Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

Once again, she hadn’t seen it coming; she was always being had. Adele Gödel was another of those embittered women just waiting to unleash their bile.

A blob of glittering pink entered her field of vision. She sighed. Gladys would make a fitting coda to this disastrous day.

“So, you had a little argument?”

“News gets around fast.”

“Adele can be mercurial. But at least she doesn’t hold a grudge. You’ll remember next time.”

“Remember what?”

Gladys put her manicured, liver-spotted hands on her hips. Anna thought she looked all too much like an ad for a golden-years Barbie.

“Today was her birthday! She didn’t have any visitors. Except you, briefly. And it’s probably going to be her last. About that, she has no illusions.”

The young woman felt herself flooded with a familiar sensation of guilt. How could she, usually so meticulous, have overlooked the date? She knew what would happen next: in another two minutes, she would start to find excuses for Adele, and a minute after that, she would look for ways to be forgiven.

*As well as meaning “archive,” the German word Nachlass means “discount.”

The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished.

— Alfred Adler, “Reflections on Mathematics and Creativity”

Rudolf had gone ahead into his brother’s room. I was waiting my turn, sitting next to the mathematician Oskar Morgenstern, a close friend of Kurt’s to whom I’d never previously been introduced. While he couldn’t possibly have believed that I was “a close friend of the family,” he accepted the information blandly. Kurt, with his boundless capacity for suspicion, had told me that I could trust this good and phlegmatic man entirely.

“How is our patient, Miss Porkert? At our last meeting, he seemed so weak.”

“When they weighed him yesterday morning, he had reached one hundred and seventeen pounds. The doctor has set the bar for his release at one hundred and twenty-eight.”

I hardly dared to whisper; the elegance of the sanatorium’s lobby still intimidated me. Anna had told me lots of stories about the prominent Viennese figures who had stayed there. Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg, and Arthur Schnitzler had come for a spell of luxurious rest, along with maharanis and millionaires of every nationality. Before the crash, of course! In 1936, the desperate rich were growing scarce, at Purkersdorf as well as in Vienna’s nightspots.

The austere sophistication of the décor tired my eyes. The architect, a certain Josef Hoffmann, had an unhealthy liking for checkerboard patterns. They appeared in the wall friezes, floor tiles, window frames, doorways, and even the hard-backed chairs in which I bided so much time. The façade, too, continued the rhythmic pattern of the window openings, which were divided into small squares. I have always needed softness and would have found comfort in neither the sanatorium’s Spartan rooms nor its severely geometrical gardens. The place was perfect for Kurt, however: clean, silent, and orderly. And Morgenstern, an elegant man who was reputed to be an illegitimate scion of the German imperial family, seemed perfectly at ease in this too-vertical world.

“You have been a great help to him, Fräulein. Kurt has told me as much. He is not a man to display his emotions.”

Oskar Morgenstern clasped my hands warmly in his, the one time in our interactions when this man actually touched me.

“Did you know that he has started working again? I brought along some recent articles that might interest him, especially those by a young English mathematician, Alan Turing.”

He could see that I was uncomfortable but mistook the reason.

“I didn’t mean to intrude on your private relations.”

“We’re not allowed to bring him documents anymore. Someone who meant well smuggled in a letter from a certain German scientist, and Kurt stopped eating again for days. He became convinced that his work was being dismissed. And he interpreted it as a plot to keep him locked up indefinitely.”

“A man named Gentzen tried to disprove him, but Kurt’s theorems survived. His detractors hang on to Hilbert as to their mother’s breast. Turing’s work will interest him much more.”

“His reading is very carefully screened. We have instructions not to give him any books, or even pencil and paper.”

“That’s idiotic! To keep Gödel from working is to keep him from breathing.”

This was exactly my experience, too. Work was a life buoy as well as an anchor for my man. I looked over my shoulder to see if Rudolf was around. Kurt needed staunch friends, and Morgenstern seemed trustworthy.

“We’ve reached an agreement. I smuggle his belongings in to him as long as he keeps putting on weight. If he gets carried away, I confiscate his toys.”

The shock on Morgenstern’s face didn’t surprise me.

“You think it’s crude, but there was no alternative. Being force-fed and doped up on medication was destroying him. He deserves to have some semblance of control over his life.”

“Does Rudolf know?”

“He looks the other way. And he can tell that his brother is improving.”

“It’s wonderful that he’s working again. Has he mentioned what he is working on?”

I could hear no condescension in his question, I had been elevated from the role of bimbo to that of nurse. The promotion was welcome enough, even if I deserved a more official title. Still, I hesitated. How much could I trust him? Kurt had banged on so often about his colleagues’ jealousy.

“I’ve heard him talk about the first problem.”

“Of Hilbert’s program? Cantor’s continuum hypothesis? Is he still trying to show that it’s consistent?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Of course. Hilbert’s first problem. Kurt spoke of his ambitions at a talk in Princeton. The very import of his choice of research strikes me … But I’m straying from the point, I apologize. Here comes Rudolf, I’ll just go in and say hello to Kurt and then he’s all yours.”

I put my hand on his arm. “Herr Morgenstern? What is this program of Hilbert’s and what about it is worrying?”

“The subject is a complicated one.”

“I’ve been with Kurt for a long time now, and I’m used to not understanding everything.”

“Hilbert’s program is a list of tasks that twentieth-century mathematicians should accomplish. A series of questions that need to be resolved to shore up a portion of existing mathematics. Kurt has already partially settled the second question with his incompleteness theorem.”

“Then why is it a cause of worry to him?”

“Of Hilbert’s twenty-three problems, seventeen at least are still unanswered. Kurt has shown us that some certainties are forever out of reach. But as to which ones …”

“He could spend his life on it, and for nothing?”

“If anyone has a chance of resolving Hilbert’s first problem, it is certainly Kurt!”

“And the other problems?”

“If he had ten lifetimes it still wouldn’t be enough. In fact, I doubt they’ll ever be entirely solved.”

“That’s the sort of thought that haunts him.”

“Not at all! Don’t you see? Our friend enjoys the voyage more than the destination. You’ve made the right choice, Fräulein Porkert.”

He rose, leaving his seat to Rudolf, who collapsed into the unaccommodating chair, risking his back.

“The nurse can barely keep from throttling him.”

“Don’t let it upset you. He’ll have better days.”

Kurt’s brother buried himself in his newspaper. He sat up, cursed, and held up a page dated June 23.