Dropping his pen in mid-word, Bento bolts to his feet. “Too busy? Hardly, sir. You’re the first customer of the entire day. Please pardon my inattention. How may I help you?”
“I’d like a liter of wine and perhaps, depending upon the price, a kilogram of those scrawny raisins in the lower bin.”
As Bento places a lead weight on one plate of his scale and uses a worn wooden scoop to add the raisins to the other plate until they balance, van den Enden adds, “But I disturb your writing. What a refreshing and uncommon—no, more than uncommon, let me say singular—experience, to enter a shop and come upon a young clerk so absorbed in writing that he is unaware of customers. Being a teacher, I generally have quite the opposite experience. I come upon my students not writing, and not thinking, when they should be.”
“Business is bad,” replies Bento. “So I sit here hour after hour with nothing to do other than think and write.”
The customer points toward Spinoza’s journal, still open at the page on which he had been writing. “Let me hazard a guess about your writing. Business being bad, no doubt you worry about the fate of your inventory. You chart expenses and income in your journal, make a budget, and list possible solutions? Correct?”
Bento, face reddened, turns his journal face down.
“Nothing to hide from me, young man. I am a master spy, and I keep confidences. And I, too, think forbidden thoughts. Moreover, I am by profession a teacher of rhetoric and most assuredly could improve your writing.”
Spinoza holds up his journal for viewing and asks, with a hint of a grin, “How is your Portuguese, sir?”
“Portuguese! There you have me, young man. Yes to Dutch. Yes to French, English, German. Yes to Latin and Greek. Yes even to some Spanish, and a smattering of Hebrew and Aramaic. But no to Portuguese. Your spoken Dutch is excellent. Why not write in Dutch? Surely you are native here?”
“Yes. My father emigrated from Portugal when he was a child. Though I use Dutch in my commercial dealings, I am not entirely at home in written Dutch. Sometimes I also write in Spanish. And I have been steeped in Hebrew studies.”
“I’ve always yearned to read the Scriptures in their original language. Sadly the Jesuits gave me only meager training in Hebrew. But you still have not yet responded about your writing.”
“Your conclusion that I write about budgets and improving sales is based, I assume, upon my comment about business being slow. A reasonable deduction, but in this particular case, entirely incorrect. My mind rarely dwells upon business, and I never write about it.”
“I stand corrected. But before pursuing further the focus of your writing, please permit me one small digression—a pedagogical comment, a habit hard to break. Your use of the word ‘deduction’ is incorrect. The process of building upon particular observations to construct a rational conclusion, in other words building upward to theory from discrete observations, is induction, whereas deduction starts with a priori theory and reasons downwards to a collection of conclusions.”
Noting Spinoza’s thoughtful, perhaps grateful, nod, van den Enden continues. “If not about business, young man, then what do you write?”
“Simply what I see outside my shop window.”
Van den Enden turns to follow Bento’s gaze out to the street.
“Look. Everyone is on the move. Scurrying back and forth all day, all their lives. To what end? Riches? Fame? Pleasures of the appetites? Surely these ends represent wrong turns.”
“Why?”
Bento has said all he wished to say but, emboldened by his customer’s question, continues, “Such goals are breeders. Each time a goal is attained, it merely breeds additional needs. Thus more scurrying, more seeking, ad infinitum. It must be that the true path toward imperishable happiness lies elsewhere. That’s what I think and scribble about.” Bento blushes deeply. Never before has he shared such thoughts.
The customer’s face registers great interest. He puts down his shopping bag, draws nearer, and gazes at Bento’s face.
That was the moment—the moment of moments. Bento loved that moment, that look of surprise, that new and greater interest and regard on the stranger’s face. And what a stranger! An emissary from the great, outside, non-Jewish world. A man of obvious consequence. He found it impossible to review that moment only a single time. Instead he reimagined the scene a second and then, sometimes, a third and fourth time. And each time he visualized it, tears filled his eyes. A teacher, an elegant man of the world taking interest in him, taking him seriously, perhaps thinking, “This is an extraordinary young man.”
