The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  Kalman spent the night on a park bench. He was awakened by the first beams of the sun that filtered down from behind the Basilica Duomo Nuovo. He discovered immediately that under cover of darkness someone had stolen the bag with all of his clothing that he’d been using as a pillow. He was furious. Eventually he calmed down and resolved not to let the theft spoil the great experiences awaiting him. At last he was going to see and maybe even meet his French hero.

  HE HIKED for an hour and a half to get to the entrance of the famous airfield. The crowd pressed eagerly around the ticket office. Suddenly he was presented with the vision he had been dreaming of for years: For the first time in his life he saw an airplane take off, sail a hundred feet in the air, and then bank toward the grove of trees lining the right side of the airfield. The colors of the Italian flag were painted on the side of the aircraft. It occurred to Kalman that the red, white, and green stripes could just as well symbolize the Hungarian flag. He waved frantically at the airplane and yelled at the top of his lungs. He lost his balance. Never before had he felt such exhilaration. He hurried toward the broad gates as the airplane disappeared toward the horizon. A great mass of humanity was packed there. The men elbowed him and gabbled in foreign languages. When he finally reached the entry, a guard stopped him and demanded his ticket. Entry to the airfield cost five lire. He cursed the bastard who had stolen his wallet, but that did him no good. He couldn’t buy a ticket for the simple reason that his pockets were empty.

  He refused to lose heart, however, and decided there was no need to waste time just standing there. Still outside the enclosure, he began to work his way along the dark fence around the airfield. He had the idea that he might eventually get close to the hangars that way and get a look at the flying machines. After a few minutes of this, he glimpsed signs with the names of the aviators participating in the air show: Calderare, Curtiss, Pégoud, Voisin, Douhet, Fokker, Rusjan, Moore-Brabazon. The machines were positioned in the hangar behind drawn curtains. He sighed in relief when he caught sight of the name on the last sign: Blériot.

  Kalman arrived not a second too soon. An assistant pulled back the curtain and Kalman saw Blériot about to climb into the gold-colored airplane. He saw one mechanic bending over the engine and another stepping forward to grasp the single blade of the propeller. Not far away, three more mechanics stood watching the pilot, wide-eyed and alert. Blériot positioned himself to his satisfaction and then signaled the mechanic to turn the propeller. The motor caught on the third try, and the propeller began to spin. Kalman’s ears seemed to catch the draft from the whirling propeller. Blériot’s plane slowly rolled out of the hangar and disappeared behind a wooden hut in the direction of the airfield. Kalman could no longer see it, but a few minutes later the Frenchman’s plane appeared in the air. It climbed to about a hundred feet and buzzed in a wide circle over the stands, greeted by the joyous shouts of the crowd. Blériot flew out over the field, banked away toward the wooded area, and turned in a lazy circle back toward the airfield. In the course of the following thirty-eight minutes he made four of these circuits. On the fifth tour, out of the sight of the crowd in the stands, the machine began to lose altitude on its approach to the hangars. Kalman stood craning his neck and saw the plane approaching at an altitude of scarcely thirty feet. Dazzled by the sun, he didn’t see Blériot’s airplane lose its right wheel just before it flew overhead. A second later Kalman was sprawled on the ground, his head crushed.

  The winner of the Brescia 1912 grand prize, worth five thousand lire, completed seven circuits and flew a total of seventy-five kilometers in sixty-three minutes and eleven seconds. Louis Blériot received the most enthusiastic applause of all the aviators and was hailed as a hero, less for his expected victory than for the fact, discovered only after he had landed and come to a stop before the grandstand, that his plane had lost its right wheel. The Frenchman’s perfect landing was regarded as an enormous achievement. No one except Blériot knew where the wheel had fallen.

