Category: Irvin Yalom

The following is excerpted from Irvin Yalom's new book, Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy, with permission from the author. Available from Amazon.

All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral—both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.

—Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations"

The Crooked Cure

Dr. Yalom, I would like a consultation. I’ve read your novel, When Nietzsche Wept, and wonder if you’d be willing to see a fellow writer with a writing block.

—Paul Andrews

No doubt Paul Andrews sought to pique my interest in his email. And he succeeded: I’d never turn away a fellow writer. As for the writing block, I feel blessed by not having been visited by one of those creatures, and I was keen to help him tackle it. Ten days later Paul arrived for his appointment. I was startled by his appearance. Somehow I had expected a frisky, tormented, middle-aged writer, yet entering my office was a wizened old man, so stooped over that he appeared to be scrutinizing the floor. As he inched slowly through my doorway, I wondered how he had possibly made it to my office at the top of Russian Hill. Almost able to hear his joints creaking, I took his heavy battered briefcase, held his arm and guided him to his chair.

“Thankee, thankee, young man. And how old are you?

“Eighty years old,” I answered.

“Ahhh, to be eighty again.”

“And you? How many years do you have?”

“Eighty-four. Yes, that’s right, eighty-four. I know that startles you. Most folks guess I’m in my thirties.”

I took a good look at him and, for a moment, our gazes locked. I felt charmed by his elfish eyes and the wisp of a smile playing on his lips. As we sat in silence for a few moments looking at one another, I imagined we basked in a glow of elder comradeship, as though we were travelers on a ship who, one cold foggy night, fell into conversation on the deck and discovered we had grown up in the same neighborhood. We instantly knew one another: our parents had suffered through the great depression, we had witnessed those legendary duels between DiMaggio and Ted Williams, and remembered rationing cards for butter and gasoline, and VE day, and Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and Farrell’s Studs Lonigan. No need to speak of any of this: we shared it all and our bond felt secure. Now it was time to get to work.

“So Paul, if we may use first names—”

He nodded, “Of course.”

“All I know about you comes from your short email. You wrote that you were a fellow writer, you’ve read my Nietzsche novel, and you have a writing block.”

“Yes, and I’m requesting a single consultation. That’s all. I’m on a fixed income and can’t afford more.”

“I’ll do what I can. Let’s start immediately and be as efficient as possible. Tell me what I should know about the block.”

“If it’s all right with you, I’ll give you some personal history.”

“That’s fine.”

“I have to go back to my grad school days. I was in philosophy at Princeton writing my doctorate on the incompatibility between Nietzsche’s ideas on determinism and his espousal of self-transformation. But I couldn’t finish. I kept getting distracted by such things as Nietzsche’s extraordinary correspondence, especially by his letters to his friends and fellow writers like Strindberg. Gradually I lost interest altogether in his philosophy and valued him more as an artist. I came to regard Nietzsche as a poet with the most powerful voice in history, a voice so majestic that it eclipsed his ideas and soon there was nothing for me to do but to switch departments and do my doctorate in literature rather than philosophy. The years went by, my research progressed well, but I simply could not write. Finally I arrived at the position that it was only through art that an artist could be illuminated and I abandoned the dissertation project entirely and decided instead to write a novel on Nietzsche. But the writing block was neither fooled nor deterred by my changing projects. It remained as powerful and unmovable as a granite mountain. No progress was possible. And so it has continued until this very day.”

I was stunned. Paul was eighty-four now. He must have begun working on his dissertation in his mid twenties, sixty years ago. I had heard of professional students before, but sixty years? His life on hold for sixty years? No, I hoped not. It couldn’t be.

“Paul, fill me in about your life since those college days.”

“Not much to tell. Of course the university eventually decided I had stayed overtime, rang the bell and terminated my student status. But books were in my blood and I never strayed far from them. I took a job as a librarian at a state university where I stayed put until retirement trying, unsuccessfully, to write all these years. That’s it. That’s my life. Period.”

“Tell me more. Your family? The people in your life?”

Paul seemed impatient and spat his words out quickly, “No siblings. Married twice. Divorced twice. Mercifully short marriages. No children, thank God.”

This is getting very odd, I thought. So affable at first, Paul now seemed intent on giving me as little information as possible. What’s going on?