With effort Bento ripped himself away from this moment of moments and continued his recollection of their first meeting.
The customer persists, “You say that imperishable happiness lies elsewhere. Tell me about this ‘elsewhere.’”
“I only know that it does not lie in perishable objects. It lies not outside but within. It is the mind that determines what is fearful, worthless, desirable, or priceless, and therefore it is the mind, and only the mind, that must be altered.”
“What is your name, young man?”
“Bento Spinoza. In Hebrew I am called Baruch.”
“And in Latin your name is Benedictus. A fine, blessed name. I am Franciscus van den Enden. I conduct an Academy in classics. Spinoza, you say . . . hmm, from the Latin spina and spinosus, meaning respectively ‘thorn’ and ‘full of thorns.’”
“D’espinhosa in Portuguese,” says Bento, nodding. “‘From a thorny place.’”
“Your kinds of questions may prove thorny to orthodox, doctrinaire instructors.” Van den Enden’s lips curl into a mischievous grin. “Tell me, young man, have you been a thorn in the side of your teachers?”
Bento grins too. “Yes, once that was true. But now I have removed myself from my teachers. I confine my thorniness to my journal. My kinds of questions are not welcome in a superstitious community.”
“Superstition and reason have never been close comrades. But perhaps I can introduce you to like-minded companions. Here, for example, is a man you should meet.” Van den Enden reaches into his bag and extracts an old volume, which he hands to Bento. “The man is Aristotle, and this book contains his exploration into your kinds of questions. He, too, regarded the mind and the pursuit of perfecting our powers of reason as the supreme and unique human project. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics should be one of your next lessons.”
Bento raises the book to his nostrils and inhales its aroma before opening the pages. “I know of this man and would like to meet him. But we could never converse. I know no Greek.”
“Then Greek should be part of your education, too. After you have mastered Latin, of course. What a pity that your learned rabbis know so little of the classics. So narrow is their landscape they often forget that non-Jews also engage in the search for wisdom.”
Bento answers instantaneously, reverting as always to being Jewish when Jews were attacked. “That is not true. Both Rabbi Menassch and Rabbi Mortera have read Aristotle in Latin translation. And Maimonides thought Aristotle to be the greatest of philosophers.”
Van den Enden draws himself up. “Well said, young man, well said. With that answer you’ve now passed my entrance examination. Such loyalty toward old teachers prompts me now to issue you a formal invitation to study in my academy. The time has come for you not only to know of Aristotle but to know him yourself. I can place him within your understanding along with the world of his comrades, such as Socrates and Plato and many others.”
“Ah, but there is the matter of tuition? As I have said, business is bad.”
“We shall reach an accommodation. For one thing, we shall see what type of Hebrew teacher you are. Both my daughter and I wish to improve our Hebrew. And we may yet discover other forms of barter. For the present, I suggest you add a kilogram of almonds to my wine and raisins—and not the scrawny raisins—let’s try those plump ones on the upper shelf.”
So compelling was this remembrance of the genesis of
his new life that Bento, lost in reverie, walked blocks past his destination. He came to with a start, oriented himself quickly, and retraced his steps to the van den Enden house, a narrow, four-story home facing the Singel. As he climbed to the top floor, where classes were held, Bento, as always, halted at each landing and peeked into the living areas. He took little interest in the intricately tiled floor margined by a row of blue and white Delft windmill tiles on the first landing.
At the second story the aroma of both sauerkraut and pungent curry reminded him that he had, once again, forgotten to eat lunch or supper.
At the third story he did not linger to admire the gleaming harp and hanging tapestries but, as always, savored the many oil paintings filling every wall. For several minutes Bento gazed at a small painting of a boat beached on the shore and took careful note of the perspective provided by the large figures on the shore and the two smaller figures in the boat—one standing in the prow and the other, even smaller, sitting in the bow—and committed it to memory in order to make a charcoal copy later that evening.
