The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  The prince applauded enthusiastically when Voltaire concluded the reading. Later that evening he wrote in his diary, “On disait partout qu’il était juif” (“Everyone said that he was a Jew”). And he added that his visit to Ferney had proved to him beyond a shadow of a doubt that the rumor was true.

  NICOLAS WAS STRUCK SPEECHLESS by Gilbert’s warning. Not because Voltaire had selfish reasons to become their guardian but because he had heard absolutely nothing about any valued possession.

  “Would you like to know what he wants?” Gilbert asked.

  The boy nodded. The old retainer made him swear never to tell anyone else.

  “What I’m about to say perhaps may surprise you,” Gilbert began. “It astonished me, as well, when I learned of it from your father just after you were born. Before revealing it, he insisted on my pledge of absolute silence and complete loyalty. I accepted those conditions, but I must admit that there have been times, occasions of which I am now ashamed, that I found that burden difficult to bear. But I never betrayed my promise to your father, and I have never uttered a word about it to anyone.”

  Nicolas showed signs of impatience at this, but Gilbert told him to try to restrain himself for a moment. Gilbert first needed to get matters off his chest by revealing certain youthful escapades he had sought all his life to conceal behind his facade of good manners and discretion. It was necessary for Nicolas to understand the circumstances in which he’d first met Hector Spinoza, for otherwise the boy wouldn’t understand their special relationship.

  Gilbert said that his real name was Giscard Bras, and he came from the tiny village of Sainte-Marine in western Brittany. His father, a fisherman, was lost at sea in a tempest, and the search for him was called off because the powerful storm did not abate for a full three weeks. Gilbert, then nine years old and the eldest of seven children, was apprenticed to another fishing boat, but his pay was miserable and the needs at home were great. That was why his mother began to charge a few sous to read people’s palms. For other clients she would touch objects that had belonged to deceased persons and summon a vision of their lives in the next world. She had no real powers of clairvoyance, but one day she predicted that her own firstborn would get into difficulties with the law. The following week Gilbert, just twelve years old, was jailed for blasphemy because he had failed to bare his head when a religious procession passed by him on the street. The cell where thieves and murderers generously shared their experience with him was the only school he ever knew.

  It was hard for Nicolas to imagine that Gilbert, the all-knowing servant who was the very embodiment of French phlegm with his calm, his courtesy, and his gracious manners, the man who never lost his composure or raised his voice, had been a full-fledged criminal, a thief and a con man, and had spent many years behind bars. Or that once upon a time he had killed a man.

  ONE WEEK AFTER Grandfather’s death the whole clan assembled in our home for the reading of the will. It was the first time in many years that we had all come together. My father and Aunt Ilona had long been feuding, and she maintained an icy distance between herself and the rest of the family. Uncle Carlo had fled from Hungary during the people’s revolt of 1956 and taken up residence in Vienna; this was the first time he had come back home.

  SASHA AND I were too small to remember Uncle Carlo from the time before the revolt. This occasion was, shall we say, our first real meeting with him. We immediately noticed that he was nothing like our father, who was a dour man always locked away within himself. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I immediately liked our uncle better than our father. He was more open and welcoming. He was jolly, warm, gregarious, and almost as good at telling stories as my great-uncle. There was something spellbinding in the way he talked and in the shrewd twinkle of his fleeting glance.

  We especially appreciated his frankness. Not just the fact that he spoke without compunction of his dead father’s irritability or his declaration before everyone present that he didn’t dare taste his mother’s soup for fear of salt poisoning, but because he discussed topics our family had always tacitly avoided. In our house no one talked about what had happened during the war, either because they couldn’t face the nightmarish past again or because they wanted to protect us children from the torments and suffering of those times.