I persevered. “Your plan was to write a novel about Nietzsche and your email mentioned that you had read my novel, When Nietzsche Wept. Can you say some more about that?”

“I don’t understand your question.”

“What feelings did you have about my novel?”

“A bit slow going at first, but it gathered steam. Despite the stilted language and the stylized, improbable dialogue, it was, overall, not an unengrossing read.”

“No, no, what I meant was your reaction to that novel appearing while you, yourself, were striving to write a novel about Nietzsche. Some feelings about that must have arisen.”

Paul shook his head as though he did not wish to be bothered with that question. Not knowing what else to do, I continued on.

“Tell me, how did you get to me? Was my novel the reason you selected me for a consultation?”

“Well, whatever the reason, we’re here now.”

Things grow stranger by the minute, I thought. But if I were to offer him a useful consultation, I absolutely had to learn more about him. I turned to ‘old reliable,’ a question that never fails to provide heaps of information: “I need to know more about you, Paul. I believe it would help our work today if you’d take me through, in detail, a typical 24-hour day in your life. Pick a day earlier this week and let’s start with your waking in the morning.” I almost always ask this question in a consultation as it provides invaluable information about so many areas of the patient’s life. Sleep, dreams, eating and work patterns, but most of all I learn how the patient’s life is peopled.

Failing to share my investigative enthusiasm, Paul merely shook his head slightly as though to brush my question away. “There’s something more important for us to discuss. For many years I had a long correspondence with my dissertation director, Professor Claude Mueller. You know his work?”

“Well, I’m familiar with his biography of Nietzsche. It’s quite wonderful.”

“Good. Very good, I’m exceptionally glad you think that,” Paul said, as he reached into his briefcase and extracted a ponderous binder. “Well, I’ve brought that correspondence with me and I’d like you to read it.”

“When? You mean now?”

“Yes, there is nothing more important that we could do in this consultation.”

I looked at my watch. “But we have only this one session and reading this would take an hour or two and it is so much more important that we—”

“Dr. Yalom, trust me, I know what I’m asking. Make a start. Please.”

I was flummoxed. What to do? He is absolutely determined. I’ve reminded him of our time constraints and he is fully aware he has only this one meeting. On the other hand, perhaps Paul knows what he is doing. Perhaps he believes that this correspondence would supply all the information about him that I needed. Yes, yes, the more I think about it the more certain I am: this must be it.

“Paul, I gather you’re saying that this correspondence provides the necessary information about you?”

“If that assumption is necessary for you to read it, then the answer is ‘yes.’”

Most unusual. An intimate dialog is my profession, my home territory. It’s where I am always comfortable and yet in this dialog everything feels askew, out of joint. “Maybe I should stop trying so hard and just go with the flow. After all, it’s his hour. He’s paying for my time.” I felt a bit dizzy but acquiesced and held out my hand to accept the manuscript he proffered.

As Paul passed me the massive three-ring binder, he told me the correspondence extended over forty-five years and ended with Professor Mueller’s death in 2002. I began by flipping the pages to familiarize myself with the project. Much care had gone into this binder. It seemed that Paul had saved, indexed, and dated everything that passed between them, both short casual notes and long discursive letters. Professor Mueller’s letters were neatly typed with his small exquisitely fashioned closing signature, while Paul’s letters—both the early carbon copies and the latter photocopies—ended simply with the letter ‘P.'

Paul nodded toward me, “Please start.”

I read the first several letters and saw that this was a most urbane and engaging correspondence. Though Prof Mueller obviously had great respect for Paul, he chided him for his infatuation with wordplay. In the very first letter he said, “I see that you’re in love with words, Mr. Andrews. You enjoy waltzing with them. But words are just the notes. It’s the ideas that form the melody. It’s the ideas that give our life structure.”

“I plead guilty,” retorted Paul in the ensuing letter. “I don’t ingest and metabolize words, I love to dance with them. I greatly hope to be always guilty of this offense.” A few letters later, despite the roles and the half-century dividing them, they had dropped formal titles of Mister and Professor and used their first names, Paul and Claude.

