The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  IN AUTUMN Nathan returned to his study of mathematics, although not in Budapest. He didn’t want to go back there.

  His last memory of Eötvös Loránd University was Emanuel Lasker’s lecture, and he remembered the grand master’s passing comment that the most important mathematical research in Germany was being done by a young woman in Erlangen. Nathan had stupidly forgotten her name. But he had no desire to start something new, so he applied to the mathematics faculty of the university in that idyllic setting in a small town in northern Bavaria.

  Emmy Noether—Nathan had never met anyone like that young Jewish woman. The daughter of a well-known mathematician, she was only a few years older than he was. At that time women generally did not have access to advanced studies, but she managed to write a groundbreaking doctoral thesis only shortly after her twenty-fifth birthday. Albert Einstein was among those who later praised her achievements, for he relied heavily on Emmy’s analysis while working out his general theory of relativity. Researchers in particle physics considered her divinely gifted, and in the world of mathematics she was seen as one of the most promising talents to emerge in decades.

  Many years later as Nathan looked back over his life, he commented that if Emmy hadn’t been heedless of her appearance and so unattractive—nearsighted, big-nosed, with a flat chest and a high forehead—he would certainly have fallen in love with her. Already at their first meeting he sensed the immense power she radiated, a power that intimidated opponents of feminine attendance at the university and made older professors quake in her presence. But the students treasured the lectures that she delivered for seven years without pay because women were officially barred from teaching at German universities.

  Emmy and Nathan were not meant for each other, but they established a friendship that grew ever deeper as time passed. During their three years of collaboration on the analysis of algebraic invariants, he often turned to her in hopes of finding guidance in all sorts of important matters, for he was convinced that she knew how to deal with almost anything.

  Mathematics was holy for Emmy, and she recognized that she was devoting her life to its research. She once told Nathan she’d thought of teaching languages before she discovered that the logical world of mathematics stood wide open to her. She could enter it anytime to rummage around and put things in impeccable order, while the rest of life was marred by chaos, governed by chance, and, in particular, ruled by men. She knew that as a woman she had absolutely no influence over them. Truth has a face, she said, but it has nothing in common with the reality that we human beings in our blundering errors see around us; truth has to be searched out in the structure of the world. She did not make any secret of her contempt for money or her antipathy for the reactionary Bavarian upper class with its deep disdain for women, Jews, homosexuals, and workers. Emmy had a deep abiding faith in the future, even though she was aware that a very long time would have to pass before the individual realized that his egotism must be subordinated to the welfare of collective society. Her views had a lasting impression on Nathan.

  ONE DAY HE RECEIVED a letter from the legal offices of Gottfried & Gottlieb in Budapest. They informed Nathan that his father, Bernhard Spinoza, had succumbed to a heart attack and he was to contact the executor of the estate as soon as possible, preferably in person. Nathan had no feeling of loss; if anything, he was indifferent. He tried to imagine the death of his father. All he could see was the man’s erect penis plunging into Marika’s sex, and all he could hear was her inciting him with an excited voice, “Continue. More. I’m yours. Do with me what you will.” He had a vision in which his father, sweating and panting as he stood up, squealed in pain, grabbed his chest, and collapsed headlong over Marika’s naked body.

  The attorney, Géza Gottlieb, told Nathan that a neighbor had found his father lying in the staircase between the fourth and fifth floors. The elevator had been out of order all day, and tenants had been advised to use the stairs. This had obviously been too stressful for him, and his heart could not take it. He was conscious the whole time. As he was being transported to the nearest hospital, he complained of chest pains. An experienced physician examined him and was preparing an injection. Just then Bernhard began bellowing in excitement, his face turned white, he gasped for breath, and he suffered a heart attack. Five minutes later he was dead.

  Since Bernhard had not left a will and Nathan was the only one of the sons the attorney as executor of the estate had managed to contact, he was deemed to be the principal heir and was therefore entitled to take possession of the household, all the movable property, and the contents of the deceased’s bank accounts.