  That afternoon some people walking through the area behind the hangars discovered a young man lying in a pool of blood. They notified the police, who blocked off the area and hustled away the few curious onlookers. A physician soon arrived on the scene and determined that the man, between twenty-two and twenty-five years of age with healthy teeth and an enormous nose, had been killed by an airplane wheel that lay about ten feet away. The doctor closed the eyes of the dead man with the tip of his index finger; they’d obviously been open wide at the moment of his sudden death. The police found it impossible to determine the man’s identity because he was carrying no documents. The only clue they discovered was a label discreetly sewn into his jacket and trousers: Elemér Polgár’s Tailoring for Gentlemen, Váci Street, Budapest.

  LATE THAT EVENING the Brescia police commissioner, Enrico Bussoli, interviewed Louis Blériot about the accident with the lost wheel. The pilot expressed his regret at the death of the young man and said that the tragic event, due to an unforeseeable mechanical failure neither he nor his assistants could be blamed for, had occurred at a most unfortunate time for him and the French nation. His enterprise, Blériot Aéronautique, had a signed contract with the military of his homeland for no fewer than 125 flying machines of the same model. He was concerned that the fatal accident had the potential to call the deal into question or block it entirely, significantly prejudicing France’s vital air defense. He looked deep into Bussoli’s eyes and said quietly, almost in a whisper, that since the victim was a foreigner of unknown identity, perhaps an individual with a criminal history although, granted, he had apparently done nothing illegal—but considering that he was lurking around the hangars where he had no business to be, one could assume that he was up to no good—and since no one had reported him missing, perhaps the best thing to do instead of engaging in long months of fruitless investigation would be to take the case out of the files and quietly lose the documents somewhere in the back of the commissioner’s desk drawers. This would certainly lighten the work load of the Lombardy police force and free them to devote themselves to solving crimes more serious than an innocent accident caused by a screw shaken loose by the vibration of the airframe. The police commissioner’s face took on a thoughtful look. Blériot indicated after a short pause that he was quite ready to compensate Signor Bussoli generously for his cooperation. Demonstrating Italy’s renowned hospitality, the police commissioner accepted the Frenchman’s suggestion and promised to put an end to all journalistic inquiries concerning the identity of the unknown victim. The gentlemen shook hands on the deal and went off to a nearby trattoria to discuss the details over a couple of glasses of grappa.

  Three days later, since no one had reported the dead man as missing, the body was transferred by night to the Cimitero Vantiniano and placed in an unmarked grave. Kalman received neither burial rites nor gravestone.

  His worried friends met at Feral, Kalman’s favorite tavern. Two weeks had gone by since he left and none of them had heard anything from him. This was unlike Kalman. Perhaps he had gotten a job with Blériot. Or met a woman. Maybe he had fallen ill. What should they do? The teachers had begun to ask after Kalman. After a long discussion and a fair number of bottles of the local Riesling, they decided to call on the rector the following day and tell him Kalman had gone to Brescia.

  In mid-October Bernhard received an official letter with the elegant emblem of the Hungarian Royal Maritime Academy in the upper left corner of the envelope. Suspecting nothing, he opened the letter and was surprised to see the rector’s signature. He carefully read the short text informing him that Kalman had been absent from classes for more than a month without permission. The official of the Maritime Academy responsible for discipline had decided in accordance with the prevailing statutes of the royal institution to dismiss Kalman, effective immediately. The decision was final and without recourse to appeal.

  The letter astonished Bernhard. He thought it over and realized that in fact he had heard nothing from his youngest son s
ince early September. Something must have happened. He began to suspect something was amiss and decided to go to Fiume.

  His stay was brief; he remained for only two days. Neither his visit to Kalman’s landlady nor his meeting with the rector of the Maritime Academy gave him any clue about his son’s activities in recent months. He got a bit more out of Kalman’s friends. They were obviously distressed. One chewed on his lower lip and another wrung his hands as they recounted the discussions preceding Kalman’s trip to see the air show. Bernhard went to the police station to report his son as missing before he took the train to Brescia.

