The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  Once all his subordinates had been so vaccinated against treason, Afonso Henriques took a leather pouch from his belt and tossed it to Baruch. “There you have ten gold coins as reward for your work. From this day forth you will serve as my personal physician. But keep in mind, everything about my physician—not only his medicines but also his expression, his gestures, his clothing, his speech, his gaze, his manner when touching me, everything—must please me.”

  Such a boon was completely unexpected. Baruch gasped for breath but recovered quickly. He expressed his profound thanks with an eloquence that surprised even him: “I wish to thank His Majesty for the high honor that the king in his boundless kindness has granted to me. I will pray to our Lord that he might safeguard the health of His Majesty and increase His Majesty’s glory. Throughout my life I shall in humblest subjugation, embracing his good counsels, serve my king. May our Lord always shower his holy grace upon His Majesty.”

  IN THE MIDDLE of the twelfth century a young Jewish man emerges from the dark reaches of history and becomes visible in Lisbon. His name is Baruch de Espinosa. No portrait of him exists, nor is there any chronicle of his life. Everything that I know of my ancestor of thirty-six generations ago I learned from my great-uncle. He was the one to reveal to my twin brother, Sasha, and me the fact that Baruch was the private physician of King Afonso Henriques, a position that gave our Jewish ancestor many privileges virtually unheard of in that era.

  In the year 1158 there spread—even far beyond the borders of Portugal—rumors that the king’s private physician Baruch de Espinosa possessed supernatural powers capable of banishing illness and that his medicines could transform impotent old men, granting them the virility of young bulls. Some saw him as a sort of savior sent from heaven in answer to their fervent prayers and pleadings. Some days there might be hundreds of ailing persons assembled outside the palace pleading for his help. Many were royal emissaries from foreign lands who battled for places on the benches outside his laboratory in hopes of obtaining medicines to take home with them.

  Baruch’s various herbal remedies were effective against all sorts of afflictions, including headaches, persistent bleeding, all kinds of maladies of the bones and joints, kidney stones, gallstones, cramps, and convulsions. They were frequently used in connection with tooth extractions, and the ladies of the court had a remedy of their own to alleviate menstrual cramps.

  ACCORDING TO MY GREAT-UNCLE, Baruch once succeeded—with the help of a concoction of one part valerian, two parts salvia, and blood from the left wing of a white dove—in resuscitating the king’s eldest son after the boy had died from eating too many wild chestnuts. My great-uncle insisted that Baruch had succeeded in cultivating a secret herb that so terrified death that it recoiled from the patient.

  Our ancestor wrote as many as a dozen treatises about the medicinal qualities of plants. He cataloged in exhaustive detail the characteristics of those he considered most useful. A regular theme in his writings is that nature produces nothing that lasts forever, for only God can create the eternal.

  In his later years Baruch devoted many years to the study of chameleons. He found that species of lizard so fascinating and remarkable that he wrote an entire book about its appearance, characteristics, and internal structures, as well as the magical powers associated with the little creature. What he found particularly intriguing was that chameleons not only change color in the proximity of objects of various hues but also do so when they are frightened or feel other emotions.

  FOR A COUPLE of months in the fall of 1538, after the hardships of a hearing that obliged him to flee Basel, the alchemist and physician Paracelsus held the chair of Professor of Medicine at the University of Lisbon. He heard by chance of Baruch and his work. An acquaintance, a bald professor of gloomy mien and rotten teeth who lectured in religion and served the Inquisition, advised Paracelsus at that time that the Jew’s writings were full of heretical teachings. His warning served only to increase Paracelsus’s interest. The fact was that the Swiss was a rebel against conventional scholasticism and was on a quest for new knowledge, especially in the natural sciences and in traditional hermetic knowledge rooted in the Jewish Cabala and in the wisdom of the Egyptians.

