“I don’t know about these things, but your conclusion seems plausible. I, too, never allow myself to think deeply about death. I always hated it when my father insisted on taking me to my mother’s grave.”
Friedrich remained silent until he was certain Alfred intended to say no more and said, “So, Alfred, that’s a very long answer to your polite inquiry about how I am doing, but as you see, I love observing and discussing all these machinations of my mind. Did I give a more involved answer than you expected or wished?”
“It was a longer answer to my inquiry than I expected, but it was real, it was deep, and it was heartfelt. I admire how you avoid superficiality—how willing you are to share your thoughts so honestly and unself-consciously.”
“And you, Alfred, you too went deep within yourself at the end of yesterday’s conversation. Any after-effects?”
“I confess I’ve been unsettled: I’m still trying to understand our talk.”
“What part wasn’t clear?”
“I’m not referring to clarity of ideas but to the strange feeling I had when talking with you. I mean we only spoke a brief time—what, perhaps three-quarters of an hour? And yet I revealed so much and felt so involved, so strangely . . . close. As though I’ve known you intimately all my life.”
“That an uncomfortable feeling?”
“It’s mixed. It was good because it takes the edge off my isolation, my sense of homelessness. But it was uncomfortable because of the extreme oddness of the conversation yesterday—as I keep saying to you, I’ve never had an intimate talk like that nor trusted a stranger so quickly.”
“But I’m not a stranger because of Eugen. Or let’s say I’m a familiar stranger who has had access to the inner chambers of your childhood home.”
“You’ve been in my mind a great deal since yesterday, Friedrich. One matter has arisen, and I wonder if you would permit a personal question . . .”
“Of course, of course. No need to ask—I like personal questions.”
“When I asked you how you acquired such skills in speaking and exploring the mind, you answered that it was your medical training. Yet I’ve been thinking of all the doctors I’ve known, and none, not a single one, has shown even a trace of your engaging manner. With them it’s all business—a few cursory questions, never a personal inquiry, then a quick scribbling of some mysterious Latin prescription followed by ‘Next patient, please.’ Why are you so different, Friedrich?”
“I haven’t been totally candid, Alfred,” replied Friedrich, looking into Alfred’s eyes with his usual straightforwardness. “It is true I am a physician, but I’ve withheld something from you—I’ve also completed training in psychiatry, and it was that experience that has shaped the way that I think and speak.”
“That fact seems so . . . so innocuous. Why such pains to conceal it?”
“Nowadays more and more people become nervous, back away, and look for the exit when they learn I am a psychiatrist. They have silly notions that psychiatrists can read minds and know all their dark secrets.”
Alfred nodded. “Well, perhaps not so silly. Yesterday it was as if you could read my mind.”
“No, no, no. But I am learning to read my own mind, and by virtue of that experience I can serve as a guide for you to read your own mind. That’s the major new direction of my field.”
“I have to confess that you’re the first psychiatrist I’ve ever met. I know nothing about your field.”
“Well, for centuries, psychiatrists have primarily been diagnosticians and custodians for hospitalized psychotic, almost always incurable patients, but all that has changed in the last decade. The change began with Sigmund Freud in Vienna, who invented a talking treatment called psychoanalysis, which permits us to help patients overcome psychological problems. Today we can treat such ailments as extreme anxiety or intractable grief or something we call hysteria—an ailment in which a patient has psychologically caused physical symptoms like paralysis or even blindness. My teachers in Zurich, Carl Jung and Eugen Bleuler, have been pioneers in this field. I’m intrigued by this approach and will soon be starting advanced training in psychoanalysis in Berlin with Karl Abraham, a highly regarded teacher.”
“I’ve heard some things about psychoanalysis. I’ve heard it referred to as another Jewish intrigue. Are your teachers all Jews?”
“Certainly not Jung or Bleuler.”
“But, Friedrich, why involve yourself in a Jewish field?”
“It will be a Jewish field unless we Germans step in. Or put it another way: It’s too good to be left to the Jews.”
“But why contaminate yourself? Why become the student of Jews?”
“It’s a field of science. Look, Alfred, consider the example of another scientist, the German Jew Albert Einstein. All of Europe is buzzing about him—his work will forever change the face of physics. You can’t speak of modern physics as Jewish physics. Science is science. In medical school one of my instructors in anatomy was a Swiss Jew—he didn’t teach me Jewish anatomy. And if the great William Harvey were Jewish, you’d still believe in the circulation of the blood, right? If Kepler were Jewish, you’d still believe in the earth revolving about the sun? Science is science regardless of the discoverer.”
“It’s different with the Jews,” Alfred interjected. “They corrupt, they monopolize, they suck every field dry. Take politics. I saw firsthand the Jewish Bolsheviks undermine the entire Russian government. I saw the face of anarchy on the streets of Moscow. Take banking. You’ve seen the role of the Rothschilds in this war: they pull the strings, and all of Europe dances. Take the theater. Once they take over, they allow only Jews to work.”
