The Spinoza Problem (36 page)

He edged closer to listen to the rabbi, who urged his congregation, the men clustered about him and the women in an outer circle, to think of all their regrets of the past year, all their acts of unkindness and their ignoble thoughts, their envy and pride and guilt, and told them to shed them, to toss unworthy thoughts away just as they now threw away their bread. The rabbi tossed his bread into the water, and immediately the others followed suit. Bento momentarily reached into the his pocket where he had put his bread but pulled his hand back. He disliked participating in any ritual, and, besides, he was a bystander and was too far from the canal. The rabbi chanted the prayers in Hebrew, and Bento reflexively murmured the words with him. It was, all in all, a pleasing and most sensible ceremony, and as the crowd turned back to walk to their synagogue, many nodded to him and said, “
Gut Yontef
” (“Good holiday”). He reciprocated with a smile, “
Gut Yontef dir
” (“Good holiday to you”). He liked their faces; they seemed like good people. Even though their appearance differed from his own Sephardic community, still they resembled the people he had known as a child. Simple but thoughtful. Serene and comfortable with one another. He missed them. Oh, he missed them.

As he walked to Simon’s house, nibbling Rifke’s bread, Bento pondered his experience. Obviously he had underestimated the power of the past. Its stamp is indelible; it cannot be erased; it colors the present and vastly influences feelings and actions. More clearly than ever before, he understood how nonconscious thoughts and feelings are a part of the causative network. So many things became clear: the healing power with which he imbued Franco, the strong sweet tug of the Tashlich ceremony, even the extraordinary taste of Rifke’s bread that he chewed slowly as if to extract every particle of flavor. What’s more, he knew for certain that his mind undoubtedly contained an unseen calendar: though he had forgotten Rosh Hashanah, some part of his mind had remembered that today marked the beginning of a new year. Perhaps it was this hidden knowledge that lay behind the malaise that had plagued him the entire day. With this thought, his aches and his heaviness vanished. His stride quickened as he headed toward Amsterdam and Simon de Vries.

H
itler’s note utterly astounded me. Here, Friedrich, I want you to see it with your own eyes. I carry it in my wallet at all times. I now keep it in an envelope—it’s starting to fall apart.”

Friedrich took the packet gingerly, unfolded the envelope, and extracted the note.

“So this was given to you just after the failed putsch—two years ago?”

“The day after. He wrote it on November 10, 1923.”

“Tell me more about your reaction.”

“As I say, stunned. I hadn’t a single clue he would select me to succeed him.”

“Keep going.”

Alfred shook his head. “I . . .” He choked up for a moment and then regained his composure and blurted out: “I was jolted. Bewildered. How could it be? Hitler never spoke of my leading the party before this note—and never spoke of it again after he wrote it!”

Hitler never spoke of it before or after
. Friedrich tried to digest that odd thought but continued focusing on Alfred’s emotions. His analytic training had made him more patient. He knew all would unfold in time. “A lot of emotion in your voice, Alfred. It’s important to follow feelings. What comes up for you?”

“Everything fell apart with the putsch. The party was dispersed. The leaders were either in jail, like Hitler, or out of the country, like Göring, or in hiding, like me. The government outlawed the party and permanently closed the
Völkischer Beobachter.
It reopened only a few months ago, and I’m back at my old job.”

“I want to hear about all of this, but for the moment go back to your feelings about the note. Do what we’ve done before: imagine the scene when you opened the note for the first time, and then say whatever floats into your mind.”

Alfred closed his eyes and concentrated. “Pride. Great pride—he chose
me
,
me above all the rest
—he passed his mantle to me. It meant everything. That’s why I carry it with me. I had
no
idea he trusted me and valued me so much. What else? Great joy. It was perhaps the proudest moment of my life. No, not perhaps, it
was
my proudest moment. I loved him so much for that. And then . . . and then . . .”

“And then what, Alfred? Don’t stop.”

“And then it all turned to shit! That note. Everything! My greatest joy turned into the greatest . . . the greatest
pestilence
of my life.”

“From joy to pestilence. Fill me in on the transformation.” Friedrich knew his comments were unnecessary. Alfred was bursting to talk.

“It would take all my time today to answer in detail, so much has happened.” Alfred looked at his watch.

“I know you can’t tell me everything about the last three years, but I’ll need at least some brief overview if I’m to really understand your distress.”

Alfred looked at the high ceiling of Friedrich’s spacious office and gathered his thoughts. “How to put it? In essence that note gave me an impossible task. I was asked to lead a sorry cadre of venomous men all scheming for power, all with personal agendas, each one set on defeating me. Each one shallow and stupid, each one threatened by my superior intelligence and entirely unable to comprehend my words. Each profoundly ignorant of the principles the party stood for.”

“And Hitler? He asked you to lead the party. No support from him?”

“Hitler? He has been entirely bewildering and has made my life more difficult. You’ve not followed the drama of our party?”

“Sorry, but I’m not keeping up with political events. I continue to be consumed by new developments in my field and by all the patients calling upon me—mostly ex-soldiers. Besides, it’s best I hear everything from your perspective.”

“I’ll summarize. As you probably know, in 1923 we tried to persuade the leaders of the Bavarian government to join us in a march on Berlin patterned on Mussolini’s march on Rome. But our putsch was an utter fiasco. In everyone’s view it could not have been worse. It was poorly planned and poorly executed and disintegrated at the first sign of resistance. When Hitler wrote that note to me, he was hiding in Putzi Hanfstaengl’s attic, facing imminent arrest and possible deportation. When Frau Hanfstaengl delivered the note, she described what had happened. Three cars of policemen came to the house, and Hitler grew frenzied and waved his pistol, saying he would shoot himself before he let those swine take him. Fortunately, her husband had taught her jujitsu, and Hitler, with his injured shoulder, was no match for her. Frau Hanfstaengl wrestled the gun from his hands and threw it into a huge two-hundred-kilo barrel of flour. After quickly scribbling a note to me, Hitler went meekly to jail. Everyone
thought his career was over. Hitler was finished—he was a national laughing stock.

