The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  The countess’s eyes filled with tears and she began to weep. Avraham tried to console her. His infatuation appealed to his chivalry, and he pledged to protect her, provide her an apartment fit for a countess, and furnish her with a whole new wardrobe.

  “Countess de Mercier—Hélène.” He added quickly, “I beg your pardon, it is not my intention to intrude. Of course I ask nothing from you in return. Do not fear me. I wish only to lighten the countess’s spirits and to get to know her a little better.”

  The countess quickly mastered her emotions, called over a servant, and ordered a bottle of the best champagne in the house. She rapidly downed two glasses and said by way of excuse, “I must reinforce myself and soothe my nerves, so as to express my undying gratitude that in the baron I have suddenly and unexpectedly acquired such a helpful and generous friend—dear Armand.”

  Avraham felt a surge of happiness such as he had never known before at the knowledge he was in a position to help the needy countess. He saw her lily-white skin, the rosy, dimpled cheeks, and her seductive glance. He tried to imagine what it would be like to hold her in his arms—little knowing that within just a few hours, she would willingly follow him home and share his bed.

  ———

  AVRAHAM RENTED an exclusive apartment for Hélène near the Église de la Madeleine and ordered an entire new wardrobe for her. He visited her every day and was overjoyed as she taught him the finer points of love play, taking him places he had never dreamed of.

  Every day Avraham recalled the words of Voltaire: Love which strikes suddenly is the most difficult to cure, and the only way to relieve the pain of thoughtless passion is to make love even more furiously.

  AFTER A FEW WEEKS of this Hélène asked if she could introduce Avraham to her beloved brother Robert Deschanel, who was having difficulties with the authorities because of malicious rumors spread by competitors and individuals conspiring against him. He had been discharged from his employment and was seeking some way to provide for himself and his family. She added that Robert had a wonderfully charming wife. Avraham accompanied her to meet the brother over a glass of wine.

  Deschanel turned out to be just as fine a person as his sister. Warm, charming, and direct, he spoke immediately of his troubles without beating about the bush: He had just completed a two-year prison sentence for fraud. An unscrupulous colleague in the office had cold-bloodedly stolen money, forged documents, and laid the blame on him. Deschanel said that he would be a liar if he were to say that life in the Bastille hadn’t been unendurable, especially considering he was innocent; but worst of all was the loss of his reputation. No one in Paris would even speak his name, let alone recommend him for employment. One day he had become so despondent, he said with tears in his eyes, that death seemed the only way out. He had acquired a rope and was tempted to hang himself. But he thought that he should do one last good deed by using his talents and making someone wealthy.

  Deschanel had heard from his sister Hélène that the baron was a good and wise man, and he wanted to suggest a collaboration that could profit both of them. He quickly outlined a couple of ideas, stock speculations that could easily yield fabulous profits without the slightest risk. Deschanel assured the baron he could make him one of the richest men in Paris and simultaneously redeem his own reputation.

  Hélène nodded in approval throughout the presentation.

  Avraham found it somewhat difficult to concentrate upon the details of Deschanel’s plan, for his eyes were drawn irresistibly to the sight of Hélène’s décolletage, which was even more revealing than usual. One of the richest men in Paris—that phrase brought sweet music to his ears. He thought of Voltaire, who had always undervalued him and never believed he would turn out to be anything. He could imagine the philosopher’s face, filled with surprise and reverent admiration when he heard of Avraham’s unprecedented financial success. One of the richest men in Paris … He was overcome by an irresistible desire to work with Deschanel.

  “Your candor,” he replied, flushed with the wine and the prospects of a gleaming future, “has won my absolute confidence, and I will be most happy to place a portion of my patrimony in your hands. If you will permit me, dear friend, to call you Robert, I will raise my glass to toast the brilliant future that awaits us.”

  “We can be entirely open with each other here, dear Baron de Spina-Rosa,” Deschanel answered and sipped his wine, “given that through Hélène you are, so to speak, a member of the family. I should like to get to work as quickly as possible. I always say that you can’t make a profit if you fail to strike while the iron is hot. And believe me: I have reason to pride myself on my ability to see things clearly.”

  THE VERY NEXT DAY, with Deschanel’s most willing assistance, Avraham invested a considerable sum in the Paris-Senegal Trading Company. To be sure, he had never heard of the enterprise before. But Deschanel assured him that it was an unusually well-managed and solid enterprise, a leader in a lucrative branch of commerce; it was engaged in the transport of slaves from West Africa to North and South America.

