The Elixir of Immortality

by Gabi Gleichmann

  Fate used my great-uncle’s voice to whisper the message to me that I was born to be a liar and a cheat. He often told Sasha and me that an unusually large nose was a Spinoza trait that turned up in each generation. The children born with that gigantic nose were always uncommonly lucky and successful in whatever they undertook. The nose brought good fortune to the one who inherited it, even though all of them, strangely enough, met tragic deaths. Likewise, duplicity was passed down through the Spinozas in a sort of inexplicable natural balancing act, also revealing itself in every generation. Children born with that strange inability to tell the truth were always solitary because they disappointed everyone and failed at everything. Their perpetual lying was in itself a curse upon them.

  My great-uncle never said it in so many words, but we all knew it. Anyone with eyes in his head could see it; the truth could not be hidden. My twin brother, Sasha, had an enormous nose.

  MUHAMMED HAD FELT EXHILARATED since the sultan’s death less than twenty-four hours earlier. He was enormously pleased that at last he was the ruler of Granada. He considered himself exactly the right man for the job. He was greatly stimulated by the knowledge that because he was generally feared, people would comply with his wishes and humbly obey his every command. Seated on the throne with Nedjmaa at his side, surrounded by his father’s old counselors, he felt a strong urge to make a demonstration of his power. He aimed more than anything else to prevent the court from speculating about the sudden death of his father. He ordered two guards to fetch Rebecca, the wife of the executed Jewish physician, so as—in his own words—to see that justice was promptly carried out. He intended to charge her with complicity in the death of the sultan.

  MUHAMMED HAD NO NOTION of Rebecca’s character, even though he had seen her now and again. He had always been impressed by her beautiful face, but now she appeared transformed, smaller and paler than he remembered her, anything but a beauty. He made no comment upon the change because he was disconcerted by the sight of her swollen belly; he had forgotten that she was expecting a child. A painful silence settled over the room. For a long moment Muhammed regarded Rebecca in silence. He particularly noted the sorrow in her eyes and the dignity of her despair.

  Rebecca was the first to speak. She had caught sight of a table in the depths of the throne room where a chessboard was set up with marble pieces, ready for a match. This gave her an idea. She knew of the old sultan’s passion for chess and knew it had become an all-enveloping passion at court. In an attempt to save her life, she suggested a chess match.

  “High and worthy sultan,” she said, “should I lose the match, I will forfeit the life of my son, Moishe, and that of my unborn child. But if I by dint of my efforts should succeed, I beg His Grace to spare our lives and grant us the right to go back home to the house of my father in Córdoba.”

  Rebecca evinced a degree of courage uncommon even among men. Her bold suggestion further disconcerted Muhammed, not least because he was certain that not a single woman of Granada knew the rules of chess. He was confident that he had nothing to lose in accepting her challenge, for no one but his own father had ever beaten him at the game. Even so, he hesitated for a moment. He glanced down at Nedjmaa as if to ask: What do you think of this? Just as taken aback as he was, Nedjmaa was incapable of advising him.

  A satisfied little smile broke over Muhammed’s face. His eyes sparkled. He accepted Rebecca’s suggestion.

  Muhammed played with great concentration—taking the white pieces, of course—and began with a bold opening gambit he had learned from his father. Rebecca’s response was ineffective. He quickly put her at a disadvantage, capturing two pawns and a knight.

  The astonished counselors following the match were convinced that Muhammed would triumph. When Rebecca made an apparently meaningless move, the spectators murmured in derision. Muhammed straightened up, filled his chest, and declared, “Victory is near.” But he suddenly saw that Rebecca’s next move was countering his aggressive play; the truth was that she had set a complicated trap for him.

  Muhammed realized that he had been relying too much on the luck that up until that moment had never abandoned him. He had failed to perceive the astute thought and implacable logic behind Rebecca’s moves. He now foresaw that he would lose in two more moves. Perplexed, he interrupted the game so as to avoid subjecting himself to ridicule. He grumbled, “This is a match at the highest level of play, and I am about to triumph. But the fact is that I have no time for playing chess. Granada needs a powerful sultan, a man of action to resolve its many issues. I am a benevolent ruler, Rebecca, and therefore I release you as of this moment. You must leave the city within two hours.”