In another letter, my eye fell on an important statement written by Paul: “I never fail to perplex my companions.” So, I had company. Paul continued, “Hence, I shall always embrace solitude. I know I make the error of assuming that others share my passion for great words. I know I inflict my passions onto them. You can only imagine how all creatures flee and scatter when I approach them.” That sounds important, I thought. ‘Embracing solitude’ is a nice cosmetic touch and puts a poetic spin on it, but I imagine he is a very lonely old man.

And then, a couple of letters later, I had an ‘aha’ moment when I came upon a passage that possibly offered the key to understanding this entire surreal consultation. Paul wrote, “So you see, Claude, what is there left for me but to look for the nimblest and noblest mind I can find. I need a mind likely to appreciate my sensibilities, my love of poetry, a mind incisive and bold enough to join me in dialog? Do any of my words quicken your pulse, Claude? I need a light-footed partner for this dance. Would you do me the honor?”

A thunderclap of understanding burst in my mind. Now I knew why Paul insisted I read the correspondence. It’s so obvious. How had I missed it? Professor Mueller died fifteen years ago and Paul is now trolling for another dance partner! That’s where my novel about Nietzsche comes in! No wonder I was so confused. I thought I was interviewing him whereas, in reality, he was interviewing me. That must be what is going on.

I looked at the ceiling for a moment wondering how to express this clarifying insight when Paul interrupted my reverie by pointing to his watch and remarking, “Please Dr. Yalom, our time passes. Please continue reading.” I followed his wishes. The letters were compelling and I gladly dived back into them.

In the first dozen letters there seemed a clear student-teacher relationship. Claude often suggested assignments, for example, “Paul, I’d like you to write a piece on comparing Nietzsche’ misogyny with Strindberg’s misogyny.” I assumed Paul completed such assignments but saw no further mention of them in the correspondence. They must have discussed his assignments face to face. But gradually, halfway through the year, the teacher-student roles began to dissolve. There was little mention of assignments and, at times, it was difficult to discern who was the teacher and who the pupil. Claude submitted several of his own poems seeking Paul’s commentary and Paul’s responses were anything but deferential as he urged Claude to turn off his intellect and pay attention to his inner rush of feelings. Claude, on the other hand critiqued Paul’s poems for having passion but no intelligible content.

Their relationship grew more intimate and more intense with each exchange of letters. I wondered if I held in my hands the ashes of the great love, perhaps the only love, of Paul’s life. Maybe Paul is suffering from chronic unresolved grief. Yes, yes—certainly that’s it. That’s what he’s trying to tell me by asking me to read these letters to the dead.

As time went on I entertained one hypothesis after another but, in the end, none offered the full explanation I sought. The more I read, the more my questions multiplied. Why had Paul come to see me? He labeled a writing block as his major problem, yet why did he show no interest whatsoever in exploring his writing block? Why did he refuse to give me details of his life? And why this singular insistence that I spend all our time together reading these letters of long ago? We needed to make sense of it. I resolved to broach all these issues with Paul before we parted.

Then I saw an exchange of letters that gave me pause. “Paul, your excessive glorification of sheer experience is veering in a dangerous direction. I must remind you, once again, of Socrates’s admonition that the unexamined life is not worth living.”

‘Good going, Claude!’ I silently rooted. ‘My point exactly. I identify entirely with your pressing Paul to examine his life.’

But Paul retorted sharply in his next letter, “Given the choice between living and examining, I’ll choose living any day. I eschew the malady of explanation and urge you to do likewise. The drive to explain is an epidemic in modern thought and its major carriers are contemporary therapists: every shrink I have ever seen suffers from this malady, and it is addictive and contagious. Explanation is an illusion, a mirage, a construct, a soothing lullaby. Explanation has no existence. Let’s call it by its proper name, a coward’s defense against the white-knuckled, knee-knocking terror of the precariousness, indifference and capriciousness of sheer existence.” I read this passage a second and third time and felt destabilized. My resolve to posit any of the ideas fermenting in my mind wavered. I knew that there was zero chance that Paul would accept my invitation to dance.

Every once in a while I looked up and saw Paul’s eves riveted on me, taking in my every reaction, signaling me to go on reading. But, finally, when I saw there were only ten minutes left, I closed the folder and firmly took charge.

“Paul we’ve little time left and I have several things I want to discuss with you. I’m uncomfortable because we’re coming to the end of our session and I’ve not really addressed the very reason you contacted me – your major complaint, your writing block.”

