The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  Jakob had to act quickly to stop the spread of contagion and the flood of rumors provoked by the priest. The doctor had told him that the cramped quarters and filth of the workers’ houses were fertile grounds for tuberculosis. Without delaying to consult Rudolf, Jakob used a portion of the estate’s profits to improve the living conditions of the workers. He ordered old houses torn down and new ones built. He also had a clinic and a school constructed.

  THE WORKERS STARED at Jakob with distress and sympathy when they heard that Chiara had fallen ill. For several weeks the family had heard the sound of stifled coughing in her room. At night she lay bathed in sweat under Eleonora’s care. The physician was unable to cure her tuberculosis; she was beyond all help, and he could offer her only a few words of comfort. He told Jakob she might not survive until the spring.

  THE CHILDREN called her Grossmutti. They adored the stories she would tell them. Every Friday evening Chiara would recount a passage from Mesillat Jesharim (The Way of the Righteous), the best-known work of her grandfather Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, written in the form of a debate between a wise Jew and a pious Jew. Three days before she passed away, on the last Shabbat she celebrated with the family, she told them of a dark prophecy about an enemy of Israel who would threaten the entire people. He would inflict upon the Jews a defeat from which they would not recover for thousands of years. His name would be … Chiara fell silent and stared absently into space. Jakob, Eleonora, and the children regarded her with eyes open wide and waited for the name. But it became obvious that she could no longer remember it.

  “Children,” she said in a heavy earnest voice after a few moments of silence, “you have no idea how privileged you are to live in a time and place where nothing is threatening you. Your forefathers did not enjoy the same good fortune, and I fear that our descendants may face something infinitely more terrible.”

  “Grossmutti,” said fourteen-year-old Bernhard, taking the floor, “it sounds like you’ve forgotten the name of the terrible fiend. But do you remember the rest of the story? What should we do to defeat him?”

  “I do not know,” Chiara replied. “I do not know. I have never attempted to pry into God’s mysteries.”

  CHIARA’S SOUL had scarcely departed toward its heaven than Clementina followed. She died in her sleep. The castle maids whispered that her heart had broken because the loss of her friend was too much for her.

  Rudolf was at first bewildered when he heard of his mother’s death. His grief exploded minutes later in a fierce tirade against a servant who hadn’t foreseen that he would need a bottle of red wine that early morning to wash down the news.

  SOLOMON’S HEART ATTACK at least made it possible for Jakob to carry out one of Chiara’s two last wishes. During the final two years of his life the patriarch of the Rothschild family was no longer the decisive and commercially astute man who had driven Jakob out of the bank only a decade earlier. His uncertain health kept him from putting the last touches on a huge loan to no less a client that the emperor of Austria. Since none of his brothers could handle the matter, the family council voted to call Jakob in. He gave them one condition and emphasized that it was not negotiable: Chiara must be interred in the same grave with Amschel and Angela. The family council didn’t comment or protest. They accepted his demand.

  ———

  CHIARA’S SECOND WISH could not be fulfilled, however, principally because of bureaucratic obstacles. She wanted her heart to be placed in Nicolas’s coffin at the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris.

  SHORTLY AFTER THE DEATHS of Chiara and Clementina something wholly unexpected and quite remarkable occurred at Biederhof. One spring morning a wagon arrived carrying a shabby man and a twelve-year-old girl with long black hair. The man insisted on speaking to Prince Biederstern. Rudolf was in a meeting with Jakob when the liveried servant reported that a short, thin, unshaven, ill-clad stranger with a young girl trailing behind him was asking to meet him. Rudolf replied that the man should wait in the salon and told the servant to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t steal anything. He then turned back to listen to the manager’s careful review of the financial situation of the estate. By the time the meeting was over, he had completely forgotten the visitor. He had a lengthy luncheon; drowsy after a couple of glasses of white wine, he lay down for a nap. When he awoke that afternoon the servant informed him that the visitor had begun to show some signs of impatience after waiting for five hours and was again asking to see the prince. Rudolf was in no hurry, however, for he had no idea that the meeting was to be one of the most important in his life. Another two hours went by before he was ready to receive the man.