“Alfred, we all love to hate the Jews, but you do it with such . . . such intensity. It’s come up so often in our brief conversations. Let’s see . . . There was the attempted enlistment with the Jewish sergeant, and Husserl, Freud, the Bolsheviks. What do you say to our making a philosophical inquiry into this intensity?”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the things I love about psychiatry is that, unlike any other field of medicine, it veers close to philosophy. Like philosophers, we psychiatrists rely on logical investigation. We not only help patients identify and express feelings, but we also ask ‘why’? What is their source? Why do certain complexes arise in the mind? Sometimes I think our field really began with Spinoza, who believed that everything, even emotion and thought, has a cause that can be discovered with proper investigation.”
Noting the baffled expression on Alfred’s face, Friedrich continued. “You seem puzzled. Let me try to clarify. Consider our very brief excursion into something that haunts you—the sense of not being at home. Yesterday, in only a few minutes of informal meandering, we came upon several sources of your feeling of being unrooted. Think of them—there was the absence of your mother and your ill and distant father. Then you talked of having chosen the wrong academic field, and now your lack of self-esteem, which results in your not being at home in your skin—right? You follow me?”
Alfred nodded.
“Now, just imagine how much richer our excavation would be if we had many, many hours over several weeks to explore these sources more fully. Do you see?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“That is what my field is all about. And what I was suggesting earlier is that even your particularly powerful Jew-hatred must have psychological or philosophical roots.”
Drawing back slightly, Alfred said, “There we differ. I prefer to say that I am fortunate to be enlightened enough to understand the dangers that the Jew poses for our race and the damage they have done to great civilizations in the past.”
“Please understand, Alfred, you have no quarrels with me about your conclusions. We both have these feelings about the Jews. My point is only that you feel them so very keenly and with such extraordinary passion. And the love of philosophy that you and I share dictates that we can examine the logical base of all thoughts and beliefs. Not true?”
“Here I cannot go with you, Friedrich. I cannot follow you. It seems almost obscene to subject such obvious conclusions to philosophic inquiry. It’s like analyzing why you feel the sky is blue or why you love beer or sugar.”
“Ah yes, Alfred, perhaps you’re right.” He recalled Bleuler admonishing him on more than one occasion: “Young man, psychoanalysis is not a battering ram: we do not just hammer away until exhausted egos raise tattered white flags of surrender. Patience, patience. Win the patient’s confidence. Analyze and understand resistance—sooner or later resistance will melt away and the road to the truth will open up.” Friedrich knew he should drop the topic. But his internal impetuous demon who had to know could not be stilled.
“Let me make one last point, Alfred. Let’s consider the example of your brother, Eugen. You’d agree he is deeply intelligent, brought up in the exact culture as you, same heredity, environment, same relatives surrounding him, and yet he does not invest the Jewish problem with much passion. He is not German-intoxicated and prefers to think of Belgium as his real home. Fascinating puzzle. Brothers with the same environment yet such different points of view.”
“We had similar but not identical environments. For one thing, Eugen did not have my bad luck of encountering a Jew-loving headmaster in the Realschule.”
“What? Headmaster Peterson? Impossible. I knew him well when I attended that school.”
“No, not Peterson. He was on sabbatical my senior year, and his place was taken by Herr Epstein.”
“Wait a minute, Alfred—I’m just beginning to recall Eugen telling me a story about you and Herr Epstein and some serious trouble you got into just before your graduation. What happened exactly?”
Alfred told Friedrich the entire story—about his anti-Semitic speech, about Epstein’s fury, about his immersion in Chamberlain, about the forced assignment of reading Goethe’s comments about Spinoza, and about his promise to read Spinoza.
“Quite a story, Alfred. I’d like to see those chapters in Goethe’s autobiography. Promise that you’ll point them out to me some day. And tell me this: Did you keep your promise to read Spinoza?”
“I tried again and again but could not get into it. It was such abstruse fluff. And the incomprehensible definitions and axioms in the beginning were an insurmountable roadblock.”
“Ah, you started with the Ethics. A big mistake. It’s a difficult work to read without a guide. You should have begun with his simpler The Theological and Political Treatise. Spinoza is a paragon of logic. I put him up there in my pantheon of Socrates, Aristotle, and Kant. Someday we must meet again in the Fatherland, and if you wish, I shall help you read the Ethics.”
“As you can imagine, I have highly charged feelings about reading the work of this Jew. Yet the great Goethe revered him, and I did give my oath to the headmaster to read him. So you could help me understand Spinoza? Your offer is kind. Even enticing. I shall try to make our paths cross in Germany, and I look forward to learning about Spinoza from you.”
“Alfred, I must return to my mother, and as you know, I leave tomorrow for Switzerland. But I wish to say one last thing before we part. I feel in a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand I care about you and wish only for your welfare, but on the other hand I am burdened with some information that may pain you but will, I think, ultimately lead you to some truths about yourself.”
“How can I, as a philosopher, refuse to pursue the truth?”
“I expected no less a noble answer from you, Alfred. What I must tell you is that your brother over the years and even last month has spent hours with me discussing the fact that his mother’s grandmother—your great-grandmother—was Jewish. He said he once visited her in Russia and that, even though she had converted to Christianity in childhood, she acknowledged her Jewish forebears.”
