Alfred froze for a moment. Then he stood more erect; strode to his closet, from which he removed his Nazi uniform; turned toward Friedrich—and seemed almost surprised to see him still there. “Herr Oberleutnant Pfister, go to your room. Await me there.”
Quickly donning his uniform and putting on his boots, he joined Hess. They walked in silence to the room where Hitler awaited.
Hitler rose to greet Alfred, returned his salute, pointed for him to be seated, and indicated to Hess that he wait outside.
“You’re looking well, Rosenberg. Not at all like a hospitalized patient. I am relieved.”
Alfred, flustered by Hitler’s affability, mumbled his thanks.
“I’ve just reread your Völkischer Beobachter article last year on the award of the Nobel peace prize to Carl von Ossietzky. An excellent piece of journalism, Rosenberg. Far superior to the pallid stuff published in our paper during your absence. Just the right tone of dignity and outrage at the Nobel committee awarding the peace price to a citizen who is in prison in his own country for treason. I entirely agree with your position. It is indeed an insult and a frontal attack upon the sovereign Reich. Please prepare Ossietzky’s obituary. He is not tolerating the concentration camp very well, and we may have the good fortune to report his death shortly.
“But I am visiting today not only to inquire after your health and to give you my greetings but also to give you news. I very much liked your suggestion in the article that Germany should no longer tolerate the arrogance of Stockholm and should instead initiate our own German equivalent of the now-odorous Nobel prize. I have taken action and have created a selection committee to consider candidates for the German National Prize for Art and Science, and commissioned Müller-Erfurt to design an elaborate diamond-studded pendant. There will a prize of 100,000 reichsmarks. I want you to be the first to know that I have nominated you for the first Deutscher National-preis. Here is a copy of the public statement that I shall release shortly.”
Alfred took the sheet and read greedily:The National Socialist movement, and beyond that, the entire German people, will be deeply gratified that the Führer has distinguished Alfred Rosenberg as one of his oldest and most faithful fighting comrades by awarding him the German National Prize.
“Thank you. Thank you, mein Führer. Thank you for the proudest moment of my life.”
“And when will you be going back to work? The Völkischer Beobachter needs you.”
“Tomorrow. I am now entirely fit.”
“The new doctor, that friend of yours, must be a miracle worker. We should commend and promote him.”
“No, no—I recovered before he arrived. He deserves no credit. As a matter of fact, he was trained in that Jew-run Freud institute in Berlin and weeps tears that the Jewish psychiatrists have all left the country. I’ve tried, but I don’t think I can get the Jew out of him. We should watch him. He may need some rehabilitation. And now I go to work. Heil, mein Führer!”
Alfred marched briskly to his room and quickly began to pack. A few minutes later Friedrich knocked on his door.
“Alfred, you’re leaving?”
“Yes, I’m leaving.”
“What’s happened?
“What’s happened is that I have no further use for your services, Herr Oberleutnant Pfister. Return immediately to your post in Berlin.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
VOORBURG—DECEMBER 1666
My dear Bento,
Simon promises to deliver this letter within a week, and unless you tell him otherwise I shall visit you in Voorburg in the late morning of December 20. I have much to share with you and much to learn of your life. How I have missed you! I have been under such excruciating surveillance that I have not dared even to visit Simon to post a letter. Please know that even though we have not been together, you have been close to my heart all these years. Not a day passes without my seeing your radiant face and hearing your voice in my mind.
You most likely know that Rabbi Mortera died not too long after our last visit and that your brother-in-law, Rabbi Samuel Casseres, who gave the funeral oration, died a few weeks later. Your sister, Rebekah, lives with her son, Daniel, now sixteen and destined for the rabbinate. Your brother, Gabriel, now known as Abraham, has become a successful merchant and travels often to Barbados for trade.
