Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

“How many times can a senator be reelected?”

“Until he is mummified?”

“Correct. But formulate your answer more appropriately, Adele.”

“One last question for the road. Where is the White House?”

“At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.”

“You’re a walking disaster, Gödel. My next present to you will be a muzzle!”

“I don’t know as much as he does.”

“Don’t worry. By tonight, you will be an American citizen.”

An American. Who could have imagined that one day I would give up my nationality, my language, and my memories to petition a foreign government for naturalization? I watched the tidy streets of Princeton flash by as I thought of the streets and roads I had traveled for seven months across a dying Europe.

I had hared around in every direction to visit my family and to bring reassurance to Kurt’s, helping them to the extent that we could. I had knocked on Lieesa’s parents’ door. Her father had not recognized me. He claimed never to have had a daughter, but at the sight of a few dollars his memory returned. Lieesa had left Vienna in the wake of the Nazi troops. She’d gotten knocked up by a German officer. His whore of a daughter had probably wound up in a ditch, her ass in the air, the way she’d spent most of her life. I took a taxi to Purkersdorf without much hope. The sanatorium was still standing; the war had brought to its doors a fresh quota of loonies. The surviving staff had had no news of Anna since she had left to be with her son, and no one had her address. I made inquiries at the Red Cross and the American relief organizations, but in vain. The bureaucracies were in chaos. Who had time for a cabaret dancer and a redheaded nurse when thousands were mourning the loss of their loved ones? I lit two candles for them at the Peterskirche. Across the street, the Nachtfalter was still in business. Now it catered to GIs looking for distraction. Other dancers would try their luck with them. Lieesa had backed the wrong horse. Anna had never had the wherewithal to place a bet.

It was my responsibility to sell our Viennese apartment as well as to get damages for the villa in Brno that had been requisitioned during the war — a further bureaucratic puzzle. After years of anxious isolation, the activity brought me back to life, but my compatriots’ distress was a constant agony. Vienna had been ravaged by the Allied bombing — even its historic center, where the Opera had been destroyed by fire. The arrival of the Soviets in April 1945 had provoked an orgy of violence in the way of rapes, fires, and looting. The dying city, which had no police force and no water, gas, or electricity, experienced a second wave of pillagers shortly afterward, this one native. American troops had rejoined the Red Army, and the two forces were now quarreling over the last shreds of my blood-drained city.

Einstein was right, the world of yesterday, the world I longed for, no longer existed. 24What would stand in for hearth and home going forward was America. Yet I had left Princeton in the spring thinking I might not come back. Après moi, le déluge . I was sick of Kurt’s insufferable routines. I was tired of having to drag my mattress to the bottom of the abyss to catch his fall. I was exhausted from exile and loneliness. I wanted to go home.

The hypothesis of freedom is more important than its actual use. America had taught me this lesson in pragmatic democracy: don’t give people a choice, give them the possibility of choosing. The potential to choose is all we need. Few of us could stand the dizzy prospect of pure freedom. By letting me go, my husband made sure that I would come back. On the trip out, standing on the deck of the Marine Flasher , I became myself again, far from our domestic monastery. I experienced those first days on my own as a resurgence of youth, and I was happy to be so small amid such vastness.

Quickly, though, my thoughts returned to Kurt. Had he been aboard he would have howled from the cold. I’d have had to round up every last unused blanket on the sundeck. And he would have hated the menu. He would have avoided the other passengers, who all talked too much, whereas I found their mediocrity restful. Then I fell prey to the inevitable insomnia: Now he has just come home from work. Has he eaten? I hadn’t reached Bremen, and already I was no longer my own master.

The car stopped in front of the New Jersey State Capitol, a stone structure very much in the European tradition. The paradox would normally have made me smile, but I had a lump in my throat. Kurt had infected me with his anxiety. We went upstairs to the courtroom. A dozen or so people were waiting in the large space. Each candidate had to be interviewed privately by the judge, who, on seeing Albert, came over to say hello, ignoring the next man in line.

“Professor Einstein! To what do we owe the honor of your visit?”

“Judge Forman! Such a coincidence! I am accompanying my friends Kurt and Adele Gödel, who have come for their interview.”

The judge gave us barely a glance.

“How are you? We haven’t seen each other in ages.”

“Time flies so fast these days.”

“Well, then, who will go first?”

I took a step back. I wasn’t prepared for this undemocratic cutting in line.

“Women and children first! Philip Forman gave me my interview when I came to be naturalized. You’re in good hands, Adele.”

I followed the judge into his chambers, tortured by the violent urge to urinate. He took exception neither to my jumpiness nor to my still atrocious accent, for I emerged a few minutes later with my valuable prize. He was probably impatient to talk to Herr Einstein. He had asked me a few very simple questions and nodded vacantly at my answers. I returned to my little group clutching the form. Waiving protocol, the judge invited Oskar and Albert to accompany Kurt into his office. He must have been terribly bored; the prospect of spending a few minutes with our illustrious companion brightened his day.

The men were gone a long time. I creased and uncreased the paper between my hands. I was afraid that, on the grounds of logical exactitude, Kurt would overstep the boundaries. The other applicants were conversing around me in languages not totally unfamiliar: a little Italian, some Polish, a brand of Spanish. I smiled at the pending citizens of my new country. What had they fled? What had they left behind to find themselves, gussied up, in this drafty hallway?

The door finally opened. Three men in high spirits emerged, the last of them clearly relieved. Herr Einstein grabbed my elbow before I could ask about their hilarity.

“Quickly, let us quit this temple of the law for one of gastronomy! By gosh, I am hungry!”

As we waited for the elevator, a man came up and asked for his autograph. It was unusual to go anywhere with Albert and not be interrupted in this way. He submitted with good grace to the request, at the same time letting the stranger know that he had other things to do.

“It must be terrible to be hounded like that by so many people.”

“It is a last vestige of cannibalism, dear Oskar. In the old days, people wanted your blood, now it’s your ink. Let’s go, before someone asks me for my shirt!”

In the privacy of the elevator, I rearranged Einstein’s hair with my gloved hand.

“I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“Adele Gödel, I could have you arrested for indecent behavior.”

“It would be my first infraction as a citizen, Professor!”

On the drive home, the atmosphere was more relaxed. Even Kurt was smiling.

“What exactly happened in that office?”

“Just as we expected, your husband lost no time in putting his foot in his mouth.”

The judge had started by asking Kurt where he was from. Thinking it might be a trap, Kurt had said “Austria” with a rising is-that-right? inflection. The judge had then questioned him about Austria’s form of government. Kurt explained what he believed to be true, namely, that our republic had morphed into a dictatorship because of a deficient constitution. Forman had breezily replied, “That’s terrible, but it could never happen in this country.” My naïve spouse had contradicted him without an ounce of malice: “Oh yes, it could! And I’ll prove it!” His love of proofs was boundless. To be fair, the judge had inadvertently asked him the most dangerous question he could possibly have picked. Kurt could imagine no way to answer it without being entirely truthful. Einstein and Morgenstern were horrified, but Forman had the intelligence not to enter into debate. Kurt’s two colleagues swore on their honor that Mr. Gödel was a man of great value to the nation and a good citizen with a profound respect for the laws. And so we spent the rest of the trip laughing, looking for something that Kurt might transgress at least once in his life other than mathematical assumptions.