“I never said that.”

“But in your email to me you said … here, I have it printed out…” I opened my folder but, before I could locate it, Paul responded:

“I know my words: I would like a consultation. I’ve read your novel, When Nietzsche Wept, and wonder if you’d be willing to see a fellow writer with a writing block.”

I looked up at him expecting a grin but he was entirely serious. He had said he had a writing block but had not explicitly labeled it as the problem for which he wanted help. It was a word-trap and I fought back irritation at being trifled with. ““I’m accustomed to helping folks with problems. That’s what therapists do. So one can easily see why I made that assumption.””

“I understand entirely.”

“Well then, let’s make a fresh start, ‘tell me, how can I be of help to you?’”

“Your reflections on the correspondence?”

“Can you be more explicit? It would help me frame my comments.”

“Any and every observation would be most helpful to me.”

“All right.” I opened the notebook and flipped through the pages, “As you know, I had time to read only a small portion, but overall I was captivated by it, Paul, and found it brimming with intelligence and erudition at the highest level. I was struck by the shift in roles. At first you were the student and he the teacher. But obviously you were a very special student and within a few months this young student and this renowned professor corresponded as equals. There was no doubt he had the greatest respect for your comments and your judgments. He admired your prose, valued your critique of his work, and I can only imagine that the time and energy he gave to you must have far exceeded what he could possibly have provided the typical student. And, of course, given that the correspondence continued long after your tenure as a student, there is no doubt that you and he were immensely important to one another.”

I looked at Paul. He sat motionless, his eyes filling with tears, eagerly drinking in all that I said, obviously thirsting for yet more. Finally, finally, we had had an encounter. Finally, I had given him something. I could bear witness to an event of extraordinary importance to Paul. I, and I alone, could testify that a great man deemed Paul Andrews to be significant. But the great man had died years ago and Paul had now grown too frail to bear this fact alone. He needed a witness, someone of stature, and I had been selected to fill that role. Yes, I had no doubt of this. This explanation had the aroma of truth.

Now to convey some of these thoughts that would be of value to Paul. As I looked back on all my many insights and at the few minutes remaining to us, I was uncertain where to begin and ultimately decided to start with the most obvious: “Paul, what struck me most strongly about your correspondence was the intensity and the tenderness of the bond between you and Professor Mueller. It struck me as a deep love. His death must have been terrible for you. I wonder if that painful loss still lingers and that is the reason you desired a consultation. What do you think?”

Paul did not answer. Instead he held out his hand for the manuscript and I returned it to him. He opened his briefcase, packed the binder of correspondence away, and zippered it shut.

“Am I right, Paul?”

“I desired a consultation with you because I desired it. And now I’ve had the consultation and I obtained precisely what I wished for. You’ve been helpful, exceedingly helpful. I expected nothing less. Thank you.”

“Before you leave, Paul, one more moment, please. I’ve always found it important to understand what helps. Could you expound for a moment on what you received from me. I believe that some greater clarification of this will serve you well in the future, and might be useful for me and my future clients.”

“Irv, I regret having to leave you with so many riddles but I’m afraid our time is up.” He tottered as he tried to rise. I reached out and grabbed his elbow to steady him. Then he straightened himself, reached to shake my hand and, with an invigorated gait, strode out of my office.


 

Prologue

Spinoza has long intrigued me, and for years I’ve wanted to write about this valiant seventeenth-century thinker, so alone in the world—without a family, without a community—who authored books that truly changed the world. He anticipated secularization, the liberal democratic political state, and the rise of natural science, and he paved the way for the Enlightenment. The fact that he was excommunicated by the Jews at the age of twenty-four and censored for the rest of his life by the Christians had always fascinated me, perhaps because of my own iconoclastic proclivities. And this strange sense of kinship with Spinoza was strengthened by the knowledge that Einstein, one of my first heroes, was a Spinozist. When Einstein spoke of God, he spoke of Spinoza’s God—a God entirely equivalent to nature, a God that includes all substance, and a God “that doesn’t play dice with the universe”—by which he means that everything that happens, without exception, follows the orderly laws of nature.

