Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

“I’m scheduled to visit my mother in Berkeley.”

Mrs. Gödel didn’t hide her disappointment. Had she imagined that Anna would celebrate Christmas with her? Anna considered the notion and its ramifications. It would be a good excuse to give her ogre-mother: a commitment at work.

“Are you by any chance feeling ill?”

“Don’t take your psychologizing too far, Adele. There are things the body can’t do.”

“Poppycock! I lived my whole life with a doctor in psychosomatic illness. And even I never reached the end of the year without feeling a little under the weather. Good God! Who really likes Christmas?”

Anna removed the rubber band in her hair, scratched her scalp vigorously, then pulled her hair back into a bun so tight that it almost hurt.

“I’m not going to visit you as often from now on. My boss told me yesterday that the project was over.”

Adele sipped her tea unhurriedly; Anna couldn’t read the expression on her face. The news seemed neither to affect nor to surprise her.

“He has lost interest in the Nachlass already?”

“He’s considering firing me.”

“And right he is! The job is bad for you. Think of it as an opportunity to embark on a new cycle.”

The sudden reminder of a countdown in progress made Anna’s insides heave. There wasn’t just the countdown to the holidays; that other one was also pending, but the young woman would have rather cut off her own tongue than articulate it to her friend. She made the decision that she had been backing toward for several days.

“What if I spent Christmas with you?”

“You would willingly subject yourself to a party with so many living corpses?”

“You’d actually be saving my bacon.”

Anna rubbed her face to erase the flood of emotions fighting for expression there. She was tired of having to always find excuses.

“Stop that immediately! You are giving yourself wrinkles before your time. Why do you torture yourself in this way?”

“I don’t have your courage, Adele. I spend my whole life running away from things. I’m pathetic.”

Adele stroked her hand. The gesture, intimate and gentle, brought Anna to the verge of tears.

“You’re not going to cry, all the same! What is making you so unhappy?”

“I’m too ashamed to say it. Especially in front of you.”

“Suffering is not a competition. There can be a certain relief in mourning. The memory of the departed can be more comforting than that person’s presence ever was.”

Anna reclaimed her hand gently. The old woman was recounting her own experience. For a brief moment, the young woman might have confided in her, but people’s worlds are watertight; their otherness is inevitable and definitive. How could she explain to Adele that she had refused exactly the fate that Adele had accepted? For Mrs. Gödel — who, after all, had only been following the paradigms of her epoch — choosing a man like Kurt or Leo necessarily meant sacrificing herself, even if at times it brought collateral benefits like sex. Monsters take everything and give back nothing. Adele had in the process lost her natural joy, along with any hope of resolving her incompleteness by becoming a mother. Anna understood the aspiration without believing it to be necessary. Her mother, Rachel, had chosen not to dissolve herself either in her marital or her maternal relations. Anna admired her freedom but not the intransigence that went with it. In the end, these two women paid for their choice by being similarly alone. This proposition, too, was undecidable.

“You should go on another trip, Anna. Take advantage of your freedom. You still have so many possibilities ahead of you.”

A sudden pain in her side pinned the old lady to her pillow. Anna reached for the alarm button, but Adele pushed her hand away, fighting to regain her breath.

The young woman prepared an eau de cologne compress and comforted her friend as best she could. The features of Adele’s face had grown more haggard since their escapade to the movies. How could Anna not have noticed? It was her fault that Adele had burned up her last reserves of energy. She had even sacrificed her last real pleasure: gossiping. The Great Grinch was counting his favors. She thought of the exhausting road home. She wondered if Jean was on duty: she would bum a cigarette from her on the way out. She was ashamed of already thinking about leaving. She felt dirty, soiled by her constant cowardice. Mrs. Gödel was going to die soon, and she, Anna, owed her at least this one bit of courage: honesty.

“I’m so glad I met you, Adele. Until now, I’ve had the impression that I wasn’t useful to anyone.”

The old woman straightened up laboriously. For a moment Anna thought she had used up her supply of indulgence, but Adele surprised her with the gentleness of her voice, bereft of sarcasm.

“I would be sorry to leave this world having made you feel this way, Anna. I am only a tiny inflection in your life path. You still have plenty of time to find a mission for yourself.”

Such is man’s imprudence, such is his folly, that the fear of death sometimes drives him toward death.

— Seneca

Princeton, November 15, 1973

Dearest Jane ,

I’m sorry I’m so bad at writing letters. This time I have a good excuse for my long silence. I’ve been very busy these last weeks. I finally agreed to work as a nursing assistant for the couple that Peter has been gardening for. They’re so old I felt sorry for them. They really needed a full-time aide, especially the poor lady. She is stuck in a wheelchair. So he’s the one who does the shopping and the housework. You can imagine what the house looked like when I arrived. I saw right away that I would have to be not only the nurse but the housekeeper, cook, and “granny-sitter.” The Gödels have been together almost fifty years. Their love is so old it would really be wonderful if their situation wasn’t so pathetic. They never had children and live a very solitary life. Mrs. Gödel finds this difficult. She is delighted to have someone to talk to. She’s as much of a chatterbox as I am!

How can I describe this strange couple to you? Mr. Gödel is apparently a genius. I can’t say if this is true. He’s an odd man, sometimes very nice, but he often says nothing at all. He spends his days and nights shut up in his study. He eats very little, and only after sniffing and poking it a hundred times. His wife says he is afraid of being poisoned. He is so thin it’s scary. A walking skeleton. Adele Gödel, on the other hand, is very fat. She suffers from many of the infirmities of old age, but she doesn’t take her pills. Not that she hasn’t got all her marbles. She spends all her time worrying about the health of her addled husband .

I can’t figure out what Mr. Gödel suffers from exactly. His doctor gave me some instructions about his prostate troubles, because he refused to have an operation and prefers to go around with a catheter, although it puts his kidneys at serious risk of infection. The poor man secretly ingests unbelievable quantities of substances he doesn’t need. You’ve worked at a hospital too, so you can judge for yourself. I made a list of everything he takes: milk of magnesia for his ulcer; Metamucil for constipation; various antibiotics, including Achromycin, Terramycin, and Cefalexin, Mandelamine, Macrodantin, Lanoxin, and Quinidine — although he has nothing wrong with his heart. And finally, to round off the menu, he takes laxatives like Imbricol and Pericolase. I’m used to impairments resulting from senility, but this really leaves me speechless. Last fall, he agreed to be operated on. But at the hospital he made a giant scene, ripped out his catheter, and insisted on going home as though nothing had happened. We’ve had difficult patients, Jane, but this one takes the cake!