  Nathan was aware of the existence of The Elixir of Immortality. His elder brother had told him of it some years earlier. They’d met at the Café Gerbeaud at Moricz’s suggestion. Nathan hadn’t seen his brother for a long time and was confused when Moricz didn’t come alone but instead arrived in the company of an Austrian acquaintance, someone he’d recently met through their cousin Mathäus Frombichler. The man’s name was Adi and he had an odd, chilly air about him. Nathan instinctively distrusted him. Moricz recapitulated briefly for him what he’d been up to in recent years. Nathan was surprised at the changes in Moricz. His charm had utterly disappeared, as had his inimitable, captivating volubility. He showed no interest in Nathan’s life and doings. He said he’d lived in Chicago for a while, but because the FBI had a warrant for his arrest in connection with a few minor oversights, he’d found it advisible to leave the United States. He’d been working as a Presbyterian missionary in Toronto when the Canadian immigration authorities had gotten on his case and made his life unbearable. So he came back to Europe. Of course Nathan understood that his brother hadn’t been involved in innocent fun and games in North America, but he said nothing; he simply smiled to himself. For the time being Moricz was living in Vienna. There through the good offices of Frombichler the news of his father’s death a few years earlier had come to his attention. He told Nathan about Benjamin’s book, suddenly becoming much more animated—how he had come across it by chance many years earlier, hidden in a secret drawer on the bottom right side of their father’s desk. He said that the book, which existed only in that single copy, contained many prophecies and wisdom older than time, all of it incomprehensible to him, along with the history of the family. According to tradition, he said, stressing each word, it was handed down through the family to the eldest son of each generation. He’d come to Budapest to claim it, since it belonged to him now. Adi and he were planning to sell the book to some German aristocrat with a lot of money and secret Jewish origins. Nathan sat there depressed by all this as the other two discussed how much money the treasure might fetch. Moricz was almost beside himself with the happy anticipation of collecting more than a hundred thousand marks if they—as Adi expressed it—had luck on their side and got the right sort of collector on the hook. Nathan realized that he must at any cost keep The Elixir of Immortality from winding up in the hands of his erratic brother and Moricz’s unpleasant friend. He told Moricz to come pick up the book at his house the following day at lunchtime. He bowed his head and studied his fingernails as he waited for their reaction. Naturally he was relieved when his brother accepted the offer without question and didn’t insist on setting off to collect the book right away. Nathan excused himself with the pretext that he had a doctor’s appointment, which was in fact a little white lie. He got up and quickly went home to locate the book and put it some secure place.

  WHEN I WAKE UP early in the morning, most of the time just before dawn, I feel myself getting weaker, and I sense that my time is running out. In my darkest hours I tell myself that I won’t be able to finish what I’ve started here. That is a terrible thought, but hardly unexpected, for I’ve failed at everything I’ve ever undertaken. I’m pleading now with whatever powers may exist not to let me fail this last time. The fingers of my left hand have been paralyzed since the morning of the day before yesterday, because now the tumors have attacked that
arm. I still have a functioning right index finger, however, that I can stretch out to snare and reel in all the loose threads of this tattered fabric.

  MORICZ AND ADI were white with rage when they discovered that the hidden compartment in the desk was empty. Moricz shouted that Nathan was the mangy dog who’d stolen the book, and Adi threatened him with a pistol. Nathan’s heart contracted with terror as he entreated Adi to put away his weapon and assured them that he’d never heard a word about the book, much less seen it. He suggested that they search the apartment, since it was inconceivable that their father would have removed it. Moricz and Adi needed no encouragement. They set to work at once, methodically examining everything in the house, opening every cabinet, pulling out drawers and dumping the contents on the floor. Over the course of six hours they thoroughly searched every nook and cranny, turned every room upside down, and intently went through every single book on every shelf, all without finding The Elixir of Immortality. Both were dizzy with fatigue. Nathan asked for help in putting the apartment back together, and Moricz burst out in a resounding roar of laughter, turned toward Adi, and brayed, “Didn’t I warn you my brother was a comedian?” They left the apartment, vowing to come back the next day at the same time. Nathan slept fitfully that night and woke with a jerk at about three in the morning, soaked in sweat, with the sensation that an iron hand was squeezing his heart. When they next appeared, Adi carried himself in an aggressively threatening manner, waved his pistol several more times, and made a solemn vow to come back to Budapest some day, if necessary with a whole army of men ready to work themselves to death to find the Jew book. Moricz was swearing in Hungarian and German and cursing their father. Nathan was at a loss afterward to understand how he had managed to find the strength to conceal the book and not give himself away.

  IT WOULD BE NO EXAGGERATION to say that Moricz’s behavior stimulated Nathan to study The Elixir of Immortality in depth. The book’s magical world, its subtleties, its brilliantly ingenious analysis, its beautiful use of language, and, not least, the epic adventure described in it all made a profound impression on him. As he read the history of his lineage, his heart swelled with pride that for centuries and centuries his family name had been borne by men significant in the evolution of Europe, even though they were unaware at the time that they constituted a relatively important part of God’s great plan. He still frowned sometimes in disappointment at the book’s failure to offer a clear account of how his ancestors felt and reacted and how they were affected by their pleasures and joys, the closeness of families and communities, duties and achievements, dreams and dashed hopes, in all their terrible vulnerability. Nathan wanted guidance for a world marked by the triumphs of violence: trenches on battlefields, grenades, poison-gas attacks, strife of man against man, suffering, and death. Books were of little value to him unless they served as signposts pointing toward the future and describing the new era awaiting humanity after the great wars ended. As he read Benjamin’s book, he realized that the Spinozas had always valued the past above everything else. And the more he thought about it, the clearer it became to him that the future—not just his own future but that of everyone else—was far more important. He asked himself what could bring the greatest good to the greatest number. Peace, social justice, technological progress, and respect for human dignity were all part of the answer. His reflections led him to the form of society that offered the masses the promise and hope of all of those: socialism.

  It would take many years for him to realize that the truth was a little more complicated than that.

