The Spinoza Problem (4 page)

With effort Bento ripped himself away from this moment of moments and continued his recollection of their first meeting.

“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.’”

“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.”

S
o 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.”

A
fter 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.”