The Spinoza Problem (9 page)

Jacob interrupted Bento, outraged. “You speak as though we Jews know nothing of the nature of God. Do not forget that we have the Torah containing his words. And, Franco, do not think that God is without power. Do not forget that the Jews persist, that no matter what they do to us, we persist. Where are all those vanished people—the Phoenicians, Moabites, Edomites—and so many others whose names I do not know? Do not forget that we must be guided by the law that God Himself gave to the Jews, gave to us, His chosen people.”

Franco gave Spinoza a glance as though to say,
You see what I have to face?
and turned to Jacob. “Everyone believes God chose them—the Christians, the Muslims—”

“No! What does it matter what others believe? What matters is what is written in the Bible.” Jacob turned to Spinoza, “Admit it, Baruch, admit it, scholar: does not the word of God say that the Jews are the chosen people? Can you deny that?”

“I have spent years studying that question, Jacob, and if you wish, I will share the results of my research.” Bento spoke gently, as a teacher might address an inquisitive student. “To answer your questions about the specialness of the Jews we must go back to the source. Will you accompany me in exploring the very words of the Torah? My copy is only a few minutes away.”

Both nodded, exchanging glances, and rose to follow Bento, who carefully put the chairs back in place and locked the shop door before escorting them to his home.

H
eadmaster Epstein’s prediction that Rosenberg’s limited curiosity and intelligence would render him harmless proved entirely wrong. And wrong, too, was the headmaster’s prediction that Goethe and Spinoza would instantaneously vanish from Alfred’s thoughts. Far from it: Alfred was never able to cleanse his mind of the image of the great Goethe genuflecting before the Jew Spinoza. Whenever thoughts of Goethe and Spinoza (now forever melded) appeared, he held the dissonance only briefly and then swept it away with every ideational broom at hand. Sometimes he was persuaded by Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s argument that Spinoza, like Jesus, was of the Jewish culture but did not possess one drop of Jewish blood. Or perhaps Spinoza was a Jew who stole thoughts from Aryan thinkers. Or perhaps Goethe had been under a spell, mesmerized by the Jewish conspiracy. Many times Alfred contemplated pursuing these ideas in depth through library research but never followed through. Thinking, really thinking, was such hard work, like moving heavy trunks about in the attic. Instead, Alfred grew more adept at suppression. He diverted himself. He plunged into many activities. Most of all, he persuaded himself that the strength of convictions obviates the need for inquiry.

A true and noble German honors an oath, and as his twenty-first birthday approached, Alfred remembered his pledge to the headmaster to read Spinoza’s
Ethics
. He intended to keep his word, bought a used copy of the book, and launched into it only to be greeted on the first page by a long list of incomprehensible definitions:

Who could understand this Jewish stuff? Alfred flung the book across the room. A week later he tried again, skipping the definitions and moving to the next section of Axioms:

These were equally indecipherable, and again the book took flight. Later he sampled the next section, the propositions, which were also inaccessible. Finally it dawned on him that each successive part depended logically upon the preceding definitions and axioms, and nothing would come of further sampling. From time to time he picked up the slim volume, turned to the portrait of Spinoza facing the title page, and was transfixed by that long oval face and those gigantic, soulful, heavy-lidded Jewish eyes (which stared directly into his own eyes regardless of how he rotated the book). Get rid of this cursed book, he told himself—sell it (but it would fetch nothing, being much the worse for wear after several aerial excursions). Or just give it away, or throw it away. He knew he should do this, but, strangely, Alfred could not part with the
Ethics
.

Why? Well, the oath, of course, was a factor but not the compelling one. Had not the headmaster said that one had to be fully grown to understand
Ethics
? And did he not have years of education still ahead of him before he was fully grown?

No, no, it was not the oath that vexed him: it was the Goethe problem. He worshipped Goethe. And Goethe worshipped Spinoza. Alfred could not rid himself of this cursed book because Goethe loved it enough to carry it in his pocket for an entire year. This obscure Jewish nonsense had calmed Goethe’s unruly passions and made him see the world more clearly than ever before. How could that be? Goethe saw something in it that he could not discern. Perhaps, someday, he would find the teacher who could explain this.

The tumultuous events of the First World War soon pushed this conundrum out of consciousness. After graduating from the Reval Oberschule and saying farewell to Headmaster Epstein, Herr Schäfer, and his art teacher, Herr Purvit, Alfred began his studies in the Polytechnic Institute in Riga, Latvia, about two hundred miles from his home in Reval. But in 1915, as the German troops threatened both Estonia and Latvia, the entire Polytechnic Institute was moved to Moscow, where Alfred lived until 1918, when he handed in his final project—an architectural design for a crematorium—and received his degree in architecture and engineering.

Though his academic work was superior, Alfred never felt at home in engineering and preferred, instead, to spend his time reading mythology
and fiction. He was fascinated by the tales of Norse mythology contained in the Edda as well as the intricately plotted novels of Dickens and the monumental works of Tolstoy (which he read in Russian). He dabbled in philosophy, skimming the essential ideas of Kant, Schopenhauer, Fichte, Nietzsche, and Hegel and, as before, shamelessly took pleasure in reading philosophical works in conspicuous public places.

