SEPTEMBER 26, 1958, LA JOLLA
The nightmare of haggling over our marriage settlement is over. Yesterday I drove with Verena to Los Angeles, and there we together signed the papers for our permanent separation. She then got onto the airplane for Reno, and I drove the 150 miles back here alone. I got back at nine o’clock and found the children asleep and Imme quietly waiting for me. The divorce will now take six weeks and is a pure formality, since the difficult questions of custody and finance are decided in advance by the separation agreement. The terms of the agreement are roughly:
1. I have custody of the children during school terms and Verena during the holidays.
2. I pay for them to travel to her three times a year if the distance is less than 1,500 miles, once a year if it is over 1,500 miles within the U.S., and if it is a trip across the ocean, I pay for it only if I am traveling to Europe myself.
3. I am responsible for all support and maintenance of Esther and George; Verena for Katrin.
4. I have undivided possession of the house and the car.
5. I pay Verena $12,000 within two years, plus $1,000 for the lawyers.
Thank God this is all over!
OCTOBER 6, 1958, LA JOLLA
Imme did not say yes to my proposal. She intends to go back to Germany in November and think over at leisure what she will do. I also consider this wise for her. The new girl Margot Kaufner arrived on Wednesday, and she is very good with the children. She will certainly be able to take over from Imme quite effectively. Yesterday the whole family drove into Mexico, and we had a delightful Mexican lunch, Imme and I danced to the music of a jukebox while Margot and the children applauded. Mexico is noticeably more clean and prosperous than it was two years ago.
OCTOBER 7, 1958, LA JOLLA
I am sitting after supper in the big living room of our house while Imme and Margot are chattering away in German. It is good to listen to them, there is such a lot of laughing, though I do not understand most of the jokes. These two girls get along well together, they are both efficient in the house and good with the children. It is a pity I cannot keep both of them!
OCTOBER 12, 1958, LA JOLLA
This weekend I have been alone with Katrin. I enjoy her a lot when the little ones are not in the way. Katrin also enjoys being able to cook and mess around in the kitchen without supervision. She gets my meals, washes my socks, and plays the housewife efficiently. Now she is doing her homework. The family left on Friday morning, so Katrin has the household for three days. I am glad to have some time with her, to talk and get to know her again. She is growing very fast into a young woman.
Yesterday Katrin and I spent the whole day up at the cliffs at the Glider Club. It was a beautiful day. I was in the air five times. Katrin would like to learn to fly, and I will let her begin as soon as I have her mother’s permission. But for her the flying is not so important. The reason she will happily spend a whole day up there on the cliffs is Keith. Keith is a fourteen-year-old boy whom I got to know and like during the summer. He is an excellent glider pilot and also a good sport and does more than his share of the routine work. He is too busy with his hobbies to be interested in girls. I had never thought of him in connection with Katrin. However, a week ago when I took her up to the cliffs the first time, she attached herself immediately to him, and he seemed to enjoy her undisguised admiration. Yesterday she spent the whole morning sitting beside him in the cage while he operated the winch, and in the afternoon they went down the cliffs for a long walk together. If this is to be her first serious love, I cannot imagine a healthier or sounder way it could have happened. I never thought her taste was good enough to fall in love with somebody like Keith. As usual, I underestimated her.
Imme and Margot Kaufner and the little ones all went off at six on Friday morning. Katrin was strongly urged to go with them, but she refused. This makes me secretly happy. She said to me, “I like Mummy all right, but I do not respect her.” These words were her own, I did not suggest them to her. She knows more about life at thirteen than I did at thirty!
OCTOBER 17, 1958, LA JOLLA
I feel now more optimistic about the chance of Imme saying yes to me. The reason the chances have improved is that I had a reply to my official letter to Dr. Jung in Wertheim. Dr. Jung writes in a very friendly way and says he will not attempt to influence Imme’s decision one way or the other. The thing I liked best in his letter was these sentences; [English translation: “If she decides to become your wife, the difference in age between the partners does not worry me. My own parents lived their lives together in a harmonious marriage, and the difference between their ages was one year greater.”] The problem of the age difference had been for me the greatest worry, and so it was specially good of him to write me those words. Imme also was visibly relieved when she saw the letter.
OCTOBER 21, 1958, LA JOLLA
The good news is here already. Imme said yes. This happened not with any sudden decision but gradually and quietly. Now I am in a state of great happiness and confidence about the future. We have not begun any celebrations because we do not want to tell anybody anything until the divorce is over. Imme insists that not even the children be told before the divorce is settled. I think she is wise; if Verena should know that we decided definitely to get married, it puts Verena into a stronger legal position which she might use to blackmail us further. So please do not say a word to anybody until I give you the go-ahead. The divorce hearing is now set for November 12. Yesterday we had a pleasant hour at a good jeweler’s shop looking at rings. I am giving her a beautiful diamond. It makes me happy to spoil Imme a bit. She has never been spoilt before. I promised Imme we shall both come to Europe next summer to visit her family and mine. I wish this news could make you as happy as it makes me.