  VOLTAIRE FELL into a rage when he heard of the investment and demanded that Avraham immediately sell his holdings.

  “I have brought you up in the spirit of humanism,” the philosopher protested. “You cannot possibly associate yourself with this undertaking by financing such a cruel and inhumane commerce.”

  Avraham easily resisted the temptation to give in to Voltaire’s higher moral principles. “Maître,” he replied quickly in a flattering tone, “I cannot pretend to aspire to your character of high principle, but I certainly stand in admiration of it.”

  “Consider this: You may be the victim of a fraud,” Voltaire responded in a more reasonable tone. “You know almost nothing about this man Deschanel, or about the beautiful countess, or about this Senegalese enterprise.”

  Avraham refused to be shaken from his convictions.

  “I am very well acquainted with the qualifications of Monsieur Deschanel,” he said firmly, “and I am fully convinced that he is extremely adept in conducting business. I have no intention of losing the profitable opportunity that Robert has prepared for me in a spirit of great goodwill. Share prices have been rising persistently, and selling my holdings now would be pure folly—and besides, doing so would not save a single Negro from the slave ships. This is a sure road to riches!”

  AFTER THE CONVERSATION with Voltaire, Avraham went home and made some quick calculations. No matter how he did the arithmetic, his investment was bound to make him wealthy beyond his dreams in the course of only a few months.

  “Discounting,” he happily repeated the business term he had learned from his new friend. “Discounting! It’s simply a matter of finding an investment that will provide a high yield and daring to put your money into it. Isn’t that what Robert is always saying? And besides, what does Voltaire know about modern notions such as business?”

  He rubbed his hands together and went off to Deschanel to bid him to purchase even more shares with what remained from his inheritance.

  FATE WAS WAITING in ambush for him. A couple of weeks later a letter reached Avraham on a snowy February morning.

  My dear Baron Armand de Spina-Rosa,

  As a result of reports that have just reached me from Dakar, I have the sad duty of informing you that the English navy under the command of Admiral Edgar Whittaker-Stocks has occupied the city and shut down the lucrative trade in human beings. As a consequence the Paris-Senegal Trading Company has gone into immediate liquidation. The value of your shares in the enterprise as of today is zero.

  It is deeply to be deplored that these times of political unrest have had such an unforeseen effect on your investments.

  I shall pray to God that the disposition of the funds that remain to you from your inheritance is such that you are still able to sleep easily. If you should have the need, I am of course available to assist you both in word and deed.

  Concerning my own future business plans, I have been appointed
chief administrator for the Municipal Treasury of Bordeaux. As a consequence I am unusually encumbered with business responsibilities and will find it difficult to take time from these duties over the next few days. I will be traveling to Bordeaux no later than the end of this week.

  Recommending myself to you with respectful sincerity,

  Robert Deschanel

  AVRAHAM COULD NOT believe his eyes. He shook his head and read the letter again and again. He took out the little pouch stored beneath the bed and opened it. He hastily examined the share certificates inside it and realized that the whole thing could be a fraud.

  “I am ruined!” he exclaimed. “No, this cannot be!”

  He tried to tell himself the whole thing was simply a misunderstanding. He remembered all the times he had invited Robert Deschanel to dine at the finest inns of Paris and of the reports of the glowing prospects of business in Senegal he had always received. For a moment he asked himself if this was really happening. Perhaps his brain was overwhelmed with love and playing tricks on him.

  He took a carriage to Deschanel’s office. The door was locked and no one came to open it, even though he pounded vigorously for several minutes. He decided to visit Hélène, assuming that she would know the whereabouts of her brother. He knocked at her door with his heart in his mouth. No one answered.

  The concierge came up to him. “The countess moved out early this morning with all of her trunks and baggage,” the old woman reported and started to snivel. “She was in such a hurry she didn’t even say goodbye to me—to me! I’ve done so much for her and loaned her so much money!”

  VOLTAIRE LISTENED attentively to Avraham’s recital of the events. The philosopher decided that the whole story had to be complete fabrication, and he said right out, “Avraham, I believe you’re lying. You’ve simply squandered all your inheritance. And now, my dear Baron de Spina-Rosa, this is the end of your life in a fantasy world. You’re penniless, and no woman will want you. That’s why you’re trying to entice more money from anyone who will listen to you.”

  HIS MOTHER FELT that Avraham had dishonored his father’s memory by recklessly spending his whole inheritance, but she agreed to help her penniless son. She hired an attorney who promised full discretion and guaranteed that he would get to the bottom of this delicate affair.