  Whenever Paracelsus had a few hours free, he would visit the section of the royal library where Baruch’s writings were kept, deep in the cellar of the castle. Unfortunately, the rats in the damp cellar had consumed a large part of Baruch’s work and some of the treatises were much the worse for wear, so that the alchemist could scarcely make out the contents. He found not the slightest trace of any heresy to offend God or the king. Instead, he brought to light an extensive collection of unique observations of nature, apparently the sole subject and scope of the texts. Paracelsus realized that he had found a veritable treasure trove, untouched by human hands for centuries, the legacy of a pioneer in the study of natural sciences.

  The following year while serving as physician to the court of Aragon, Paracelsus wrote to the Holy Office in Lisbon, emphasizing that not even the sternest censor would be able to detect erroneous teachings or anything counter to the holy faith in the writings of Baruch de Espinosa. He emphasized that anyone even slightly acquainted with them would ask whether the author shouldn’t receive accolades rather than accusations and be the object of admiration rather than of suspicion.

  A few weeks later Paracelsus received in reply a brief letter signed by the chief censor of the Inquisition, Tristan Alonso de Navia. It opened with words of delighted admiration and praise for the work of the Swiss alchemist and physician and concluded with the comment that a discreet silence was the best response to his request, for the totality of writings by Jewish hands had forever been condemned as contrary to the prevailing Catholic world order.

  PARACELSUS’S INITIATIVE was a sign of his courage. But my great-uncle was not convinced that the Swiss genius was driven by the purest of motives when he searched the depths of Baruch’s work. He believed that Paracelsus not only had taken inspiration there but also had appropriated outright the texts of the royal physician, especially his treatise on the chameleon, thirty pages of which he reproduced word for word in Philosophiae et Medicinae utriusque compendium (Basel, 1568) without acknowledging the source.

  THERE WERE RUMORS, our great-uncle intimated, that the grandmother of Tristan Alonso de Navia had been a Jew and that in order to conceal that shameful fact the head censor of the Inquisition applied himself with zealous heart and soul to the careful and complete eradication of all traces of the Jews. This might equally have been due to the fact that he was convinced that he had little time left to live. De Navia believed that he had an incurable illness and for that reason he was obsessed with death. He acknowledged this only to his father confessor, a bigoted old priest who pretended to comfort him in his trials but in fact dedicated himself to poisoning the mind of the head censor with stories of the iniquity of the Jews, instilling in him the belief that as a true Catholic he could get to heaven only by supporting their extermination.

  THE FORMAL ORDER bearing de Navia’s signature and the seal of the Inquisition decreed on April 19, 1540, was clear and unmistakable: When the sun has set, all Jewish books and writings in Lisbon shall be burned in a bonfire. And the fire will be kept going throughout the night.

  The writings of Baruch de Espinosa stood high on the list of Tristan Alonso de Navia. With mixed alarm and satisfaction he stood in witness as the Jewish physician’s work was consumed by flames.

  IN OUR OWN DAY my ancestor’s name appears nowhere in the body of scientific literature, although he is mentioned in the extensive biography of Afonso Henriques (Lisbon: Bertrand, 1999) written by Diogo Freitas do Amaral, a former foreign minister of Portugal.

  That history describes the reign of Portugal’s first king as violent and capricious. Amaral provides a lively description of the parlous world of King Afonso Henriques: the moral chaos, the arbitrary decisions, the intrigues, and the bloodlust. He vividly portrays the ill temper of the k
ing and his violence at court. Counselors who advocated moderation in the exercise of power were summarily executed, as were all those who meddled in politics. Whole families were massacred without the slightest hesitation. Those who failed to please the king were usually dispatched by the application of quick-working poisons concocted in Baruch’s laboratory.

  Amaral writes that even though everyone at court had reason to appreciate Baruch’s natural affability and miracle-working medicines, many lived in fear of him.

  “The Jews have evil faces,” some of them would whisper behind his back. Others commented that Baruch was ready to participate in any evil business at all to please the king, so as to advance his own interests and those of the Jews. A number of the court folk went further, discounting his medical knowledge and seeing him as nothing but a Jewish deviser of poisons.

