“Adele, you’re a positivist without knowing it. I find that terrifying.”
He emitted a high, mousy squeak. Had this man never learned to laugh?
“Are you expecting to become a professor, Herr Gödel?”
“Of course. I’ll probably be a Privatdozent* in a few years.”
“Poor students!”
Positivist. He might as well have called me a Bolshevik! I decided to shake up this bag of certainties a little. Phase three: immersion in cold water, the abrupt cooling of the subject.
I walked out on him.
I didn’t get to savor my little effect for very long. The clicking of my heels faded into the noise of horse-drawn carriages on Michaelerplatz. I stepped in a pile of dung. I swore at the whole world, men and horses. Then I cursed myself. Yes, I’d managed to draw his blue eyes toward me. But what I’d read there was alarm, not admiration. I had worn a dress that was much too beautiful for me, one that I couldn’t afford to buy. Already I was regretting it.
*An unsalaried university lecturer.
5
The Cerberus at the gates being absent, Anna took the opportunity to inspect the register. Visits to Mrs. Gödel had been few in the past weeks, all of them from women and none particularly young, to judge from their first names.
She put the ledger carefully back in its place before going to sit in her strategic chair. She had arrived too early. She would wait, as usual. To her blacklist of idiotic tasks — looking for the beginning of a roll of Scotch tape, lining up at the bank, choosing the wrong line at the supermarket, missing the exit on the interstate — she could add a new item: waiting for Adele. The sum of little bits of wasted time and the lateness of others added up to a lost life.
From the far end of the hallway, Gladys came bustling toward her. She was astonishingly vigorous for her age. She rummaged through Anna’s carryall without ceremony but was disappointed. The visitor had brought nothing this time.
“You’re all dolled up, Gladys.” The tiny woman in pink angora had only just left the clutches of a perverse hairdresser, which was apparent from the nauseating smell of lacquer, ammonia, and unnatural hair coloring.
“Can’t let yourself go. You know what they are … men!”
Anna gripped her bag. She really didn’t want to know. She pushed away images of wrinkled skin against wrinkled skin, of flaccid organs between withered fingers.
“We haven’t got many left in the retirement home. Barely one for every six women. I could tell you stories.”
“I’d rather not.”
Gladys didn’t hide her disappointment: no little treats and no tittle-tattle to sink her dentures into. Anna felt sorry for her and revived the conversation.
“How is Adele?”
“She doesn’t even ask to see the hairdresser anymore. But then she is having problems with her hair, which is dropping out by the handful. Your hair is so nice. Is that your natural color?”
“Is she depressed?”
The elderly lady patted her hand.
“Adele is in the activities room. Listen for the music! I’ve got to leave you, dearie. I have a date.”
Anna found the room without much trouble, following the sounds of a lively melody played on an ill-tuned piano. The walls were pimpled with bright paintings. Lordly in her wheelchair, Adele tapped out the beat with her foot. At Anna’s entrance she put her finger to her lips. She was still wearing her cap, a thick wool jacket whose days of resplendence were in the last century, and soft shoes. Anna sat in a nearby chair. It was pink, as in a maternity ward: pastel colors at the start and end of our lives.
The pianist, a local youth, turned as he played the final chord. He had a scar from a cleft lip, and one of his eyes was half closed. The other was warm and bright. He kissed Adele on the cheek before taking off.
“Jack is the son of the head nurse. He is maladjusted but charming.”
“What was he playing? I’ve heard that tune before.”
“I am the merry widow of a man who loved operetta.”
Anna tightened her buttocks, which were sliding across the leatherette seat.
“Humor is a requisite for survival, young lady. Especially here.”
“We all manage our grief in different ways.”
“Pain is not a business. You don’t manage a drowning. You try to get back to the surface.”
“Or you decide to drown.”
“You seem to be a specialist on the subject. You’re so stiff. Relax!”
Nothing set Anna on edge more than being told to relax. Adele was in far too good a frame of mind to be a widow; the young woman couldn’t understand her. She’d never been that good at figuring people out, and the old lady didn’t conform to any of the personality types she had in her inventory. She would have liked to retreat behind her customary aloofness, but she had neither the time nor the talent for tactical procrastination.
“Did you mean to avoid me? You left me waiting in the reception area.”
“Are you making a scene?”
“I would never think of it.”
“Too bad. Bring me back to my room, please.”
Anna pushed at the wheelchair but found it stuck.
“The brake, young lady.”
“Sorry.”
“You should banish that word from your vocabulary.”
Adele was certainly a woman who didn’t apologize for existing. The two made their way down the hall in silence. The walls were papered with a tired reproduction of an autumnal forest. In one corner, an unknown rebel had started to peel away a section, looking for a nonexistent exit.
“At the funeral, many of us were widows. Men die first, that’s the way it is.”
A cold wind was shaking the blinds. Anna rushed to the window.
“Leave it open. I’m stifling.”
“You’re going to catch cold.”
“I hate having the windows closed.”
“Shall I help you get into bed?”
“I’d like to enjoy the vertical world for a few more moments.”
Anna moved the wheelchair out of the draft and sat down next to it.
“Does Gladys never change her pullover?”
“She has a whole collection of them, twenty at least. All pink.”
“All atrocious!”
“When you forget to be serious, Anna, you have a beautiful smile.”
6. 1929: The Windows Open, Even in Winter
Between the penis and mathematics … there’s nothing. A vacuum!
— Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night
Some nights after making love, Kurt would ask me to describe my pleasure. He wanted to quantify it, qualify it, check if its gradient was different from his own. As though “we women” had access to a different realm. I was hard-pressed to answer him, at least with the precision he wanted.
“You’re going back to being a pimply adolescent, Kurtele.”
“If that were true, I would talk about your breasts. Excuse me, your big breasts.”
“You like my breasts?”
He smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt. I hadn’t given him time to fold his clothes on his chair as was his exasperating habit.
“I love you.”
“You’re lying. All men are liars.”
“It all depends on who is making the statement. Was it a lesson from your father or your mother? A syllogism or a sophism?”
“You’re speaking Chinese, O learned doctor!”
“If it was your father, you’ll never know whether he was lying or not. If it was your mother, its truth is contingent on her experience of men.”
“Common sense tells us plainly enough that girls grow up being taught lies. No use trying your demonic logic on me. You have a shriveled heart. You’re nothing but a man!”