  THE PAINSTAKINGLY PEDANTIC ATTORNEY methodically put together his case. Avraham was required to provide a written account of every meeting with Deschanel and Hélène, including every tiny detail—how long they had been together, what they had said, what he had answered, where they had eaten dinner, and why he had placed his entire inheritance with the Paris-Senegal Trading Company, an enterprise of which no one had ever heard.

  At the sight of the stock certificates the attorney laughed right in Avraham’s face and said he should have required a better authentication of the transactions than those clumsy forgeries.

  The attorney took only two weeks to unravel the mess. His inquiries established that Robert Deschanel, whose real name was Étienne Girard, had vanished from Paris without a trace, failing to pay the rent for his apartment, of course, and leaving nothing behind but an old trunk full of forged papers that showed what a mad rogue he was. The attorney checked police records and found that Étienne Girard had gone to prison three times for fraud.

  And then came the worst news: The attorney also found “Hermione Girard” in the records. That was Hélène’s real name. There had never been any Countess de Mercier. The whole thing was made up; the countess was a role that Hermione Girard had played in order to entice Avraham into her clutches.

  And then came the last devastating blow: “Hermione Girard,” the attorney informed him, “is not Étienne Girard’s sister but his legally married wife.”

  LIFE IN THE CLOISTER was Avraham’s escape from the hopelessly tangled circumstances that made his life seem so terribly complicated and meaningless. He took refuge at the cloister of the Royaumont Abbey, where Father Sebastien, a valiant soul who had the ear of the abbot, took him in. They sat in a tiny room used as a workshop and labored patiently, endlessly, manufacturing religious articles for sale to other churches and cloisters: crucifixes, medallions, church candelabra, and rosaries of various lengths.

  Avraham had nimble fingers, a sharp eye, and a sense of precision. Within a few weeks he had mastered the craft. He was extremely hardworking; he had great concentration and would turn and shape objects for hours on end. He carved, shaped, sawed, and filed, building up a comprehensive inventory of objects the brothers of the cloister could take out to sell on their travels.

  After he put down his tools at the end of a long day of work, he would listen to the organ music in the chapel. He regularly sat there for an hour or two, motionless, staring straight before him as if deep in prayer.

  Avraham was beloved in the cloister. The brothers praised him for his dedication to work and his modest appearance. Even the abbot, a man of great severity, developed a sympathy for him.

  ON ONE OCCASION Avraham confided to the abbot that before entering the cloister he had worked in business. Another time he suggested several ways for the order to increase its revenue. Some time after that he presented the abbot with a large wooden relief depicting Jesus suffering at Golgotha. The abbot was greatly impressed, especially when he examined Avraham’s carving closely and saw the care and ingenuity that had gone into it.

  The abbot saw that Avraham was no ordinary monk and thought it might be useful to keep him close at hand. At first the abbot asked Avraham’s advice on some trivial matters. But after demonstrating his conscientiousness and intelligence, Avraham was entrusted with the administration of the order’s finances.

  Almost as proof of Voltaire’s worst fears, one day Avraham was arrested for stealing from cloister funds, a charge he hotly denied. He was put in prison.

  His mother turned in despair to Voltaire. The philosopher was unmoved by Avraham’s plight, but he demonstrated his magnanimity. He did Madame Spinoza a favor and spoke to his contacts at the royal palace—at that time he was a trusted friend of the queen. The charges were dismissed and Avraham was released, whereupon the young man left Paris without a moment’s delay.

  SOMETIMES IN MY CHILDHOOD I thought life wasn’t worth living. This was especially the case when I tried to get my parents to show affection. I wanted them to see me and to appreciate me as I was, without acting or pretense. But it always seemed to me that they liked my twin brother better.

  Nothing is more painful to a child than the feeling that his own father and mother don’t love him.

  ———

  I RECALL MY PARENTS’ beaming faces at the end of every school year when Sasha brought home his report card with outstanding marks. He gave them every reason to be proud. As for me, starting in the third grade I received failing marks in both mathematics and history, and the stern school principal called my parents in for a conference. They listened with obvious displeasure when he said I should repeat the year. My shame at my failure was devastating. I couldn’t bear to see my father’s expression of dissatisfaction. Later that evening he gave me a scathing lecture. He was in a towering rage. I had made my hypersensitive mother suffer so much that she was almost distraught.

