Yannick Grannec - The Goddess of Small Victories

On that morning, Elizabeth Glinka had telephoned her. She was just preparing to visit Mrs. Gödel, as she had done every weekend since Christmas. “Miss Roth?” Anna knew what would come next. She had sat down to let the grief flood through her. She hadn’t said goodbye to Adele.

There had been so few people at the funeral: a few attendants with graying temples, eager for it to be over, supporting a handful of old ladies in black. Shivering, she had clung to Elizabeth’s arm. She hardly remembered the moment. The long car had brought the casket. Had Calvin Adams made a speech? She couldn’t remember it. She had thrown red roses onto the casket before it was covered with earth. She hadn’t found any camellias. The religious ceremony had been stiff and brief. Elizabeth had asked her advice about the music. Anna had suggested a Mahler song, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” I am lost to the world, in homage to the Vienna that was gone. During the service, she changed her mind and thought she should have chosen James Brown, just to see Gladys bring life to the empty chapel with the shimmying of her black angora. Barbie had a black sweater. Why did this pathetic detail stick in Anna’s mind?

Adele was lucid to the end. The nurses hadn’t been able to understand her last words: they were in German. Anna was sure they were addressed to her husband. Since February 8, she had been lying next to him under the gray marble slab. On the pages of the open book, the words were engraved: Gödel, Adele T.: 1899–1981, Kurt F.: 1906–1978 . From now on she would sleep on the left side of the bed.

The security guard at the IAS waved her toward him. He seemed as old as the building itself. Emerging from his usual silence, he expressed how happy he was to see her again. People had been worried about her. Anna had no time to wonder who was meant by “people”; the guard deposited on the counter a large package. She blew on her numb fingers and opened the accompanying envelope. The card, written in childish handwriting, was signed by Elizabeth Glinka. “I am sending you a present and a letter from Adele. Don’t be sad. She wasn’t. She wanted to go.” Anna smiled in spite of herself. She was sad, but the feeling would be bearable now. It was a sadness that came from accomplishment, not regret, the sadness you feel the day after a party. She hefted the package: no chance of its containing the Nachlass . It didn’t matter. She had already made up her mind to leave Princeton. This time, her protracted absence had not been a flight; it had allowed her to gather her strength, swathed in her red woolen cardigan. She would put her resignation letter on Calvin Adams’s desk in the course of the morning.

Anna had always believed in justice, order. For a time, she had thought that her mission on earth was to recover those papers. Adele had accepted her own mission: her God had created her to keep a certain genius from slipping away before his time. She had been compost for the sublime: the flesh, blood, hairs, and shit without which the mind cannot exist. She had been the necessary but not the sufficient condition; she had consented to be a link: forever the nice, fat, uneducated Austrian woman.

Today, Anna would have liked to tell her that she was wrong: in the continuum of dissolved bodies and forgotten souls, one life was worth another. We are all links. No one has a mission. Adele had loved Kurt; nothing was more important.

Her office didn’t smell musty, as she’d feared. “People” had aired it out and even brought in a green plant with a card: “Be well, Calvin Adams.” She was surprised at this mark of attention: at best, she had expected a final warning shot across her bow. She looked defiantly at the tray overflowing with messages. She preferred to start with the letter. She installed herself unhurriedly at her desk after having made herself a cup of tea. She sniffed the paper and imagined a hint of lavender coming from it. She repressed the welling of emotion; Adele wouldn’t have condoned her tears.

Dearest Anna ,

I leave Kurt Gödel’s Nachlass to the Institute. I never considered doing any different. I have asked Elizabeth to have those crates delivered FROM YOU to the director of the IAS. It is not a present, and you are not in any way to take it as such! There is a time for everything, Anna: a time to hide in books and a time to live .

You gave me a great deal more than you could have hoped for even. My last thoughts will be for all the wonderful things that still lie ahead of you, and not for all those that I should be regretting. I wish you a magnificent life .

Your own Adele Thusnelda Gödel

The handwriting was firm, the letters deeply incised, but after the signature she had added a more spontaneous postscript, in which Anna felt her corporeal presence: “ Vergessen Sie nicht zu lächeln, Mädel! ” Don’t forget to smile, young lady!

Anna struggled to remove the complicated wrapping; Elizabeth was a very meticulous person. The package contained a pink flamingo made of battered cement. She laughed until the tears came. She set the bulky fowl on her desk, then upturned her handbag on the desktop. She didn’t have far to go to find it: Leo’s note was stuck as a bookmark in The Aleph , the book that had accompanied her on all her visits to Pine Run. She hadn’t finished it.