  ON EASTER MORNING in 1160 Baruch was ordered to accompany the king to church to hear Cardinal Berenguer’s sermon. The cardinal ranted at the congregation, a veritable fury, and used fiery phrases to condemn the apostates who had turned their backs on Jesus Christ and sunk themselves in the morass of idleness, irresponsibility, and immorality.

  The unctuous sermon about wasted lives awakened Baruch’s interest and he listened intently. When Berenguer flung out the Latin words “Ibi dissipavit substantiam suam, vivendo luxuriose,” Baruch felt them like a blow. The text was taken from the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint Luke and dealt with the prodigal son who traveled to a foreign land and “dissipated his patrimony there in riot and luxury.” Baruch felt a sharp pang of conscience for the many years he had forgotten about his father and neglected Judaism.

  He went to bed early that evening but awoke just after midnight to see a luminous presence standing next to his bed. It was his father who had come to take his farewell; his time on earth was over. He gently touched Baruch’s hair; he bade him to remain a good Jew, to keep the Sabbath, and to wear his prayer shawl. Then Rabbi Judah Halevy disappeared as silently as he had come.

  Baruch lay sleepless in his bed as the breezes of the spring night wafted into the room through the open window. His thoughts chased one another around and around in his head and it seemed that nothing could rescue him from that night’s grinding torment and the sharp lash of his conscience.

  Suddenly he remembered the words of Moses:

  You are to keep the commandments engraved in my stone tablets, live according to them, and establish a Jewish community from which many great men and women will go forth and conquer every corner of the world. One day you will discover the great secret that humanity has been seeking since the beginning of time. That secret shall thenceforth be guarded by your children and your children’s children for a thousand years. As long as your descendants comply with their obligations, they will go forth among the peoples of the earth with their heads high, and the Lord will watch over them. But should any one of them fail to respect the Lord’s will, your generations will be obliterated from the earth.

  Baruch decided that the next morning in the king’s chamber he would ask for permission to study the Talmud in the castle and to keep the Sabbath. He then fell asleep with a clear conscience and slumbered peacefully.

  AFONSO HENRIQUES GRANTED to his personal physician the privilege of establishing Lisbon’s first community of Jews, under the special protection of the king. In order to observe the Sabbath with a minyan, the religious service requiring a minimum of ten adult Jewish men, Baruch obtained permission to invite a rabbi and five Jewish families from León who either tended humble shops or peddled wares from village to village. He invited Rabbi Mordechai Montefiori and the families Castro, Halevi, Abravanel, Sarfati, and Peralta.

  In no time at all there emerged a complicated network of relationships and property linking these families that continually intermarried over the following four hundred years.

  RABBI MORDECHAI MONTEFIORI was determined to see Lisbon’s Jewish community grow. He put all his energy into persuading Baruch to marry. The rabbi stressed that only within his own family could a man live a wholly worthy Jewish life, and he assured Baruch that he had found the perfect wife for him.

  Montefiori had wisdom in his eyes. In addition, his whole shape and all of his gestures had a gravity that commanded respect. This was further reinforced by the fact that he spoke clearly and decisively, placing a careful emphasis on every syllable. When the rabbi described that perfect woman, absolutely innocent and with a demure disposition, he sounded entirely sure of himself. He simply ignored the fact that Baruch appeared uninterested, for not in his wildest dreams could he imagine the deep secret that the royal physician, the most eligible Jewish bachelor of Lisbon, was hiding within his being: an attraction to the male sex.

  Soon afterward at the rabbi’s home Baruch was presented to a young woman named Marianne Castro. She was squint-eyed. Before Baruch could open his mouth he was captivated by that quality; it inflamed his memories, and the enigmatic shape of Raimundo stood forth in his thoughts. Seeing Marianne, Baruch was obsessed by the thought of his friend. She had a handsome face and a boyish body with broad shoulders, small breasts, and large feet. They sat together in silence for half an hour, not knowing what to say to each other. The rabbi found this a good sign, for those who prattle about a thousand meaningless things are in fact not meant for each other.