I am now a rabbi! Yes, a rabbi! And until recently I was the assistant of Rabbi Aboab, who is now chief rabbi. Amsterdam is now under a madness, and no one speaks of anything else except the arrival of the Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi. Oddly, and I shall explain later, it is this madness about him that makes it possible for me to visit. Even though Rabbi Aboab continues to scrutinize my every move, it now no longer matters. I embrace you, and soon you shall know all. Franco (also known as Rabbi Benitez)
Bento read Franco’s letter a second and then a third time. He grimaced at the portentous phrase “it no longer matters”? What did that mean? And he grimaced again at the mention of the new Messiah. Sabbatai Zevi was in the air. Only the day before, he had received a letter about the coming of the Messiah from one of his regular correspondents, Henry Oldenburg, corresponding secretary of the British Royal Society of Science. Bento fetched Oldenburg’s letter and reread the pertinent passage:Here there is a widespread rumor that the Israelites, who have been dispersed for more than two thousand years, are to return to their homeland. Few hereabouts believe it, but many wish it. . . I am anxious to hear what the Jews in Amsterdam have heard about it and how they are affected by so momentous an announcement.
Bento paced as he thought. His tile-floored room was more spacious than his Rijnsburg room. His two bookcases, now filled with over sixty large volumes, occupied one of his four walls; his slashed greatcoat hung next to the two small windows of a second wall; and the two remaining walls were adorned with borders of Delft tiles of windmills and a dozen fine Dutch landscapes by Dutch painters collected by Daniel Tydeman, his landlord, a Collegiant and an admirer of his philosophy. It was at Daniel’s insistence that Bento had left Rijnsburg three years earlier to rent a room in his house in Voorburg, a charming village, only two miles from the seat of government in The Hague. Moreover, Voorburg was also the home of a valued acquaintance, Christiaan Huygens, the eminent astronomer, who often praised Bento’s lenses.
Bento slapped his forehead as he muttered, “Sabbatai Zevi! The coming of the Messiah! What madness! Will there ever be an end to such foolish gullibility?” Few things irritated Bento more than irrational numerological beliefs, and 1666 was awash in fantastical predictions. Many superstitious Christians had long held that the great flood occurred 1656 years after the Creation and that a second coming or some other world-changing event was to occur in 1656. When that year passed uneventfully, they merely transferred expectations to 1666, a year given significance by a statement in the book of Revelations naming the number of the beast as 666 (“six hundred three score and six”—Revelations 13:18). Hence many had predicted the coming of the Antichrist in 666. When that prediction failed, latter-day prophets had set the ominous date one millennium ahead, to 1666—a belief given more credibility by the great fire of London only three months earlier.
The Jews were no less gullible. The messianists, especially among the Marranos, were fully anticipating the imminent coming of the Messiah, who would gather all the dispersed Jews and return them to the Holy Land. For many the arrival of Sabbatai Zevi was the answer to their prayers.
On Friday, the appointed date of Franco’s arrival, Bento was unusually distracted by the sounds of the bustling Voorburg marketplace, only thirty meters from his room. This was odd for him—ordinarily he concentrated on his scholarly work despite all noises and outside events—but Franco’s face kept dancing through his mind. After a half hour of rereading the same page of Epictetus, he gave up, closed the book, and returned it to the bookcase. This morning he allowed himself to daydream.
He tidied up the room, straightened the pillows, and smoothed the down blankets on the four-poster bed. He stepped
back to admire his work and thought, Someday I shall die upon that bed. He eagerly anticipated Franco’s arrival and wondered if the room were warm enough. Though he himself was indifferent to temperature, he imagined Franco would be chilled after his journey. Hence he gathered two armfuls of wood from the woodpile behind the house but tripped as he entered the house, scattering the logs on the floor. He collected them, carried them into his room, and bent to light a fire in the fireplace. Daniel Tydeman, who had heard the clatter of the falling logs, gently knocked on his door. “Good morning. A fire? Are you not feeling well?”
“The fire’s not for me, Daniel. I’m expecting a visitor from Amsterdam.”
“Amsterdam? He’ll be hungry. I’ll tell the huishoudster to prepare some coffee and some extra dinner.”
Bento spent much of the morning looking out of his window. At midday, spotting Franco, he joyously rushed out to embrace him and lead him into his room. Once inside, he stepped back to admire Franco, who was now dressed as any proper Dutch citizen, with a tall, broad-brimmed hat, a long greatcoat, a jacket buttoned to the neck with a square white collar, and knee britches and hose. His hair was brushed and his short beard neatly trimmed. They sat together silently on Bento’s bed and beamed at one another.
“Silence today,” Bento said in familiar Portuguese of years past, “but this time I know why. There is simply too much to be said.”
“And also great joy often overwhelms words,” added Franco.
Their sweet silence was fractured by Bento’s short coughing fit. The phlegm that he spat into his handkerchief was speckled brown and yellow.