On the fourth level he was greeted by van den Enden and six young academy students, one studying Latin and five who had progressed to Greek. Van den Enden began the evening, as always, with a Latin dictation exercise that students were to translate into either Dutch or Greek. Hoping to inject passion into the mastery of new languages, van den Enden taught from texts meant to interest and amuse. Ovid had been the text for the past three weeks, and tonight van den Enden read a portion from the story of Narcissus.
Unlike the other students, Spinoza displayed minimal interest in magical tales of fantastical metamorphoses. It was soon apparent that he needed no amusements. Instead, he had a passion for learning and a breathtaking aptitude for language. Though van den Enden had known immediately that Bento was to be an extraordinary student, he continued to be astounded as the young man grasped and retained every concept, every generality, and every grammatical singularity before the explanations had left his teacher’s lips.
The quotidian task of Latin language drill was overseen by van den Enden’s daughter, Clara Maria, a long-necked, gangly thirteen-year-old with a beguiling smile and crooked spine. Clara was herself a prodigy in languages and shamelessly demonstrated her facility to the other students by switching back and forth from tongue to tongue as she and her father discussed each student’s lessons for the day. At first, Bento was shocked: one of the Jewish tenets he never challenged was the inferiority of women—inferior rights and inferior intellects. Though he was stunned by Clara Maria, he came to regard her as an oddity, a freak, an exception to the rule that women’s minds were not equal to men’s.
Once van den Enden left the room with the five students working on Greek, Clara Maria commenced, with a gravity almost comical in a thirteen-year-old, to drill Bento and a German student, Dirk Kerckrinck, on their vocabulary and declension homework. Dirk was studying Latin as a prerequisite to entering medical school in Hamburg. After the vocabulary drill Clara Maria asked Bento and Dirk to translate into Latin a popular Dutch poem by Jacob Cats on the proper behavior of young unmarried women, which she read aloud in a charming manner. She beamed, stood, and curtsied when Dirk, joined quickly by Bento, applauded her performance.
The final segment of the evening was always the highlight for Bento. All the students convened in the larger classroom, the only one with windows, to listen to van den Enden discourse on the ancient world. His topic for this evening was the Greek idea of democracy, in his opinion the most perfect form of government, even though—here he glanced at his daughter, who attended all his sessions—he admitted, “Greek democracy excluded over 50 percent of the population, namely women and slaves.” He continued, “Consider the paradoxical position of women in Greek drama. On the one hand, Greek women were either forbidden to attend performances or, in later, more enlightened centuries, were permitted into the amphitheaters but could sit only in the areas with the poorest view of the stage. And, yet, consider the heroic women in the drama—women of steel who were protagonists of the greatest tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. Let me describe briefly three of the most formidable characters in all of literature: Antigone, Phaedra, and Medea.”
After his presentation, during which he asked Clara Maria to read several of Antigone’s most powerful passages in both Greek and Dutch, he asked Bento to stay for a few minutes after the others had left.
“I have a couple of issues to discuss with you, Bento. First, you remember my offer at our initial meeting in your shop? My offer to introduce you to kindred thinkers?” Bento nodded, and van den Enden continued, “I haven’t forgotten, and I shall begin to fulfill that promise. Your progress in Latin has been superb, and we shall now turn to the language of Sophocles and Homer. Next week Clara Maria will begin instruction in the Greek alphabet. Moreover, I’ve chosen texts that should be of special interest to you. We’ll work on passages from Aristotle and Epicurus that pertain to the very issues in which you expressed interest during our first encounter.”
“You refer to my journal entries about perishable and imperishable goals?”
“Precisely. As a step toward perfecting your Latin, I suggest you now begin writing your entries in that language.”
Bento nodded.
“And one more matter,” van den Enden continued. “Clara Maria and I are ready to commence our Hebrew training under your tutelage. Are you agreeable to beginning next week?”