  “Your Highness,” the visitor said, “it is a great honor for me finally to meet the prince. I have heard so much about him and for years I’ve tried to imagine what it might be like to be with him here in his castle—”

  “Be so kind as to go directly to the matter at hand,” Rudolf interrupted him impatiently. He stood there haughty and erect, certain that the shabby man with the dirty child was a beggar, and it was therefore entirely appropriate to address the individual with condescension. A chilly mood pervaded the salon. “I am busy, man. I have no time for flattery. Why are you here? What do you and your daughter want of me?”

  “No, Your Highness, I am not asking for anything from you, just the opposite, in fact. I’ve come to give you something.” He pointed to the child. “Ariadne is not my daughter. She is Your Highness’s own flesh and blood. I’m here to deliver her to you. My name is Alois Braun. When Ariadne was born, my sister Arabella asked me and my wife to take her in. I’ll never forget Arabella’s desperation when she had to give up her only child. But she had no choice. She had no way of taking care of the girl. We promised to bring Ariadne up, and we have. But now my wife is dead and I have many children and nothing to feed them with. Ariadne can’t live with us any longer. No one can blame me, for I have only a small house and many mouths to feed. I have no prospects and nothing to give her. But God exists, and he always holds his sheltering hand over princes. The prince’s daughter will thrive here in his house. Ariadne is a thoroughly charming girl and the prince will come to appreciate her.”

  Rudolf was no longer listening to the man; he was looking at the girl. She stood there with her head bowed, trying to hide her face behind the heavy curtain of hair.

  “You there, look up,” Rudolf said peremptorily. “I want to see your face. I must see if I can find any trace of the Biederstern features. How else can I know if you belong to me? Your mother was hardly a Madonna.”

  “Ariadne’s always on her guard when she meets folk she doesn’t know,” the man sought to excuse her. “Your Grace will kindly forgive her if she keeps her eyes down. It’s because she can’t see anything. She was born blind. My sister infected her with the syphilis.”

  Rudolf approached the girl, lifted her chin, and pushed aside her hair to see her features. Ariadne was the very picture of his own recently deceased mother. The blood drained from his face. The shock of discovering that he had a daughter left him speechless. He was obliged to sit down.

  RUDOLF COULD HARDLY BEAR all the memories of Arabella reawakened by his daughter, whose foul temper soon pitched him into the abyss of premature old age. When Ariadne arrived at Biederhof he was not quite forty years old; a few months later he looked to be sixty. At first the servants were the only ones who whispered that the prince had aged in an abnormal but fully deserved manner. But soon it became common knowledge on the estate that the blind daughter had caused the master of the castle so many woes that in six months he had aged at least ten years.

  ARIADNE WAS TO ALL APPEARANCES an exact copy of Clementina, but she had inherited her temperament from her mother and father. She tormented Rudolf with constant outbursts of ill temper. He often reacted with such a fury of his own that one might have imagined he intended to kill her. One day, things went so far that he snatched up a heavy hunting rifle and held it fully cocked only a few feet from the girl’s he
ad. She couldn’t see what he was doing, of course, but a servant desperately shouted, “Don’t shoot, Your Grace, for God’s sake, she’s your own daughter!” When Rudolf heard this, his anger subsided and he closed his eyes. Once he had fully calmed down, he had a vision of himself as a little boy in short pants and remembered the way he had carried on during his worst tantrums. The agonized faces of his mother and father rose before him. The thought crossed his mind that now he was being repaid with interest for everything he had done to his poor parents.

  ARIADNE HAD BEEN AT BIEDERHOF for six months. She was deeply homesick. She yearned for the Brigittenau neighborhood—not for the poverty and hunger of it and especially not for Uncle Alois, the tyrant, but instead for her cousins and everything else she knew and loved. The castle was an enormous prison to her. She was never allowed to leave it by herself. She felt enclosed, encircled, and isolated. It was suffocating her. She hated Biederhof. The castle itself was her enemy. Here she was a cipher, a stranger. She never met anyone but her father. She despised him, not only because he’d neglected her when she was small, but also because he was selfish and stern, a man with no love or conviction behind his authority; all he had to offer were empty threats worthy only of contempt. She also hated the servants. They padded about behind her back, whispered, tittered, and told lies about her. It was clear that the miseries of her heart mattered to no one. She always felt helpless, incensed, and ready to weep. She could scarcely contain her pain and anger. Isolation almost paralyzed her. She wanted to die, to go to sleep and never wake up. She was shrouded in mournful silence. She felt betrayed. No one cared about her, no one wanted to share her secrets and passions, no one listened to her or paid any attention to her standing there with her eyes so dark and empty.

