10. 1931: The Flaw
If nature had not made us a little frivolous, we should be most wretched. It is because one can be frivolous that the majority of people do not hang themselves.
— Voltaire, Letters
I was frantic with worry. No news from Kurt for six days. The few friends of his that I’d managed to meet had already emigrated: Feigl to the United States, Natkin to Paris. At the university, they looked me up and down before informing me disdainfully that Kurt had taken a leave of absence. As a last resort, I decided to knock on the forbidden door at the Josefstädterstrasse, but I’d broken our agreement for nothing: the family wasn’t there. The concierge wouldn’t even open her window to me. I had to slip a schilling through the crack to get her talking. Then she told me everything: the comings and goings in the middle of the night, the men apologetic, the mother with swollen eyes, the brother even stiffer than usual.
“They took him to Purkersdorf, to the sanatorium. Where they put the nut jobs from the society pages. Never looked too sturdy to me, that young man. But since you know the Gödels, maybe you can tell me — are they Jewish? I’ve never managed to find out. Usually I can spot them a mile off.”
I fled without a word. I wandered for hours, bumping into other pedestrians, before deciding to return to my parents’ apartment on the Lange Gasse. I couldn’t stand the idea of being at my place alone.
It wasn’t possible, wasn’t acceptable. It wasn’t him. I’d have seen it coming. We’d had dinner together that Saturday. No, I’d eaten and he’d watched. How could I have been so blind? Recently he hadn’t taken pleasure in anything. He wasn’t even interested in me. I’d attributed his indifference to exhaustion. He’d worked so much. But that was behind him; he had said himself that his ideas were starting to gain acceptance. He’d received his doctorate, he’d been published, the road was open. I hadn’t wanted to see. Where I came from, this kind of illness was treated with stiff doses of alcohol. Sanatoriums were for TB cases.
I couldn’t find any particular reasons for his breakdown. Just a little too much pressure. Too many all-nighters. Too much of me, too much of her. Too much darkness after the great light. At the first difficulty, I was ejected from his life. His family had thought it best not to keep me informed. Marianne and Rudolf knew of our relationship, but I didn’t really exist as far as they were concerned. To his acquaintances I was just “that girl from the club.” The broad whose existence you accept. Two worlds separated by the service stairs.
I left a note on my parents’ kitchen table and rushed to the Westbahn, where I caught the last train to Purkersdorf. I collapsed on a seat and only then began to think. How was I going to contact him? I had no rights. His mother could have me ejected like a vagrant. I was part of his life, there was nothing she could do about that. This time she wouldn’t win. I wouldn’t let the old cow wreck her son’s life with her jealousy and guilt making.
My parents didn’t understand me either. I was no longer at home in their world, but I would never completely belong to his. And if I missed the call at the Nachtfalter that night, I wasn’t sure I’d still have a job when I got back. I’d already logged more hours of flight than was good for a cabaret girl. I didn’t care. Even if no one wanted to hear it, I was certain that I could save him from himself. I’d have to remind him of this if he’d forgotten.
During the trip, I straightened out my creased outfit and repaired my ravaged face as best I could. Before long, the high façades of Vienna gave way to greenery. All that nature made me sick.
I presented myself at the sanatorium’s personnel office. The building was immaculate, looking more like a luxury hotel than a hospital despite its austere modernism. This kind of establishment has a constant need for girls like me, but as I had no references and times were hard, they politely turned me away. I loitered at the edges of the park, avoiding the main door. The cool swaths of lawn, the silence punctuated by the cawing of crows, a faint odor of soup and clipped hedges: I didn’t yet know it, but it was a foretaste of the years we would spend in purgatory.
One of the nurses was taking her break at the delivery entrance. I asked her if she had any tobacco. My fingers refused to roll a decent cigarette.
“You’re having one of those days.”
I managed to counterfeit a smile.
“At Purk, we’re used to seeing people who are unhappy. You could even say it’s the house specialty. They come in droves. It’s what keeps the place going!”
“My friend is being treated here. I don’t have permission to visit him.”
She picked a fleck of tobacco from her mouth.
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Kurt Gödel. I’ve had no news from him for days now.”
“Room 23. He’s taking a sleep cure. It’s going pretty well.”
I squeezed her arm. She pushed me away gently.
“Still, he’s in pretty bad shape, your guy. He’s skinny as a rake. I like him. He thanks you when you do his room. Not everyone does. But he doesn’t say anything beyond that. His mother, now, she’s a handful. She’ll start cussing the staff up one side and down the other, bawling the nurses out. A first-class pain in the rear!”
“What can they do to help him?”
“It depends on Dr. Wagner-Jauregg, honey. If he’s in a good mood, your friend will get some water therapy and some hanky-wetting sessions before they send him home. The man in charge is a close pal of your Dr. Freud. A star. He brings us lots of clients. Most of his patients come out of his consulting room with their handkerchiefs sopping. It’s supposed to help. For the others, Wagner prefers stronger methods.”
I took a deep drag on my badly rolled cigarette.
“No one has ever called Wagner a softy. In his view, all means are fair in science. He treats his special cases with electricity.”
“What for?”
The maid flicked her cigarette end toward the hedge.
“To bring them back to reality. As if they would need reminding that all this crap is real. I like to say that parts of their brain go off on holiday. The good thing with electricity is that they stop yelling and beating their heads against the wall. So that’s an advantage. But they shit their beds. Makes work for us. I gotta go. Work calls.”
She straightened the white cap on her mop of red hair and held out her tobacco pouch to me.
“One more for the road? Don’t go having a cow. Your lover boy is like a lot of others. He has what they call melancholia. When a man is sad. The times are like that. Come back at the same time tomorrow and I’ll get you in. His mother won’t be around. She riled the nurses up so bad they banned her from the floor for two days. For therapeutic reasons.”
“Thanks. Thanks a million. What’s your name? I’m Adele.”
“I know, hon. That’s the name he mutters in his sleep. I’m Anna.”
11
“A little outing in the garden?”
“It’s cold. I’m tired.”
“It almost feels like spring! I’ll bundle you up and we’ll go out.”
Anna carefully wrapped the old lady in layers of clothing. She unlocked the brake and navigated the wheelchair out the bedroom door. Despite the deft handling, Adele gripped the armrests.
“I don’t like being carted around in this damn contraption. It gives me the feeling that I’m already dead.”
“You’re much too curmudgeonly. Death is probably afraid of coming near you.”
“Let death come, I’ll stand my ground. If my legs still hold me. I had lovely legs, you know?”
“You danced like a queen, I can well imagine.”