The Final Testament (3 page)

Sauerwald stooped his shoulders and offered his palms. “Because some people think you would be giving support to enemies of your race?”

Freud cleared his phlegm-ravaged throat and glared. “You are mistaken. The point of my book is not to discredit the religion of my people. It is to consider the distinctive characteristics of the Jewish people and to try to understand how they might have evolved over time.”

“But you must recognize that some people would use your book as justification for staying out of a war to save Jews,” Sauerwald said, goading him shamelessly.

“You give me far too much credit for being influential.” Freud shook his head, refusing the bait. “I very much doubt this slender volume you're holding would change anyone's mind about anything.”

“An author is often the worst judge of how a book will be received.” Sauerwald chuckled and rocked back so that his feet left the floor. “I applaud your decision to go ahead, nevertheless. Is there a publication date?”

“It needs to be translated and copy-edited in several languages. My American publisher expects to have it out by spring next year.”

“
Wunderbar.
” Sauerwald's smile faded as quickly as a flashbulb dimming. “Excuse me, Dr. Freud. But I would like now to ask an impertinent question.”

“
Now
you are worried about manners?”

“It's no secret that your health has deteriorated greatly in the last few months, and that you have been suffering greatly.” The visitor thinned his liver-colored lips. “Do you expect to be alive by the time your book comes out?”

Several seconds of silence passed. Birds began to sing, trying to fill the empty space, and then stopped. A toilet flushed somewhere in the house. A baby cried out on the street.

His life's work had been the study of raw emotion. He had made a habit of measuring and analyzing his own responses with as much detachment as possible. But, for an instant, he became a child of the Vienna streets, broiling with scarlet rage as his meek father had a beautiful new fur hat knocked from his head by a Jew-hating brute and failed to retaliate with appropriately unrestrained violence.

“That is an ugly and inhuman thing to say,” he said quietly. “If not for my sisters, I would demand that you leave my home now”

“But you know you will not.”

“What is it you want then? For God's sake,
out with it already
.”

Sauerwald sat back and laced his hands behind his head, tauntingly. “I would like you to help me become an author.”

“Are you serious?”

“I have never been more serious.” The visitor undid the snaps of his attaché case and took out a slender volume with a brown leather cover and gold lettering on the spine. “I took this manuscript to one of the finest bookbinders in Vienna and paid for the work out of my own pocket.”

And probably took your money back after you had him arrested, Freud thought grimly.

Sauerwald smiled, the skin as tight as a sausage casing over his features, then put the attaché case aside and stood up. He crossed the room with a brisk ebullient stride and handed the book to Freud.

The doctor took it and placed it on his lap, closing his eyes for a moment to collect himself. “This is a book you wrote?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Sauerwald nodded.

“Are you asking me to read it and offer a critique?”

“Both more than that and less than that.”

“I don't understand.” Freud blinked.

“Open the cover.”

With stiff gnarled fingers, Freud did as he was asked and his eye glanced over a title rendered in fourteen point Garamond type:
The Theft of the Birthright.
But then his eye found the author's byline and his heart stopped for a good half-second.

“What do you mean by this?” He looked up, translucent whorls and eddies floating before his eyes.

“You should be even more flattered.”

“I should be flattered that my name is on a book that I did not write?”

“Most writers would be delighted to have someone else produce their work for them.” Sauerwald waggled his eyebrows roguishly. “I would expect you to say thanks.”

Freud's hands shook as he began to turn the onion-skin pages quickly, looking for thoughts and words that he might recognize as his own. Like most writers, he was the most fervid admirer and the fiercest critic of his own prose, and was always pleased when he detected his own influence on the work of others. But here was a book that claimed to have him as an author, and its style was appalling. Barbaric phrases and sentiments abounded from every paragraph. “
These so-called holier-than-holy chosen people … A pattern of mendacious deceptive audacity repeated audaciously throughout the tortured course of history … The most monstrous of all lies told with the cleverness of ants … the sanctimonious legitimacy of parasitic larceny …
”

“This is work that you're trying to pass off as mine?” Freud closed the cover and set the book down on the edge of his desk, a wave of dizziness and nausea causing him to pitch forward a little in his creaking chair. “Why would you do such a thing?”

Sauerwald had returned to the green seat behind the head of the couch. “I'm merely taking up what you suggested in your Moses book and bringing it to its logical conclusion. I'm saying what even you,
herr professor
, lacked the nerve to say.”

“Which is what?”

“That this entire religion, this entire race, this entire
culture
—as some people insist on calling it—is based on an even greater lie than the murder of a prophet and its concealment. It begins with an astonishing act of fraud and bad faith, and only gets worse from there.”

Freud's fingers grappled among themselves, trying to select a single digit to grip as a cigar substitute. “Explain yourself.”

“It would be far better if you would take the time to read it. I'm quite proud of it.”

“Spare me the effort. As you say, I'm an old man. And I'm sure you can summarize the contents.”

Sauerwald sighed, a look of unmistakable disappointment tilting down the corners of his mouth. “Well, if you insist …” He huffed. “I tried to the best of my abilities to emulate your style and mimic your methodology. Like yourself, I take the Bible as my source material, then I put it on the couch like a patient and dissect it without fear or favor.”

“I do not
dissect
patients.” Freud moved his tongue around inside his mouth, trying to rid himself of the taste of decay. “I analyze them.”

“A fine distinction, but not important here.” Sauerwald smirked. “I began with an origin myth that takes place long before this Moses legend. You are familiar, of course, with the story of Abraham in the Book of Genesis?”

