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her blessing. At the same time, she had a good excuse: the
Sudeten crisis made it difficult to travel. In palmier times,
she still would not have made the trip. In palmier times,
Kurt would not have married me.
Twenty years later, in the flowered courtyard of a church in
Princeton, I would cry at the wedding of a radiant stranger.
Not because I was jealous of her puffy white dress, her
prosperous and self-congratulatory family, or her friends
wrapped in lavender satin—I cried over the hope that I had
harbored at my own wedding. Like this unknown bride, I
had followed the tradition of “Something old, something
new, something borrowed, something blue, and a silver
sixpence in her shoe.” I was in fact carrying something new
under my blue vest—a little of him, a little of me. He was
unaware of it as he signed the register. He was also unaware
that I would not accompany him to the United States. This
hope of mine, how could I give it short shrift? How could I
get on a train, and then a boat, and risk losing the child
when, at the age of thirty-nine, it was probably my last
chance? Old Lady Gödel would likely consider a
miscarriage the unfortunate but justly deserved
punishment due to the divorcée who put the grapple on her
son. But Kurt had always avoided the subject. Fatherhood
was not part of his program. “Take care of the details,” he
had said.
I let him run around and send telegrams in every direction
trying to raise funds for a second ticket. His egotism and