  JAKOB’S DAYS were filled with work. His responsibilities for Biederhof and, after Solomon’s death, for the Viennese affairs of the Rothschild bank required almost superhuman effort. During the four months spent helping Prince Thurn und Taxis sell the postal network to the German state he had never slept more than three hours a night. But no one ever heard him complain, not even at the fact that the time spent at his desk had bent his spine even more. Or that the meticulous examination of the fine points of all the contracts, promissory notes, reports, and statements of accounts had caused his vision to deteriorate. Perhaps his regular reading of The Elixir of Immortality helped restored his spirits. Night after night with no trace of fatigue he explored Benjamin’s work, pondering every detail, no matter how apparently insignificant, for he knew that each piece could later be of value in understanding the whole.

  THE SPINOZA FAMILY invited Rudolf to celebrate New Year’s Eve. This was a first. He had never before set foot in their house next to the castle. Even though the general tenor of relations between Rudolf and Jakob was good, in fact almost friendly, they had never met except on business. But whenever Rudolf needed help he could always count on Jakob. It was Jakob’s firm belief that one should greet everyone with a warm smile, believe the best of people, and always offer a helping hand. That was why Jakob invited his employer and Ariadne to dinner, an initiative quite unprecedented at the time. He did it for the girl’s sake. Jakob and Eleonora pitied the blind child who seemed so lonely in the castle.

  The house was full of shrieking children and uninhibited glee. After dinner Jakob led the family in group song, singing with great feeling although with a hoarse voice. No one heard the clock strike twelve in the general hubbub. It was twenty minutes after midnight when they became aware of the oversight and boisterously exchanged wishes for a happy New Year.

  Rudolf and Ariadne walked slowly and silently back to the castle through the chill of the night. He had a headache, for it had been an evening of more human company than he was used to. She felt happier than she had been for a long time. At last she had made some friends.

  RUDOLF TURNED to Jakob for help and counsel. His face was pasty white and he had suffered through many sleepless nights. He said that he desperately needed a confidant, someone with a paternal air, someone he could discuss things with. He admitted that it was difficult for him to turn to Jakob and open his heart. He had never before done such a thing. But perhaps a man-to-man talk would help, since he needed practical advice. He didn’t expect Jakob to understand him entirely, since Jakob was a man who loved his own children, a man who saw them as a blessing, while he himself suffered under the burdens of fatherhood. Ariadne was so fearful and rebellious, even though she was blind, that whenever they were in the same room for more than a few minutes, they started quarreling. Life with her was unbearable, for she was worse than her mother ever had been. She was so malicious and imaginative as she defied him and stirred up trouble that she needed sterner discipline than he was capable of imposing. Rudolf confessed that he despised himself for his weakness, but it was terrifyingly clear to him that he could no longer endure the presence of Ariadne in the castle. He was afraid that one day he would lose all control and physically harm the girl. What should he do? Ariadne was his daughter, after all, and his only relative. He could not stand the girl, but he was tormented by the thought of losing her.

  Jakob sat silent for a long moment. Then, without hesitating or mincing words, he suggested that Ariadne move in with his family. He believed the girl needed friends, other children to play with. Rudolf acknowledged that Jakob was probably right, for since New Year’s Eve she had been pleading every day to be allowed to play with the Spinoza children again, threatening that if he refused, she would smash every window in the castle.

  With that, everything was settled. Rudolf told a servant to have the chambermaids pack up Ariadne’s belongings.