  Baruch believed that he was the only person in Lisbon who had been physically tempted by someone of his own sex. In addition, he assumed that such an inclination was against Mosaic law and he should resist it. For that reason he decided in short order that he would marry Marianne. Upon hearing this, the rabbi’s face broke into a broad, heartwarming smile—an expression almost never seen there—and he revealed to Baruch the fact that Marianne was his niece.

  THE WEDDING took place three days later. The rabbi gave a short sermon. He impressed upon them his view that by the special grace of heaven the Jews had been allowed to establish a community in Lisbon, and he charged them as newlyweds to fulfill their duty to be fruitful and multiply.

  Following the ceremony the couple went immediately to bed. It was almost as if they were intent upon promptly carrying out the rabbi’s commandment. Baruch was nervous, for he had never before seen a woman unclothed. Marianne quivered with passion. She guided Baruch’s fingertips to her nipples, the most sensitive spot on her body, and his touch gave her gooseflesh. The odor of Marianne’s hair, her gasping breath, and her warm skin banished the inhibition of Baruch’s demons and he hungrily sought his pleasure. They did not drift away to sleep until the dawn.

  BARUCH FELT deeply happy. For the first month they made love as if possessed. But Marianne became pregnant and the more her belly grew, the less attraction Baruch felt for her. Several months later when after a lengthy interruption she asked him to come to her bed, he discovered to his dismay that he was disgusted by her now greatly bloated body.

  Baruch’s thoughts often turned to his friend Raimundo. He became more and more confused by the strong feelings that welled up within him along with hot fleeting images from the bunk in the cellar of the smithy. Gradually the message from the darkness of his subconscious reached him. He came to see that there were powerful forces at work here against which he could do nothing, no matter how hard he tried. He realized that wedded bliss did not exist for him and that taking a wife had been a disastrous mistake. Every day he reproached himself for having listened to the rabbi. From pure instinct for self-preservation he shared his thoughts with nobody, for he knew that no one would understand them and divorce was impossible. In addition, he was determined to present his marriage to the outside world as a happy one, particularly to the king who had been so magnanimous and protective of the Jews.

  MARIANNE FELT more and more unloved. One day she had the notion that Baruch must have caught some mysterious illness. Out of a delicacy of feeling she was hesitant to press him on the matter. Keenly aware of the warm wetness between her legs, she would feed her husband peanuts and stewed goat testicles as often as s
he could, for she had heard from her mother that those foods had a powerful aphrodisiac effect. But nothing seemed to rouse his desire.

  Tired at last of Baruch’s indifference she asked him right out one day to mix up a potion that would stimulate certain parts of the masculine anatomy. She particularly had in mind, since it was apparent that she was no longer capable of inciting his manhood, that organ that she referred to with a sniff as “the one-eyed snake.” But Baruch answered with a disgusted look that he had no intention of mixing up any such potion.

  Her unhappiness at no longer being attractive and her increasingly strong longing for physical stimulation robbed Marianne of both sleep and appetite. As weeks went by, she felt more and more desperate. At last she could no longer keep quiet about her unhappy love life. She turned to her mother, even though she knew that her mother was a gossip with a huge, flapping tongue. She pleaded with her mother never to utter a word of what she was about to reveal. Her mother gave her a solemn pledge, tantamount to a guarantee that she would spread the news like wildfire. With that, a tearful Marianne confessed in a love-starved voice that for months she had received not the slightest physical consolation within her marriage. Her mother’s only suggestion was to cuckold her husband, a counsel Marianne refused to accept.

  THAT VERY AFTERNOON a rumor began to circulate in Lisbon’s Jewish community. Passed from one female mouth to another, it was continually embroidered with new details. According to this malicious gossip, the royal physician had provoked the devil with his experiments with plants. In revenge the Dark One had planted an icy cold in Baruch’s body that made him impotent and left his male member shriveled and useless. Simultaneously the Prince of Darkness had lit an unquenchable fire in Marianne’s loins so that she burned incessantly with desire, and every day she needed to plant five big, strapping fellows between her legs before she could get to sleep at night.