On that afternoon, it was still too early for nuances. Indignation was the order of the day. Anger kept our minds from being numbed by fear, but only momentarily, because whose name would be blacklisted next? Kurt had done nothing to be ashamed of. He lacked the soul of a traitor and had no valuable information to offer. Why would the Russians take an interest in his work? Yet given the demented logic of the times, no one was safe, not even Kurt. A simple summons to testify would have been fatal to my husband.
We sipped our cold tea, hoping for better days. I looked at the clock: it was time to go. I was afraid that Kurt would use the momentary silence to initiate a conversation of the kind he particularly specialized in: obscure and supremely irrelevant. He leapt at the opportunity.
“Oppenheimer’s trial is not the first of its kind. The great scientists have always been subjected to cabals by the powers-that-be. Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Leibniz …”
Albert hesitated a few seconds. He knew where this would lead if he picked up the cue. In the end, he couldn’t resist the chance to needle his friend a bit. Morgenstern made an effort to mask his impatience by draining his already empty cup. Lili crossed and uncrossed her legs in anticipation of the ordeal.
“I wondered how long you would hold out before bringing good old Gottfried into the picture, Gödel. What is he doing in this list of brave martyrs? Leibniz was never persecuted, so far as I know!”
“Newton had powerful political allies. He brazenly robbed Leibniz of the credit for inventing the differential calculus.”
“That has nothing to do with a plot! Newton was a horrible man. But I settled his hash, don’t worry!”
“And what do you say to this? Certain works of Leibniz have disappeared from the Princeton library! Oskar is my witness.”
Morgenstern, embarrassed, nodded his assent. The university had acquired an extensive collection of the German scientist’s papers, but some of the documents were missing. According to Kurt, Leibniz had kept all his writings, his drafts and notes, for posterity. He couldn’t have destroyed the documents himself. Oskar believed the gaps reflected an oversight on the part of the catalogers, not a plot of any sort. My husband, eager to support his pet mania, would hear nothing of it.
“Certain texts have been secretly destroyed by those who want to prevent mankind from progressing in intelligence.”
“Who in God’s name would do that? McCarthy? He barely knows how to spell his own name!”
“Leibniz anticipated modern scientific research. He pointed to the paradoxes of set theory two hundred years before the fact. He even stole a march on my friends Morgenstern and von Neumann by developing game theory!”43
Oskar had been the stoic target of many previous attacks; he took no offense at this one.
“Don’t try to sell me a conspiracy by the Rosicrucians or some other secret order. We have enough thugs in our own day and age. Politicians persecute in broad daylight now. And let’s be frank. The modern world doesn’t give a damn about your Leibniz!”
“The general indifference is further evidence of machinations! What I do is to encrypt my notes in Gabelsberger. You should too, Herr Einstein.”
“No point. Even I can’t read my own handwriting.”
I smiled at the elderly physicist’s attempts to lighten the tone. Kurt had such faith in their friendship that he couldn’t conceive of Herr Einstein’s total disinterest in the subject and continued to harp on about the extraordinary relevance of his idol’s research. Leibniz apparently worked, like Kurt himself, on a universal language of concepts. Although his attempt was successful, he never published his results because they were too far ahead of their time. To this, Einstein invariably responded, “Gödel, you became a mathematician so that people would study your work. Not so that you could study Leibniz, for God’s sake!”44 And we would be off on another round.
“Like Leibniz, I seek Truth. And for that reason, I, too, am targeted. They want to get rid of me.”
“Who is this ‘they’? Does Hilbert’s ghost come tickle your feet at night?”
“I’ve uncovered foreign agents trying to introduce themselves into my house. Several poisoning attempts have been made against me. If I weren’t a reasonable man, I’d even say that our refrigerator has been sabotaged!”
“Don’t mention that accursed refrigerator to me again, Gödel! I am begging you. I would rather face another McCarthy hearing.”
It was time to slip away before my husband dug himself a deeper pit. His friends showed great patience toward him, which he abused all too often. Mine was now unshakable. I had put away anger. Had therapy been successful? I like to say that it helped me understand the pointlessness of my open battle. I’d gone back to our old way of operating: I watched him teeter on his aerialist’s wire and readied the mattress to catch him.
Anger purges you. But who can live with it for any length of time? Repressed anger eats at you. Then it escapes in little venomous farts that only stink up an already insalubrious atmosphere. What to do with all this anger? For want of a better alternative, some spew it at their children. I didn’t have that misfortune. I therefore kept it for others: incompetent officials, venal politicians, officious store clerks, nosy hairdressers, unattractive weather announcers, and the ass-faced Ed Sullivan. For all the pains in the rear I had no use for. I’d become a shrew to protect myself. I had never felt better. From that time on, whenever my barometer showed a storm brewing, I left on a trip. I practiced the art of flight until old age took away the option. Kurt encouraged me in this, despite the expense, although I always found him thinner and more taciturn on my return. If hope germinated in me at a distance, it rotted away after two hours back in Princeton: nothing would change him.
I was no longer tempted to return to Europe and live. My family had disappointed me. The previous spring, I had been summoned back to Vienna to see my sister on her deathbed. Lies. Believing it an emergency, I had taken an airplane for the first time in my life, spending money needlessly. We were comfortably off, but not as rich as they imagined us. I’d become their milk cow. I offered them love; they wanted money. In the end, what might have destroyed me in fact saved me: my real family, for what it was worth, was him.
“Let’s say our goodbyes, Kurt. We’re late. We’re attending the Metropolitan Opera tonight. Die Fledermaus, a limousine, champagne, the whole nine yards!”
“What has gotten into you, Gödel? You’re throwing away your salary now? Have you been selling secrets to the Russians?”
“Strauss is perfectly bearable for two hours, and I wanted to please my wife. She certainly deserves it.”