  In Brescia he had a long discussion at the hotel where Kalman was supposed to have stayed, but nothing indicated that the young man had ever arrived. He questioned the employees of all the hotels and trattorias in the center of the city and heard the same thing, the story he would hear many more times: No one could recall having seen or met Kalman. Nor did his call upon the police turn anything up. Commissioner Bussoli proved to be the very soul of friendliness and told him with elaborate courtesy that tens of thousands of people had visited the September air show, a well-run affair staged without incident. He suggested that an ardent young fellow, as he imagined Kalman to be, might well have been struck by Cupid’s arrow while sitting on the train sitting opposite some dark beauty. Perhaps he had followed a signorina off the train and was now, heedless of the rest of the world, enjoying his conquest. Bussoli predicted that the prodigal son would turn up any day now. His father could look forward to an affectionate reunion.

  The police commissioner’s theory that Kalman had simply fallen in love and lost his head sounded suspiciously pat and didn’t reassure Bernhard. Not at all. Bussoli’s spiel left a bitter taste in his mouth. Nathan had rushed away from home in anger and turned his back on his family because of a housemaid. But Kalman was not like his brother; he would never vanish without a word.

  DURING THE YEAR after Kalman’s disappearance, Bernhard never gave up hope of locating him. He left no stone unturned and pulled every string available to him, but all in vain. The search for his son took up most of his time, and he aged prematurely; the dynamic newspaperman became a tired old man. He wrote almost nothing for Pester Lloyd anymore and found it increasingly difficult to keep up with contemporary events. He completely lost his earlier fascination for the obscure intrigues of society and the politics of the double monarchy, although growing nationalistic sentiment and insistent demands for secession made these more disquieting than ever. Becoming openly sentimental, something no one could have accused him of before, he sank into deep melancholy. He felt helpless, and it pained him beyond measure that he had lost contact with all of his children. The last he had heard of his black-sheep eldest son, Moricz, was that the young man was somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic, wanted by the Chicago police for serious fraud. Nathan was studying mathematics at the university in the German city of Erlangen, that much he knew, but all of the many, many letters he had sent to Nathan were returned unopened. As for Kalman, Bernhard felt a suppressed but distinct anxiety that he would never see him again.

  Bernhard opened Benjamin’s book, The Elixir of Immortality, in search of consolation. He had read it many times, but he’d always skipped over certain passages. He’d never found any reason to study the chapter on the history of the family that described a succession of future events the philosopher had sketched out in fragmentary fashion several hundred years before. During his sleepless nights Bernhard heard those voices from the past, the murmuring of his forefathers and their sighs of disappointment at life’s cruelties. Only now did he realize what a rich treasure of love, devotion, belief in God, and human dignity he had lost by turning away from his family and its past, neglecting the world that had meant everything to the Spinozas.

  Benjamin writes of a noble author so intent on improving the world that he completely forgets his family. Bernhard was pained to recognize himself in that passage. For a time he tried to make sense of the mixing of the blue blood of the Biederstern princes and the blood of Arabella Braun; he even turned to the study of Gregor Mendel’s research on genetics, a fascinating subject, because he wanted to find a way to convince himself there might be some other explanation for the loss of his sons. It was no use; he was forced to conclude that although inheritance is a significant factor, neither chance nor events at birth or in childhood, nor even developments in society at large, played more of a role in shaping the relationships between him and his sons than his own shortcomings and absence from their lives.

  Benjamin’s chapter on the schools of thought of the ancient Greeks and their customs contains a passage that haunted him:

  The ancient Greeks had a custom that merits our attention: for those who perished in fire, those engulfed by volcanoes, and those buried by lava, those torn apart by wild beasts or devoured by sharks, the populace of their native city would construct what they called cenotaphs or empty graves. For bodies are fire, water, or earth and the spirit is Alpha and Omega; these are the things for which one should erect a memorial.

