The Spinoza Problem (26 page)

Halfway through, Bento realized his folly. By now, along with the entire congregation, Gabriel would have been forbidden by the
cherem
to read anything that he had written. Not wanting to cause more pain for his brother, Bento tore up his letter and quickly composed a note containing a few lines of essential information that he placed on the kitchen table:

With all of its stops along the way, Bento knew the barge carrying his bed and books would take two hours to reach van den Enden’s house. On foot he could cover the distance in a half hour, so he had time to take a final walk through the streets of the Jewish neighborhood where he had spent all his life. Leaving his bag, he set off with reasonable equanimity at a brisk pace, but soon felt oppressed by the eerily quiet streets reminding him that almost every person he knew was at this moment in the synagogue listening to Rabbi Mortera curse the name of Baruch Spinoza and ordering them to shun him forever. Bento imagined the scene if he were to take this walk tomorrow: all eyes would avoid his, and crowds would divide around him, as if making way for a leper.

Though he had prepared himself for this moment for months, he was unexpectedly shocked by the ache coursing through him—the ache of homelessness, of being lost, of knowing he would never again walk these
memory-laden streets of his youth, the streets of Gabriel and Rebekah and all his childhood friends and neighbors, the streets once walked on by those dear ones who no longer walked on any streets on earth—his father and mother, Michael and Hanna, his stepmother, Esther, and his dead brother and sister, Isaac and Miriam. Bento continued on past a little row of shops. These streets were his last tangible connection to the dead. They and he had both trod on these same streets, and their eyes had fallen on the same sights: Mendoza’s kosher butcher shop, Manuel’s bakery, Simon’s herring stalls. But now the connection would be ruptured; never again would he set eyes upon anything his dead father, mother, and stepmother had also seen. Solitude—he knew it now as never before.

Almost instantly, Bento observed an opposing sentiment emerging in his mind. “Freedom,” he whispered to himself. “How interesting!” He had not willed this thought—it emerged to offset the pain of solitude. It was as though his mind automatically strove for equilibrium. How could that be? Was there deep within him a force independent of conscious willing, that created thoughts, offered protection, and permitted him to flourish?

“Yes, freedom,” he said—Bento had long been in the habit of holding lengthy conversations with himself—“freedom is the antidote. You are finally free from the yoke of tradition. Remember how you yearned and strained for freedom—from prayer and ritual and superstition. Remember how much of your life had been in bondage to ritual. The countless hours devoted to tefillin. Chanting the appointed prayers three times a day in the synagogue and again whenever drinking water or eating an apple or any morsel of food. Whenever engaging in any event of life. Remember the endless hours reciting the alphabetical list of sins and striking your entirely innocent breast and praying for forgiveness.”

Bento stopped on a bridge over the Verwers Canal and leaned on the cold stone railing to gaze at the inky water below as he recalled his study of religious commentaries. Whatever time was left from observance of ritual was devoted to reading commentary. Day after day, night after night, for hours beyond count, he had pored over the words—some banal, some brilliant—of vast armies of scholars who had spent entire lifetimes writing on the meaning and the implications of God’s words in the scriptures as well as the justification and implications of the prescribed 613 mitzvoth (commandments), which controlled every aspect of Jewish life. And then,
when he began the study of the Kabbalah with Rabbi Aboab, his lessons became arcane beyond belief, as he confronted the secret meanings of each letter and the ramifications of numbers assigned to each letter.

And yet none of his rabbi teachers nor ancient scholars had ever questioned the validity of their basic text or whether the books of Moses were indeed the actual words of God. When in his Jewish history class, over a dozen years ago, he had dared to question how God could have written a document with so many inconsistencies, Rabbi Mortera slowly raised his head, glared at him unbelievingly, and responded, “How can you, a mere child, a single soul, question God’s authorship and presume to know of God’s infinite knowledge and God’s intentions? Do you not know that the presentation of the Covenant to Moses was witnessed by the tens, by the hundreds of thousands, by the entire nation of Israel? It was seen by more people than any other event in all of history.”

The rabbi’s tone conveyed to the class the expectation that no student should ever again raise such a foolish question. And no one ever had. Nor, it seemed to Bento, had anyone but he himself observed that the people of Israel collectively in their reverential posture toward the Torah had committed the very sin that God, through Moses, had most warned them against: idolatry. The Jews everywhere worshipped not golden idols but idols of paper and ink.

As he watched a small boat disappear into a side canal, Bento heard the sound of someone running toward him. Looking up, he saw Manny, the baker’s son, his pudgy and slightly slow-witted but faithful classmate and lifelong friend. By reflex, Bento smiled and stopped to greet his friend. But without breaking stride and with no sign of recognition, Manny rushed past, over the bridge, and down the street in the direction of his father’s bakery.

Bento shivered. So the
cherem
had really happened! Of course he had known that it was real—Rabbi Mortera’s glare had told him, as did the empty streets and Rebekah’s slap, which still stung his cheek. But it was Manny’s turning away from him that brought reality crashing down. He swallowed and thought,
It is all for the better—they force me to do nothing that I would not have done of my own accord. I dreaded scandal, but since they want it that way, I enter gladly on the path that is opened to me.

“I am no longer a Jew,” Bento murmured and listened to the sound of the words. He repeated it again and again.
I am no longer a Jew
.
I am no longer a Jew
.
I am no longer a Jew
. He shivered. Life felt cold and hearthless.
But life had felt cold ever since his father and his stepmother had died. As of today, he was no longer a Jew. Perhaps now, as an excommunicated Jew, he could think and write as he wished, and he would be able to hold exchanges of opinions with Gentiles.