  Uncle Carlos stayed with us for three days. He then asked for Father’s indulgence and permission to leave, since he was obliged to get back to his work. We imagined that he had some senior position in an international bank, considering his knowledgeable discussion of the world economy during one evening’s conversation. But after he had left for Vienna, Grandmother informed us almost with glee that Carlo hadn’t found a decent job or anyone there to marry. He was employed as a street sweeper.

  Though we spent only a short time with Uncle Carlo, Sasha and I learned a great deal from him about the war on the eastern front. Because he was a Jew, Uncle Carlo was picked up and sent to the Don River during the miserably cold winter of 1942–1943 in a brigade of laborers who went ahead of the Hungarian army and risked their lives to clear mines and secure the bridges. The big battle lasted only three days. The skies were almost black throughout that time. The proud Hungarian army was completely annihilated. Miraculously enough, Uncle Carlo managed to get away with his life and came home again after four years in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp. Fate had made different arrangements for most of the rest of the forty-four thousand Jews in the military work brigades. They disappeared without a trace on the banks of the Don.

  Sasha asked Uncle Carlo what he felt now when he remembered the war. Our uncle did not answer immediately; he carefully extracted his spectacles from a worn leather case and put them on. We had the impression that they made his eyes look many times larger and more sorrowful. “Nothing in particular,” he answered. “Absolutely nothing in particular. Only a distant, nagging headache. Other than that, nothing.”

  GILBERT TOLD NICOLAS that he had been in jail, little knowing that war was in the air. One morning his cell door opened, and he was issued a ridiculously large army uniform, leather boots that were too small, and a rifle with no ammunition. Then they sent him north toward Belgium with the rest of the prisoners. No one told them how dangerous it was to go to war against the army commanded by the Count of Cumberland.

  Flights of birds beat their way across the skies of Fontenoy. One morning some days later, after he had seen all too many of his comrades bleed to death on the battlefield, he told himself that the issue of the Austrian succession had little to do with him and he had no personal disputes with those who had been mustered into the opposing army. He decided to desert.

  He waited for a moonless night. When everyone else had gone to sleep he slipped out of the tent. Suddenly a sergeant loomed before him and blocked his escape. He gave the sergeant a shove; the man fell over backward, hit his head on a stone, and perished on the spot. That’s how Gilbert became a criminal: He wanted to go home and the sergeant was standing in his way.

  His life as a deserter and hunted murderer turned out to be harder to survive than the war. He slept in forests in the company of drunks and worn-out whores. He often woke up from dark nightmares in which his father’s chiding ghost was howling his name. Once he was almost murdered by a gang of bandits after quarreling with their leader. Another time he almost burned to death in a barn. One winter morning he awoke half frozen in a drafty cellar and decided he’d had enough. He couldn’t stand it anymore. The whole thing was pointless. There was a curse upon him. There was only one way out. He wanted to die; his whole soul wanted to die.

  That was when he met Hector Spinoza.

  “Your father not only saved my life,” Gilbert said, “he gave me everything I’d never had before. Trust. Warmth. Employment. Generous pay. A home. Friendship. He gave meaning to my life and made me the man I am today. Everything I am and everything I have, I owe to Hector Spinoza.”

  Nicolas thought of his father. With a pang in his heart he recalled the library where hi
s father used to sit. He also remembered the frightening, evil-tempered, impulsive violence of his father’s slaps. He remembered that in those days long gone, he had appreciated the attention shown by his father with those blows more than he had appreciated the gentle but disengaged manner of his mother.

  The sun’s warm rays lit up the room. Titters and voices were audible in the hall outside. The two sat there for a moment, looking at each other in silence.

  Nicolas was the first to speak. He admitted that the events of the previous few months had frightened him, made him miserable, and left him at a loss. Gilbert’s story had cleared up many things for him. He appreciated Gilbert’s truthfulness. Now, however, he wanted to hear what it was that belonged to him and Voltaire was scheming to get.

  WE POSSESSED the recipe for eternal life. Even so, through a sort of strange twist of fate, our family suffered several more deaths soon after my grandfather’s funeral.