I also believe that Spinoza, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, on whose lives and philosophy I have based two earlier novels, wrote much that is highly relevant to my field of psychiatry and psychotherapy—for example, that ideas, thoughts, and feelings are caused by previous experiences, that passions may be studied dispassionately, that understanding leads to transcendence—and I wished to celebrate his contributions through a novel of ideas.

But how to write about a man who lived such a contemplative life marked by so few striking external events? He was extraordinarily private, and he kept his own person invisible in his writing. I had none of the material that ordinarily lends itself to narrative—no family dramas, no love affairs, jealousies, curious anecdotes, feuds, spats, or reunions. He had a large correspondence, but after his death his colleagues followed his instructions and removed almost all personal comments from his letters. No, not much external drama in his life: most scholars regard Spinoza as a placid and gentle soul—some compare his life to that of Christian saints, some even to Jesus.

So I resolved to write a novel about his inner life. That was where my personal expertise might help in telling Spinoza’s story. After all, he was a human being and therefore must have struggled with the same basic human conflicts that troubled me and the many patients I’ve worked with over the decades. He must have had a strong emotional response to being excommunicated, at the age of twenty-four, by the Jewish community in Amsterdam—an irreversible edict that ordered every Jew, including his own family, to shun him forever. No Jew would ever again speak to him, have commerce with him, read his words, or come within fifteen feet of his physical presence. And of course no one lives without an inner life of fantasies, dreams, passions, and a yearning for love. About a fourth of Spinoza’s major work, Ethics, is devoted to “overcoming the bondage of the passions.” As a psychiatrist, I felt convinced that he could not have written this section unless he had experienced a conscious struggle with his own passions.

Yet I was stumped for years because I could not find the story that a novel requires—until a visit to Holland five years ago changed everything. I had come to lecture and, as part of my compensation, requested and was granted a “Spinoza day.” The secretary of the Dutch Spinoza Association and a leading Spinoza philosopher agreed to spend a day with me visiting all the important Spinoza sites—his dwellings, his burial place, and, the main attraction, the Spinoza Museum in Rijnsburg. It was there I had an epiphany.

I entered the Spinoza Museum in Rijnsburg, about a forty-five-minute drive from Amsterdam, with keen anticipation, looking for—what? Perhaps an encounter with the spirit of Spinoza. Perhaps a story. But entering the museum, I was immediately disappointed. I doubted that this small, sparse museum could bring me closer to Spinoza. The only remotely personal items were the 151 volumes of Spinoza’s own library, and I turned immediately to them. My hosts permitted me free access, and I picked up one seventeenth-century book after another, smelling and holding them, thrilled to touch objects that had once been touched by Spinoza’s hands.

But my reverie was soon interrupted by my host: “Of course, Dr. Yalom, his possessions—bed, clothes, shoes, pens and books—were auctioned off after his death to pay funeral expenses. The books were sold and scattered far and wide, but fortunately, the notary made a complete list of those books prior to the auction, and over two hundred years later a Jewish philanthropist reassembled most of the same titles, the same editions from the same years and cities of publication. So we call it Spinoza’s library, but it’s really a replica. His fingers never touched these books.”

I turned away from the library and gazed at the portrait of Spinoza hanging on the wall and soon felt myself melting into those huge, sad, oval, heavy-lidded eyes, almost a mystical experience—a rare thing for me. But then my host said, “You may not know this, but that’s not really Spinoza’s likeness. It’s merely an image from some artist’s imagination, derived from a few lines of written description. If there were drawings of Spinoza made during his lifetime, none have survived.”

Maybe a story about sheer elusiveness, I wondered.

While I was examining the lens-grinding apparatus in the second room—also not his own equipment, the museum placard stated, but equipment similar to it—I heard one of my hosts in the library room mention the Nazis.

I stepped back into the library. “What? The Nazis were here? In this museum?”

“Yes—several months after the blitzkrieg of Holland, the ERR troops drove up in their big limousines and stole everything—the books, a bust, and a portrait of Spinoza—everything. They carted it all away, then sealed and expropriated the
museum.”

“ERR? What do the letters stand for?”

“Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. The taskforce of Reich leader Rosenberg—that’s Alfred Rosenberg, the major Nazi anti-Semitic ideologue. He was in charge of looting for the Third Reich, and under Rosenberg’s orders, the ERR plundered all of Europe—first, just the Jewish things and then, later in the war, anything of value.”

