The Spinoza Problem (3 page)

“I will follow your example, sir, and speak of my ancestry.”

“I have personally done my family’s genealogical research back for several centuries. Have you?”

Alfred shakes his head.

“Do you know how to do such research?”

Another headshake.

“Then one of your required pregraduation research projects shall be to learn the details of genealogical research and then carry out a search of your own ancestry.”

“One of my projects, sir?”

“Yes, there will be two required assignments in order to remove any of my doubts about your fitness for graduation as well as your fitness to enter the Polytechnic Institute. After our discussion today, Herr Schäfer and I will decide upon another edifying project.”

“Yes sir.” Alfred is now growing aware of the precariousness of his situation.

“Tell me, Rosenberg,” Headmaster Epstein continues, “did you know there were Jewish students at the rally last night?”

A faint nod from Alfred. Headmaster Epstein asks, “And did you consider their feelings and their response to your words about Jews being unworthy for this school?”

“I believe my first duty is to the Fatherland and to protect the purity of our great Aryan race, the creative force in all civilization.”

“Rosenberg, the election is over. Spare me the speeches. Address my question. I asked about feelings of the Jews in your audience.”

“I believe that if we are not careful, the Jewish race will bring us down. They are weak. They are parasitic. The eternal enemy. The anti-race to Aryan values and culture.”

Surprised by Alfred’s vehemence, Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer exchange concerned glances. Headmaster Epstein probes more deeply.

“It appears you wish to avoid that question I asked. Let me try another line of discussion. The Jews are a weak, parasitic, inferior little race?”

Alfred nods.

“So tell me, Rosenberg, how can such a weak race threaten our all-powerful Aryan race?”

As Alfred tries to formulate an answer, Herr Epstein continues, “Tell me, Rosenberg, have you studied Darwin in Herr Schäfer’s classes?”

“Yes,” Alfred responds, “in Herr Schäfer’s history course and also in Herr Werner’s biology course.”

“And what do you know of Darwin?”

“I know about evolution of the species and about the survival of the fittest.”

“Ah, yes, the fittest survive. Now of course you’ve thoroughly read the Old Testament in your religion course, have you not?”

“Yes, in Herr Müller’s course.”

“So, Rosenberg, let’s consider the fact that almost all of the peoples and cultures—dozens of them—described in the Bible have become extinct. Right?”

Alfred nods.

“Can you name some of these extinct people?”

Alfred gulps: “Phoenicians, Moabites . . . and Edomites.” Alfred glances at the nodding head of Herr Schäfer.

“Excellent. But all of them dead and gone. Except the Jews. The Jews survive. Would not Darwin claim that the Jews are the fittest of all? Do you follow me?”

Alfred responds in lightning quick fashion, “But not through their own strength. They have been parasites and have held back the Aryan race from even greater fitness. They survive only by sucking the strength and the gold and wealth from us.”

“Ah, they don’t play fair,” Headmaster Epstein says. “You’re suggesting there is a place for fairness in nature’s grand scheme. In other words, the noble animal in its struggle for survival should not use camouflage or hunting stealth? Strange, I don’t remember anything in Darwin’s work about fairness.”

Alfred, puzzled, sits silently.

“Well, never mind about that,” says the headmaster. “Let’s consider another point. Surely, Rosenberg, you’d agree that the Jewish race has produced great men. Consider the Lord, Jesus, who was Jewish-born.”

Again Alfred answers quickly, “I have read that Jesus was born in Galilee, not in Judea, where the Jews were. Even though some Galileans eventually came to practice Judaism, they had not a drop of true Israelite blood in them.”

“What?” Headmaster Epstein throws up his hands and turns toward Herr Schäfer and asks, “Where do these notions come from, Herr Schäfer? If he were an adult, I would ask what he had been drinking. Is this what you are teaching in your history course?”

