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blindness were vast. He wanted me with him in the United
States because he didn’t feel he could stand another
academic year as an overaged bachelor student. The only
way for us both to get visas was for him to marry me. I
didn’t have any illusions. He was not troubled by the course
of history, not terrified at leaving his mother alone in
Czechoslovakia, and he was hardly concerned about our
dicey finances. He had his work, his needs as a man, and
the rest mattered very little. What were the world’s
upheaval or the jeremiads of a woman in comparison with
the infinity of mathematics? Kurt always placed himself
outside the game. Here and now was an unpleasant point in
space-time, an imperative I was assigned to handle so that
we might survive.
He briefly considered emigrating officially but dismissed it
without serious thought. Oskar Morgenstern and Karl
Menger, who had been in the United States for several
months, wrote that they planned to settle there. They urged
him to weigh the possibility of expatriate life. I started to
think about it. If he married me, Princeton’s invitation gave
us an opportunity to go, leaving everything behind. I made
two lists. Here: my family; his mother, who had taken
refuge in a defeated Czechoslovakia; his academic career,
already on a solid footing, and a university that still
believed in him; his brother, who was our only financial
guarantor; and a political situation that, while explosive,
did not threaten us directly. There: his friends; temporary
appointments; the unknown. Could we get a two-person