Several months earlier, Bento had silently vowed to live blessedly in honesty and love. Now as a non-Jew he could live more peacefully. The Jews had always held that true opinions and a true plan of life arrived at by reason, rather than through prophetic Mosaic documents, had no place in the path of blessedness. Railing against reason made no sense to Bento, so now that he was a non-Jew, should he not be able to live a life of reason?

As he descended from the bridge, Bento suddenly thought,
What am I? If not a Jew, then what am I?
He reached into his pocket for the notebook he always carried—the same notebook in which van den Enden had seen him writing at their first meeting. Turning right onto a small street, he sat down by the canal’s edge and looked for an answer among his written observations of the last two years, stopping to reread the comments that particularly enhanced his resolve.

Bento closed his notebook, stood up, and turned back through the deserted streets toward his house to collect his belongings. Suddenly, an anguished voice behind him called, “Baruch Spinoza. Baruch Spinoza.”

B
erlin on the first day of spring was much as Alfred remembered it from his brief stay in the winter of 1919. Under a granite sky, with biting cold winds and continual light rain that never seemed to reach the ground, dour shopkeepers swaddled in several layers of clothes sat in unheated shops. The Unter den Linden was empty but guarded at every street corner by soldiers. Berlin was dangerous: violent political demonstrations and assassinations of both Communists and Social Democrats were everyday happenings.

At the end of their last meeting, four years earlier, Friedrich had written “Charité Hospital, Berlin” on the note that Alfred had torn up and thrown away, only to return to the spot a few minutes later to collect the scattered pieces. Approaching a guard, Alfred asked for directions to the hospital. He inspected Alfred from shoes to crown and growled, “Your vote?”

Alfred, puzzled, asked, “What?”

“Who did you vote for?”

“Oh.” Alfred drew himself up. “I’ll tell you who I will vote for in future elections: Adolf Hitler and the entire anti–Jewish-Bolshevist platform of the NSADP.”

“Don’t know any Hitler,” replied the soldier, “and never heard of the NSDAP. But I like the platform. The Charité, huh—you can’t miss it—it’s the largest hospital in Berlin.” He pointed to a street on his left. “Down that street, straight ahead.”

“Thank you much. And, sir, keep the name Hitler in mind. You’re going to be voting for Adolf Hitler soon enough.”

 

 

 

T
he clerk in the receiving building recognized Friedrich Pfister’s name instantly. “Ah, yes, Herr Doctor Pfister is a consultant in the out-patient department for nervous and mental disorders. Down the hall to your right, out the door, and straight ahead to the next building over.”

So jammed was the reception area of the next building with young to middle-aged men still wearing their grey military overcoats that Alfred needed fifteen minutes to push his way to the front desk, where he finally caught the attention of the harried receptionist by smiling politely and announcing, “Please, please, I’m a close friend of Doctor Pfister. I assure you he will want to see me.”

She looked straight into his eyes. Alfred was a handsome young man. “Your name?”

“Alfred Rosenberg.”

“As soon as he finishes his session I’ll tell him you’re out here.” Twenty minutes later, she gave Alfred a warm smile and beckoned him to follow her to a large office. Wearing a band with a mirror on his head, a white coat with pockets crammed with a flashlight, pen, ophthalmoscope, and wooden tongue depressors, and a stethoscope, Friedrich awaited him.

“Alfred, what a surprise! A good surprise. I never thought to see you again. How are you? What’s happened to you since we met in Estonia? What brings you to Berlin? Or do you live here? You can see I’m a bit harried by my foolishly thrusting questions at you when I have no time to hear answers. The clinic is packed, as always, but I’m finished by half past seven—will you be free then?”

“Totally free. I’m, uh, just passing through Berlin. I thought I’d take a chance on seeing you,” said Alfred, silently admonishing himself,
Why don’t you tell him the real reason you’re here?

“Good, good. Let’s have supper and a talk. I’d enjoy that.”

“I would as well.

“I’ll meet you at the receptionist’s desk at 7:30.”

Alfred spent the afternoon trudging through the city and comparing the tawdry Berlin streets with the resplendent boulevards in Paris. When the chill was too great, he tarried in the warmest rooms of the unheated museums. At 7 he returned to the hospital waiting room, now almost empty. Friedrich arrived at exactly 7:30 and escorted Alfred to the doctor’s dining room, a large, windowless, sauerkraut-scented room with many waiters
scurrying about serving white-coated patrons. “You see, Alfred, it’s like all of Germany: many tables, plenty of help, but little to eat.”

Supper at the hospital, invariably a cold meal, consisted of thin slices of
bierwurst
,
leberwurst
, country Limburger cheese, cold boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut and pickles. Friedrich apologized. “I’m sorry it’s the best I can offer. I hope you had a hot meal today?”

Alfred nodded, “Wursts on the train. They weren’t bad.”

“We can look forward to dessert. I’ve asked the cook for something special—his son is one of my patients, and he often bakes treats for me. Now,” Friedrich sat back and exhaled, obviously exhausted, “finally we can relax and talk. First, let me tell you about your brother. Eugen just wrote asking if I had heard from you. We saw a good bit of one another in Berlin, but about six months ago he moved to Brussels to take a good position at a Belgian bank. He continues to be in remission from his consumption.”

“Oh, no,” Alfred moaned.

“What is it? Remission is
good
news.”

“Yes, of course. I was responding to ‘Brussels.’ If only I had known. I just spent a day there.”

“But how could you have known? All Germany is dislocated. Eugen wrote that he had no idea where you were living. Or how. All I could tell him from our meeting in Reval is that you were hoping to get to Germany. If you wish, I’ll serve as the intermediary and give both of you the other’s address.”

“Yes, I want to write him.”

“I’ll get his address after dinner—it’s in my room. But what were you doing in Brussels?”

“The long or short version?”

“The long version. I’ve plenty of time.”