“Nothing to build a career around.”
“I’m talking to you about pleasure. Find where your happiness is, Anna!”
“And where is yours, Adele?”
The old woman tossed the brush on the bed.
“Mine is currycombing. I’m stopping for today, sweet pea. My arms ache!”
28. 1944: An Atomic Soufflé
Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the administration … This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs …
— Albert Einstein, letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 2, 1939
“He’s still out there.”
“They’ll be arriving at any moment, Kurt. Turn the lights back on! I have to set the table.”
“See for yourself!”
Irritated, I made my way to the side of the window, where he was hiding.
“Be more discreet, Adele. He’ll see you.”
I examined the quiet thoroughfare. A dank November gloom had settled over Alexander Street. I saw a single figure strolling by: a man lost in his thoughts.
“I saw that man on the way to the Institute this morning. I recognize his hat.”
“Princeton is such a small town, Kurt. It’s perfectly normal to see the same people more than once.”
“He’s following me!”
“Shut the damned windows! It’s freezing in here. Your guests will all be shivering.”
He had bundled himself up in a thick woolen jacket, knitted by my own hands.
“The apartment has a funny smell.”
“Now don’t start! I aired it out all day. I burned sprigs of sage. Every room has been thoroughly scrubbed. I can’t do any more.”
“I can still smell the previous renters.”
“You’re too sensitive. Do something useful for once. Put out the plates and shut the windows!”
I went back into the kitchen, shivering despite the heat from the oven. I lived my days with the windows open and my arms in the washing machine. Kurt had always been pathologically sensitive to smells, including those of the body. Since moving to Princeton, his reactions had become obsessive. I had to bathe scrupulously before joining him in bed. Sweat, strong perfume, or my morning breath disgusted him. He avoided me like the plague when I had my period. Of course, he never talked about it. How could he even touch on the subject? Yet I had to listen to a daily description of the changes in his body temperature and the consistency of his stools. My own internal machinery didn’t interest him. Every morning, I would sort through the wash, sniffing his clothes one by one, not so much for any trace of female contact as to inhale his smell in his absence. But he didn’t sweat. His skin had very little odor and his clothes didn’t get dirty.
When I returned to the living room, he was still peering out into the street.
“Damn it to hell, Kurt! Set the table!”
“Don’t swear like that, Adele. And don’t get so agitated. This is not a formal dinner.”
I stuck my tongue out at his back. I set the table and looked at it critically: no silver, no fine porcelain. The secondhand bride had not merited an elaborate trousseau.
He stayed planted by the window.
“Where are they? Did you tell them six o’clock?”
“They had to bring Russell to the station first.”
“I’m wondering when I should put the soufflé in the oven.”
“You should have planned a simpler menu.”
“Albert Einstein is coming to dinner! Of course I’m going the whole nine yards!”
“His tastes are down-to-earth.”
“He won’t be disappointed, given how primitive the apartment is.”
“Don’t always complain, Adele. We’re a hop and a jump from the shuttle. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“You and your mania for train stations. If they call the shuttle the ‘Dinky,’ it’s because it really deserves the name. What a flea bucket! In any case, we never go to New York.”
“You’re free to go without me.”
“And spend what money? Everything has started to get more expensive. I’m juggling every day just to make ends meet.”
He put his hand over his stomach. I swallowed my resentment. I wanted this dinner to succeed.
“Are you worried?”
“Inviting Einstein and Pauli together might not have been wise. They often squabble. Relativity and quantum mechanics don’t make a good pair. It would take too long to explain.”
“I like Pauli a lot. He’s ugly, but so charming!”
“Don’t go by appearances, Adele. Wolfgang is a man of formidable intelligence. Some people call him ‘the scourge of God.’ His mind is like a scalpel!”
“It didn’t stop him from marrying a dancer too. Even if he is divorced, like Albert. Also, Pauli is Viennese.”
“Don’t be too familiar with Herr Einstein. No one calls him by his first name.”
I was so happy to be receiving company — exalted company, no less! With Herr Einstein, I wasn’t afraid of my poor English: he spoke with an atrocious accent. I even suspected him of exaggerating it. I didn’t know him well at the time, but I felt at ease in his presence — he didn’t rank the people he was talking to. He listened with the same good nature, the same amused indifference, to everyone from the geniuses of this world to the cleaning ladies at the university. Kurt and he had become close when we first arrived in Princeton. More than one passerby turned to stare at the odd couple they formed, and not only because of the physicist’s enormous popularity. They were Buster Keaton and Groucho Marx, lunar man and solar man, one closemouthed and the other charismatic. My man, his hair brilliantined, stayed faithful to his impeccable suits, while Albert always looked as though he’d just fallen out of bed in his wrinkly clothes. He hadn’t darkened the door of a barbershop since the Anschluss. Their long, ambulatory conversations were punctuated by the physicist’s explosive laugh and my husband’s circumspect squeak. Einstein turned an almost paternal attention on him. He admired his work and was unquestionably happy to have found a comrade largely unimpressed by his demigod’s aura. To Kurt, Albert was a scientist like any other, not a headliner. And Albert, whose vital force was considerable, was sensitive to my man’s frailness. He perhaps saw in him something of his youngest son, Eduard, who at twenty had fallen into the black hole of schizophrenia. I didn’t belong to his close circle, of course, but knowing that Kurt was on good terms with such a huge celebrity reassured me about his chances in exile.
“Here they are, Adele! I can see Herr Einstein’s mop. My God but he must be cold! He is hardly wearing anything, poor man.”
I glanced out into the street, where I recognized the scientist’s already legendary silhouette. At sixty-five, he had the alert step of a much younger man. He had thrown on a light overcoat — a concession, no doubt, to his faithful secretary, Helen Dukas — but he had as usual neglected to put on socks. Pauli, in his prosperous forties, wrapped in an ample coat, had a high forehead and a receding hairline. The two physicists were well known for their appetite. I planned to satisfy it. You didn’t leave Mrs. Gödel’s table without a full stomach!
“So you’ll have to close the windows. I’m going to put the soufflé in the oven.”
I stopped a moment in front of the bedroom mirror. My hair had grown; I had let it curl a little and swept it up at the sides with combs. One of my first big purchases had been a sewing machine. I’d made myself a dress for special occasions: cream-colored wool, gathered in at the waist by a long row of pearl buttons. The puffy sleeves hid the flab on my arms. I stretched back the skin of my temples. Other than a few crow’s-feet, time had been good to me; I was still attractive for my age. I adjusted my best bra, gave my port-wine stain a little extra powder, reapplied my lipstick, and smacked my lips together. The noise irritated Kurt no end. He could say whatever he wanted tonight! I was happy to be entertaining. I felt alone in Princeton, a long way from my family, and cut off from all news by this endless war. I had to stop thinking about it. “Worry causes wrinkles,” my mother used to say. How those wrinkles must have eroded her looks these past few years! I recapped my tube of lipstick with a small decisive gesture.