She unfolded the slip of paper; over a few lines of code, Leonard had scrawled some numbers in a bold hand, followed by “Insist, PLZ,” which was triply underlined. Anna looked out at the long, snow-covered lawn, mirroring the low, white sky.

Then she dialed Leo’s number, a series of digits without logical connection, but displaying perfect elegance.

Thanks to my love for having believed in this work long before I did. Thanks to my children for having (from time to time) allowed me the leisure to write. Thanks to my mother for having given me a taste for books. Thanks to my brother for having introduced me to the world of geeks.

Thanks to Cheryl and John Dawson for their tremendous work and infinite kindness. Thanks to Stephen C., my editor, for his confidence and his prodding. Thanks to Simon D. for his luminous explanations of the continuum hypothesis. Thanks to Anne S. for her support of this book since its fetal stages. Thanks to Maxime P. for his ready enthusiasm. Thanks to Philippe B. for his Ping-Pong table. Thanks to Emmanuelle T. for all our girl talk. Thanks to Dan and Dana K. for their light. Thanks to Marinela and Daniel P. for their good vibes. Thanks to Thérèse L. for her how-strong-you-are theory. Thanks to Axelle L. for having been such a lovely inflection point. Thanks to Tina G., Martina and Alex T., Aurélie U., Katherin K., and Christian T. for their Austrian and German translations. Thanks to all the math lovers on the Internet: without you this book would not have existed.

Thanks to Adele. I would have liked to meet you, Frau Gödel.

While this novel is primarily a work of fiction, I have made every effort, out of respect for the memory of Adele and Kurt Gödel, to be scrupulously faithful to the biographical, historical, and scientific facts available to me. Specialists will no doubt uncover inaccuracies, errors, and numberless oversimplifications.

This story is one truth among others: a knitting together of objective facts and subjective probabilities. Adele and Kurt truly lived on the same street in 1927. That they should have met there seems to me entirely plausible. That Adele seduced Kurt is obvious; that he gave her lessons in logic is much less so. That they shared an apple in bed is poetic license. That she was allowed to care for Kurt and meet with Morgenstern at the sanatorium is a supposition. That she fed him with a spoon is fact. That her mother-in-law was a gorgon is highly probable; that she encouraged Adele to marry her son is much less so. That Adele was pregnant at their wedding is pure invention, but that she rescued her husband on the steps of the university with her doughty umbrella is a true story. That they were cold and afraid on the Trans-Siberian railway seems logical. That Adele would have liked tempura in Japan is only natural, as who doesn’t? That the logician complained about his trunk key being stolen has been reported by good Mrs. Frederick. That Pauli and Einstein were partial to Austrian cooking is a supposition, but the “Pauli effect” is well known in scientific circles; Adele’s soufflé could never have withstood it. That Einstein and Gödel walked daily arm-in-arm is historical fact. That the genius who discovered relativity suffered from excessive perspiration is equally so. All his biographers agree on his appetite for and coarseness toward the female sex, though they are more divided on his interest in the relativistic dishwasher. Those who are familiar with Einstein’s life will easily identify the quotations and aphorisms attributed to him. The naturalization scene has been told by Oskar Morgenstern himself. That his companions derided Gödel on the car ride home is a defensible conjecture. There is little documentation about Adele’s friendships, but sources suggest that Lili Kahler-Loewy was a very appealing person. Her friendship with Albert is incontrovertible. That Adele got angry with her husband is beyond challenge; the provocation was excessive. That Mr. Hulbeck was an odd bird and that he played the tom-tom is on record; that he disparaged Goethe and classical German culture seems consistent with the Dadaist position. Theolonius Jessup, on the other hand, is pure invention. Although. It is a fact that the Oppenheimers were persecuted by Senator McCarthy, and Albert Einstein was under surveillance; that Kurt Gödel would be tailed by the FBI is therefore highly probable. That the Gödels played games of thought transference is a true story. A biographer has related that the reclusive genius was approached by a film director. I chose to believe that it might have been Kubrick. That the young Paul Cohen came to the old master’s house to sip hot water is a narrative device. That the logician’s office door was slammed in his face is historical fact. That Gödel died of hunger is regrettably true; that Adele was unwilling to hand over his archives is a gross distortion. She donated the Nachlass to the Institute for Advanced Study. It occupies approximately nine cubic yards of space. That they loved each other for more than fifty years strikes me as self-evident.