“So then these books are twice removed from Spinoza?” I asked. “You mean that books had to be purchased again and the library reassembled a second time?”

“No—miraculously these books survived and were returned here after the war with just a few missing copies.”

“Amazing!” There’s a story here, I thought. “But why did Rosenberg even bother with these books in the first place? I know they have some modest value—being seventeenth-century and older—but why didn’t they just march into the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum and pluck a single Rembrandt worth fifty times this whole collection?”

“No, that’s not the point. The money had nothing to do with it. The ERR had some mysterious interest in Spinoza. In his official report, Rosenberg’s officer, the Nazi who did the hands-on looting of the library, added a significant sentence: ‘They contain valuable early works of great importance for the exploration of the Spinoza problem.’ You can see the report on the web, if you like—it’s in the official Nuremberg documents.”

I felt stunned. “‘Exploration of the Nazis’ Spinoza problem’? I don’t understand. What did he mean? What was the Nazi Spinoza problem?”

Like a mime duo, my hosts hunched their shoulders and turned up their palms.

I pressed on. “You’re saying that because of this Spinoza problem, they protected these books rather than burn them, as they burned so much of Europe?”

They nodded.

“And where was the library kept during the war?”

“No one knows. The books just vanished for five years and turned up again in 1946 in a German salt mine.”

“A salt mine? Amazing!” I picked up one of the books—a sixteenth-century copy of the Iliad—and said, as I caressed it, “So this old storybook has its own story to tell.”

My hosts took me to look at the rest of the house. I had come at a fortunate time—few visitors had ever seen the other half of the building, for it had been occupied for centuries by a working-class family. But the last family member had recently died, and the Spinoza Society had promptly purchased the property and was just now beginning reconstruction to incorporate it into the museum. I wandered amid the construction debris through the modest kitchen and living room and then climbed the narrow, steep stairway to the small, unremarkable bedroom. I scanned the simple room quickly and began to descend, when my eye caught sight of a thin, two-by-two-foot crease in a corner of the ceiling.

“What’s that?”

The old caretaker climbed up a few stairs to look and told me it was a trap door that led to a tiny attic space where two Jews, an elderly mother and her daughter, were hidden from the Nazis for the entire duration of the war. “We fed them and took good care of them.”

A firestorm outside! Four out of five Dutch Jews murdered by the Nazis! Yet upstairs in the Spinoza house, hidden in the attic, two Jewish women were tenderly cared for throughout the war. And downstairs, the tiny Spinoza Museum was looted, sealed, and expropriated by an officer of the Rosenberg task force, who believed that its library could help the Nazis solve their “Spinoza problem.” And what was their Spinoza problem? I wondered if this Nazi, Alfred Rosenberg, had also, in his own way, for his own reasons, been looking for Spinoza. I had entered the museum with one mystery and now left it with two.

Shortly thereafter, I began writing.

Chapter One

AMSTERDAM—APRIL 1656
As the final rays of light glance off the water of the Zwanenburgwal, Amsterdam closes down. The dyers gather up their magenta and crimson fabrics drying on the stone banks of the canal. Merchants roll up their awnings and shutter their outdoor market stalls. A few workers plodding home stop for a snack with Dutch gin at the herring stands on the canal and then continue on their way. Amsterdam moves slowly: the city mourns, still recovering from the plague that, only a few months earlier, killed one person in nine.

A few meters from the canal, at Breestraat No. 4, the bankrupt and slightly tipsy Rembrandt van Rijn applies a last brushstroke to his painting Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph, signs his name in the lower right corner, tosses his palette to the floor, and turns to descend his narrow winding staircase. The house, destined three centuries later to become his museum and memorial, is on this day witness to his shame. It swarms with bidders anticipating the auction of all of the artist’s possessions. Gruffly pushing aside the gawkers on the staircase, he steps outside the front door, inhales the salty air, and stumbles toward the corner tavern.

In Delft, seventy kilometers south, another artist begins his ascent. The twenty-five-year-old Johannes Vermeer takes a final look at his new painting, The Procuress. He scans from right to left. First, the prostitute in a gloriously yellow jacket. Good. Good. The yellow gleams like polished sunlight. And the group of men surrounding her. Excellent—each could easily stroll off the canvas and begin a conversation. He bends closer to catch the tiny but piercing gaze of the leering young man with the foppish hat. Vermeer nods to his miniature self. Greatly pleased, he signs his name with a flourish in the lower right corner.

