The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  “We must handle this with the utmost tact,” commented Mayer, who lived in Paris. “I’m concerned that Jakob might feel slighted, take offense, and cause difficulties for us.”

  “I will take the matter in hand,” Solomon replied. “I will open a private account in his name with a modest sum as compensation, so he can get by financially until he finds other employment. Chiara and he can scarcely expect us to provide for them forever.”

  The brothers found this a splendid proposal. Nathan, head of the London office, said, “You’ve thought it all out, Solomon. I’m most impressed by your prompt action.” Calmann, who managed things in Naples, agreed.

  “It is my responsibility as head of the family to stay alert and make quick decisions,” Solomon continued. “I have thought about our general situation, but I have not yet had time to go over every detail. I suggest that Amschel’s shares be divided equally among us brothers. In addition, I would like to see his house deeded to my son Anselm Solomon, who is living in Berlin. Provided that no one has any objection, he will move to Frankfurt and take over the management there. The residence is perfectly suited for him. His splendid wife, Désirée, who these days is taking care of her mother the delightful widow von Wiedersack and the children, will get along there very well.”

  SOLOMON DIDN’T HAVE THE AUDACITY to look Chiara in the face. He dispatched the bank’s attorney to her, and the message delivered by that gentleman was extremely painful to her. She had lived with Amschel for forty years but now they were treating her like a mere housekeeper.

  Chiara had long known that Solomon had never cared for her. She was a woman—that in itself was enough to provoke his distrust. Her intelligence and indifference to money did not help. He also disapproved of the fact that she was living in sin with Amschel, but instead of urging his brother to take Chiara as his lawful wife before God and his people, he had continually harped on the decay of contemporary morals—never thinking for more than a moment or two of the immorality he was encouraging by consorting with young girls at the Salon Rouge, Vienna’s leading bordello.

  Solomon was annoyed most of all by Chiara’s influence over Amschel. It provoked his jealousy. He assumed that she was working against him, and he did not understand, for his brother was all too polite to inform him, that his own blindness and inability to think in strategic terms were his principal enemies, not Chiara. They were the reasons that Amschel had not involved him in the most important decisions affecting the bank.

  Chiara suddenly recalled how often she had been astonished by Solomon’s shady schemes and his perpetual subordination of ethical considerations to financial gain. But it still came as a cruel surprise that he was so lacking in brotherly love as to disregard Amschel’s express wishes. These things baffled her. Only now did she comprehend how base he was.

  And that was how, even though she was in deep mourning for Amschel, she was evicted three days after his death from the home that they had built together. The other family members—Jakob, his wife, Eleonora, and their two small children—were also out on the street.

  I’M LEAVING CHIARA AND JAKOB to their fate for the time being, for I’ve suddenly recalled something else Grandfather related to us.

  I really don’t believe that Grandfather cared for Sasha and me—perhaps he simply disliked children as a general principle—since he almost always appeared irritated when we were anywhere in his vicinity. But just now there unexpectedly came to my mind one of the infrequent occasions when he consented to grace us with his company. This was after the school year ended. We had just completed third grade, my twin brother with his brilliant marks and I with my failures in history and mathematics. We were sitting in the kitchen eating lunch in silence. Grandmother had left us in quest of the latest news from the all-knowing concierge, the woman who kept her informed about everything going on in the neighborhood. We were surprised to see Grandfather come into the kitchen. He was in the habit of spending the day at his favorite tavern, ironically called the Brooding Rooster, where six days a week he would order a lunch of oxtail soup, the cheapest item on the menu, and then play cards with his friends. We never learned why he had broken with his custom that day. He dished out a bowl of soup and took a seat next to us.

  With only his second spoonful of soup Grandfather exclaimed angrily, “That damned woman! She’s never learned a thing about cooking, not even by trial and error. She always burns everything. Her cooking is a pure disgrace. The only place I’ve ever had worse food was in prison!”

  Then he sent several swearwords flying, although since he both dressed and behaved with innate aristocratic elegance, he said them in German.

  We didn’t understand the words, but we were alarmed and avoided his eyes. Sasha looked up after a few seconds and said carefully, both to challenge me and to change the grim mood, “Grandfather, I had the best marks in class. Five over five in all my subjects. Aren’t you proud of me?”

  I can still see my grandfather’s surprised expression. One might have thought that he’d had no idea we’d been going to school.

  “Yes, well, that’s certainly fine,” he said, and shoveled down a few more spoonfuls of soup. “And what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “A cosmonaut,” replied Sasha, who idolized Yuri Gagarin, the Russian peasant’s son who shortly before this had become the first man in space.

  “That sounds exciting. So, then, leaving the earth behind—maybe you’ll have the chance to get out of this socialist hell that we’re living in.” He turned to me. “And you, Ari, what do you want to be?”

  Ashamed of my failures in school and dreading the confrontation with my parents later that afternoon, I answered, “Somebody else. I want to be somebody else.”

  “That’s exactly what my brother Moricz used to say: I want to be somebody else.”