OCTOBER 26, 1958, LA JOLLA
On Friday night Imme and I had supper at a little restaurant in Mexico. It is a great asset of this place that in an hour one can drive across the border into a completely different world. They gave us excellent food and wine and some Spanish guitar music and took our picture. The picture turned out not so bad as I had expected. We definitely decided on Mexico City for our honeymoon. Dates are still vague, but it will be sometime before Christmas. It is a great help in Mexico that Imme has fluent Spanish. Everything is open to us in a way it never was to me alone.
OCTOBER 31, 1958, LA JOLLA
I came back at one a.m. this morning from a week at Livermore where they make bombs. It is a good sign of my general recovery that I was able to go away for a week and forget my personal drama in the middle of the public drama at Livermore. Livermore was wildly exciting. The days I was there were the last days before the test ban went into effect, and they were throwing together everything they possibly could to give it a try before the guillotine came down. Everybody was desperate and also exhilarated. Edward Teller who is the head of the lab talked to me about his plans. He was in good spirits and pressed me with invitations to come and work for him. But it was good to get home this morning and see Imme and the children again. They had been enjoying themselves and managing things very well without me.
NOVEMBER 6, 1958, LA JOLLA
George hangs round Imme’s neck and asks her please please not to go home to Germany. George is quite worried about her going, and it will be a great relief for him when he learns the truth. Esther is much less attached to Imme and more to her mother. Also she is the only one of the three who genuinely likes Kreisel (and the feeling is reciprocated). Esther is on the surface unworried, but certainly she suffers quite a lot underneath. When she went to Reno for the weekend, she was happy with her mother and found it hard to say good-bye again. When she came home, she said to me, “It would be better not to have a mother at all, as soon as the milk is finished.” I think it is best for Esther to see as little as possible of the other family, but I am obliged to send her for Christmas and Easter. She will work her way through these problems somehow.
NOVEMBER 17, 1958, LA JOLLA
Now for some good news. I heard officially today that the divorce in Reno is decreed.
So now we can tell everybody about our plans. We shall be married here in San Diego on Friday, November 21. I told the children last Wednesday that Imme was going to marry me, and the reactions were characteristic. George: “You know, always when I asked Imme if she was going to stay with us, she always said yes. I believe she has been planning to marry you all the time.” Esther: “I am glad there will be two families now. And the children will be able to hop from one to the other, like grasshoppers.” Katrin: “Congratulations. I think this is the best thing that could happen for both of you.”
NOVEMBER 25, 1958, LA JOLLA
Just to let you know that we did get married and are still alive. We had a delightful two-day honeymoon in San Francisco, and we shall take off for a real ten-day honeymoon in Mexico City sometime in December. The wedding itself was an unconventional but merry affair. The judge took us between two traffic violation cases. So we all sat, with the flowers and the three children and the two witnesses, in the court while the lawyers were cross-questioning some poor fellow who had been crashed into by a carload of drunk Mexicans. The children were fascinated by the whole proceeding. After a long time the jury came back and pronounced the verdict guilty. The judge then adjourned the case and said, “Well now, let’s get these people married.” And so we were.
Imme wants a baby very much, so don’t be surprised if one is already on the way when you next see her. I was willing to wait a couple of years, but she says she will always feel like Verena’s housemaid until she has a real baby of her own. I will be extremely happy if one arrives soon. Next Thursday is Thanksgiving, and we shall have the children here for our celebration.
• 15 •
HOMECOMING
IN DECEMBER 1958 Imme and I went to the San Diego airport to fly to Mexico City for our honeymoon. At that time we still had the new au pair, Margot Kaufner, to take care of the children. Imme had a brand-new German passport since her old passport had expired. The Mexican immigration official at the airport examined the passport and refused to let us fly. The expiration date on the passport said clearly that the passport had expired the day before it was issued. We must send the passport back to the German consulate and have a new one issued before we could travel. Four months passed before we could reorganize the honeymoon with Margot no longer available. We finally arrived in Mexico in March.
JANUARY 29, 1959, LA JOLLA
We had a letter from Hans Haefeli. He finally won his appeal to the Santa Rota in Rome. [This means the pope formally annulled his marriage to Verena. In the eyes of God, as interpreted by the Santa Rota, they were never married.] He will now marry a Swiss girl whom he has got to know in Boston. Katrin has met her and likes her, but I have not met her. Unfortunately this means he will go back to Switzerland for good. He has a job at a small engineering college in Luzern, and he will settle down there for the rest of his life. Undoubtedly this is the best solution for him, only I am sorry we shall have him no more to visit us in Princeton. He wrote me a very nice letter and said he has only understood, by what happened to me, what an idiot he was for so many years. I am very happy for him that he finally got away from his past too. For Katrin, this does not make much difference. She was not close to Hans anymore. There is no question of her going to live with him in Luzern. It is now entirely up to Verena to make some tolerable arrangement for Katrin.
