In Search of Klingsor

“Seventeen,” she responded. Her voice was low and deep.

Bacon paid for the paper and slowly walked away, as if he was waiting for her to call out to him at the last minute. She, on the other hand, didn’t even seem to have noticed the anonymous face that had just asked her age. The next day, Bacon returned. His legs trembling, he somehow managed to speak in a neutral, firm tone of voice.

“Would you like to go to the movies with me?” he asked her.

For the first time, she looked up at Bacon, displaying a set of teeth that made the newsprint in front of her look yellow and old. She watched him with imploring eyes. Was this some kind of joke?

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

This scene would be repeated over and over again during the months that followed. Bacon would stop by, pay for his New York Times, and tell her about the various movies playing at the nearby theaters, in the hopes of finally eliciting a yes from her. But she always just shook her head violently from side to side, as if trying to scare away a bothersome fly. Bacon refused to be discouraged, however; from his perspective, the situation was slowly evolving into a weekly routine. He was genuinely surprised, then, when one morning, she finally granted his request. At the end of the day, he met her in front of the box office of one of the local movie theaters, a highly undesirable place, it was said. The movie was (how could he forget?) Gone With the Wind, which had just recently opened, and was the first film Bacon had ever seen in color. Later on he would remember little of the plot, having been far more interested in sneaking covert glimpses of his companion’s profile, silvery blue in the light reflecting off the movie screen. He did, however, manage to memorize both the name and the gestures of the film’s starring actress, Vivien Leigh. And that was the name with which he chose to baptize his new lady friend. Later on, she told him her real name, but he stated quite plainly that he preferred calling her Vivien. By doing this, he had invented a new creature, blessed with the qualities and characteristics that he saw fit to imbue her with.

The following Sunday they repeated the scene from the previous week, even seeing Gone With the Wind again, as if testing the full range of laws of inertia. Again, they spoke very little. It was as if they had signed a tacit agreement to spend time together, nothing else. Their first kiss took place on the way to the movies. Just like almost everything Bacon ever did, this kiss was inspired by a curiosity that was more scientific than romantic. After a few weeks, they added a twist to their incipient tradition: the small cottage in the country that was the one thing Bacons father had left him when he died. Even there, they never spoke more than they absolutely had to. But he would have liked to know, for example, if she felt the same pleasure he did, or if she was subjecting herself to this intimate physical activity just to make him happy. He really had no idea of the emotions that they felt for one another; to speak frankly and openly about their relationship, prohibited and precarious as it was, would have been an unnecessary provocation. And as the days stretched on, he slowly accepted that his relationship with Vivien could exist only by observing this vow of silence.

One day, Bacon was just returning home from a statistics class when he received an unexpected visitor: his mother, who now called herself Rachel Smith. After her husband’s death, she had become a wealthy, haughty woman. She dressed like a New Yorker: tailored black dresses, an anachronistic gamine haircut, and a grayish animal wrapped around her neck, his dead eyes a pitiable sight. Though born into middle-class America, she had managed to find her place among the local aristocracy, thanks to her second marriage. She considered herself an equal to the women around her, and she carefully noted and copied all their habits and idiosyncrasies. For a long time Bacon didn’t even notice this new attitude, until one day when she happened to unleash her venom on the city sanitation workers.

“How can you humiliate me this way?” she implored as she burst through Bacon’s front door, on the verge of tears, as her turquoise-colored purse fell upon his desk. Her tone was timid, almost inaudible, despite her worldly appearance. “I had to learn from one of my friends that instead of studying, my son uses the money he inherited from his father to go out on dates with a whore. Is this true?”

“She’s not a prostitute, Mother.”

“Don’t be coy with me, Frank.”

They argued for several minutes until, worn down by his mother’s histrionics, Bacon swore that he would stop seeing Vivien for good. Of course, he didn’t really intend to keep the promise, at least not fully. The next time he saw Vivien, he simply told her that he would rather not see her out of doors. Vivien’s eyes filled with tears when she heard this, but just as he had imagined, she said nothing. Not one single reproach or protest, just the same sadness. Nor did Vivien say anything when Bacon refused to go to the movies with her the following week. From that day on, they never went out together again. Bacon didn’t even have to explain why: Vivien knew the reason all too well, and the last thing she needed was the additional humiliation of being lied to. Finally, when Bacon mentioned something about a job in a newsstand being beneath the dignity of a girl like her, Vivien began working in a cafeteria.