  MY GREAT-UNCLE told us wonderful stories about chess and seldom failed to include, as if in passing, an account of some historic match between grand masters. He would describe it move by move. He adored chess. The game had literally saved his life.

  This had happened before the Second World War in Dachau, the first German concentration camp, set up outside Munich especially to deal with Jews, homosexuals, so-called political criminals, and derelicts.

  The winter was bitterly cold. One night two dockworkers who had been active in the Rostock union managed to escape from the camp. They smashed the lightbulbs in a narrow corridor and under cover of darkness overpowered two guards, strangled them with their bare hands, stripped them, and put on their uniforms. Then they nonchalantly strolled out through the main gates of Dachau.

  Only a handful of prisoners had ever escaped from that camp. All of the inmates had sometimes felt the strong temptation to try and had seriously weighed the possible consequences of attempting an escape, but Dachau was not a place one could simply slip away from. Therefore the prisoners’ most common escape was spiritual, into their own dreams of freedom.

  The rumor spread in whispers through the barracks that two men had killed a couple of the hated guards and regained their freedom. The malnourished, worn-out prisoners were astounded and excited by the escape. Many felt that the guards had gotten exactly what they deserved. Several began to think of following the example of the bold dockworkers.

  The search for the escapees went on all night. At dawn, straining bloodhounds detected the scent of the Rostock men ten miles north of Dachau. The camp commandant, Oberführer Hans Loritz, burst into a rage when he received the report that the escapees had been found frozen to death, for he had given strict orders that they were to be captured alive. Loritz was disappointed that he would not have the pleasure of personally torturing the men to death and then planting them on chairs on the parade ground for all to see, bearing a sign inscribed GOOD TO BE BACK AGAIN. The frustrated camp commandant roared at the top of his lungs that ten prisoners were to be shot immediately in retribution for each of the murdered guards.

  Two armed soldiers burst into my great-uncle’s overcrowded barracks, and in the stifling gloom one of them pointed at Fernando where he lay in his bunk. “You there, get up, now, stand at attention!” shouted the men in uniform. “You’re going to be taken out and shot!”

  My great-uncle went rigid. He was convinced that his last hour on earth had arrived. The guards stalked farther into the barracks looking for additional victims. Fernando lay there for a moment, in a fetal position, paralyzed with fear. When the guards were out of sight, his bunkmate, the tailor Aron Reinherz, whispered in his ear. Fernando knew the old gentlemen’s tailor from Vienna, where they had shared the same lodgings. In Dachau they would often while away their idle hours playing chess with pieces molded of dry bread.

  “Esteemed Herr Scharf, you have beaten me so often in chess. Grant me now, please, a favor that means a great deal to me. Let me be the lucky one today and take your place.”

  My great-uncle was so astonished that he could scarcely respond. Aron Reinherz got out of the bunk and added, “Thank you for your generosity, Herr Scharf. Allow me to ask one additional favor. Please drink a cup of coffee at Sacher’s someday and have a bit of their famous cake for me.”
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  The old tailor stood in the doorway. Half a minute later the guards carried him and another prisoner off to the parade ground outside the barracks.

  A couple of the prisoners, including my great-uncle, cautiously crept to a window and listened intently, trying to make out what was happening in the yard. Four armed guards stood out there ten or fifteen feet away, their mustaches white with frost and their breath steaming in the air. The prisoners could hear the guards grumbling to one another about the intense cold. A hearty laugh rang out. Gentlemen’s tailor Aron Reinherz was doubled up in amusement.

  “What’s the matter with you, Jew?” screamed one of the guards. “What are you laughing at? What’s so funny? You’re about to die, you idiot!”