I am sorry I have to abandon Katrin at this stage. I feel I am punishing her for her mother’s sins. But I have really no choice; Verena has legal control of Katrin, and so long as Katrin lives with us, this is bound to be troublesome. Verena’s future is also now more settled. She has taken a permanent job at San José State College. This is fifteen miles from Stanford. So she will continue to live where she now is. Kreisel will return to Reading for one more winter, and then come to a permanent position in Stanford in 1960. So it looks as if they will be able to provide a reasonably stable background for Katrin.
Margot Kaufner found herself a job with a family in La Jolla. So she left our household on Sunday. She seems happy at the new place, with five children under ten.
MARCH 26, 1959, MEXICO CITY
So here we are at last! Yesterday I achieved an ambition I have cherished since childhood by standing on the slopes of Popocatépetl [the gigantic volcano overlooking the valley where Mexico City stands]. What a magnificent mountain this is! A perfectly symmetrical peak with a crown of white snow. Needless to say, we did not climb it. It is 17,600 feet and takes twenty-four hours and a mule. What we did was just to get near enough to see it in its full glory. This takes some doing. Imme drove us in a beaten-up old Fiat car which we have rented. First she drove fifty miles over a “first-class” road, which means a road which was once tarred but is consistently narrow and full of bumps. Then came twenty miles of “second-class” road, which took us up to the pass about 11,000 feet high. The second-class road is barely endurable if one goes at fifteen miles per hour. It is hard dirt with pockets of soft sand, the surface ridged like a draining board. On the map there are also many third-class and fourth-class roads. But the map says before starting on these one should “seek local advice.” We decided the best advice would be to go on a mule. The pass is a magnificent place, a wide expanse of dry plateau with the snow peaks of Popocatépetl on one side and Ixtaccihuatl on the other. We walked up a little hill in the pass and looked through binoculars at the mountains and distant villages far below. Walking there is not an unmitigated joy, because the ground consists of the most penetrating black volcanic ash, which comes through everything and makes people and clothes uniformly grey.
The first days here we spent shopping and sight-seeing in the city. Yesterday was the first with the car. Today we took the car out again and went to see some ruins of pre-Aztec people, date about A.D. 500, at Teotihuacan. These ruins are also immense, and besides colossal pyramids and temples a certain amount of good fresco painting has survived. The pre-Aztecs seem to have been more cheerful people than the Aztecs. All the time here I am reminded of the days when I read Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico aloud to Mamma. I am glad I have this background to help understand things. But I am still woefully ignorant of the later history.
When my mother was growing old, she had eye problems that made reading difficult. I read many books aloud to her, including Prescott’s The Conquest of Mexico and The Conquest of Peru (1843 and 1847). Prescott’s books are written in a lively style, with a fast-paced narrative and vivid descriptions of buildings and landscapes. The monuments and mountains that I saw in Mexico were exactly as Prescott described them. I was amazed when I later learned that he had never visited either Mexico or Peru. He had eye problems too, and that made traveling difficult.
Generally speaking, the city is lovely, full of trees and parks and wide roads with even wider green strips on either side. There are many lovely old and new buildings. And still one is constantly shocked by the extreme poverty in the villages and in many parts of the city, the crowds of people hanging around the hotel district trying to sell knickknacks, many of them small children. Schools seem to be few and far between. We flew down here on Saturday, shall probably stay ten days and have three more at Acapulco on the ocean before flying home.
On Sunday we went to a bullfight in the big arena. This was not a good bullfight according to the experts, but it was exciting enough for me. The spectacle is impressive, and I should quickly become an aficionado if I lived here. You would not like it here, as the heat at midday becomes oppressive. Even for us it is exhausting from about eleven till three. One has to live like the Mexicans and take a siesta during the hot hours. It is pleasant to find the villages unspoilt, primitive, and picturesque. But for the people who live there, one can only hope they get spoilt as quickly as possible.
APRIL 7, 1959, LA JOLLA
Here we are, safe and sound after our two-week jaunt. The last three days turned out the best. Acapulco is what a seaside resort ought to
be. The sea is warm so one can swim as long as one likes. In Acapulco we had no shopping or sight-seeing to do, and we could relax completely. We were in a hotel of the most satisfactory sort, a little bungalow for each family, equipped with icebox, cold drinks, and a jeep for driving around the rugged hills. We found the three children in excellent spirits when we returned. George and Esther stood at the door and threw rice over us as we came in.
APRIL 19, 1959, LA JOLLA
Now comes the sad news. Oliver will not be born in any inn or stable. Imme went to see her doctor, and he said Oliver is due approximately September 6. He said it is crazy to think of coming back from Europe in August, and even the trip out in July would be a serious risk in case of a bad-weather flight. So we decided to be sensible and have the baby here. We will drive home in time for the start of the institute term on October 1. It was Mrs. Peierls who said, “It is no use trying to have a baby at a convenient time. When they come, it is always inconvenient.”
Each of our daughters in turn was called Oliver, until he turned out to be a she.
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