It didn’t take Bacon long to realize that when you despise the woman you love, the love becomes a cruel, solitary vice. He trusted her, but he was also aware of the hatred that was slowly building up behind the wall of her submissiveness. Vivien, however, acted as though she had no idea of what was going on in her lover’s head, behaving as if nothing at all had changed between them. She continued visiting his house, twice a week at least, with the apathy of a rabbit who allows himself to be fattened up, knowing full well that the day will soon come when he will have to take his place on his master’s dining room table.

One day, at one of the little social gatherings she loved to organize, Bacon’s mother introduced her son to a perky, freckled young woman from “one of the best families in Philadelphia,” as Bacon’s mother noted with great pride. When the girl actually seemed interested in what he had to say, young Frank decided it wouldn’t be so terrible to dance with her, or tell her that he was currently unattached. Vivien didn’t even cross his mind; she had evolved into something of a sexual phantom that appeared at his bedside like a figure from one of his erotic dreams. Vivien, in fact, did materialize at Bacon’s apartment several times over the next few weeks, but she never found him there; he had failed to mention that he had made a number of dinner dates with the parents of his spectacular new girlfriend.

“Don’t leave me” Vivien said to him the next time they were together, in a quiet, firm, determined voice.

“This was going to have to end sooner or later, Vivien. I’m sorry, really I am.”

“Why?”

“There’s no other way.”

“I promise not to tell anyone about us.”

The more Vivien talked, the more Bacon despised her—and loved her, in some odd, inexplicable way.

“There’s something I haven’t told you,” he added, looking away. “I’m engaged.” His voice trailed off. “It couldn’t be any other way, you have to understand.”

Of course she could understand. Bacon knew she would—he could predict her reactions by now, otherwise he wouldn’t have told her, or at least not so abruptly. Perhaps Vivien would surprise him and actually get angry, and leave him for good. But Bacon suspected that she would do none of those things; he was betting that she would come back to him, and that once again they would love one another wordlessly, reverting to the same wretched habits they had maintained for so long.

“All right, Vivien. Whatever you wish.”

The Institute for Advanced Study was a moldy, dismal place. It had neither laboratories nor noisy, impertinent students, and the professional tools of its occupants were reduced to the bare minimum: a few blackboards, chalk, paper. If mental experiments were what you wanted, this was the place to perform them. There, safely tucked away behind the thick walls of Fuld Hall, some of the greatest minds in the world were at work: professors Veblen, Gödel, Alexander, Von Neumann, plus a handful of celebrated thinkers who made regular pilgrimages to the institute as a stop on the university lecture circuit. This, of course, was to say nothing of the institute’s most famous occupant, the patron saint of theoretical physics, Albert Einstein himself. Nevertheless, Bacon was bored.

Bacon had been working with Von Neumann for only three months, but he was already bothered that he hadn’t found anything that really excited him. It wasn’t that he disliked his work with the Hungarian mathematician—it was rather effortless, and after all, there was no better place to continue his education. But in his heart, he had discovered that something was pulling him away from the field of pure theory, or at least from the wordless science that was practiced at the institute. A few times, he had tried approaching the professors who gathered together for tea and cookies at three in the afternoon every day, but his attempts at striking up conversations were always frustrated by their utter lack of interest in him. Worn-out from being alone with their thoughts, they talked among themselves about such pressing scientific topics as baseball scores, the best way to acquire European wines, or the greasy quality of North American cuisine. The serious questions Bacon was trying to pose always dissolved amid a flurry of nervous titters and sudden, distracted gestures. Although he respected Bacon, Veblen limited their interactions to a condescending nod before moving away as quickly as possible. Von Neumann managed to tolerate him, as Bacon had suspected he would, but all the other scientists, the ones he scarcely knew, didn’t even acknowledge his existence.

Bacon, who was accustomed to excelling at all his academic endeavors, felt himself plummeting into a state of despondence at this lack of attention, a sensation that felt a lot like the depressions he had suffered while living with his family. In these moments, he wondered if he wouldn’t have been better off somewhere else, Caltech, maybe, where at least he would have been working on more pressing issues. Despite the fact that Von Neumann had published one of the most important documents of modern physics, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, in 1932, it was all too clear that he was now primarily concerned with his game theories and, even worse, the programming of mechanical calculators. Neither of these subjects compelled Bacon in the least; his mentor’s ingenious formulations were occasionally entertaining, but they weren’t enough to sustain Bacon’s interest.