“Or so it seemed. But it was at this lowest point that his true genius emerged. He turned the fiasco into pure gold. I’ll be honest: he has treated me like shit. I’m devastated by what he did to me, and yet at this moment I am more convinced than ever that he is a man of destiny.”

“Explain that to me, Alfred.”

“His moment of redemption came at the trial. There, all the other putsch participants meekly pleaded not guilty to the charges of treason. Some were given light sentences—for example, Hess got seven months. Some, like the untouchable Field Marshal Ludendorff, were found not guilty and freed immediately. But Hitler alone insisted on pleading guilty to treason and at his trial entranced the judges, the spectators, the reporters from every major newspaper in Germany with a four-hour miraculous speech. It was his greatest moment—a moment that made him a hero to all Germans. Surely you know of this?”

“Yes. All the papers reported on the trial, but I’ve never actually read the speech.”

“Unlike all the other weaklings pleading not guilty, he proclaimed his guilt again and again. ‘If,’ he said, ‘overthrowing this government of November criminals, who stabbed the valiant German army in the back, is high treason,
then I am guilty
. If wanting to restore the glorious majesty of our German nation is treason,
then I am guilty
.’ If wanting to restore the honor of the German army is treason,
then I am guilty
. The judges were so moved, they congratulated him, shook his hand, and wanted to acquit him, but they could not: he insisted on pleading guilty to treason. In the end, they sentenced him to five years in the minimum security prison at Landsberg but assured him of an early pardon. And, thus, in one extraordinary afternoon, he suddenly went from being a small-time politician and laughing stock to a universally admired national figure.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed his name is now known to all. Thanks for filling me in. There’s something sticking in my mind I’d like to return to—your strong term ‘pestilence.’ What happened between you and Adolf Hitler?”

“What
didn’t
happen? The most recent thing—the real reason I’m here—is that he publicly humiliated me. He had one of his major tantrums, and in a rage he viciously accused me of incompetence, disloyalty, and all the crimes in the calendar. Don’t ask me for more details. I have blotted it out
and remember only fragments, the way one remembers a flitting nightmare. It has been two weeks, and I still haven’t recovered.”

“I see how shaken you are. What prompted this rage?”

“Party politics. I decided to run some candidates in the 1924 parliamentary elections. Clearly our future is in that direction. The disastrous putsch proved that we had no choice but to enter the parliamentary system. Our party was in tatters and would have dissolved entirely otherwise. Since the NSDAP was outlawed, I proposed that our members join forces with a different party, led by Field Marshal Ludendorff. I discussed this at length with Hitler in one of my many visits to the Landsberg prison. For weeks he refused to make a decision but finally granted me the authority to decide. That’s like him—he’ll rarely make a decision on policy, leaving it instead to his subordinates to battle it out. I made the choice, and we did well in the election. Later, however, when Ludendorff attempted to marginalize him, Hitler publicly denounced my decision and proclaimed that no one could speak for him—thus withdrawing all authority from me.”

“It sounds as though his rage at you is displaced anger—that is, it was misdirected and flowed from other sources, especially the prospect of losing his power.”

“Yes, yes, Friedrich. Exactly. Hitler is preoccupied now with one thing and one thing only—his position as leader. Nothing else, certainly not our basic principles, matters as much. Ever since he was pardoned after thirteen months in Landsberg, he has changed. He has developed a faraway look, as though he sees what others cannot, as though he is above and beyond terrestrial matters. And he now absolutely insists on everyone calling him ‘Führer’—nothing else. He’s grown inexpressibly distant with me.”

“I remember your talking during our last meeting about how you felt he stayed distant from you, how chagrined you were when you witnessed him being more intimate with others—was it Göring you talked about?”

“Yes, exactly. But it’s far more extensive now. In public he holds himself back from everyone. And this lout, Göring, is a big part of the problem. Not only is he unctuous, divisive, and abusive to me, but his open drug addiction is a disgrace. I’m told that in public meetings he takes out his bottle of pills every hour and gulps a handful. I tried to throw him out of the party but could not obtain Hitler’s agreement. In fact, Göring is the other major reason I’m here today. Though he is still out of the country, I’ve heard from good sources that Göring is spreading the vicious rumor that Hitler
deliberately
chose me to lead the party in his absence
because he knew I was the most unsuitable candidate imaginable
. In other words, I’d be so inept that Hitler’s own position and power would be unthreatened. I don’t know what to do. I’m ready to jump out of my skin.” Alfred sank back into his chair, hands over his eyes. “I need your help. I keep imagining talking to you.”

“What do you imagine my saying or doing?”

“There I draw a blank. I never get that far.”

“Try to imagine my speaking to you in a manner that would relieve your pain. Tell me, what would be the perfect thing for me to say?” This was one of Friedrich’s favorite ploys, as it always led to deeper investigation of the therapist-patient relationship. Not today.

“I can’t, I can’t do it. I need to hear from you.”

Seeing that Alfred was too agitated to do much reflection, Friedrich offered support as best he could. “Alfred, here’s what I’ve been thinking as you spoke. First, I feel the weight of your burden. This is a horror story. It’s as though you’re in a viper’s nest and you’re dealt with unfairly and viciously by everyone. And though I’m listening hard, I haven’t heard any affirmation from any source.”