  IN ONE CORNER of Lipótváros, Budapest’s exclusive fifth district, stood Kohn’s delicatessen, where the affluent bourgeoisie of the city did their shopping. Moricz passed by the popular shop every day on his way to and from school, and sometimes when he had managed to filch a coin from his father’s jacket, he would go in to buy sweets. One afternoon he found the shop empty; neither clients nor employees were there. He looked around in surprise. An odd, almost threatening silence lay over the shop. “Hello!” he called out, and coughed sharply to attract the attention of the shop attendants. But it appeared that there was no one to hear him. Moricz smelled the sweet scent of ham, forbidden to us at home, mixed with the distinct fragrance of chocolate. He stole forward to the display where they kept various confections with honey and the Turkish delight. He looked around once more to make sure that no one else was in the shop. His mouth began to water as he gazed wide-eyed at all the sweets. He deposited his school bag on the floor, lifted the lid of the glass bowl with his left hand as quietly as his could, and then with his right hand crammed his trouser pocket full of the vivid Turkish confectionary, the very essence of absolute delight. Without losing a second, he bolted out of the shop with indescribable feelings of good fortune and intense joy.

  OVER THE NEXT TWO YEARS Moricz became so obsessed with the thought of repeating that thrilling exploit —standing alone in the shop and thrusting a fistful of sweets into his pocket—that he probably spent more time lurking around the delicatessen than in school, avidly watching for a moment when the shop would be deserted. He knew that it would take incredible daring and adeptness to avoid disaster. The boldness of his exploits excited him. He felt invincible.

  In the evening he let everyone think that he was deeply engaged in his studies and homework, while in fact he was concentrating ferociously on learning to imitate his father’s handwriting. This was no easy task, for the celebrated journalist had a very personal hand with extremely small letters. But at last, after filling and blotting several hundred sheets of paper, Moricz could confidently replicate his father’s very unusual handwriting style in every detail. Over the course of the following year he presented a towering pile of imagin
atively formulated medical excuses, written and signed in his father’s forged hand, without arousing suspicion at school.

  ONE DAY Moricz’s luck ran out. He was just about to nip out of the store with his pockets full when he ran into Hermann Kohn, the owner, who was standing in the door and watching him.

  “You little thief!” the old man snapped, and caught him by the ear. “So you’re the rat who’s been stealing our candy. I noticed that lots of Turkish delight has gone missing lately. How long has this been going on?”

  “I humbly apologize,” the embarrassed Moricz replied. “I never took anything before today. This is the first time. My mother sent me here to buy some fat smoked herring the doctor said would be good for her poor health and nerves. But there was no one in the shop to help me and for just a moment I was tempted by all the candy. The good Mr. Kohn certainly understands that my mother is not a wealthy person and she doesn’t have the funds to purchase Turkish delight for me …”

  The shop owner didn’t believe a word of it. A glance at the boy’s clothing was all he needed to see that his family was anything but poor.

  “You’re lying,” the old man said, and pulled him sharply again by the ear. “What’s your name and where do you live? I’m going to tell your father that you’ve been stealing from me.”

  “My father is dead. He was a drunk and he killed himself after losing all his money gambling at cards—”

  The old man pulled his ear again.

  “Ow!… Nathan Spinoza,” Moricz said without a blink. “That’s my name and I live at number 8 Mor Wahrmann Street.”

  Before he released the boy, Hermann Kohn made him empty his pockets. Then he went into the shop and gave his employees a tongue-lashing for leaving it unattended. He wrote a letter to Herr Spinoza at once, not bothering to try to be polite, and sent an employee to carry it to the address Moricz had blurted out under pressure.

  ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE that evening in the Spinoza family. Grandfather told us about it as the three of us were trying to finish Grandmother’s soup—in itself a relatively unappetizing task. He said that the memory of that distant evening was still sharp in his mind, for never had he felt so unjustly accused. The injustice of the charges he had endured as a ten-year-old caused him so much pain, he told us, that even in old age his heart would begin to pound whenever he even thought of it.

  It may be superfluous to add that I’ve forgotten a fair number of details from my grandfather’s story, for that lunch took place more than thirty years ago. But I’m trying to describe it just as I remember it.

  NATHAN—IN OTHER WORDS, my grandfather—was summoned by his scowling father. The boy stood there completely uncomprehending, not moving a muscle as Hermann Kohn’s letter was read out loud to him. Then he was subjected in turn to harsh scoldings and hard slaps, even though he insisted that he hadn’t been anywhere near the delicatessen. He’d spent the whole afternoon in the building with a friend in the apartment on the floor below. His father refused to believe him. He was convinced that the boy was lying. Nathan fell to his knees and begged him to send their servant Vera down to the neighbors to see whether he was lying. His father reluctantly allowed it. Vera came back shortly afterward to report that the classmate’s mother had confirmed Nathan’s alibi. Without the least sign of yielding or regret or reconciliation in his voice, his father ordered him to go to the kitchen, have his meal there, and then go to bed at once.

  It’s natural for a father always to be regarded as the example and model for a boy who’s growing up. Nathan was in awe of his father—a journalist, an advocate for society’s needy children, the very symbol of justice—and he felt deeply betrayed. He withdrew in silence to his room, his heart so deeply aggrieved that he felt his chest would burst.