In addition to all this, Bacon’s relationship with Elizabeth was growing more and more serious with each passing day, and the prospect of a formal engagement caused him nothing less than total panic. At first, he had treated their relationship as a test—after all, this was the first time a woman from his social class had ever declared her love for him. But he never imagined that it would all happen so fast. On the other hand, there was no way he could publicly formalize his relationship with Vivien: The ensuing scandal would alienate him from everyone, even in the academic world. The brilliant future that he had laid out by joining the institute suddenly seemed like a trap, and he saw no way out. But he couldn’t give up on it, either; he had to hold out for at least a year before he could even think of going to Caltech.

“What’s wrong with you, Bacon?” Von Neumann asked him one day, blunt and direct as always. “Is something the matter? Oh, I think I know what it is. Women, right? Men are forever in torment at the hands of women. That is the quintessential problem of the age we live in, Bacon. If we took one quarter of the time we spend resolving romantic problems and applied it instead to physics or mathematics, why, scientific progress would advance in geometric proportions. But it is one of life’s great pleasures, isn’t it?”

“Pleasure and pain, Professor,” mumbled Bacon.

“Of course, of course! That’s what makes it so very fascinating! I have to confess, I also spend hours thinking about this subject. I’m a married man, you understand. You even met my wife, Klara, at the party the other day. But I’m still young. I have a right to wonder if I will ever know another woman’s body, wouldn’t you agree?” Von Neumann’s cheeks grew pink, livened by the topic of conversation. “Why don’t we have a little drink at the end of the day, to talk more? Yes, let’s do it, Bacon. In the meantime, let’s get to work.”

As the afternoon wore on, the sun transformed the red-brick exterior of the institute into a wall of fiery rose and violet, breaking through the somber cloud cover that normally settled in above the building. Once again, Von Neumann told Bacon to meet him at his home. Klara had gone out to play bridge with one of their neighbors, so they had the house to themselves and could talk freely. Bacon was beginning to feel more and more at home in that drawing room.

“When they first told me that alcohol was forbidden in the United States, I thought it was a joke,” said Von Neumann as he removed two glasses from the bar. “You can imagine how horrified I was when I found out it was true. Truly insane, those Americans. I tell you, I only accepted the position of visiting professor at the university under the condition that I could return to Europe each summer and replenish this drought.” He took out a bottle of bourbon and expertly poured the honey-colored liquid into two tall glasses. “Thank God they realized their mistake. Water? I take mine neat. All right, here you are … So, tell me, Bacon, what’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know,” Frank lied. “I guess it would be different if …” He tried to correct himself: “It’s not that I’m unhappy at the institute, Professor, it’s just that I’m afraid that it might not be the right place for me right now.”

“Well, where else would you want to be?”

“That’s my problem. On one hand, I can’t think of any other place I’d rather be. Everyone is here. But for that reason, I get the feeling that my own work will never be very important at the institute.”

The professor shook his head, as if he was sincerely distressed. “I’ve always said that one’s mathematic capacity begins to decline after age twenty-six, so let’s see, you have how many years left?”

“Four.”

“Four! It’s terrible, isn’t it? Well, anyway, I am thirty-eight, though I think I hide it rather well.” He took a few sips from his glass, then wiped his lips with a linen napkin. “Nevertheless, I get the sense that the institute isn’t the only thing on your mind. You’ve got a problem with the girls, don’t you?”

Bacon was grateful for his tutor’s advice, but he wasn’t altogether convinced that he wanted to discuss his private life with him. The truth was, he didn’t like discussing his private life with anyone.

“So tell me, what’s the matter?”

“Well, it’s about two women….”

“I knew it! See what a good nose I’ve got, Bacon? People think that mathematicians are completely out of touch with the real world, but it’s just not true. Sometimes we are even better observers than regular people. We see things that others don’t.” He paused. “Do you love them both?”

“In a way, yes. I’m not sure. One of them is my fiancée. She’s a fine girl, very sweet.”

“But you don’t love her.”

“No.”

“So then marry the other one.”