  “The truth is, I’m laughing at you, guard.” The old Jew raised his voice so it could be heard throughout the yard. “In just a few moments I won’t have to put up with the cold. But you’ll be standing here the whole morning long, shivering. So just who’s the fool—”

  The next second the ice-cold silence of the yard was shattered by three pistol shots.

  WHEN REBECCA ARRIVED in Córdoba and her father asked her with amazement what had given her the idea of suggesting a game of chess, her answer was curt.

  “Not what, dear father, but who. An angel. Who also guided my hand at the board.”

  Not long afterward, Rebecca died in childbirth, and the infant did not survive. Rabbi Orabuena took the responsibility of caring for two-year-old Moishe.

  THE BRILLIANT DE ESPINOSA court physicians in Lisbon had vast knowledge of herbs and curative plants but were completely uninformed about the world around them. They were so intent on satisfying their rulers and pleasing their God by zealously complying with their own centuries-old traditions that they paid no attention to new notions and were never enticed by the contemporary proliferation of new ideas. They lived in this way from generation to generation, during a time when Jewish mystics felt extraordinarily driven to explore paths leading to the secrets of the universe and to create poetry of great beauty and depth. My ancestors lived their backward and provincial lives, indifferent to events both proximate and imminent, like all who are prisoners of their own officious shortsightedness.

  Rabbi Orabuena, in contrast, was an erudite, intelligent man with a keen sense of ethics. Throughout his life he sought to identify the threads of thought common to the Jewish tradition, Christianity, and the Platonic philosophers. He wanted to understand the principles that rule the fragile destiny of the earth and even affect the eternal heavenly spheres.

  The rabbi opened Moishe’s eyes to broad horizons and strove incessantly to develop his intellect. He encouraged a quickness of thought in the boy and pushed him to become bolder. Above all, the rabbi made sure that three fundamental principles remained engraved clearly and forever in the boy’s consciousness.

  Those three fundamental truths pronounced by Rabbi Orabuena were a constant theme of my great-uncle, so I remember them particularly well. Even so, I must acknowledge that I failed to appreciate the wisdom of those words until thirty years after I first heard them. Before that, they seemed unrelated to my own life.

  I. Every day begins with reflection; every day ends with constancy.

  II. There are always many more realms of truth and reason than those of prevalent contemporary opinion and the traditions of one’s own society.

  III. Only fools remain certain of their beliefs and fail to doubt.

  WHY HAVE I DESERVED to fall into disgrace with the Almighty? That was Israel’s first thought when the news reached him that Chaim had been executed in Granada in reprisal for the murder of the sultan. A dark shadow fell across the forehead of the old royal physician; he dropped to his knees, his lips twisted into a grimace, and tears streamed down his bearded cheeks. He gave vent to his pain, lamenting loud and long, then he sank fainting to the floor.

  What tormented Israel most?

  Sasha and I never got an answer to that question. My great-uncle sighed aloud with a far-off smile, but for once he could not explain. And so, even today, I do not know what grieved Israel more—losing his son or the belief that he, having lived in the ardent conviction that the whole meaning of life was to serve the Lord, had fallen from God’s grace.

  ONCE ISRAEL had recovered from the initial shock and regained some measure of composure, he went upstairs to Leah, the only one of his daughters still unmarried, living in her narrow space in the attic of her parents’ house. They had not exchanged a word since that day long ago when Chaim was born. He could not even remember the last time he had seen her; she appeared totally alien to him as she stood there, filthy and unkempt in the colossal disorder. When he looked at his daughter, she instinctively turned her gaze away. He saw she had become an old woman without ever having had a life; she emitted an odor of dead flowers. Only now did he realize that he had reacted far too strongly in completely cutting her off, allowing her place in his heart to wither, and turning her into a stranger because of a prophecy that had now come true.

  Overcome with shame, he bowed his head and told her he had come to ask for forgiveness. She had spoken the truth from the very first moment: Chaim had brought eternal shame to the name of Espinosa. Then he told her in an almost inaudible voice that his son was dead. His eyes filled with tears. A new pain burned suddenly inside as he realized this meant the end of the Espinosa line.

