This is a sad letter, I hope you don’t mind too much. You are such a good listener, Jane.
Your fond friend,
Beth
Princeton, June 15, 1976
Dearest Jane,
In your last letter you asked for details about my “two old people.” Poor Adele has been hospitalized. She had another stroke. She is in critical condition, delirious and needing to be fed intravenously. I’m exhausted. I spend my time shuttling between the house and the hospital, driving Mr. Gödel to his wife’s bedside. He is painful to look at, like an abandoned child. I do his shopping. I cook little dishes for him, but he says he prefers to make his own meals. I don’t believe him. He is completely irrational. Some days, he’ll talk to me about Adele for hours on end. Other days, he suspects me of belonging to a plot to get him fired from his job. He forgets that he has already retired. Adele’s stroke is perhaps related to the stress she has been under these past few weeks. Her husband escaped from the hospital where he was due for an emergency operation to replace his catheter. He walked home on foot. While I stood there, he accused his wife of wanting to kill him and of having siphoned off all his money while he was gone. The poor woman cried in discouragement. Several people tried to talk him into taking a sedative, including the doctor and his friend Morgenstern, but they all failed. He held out stubbornly for several days in a state of semidelirium. He even called his brother in Europe to ask him to be his legal guardian. The next day, he announced that he hated his brother. What this woman has had to put up with is beyond all telling. By being extraordinarily patient, she actually managed to calm him down. Everything seemed back in order (if there can be any order in a house full of crazies), when she suddenly began to feel unwell. We took her to the hospital immediately. Ever since, her husband has been filled with concern for her. Mr. Morgenstern is also not a pretty sight. He has grown thin and uses his last remaining energy worrying about his capricious walking corpse of a friend. Mr. Gödel should be locked up somewhere. Adele refuses to do it. She still finds ways to feel guilty about not being able to look after him.
I’m almost at the end of my rope, Jane. Send me courage. I swear that from now on I’ll only look after newborns! Will you remind me of this?
Beth
Princeton, September 2, 1977
Dearest Jane,
The latest news is not good. Adele has been in intensive care for the last two months. She was already in poor shape because of her stroke, I’m not sure she’ll manage to recover from her colostomy. Even in the best circumstances, she won’t go home before Christmas. If she goes home at all. Her fear of leaving her husband all alone is the one thing that keeps her alive. What I worried would happen at the start of the summer has in fact come to pass. It didn’t take any great foresight! Mr. Gödel has shut himself away at home and refuses all help. With his wife not there, he has stopped eating. I leave small plates of food for him. I find them untouched the next morning. Yesterday I found a chicken covered with flies on the doormat. Someone else is trying to bring him food too.
I just don’t know how to hide the truth from Adele anymore. She blames herself for having left him to his own devices: “What is he going to do without me? Elizabeth, are you bringing him food every day?”
Mr. Gödel no longer opens his door for anyone. He won’t let me help him. When I manage to reach him by telephone, he accuses me of keeping his colleagues from visiting. He asks for his friend Oskar. Mr. Morgenstern died two months ago. He doesn’t want to admit it.
I’m afraid the end is near. For both of them. Now that she’s away, he is letting himself drift off. She won’t survive him.
Kiss a palm tree for me! This stab at humor might seem out of place to you. Believe me, I have to dip deep into my reserves so as not to drown alongside my charges.
Your affectionate and very tired friend,
Beth
Princeton, January 21, 1978
Dearest Jane,
You won’t be surprised to learn that Mr. Gödel died on January 14. Adele is in shock. She still can’t get her mind around it. She was so happy to have finally convinced him to enter the hospital. But despite the fact that she came home and looked after him, it was too late. He let himself die of hunger while she was gone. When he died, he weighed sixty-six pounds! How could a man as smart as he manage to get himself into such a position? I don’t understand. He passed away in the afternoon, curled up like a fetus in the armchair in his bedroom.
Since the funeral, I’ve spent all my time with Adele to give her support. She alternates between feelings of relief and guilt. I’ve even caught her talking to him. She is losing her mind a little. It’s probably for the best. She has to go on living without him. If you can call it living.
We’re going to find a place for her in a nursing home. She grouses about it but only because it’s expected of her. In fact she knows that it’s the best solution. She’s very afraid of being left alone. Her pension is not much, but with the proceeds from the sale of their house we should be able to find her a not-too-terrible old folks’ home.
My work here is coming to an end. Five long and horrible years. The doctors say that Mr. Gödel’s anorexia was due to a personality disorder. What a surprise! He should have been committed involuntarily a long time ago. If he had not been a bigwig in his field, he would certainly have been locked up. But it was her decision. And she paid for it right to the end. My last project will be to help her put some order into their archives. I looked around the basement. It’s not going to be any walk in the park. Her husband accumulated tons of paperwork.
I’m coming to see you soon, Jane. I badly need to laugh, sit in the sun, and forget this whole story. That’s what happens when you develop an affection for your patients!
Your staunch friend,
Beth
53
“Does the staff know about your little meetings?”
“Under the heading of entertainment: never disturb an old person in conversation with the dead, with cats, or with archivists.”
Reluctantly, Anna pushed Adele’s wheelchair toward their “secret” rendezvous. She had lied to her mother, claiming she couldn’t go to California because of the flu, and now she’d been roped into taking part in this silliness on Christmas Eve. According to Mrs. Gödel, certain of the positivists took part in parapsychology séances back in Vienna, but Anna couldn’t believe that the greatest logician of the twentieth century would have subscribed to this irrationality for any reason other than to expose charlatans.
“You’re not risking a great deal. At worst, we might conjure up the wrong person.”