The Elixir of Immortality Read online

Father put down the will. For several moments no one said a word. It was obvious that my father and his siblings were disappointed. Not because Grandfather had left them nothing but because he had not even mentioned them. This opened old wounds and old grievances surfaced. The knowledge that their father had not loved them was a demon before which Grandfather’s children were defenseless. It loomed perpetually before them.

  My father’s face showed not a trace of emotion; he was a master of deadpan expression. Uncle Carlo rose, pushed back his chair, took a couple of steps forward, stood stockstill, looked around the room, and declared that anyway it was worth it all to come home to Hungary after eight years in exile to enjoy Gerbeaud’s delicate little pastries. Aunt Ilona found it more difficult to master her emotions. She began to babble something about the fact that her only memories of her father were that he was always scolding, threatening, and mocking his children—but then she bit her lip and fell silent. Then she gathered herself and drank a glass of water to calm her pulse and regain her composure. “Life is hard,” she declared in a melancholy tone. “But there’s no reason to make a drama of it. In any case, that will is practically meaningless.”

  TO A CERTAIN EXTENT Aunt Ilona was right. Grandfather’s will turned out to be superfluous. Fate had always handled Grandfather roughly and once again it proved contrary to his wishes.

  Grandmother had already sold his clothes at a nearby flea market the same day that he died. Grandfather had promised his pocket watch both to Sasha and to me. He would often whisper the same thing to one or the other: “You are the best young man. You’ll inherit the gold Doxa.” It therefore seemed to me entirely appropriate that Sasha never got it because Grandmother promptly pawned the watch along with the wedding band. And she just as quickly got rid of the claim check, since she felt no obligation to redeem them.

  Nor could Grandfather’s last wish be fulfilled because on the day after his death he had been buried in the very back of the Jewish cemetery where Grandmother had sought out the least expensive plot.

  THE UPSHOT of it all was that I was the only one to inherit anything from Grandfather. I was in no hurry to open the little suitcase. I thought I knew what it contained. From time to time I’d seen Grandfather writing in a blue notebook, but his scribblings were of no interest to me.

  My father took charge of the suitcase, and it stood untouched for thirty years. After the death of my mother and shortly before he took his own life, Father turned the suitcase over to me. I opened it and realized that for all those years I’d been mistaken.

  The case didn’t contain Grandfather’s notes. It was packed with all sorts of historical documents about the Spinoza family, many of them difficult to decipher and all of it impossible to evaluate. Here in a heap I found letters, diaries written hundreds of years apart, birth certificates, wills, contracts, papers involving real estate, and masses of unsorted papers. At the very bottom of all these documents was a book bound in a mottled brown cover. It turned out to be the secret work of my distant ancestor, the philosopher Benjamin Spinoza: The Elixir of Immortality.

  MORE THAN HALF of the pages in Grandfather’s blue notebook had been torn out. The only remaining note left there read:

  How can one deal with the past, with all of those things that fade and slip away? Memories betray us by disappearing in time, becoming less and less distinct, more and more diffuse and transparent. Sometimes memories assume lives of their own; they turn into fantasies that begin to move, spreading themselves out in tastes and colors and odors, all the signs recognized by our senses, and then from the past they create a completely different reality, a past that never existed but even so lives on in distinct images, perhaps even more distinct than the real memories.

  MY NAME IS ARI. I am the last of the Spinoza family. Our family tree has had few male branches and when I quietly lapse into my final slumber only a few months from now, according to the prognosis of my doctor, that family saga will reach its well-deserved end. I am lying here in a hospital bed; my fate is sealed and my memories are besieging me. All those memories that I thought had faded away, slipped off, and disappeared over the course of time have set themselves in motion again; they take on a life of their own, and out of them the past comes blooming, our confusing, ambiguous past.

  JUST HOW is our past confusing and ambiguous? Let me offer an immediate example: How did the philosopher Benjamin Spinoza die?