  ARIADNE LOVED living with Jakob and Eleonora. She played with the youngest children, Andreas and Claudia, who saw her as a big sister, and she studied alongside Nikolaus, her contemporary. But Bernhard, the eldest boy, was the one closest to her. She received a great deal of attention and felt that they regarded her as a member of the family. She demonstrated more devotion to Eleonora and Jakob than she had ever shown to her stepmother and stepfather, and she called Andreas and Claudia her “little brother and sister.” A few years later she even adopted the family’s name and bore it proudly and happily until her all too untimely death.

  MY GREAT-UNCLE did not like Franz Josef. He was of the opinion that the Kaiser had robbed him of several years of his youth. He told us how after the battle at Solferino in northern Italy in 1859 revealed Austria’s weakness, Franz Josef was forced to give up possession of Lombardy. The defeats in the war with Prussia led by steps to the loss of Venice and the expulsion of the Habsburgs from Germany. The emperor was obliged to change his approach. At the insistence of his wife, Sissi, he set himself resolutely to work, applying his usual cunning to maintaining a political balance. He made peace with the Hungarians, and had himself crowned king of Hungary in a ceremony in Budapest. In the new alliance of Austria and Hungary, known as the double monarchy, the Austrians and the Hungarians ruled their respective domains and jointly dominated other peoples.

  Securing his title as Royal and Imperial Majesty was a costly affair. The Ausgleich (“Compromise” or “Reconciliation”) of 1867 almost emptied the state coffers in Vienna. The financial situation eventually became so difficult that Franz Josef was obliged to humble himself to the extent of inviting potential creditors to tea at the Hofburg.

  It’s no easy job, my great-uncle commented, to rule as absolute monarch over a population of fifty million souls.

  FRANZ JOSEF almost lost his cigar when Jakob came in, for His Majesty’s imperial and royal jaw dropped at the sight of the Jew’s incredibly large nose. The emperor had never seen anything like it. He was on the verge of bursting into laughter.

  Jakob had encountered this same reaction many times before. He said, “The nose comes from my grandfather, Nicolas Spinoza. But His Majesty need not be alarmed, for my ancestor’s revolutionary blood does not flow through my veins. I am greatly honored to be here, and I can assure His Majesty that
I do not come with any thoughts of chopping off heads. I humbly desire to serve my emperor and do everything I can to exalt his standing and that of the empire.”

  That impromptu speech impressed Franz Josef. He heartily approved of Jakob’s sentiments. He answered in a bantering tone, “If you serve your emperor well, you may well receive a title. If you displease your sovereign by God’s grace, you will spend ten years in a solitary prison cell. That does indeed constitute a sort of sinecure, compared to decapitation by the guillotine, your grandfather’s fate. This all goes to prove that we Habsburgs are more humane than French revolutionaries.”

  Both smiled. It was the beginning of a long friendship.

  FRANZ JOSEF’S LIFE was marked by many sorrows. His brother Maximilian, the emperor of Mexico, was deposed and executed by a firing squad of his ungrateful subjects. His only son, Rudolf, committed suicide in mysterious circumstances. His sister Valentina perished in a fire in Paris. His wife, Sissi, was stabbed to death with a sharpened file by an Italian anarchist. His presumptive successor, Franz Ferdinand, was shot to death by a Serbian nationalist.

  A day eventually came when the emperor lost his desire to live. For two weeks he had locked himself away in his bedroom, not saying a word to anyone. My great-uncle told us that by then the emperor was contemplating suicide. He ordered a servant to bring him a thick rope, but the thought of hanging from a chandelier with his legs dangling gave him a headache. He began to suffer cold sweats and his stomach twisted into a knot. There had to be some other way, but he didn’t know which method would be the surest and the least painful. The situation was further complicated by the fact that he could not seek counsel from any of his ministers. Who could help him? Whom did he dare trust? He had Jakob summoned and opened his heart to him. Jakob pondered for a couple of minutes and then offered a suggestion. He told the Kaiser he owned a book of Talmudic wisdom that held the answer to every question. He promised to return quickly and went to his residence. Life is more important than anything else, he thought, and so he did something he knew was absolutely forbidden. To free his friend from the dark imaginings tormenting the imperial and royal brain, Jakob carried Benjamin’s secret book, The Elixir of Immortality, to the Hofburg and read selected passages aloud. He went so far as to allow Franz Josef to look through the book.