Herr Schäfer shakes his head and turns to Alfred. “Where are you getting these ideas? You say you read them but not in my class. What are you reading, Rosenberg?”

“A noble book, sir.
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century
.”

Herr Schäfer claps his hand to his forehead and slumps in his chair.

“What’s that?” Headmaster Epstein asks.

“Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s book,” says Herr Schäfer. “He’s an Englishman, now Wagner’s son-in-law. He writes imaginative history: that is, history that he invents as he goes along.” He turns back toward Alfred. “How did you come upon Chamberlain’s book?”

“I read some of it at my uncle’s home and then went to buy it at the bookstore across the street. They didn’t have it but ordered it for me. I’ve been reading it this last month.”

“Such enthusiasm! I only wish you had been so enthusiastic about your class texts,” says Herr Shäfer, gesturing with a sweep of his arm to the shelves
of leather-bound books lining the wall of the headmaster’s office. “Even one class text!”

“Herr Schäfer,” asks the headmaster, “you’re familiar with this work, this Chamberlain?”

“As much as I’d wish to be with any pseudo-historian. He is a popularizer of Arthur Gobineau, the French racist whose writings about the basic superiority of the Aryan races influenced Wagner. Both Gobineau and Chamberlain make extravagant claims about Aryan leadership in the great Greek and Roman civilizations.”

“They
were
great!” Alfred suddenly interjects. “Until they mixed with inferior races—the poisonous Jews, the Blacks, the Asians. Then each civilization declined.”

Both Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer are startled by a student daring to interrupt their conversation. The headmaster glances at Herr Schäfer as though it were his responsibility.

Herr Schäfer shifts the blame to his student: “If only he had such fervor in the classroom.” He turns to Alfred. “How many times did I say that to you, Rosenberg? You seemed so uninterested in your own education. How many times did I try to incite your participation in our readings? And yet suddenly today here you are, set on fire by a book. How can we understand this?”

“Perhaps it is because I never read such a book before—a book that tells the truth about the nobility of our race, about how scholars have mistakenly written about history as the progress of humanity, when the truth is that our race created civilization in all the great empires! Not only in Greece and Rome, but also Egypt, Persia, even India. Each of these empires crumbled only when our race was polluted by surrounding inferior races.”

Alfred looks toward Headmaster Epstein and says as respectfully as possible, “If I may, sir, this is the answer to your earlier question. This is why I do not worry about the hurt feelings of a couple of Jewish students, or about the Slavs, who are also inferior but not so organized as the Jews.”

Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer again exchange glances, both of them now, finally, appreciative of the seriousness of the problem. This is no mere prankish or impulsive teenager.

Headmaster Epstein says, “Rosenberg, please wait outside. We shall confer privately.”

J
odenbreestraat at dusk on the Sabbath teemed with Jews. Each carried a prayer book and a small velvet bag containing a prayer shawl. Every Sephardic Jew in Amsterdam headed in the direction of the synagogue, save one. After locking his shop, Bento stood on the doorstep, took a long look at the stream of fellow Jews, inhaled deeply, and plunged into the crowd, heading in the opposite direction. He avoided meeting the gaze of anyone and whispered reassurances to diminish his self-consciousness.
No one notices, no one cares. It is a good conscience, not a bad reputation, that matters. I’ve done this many times.
But his racing heart was impervious to the feeble weapons of rationality. Then he tried to shut out the outside world, sink inward, and distract himself by marveling at this curious duel between reason and emotion, a duel in which reason was always overmatched.

When the crowds thinned, he strolled with more ease and turned left on the street bordering the Koningsgracht Canal toward the home and classroom of Franciscus van den Enden, teacher extraordinaire of Latin and classics.

Though the encounter with Jacob and Franco had been remarkable, an even more memorable meeting had taken place in the Spinoza export shop several months earlier, when Franciscus van den Enden first entered the store. As he walked, Bento amused himself by recalling that encounter. The details remained in his mind with perfect clarity.

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.”