“That cough again, Bento. You are ailing?”
He waved his hand to dismiss his friend’s concern. “My cough and congestion have taken up lodging in my chest, and they never wander too far from home. But in all other ways, my life is good. Exile suits me, and, today excepted of course, I am grateful for my solitude. And you, Franco, or should I say Rabbi Franco Benitez, you look so different, so groomed . . . so . . . so Dutch.”
“Yes, Rabbi Aboab, kabbalistic and otherworldly though he be, nonetheless wishes me to dress as the everyday Dutchman and even insists I trim my beard. I think he prefers to be the only full-bearded Jew in the community.”
“And how have you possibly managed to arrive here so early from Amsterdam?”
“I came yesterday on the trekschuit from Amsterdam to The Hague and spent the night there with a Jewish family.”
“Are you thirsty? Coffee?”
“Perhaps later, but now I am famished for only one thing—conversation with you. I want to know of your new writing and thinking.”
“I’ll converse more easily if I first ease my mind. A line in your letter gave me great concern.” Bento walked over to his desk, fetched Franco’s letter, and looked at it. “Here it is: ‘Even though Rabbi Aboab continues to examine my every move, it now no longer matters.’ What has happened, Franco?”
“What happened was that which necessarily happened—and I believe I use your term ‘necessarily” correctly, in that things could not have happened otherwise.”
“But what?”
“Don’t be alarmed, Bento. For once we’re not rushed. We have until two this afternoon, when I must take the trekschuit to Leiden, where I shall visit some Jewish families. We have ample time to go over the story of my life and of your life. All will be told, and all will be well, but stories are best told from the beginning rather than from the end backward. You see I still love stories and persist in my campaign to increase your respect for them.”
“Yes, I remember your strange notion that I secretly enjoy stories. Well, you won’t find many there”—Bento waved his hand toward his bookcase.
Franco walked over to peruse Bento’s library and glanced over the titles of the four shelves of books. “Oh, they’re beautiful, Bento. I wish I could spend months here reading your books and talking about them. But look here!” Franco pointed to one shelf. “What’s this before my eyes? Do I not see the greatest storytellers of all? Ovid, Homer, Virgil? In fact I hear them whispering to me.” Franco bent his ear to them. “They’re pleading, ‘Please, please read us—we have wisdom, but our unamused master ignores us so.’”
Bento burst out laughing, stood, and embraced his friend. “Ah, Franco, I miss you. Only you talk to me like this. Everyone else is so deferential to the Sage of Voorburg.”
“Ah, yes. And, Bento, you and I both know that the Sage plays no role whatsoever in the deferential manner in which he is treated.”
Another big guffaw from Bento. “How dare you keep the Sage waiting? Get to your story.”
Franco took his seat next to Bento and began. “When last we met at Simon’s home, I was just embarking on my study of Talmud and Torah and excited by the process of education.”
“‘Joyous study’ was your term.”
Franco smiled. “Precisely the phrase I used—but I expected no less from you. Three or four years ago, I asked the old caretaker of the synagogue, Abrihim, who was ailing and near death, about his memories of you, and he replied, ‘Baruch de Espinoza forgets nothing. Total retention.’ Yes, I was indeed joyous to learn, and my appetite and aptitude were so evident that Rabbi Aboab soon regarded me as his best student and extended my stipend so that I could continue on to rabbinical studies. I wrote you about that. You received my letter?”
Bento nodded. “I received it but was puzzled. In fact, astounded. Not by your love of learning—that I understand, that we share. But given your strong feelings about the dangers, the restrictions, the irrationality of religion, why choose to become a rabbi? Why join the enemies of reason?”
“I joined them for the same reason you left them.”
Bento raised his eyebrows and then smiled slightly in comprehension.
“I think you understand, Bento. You and I both want to change Judaism—you from the outside and I from the inside!”
“No, no, I must disagree. My goal is not to change Judaism. My goal of radical universalism would eradicate all religions and institute a universal religion in which all men seek to attain blessedness through the full understanding of Nature. But let’s return to this later. Exploring too many tributaries will impede your explanation of why Rabbi Aboab’s surveillance no longer matters.”