  Immanuel Kant asserts in his early work Dreams of a Spirit-Seer that Spinoza hanged himself from an apple tree. Bertrand Russell is of the opinion that he died after breaking his hip, and Isaiah Berlin writes in a letter to an Israeli colleague that he drowned in the North Sea. Marx and Engels maintain that he died in prison. Lenin says the same but adds that the Inquisition tortured him to death.

  Which of these thinkers knew the truth?

  “TRUTH!” MY GREAT-UNCLE used to say. “The truth is that there has never been a single truth. Many truths exist. Those truths contradict one another, reflect one another, challenge one another, and ignore one another.”

  ———

  TO TELL the truth, who is so certain as to assert and prove that any of those thinkers was wrong, that all of their versions didn’t happen simultaneously, and that Benjamin didn’t die at the same time in all those different ways?

  Who can guarantee that history is always unique and always has a single meaning?

  THERE WAS A FAMILY legend my twin brother, Sasha, and I loved when we were small, back when the world still seemed so open, challenging, and complex and I could regard it with the optimistic eyes of a child. The reason I never tired of hearing the legend was that my great-uncle was such a superb storyteller. With a few well-chosen words and dramatic gestures he could conjure up all of the medieval history of the Iberian Peninsula with its bloody battles, cruel rulers, hypocritical priests, and conspiring noblemen. According to the legend he used to bring to life for us, the far distant past of our lineage, the history of the Spinoza family, began thirty-six generations ago in the provincial town of Espinosa, situated in the region of León near Burgos in Spain. It was an isolated place sunk in its feudal subjugation.

  THE RABBI OF ESPINOSA was Judah Halevy. He had dark, intelligent eyes and delicate features. His hands were smooth and shapely like those of most of the Lord’s servants, since instead of doing physical labor, he devoted himself to tireless study of the Holy Scripture. He had great knowledge, so it was not in vain that he had spent countless days leaning over a rickety desk in studies that had left him with the bent back of a much older man. The Jews of Espinosa and the nearby villages loved him, not only for his wisdom but also and just as much for his wonderful sense of humor. He was always joking with everyone; he cajoled the poor and the sick into laughing with him and forgetting their afflictions, if only for a moment. Everyone could see that he had an optimistic view of life and trustingly saw the world as the cradle of all goodness.

  The rabbi’s wife, Judith, was the daughter of a shoemaker, a man who was hard of hearing and had only two fingers on his right hand. He died of dysentery at an early age and left nothing behind except the poetic sound of his Gallic last name: de Narbonne. But it did not matter to Judah that Judith brought no dowry with her; he married her because he was deeply in love. Many were surprised by this, not only because everyone had thought he would marry the daughter of the city’s richest merchant but even more because in those days and in that part of the world love was virtually unknown and certainly not understood.

  Judah and Judith resembled each other. There was every indication of harmony between them, an uncanny ability to follow each other’s thoughts and to surrender to the same impulses. They frequently joined hands across the table, rubbing fingertips for the simple pleasure of touching. It was evident to them that they belonged together; this was the natural order of things.

  Judah would say, “Part of my inner self is within Judith and the other part wanted to join it.”

  THE SECOND SUMMER after their wedding Judith
became pregnant. In the spring she gave birth to a daughter whom they named Edita. The girl had a lopsided skull and died four days later. The next year a son was born to them. He survived only four days. Judith wept and would not be consoled. Judah sought to encourage her with optimistic anecdotes from the Torah.

  In their fifth year together she again gave birth to a son. At the very moment he took his first breath and noisily greeted life, she breathed her last.

  “She bled to death,” the midwife explained. The woman was experienced in birthing but that morning her knowledge was of no use.

  Judah turned pale, broke into a cold sweat, and became agitated when he heard that Judith was dead. He didn’t know what to do—whether to weep over the loss of his wife or laugh in joy over the wonderful grace that had been granted to him, a son at last.