  One year to the day after Kalman had boarded the train in Fiume on his way to Brescia, Bernhard had a stone placed over the empty grave he had acquired in the Jewish cemetery. Engraved in the stone were three words: Kalman Spinoza—missing. Bernhard stood next to the empty grave for a long time, totally alone, his hands clenched, struggling to contain his tears.

  I am the last of the Spinozas. Our lineage could very well have escaped dying out, but I have put no child into this world. I’ve never had any woman, not from a lack of interest in the opposite sex but because I’ve never been able to love anyone truthfully and sincerely. I’m lying in a hospital in Oslo, my body is riven with cancer, and soon the long saga of our family will reach its well-deserved end. Now, at the very end of my life, these memories come crowding forth. All the memories I thought had faded, slipped away, and disappeared in time have invigorated themselves; they live their own lives and the past comes burgeoning forth, our past so charged with meaning. I am devoting all the time and energy left to me to the attempt to keep previous generations from disappearing without a trace. I write down everything that comes into my head. It may be that these words of mine will serve as a cenotaph, an empty grave for the Spinoza line. Our bodies are perishable but our souls emerge suddenly from eternity, and I’m trying to raise a memorial over them.

  ONE PASSOVER EVENING when Nathan asked why they’d never had a family reunion, Bernhard told his sons that their aunt was married to a dull-witted Catholic peasant of no interest to anyone, and their uncle living in a grand palace in Vienna had deceived his siblings and made off with the fortune left by their grandfather. This was a clear demonstration of Nikolaus’s wickedness and the reason Bernhard wanted nothing to do with him; this was why the children had almost never met their relatives.

  The memory of that remark came unsought to Nathan as he stood outside the door just after he had seen his father plunging himself into Marika. He didn’t think twice. He decided to go to Vienna—not to visit his aunt in the countryside but instead to look up his uncle. For the time being he simply couldn’t think of any better way to revenge himself on his father than to ask Nikolaus for financial help to establish his own independence.

  Nikolaus received Nathan at once and embraced him with delight. He stood there for a time, looking at him, examining and noting similarities and differences. He said that it had grieved him all these years not to be allowed to get to know his nephews. He wished nothing better than to change the situation and reunite the family. Nathan felt unexpected relief at the warm welcome. A smile, the first smile since he came upon his father with Marika, appeared on his face. Nikolaus conducted him to an elegantly furnished salon and offered him a glass of dry sherry. As they sipped the amontillado he commented that in his opinion Bernhard had gone much too far when he cut all contact with him because of an unfortunate misunderstanding. Nikolaus said he was certain that Nathan was a reasonable young man capable of working out th
e difference between what he’d been told and what he could see with his own eyes. Nikolaus was pleased that the son of his favorite brother had come to him and now they could get to know each other.

  Nathan stayed in Vienna with his uncle throughout the summer. Those five months were the happiest time of his youth. Nikolaus’s family lived a completely different life from that he’d known in Budapest. They were incredibly wealthy, of course, and they lived like royalty. They had tennis courts and swimming pools; they went skiing in the Alps in the winter and sailing in the Mediterranean in the summer; they traveled regularly to Paris to shop for clothes; and several times a week they hosted superbly prepared dinners for prominent guests. They had great expectations of their lives and great demands. All this quite bedazzled Nathan at first, but before long he became part of it, oiling and parting his hair, dressing himself in tailored suits, appreciating and enjoying their dolce vita. Nikolaus spoiled him with expensive presents, including the gold Doxa pocket watch we boys later dreamed of inheriting one day, and took him to fashionable salons where Nathan was introduced to young beauties from aristocratic families. That spectacular world gave him a lifelong taste for elegance and fine clothing. He got along famously with the ruling class that his father had criticized in his articles for years. He considered his uncle a great man, nothing like the malicious portrait drawn by his father. Four decades later when he was in the process of rotting away in a communist jail, he blushed at the thought of how blind he’d been. It was many years before he understood the reason for the exaggerated generosity of his shameless, duplicitous paternal uncle.