  Even now, approaching the end of my life, I have to admit that I’ve never gotten over my father’s rebuke for not being as bright and clever as a Spinoza was supposed to be.

  FOR MY WHOLE LIFE I’ve heard that an unusually large nose is part of the Spinoza heritage. It appears in someone of each generation. The children born with that huge olfactory organ were always unusually fortunate and successful in whatever they undertook. Sasha had an enormous nose, and he was better in everything than I was.

  I’d also heard of another inherited trait: a tendency to lie also turned up in each generation. Spinoza children born with that strange inability to tell the truth were always lonely. They failed at almost everything. I knew that this inherited duplicity was a sort of curse. And I’ve always been quick to shad
e the truth a little or even a lot in hopes of pleasing others.

  ONE AFTERNOON my great-uncle had described some of Avraham’s adventures in the New World, and I had an idea. I went to my grandfather and asked him what he thought about the traits that reappeared in every generation of our family.

  The question didn’t appear to surprise him in the least. He said, “It sounds as if you’ve been staring at Sasha’s nose again. Don’t worry, you’ll turn out to be a fine fellow—even if you did inherit your mother’s little turned-up nose. Trust me. I should warn you that not everything Fernando describes in his tall tales will come to pass in the real world. Yes, sometimes you tell lies and do stupid things. And who doesn’t, sometimes? Every human being is occasionally careless and makes mistakes. The wise learn from their errors, while the foolish blab about them to everyone they come across. Keep in mind that a good reputation is more often due to what one hides than to what one actually does.”

  Grandfather’s words awakened some hope within me. Perhaps when everything was said and done, I wasn’t doomed to eternal perdition. I felt a bit better, but not quite as relieved as I would have liked.

  Grandfather spoke again. “You may know that I had a brother named Moricz. He had a tragic end, the poor fellow; he froze to death on a mountain plateau in Lhotse, in the Himalayas. You’re the spitting image of him. He wasn’t exactly a paragon of honesty. He did a number of mad things in his life, but some of his schemes one couldn’t help laughing at.”

  GRANDFATHER HAD NEVER before mentioned Moricz to us. It was from Grandmother we had heard that his young brother had done something scandalous that Grandfather was ashamed of. But now my grandfather opened up and told me that Moricz loved to play poker and had once wound up in a terrible fix. He needed money to pay off a gambling debt. When he realized that no one could lend him such a large sum, he had an inspiration. He put on his best suit, located in a drawer some gold medals that Kaiser Franz Josef himself had pinned upon his grandfather, and attached them to the breast pocket of his suit. Then he got two acquaintances who were street sweepers to follow him to Váci Street, the most elegant of Budapest’s pedestrian esplanades, lined with the most exclusive shops of the city. This was in 1911. They took their positions outside Elemér Polgár’s Tailoring for Gentlemen, where the nobility of Europe ordered their suits, following the example of the Prince of Wales. The two workers pretended to be making measurements with instruments they were carrying while Moricz took notes. It didn’t take too long for Polgár, the master tailor himself, to appear in the doorway, intrigued, and to ask what the workers were doing just outside the entrance to his establishment. With apparent reluctance Moricz informed him that they were from the municipal planning authority. Plans had been made to construct an open toilet for gentlemen just at that location, since for reasons of public health it was deemed necessary to install one somewhere along that lengthy pedestrian walkway. Polgár exclaimed in an anguished voice and with a trembling lower lip, “A pissoir in front of my shop! Completely unthinkable—it would be my ruin. You can certainly understand, young man, that no stinking toilet can be tolerated outside my salon. Think of all my clients, every one of them blue-blooded, of the most genteel nobility; they cannot be exposed to the stink of piss.” Moricz tried to calm the tailor, telling him in confidence that the measurement phase was not yet complete. The results of their work would be evaluated before a decision was made about the exact placement of the gentlemen’s toilet. Polgár immediately saw his chance. He invited the polite young man from the planning office into his salon for a quiet discussion in private. The master tailor offered Moricz a snifter of the finest French cognac—and with it, two thousand imperial crowns if the workers would move the site a hundred paces or so farther along the esplanade. As a diligent civil servant, Moricz could not countenance a bribe—that is, at least not until the amount was raised to five thousand crowns. A few hours later, after paying off his assistants, Moricz went home with twenty-five thousand crowns in his pocket, a fabulous sum at that time. He had the deep satisfaction on that sunny day of having diligently provided six lucky proprietors the opportunity of warding off the planning department’s project of installing a pissoir just outside their shops.