Free The Goddess of Small Victories by Yannick Grannec Page B

that damned French mathematician mangles his English so badly I can barely understand a word he says. I need your talents. And you will make an effort to look presentable, won’t you?”
    Anna wondered whether he would deliver the final thrust by reminding her of her mother’s legendary elegance. He stopped short. The shadow of her father was enough to give the conversation weight. Having to share Thanksgiving dinner with Leo would be the last straw. She rose and took her leave, the urge to scream rising in her. She would wait until she was safely in the shower. Princeton’s manicured lawns were generally unreceptive to fits of hysteria.
    From his office window, the director watched the slender figure retreat. He had never understood her as a child, and he had no more insight into her now that she was a young woman. He felt a tightening in his pelvis at the thought of the girl who, thirty years earlier, had sat next to him during a reception for Princeton students. Austere Anna was her exact opposite. Rachel had been irresistible, a brilliant student with delectable breasts. As he and Rachel were already committed to other partners, they had shared just one, frustrating dance. He scratched his crotch. Times were different. Nowadays, he could have asked her out for a drink. He shut the door and allowed himself a little liquid solace to erase the vision of creamy thighs and breasts like basketballs. He’d have to tell his wife that Anna was coming to Thanksgiving dinner. Virginia didn’t like her, and she’d never liked Anna’s mother. With a little luck, his space-alien son might consent to join them. With even more luck, Leo might even be directed toward gainful employment by Andrew W. Richardson Jr. And if miracles still happened, Virginia might reach the end of the meal without getting crocked. But luck wasn’t to be trusted. He poured himself another belt before hiding the bottle and summoning his secretary.
    “Mrs. Clarck, I’d like to speak to Leonard right away. Call his lab at MIT and tell the receptionist to wake up the guy sleeping on the pile of empty pizza boxes.”

14
    JANUARY 1936
    Necessary but Not Sufficient
    Hell could invent no greater torture than of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.
    —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Accursed Intellect”
    I wanted to believe, as his family did, that his first episode of depression would come to seem like just a bad incident. His health would improve when we were together, I was all he needed. Order would return and disorder recede. But after he came back from the United States in 1934, Kurt collapsed again and had to take a long rest cure.
    His second episode of depression started right after Hans Hahn died. His thesis adviser succumbed to an aggressive cancer shortly before Dollfuss’s assassination. Kurt was still at Princeton and felt horrible that he couldn’t be there for Hahn during his last moments. The disease killed Kurt’s mentor in just three months. Another father he hadn’t said goodbye to.
    Entropy, he could have told himself: the disorder in a system increases. A broken teacup will never glue itself back together. The universe is disorder, revels in disorder, engenders disorder.
    The Purkersdorf Sanatorium thus became his second home. I found myself having to wait for his rare outings. I was allowed a furtive embrace, dinner of a sort, and sometimes even a night at the movies with Kurt before he would rush off to his mother to show her the progress he’d made. His temporary leaves from the sanatorium were always in her hands. Redheaded Anna had persuaded me not to ask for more: “You have to be strong for both of you, Adele. That’s your mission. And be happy that you
have
a mission, since most people don’t know what to do with their stupid lives.”
    Kurt never spent very long in Vienna, where the perpetual stress sapped his limited energy. The university was being drained of its life force: Jewish