Alfred silently glared into the distance.
“Alfred?”
“I deny this. This is a scurrilous rumor that has long hovered about, and I resent your propagating it. I deny it. My father denies it. My aunts, my mother’s sisters, deny it. My brother is a confused fool!” Alfred’s face was suffused with anger. Refusing to meet Friedrich’s gaze, he added, “I cannot imagine why Eugen embraces this lie, why he tells others, and why you tell me.”
“Please, Alfred.” Friedrich lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “First, let me assure you I do not propagate it. You are the only person I have mentioned this to, and it shall remain that way. You have my oath, my German oath. As for why I told you—let’s reason it out. I did say to you I had a dilemma: telling you seemed painful, and yet not telling you seemed worse. How can I pretend to be your friend and not tell you? Your brother told me this, and it seemed relevant to our discussion. Good friends, not to mention fellow philosophers, can and should speak of everything. Your resentment to me is great?”
“I am stunned that you say this to me.”
Friedrich thought of his supervision with Bleuler, who had admonished him many times: “You do not have to say everything you think, Doctor Pfister. Therapy is not a place for you to feel better by discharging troublesome thoughts. Learn to hold them. Learn to be a vehicle for unruly thoughts. Timing is everything.” He turned to Alfred. “Then, perhaps I erred and should have kept it to myself. I must learn that there are some things that must be left unsaid. Forgive me, Alfred. I told you out of friendship, out of my belief that your unbridled passion may ultimately be self-destructive. Look how close you came to being thrown out of the Realschule. Your future education, your degree, your bright future ahead of you would have all been sacrificed. I wanted to help make sure such events did not happen in the future.”
Alfred looked far from persuaded. “Let me ponder upon it. And now I know you must be on your way.”
Taking a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and handing it to Alfred, Friedrich said, “Should you wish to see me again for any reason—a continuation of any part of our discussion, guidance for reading Spinoza, anything—here is my current address in Zurich and my contact information in Berlin, where I shall be after three months. Alfred, I do hope we meet again. Auf wiedersehen.”
Alfred sat glumly for fifteen minutes. He emptied his stein and stood to leave. He unfolded the sheet of paper Friedrich had left, stared at Friedrich’s addresses, then ripped it into quarters and threw it on the floor, and headed out of the beer hall. Just as he reached the exit, however, Alfred stopped, reconsidered, walked back to his table, and bent down to retrieve the pieces of the torn page.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AMSTERDAM—1656
About 10 o’clock the following morning the Spinoza brothers were hard at work in their shop, Bento sweeping and Gabriel opening a newly arrived crate of dried figs. They were interrupted when Franco and Jacob appeared at the door and stood there hesitating until Franco said, “If your offer is still open, we would like to continue our discussion. Please, we are available any time that is convenient for you.”
“I am glad to resume,” Bento said, but turning to Jacob, he asked, “You wish this also, Jacob?”
“I wish only what is best for Franco.”
Bento considered that response for a moment and replied, “Wait one minute, please,” and then, after a whispered conference with his brother in the back of the shop, Bento announced, “I can be at your service now. Shall we walk to my house and continue our study of the scriptures?”
The massive Bible was on the table and the chairs in place as if Bento had been expecting them. “Where shall we begin? We touched on many questions last time.”
“You were going to tell us about Moses not writing the Torah,” said Jacob, speaking in a softer, more conciliatory manner than the day before.
“I’ve studied the matter for many years and believe that a careful and open-minded reading of the books of Moses provides much internal evidence that Moses could not possibly have been the author.”
“Internal evidence? Explain to me,” said Franco.
“There are inconsist
encies in the story of Moses; some parts of the Torah contradict other parts, and many passages don’t hold up to simple logic. I’ll give examples and start with an obvious one that others before me have noted.
“The Torah not only describes the manner of Moses’ death and burial, and the thirty days’ mourning of the Hebrews, but further compares him with all the prophets who came after him and states that he surpassed them all. A man obviously cannot write about what happens to him after his death, nor can he compare himself with other prophets yet to be born. So it’s certain that part of the Torah cannot have been written by him. Not true?”
Franco nodded. Jacob shrugged.
“Or look here.” Bento opened the Bible to a page marked by a thread and pointed to a passage in Genesis 22. “You see here that Mount Moriah is called the mount of God. And historians inform us it acquired that name after the building of the Temple, a great many centuries after the death of Moses. Look at this passage, Jacob: Moses clearly says that God will at some future time choose a spot to which this name will be given. So earlier it says one thing and later an opposing thing. You see the internal contradiction, Franco?”
Both Franco and Jacob nodded.
“May I present another example?” Bento asked, still troubled by Jacob’s outbursts of temper at their last meeting. Confrontations were always uncomfortable for him, but at the same time he was thrilled to finally share his thoughts with an audience. He steadied himself; he knew what to do—a temperate delivery and a presentation of undeniable evidence. “The Hebrews in the time of Moses indisputably knew what territories belonged to the tribe of Judah but absolutely did not know them under the name of Argob or the Land of the Giants, as cited in the Bible. In other words, the Torah uses names that did not come into existence until many centuries after Moses.”