The Goddess of Small Victories Read online

  “You talk about sports and cigars?”

  “We talk about mathematics and philosophy. About language.”

  “Women?”

  “No. No women. Well, yes. Sometimes. Olga Hahn joins us.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  He removed his glasses to wipe away an invisible speck of dust.

  “Very intelligent. Funny. I think.”

  “Do you like her?”

  “She’s engaged. What about you?”

  “You’re asking if I’m engaged?”

  “No, what did you do with your afternoon?”

  “We rehearsed a new floor show. Will you come and watch me?”

  “I wouldn’t think of missing it.”

  I conscientiously admired the room.

  “A very attractive place. Do you come here often, Herr Gödel?”

  “Yes, with my mother. She likes the pastries.”

  “You don’t order anything to eat?”

  “Too much to choose from.”

  “I’d have known what to order for you.”

  The waitress set down the teapot in front of him, along with the bowl of sugar and the pitcher of milk. He rearranged the position of each. But he restrained himself from touching my tableware. He took a spoonful of sugar, leveled it carefully, and gauged the quantity before putting it back in the bowl and then starting the operation all over again. I took the opportunity to eat my ice cream. Kurt sniffed at his tea.

  “Is it not to your liking, Herr Gödel?”

  “They use boiling water. It’s better to let it sit a few minutes before steeping the tea leaves.”

  “You’re a bit of a maniac.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I buried my laugh in my cream horn.

  “You have an appetite. It’s a pleasure to watch you eat, Adele.”

  “I burn it all off. I’m always on the go.”

  “I envy you. My own health is very fragile.”

  He smiled gluttonously. I felt like a strudel in a pastry case. I patted my lips with my napkin before embarking on my drawing-closer-to-you tango.

  “What are you studying exactly?”

  “I am working toward a doctorate in formal logic.”

  “You can’t be serious! The university awards degrees in logic? But isn’t logic a faculty you either have at birth or don’t?”

  “No, formal logic is not by any means a faculty.”

  “Then what kind of animal is it?”

  “Do you really want to talk about this?”

  I laid it on, eyelashes flaring. “I love to hear you talk about your work. It’s so … fascinating.”

  Lieesa would have rolled her eyes. I stuck to my own way of thinking. The broader you play it, the better it works. A man’s vanity may make him deaf, but it also makes him talkative. First step: let him explain his life to you.

  He put down his cup, lining up the handle with the floral design of the saucer, then changing his mind and setting it in its normal position, but only after giving it a full revolution. I waited, careful not to show my thoughts: Come on, schoolboy! You can’t resist it, you’re a man like any other!

  “Formal logic is an abstract system that doesn’t use normal language, the language we speak, you and I, when we’re discussing something. It’s a universal method for manipulating mathematical objects. Though I don’t speak Chinese, I could follow a logical demonstration by a Chinese person.”1

  “What’s the point, other than allowing you to understand a Chinese speaker?”

  “The point?”

  “Yes. What’s the purpose of logic?”

  “To prove! We’re looking for protocols that will let us establish definitive mathematical truths.”

  “Like a recipe?”

  In this new light, I had a better grasp of his seduction technique. He wasn’t all that shy. I was an unfamiliar specimen, he didn’t know how to act with me. I was harder to approach than the coeds at school because I was unimpressed by his academic success. He had to proceed step-by-step, justifying every stage. A chance meeting, a walk, two walks, then tea. What could he talk about? Let her do the talking. His usual technique, as he confessed to me later, was far different. He would arrange a meeting with a young woman in a room at the university where another young woman—the real object of his desire—was studying. Jealousy, competition, scoring off a bank shot: applied mathematics.

  “Not everything can be proved with your logic, can it? For instance, can you prove love?”

  “In the first place, a proof requires rigorous definitions, and the problem needs to be parceled into small pieces that are hard and immutable. Second, not everything can be transposed into this realm; that would be wrong. Love isn’t governed by a formal system.”

  “A formal system?”

  “An entirely objective language adapted to mathematics. Based on a set of axioms. Love is subjective by its very definition. It has no foundational axioms.”

  “What’s an axiom?”

  “A self-evident truth, on which you build more complex ideas like theorems.”

  “A kind of brick?”

  The teacup revolved three more times.

  “If you like.”

  “I’m going to teach you Adele’s first theorem. When it comes to love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.”2

  “That’s not a theorem. As long as it hasn’t been proved, it’s a conjecture.”

  “What do you do with those that fail the test? Do you send them to the graveyard for conjectures?”