  “My beloved wife is gone,” he muttered, almost inaudibly. “She who was the very best creature in the world. I will never again see her beautiful face.” He lifted his eyes to the heavens and raised his voice. “Oh, my God, what have I done to offend? Why do you punish me so severely? Why have you taken Judith from me?”

  Heaven did not reply. Judah knew that his questions would never be answered. But he understood the mystery of silence—wherever the Almighty is present, absolute silence reigns, a blessed light and eternal stillness. But in that hour he wished more than anything in the world to receive an answer.

  THE MIDWIFE brought him the newborn child, a boy as hairy as a bear cub. Judah looked doubtfully at him and said nothing. The woman clearly could read his thoughts, for she immediately sought to offer him a crumb of comfort by reminding him of the comet that had appeared in the sky the night before.

  “The child was born with hair covering his whole body,” she said, “and I hardly need remind the dear rabbi of what is written in our holy books. Those who are born hairy will achieve great things in life. The comet is a witness that the rabbi’s offspring will serve a king.”

  Judah inspected the child and discovered to his alarm that the tiny thing had an inconceivably large nose. “Poor boy,” he sighed. Fearing that there might be something wrong with the child, he examined him anxiously. But he found nothing disquieting other than the large quantity of hair and the gigantic nose.

  At this, the midwife uttered a phrase, perhaps only to be kind, but since the wise woman knew how to use the simplest words to express great things, it gave the rabbi the sensation that he had just witnessed a miracle: “The Almighty has given you the greatest of all gifts, a well-formed son.”

  Judah changed his tone. “My darling boy, how handsome you are. Dear God, I am so thankful that you have given me such a splendid little boy. Your name will be Baruch, the blessed,” he said and burst into tears.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE Baruch Halevy was born—in the year 1129—the October skies had been lit up by a comet with two tails. It rolled like a blue flame across southern Europe. People fell to their knees and prayed to God. Dogs barked, women began to menstruate, ceilings collapsed, roosters laid eggs, and rats turned on one another. A prominent Roman bishop saw terrifying figures approaching across the vault of heaven and thought he was witnessing the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse bringing war, hunger, plague, and death. The bishop’s hair turned white and he was struck dumb. They locked him away in the madhouse.

  In the autumn of his age, in the still moments of the early morning, Baruch thought he heard a voice whispering to him that the two-tailed comet was an augury of the moment that his family was born.

  AT THREE in the afternoon on October 24, 1147, the muezzin raised his harsh voice for the last time to make the call to prayer from Lisbon’s largest mosque: “Allahu akbar.” The muezzin never completed the summons, for a zealous crusader from the Anglo-Norman forces rushed up the steps of the minaret and abruptly hewed off the elderly Arab’s head. That moment marked the end of the bloody four-month-long siege of the city. The Moors surrendered unconditionally. Catholicism was victorious. The heralds proclaimed that all soldiers were granted the right to the spoils of war according to their rank except for those items reserved for King Afonso Henriques, the conqueror of Lisbon. Shouts of joy rang out over the whole city. A new kingdom was being born.

  These events were narrated by Osbernus, the Latin chronicler who assembled his writings under the title The Conquest of Lisbon.

  My great-uncle told Sasha and me that Osbernus was an English priest. He ascribed to the Englishman a number of qualities, all of which were unsavory except for one. But the man’s positive quality figures in another story I will tell later. Despite his foreign origins Osbernus had a place of honor in the Portuguese court because he was clever and succeeded in flattering Afonso Henriques with countless songs celebrating kingly heroism, thereby winning his favor. The priest was extremely reserved about his own background. Instead of boasting of his high-placed patrons as was the custom of the time, he conducted himself so as to suggest that he had secret links with the powers in London.