During the chaos of the 1917 Russian Revolution Alfred was appalled by the sight of hundreds of thousands of frenzied protestors taking to the streets, demanding the overthrow of the established order. He had come to believe, on the basis of Chamberlain’s work, that Russia owed everything to Aryan influence through the Vikings, the Hanseatic League, and German immigrants like himself. The collapse of the Russian civilization meant only one thing: the Nordic foundations were being overthrown by the inferior races—the Mongols, Jews, Slavs, and Chinese—and the soul of the real Russia would soon be lost. Was this to be the fate, too, of the Fatherland? Would racial chaos and degradation come to Germany itself?

The sight of the surging crowds repulsed him. The Bolsheviks were animals whose mission was to destroy civilization. He scrutinized their leaders and grew convinced that at least 90 percent were Jews. From 1918 forward, Alfred rarely spoke of the Bolsheviks: it was always the “Jewish Bolsheviks,” and that double epithet was destined to work its way into Nazi propaganda. After graduation in 1918 Alfred was thrilled to board the train taking him across Russia back to his home in Reval. As the train chugged westward, he sat day after day staring at the endless Russian expanse. Transfixed by the space—ah, the space—he thought of Houston Smith Chamberlain’s wish for more Lebensraum for the Fatherland. Here, outside his second-class train window, was the Lebensraum that Germany so desperately needed, and yet the sheer vastness of Russia made it unconquerable unless . . . unless an army of Russian collaborators was to fight side by side with the Fatherland. Another germ of an idea took hold: this forbidding open space—what to do with all of it? Why not put the Jews there, all the Jews of Europe?

The train whistle and the clenching and squealing of the brakes signaled that he had arrived home. Reval was as cold as Russia. He donned all the sweaters he owned, knotted his scarf tightly around his neck, and with bags in hand and diploma in briefcase, exhaling clouds of mist, he walked the familiar streets and arrived at the door of his childhood home, the
dwelling of Aunt Cäcilie—his father’s sister. His knock was welcomed with shrieks of “Alfred,” broad smiles, male handshakes, and female embraces, and he was ushered quickly into the warm fragrant kitchen for coffee and streusel while a young nephew was sent galloping to fetch Aunt Lydia living a few doors down the street. Soon she arrived laden with food for a celebratory dinner.

Home was much as he recalled it, and such persistence of the past offered Alfred a rare respite from his tormented sense of rootlessness. The sight of his own room, virtually unchanged after so many years, brought an expression of childlike glee to his face. He sank into his old reading chair and basked in the familiar sight of his aunt noisily beating the pillow and fluffing the down coverlet into place on his bed. Alfred scanned the room: there was the handkerchief-sized scarlet prayer rug on which, for a few months, years ago (when his antireligious father was out of earshot), Alfred said his bedtime prayers: “Bless Mother in heaven, bless Father and make him well again, and heal my brother, Eugen, and bless Aunt Ericka and Aunt Marlene, and bless all our family.”

There on the wall, still glaring and powerful and blissfully unaware of the faltering fortunes of the German army, was the huge poster of Kaiser Wilhelm. And on the shelf under the poster were his lead figures of Viking warriors and Roman soldiers, which he now picked up tenderly. Bending down to examine the small bookcase crammed with his favorite books, Alfred beamed to see them still aligned in the same order he had left them in so many years ago—his favorite,
Young Werther
, first, then
David Copperfield
, followed by all the others in order of descending merit.

Alfred continued to feel at home during dinner with aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces. But when everyone had left and silence descended, and he lay under his down coverlet, his familiar anomie returned. “Home” began to pale. Even the image of his two aunts, still grinning, waving, and nodding, slowly receded into the distance, leaving only chilly darkness. Where was home? Where did he belong?

The next day he roamed the streets of Reval searching for familiar faces, even though all his childhood playmates were grown and scattered, and, besides, he knew deep in his heart that he was searching for phantoms—the friends he
wished
he had had. He strolled to the Oberschule, where the halls and open classrooms looked both familiar and uninviting. He waited
outside the classroom of the art teacher, Herr Purvit, who had once been so kind to him. When the bell rang, he entered to speak to his old teacher between classes. Herr Purvit searched Alfred’s face, uttered a sound of recognition, and inquired about his life in such general terms that Alfred, walking away as the students for the next class scampered into their seats, doubted he had been truly recognized. Next he searched in vain for the room of Herr Schäfer but noted the room of Herr Epstein, no longer headmaster but once again a history teacher, and slipped by quickly with his face turned away. He did not wish to be asked about keeping his Spinoza vow or learn that the vow of Alfred Rosenberg had long ago evaporated from Herr Epstein’s mind.

Outside again he headed toward the town square, where he saw the German army headquarters, and impulsively made a decision that might change his entire life. He told the guard on duty, in German, that he wished to enlist, and was directed to Sergeant Goldberg, a hulking figure with a large nose, bushy mustache, and “Jew” writ large on his face. Without looking up from his paperwork, the sergeant briefly listened to Alfred and then gruffly dismissed his request. “We are at war. The German army is for Germans, not for citizens of combatant occupied countries.”

Disconsolate, and stung by the sergeant’s manner, Alfred took refuge in a beer hall a few doors away, ordered a stein of ale, and sat at one end of a long table. As he raised his stein for his first sip, he noted a man in civilian dress staring at him. Their eyes met briefly, and the stranger raised his stein and nodded to Alfred. Alfred hesitantly reciprocated, then sank back into himself. A few minutes later, when he again looked up, he saw the stranger, tall, thin, attractive, with a long German skull and deep blue eyes, still staring at him. Finally, the man arose and, stein in hand, walked toward Alfred and introduced himself.