  He never cracked a smile. I moved on from subtleties to phase two: applying heat. Provocation gets you closer to the subject.

  “And I don’t agree with you. Love is so predictable in its repetitions. All of us live through a logical progression: desire, pleasure, suffering, disenchantment, disgust, etc. It only appears to be confused or personal.” I purposely stressed the words “pleasure” and “suffering.”

  “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!”

  “Argumentum ad hominem. Your logic is inappropriate and your ethics unjust. If I used such low arguments, I would be thought a terrible lout.”

  “Why don’t you put a little more coal on the fire.”

  Kurt cast a suspicious glance at the coal-burning stove. It was a chore he hated. He opened the window wide.

  “What are you doing? It’s cold enough to split rocks!”

  “I’m hot. The air in this room is stuffy.”

  “If I die of pneumonia, it’ll be your fault. Come here!”

  He put down his shirt and lay next to me. We hid under the covers. He caressed my cheek.

  “I like your birthmark.”

  I caught his hand. “You’re the only one who does.”

  Using two fingers, he traced a horizontal eight between my breasts.

  “I read an interesting story about port-wine stains.”

  I bit him gently.

  “According to Chinese legend, birthmarks are passed down from previous lives. Therefore I must have made a mark on you in an earlier life so I’d be able to find you again in this one.”

  “In other words, because I put up with you in a past life I’m doomed to put up with you in all subsequent ones?”

  “That’s the conclusion I’ve come to.”

  “And how will I recognize you?”

  “I’ll always keep the windows open, even in winter.”

  “Too many windows to inspect, it would be more sensible for me to leave a mark on you too.”

  I bit him, not holding back this time. He howled.

  “Pain is something we never forget, Kurtele.”

  “Adele, you’re crazy!”

  “Which one of us is crazier? Look how you disfigured me! I hope it was in my very last life! Because I don’t like the idea of having wandered around like this since the dawn of time.”

  My hands won me forgiveness for the bite I’d given. I felt his body relax.

  “Are you asleep?”

  “I’m thinking. I have to go to work.”

  “Already?”

  “I have a present for you.”

  Reaching under the bed for his document case, he produced two red, highly polished apples. Wit
h a knife, he had carved “220” on one and “284” on the other.

  “Is it the number of our past lives? One of us has got a head start on the other.”

  “I’ll eat ‘220,’ and you ‘284.’ ”

  “You always choose the lighter one.”

  “Hush, Adele. It’s an Arab custom. Both 220 and 284 are amicable numbers, magnificent numbers. Each is the sum of the factors of the other. The factors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71, and 142. Their sum is 220. And the factors of—”

  “Enough, it’s all too romantic, darling toad, I’ll faint!”

  “Only 42 pairs below 10,000,000 are known.”

  “Stop, I’m begging you!”

  “If an infinite number of them exist, no one has ever proved it. And a pair with an even and an uneven number has never been found.”

  I stuffed the apple into his mouth. As I bit into mine, I was already nostalgic for this moment, for what we would never be again: beautiful, stupid children, alien to everything except each other. It was the most precious gift he ever gave me. I kept the seeds in a candy box from Café Demel.

  The first time we’d embraced, a few months earlier, I’d been afraid that I would break him in two. After the massive, brushy torso of my first husband, I was unused to his brittle, hairless body. I didn’t initiate him into sexual matters, but I had to teach him about intimacy. At the start of our relations, sex was a release for him, a concession to biology. A detail to be addressed lest his mental acuity suffer.

  Of course, I didn’t belong to his world. But intellectuals are men, after all, their desires are not in a separate compartment. On the contrary, Kurt and his friends were fierce in their desires, as though needing to take revenge. Their common hunger for the ideal could be assuaged only through the flesh. We girls were a reality they could palp.

  He’d lost his virginity fairly young to an attractive older woman, a friend of the family. His mother, when the affair came to light, embarked on an intensive campaign to safeguard the family honor. Capital not to be frittered away on a girl without expectations. Marianne envisioned her son marrying a woman of a certain social standing—a comfortable union to cushion her precious offspring’s daily life. His wife would have a good education but no personal ambition, the necessary and sufficient basis for perpetuating—or, rather, providing roots for—this dynasty of petit bourgeois that had accumulated money through the ceaseless striving of Gödel senior. Kurt was forced to break off his liaison and took care afterward to hide his private life, developing a taste for secrecy. Several years after our meeting at the Nachtfalter, his mother would learn of our relations and view them as an unfair punishment for a blameless life. Marianne never forgave me for Kurt’s duplicity, not recognizing, of course, that I had been its first victim.