  MORICZ WAS CALLED IN for an interview. It took awhile for the servant to locate him, because he was hiding beneath his bed.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” his father asked the boy, as he closed the door to the study behind him.

  “I know why, Father,” he replied firmly, “but I have never stolen anything from Kohn’s delicatessen. I swear it on my word of honor.”

  “Moricz, I haven’t said a word about the shop. What makes you think that I was about to accuse you of some theft there?”

  “My intuition, Father.”

  That won him a dozen hard slaps, each one accompanied by the ironic repetition of Moricz’s reply, before his father began with great deliberation to undo his belt. Now facing the prospect of the application of real violence, the boy reconsidered and recalled that perhaps he had forgotten to pay for a handful of Turkish delight that afternoon at Kohn’s delicatessen.

  “Taking candy is stealing, and you have taken a lot of it. It is galling to discover that I have a son who’s a thief. But even worse is the fact that you’re not man enough to own up to your actions. So you blamed your brother for the theft!” his father barked. “Why did you tell Kohn your name was Nathan?”

  “I thought you understood me, Father. It’s easy to explain. It wasn’t because I’m afraid to assume the responsibility for my actions. On the contrary! I’m proud of everything that I do. But sometimes I get a little tired of being Moricz. I want to be someone else.”

  “I WANT TO BE someone else.” Those were the words used by Andrej Scharf, artistic director of the National Theater, when he greeted his new students as he opened the doors to the theater academy. And he added, “You should have only one thought in your heads: I want to be someone else, the character that I am playing.”

  The legendary man of the theater was from Russia. For reasons never revealed to anyone, he settled in Budapest and quickly became known, several years after Moricz was born, for his artistry on the stage and his attractiveness to women. Ladies could not resist him when he recited Pushkin’s love poems with his heavy Russian accent and flattered them in whispers.

  It was no secret in the theater world that Scharf the lady-killer always favored the female students at the theater academy and he recruited most of them for his bed. That’s why many were surprised when it became evident after only a few weeks that Moricz Spinoza stood in his special favor. True, everyone who met the youngster found him unusually charming and appreciated his beguiling personality, and many commented very favorably upon his striking diction and remarkable stage presence. But no one could understand how in the world Scharf—a man with ten sons engendered with just as many women, each of his offspring as neglected by him as the next—had taken such a liking for Moricz. People spoke of a sort of father-and-son connection between them.

  MORICZ ABSOLUTELY THRIVED in the theater, where everything was play and make-believe. He spent every waking hour at the academy, except Saturday morning when according to his own account he attended worship services at the synagogue.

  After a hard day of training and exercises he loved to go down to the cellar, stand before the mirror, and practice various roles while wearing one of the hundreds of costumes stored in the enormous wardrobe down there. Each was more fantastical than the next. The care and the artistic flair of the costumers were beyond compare. The fabrics were hand chosen: ancient woven textiles, heavy brocades, silk and satin, all fabrics that gleamed with class and quality. The nimble team of the National Theater’s costume workshop created haute couture for the stage, of a quality seldom seen.

  THE HAND OF DESTINY guided Scharf one day to a flea market in a neighborhood far from the center of Budapest. He had wandered around for quite a while when at one of the stands he recognized quite by chance the costume that his eldest son, Ervin, had worn several years earlier for his disastrous stage debut as Hamlet. Scharf was certain of it because he had been planning to stage the piece in the near future with Moricz in the leading role, wearing exactly the same costume. It was a simple snug-fitting suit consisting of a jersey and breeches of pliant black suede. The stall owner, a scrawny toothless fellow with breath that stank of cheap red wine, also offered him a pair of pointed suede boots with tight lacing t
hat were part of the costume.

  Scharf called the police and explained in broken Hungarian that the costume and the boots were property of the National Theater. The man must have stolen them. The stall owner earnestly denied it. He said he had inherited the clothing and the boots from his uncle, recently deceased in Transylvania. Another stall owner then inserted himself into the discussion. He said that the man was a thief and a fence of stolen goods, and his young companion turned up every Saturday morning with ten or so costumes, every one a treasure and in all likelihood stolen. The constables took the scrawny shop owner to a nearby police station. Scharf went along.

  In preparation for the hearing, a hulking policeman softened up the peddler with a couple of powerful blows to the stomach and face. This encouraged the man to become extremely cooperative. He told them that all of the garments he sold were goods stolen from the National Theater. When asked how the thefts had been carried out, he said it was as simple as could be. His fellow in crime was a student at the academy who had permission to stay in the downstairs areas where the clothes were stored. Everyone thought that he was practicing various roles, but in fact he was selecting expensive costumes that could easily be sold. Each day he put one or two costumes on beneath his own clothing and calmly left the theater. “What’s your friend’s name?” the policeman asked. Scharf, who was present during the interrogation, didn’t need to wait for the answer from the stall owner. He already knew.

  MORICZ’S CAREER in the theater was promising but short. It ended before it had even begun. But in any case, thanks to his tender age, he avoided going directly from the National Theater to prison.