“So after my studies,” Franco continued, “Rabbi Aboab ordained and blessed me and appointed me his assistant. For the first three years things went well. I participated by his side in all the daily services and eased his burden by taking over many of the bar mitzvahs and the marriage ceremonies. Soon his faith in me was so great that he sent me more and more of the individual congregation members who wished guidance and counseling. But the golden period, the time when we walked into the synagogue arm in arm, like father and son, was foreshortened. Dark clouds appeared on the horizon.”
“Because of the coming of Sabbatai Zevi? I remember Rabbi Aboab as a fervent messianist.”
“Even before that. Things went awry when Rabbi Aboab began to instruct me in the kabbalah.”
“Ah yes. Of course. And I imagine that is when you ceased being a joyous student.”
“Exactly. I tried my best, but my credulity was stretched to the breaking point. I attempted to convince myself that this text was an important historical document that I should study carefully. Shouldn’t a scholar know the mythology of his own culture as well as others? But, Bento, your crystal-clear voice and your incisive method of Torah critique rang in my ears, and I was exquisitely attuned to the inconsistencies and to the insubstantially grounded premises on which the kabbalah rested. And of course Rabbi Aboab insisted he was not teaching me mythology—he was teaching me history, facts, the living truth, the word of God. No matter how hard I tried to dissimulate, my lack of enthusiasm shone through. Slowly, day by day, his loving smile faded; he no longer grasped my arm as we walked; he grew more distant, more disappointed. Then, when one of my students reported to him that I had used the term ‘metaphor’ to refer to Luria’s descri
ption of kabbalistic cosmic creation, he publicly rebuked me and restricted my duties. I believe that he then placed informants in all my classes and enlisted observers who reported on all my activities.”
“And now I understand why you could not contact Simon to correspond with me.”
“Yes, although recently my wife picked up Simon’s twelve-page Dutch translation of some of your thoughts about overcoming the passions.”
“Your wife? I thought you could not share with—”
“Place a bookmark at this point. Patience. We’ll return to it shortly, but, to continue with my personal chronology, my problems with the kabbalah were troublesome enough. But the real crisis with Rabbi Aboab concerned the supposed Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“I imagine it has been a long time since you read the Zohar, but no doubt you recall the predictions about the coming of the Messiah.”
“Yes, I recall my final talk with Rabbi Mortera, who believed that the sacred texts predicted the arrival of the Messiah when the Jews were at their lowest point. We had an unpleasant interchange about that when I asked, ‘If we are indeed the chosen, why is it necessary for us to be at the point of greatest despair before the Messiah arrives?’ When I suggested that it seemed likely that the idea of a Messiah was designed by humans to combat their hopelessness, he was outraged by my daring to question divine word.”
“Bento, can you believe that I actually long for the good days of Rabbi Mortera? Rabbi Aboab is so extreme in his Messianic beliefs that Rabbi Mortera seems enlightened in comparison. Moreover, some coincidences have increased Rabbi Aboab’s fervor. Do you recall the Zohar’s prediction of the birth date of the Messiah?”
“I remember nine five—the ninth day of the fifth month.”
“And, lo and behold, it is reported that Sabbatai Zevi was born on the ninth of Av in Smyrna in Turkey in 1626, and last year he was proclaimed to be the Messiah by Nathan, a cabbalist of Gaza, who has become his patron. Rumors of miracles abound. Zevi is said to be charismatic, tall as a cedar, beautiful, pious, and ascetic. He is said to fast for long periods while singing psalms in a melodious voice the whole night through. Everywhere he travels he seems to go out of his way to offend and threaten the entrenched rabbinical authorities. He was expelled by the rabbis of Smyrna because he dared to speak the name of God from the synagogue bimah and expelled by the rabbis of Salonica for holding a marriage ceremony with himself as the groom and the Torah as the bride. But he seemed little troubled by the rabbis’ displeasure, and he continued to wander through the Holy Land gathering ever greater numbers of followers. Soon the news of the Messiah’s arrival swept like a hurricane throughout the Jewish world. With my own eyes I saw Amsterdam Jews dance in the street when the news arrived, and many have sold or given away all their worldly goods and set sail to join him in the Holy Land. And not just the uneducated but many of our eminent citizens are under his spell—even the ever cautious Isaac Pereira has disposed of his entire fortune and gone to join him. And rather than restoring sanity, Rabbi Aboab celebrates and raises the enthusiasm about this man to a fever pitch. This despite the fact that many rabbis in the Holy Land threaten Sabbatai Zevi with cherem.”