Half an hour later, I was setting my collapsed soufflé on the table.
“It’s a disaster! I never have a problem with it, normally.”
Wolfgang Pauli cocked his ugly turtle head to the side, and Kurt pursed his lips. Herr Einstein, though, loosed a thunderous laugh that made the candle flames flicker.
“It has nothing to do with you, Adele. The truth is, you’re providing a scientific confirmation! We were just talking about the ‘Pauli effect.’ Our friend only has to appear in a laboratory to make an experiment fail. He has the same effect on your cooking! You should never have dabbled in French organic chemistry, dear lady. Give me good solid German food!”
“I’ll make Wiener schnitzel.”
“An excellent plan.”
I went back to the kitchen distraught. I had so wanted to make a good impression.
I returned carrying an enormous steaming platter and saw Professor Einstein’s eyes sparkle with greed.
“Look at that, Pauli! You have no power over Austrian cooking!”
Not waiting for the younger man’s response, Albert rose to his feet to help me.
“According to my doctor, I must be careful about what I eat. My heart is starting to flounder.”
“Mine as well. I’m on a very strict diet.”
“Gödel, if you continue being too careful, you will become transparent.”
“I thought you were vegetarian, Herr Einstein.”
“Master Pauli, I know how to pay my respects to the lady of the house! I was well brought up.”
I dished out quantities of food onto the guests’ plates, then, with a quick smile, set a portion of white, unbreaded meat in front of my spouse.
“My husband doesn’t appreciate my culinary talents.”
“Gödel, I am your elder. Do me a favor and listen to your wife!”
Without looking up, Kurt minced his small portion into tiny pieces, most of which he would never eat.
“Adele will kill me with her cooking.”
The two men looked at him in astonishment.
“A little coleslaw, gentlemen?”
I let them fill their stomachs before breaking the silence. I was starved for compliments and conversation, two necessary foods withheld from me for years.
“Herr Einstein, I’m truly delighted to welcome you to dinner!”
“Ach! Another admirer!”
“Kurt refuses to explain your work to me. He thinks I could never understand it.”
My husband glared at me. I didn’t feel so impressed at having the greatest genius of the twentieth century at my table. I knew that lickspittling would leave him unmoved. I held to my method all the same, which was to make men talk either about their work or their prowess at sports. If the second was an option, the choice was automatic. Albert looked at me, amused. He pointed his fork at Kurt.
“Gödel, do you call this fair? I have been obliged to explain your ideas any number of times, sweating buckets of blood.”
“Please excuse my wife for importuning you in this way, Herr Einstein. Adele is sometimes thoughtless. She has no background in science, yet she is forever sticking her nose into my research.”
“A charming nose it is, too! And I’m sure Adele would learn the basics of relativity more quickly than I could ever learn about cooking.”
Pauli raised a doubting eyebrow. “Some fields don’t allow for simplification.”
Einstein swept the objection aside with a forkful of veal.
“You’re asking me to illustrate the theory of special relativity? I’m used to it! Over the last thirty years, I’ve developed a clear and precise answer.”
He paused theatrically. His colleagues let their eating implements stop moving.
“Go off and leave me face-to-face with Wolfgang … and it will seem an eternity. But with you beside me, Adele, this meal will appear to last only a minute. That is relativity!”
This time, the younger physicist expelled his breath audibly. Einstein rewarded him with a punch in the arm.
“To be entirely frank, little madam, I could explain relativity to you in simple terms, but it would take years for you to understand and master the ideas that underlie it.”
Pauli massaged his bruised shoulder.
“Everyone thinks they understand relativity nowadays. Too much vulgarization is bad for science.”
“Relax, dear Zweistein.* You’ll get your turn. One day you, too, will be besieged by throngs of ecstatic college students. Are you ready for glory? How will you sell your exclusion principle to a schoolchild?”12
“I’ll refuse, plain and simple.”
“If you can’t explain an idea to a child of six, it’s because you don’t fully understand it.”
“You should go back to being a vegetarian, Herr Einstein. Eating meat has warped your mind.”
“I’m not asking you to go into every detail, Pauli. I am simply noting your inability as a young Turk of quantum physics to place your concepts in the realm of sensory experience, to provide an objective representation of reality.”
“You’re arguing in bad faith, Herr Einstein! The ability to reduce a theory to simple terms is no proof of its robustness.”
“Your elementary particles behave as chaotically as a crowd of women in Filene’s Basement. Although the women are more predictable. I see no coherence in this hodgepodge of complexity and randomness. For me, God is subtle, but he is not malicious.”
“You still have to prove his existence.”
“Talk to Gödel! That’s his hobbyhorse.”
Kurt clenched his jaw and pushed his meager portion away.
“I make no claims. People would take me for a crank.”
Pauli finished cleaning his plate and noiselessly set his knife and fork on it. We all waited for his counterstroke.
“My dear Einstein, our hostess must not be made to suffer through our quarrels. She will forgive me if I refrain from answering her question or crossing swords with you. I am not up to the task.”
“Come, Pauli, you’re not good enough to play modest!”
A leaden silence settled over the table, which Einstein dispersed with his booming laugh.
“I love provoking you, Wolfgang. It is always an enriching experience. But don’t worry, you are the future and I am the past, no one doubts it. Help yourself to a little more of this superb coleslaw. It is wonderful for loosening the bowels.”
My husband’s face was pale. The rivalry between the two physicists, masked as it was by jokes, was stressful to him. I cast about for another avenue of discussion.
“How did your meeting with Mr. Russell go? And why didn’t you invite him to dinner, Kurt?”13
I would have liked to meet this English lord with the exciting reputation. According to rumor, Bertrand Russell’s wife had had two children by her lover during their marriage. Russell divorced her to marry the governess. In the puritanical United States, he had been judged morally unfit for teaching. His libertarian principles made him persona non grata. Kurt, whose calling as a logician had been influenced by Russell’s Principia Mathematica, deeply respected this man who had been ostracized for his pacifist opinions. He had been dismissed from Cambridge and jailed for publicly opposing British participation in the First World War.