“Nothing indicates that nuclear technology will be ready anytime soon.”
“Dear Gödel, your naïveté is a delightful ray of sunshine. Believe me, it is ready! You haven’t felt a little lonely in Princeton recently? The army has called up Institute members of every shoe size. Oppenheimer has disappeared from view. Von Neumann only breezes through occasionally. You don’t need to be a genius to guess what they are doing! There’s nothing like a good little war to give technology a push.”
“Military supremacy is what will guarantee peace.”
“I don’t share your optimism, Pauli. The very concept of dissuasion goes against the military mind-set. I distrust anyone who likes to join a column and walk to music. Brains were given to the military by mistake, a spinal cord was really all they needed. Keep them from using a new toy? Might as well try leaving a wrapped Christmas present under the tree!”
“You prompted the research in the first place.”
“At the cost of great violence to my inner self! I am a committed pacifist. The horrible reports that have come from Europe forced me to rethink. If Hitler had that bomb, there would be no one to keep him from using it.”
Pauli was sculpting his bread ball, which by now had turned gray, with the tip of his knife.
“That madman has made every useful scientist take to his heels. By persecuting Jewish science, he has sawed off the rotten branch on which he was sitting.”
“You’re frightening my wife, Herr Einstein. All these horrors will soon be behind us.”
Albert wiped his mouth and patted his stomach before tossing his napkin onto the table.
“Never in the course of modern civilization have we had such a black future. Other conflicts will arise, war is mankind’s cancer.”
The men were quiet. My eyes were full of tears. “The war will soon be over,” that was all I could hear. When it ended, I could go home. Pauli set down in front of him the figure sculpted from bread. He stuck a little disk of wax that he had picked from the tablecloth behind its head: Saint Einstein, the patron saint of pessimists. His model smiled.
“I’m so sorry, dear Adele, I quickly get carried away. What have you planned for dessert?”
“Sacher torte.”
“Mazel tov! May I have your permission to light my pipe? This old friend of mine sweetens my thoughts.”
I went back into the kitchen. Tears welled up in my eyes in spite of myself. The men probably thought I was worried about the fate of mankind, but in fact I was feeling a wave of self-pity. I was a child in a world of adults. Their universe was not accessible to me: it couldn’t be explained with a simple drawing in the sand or a few pebbles in a line. I didn’t have the words, so I cried. I cried about my loneliness. My bad English kept me enclosed in a perpetual fog. At one point I’d hoped that by associating with my countrymen I could bring light into this dark and blurry world. I was still lost. No naturalization into their scientific country was possible, there were only natives. All the same, I tried. I read a little, I paid attention. But every time I pulled on a thread, it just led to another. The weave was too dense, the fabric too big to be encompassed by the little dancer. I would never be from here; I would always be an exile in the midst of these geniuses. I was reaching an age where men would be more charmed by my cooking than my legs: the age of resignation. I wasn’t ready to give up — far from it.
Professor Einstein spluttered a few crumbs of cake toward my husband, who was cautiously sipping his hot water.
“How is your friend Morgenstern? I thought I would see him here tonight.”
“He is preparing the publication of his book with von Neumann.15 And von Neumann has hardly been seen recently.”
“He’s much too busy playing with neutrons.”
“Is there anything von Neumann doesn’t take an interest in? The man is a menace. He never stops. And he is as fast at drinking as he is at calculating!”
“He is Hungarian, Herr Einstein.”
I was bored. I’d heard them yammer on about von Neumann’s eccentricities already. He had the reputation for being quite a practical joker. One day when Einstein was supposed to go to New York, von Neumann had offered to accompany him to the station. On the way there, he told him one funny story after another. The elderly physicist boarded the train crying with laughter, only to realize later that he had been deliberately put on the wrong train. According to Kurt, von Neumann was a terrible example to the students. Some of them thought that, like him, they could spend the night drinking in clubs and then go straight to their early-morning courses as fresh as ever. But von Neumann was not human. Kurt was especially appalled by the amount of food the Hungarian could put away. His hyperactivity exhausted my husband before the fact. I had met him at the house of our former neighbor on Stockton Street, Mrs. Brown. She was drawing the illustrations for the book he was coauthoring, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. I looked after her baby; John looked after Mrs. Brown. His appetite knew no bounds. Kurt had explained to me that he and Morgenstern described social and economic phenomena using games of strategy such as Kriegspiel. That all these gray cells should be assigned to military projects struck Kurt as a great shame. Meanwhile, the von Neumanns had a very pretty house in Princeton. John was a consultant for the U.S. Navy, and the military paid well.
I poured myself another little glass of vodka in memory of my wild Hungarian pals from the Nachtfalter. The pipe’s aromatic fog made me nostalgic. I lit a cigarette right under my husband’s disapproving gaze. I had recently started smoking again to cope with the long, lonely days. When he came home, Kurt would complain of the smoke, even if I had spent all day airing the apartment. He’d always hated the way my clothes reeked after a shift at the nightclub.
“It would be surprising if von Neumann didn’t win a Nobel or two with all the work he has done!”
“If doing physics were a question of proving theorems, von Neumann would be a great physicist.”
“Don’t be jealous, Pauli. Your turn will come!”
“It’s easy enough to dismiss plaudits when you’re covered in glory.”
“I had to wait a long time.16 It was the big joke every year! Who could they give the Nobel Prize to so that they wouldn’t have to give it to me? One of the judges was blatantly anti-Semitic.”
“Your popularity is worth ten Nobel Prizes, Professor Einstein.”
“The one benefit is that it provides you with an audience. I can at least try to get across a few ideas.”
I swept the crumbs from the table; the conversation was flagging. I was annoyed at Kurt for not making a better show.
“Why haven’t you received the Nobel Prize, Kurt? I’d like to have a beautiful house like von Neumann. He claims that you’re the greatest logician since Aristotle!”
“There is no Nobel Prize for mathematics. Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician.”
“A myth! The truth is that the Nobel Prize is awarded for the work that gives the most benefit to mankind.”
“And mathematics offers none, Herr Einstein?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out, Adele. But there are other prizes.”
“Gödel is too old for the Fields Medal.”
“I don’t chase after prizes.”
“You should! With the pitiful salary you make at the IAS, we live like paupers! All your intelligence, and it doesn’t even get us a little comfort!”
Kurt looked daggers at me. His colleagues hooted with laughter.
“What good is your powerful logic, Kurt Gödel, if your little woman is unsatisfied?”
Pauli scribbled a short equation in his notebook and waved it in front of Kurt tauntingly.