  While the war with its voracious appetite devoured millions of young men on its fronts, Nathan sat safe and sound in Budapest within the walls of his childhood home and found himself terribly bored in his isolation. Since the collapse of the empire of the czar in February 1917, he had been hoping that the Bolsheviks would storm onto the scene of history and lead the people to decisive victory. But not until November did the guns of the battle cruiser Aurora boom out over Petrograd with the message that the time had come for Lenin’s Soviets to take power in the land. Nathan began to imagine thrilling developments: The events in the East would be the spark that set all of Europe and especially Hungary blazing with the prairie fires of revolution. But more than that—most of all—he was dreaming of something else entirely, for when he woke up in the morning he had nobody to wish him good morning and when he went to bed at night there was no one to kiss him good night. He dreamed of a woman to share his lonely days.

  The people called them “love boats,” with just a touch of irony, and they were immensely popular at the end of the war and during the years that followed. The cruises went out on Sundays, north toward the picturesque villages of Szentendre, Visegrád, and Esztergom, and when the weather was good, these pleasure trips offered beautiful views of Budapest and its leafy environs. Most of those on these boat trips were returned soldiers and young women who had lost fiancés in the war. Most of them bought their tickets not in search of love, the true opium of the people, but in the hope of whatever pleasure they could find. Chance encounters brought together the son of a professor and a scrubwoman’s daughter, a devout Catholic welder and a Protestant flower girl, a young man of the lesser nobility who had lost his arm at the Italian front and a nearsighted converted Jewess. And Nathan and Sara. But I suspect that Grandfather and Grandmother realized from the very first instant—he with delight and she with sorrow—that despite their differences and their contrary views of the world, they were meant for each other.

  AS A CHILD I loved to play with my grandmother’s sewing machine, an imposing construction of enameled wrought iron that stood in the bedroom Sasha and I shared with her after Grandfather died. As often as I could, I would run my fingertips over the plaque on the upper side where the manufacturer’s name was engraved in elegant letters: Singer. It was framed by the manufacturer’s golden yellow trademark and the plaque looked like a centuries-old coat of arms. I would also touch the shining vertical axles of the head assembly and drive wheel, forged of tempered steel. Most of all, I loved to press down the pedal, stamped out of sheet metal. This set the sewing machine in motion, thanks to a pulley that fit into a groove on the drive wheel and emitted a sound like that of a buzzing bumblebee. Once I was just about to break the needle because I’d been inspired to place a little piece of wood beneath the cylinder holding the sewing mechanism. At exactly that moment Grandmother happened to step into the bedroom. She gave me a resounding slap on the side of the head and shouted, “Isn’t anything sacred around here? Can’t I at least have my sewing machine to myself? Do you have to destroy the only thing I’ve ever owned in my life?”

  The long-awaited day of Nathan’s release from thirty-six months of prison in Vác and his return home ended in a battle royal. The fact is that he found to his dismay that, without informing him, Sara had allowed her mother to move into the apartment. Miriam sat there in the kitchen, white-haired and toothless. Nathan disliked her deeply. In his eyes she represented everything unchanging and backward in the world of the Jews. A humble market woman, she had sat behind her rickety vegetable stall in the market for the poor folk, and even after living in Budapest for twenty-five years she could hardly speak a word of Hungarian. The notion of sheltering her within the walls of his home was completely unacceptable to him. Sara tried to persuade him. She explained that her mother was ill, growing weaker by the day, and could no longer take her place in the market. She couldn’t even pick up an apple with her frostbitten hands, twisted as they were with rheumatism. To make things worse, Aunt Luiza, who had worked like a slave all her life taking care of five children and a senile mother with no help from anyone, had suffered a stroke; since she was behind in the payment of her rent, the heartless landlord had thrown them all out onto the street. Aunt Luiza and her mother, Erzsi, were living with a neighbor for the time being. The poor women were subsisting on their pickings from the garbage and were close to dying of hunger. They had given up hope. Their misery beggared
all description. Sara told him her mother had nowhere else to go. She needed a roof over her head. Turning her away was unthinkable. She also told him that she’d purchased a Singer sewing machine on credit and was trying to earn a little extra money by taking work from the dress shop home overnight to do late in the evenings. In the interim she was providing Luiza with food and an occasional coin or two. But since they were desperate, she intended, if Nathan would only agree, to let those two women move in with them. She feared that otherwise they would simply perish. Nathan threw a fit. He shouted that no one could expect him to feel any sympathy for those old women; he refused to have them hanging around his neck. All he wanted was a normal life with his wife, and he had no desire to have to feed three old mouths. Mother Miriam’s eyes were full of tears. She stood there with her shoulders hunched and replied in Yiddish that she had no intention of remaining for one second in the same house with her son-in-law, a Jew without a shred of decency in his body, who refused to offer a helpless old woman a minimum of consideration and a scrap of bread. This provoked Nathan even more, although he didn’t understand everything she was saying. He began shouting again, in transports of rage. Sara begged him to lower his voice so as not to awaken their little son, who lay sleeping by the oven. But he paid no attention to her. So she reared back and gave him as good as she got. The huge quarrel went on for more than an hour. Nathan’s emotion eventually subsided and he finally gave in. Miriam could stay. As for Luiza and Erzsi, he needed a few days to think it over. He said that he felt very tired and suggested that they all go to bed. He was hoping that in the matrimonial bed Sara would become more tractable beneath his experienced hands.