“I suppose this will concern the attempted sacrifice of the son Isaac.” Freud shifted restlessly. “I've already written about some of these themes in
Civilization and Its Discontents
…”

“Please don't try to anticipate. I really do wish you would approach this book with an open mind. We begin before that primal scene you describe. When Abram—as he was called then—leaves the land of Ur with his barren and disagreeable wife Sarah and sets out for Canaan. Somehow they wind up in Egypt, where in a burst of shameful cowardice Abram lies to the pharaoh and says that Sarah is his sister because he fears he will be killed otherwise. Instead the pharaoh discovers the truth and treats both of them honorably.”

“A curious section, but I wouldn't make too much of it.” Freud shrugged.

“Except that it sets a pattern that continues and escalates. A few chapters later, after God has promised Abram that he will make a great nation of his descendants and award them the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, he has a son. Only it's not born from Sarah, who is still barren. But from an Egyptian handmaiden named Hagar who gives birth to Ishmael, a strong capable boy and a worthy heir.”

“Yes, I'm familiar with this narrative.” Freud rolled his hand with barely constrained disgust. “Get to your point.”

“By all lights, this first-born should be a true descendant in the line of prophets,” Sauerwald said, enjoying—
no! luxuriating
— in the sound of his voice. “Instead, the authors trump up this preposterous tale about the child's mother ridiculing Sarah as an excuse to cast mother and child out into the desert. Somehow they survive and become acknowledged as the progenitors of the great Arab tribes. Meanwhile, Sarah finally manages to have a child of her own, this Isaac, who somehow supplants his half-brother in the line of succession—”

“Everyone knows this, Sauerwald. There's no need to rub my face in it …”

“Please,
herr professor
, you're interrupting yourself.” Sauerwald sat back and placed his hands on his stomach. “In this next section of your book, which is handled with great élan if I don't say so myself, you demonstrate that this proclivity for dishonesty and larceny continues down through the bloodlines. Isaac has two sons. Esau, who is strong and hairy, and Jacob, who is weak and shiftless. By law, Esau, the first-born, should inherit all his father's land. Instead, Jacob conspires to trick his brother out of his birthright. Jacob goes to Esau when he knows his older brother is exhausted and hungry from working the fields and then fools his sibling into trading away his rightful due for a bowl of porridge. He compounds this injustice later, by going to his blind father on his deathbed and disguising himself with furry gloves to simulate Esau's hairy hands so he can cheat his brother out of a father's final blessing. Then down through the ages, the tribes of Esau become the people of Edom, who become part of the Arab race and … ”

“Oh, for God's sake.” Freud pounded the arms of his chair, losing patience. “What is your point?”

“To show the true nature of things. To undermine this patently false Zionist narrative and reveal its true psychological underpinnings. In your terms, the Jews try to conceal the guilt for their own historic crimes, but they give clues in spite of themselves.”

Freud's entire body had started to shake, but he tried to keep his voice steady. “In other words, you hope to give support to anti-Semites all over the world, and discourage the allies from getting involved in the war.”

“Really, I implore you to read your own tome.” Sauerwald pointed to the book on Freud's lap. “It's quite scintillating, if I may say so. You make a very cogent argument and support it with voluminous scholarship. I spent more than twelve months doing the research and marshaling my sources. I've spoken to some of the most important archeologists and theologians in all of Austria and Germany. I've studied ancient texts and compared translations…”

“I'm sure you made half of them up yourself,” Freud said.

“If I did, I wouldn't be the first,” Sauerwald riposted. “And do you honestly believe most readers bother with footnotes?

“You actually believe that I would publish such a book under my own name?” Freud said fiercely, creating an unexpected shock of pain by the sudden movement of his jaw.

“I'm sure you would not find it difficult to place it. Your authority goes far beyond the field of psychiatry now. I read in the newspaper that you were recently given the honor of signing the charter book for the Royal Society of England—your name inscribed beneath Newton's and Darwin's …”

Freud winced, the memory of the Society's secretaries coming to his house to present the ledger personally souring and turning gray behind his eyes.

“Why would anyone take this seriously coming from me?” he argued. “I am not a historian or a Bible scholar.”

“No, but you are truly one of the most respected eminences on the continent,” Sauerwald spoke over him. “In the world, in fact. Anything you write would command attention from an international audience and have instantly credibility.”

“
Sauerwald
.” Freud mustered the strength to slam a gavel-like fist on his desk. “The world is on the brink of war. Jews like myself are being robbed, persecuted, and even murdered under the color of law on the streets and in the houses of every country where your party holds sway. Do you honestly think I would aid in hurting the cause of my own people?”

“I believe you would do what you needed to do to protect your sisters.”

“And so that is the choice you give me? Save my sisters or put my name on a book intended to defame and harm the race that I belong to?”

“It would appear so.” A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Sauerwald's mouth and as his hands rested on his belly, two fingers flexed with a hint of playfulness. “If you insist on putting it that way”

Freud sank down in his seat, seething at his own helplessness. At the betrayal of his body. At the betrayal of his countrymen back home. At the betrayal of the European allies. At the betrayal of humanity at large for allowing people like Sauerwald to spread such lies in the service of further German atrocities. He began to breathe more heavily, as if he was starting to suffocate under the accumulating weight of history. This would not do. His chin began to wag from side-to-side, an involuntary old man tremor turning into a deliberate headshake.