As someone who would spend his whole life committing suicide, he could have cut his suffering short right there in Paris. No one would have been there to stop him. But he came home to Vienna and checked in to the sanatorium of his own volition. Why he renounced death isn’t explained by my love for him, nor by his mother’s love, nor by his faith. He must have been obeying another and far stronger injunction: the last struggle of his body against the anthropophagy of his mind.
Perhaps I am condemned to see duality where there is none.
One morning in January 1936, looking out through the clutter of my father’s shop window, I recognized Kurt’s brother on the sidewalk. I thought: Kurt is dead. Why else would Rudolf make the effort to contact me? Ever since Kurt’s disastrous return from Paris, I had lived in limbo. Kurt was in strict isolation at Purkersdorf, and even redheaded Anna could no longer help me see him. The meager information to be gotten from his nurses was far from reassuring. He refused to eat and, groggy from drugs, spent his days sleeping. I couldn’t face either of the two likely outcomes: that I would wait for a man who was locked away and had no hope of recovery, or that I would become a widow but without the right to wear mourning. I couldn’t even run away. I was just an onlooker at a train wreck.
I sat down and closed my eyes. I heard the shrill tinkling of the doorbell, then Rudolf’s solemn greeting to my father. I waited motionless for my sentence.
“Miss Porkert? Kurt wants to see you.”
Rudolf had gone to all the trouble of seeking me out: if Kurt wasn’t dead, he was not far from it.
“He isn’t well. He is refusing to eat anything. He thinks his doctors are trying to poison him. Would you accompany me to Purkersdorf? He needs you.”
My father said nothing, having long since abandoned hope of saving his wayward daughter. My sisters bustled around upstairs, whispering and gathering my belongings. My mother dressed me tenderly: the sudden intrusion of the bald truth into a place where it had long been unspoken left me limp as a rag doll. For my family, Rudolf’s visit was proof of my importance to Kurt, this man about whom no one ever spoke, this ghost responsible for my disgrace.
Rudolf drove me in his car to the Purkersdorf Sanatorium. During the long, awkward silence I was able to recover my spirits. I watched him out of the corner of my eye: the Gödel brothers had little in common, unless it was the stiff sadness at their core. He waited until we’d reached the outskirts of Vienna to make a few bland comments. We skipped over “why” and “whose fault is it,” instead exchanging information and making arrangements. Words without emotion. Kurt would have approved the objective tenor of our conversation: who would stay with Kurt and on what days. I would be introduced to the medical team as a close friend of the family. We would avoid any scandal. There would be no commotion, we would disturb him in no way. We would try not to break the last delicate thread. We loved a different person.
Rudolf parked the car in front of the sanatorium. Despite the dirty winter light, the immaculate building displayed an insolent health. I had grown to hate its little geometric friezes, its imposing modernity, so powerless to dispel the patients’ troubled spirits.
Rudolf sat motionless, his gloved hands gripping the wheel tightly. Without looking at me, he managed to say the words that needed to be said: “I should have gone to meet him in Paris.”
I lightly touched his pale skin below the cuff of his leather glove. This man, too, was fragile, even if he didn’t show it. They are all fragile.
“It wouldn’t have changed anything. You know that.”
He stiffened at my touch. I lied badly: he should have gone to Paris to meet Kurt, but even before that he should never have let him go.
“We won’t say anything to my mother about your being here. Kurt is in no condition to manage this kind of situation.”
“I’m here for him. Don’t imagine that I consider this change of heart a victory of any sort.”
I waited for him to go around the car and open the door for me. This time I would walk in through the front door with my head held high.
His life, our love, the country’s future — everything was in confusion. I would have to straighten up this mess. I would have to bring order to his chaos if we were to ever have a future together. That’s the way I am: tell me that I’m needed and I’ll lift mountains.
15
The higher-ups at the retirement home denied Anna’s request to take Mrs. Gödel on an outing. A trip to the movies was out of the question, the staff barely managed to keep Mrs. Gödel’s pain under control. The old woman was living on borrowed time. Anna didn’t know how to break the bad news to her. She should never have made any promises. On top of everything, she’d fallen so far behind in her work that she’d had to cancel her last visit.
Arriving at the half-open door, Anna hesitated for a moment. The room was dark, the curtains pulled shut. The air was stale, the smell made her gorge rise. She composed her face into a smile before entering.
“I’m so sorry to be late, Adele. I ran into some problems on the way here.”
The shape buried under the covers made no answer.
“Were you asleep? I’m sorry.”
“I am tired of hearing you always apologize for the rain.”
Adele propped herself up laboriously on her pillows. Her mouth was drawn tight and her eyebrows arched querulously. Anna told herself she wouldn’t have the strength to clash swords with Adele, not tonight, after all the people bothering her at work, the flat tire, and the pimple throbbing on her chin. The last of the evening light was long gone, she was already thinking of the lonely, winding road that would lead her back to an empty fridge.
“So what kind of behavior is this? You come every two days, then you don’t come anymore?”
“I was very busy at work.”
“I’m not in the mood to visit with you. We’re closed. No Nachlass on the Nachlass* today!”
“Are you feeling unwell? Shall I call the duty nurse?”
“You don’t have anything better to do than to play the part of a bloodsucker?”
Anna guessed that Adele had learned she was confined to quarters and put her animosity down to that. Someone else had brought the news, but she would pay the price. She walked up to the bed holding out a bag of candies.
“I brought some sweets. We won’t tell the nurse.”
“You are trying to hurry up my death to get possession of those papers sooner?”
“I was hoping to make you happy. I know you have a sweet tooth, Adele!”
The old woman shook her finger at Anna. Her gestures and words rang false. She felt their dissonance without being able to correct them.
“Don’t talk to me as if I am a child!”
Anna had used up her stores of patience. She stared at the rejected bag of treats.