Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

He fucks her standing, the silence punctuated by a ticktocking grandfather clock. The wooden molding digs into her back at every thrust. It’s an execution squad. He has to get his revenge. She has to settle an outstanding debt. The part of herself that is excited by submission is not one she had known before. She feels her pleasure welling up too quickly. His strokes sync with the clock; she keeps herself from moaning, opens her eyes: he isn’t watching her come.

The anticipated orgasm radiated outward from her parts; she smiled — her little machine still worked. What happened afterward she preferred to forget. They had put their clothes back on and opened the door. Before leaving the room, Anna had asked for a word, a gesture of affection, but he had brushed her aside absently. “Wait, I have to jot something down and I’ll be right there.” She understood that if she chose to wait now, she would be supplicating for the rest of her life. Back in the kitchen, Ernestine, the governess, noticed her mussed clothes and gave her a quiet smile, taking her pallor for embarrassment. She left without saying goodbye to Leo and pretended to be indifferent when he called the next day.

She looked at her radio alarm clock: 6:05. Still a full hour before she could start her day. She reached over to her dressing table and took a novel haphazardly from the stack.

Her parents had almost been pleased by her taste for books. Something might be made of the girl yet. Of course, she’d never be as brilliant as the Adamses’ son. But at least she didn’t call them from the police station. Leo was probably the child they would have liked to have. Their hopes for her had been modest, and she had not disappointed. She didn’t even have the excuse that she was lazy: she worked hard, eager for the half smile that greeted every A, but there were never enough of them. It would have been hipper to have a dunce to bemoan. Still, at fourteen Anna spoke several languages. Her mother corrected her too-colloquial German, and her father thought her French and Italian barely adequate for ordering in a restaurant. The adolescent buried her anger in little black notebooks, labeled by date and scrupulously aligned on the shelf in her room, describing the people around her in unvarnished terms. Since the day when Rachel had “inadvertently” read one of her notebooks, Anna had gotten into the habit of using the Gabelsberger shorthand that her grandmother had taught her for fun. She saved her rounded handwriting for her homework. At her graduation, her father looked at his watch, and her mother, in an offensively low-cut dress, eyed the male livestock. Among all these pimply youths, there had to be one who would take an interest in her daughter. Marriage might be a good solution: sometimes talent skipped a generation.

Given her grades, she should have gone to a state college instead of Princeton. But the Roths hadn’t stood on their pride: a few quick phone calls and Anna was accepted at their alma mater. She had tried to hold out for a little more freedom, but she was made to see that such an opportunity came only once. In her junior year, Anna had unearthed that rare treasure, William, her tutor in literature. She presented him officially to her family in the second semester; they were engaged in the third. George Roth enjoyed the boy’s company, finding him a deferential listener. The academic prospects of the two young people might be limited — English literature of the nineteenth century was hardly a field to reward ambition — but they had at least shown good taste in following the family tradition. Will was reliable, punctual, and devoted to his family. Physically, he promised to age well, and he seemed mentally prepared to consent to it. To Anna, he had the particular merit — unlike her previous partners — of being an assiduous lover and of having a large library. Rachel made no comment about her daughter’s choice. She always acted politely toward him but without warmth. Anna would have felt relieved to know that her fiancé was safe from her mother’s usual attempts at seduction had this restraint not been further proof of Rachel’s contempt for him.

It had taken years for Anna to accept the simple truth that her mother’s seeming disappointment was in fact relief. Anna would never be a remarkable woman. Unlike Rachel, whose sordid achievement had been to produce an absolutely ordinary daughter. Her father had other fresh-faced grads to fry. He had resigned himself long ago to his offspring’s relative mediocrity.

“You’re a pain,” Leo had said when she declined to reenact the scene in the library. There was nothing complicated about it: she just wanted more from him than he could give. The arithmetic should have been obvious to him.

Nothing would come of their meeting at Thanksgiving, only mutual embarrassment. She emptied the orange plastic container into the palm of her hand. She wouldn’t go to work that morning. She would say she’d visited Mrs. Gödel. She played with the pills for a while, arranging them into a star, then into a perfect square. She allowed herself two tablets and put the rest back in the tube, easily imagining what Adele would say. Self-indulgence, young lady . She lay back on her bed and looked up at the ceiling, which her insomnia had already made nauseatingly familiar. Her apartment was a wreck, and someday she would have to straighten it up. Even if no one ever visited.

That the sun will rise to-morrow is a hypothesis.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

BERLIN. JANUARY 5, 1940

TO THE ATTENTION OF

FRAU ADELE GOEDEL

HIMMELSTR. 43. VIENNA.

GERMAN PASSPORTS ISSUED. AMERICAN VISAS PENDING. CONFIRMATION TODAY AYDELOTTE. TAKE FIRST TRAIN TO BERLIN. IMPERATIVE. NEED WARM CLOTHES. ONLY ONE TRUNK. 8 KURT.

January 15, 1940

Berlin

Dear Ones ,

We leave for Moscow this afternoon. From there we go to Vladivostok via the Trans-Siberian. In Vladivostok we expect to find a boat for Yokohama, in Japan, and from there, if all goes according to plan, we’ll board an ocean liner for San Francisco .

Miraculously, the immigration visas to America were issued last week, expressly prohibiting passage on a transatlantic liner. Given our German passports, only the Soviet Union and Japan will still allow us to transit their territories. It would have been very dangerous to cross the Atlantic in any case. Our papers are valid only for a short time; we must leave as quickly as possible. Yesterday we had to be vaccinated against a long list of horrible diseases: plague, typhoid, smallpox … Kurt was in such a state. He hates needles!

The apartment was left in total disorder. I didn’t have time to clean it before leaving. Would you make sure those dratted mice don’t get into the pantry? If she likes, Elizabeth can move in and use the place until we return. Otherwise, could you open the shutters from time to time to air it out? Kurt hates that musty smell. Has Liesl’s cough gotten better? She should continue using mustard plasters, even if it gives her burns .

Take good care of yourself, dearest Mum. It will be a long winter, but I’ll come back for the first violets! We’ll have a good laugh about this whole adventure. Kurt sends his cordial regards .

A big kiss ,

Adele

I had never been so frightened in my life. I was crippled with pain, my insides knotted with anxiety. To spare his nerves, my panic had to be kept hidden. His apparent calm did not bode well. A few days before our departure from Berlin, while we were still uncertain whether our visas would be issued, he delivered a lecture on the continuum hypothesis. How could he think about mathematics in the middle of such a nightmare? Although the world outside was gangrenous with uniforms, from Vienna to Berlin, and from Vladivostok to Yokohama, he sturdily maintained that the war wouldn’t last.