  Uncle Carlo had just begun his shift the day after his return to Vienna when the driver of a truck carrying a load of women’s clothing lost control of his vehicle. The Volvo 385 Viking rolled over in the intersection between Mariahilferstrasse and Esterhazygasse. The police arrived promptly and closed the surrounding streets to all traffic because several automobiles had been damaged in the accident. That part of Vienna was in chaos all morning long. It took more than four hours for two tow trucks to move the Volvo. Only then did the police discover that a street sweeper had been crushed to death beneath the eighteen-ton truck.

  Grandmother had never been particularly fond of her youngest son, and when she received the news of his death she exclaimed without thinking, “Typical Carlo! All his life long he had trouble keeping his fingers out of brassieres and panties.”

  TWO MONTHS LATER, we again had to drape all the mirrors in our house in black and wear mourning. This time it was for Aunt Ilona. She was scheduled to undergo a routine operation. Sasha and I were never told what it involved. Grandmother said it had something to do with a manipulation of the abdomen most women of a certain age are obliged to undergo. The operation was a success but the patient never woke up. The autopsy established that the physician had been too generous with the anesthetic. I remember that Grandmother was sorrowful and aggrieved—not so much because of the death of her daughter as because there was no way to sue the anesthesiologist, since his wife was the niece of the secretary of the minister of health. “That’s socialist reality for you,” commented Grandmother.

  ———

  BUT THE WORST CAME after that. The young man to whom I was bound in the strange mystery of life as a twin died a terrible death. And it was completely my fault. I received my punishment immediately, however: After losing Sasha I became deeply depressed. I felt alone, defenseless, and paranoid, perceiving all sorts of menacing dangers that others found inconsequential. Even today I can’t bear to discuss it. Thirty years later, that loss continues to be just as wrenching, painful, and distressing. It has influenced everything I’ve done throughout my twisted and tangled life.

  GILBERT SAID that shortly after Nicolas’s birth his master manifested great confidence in him by showing him a book unlike any other, a book that contained the sum of all wisdom and answers to the world’s mysteries, a book written by the philosopher Benjamin Spinoza.

  “That book consists of a thousand and one pages,” Gilbert told Nicolas, “and is titled The Elixir of Immortality. Your father made me promise that if anything ever happened to him, I would hide the book and deliver it to you upon your thirteenth birthday. He believed that you were the only one who could follow in his footsteps. You were his natural heir.”

  “Why my thirteenth birthday, exactly?” asked Nicolas.

  “After the bar mitzvah, at the age of thirteen, a Jewish boy is a man, responsible for his actions.”

  “You mean that Voltaire is trying to lay his hands on that book?”

  “Exactly. Your father revealed to Voltaire the existence of the book just before the unfortunate accident that took his life. The philosopher knows that he can find the answers to all of life’s greatest mysteries in that book. Ever since your father’s funeral, Voltaire has been after your mother, trying to get her to show him the book. But she knows nothing about it, since your father never mentioned it. And besides, I’d already hidden it in a safe place.”

  Gilbert picked up a packet and handed it to Nicolas.

  “Your father also wrote out a sort of will for you to read and put it in a sealed envelope that I kept inside the book. There he gives you an account of the great secret of the Spinoza family and explains why the book should never be read by anyone other than you and your eldest son.”

  “Gilbert, tell me the truth: Did you ever feel tempted to look into the book? If it really holds the sum of all wisdom and the answers to the great mysteries, surely at some time or other you must have thought about picking up a little bit of wisdom for yourself.”

  Gilbert squirmed and delayed a moment before answering, obviously ill at ease. Then he replied in a low voice, “I’ve never felt that desire. But even if I had, and the temptation to break my vow to Hector Spinoza had been too great, it would have been of no use to me. You see, I never learned to read.”

  WHEN AT LAST I READ The Elixir of Immortality I could see what an immense significance the book had for the French Revolution. Of course I’ve never thought that the history they teach in schools is worth studying, because it doesn’t contain the truth about the past. That’s why I don’t know much about history.

