Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

“My father will be here any minute. I’m going home.”

She dropped her cigarette stub and crushed it with a heel worn down from dancing too much black bottom. I’d always envied her small feet.

“He’s not coming back. You were just a pastime for him. You’re thirty-four years old and you’re wasting the best years of your life waiting. Come on! The night is young!”

I shivered in my light coat. The winter would be cold, and I no longer had the money to buy pretty things.

“You’re clinging to a ghost. What do you still see in that mommy’s boy who can hardly bring himself to say a word?”

I was too tired to listen to her criticisms. I scanned the street, worried only because my father was late. She forced me to turn my face toward her. Her hands were scaly and dry. I pushed her away and settled my hat on my head.

“You think he’s going to show up and ask for your hand, have children with you, and invite you to Sunday dinner with his mother? Jesus, wake up! He’s gone!”

“He’ll come back.”

“You know perfectly well that your guy hasn’t got both oars in the water! He’s a nut job and his friends are all Yids and Communists. You spend too much time at the movies, honey. There isn’t going to be a happy ending. Look after your fanny, toots, while it’s still worth looking at!”

“He and I have something special between us.”

“How long has this business dragged on? Six years? Seven? And have you even met his family? Not once!”

“Who are you to lecture me?”

“You’re putting on airs above your station, sweetie. Think of where you come from! As far as they’re concerned, you’re just a whore, Adele! But at least a whore gets paid! And you work as a serving girl so you can buy him luxuries. Christ, what world are you living in?”

“Not yours, anyway.”

She gave a snort and walked away, pumping her rump from side to side. It was at that moment that I said goodbye to my carefree youth.

She had chosen to survive. And she was pressing me to do the same. Every person in Vienna had to make a decision, not on the basis of hope but of fear: Who was more dangerous? Was it the Reds or the Browns? Who would save Vienna as we knew it? Anyone who could was fleeing the city. The party was over. There was confusion everywhere. I was alone. I didn’t want to choose, I didn’t want to be afraid. I only wanted to get off the merry-go-round, sit with Kurt at the Café Demel, and eat an ice cream. And make him sit up and beg.

Anna sat very tall, her knees together. She always felt oppressed when she was with the Institute’s director. He reminded her too much of her father: the same self-sufficiency, the same hereditary sense of the world as consisting of vertically stacked, watertight compartments. His office even had the same smell as her father’s: of leather-bound books, Ivy League mementos, and faint whiffs of expensive liquor behind mahogany panels. She focused on the dandruff speckling his navy blue jacket. The turtleneck under his shirt made her think of Adele.

“You seem pleased with yourself, Miss Roth. Have you made any progress?”

“If you mean will I drop off three crates of documents on your doorstep tomorrow, then no, I haven’t made any progress, sir.”

Calvin Adams rose to stare down at her from his full height.

“Do I detect an edge of aggression, Miss Roth?”

She made herself shrink. She mustn’t antagonize him. She had already seen him fly into a rage.

“I apologize, really. It’s just that I’ve been working so hard.”

“Then get some help. I’m not a torturer, damn it! You don’t have to make those geriatric visits every three days. We have enough to keep us busy right here. We have a delegation from Europe about to arrive. I’ll need your skills as a translator.”

“That’s not my job.”

“I’ve discussed it with your father. You need work that brings you into closer contact with people. You’ve spent too many years in the company of old papers.”

The young woman had always expected her father to poke his patrician nose into her business one day or another. Princeton’s motto, engraved above the entrance to the library, reminded her of it constantly: Dei sub numine viget , “Under the protection of God she flourishes.” Under her father’s omnipotent eye, she had wilted.

“I’m very grateful to have been offered the position, even knowing that I owe it to my father.”

The director unbuttoned his blazer and shoved his chair back. Anna’s world was full of furniture on wheels.

“We’re among ourselves here. George and I are old friends, and his concern is perfectly legitimate. I would do the same for my own son.”

“We were talking about Mrs. Gödel.”

The director’s mention of Leonard had left her drained. Especially here in this office where, twenty years earlier, Leo had offered her his collection of Strange comic books if she would pull down her panties. Both their fathers were in the next room, deep in discussion, but she’d had the time to give him a furtive glimpse of her privates behind the padded door. Not because of his comics, which were stupid, but for the pleasure of taking his dare.

“If the business drags on, there’s no point in wasting more time on it. I have still another Einstein biographer to cope with and a dozen lectures to prepare.”

“Mrs. Gödel has assured me that she didn’t destroy the documents.”

“That’s an excellent start. You need to convince her at this point that we’re acting in good faith.”

“It’s not so simple.”

“All the same, you’ve managed to soften her up. Congratulations.”

Anna had had no choice, she’d had to throw Adams a bone or he would have put her on a new assignment. He now came to the real purpose of their interview, fingering the gold buttons of his blazer in a familiar sign of embarrassment. To the extent, at least, that he was capable of showing sentiment.

“I’m counting on you to join us for Thanksgiving dinner. Virginia will be delighted to see you again. We have two or three Nobel Prize prospects joining us, a Fields medalist, and an heir to the Richardson fortune.”

“You’re very kind, but I never feel comfortable at this sort of gathering.”

“It’s not an invitation, it’s a summons, Miss Roth! I haven’t got an interpreter who can come that night, and that damned French mathematician mangles his English so badly I can barely understand a word he says. I need your talents. And you will make an effort to look presentable, won’t you?”

Anna wondered whether he would deliver the final thrust by reminding her of her mother’s legendary elegance. He stopped short. The shadow of her father was enough to give the conversation weight. Having to share Thanksgiving dinner with Leo would be the last straw. She rose and took her leave, the urge to scream rising in her. She would wait until she was safely in the shower. Princeton’s manicured lawns were generally unreceptive to fits of hysteria.

From his office window, the director watched the slender figure retreat. He had never understood her as a child, and he had no more insight into her now that she was a young woman. He felt a tightening in his pelvis at the thought of the girl who, thirty years earlier, had sat next to him during a reception for Princeton students. Austere Anna was her exact opposite. Rachel had been irresistible, a brilliant student with delectable breasts. As he and Rachel were already committed to other partners, they had shared just one, frustrating dance. He scratched his crotch. Times were different. Nowadays, he could have asked her out for a drink. He shut the door and allowed himself a little liquid solace to erase the vision of creamy thighs and breasts like basketballs. He’d have to tell his wife that Anna was coming to Thanksgiving dinner. Virginia didn’t like her, and she’d never liked Anna’s mother. With a little luck, his space-alien son might consent to join them. With even more luck, Leo might even be directed toward gainful employment by Andrew W. Richardson Jr. And if miracles still happened, Virginia might reach the end of the meal without getting crocked. But luck wasn’t to be trusted. He poured himself another belt before hiding the bottle and summoning his secretary.