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Authors: Yannick Grannec
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spoke in a shrill voice. “
I am elsewhere, do not try to bother me
. It would reach the point where I had to escape the silence, join the movement of a crowd. I would end up at the movies. You can’t imagine how much I miss going to the movies.”
Anna responded impulsively, regretting it even as she spoke.
“What if I asked for permission to take you to the movies?”
“I am adding you this minute to my will! My huge and unfortunate backside has been Scotch-taped to reality far too long.”
The young woman started to think of all the difficulties entailed by her offer. She poured a second shot of bourbon into her lukewarm cup.
“I didn’t destroy those papers, Anna. But don’t think I am telling you this because you offered to take me for an outing. I am not one of those fast women!”
“Nor am I, Adele. Nor am I.”
The old lady smacked her lips.
“What good movies are around at this moment?”
“
Manhattan
is playing. A black-and-white film by the New York director Woody Allen.”
“I’ve heard of him. He is too intellectual for me. It feels as if my whole life has been spent in a black-and-white film. A silent film, almost! Great God Almighty, I want a Technicolor screen! With music! Why does Hollywood not make musicals anymore?”
“I’m not that fond of musicals, to tell you the truth.”
“Too popular for you? Her Majesty prefers
French
films, I suppose.”
“Where do you get the right to judge me?”
“Poor thing. I was judged all my life. Stupid, vulgar, inept. Never up to the mark. I cried, I kicked against those closed doors, but I was always ‘that Austrian woman.’ Princeton was not my world. One day I said
‘Scheisse!
’ Shit! I stuck a pink flamingo in the middle of our garden. Can you imagine people’s reaction? A pink flamingo at the house of Kurt Gödel … It made his mother swallow her string of pearls. And it did me a world of good. I like musical comedy. I like love songs and paintings with pretty colors. I don’t read.
And you can all go to hell!
If you want to see depressing films or have a little drink before sunset, Anna, you are free to do it. What counts is joy. Joy!”
“What did your husband think of the pink flamingo?”
“Did he even know we had a garden?”
12
1933
Separation
Love means that you’re the knife I use to probe inside of me.
—Franz Kafka, in a letter to Milena
With the complicity of the nurse, I was able to visit Kurt during the months of his first stay in the sanatorium despite his family’s disapproval. Anna was the daughter of Russian immigrants. Her parents, who were household servants, had followed their masters in flight from the Bolshevik menace. She had married for love a Viennese clockmaker with a store on the Kohlmarkt, a few steps from the Café Demel. Her parents-in-law, strict Catholics, never accepted their son’s choice of a Jewish bride. When the clockmaker died of tuberculosis shortly after a son was born, Anna was left with a small child on her hands and a senile father. It was a miracle that she had found the job at Purkersdorf, where she lived in a tiny maid’s room. Her salary barely covered the cost of a wet nurse for her son and hospice care for her father. She saw the boy, Peter, only once a month, riding her bicycle far out into the countryside to visit him. She often showed me photographs of her little man, who had his mother’s red hair and, presumably, his father’s dark eyes. Anna masked her Russian accentunder a thick Viennese brogue, but she couldn’t hide her Slavic origins: she had a round face with strong cheekbones and pale eyes pulled into a permanent smile. Her flaming and unruly hair stood out a mile away; she never passed unnoticed. I’d forbidden her to dye her hair blond, as I envied the luxuriant thatch she had such trouble keeping under her white cap. Her life was far more difficult than mine, yet she never complained. She knew how to listen and asked for nothing in return. Our
I am elsewhere, do not try to bother me
. It would reach the point where I had to escape the silence, join the movement of a crowd. I would end up at the movies. You can’t imagine how much I miss going to the movies.”
Anna responded impulsively, regretting it even as she spoke.
“What if I asked for permission to take you to the movies?”
“I am adding you this minute to my will! My huge and unfortunate backside has been Scotch-taped to reality far too long.”
The young woman started to think of all the difficulties entailed by her offer. She poured a second shot of bourbon into her lukewarm cup.
“I didn’t destroy those papers, Anna. But don’t think I am telling you this because you offered to take me for an outing. I am not one of those fast women!”
“Nor am I, Adele. Nor am I.”
The old lady smacked her lips.
“What good movies are around at this moment?”
“
Manhattan
is playing. A black-and-white film by the New York director Woody Allen.”
“I’ve heard of him. He is too intellectual for me. It feels as if my whole life has been spent in a black-and-white film. A silent film, almost! Great God Almighty, I want a Technicolor screen! With music! Why does Hollywood not make musicals anymore?”
“I’m not that fond of musicals, to tell you the truth.”
“Too popular for you? Her Majesty prefers
French
films, I suppose.”
“Where do you get the right to judge me?”
“Poor thing. I was judged all my life. Stupid, vulgar, inept. Never up to the mark. I cried, I kicked against those closed doors, but I was always ‘that Austrian woman.’ Princeton was not my world. One day I said
‘Scheisse!
’ Shit! I stuck a pink flamingo in the middle of our garden. Can you imagine people’s reaction? A pink flamingo at the house of Kurt Gödel … It made his mother swallow her string of pearls. And it did me a world of good. I like musical comedy. I like love songs and paintings with pretty colors. I don’t read.
And you can all go to hell!
If you want to see depressing films or have a little drink before sunset, Anna, you are free to do it. What counts is joy. Joy!”
“What did your husband think of the pink flamingo?”
“Did he even know we had a garden?”
12
1933
Separation
Love means that you’re the knife I use to probe inside of me.
—Franz Kafka, in a letter to Milena
With the complicity of the nurse, I was able to visit Kurt during the months of his first stay in the sanatorium despite his family’s disapproval. Anna was the daughter of Russian immigrants. Her parents, who were household servants, had followed their masters in flight from the Bolshevik menace. She had married for love a Viennese clockmaker with a store on the Kohlmarkt, a few steps from the Café Demel. Her parents-in-law, strict Catholics, never accepted their son’s choice of a Jewish bride. When the clockmaker died of tuberculosis shortly after a son was born, Anna was left with a small child on her hands and a senile father. It was a miracle that she had found the job at Purkersdorf, where she lived in a tiny maid’s room. Her salary barely covered the cost of a wet nurse for her son and hospice care for her father. She saw the boy, Peter, only once a month, riding her bicycle far out into the countryside to visit him. She often showed me photographs of her little man, who had his mother’s red hair and, presumably, his father’s dark eyes. Anna masked her Russian accentunder a thick Viennese brogue, but she couldn’t hide her Slavic origins: she had a round face with strong cheekbones and pale eyes pulled into a permanent smile. Her flaming and unruly hair stood out a mile away; she never passed unnoticed. I’d forbidden her to dye her hair blond, as I envied the luxuriant thatch she had such trouble keeping under her white cap. Her life was far more difficult than mine, yet she never complained. She knew how to listen and asked for nothing in return. Our
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