  Then Leah spoke for the first time in almost thirty years. She said that she had sworn never again to burden her father with another prophecy, but now she was obliged to tell him what her psychic powers had revealed. The continuation of the family was assured, for Chaim had a son.

  Israel’s blood instantly froze to ice, but once again he didn’t believe Leah. His face contorted with hopelessness and fury. He pretended not to have heard his daughter’s words.

  HAGGARD, YELLOW in the face, prey to black moods and strong attacks of melancholy, Israel spent several weeks secluded in his study among the heaps of manuscripts dealing with the mysteries of the plant kingdom and with the laws of the Torah. He listened to the howling of the wind in the treetops and to the distant murmur of the stars. He spent sleepless nights plunged in regret. When the mornings came, he prayed with a dull voice to the Creator of the universe to spare him from any further trials.

  A few weeks later a letter from Rabbi Orabuena reached him, reporting that since both of Moishe’s parents were dead, the rabbi and his wife had taken the boy in hand. The letter confirmed Leah’s prediction.

  This news naturally consoled Israel somewhat, but at the same time it increased his own feeling of inadequacy. To whom could he entrust the recipe for the Raimundo plant? His own remaining progeny were the twelve daughters. Therefore he was obliged to leave the knowledge of the secret of eternal life to his grandson Moishe. How could he do so without having to initiate some outsider? The boy was only two years old and lived in faraway Córdoba.

  One afternoon Israel happened to stumble against the table. A manuscript from the top of the stack fell to the floor with a thud. It was the Sefer Yetzirah, a centuries-old work discussing God’s creation of the world. He picked it up and kissed it in a gesture of penitence for allowing the holy manuscript to come in contact with the unclean floor. He opened it at random and his eyes fell upon a sentence: The twenty-two fundamental characters then I shaped, cast, assembled, weighed, and exchanged, and with them I fashioned all creation and everything that shall be created in days to come. He read the sentence several times and fixed his attention especially on the word “exchanged.” An idea began to take form in his head.

  The court physician spent the following days elaborating a cipher. When it was complete, he used his system to encrypt the recipe for the elixir of immortality and placed the text along with a brief outline of family history in a small wooden box, roughly carved in fragrant cedar, and carefully sealed it. In an accompanying letter he instructed Rabbi Orabuena to preserve the wooden box in a secure location and turn it over to Moishe only when h
e reached adulthood.

  ISRAEL WENT TO BED late that night. An unusual silence ruled the room. The dark was especially thick and mysterious. He suddenly felt ill and thought that something strange and disagreeable was about to occur. For a long time he could not sleep, and after eventually drifting off, he woke with a start. He perceived a sound in the heart of the silent, indescribably motionless night. He heard it with great clarity and began to panic. Someone was paging through his manuscripts in the dark. He sat up with a jerk and tried to shout, but fear paralyzed his voice. Then he suddenly sensed that someone had come creeping into his bed. He understood immediately that his visitor was death, come in the middle of that silent night to enfold him in its arms.

  MY GREAT-UNCLE was always a bit enigmatic when he spoke of Rebecca, who in his eyes had been more an angel than a woman of flesh and blood. Back then I had no fear of mysteries, and I wasn’t alarmed by stories with contradictions; we were always treated to inexplicable and unexpected tales when my great-uncle came to visit. Sasha and I were thirteen years old and he was seventy-five. Though I cannot claim even today to say that I fully understood Fernando or knew what was going on within him, it was nevertheless perfectly clear to me that the grim destiny that awaited Rebecca deeply moved his heart. Most of the time he was beaming and carefree. But when he thought of that woman in fourteenth-century Granada, everything dark within him seemed to surface. His eyes filled with tears and he said, as if to emphasize that she merited our sympathy, “The verdict that heaven let fall upon Rebecca was sterner than the punishment Muhammed had prepared for her as the wife of Chaim the poisoner.”