Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

“No point. Even I can’t read my own handwriting.”

I smiled at the elderly physicist’s attempts to lighten the tone. Kurt had such faith in their friendship that he couldn’t conceive of Herr Einstein’s total disinterest in the subject and continued to harp on about the extraordinary relevance of his idol’s research. Leibniz apparently worked, like Kurt himself, on a universal language of concepts. Although his attempt was successful, he never published his results because they were too far ahead of their time. To this, Einstein invariably responded, “Gödel, you became a mathematician so that people would study your work. Not so that you could study Leibniz, for God’s sake!” 44And we would be off on another round.

“Like Leibniz, I seek Truth. And for that reason, I, too, am targeted. They want to get rid of me.”

“Who is this ‘they’? Does Hilbert’s ghost come tickle your feet at night?”

“I’ve uncovered foreign agents trying to introduce themselves into my house. Several poisoning attempts have been made against me. If I weren’t a reasonable man, I’d even say that our refrigerator has been sabotaged!”

“Don’t mention that accursed refrigerator to me again, Gödel! I am begging you. I would rather face another McCarthy hearing.”

It was time to slip away before my husband dug himself a deeper pit. His friends showed great patience toward him, which he abused all too often. Mine was now unshakable. I had put away anger. Had therapy been successful? I like to say that it helped me understand the pointlessness of my open battle. I’d gone back to our old way of operating: I watched him teeter on his aerialist’s wire and readied the mattress to catch him.

Anger purges you. But who can live with it for any length of time? Repressed anger eats at you. Then it escapes in little venomous farts that only stink up an already insalubrious atmosphere. What to do with all this anger? For want of a better alternative, some spew it at their children. I didn’t have that misfortune. I therefore kept it for others: incompetent officials, venal politicians, officious store clerks, nosy hairdressers, unattractive weather announcers, and the ass-faced Ed Sullivan. For all the pains in the rear I had no use for. I’d become a shrew to protect myself. I had never felt better. From that time on, whenever my barometer showed a storm brewing, I left on a trip. I practiced the art of flight until old age took away the option. Kurt encouraged me in this, despite the expense, although I always found him thinner and more taciturn on my return. If hope germinated in me at a distance, it rotted away after two hours back in Princeton: nothing would change him.

I was no longer tempted to return to Europe and live. My family had disappointed me. The previous spring, I had been summoned back to Vienna to see my sister on her deathbed. Lies. Believing it an emergency, I had taken an airplane for the first time in my life, spending money needlessly. We were comfortably off, but not as rich as they imagined us. I’d become their milk cow. I offered them love; they wanted money. In the end, what might have destroyed me in fact saved me: my real family, for what it was worth, was him.

“Let’s say our goodbyes, Kurt. We’re late. We’re attending the Metropolitan Opera tonight. Die Fledermaus , a limousine, champagne, the whole nine yards!”

“What has gotten into you, Gödel? You’re throwing away your salary now? Have you been selling secrets to the Russians?”

“Strauss is perfectly bearable for two hours, and I wanted to please my wife. She certainly deserves it.”

All heads nodded. I ordered my husband out the door by handing him his overcoat. I hoped to spare our friends a final wacky monologue. My hand was already on the knob when he turned on his heels and reentered the living room.

“You all take me for an eccentric. Believe me, when it comes to logic, I don’t need to take lessons from anyone! I may have little proof for what I’ve said, but I see the pattern. I see it!”

“Pierre, I’d like you to meet Anna Roth. She directs the archives at the Institute. She is almost a daughter to us.”

Anna wondered what lay behind this show of affection and her abrupt promotion to director. Calvin Adams had been very insistent that she attend the dinner. She had the sudden suspicion that he wanted to offer her as a bonus to his prestigious guest. Lectures and young flesh: the local specialties. She admonished herself. Even she was starting to get paranoid.

She greeted the mathematician in his own language. He answered in impeccable English with the slightest trace of a southern accent. Pierre Sicozzi had some of the features of a Roman bust: an aquiline nose, a curly beard and hair. He looked like the profile of Archimedes engraved on the obverse of the Fields Medal. Casually elegant, he wore a simple white shirt. The rolled sleeves revealed tanned forearms: this scientist didn’t shy away from the outdoors.

The young woman knew him by reputation. He held a chair at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies near Paris and had in fact just received the prestigious Fields Medal, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematicians, awarded to scientists under forty. She thought back to her discussion with Adele on the precocity of mathematical genius. She wondered if Sicozzi considered himself a high-level athlete in retirement. A question she wouldn’t ask him. As to his research topics, von Neumann algebras in particular, she knew nothing beyond the name, though it drew on the work of another illustrious Princeton figure. The man had a reputation for being accessible and an excellent teacher.

“I apologize, Mr. Sicozzi, I’m no scientist. We won’t be able to discuss mathematics.”

“All the better. You’ll keep me from being ripped to shreds and eaten by those young sharks.”

He nodded discreetly toward the three Institute fellows with stiff manners who were ogling him hungrily, excited to be included at the table.

“It’s not every day they get to see a Fields medalist.”

“In this town, you bump into one on every street corner.”

The entourage of Director Adams was all present and accounted for, each having brought his partner. At the far end of the table, the Richardson heir appeared to be bored stiff under the rapid-fire questioning of Virginia Adams. Anna greeted several Princeton residents, among them a highly sought after Nobelist who often visited her department. All of a sudden, Leonard materialized beside her. He introduced himself to Pierre Sicozzi as “the prodigal son and child prodigy of the house,” then plunked himself down next to his childhood friend. His mother glared at him, which he ignored. Calvin Adams was forced to take the seat intended for his son, next to Richardson, and the arrangement gave him no view of the Roth girl’s neckline, nor of the more ample cleavage of the guest across from her. He consoled himself as he tossed back his whiskey: one was too skinny, the other too old.

Anna wondered how to start the conversation. The alcohol she had drunk on an empty stomach was tormenting her insides, and Leo’s stony presence on her right was hardly calculated to make her feel comfortable.

“Thanksgiving is a special day. We are meant to give thanks to God for all the year’s blessings.”

“And what do you do to punish him for everything else?”

“The same. Indigestion, drunkenness, and family tension.”

“In France, we count on Christmas to provide that kind of explosive chemistry.”

Anna fought her nausea by drinking a sip of water.

He leaned toward her. “I’m a bit worried at the prospect of eating turkey.”

“The French have so little faith in foreign cooking.”