“Gladly,” responded Bento. “It would give me much pleasure and also allow me to repay my great debt to you.”
“Perhaps, then, it is time to think about pedagogical methods. Have you teaching experience?”
“Three years ago Rabbi Mortera asked me to assist him in teaching Hebrew to the younger students. I have jotted down a great many thoughts about the intricacies of Hebrew and hope, someday, to write a Hebrew grammar.”
“Excellent. Rest assured you will have eager and attentive students.”
“By coincidence,” Bento added, “I had an odd request for pedagogy this afternoon. Two distraught men sought me out a few hours ago and attempted to engage me as an advisor of sorts.” Bento proceeded to relate the details of the encounter with Jacob and Franco.
Van den Enden listened intently and, when Bento finished, said, “I’m going to add one more word to your Latin vocabulary homework tonight. Please write down caute. You can guess the meaning from the Spanish cautela.”
“Yes, ‘caution’—cuidado in Portuguese. But why caute?”
“Latin, please.”
“Quad cur caute?”
“I have a spy who tells me that your Jewish friends are not pleased that you study with me. Not pleased at all. And they are not pleased with your growing distance from your community. Caute, my boy. Take care to give them no further grievances. Trust no strangers with your deeper thoughts and doubts. Next week we will see if Epicurus may offer useful counsel to you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ESTONIA—MAY 10, 1910
After Alfred left, the two old friends stood and stretched while Headmaster Epstein’s secretary laid a plate of apple and walnut strudel on the table. They sat down and quietly nibbled at it as she prepared their tea.
“So, Hermann, this is the face of the future?” said Headmaster Epstein.
“Not a future I want to see. I’m glad for the hot tea—it’s chilling to be with him.”
“How worried should we be about this boy, about his influence upon his classmates?”
A shadow passed by—a student walking by in the hallway—and Herr Shäfer stood to close the door, which had been left ajar.
“I’ve been his adviser since he started, and he’s been in a number of my classes. Strangely, I don’t know him at all. As you see, there’s something mechanical and remote about him. I see the boys engaged in animated conversations, but Alfred never joins in. He keeps himself well hidden.”
“Hardly hidden the last few minutes, Hermann.”
“That was entirely new.
That jolted me. I saw a different Alfred Rosenberg. Reading Chamberlain has emboldened him.”
“Maybe that has its bright side. Perhaps other books may yet come along to inflame him in a different way. In general, though, you say he is not a lover of books?”
“Oddly, it’s hard to answer that. Sometimes I think he loves the idea of books, or the aura, or perhaps only the covers of books. He often parades around school with a stack of books under his arm—Hauptman, Heine, Nietzsche, Hegel, Goethe. At times his posturing is almost comical. It’s a way of showing off his superior intellect, of bragging that he chooses books over popularity. I’ve often doubted he really reads the books. Today I don’t know what to think.”
“Such passion for Chamberlain,” remarked the Headmaster. “Has he shown passion for other things?”
“That’s the question. He has always kept his feelings very much in check, but I do remember a flash of excitement in local prehistory. On a few occasions I’ve taken small groups of students to participate in archeological digs just north of the church of St. Olai. Rosenberg always volunteered for such expeditions. On one trip he helped uncover some Stone Age tools and a prehistoric hearth, and he was thrilled.”
“Strange,” said the headmaster as he rifled through Alfred’s file. “He elected to come to our school rather than the gymnasium, where he could have studied the classics and then been able to enter the university for literature or philosophy, which seems to be where his interests lie. Why is he going to the Politechnikum?”
“I think there are financial reasons. His mother died when he was an infant, and his father has consumption and works only sporadically as a bank clerk. The new art teacher, Herr Purvit, considers him a reasonably good draftsman and encourages him to pursue a career as an architect.”
“So he keeps his distance from the others,” said the headmaster closing Alfred’s file, “and yet he won the election. And wasn’t he also president of the class a couple of years ago?”