  And so I know too little about the general conditions that led to the French Revolution, that watershed of history—why it erupted and just what happened. On the other hand, I have noted that the radical philosophy of the Enlightenment is supposed to have stimulated revolutionary impulses. My ignorance may be my excuse for not really believing that claim. What could the connection possibly have been? The philosophers of the Enlightenment—Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot, d’Alembert—had almost nothing to do with the common people, and ordinary folk didn’t read books, not only because most of them had no money to buy books but simply because only a very few people were able to read at all. And even fewer were those who eagerly purchased the convoluted tracts produced by the pens of those deep thinkers. Besides, all of those philosophers died before 1789.

  It’s easy to point to passages in Benjamin Spinoza’s great work that could be interpreted as precursors of the key themes of the French Revolution: liberté, égalité, fraternité—freedom, equality, brotherhood. A century before the storming of the Bastille he wrote of natural rights and of human rights (nota bene: not “civil rights”), and he sketched out the concept of an ideal society with no distinctions between people on the grounds of race, religion, sex, or economic advantage. The vacuum created when religion lost credibility and vanished from the human spirit he preferred to fill with a belief in mankind, for he never doubted for a moment the ability of devoted, determined human beings to reform society in pursuit of their instinctive desire for perfection.

  EVERYONE AT the Lycée Louis-le-Grand called them “the inseparables.” They were always together. No one could imagine them doing anything apart from each other during the waking hours of the day. They agreed on everything and could read each other’s minds. They laughed at the same jokes and got hungry at the same time. Both were short and animated. Their classmates used to joke that if it weren’t for Nicolas’s gigantic nose, one might easily mistake them for twins. But they were not twin souls. Deep down, they were completely different.

  The Bishop of Arras had reinforced in Maximilien a keen awareness of his privileged status. He came from a modest background, but the bishop had made him believe that the world lay open before him. Maximilien seemed energetic, direct, and friendly, but his heart was grim and cold. His guiding principle was that a man had to harden himself to pain, fatigue, and misfortune. He rose early every morning and took a quick swim in the nearby stream, whether it was warm or freezing. In winter he often
returned with face and hands blue with the cold.

  Nicolas, in contrast, was timid and quiet, a boy who easily lost himself in daydreams. The rector and Madame Léonie sometimes worried that he seemed so oblivious to everything. They couldn’t know that his thoughts were deep in the book his father had left him. Often he could think of nothing else. He translated its lessons into texts of his own, usually late at night.

  Maximilien and Nicolas shared many of their thoughts, but each of them had a secret preoccupation.

  Maximilien was a brilliant conversationalist. He captivated everyone with his elegant rhetoric, and he often boasted that there was no essay competition he couldn’t win. But the truth was quite different. His verbal eloquence was nature’s compensation for his inability to write. He did everything he could to hide this shortcoming, and he worried obsessively that his failing might be discovered. But when Nicolas came into the Charrier household, everything changed. Maximilien disliked the new boy from the start and considered him a weakling. But as soon as he discovered Nicolas’s talent for the written word, he began to regard him in a different light. Maximilien had the distinct feeling that he could take advantage of Nicolas. And he was right.

  Nicolas’s fear was quite different. He had sung in the church choir for many years and appeared before huge audiences, but he always suffered from crippling stage fright. When he was called on to speak, even to a small group, his voice failed him, he perspired heavily, and he couldn’t utter a single word. Throughout his eight years at the cloister school his teachers and classmates had mocked him harshly. That experience had given him a permanent horror of public speaking. He was convinced that fate had endowed him with a lucid, graceful prose style to show he was destined to express himself on the page. He was grateful for his friend’s understanding, for Maximilien shielded him from the agony of public attention by taking the pieces Nicolas had written and delivering them as speeches. He pretended they were his own.