“I’m confused, I thought we would talk shop.”
“Philosophy is not a sidelight to mathematics. On the contrary, it is its substantive marrow.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Dr. Gödel.”
I made a little face at our disoriented visitor. There was no avoiding Husserl now.
“Phenomenology is first and foremost a question. How should we think of thought itself? How do we free ourselves from all the a prioris that clog our perception? How are we to grasp not what we believe to be so, but what is so?”
“My wife is taking a drawing course. She often says, ‘How can we transcribe not what we know is in front of us, but what is in front of us?’ ”
I crossed my arms to strangle my impatience. If the young man was going to join in Kurt’s game, then he’d better not complain about it afterward.
“Our brains transmit a portion of reality to us. Another portion is prerecorded. Like a lazy painter who places his subject against the same backdrop time after time.”
“But how do you free yourself from all preconception, Dr. Gödel? You would have to have extraordinary mental powers!”
“Husserl says that anyone who really wants to become a philosopher must at a certain point in his life shut himself away from others to try to overthrow all the presently accepted sciences. Then try to reconstruct them.”
“A kind of trance?”
“Husserl prefers to speak of ‘reduction.’ ”
“It’s all too esoteric for me! I am more intuitive.”
Our guest had spoken the fateful word. Reinvigorated, Kurt straightened in his chair. For several years now, his intuition had not been answering his call as often as in the past. He could no longer interrogate reality with the fresh eyes of youth. Experience had turned into a distorting filter, forcing him to retrace familiar paths. His venture into phenomenology held out the hope that his mind, lacking excitement, might find a new virginity. Must one unlearn in order to progress? I had never learned much to begin with, but it hadn’t advanced me much. He didn’t understand my irony: “Suspend your judgment, Adele. You must learn to alter your attention to the world.” As if what I needed was to get away from this world.
“Intuition is too random a shortcut, Mr. Cohen. We should be able to disassemble our thought mechanisms to reach places that our lazy perception forbids us to go, either because of censorship or habit.”
Paul Cohen became absorbed in the pattern of the curtains. He was sorry that he had opened this valve and would have to endure a flood of observations only distantly related to his primary concern: receiving blessings from the master.
“There are no limits to the mind, Mr. Cohen. Only to its habits. Just as there are no limits to mathematics. Only to mathematics circumscribed by formal systems.”
“You seem to be saying that the mind is a simple mechanical object, which one needs to take apart, oil, and put back together.”
“Don’t confuse me with Turing. Human thought isn’t static. It is continually developing. You are not a machine.”
“Yet if the number of neurons is finite, the number of possible states of connection is also finite. Therefore a limit exists.”
“Is the mind exclusively a product of matter? That is a materialist preconception.”
“Why don’t you publish an article on this?”
“And open myself to polite mockery? The zeitgeist is as much against me now as ever! I prefer to study alone in my corner, although I am certain of being in the right.”
“Are you hiding?”
“I am protecting myself. I no longer have the strength for controversy. I am not the first, nor will I be the last. Even Husserl felt that he wasn’t understood. I am certain that he didn’t say everything, so as not to encourage his enemies.”
I took out my irritation on the tea biscuits; I knew the speech by heart. What was the point of being right in your own bedroom? He no longer had the strength for controversies? He never did have the strength. I interrupted them, because the television seemed to be broadcasting new images. Earlier that afternoon at a Dallas movie house, the police had arrested a suspect, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. He was being sought for the murder of a patrolman a few minutes after the president’s assassination. His guilt was not in question.
“That didn’t take long! I hope they send him to the electric chair!”
“Isn’t it strange that they found the killer so soon? And why did the Secret Service not anticipate the shooting?”
Paul Cohen, who had little interest in conspiracy talk, rose to take his leave.
“I’m honored to have been invited into your home. May I ask whether you’ve had the chance to reread my article?”
“It’s in an envelope by the front door. If I have any other comments I’ll telephone you.”
After seeing our visitor out, I came back to the living room to find Kurt lost in contemplation of the television screen.
“That’s a very nice young man. So full of energy!”
“The fervor of youth. Speaking objectively, his method is sound, but plodding.62 His whole approach lacks elegance.”
“So you see him as a carpenter, whereas you’re a cabinet maker?”
“I don’t understand your insinuations, Adele. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”
He slammed his bedroom door by way of truncating the conversation; he didn’t want to confront the judgment of others. Mine especially. In the past months, that damned door had been shutting earlier and earlier. It spoke of his failure and his loneliness. Day after day, year after year, I heard that noise. I still hear it.
I searched the stream of anxiety-producing images on the screen for a diversion from my sadness. How could America survive a tragedy like this? The Russians were no strangers to this kind of chaos. Nothing had exploded in ’62; I’d almost have welcomed it. A little Cuban bomb and presto! We’d have been able to erase the graying blackboard, redraw our course without losing the way. Time travel. Why had Kurt not given us that gift? Then all his knowledge would have been useful, for once. How I’d have liked to wake up in the morning with an array of possibilities! I’d be twenty-seven years old, have good legs, and be handing him his overcoat at the Nachtfalter’s hatcheck stand.
I wasn’t afraid of death. I invited it. I was afraid of this ending that had no end.
49
Anna waited until she was out of sight of the IAS buildings to vent her anger. She lashed out at a sodden clump of dirt, ruining her shoes. Around her, the empty expanse of lawns slumbered in the warmth of an overly mild winter. She cursed the blue sky and insipid town. She blamed herself for her lack of courage and resourcefulness. She’d lost any combativeness she ever had.