  Fernando said Osbernus’s accounts of the conquest of Lisbon were bombastic and exaggerated, deliberately portraying the victory in epic heroic style. He said the English priest gave a fraudulent account of the nature of the crusaders. His chronicles portrayed them as courageous, good-hearted, and just men battling to uphold Christian teachings, when in fact they were treacherous and ready to murder anyone on the slightest pretext, even for a scrap of meat.

  “The reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors was not the struggle of an affectionate, peace-loving Christendom against barbarous Islam,” my great-uncle emphasized to us. “It was a pure rampage, aimed at butchering the Moors, wiping out their culture, and stealing their riches.”

  Nor did my great-uncle mince his words when he spoke of Afonso Henriques, the founder of Portugal and its first king, whom he called a bloodthirsty tyrant. To excite Sasha and me—he knew well that Grandmother didn’t like to have the subject discussed and for that very reason we would listen with even closer attention—he sometimes described to us the refined methods of torture the king used upon his people. I almost could not endure the thought that even loyal supporters were slowly tortured to death as if they were sworn enemies. Fernando spoke so knowledgeably and with such feeling—or perhaps it was because of the feverish look in his eyes—that when I was little I believed he had come face-to-face with Afonso Henriques and had nearly perished in the darkness of the royal castle’s keep.

  Many years later when I came to understand things a bit better, I realized that my great-uncle couldn’t possibly have read Osbernus’s account, because the first translation from Latin into another language was not made until a couple of years after Fernando’s death.

  A YEAR AFTER the conquest of Lisbon the rabbi’s son, Baruch Halevy, saw one of the most remarkable sights of his young life. One afternoon he sat down to rest beneath a cypress tree next to the main road where it stretched out empty in the burning sun. He drowsed off and after a time was awakened by a fly crawling over his face. He caught sight of an old wanderer trudging toward him from the direction of Salamanca. The man walked slowly, leaning over so far that he was bent almost double. He supported himself with a branch used as a staff and dragged his feet. His face was covered with dust and his white beard was blown by the wind. Under his left arm he carried two heavy stone tablets.

  Baruch lifted a hand in greeting. The old wanderer paused, standing only a few feet away from him. Baruch felt his skin begin to prickle as the ancient one looked steadily at him. The tramp inspected the young man’s timid, earnest, almost sorrowful face, as if to make sure that he was the right person.

  Then he asked, “Are you Baruch, the son of Rabbi Judah the blessed?”

  Baruch nodded in reply.

  “Listen carefully to what I have to tell you,” the man said. He leaned forward and thrust his deeply furrowed face right into that of the young man.

  Baruch felt the warm breath of the ancient wanderer and looked deep into his dark bottomless eyes.


  “I am Moses, prophet of the Jews. I come back to earth each thousand years to proclaim the commandments of the Lord. It makes no difference whether you are a believer or not. You have only to follow my instructions. Tomorrow you must leave your father’s house and begin a journey toward the west. The Lord’s will is that you should encounter the wide world. Your journey will be lengthy, and many trials await you along the way. But you will overcome them all. You have only to keep your part of the contract and the Lord will keep his. You are wondering, of course, what you are supposed to do. You are to keep the commandments engraved on my stone tablets, live according to them, and establish a Jewish community from which many great men and women will go forth and conquer every corner of the world. One day you will discover the great secret that humanity has been seeking since the beginning of time. That secret shall thenceforth be guarded by your children and your children’s children for a thousand years. As long as your descendants comply with their obligations, they will go forth among the peoples of the earth with their heads high, and the Lord will watch over them. But should any one of them fail to respect the Lord’s will, your generations will be obliterated from the earth. Do you understand me?”

  The ancient man said again, with emphasis, “Do you understand?”

  His question prompted the childish impulse in Baruch to answer as he often did, with another question. “What will happen if I refuse to leave my father?”

  “You heard my words.” The old man’s face hardened. Both his voice and his tone were icy and his words took on an air of menace. “If you fail to respect the Lord’s will, your generations will be obliterated from the earth, and you will live out the remaining days of your miserable life in Espinosa, blind and childless.”