Chapter 4
“Was your second wife, Dora, aware of the nature and extent of your work?”
“She was not aware of all the details until 1995, which means thirteen years after our marriage, eleven years after Telomerax was stable, and ten years since I started giving it to her without her knowing. It is worth explaining how I organized this phenomenon, because it marked the beginning of the immortal generation.
I met her in the summer of 1980. She came to the clinic as the rich, young, and somehow bored wife of Johann Feldstein, a respected lawyer and professor at the University of Basel.
She was the daughter of Jacob Bershidsky, a German-speaking Sudeten Jew, who was freed by Allied troops in Dachau. He came back to his Sudeten homeland just to, then, be driven out by the Czechs. He eventually moved to Freiburg, where he worked as a shoemaker. He opted for his German side, decided to forget his past, by declaring no religious affiliation, and eventually became a West German citizen and married Elke Freising. She was a widow who had lost her husband on the Eastern front and now had to settle for a second marriage with a renegade Jew, because she badly needed help to raise her small child, Helmut.
Dora was born in 1953 and lived an uneventful childhood in the German province of the “Wirtschaftswunder”, the post-war economic miracle. Her parents decided to keep their former lives hidden and Dora sensed a clear preference her mother had for her elder brother, Helmut. She went to college, where she met her first husband, who was a brilliant professor in commercial law and was ten years older than her. Shortly after they married in 1976, her father called her aside and told her the truth about himself and her mother. He could no longer bear keeping the facts hidden, as his wife was slowly being killed by the Alzheimer’s disease and he was afraid Dora would find out the wrong way, if he was not the one to tell her.
She was shocked by the news and almost broke off her relationship with her father. Even worse, she was not able to tell her husband. She felt he was continuously absorbed by his career and their relationship was quietly cooling down after the first months full of passion.
When she entered the clinic, her soul was a complete existential wreck but she was still a very attractive woman; tall, voluptuous and elegant. Her head was crowned by a forest of long, curly brown hair that reminded me of a Greek goddess, but her face was veiled in sadness that emanated from her icy eyes. Even though I was more committed than ever to my research, I could not resist the temptation to invite her to the ‘terrace dinner’.
This was a huge celebration held by the clinic that had been started by Dr. Klettendorf and consisted of a lavish meal, taking place every Wednesday evening.
The event was held for the clinic’s most valuable customers, on the beautiful terrace on the top floor, overlooking the Lake of Geneva.
We had on average fifty to sixty guests who would spend one or two weeks at Le Jardin, and we would personally choose who would attend the dinner. There were two main purposes.
First, we wanted to create a deeper sense of exclusivity among the already exclusive clients that chose to stay at the beauty farm. Second, we carefully selected the guests to create a network of connections which we could count on, in the future.
Of course there were some golden rules in the selection process. First, newcomers would typically not be allowed to the dinner. You needed to be a regular customer. Next, invitees had to bring something interesting to the table. We were not interested in the “simply rich”. They needed to have stories, or skills, or personalities that made them unique. Lastly, all the previous rules notwithstanding, everyone at the dinner had to be liked by myself and Dr. Klettendorf.
Hans started to spend less and less time at the clinic, leaving me in charge of the terrace dinner. So I broke the rule and invited Dora to the terrace after her first visit. Let me cut it short and keep a bit of privacy here. What matters for the rest of the story is that the next year she divorced her first husband, and we married in 1983.
Beyond physical attraction, we shared a deep dissatisfaction on the way life was organized, and also a resolve to change it.
While I was engaged in my personal struggle against the deaths among my loved ones, Dora held a grudge against the lies humans constantly tell each other which, in turn, make our lives miserable. Knowing this about her, I had to tell her something about my work, yet I could not risk a full disclosure.
On the eve of our marriage, I took her to the lab and explained that I was doing more than simple cosmetics and I was actually involved in a secret research about aging. I could not tell her more, but I would in due time. She had either to trust me, or leave me. After hearing these words she froze, and for a long minute I thought she was gone. The Dr. Picard she loved had a secret he was not yet prepared to tell the world, not even his future wife.
Then she asked me, “Ok, tell me just two things. Can you promise me that you are not hurting anyone and that when the day comes I will be the first to know?”
I responded happily, “Yes! No lies.”
“And I have a further request. I would appreciate you to finance my degree in psychology and my psychoanalysis, so that I can set up my psychoanalyst practice in a private studio here at the clinic. I have a simpler goal than you, just to help people get out of their own lies.”
“That is a done deal. Frankly, your mission looks more impossible than mine.”
She kissed me, and we happily married the following day.