Back in Amsterdam at Breestraat No. 57, only two blocks from the auction preparations at Rembrandt’s home, a twenty-three-year-old merchant (born only a few days earlier than Vermeer, whom he would admire but never meet) prepares to close his import-export shop. He appears too delicate and beautiful to be a shopkeeper. His features are perfect, his olive skin unblemished, his dark eyes large, and soulful.

He takes a last look around: many shelves are as empty as his pockets. Pirates intercepted his last shipment from Bahia, and there is no coffee, sugar, or cocoa. For a generation, the Spinoza family operated a prosperous import-export wholesale business, but now the brothers Spinoza—Gabriel and Bento—are reduced to running a small retail shop. Inhaling the dusty air, Bento Spinoza identifies, with resignation, the fetid rat droppings accompanying the odor of dried figs, raisins, candied ginger, almonds, and chickpeas and the fumes of acrid Spanish wine. He walks outside and commences his daily duel with the rusted padlock on the shop door. An unfamiliar voice speaking in stilted Portuguese startles him.

“Are you Bento Spinoza?”

Spinoza turns to face two strangers, young weary men who seem to have traveled far. One is tall, with a massive, burly head that hangs forward as though it were too heavy to be held erect. His clothes are of good quality but soiled and wrinkled. The other, dressed in tattered peasant’s clothes, stands behind his companion. He has long, matted hair, dark eyes, a strong chin and forceful nose. He holds himself stiffly. Only his eyes move, darting like frightened tadpoles.

Spinoza offers a wary nod.

“I am Jacob Mendoza,” says the taller of the two. “We must see you. We must talk to you. This is my cousin, Franco Benitez, whom I’ve just brought from Portugal. My cousin,” Jacob clasps Franco’s shoulder, “is in crisis.”

“Yes,” Spinoza answers. “And?”

“In severe crisis.”

“Yes. And why seek me?”

“We’ve been told that you’re the one to render help. Perhaps the only one.”

“Help?”

“Franco has lost his faith. He doubts everything. All religious ritual. Prayer. Even the presence of God. He is frightened all the time. He doesn’t sleep. He talks of killing himself.”

“And who has misled you by sending you here? I am only a merchant who operates a small business. And not very profitably, as you see.” Spinoza points at the dusty window through which the half-empty shelves are visible. “Rabbi Mortera is our spiritual leader. You must go to him.”

“We arrived yesterday, and this morning we set out to do exactly that. But our landlord, a distant cousin, advised against it. ‘Franco needs a helper, not a judge,’ he said. He told us that Rabbi Mortera is severe with doubters, that he believes all Jews in Portugal who converted to Christianity face eternal damnation, even if they were forced to choose between conversion and death. ‘Rabbi Mortera,’ he said, ‘will only make Franco feel worse. Go see Bento Spinoza. He is wise in such matters.’”

“What talk is this? I am but a merchant—”

“He claims that if you had not been forced into business because of the death of your older brother and your father, you would have been the next great rabbi of Amsterdam.”

“I must go. I have a meeting I must attend.”

“You’re going to the Sabbath service at the synagogue? Yes? We too. I am taking Franco, for he must return to his faith. Can we walk with you?”

“No, I go to another kind of meeting.”

“What other kind?” says Jacob, but then immediately reverses himself. “Sorry. It’s not my affair. Can we meet tomorrow? Would you be willing to help us on the Sabbath? It is permitted, since it is a mitzvah. We need you. My cousin is in danger.”

“Strange.” Spinoza shakes his head. “Never have I heard such a request. I’m sorry, but you are mistaken. I can offer nothing.”

Franco, who had been staring at the ground as Jacob spoke, now lifts his eyes and utters his first words: “I ask for little, for only a few words with you. Do you refuse a fellow Jew? It is your duty to a traveler. I had to flee Portugal just as your father and your family had to flee, to escape the Inquisition.”

“But what can I—”

“My father was burned at the stake just a year ago. His crime? They found pages of the Torah buried in the soil behind our home. My father’s brother, Jacob’s father, was murdered soon after. I have a question. Consider this world where a son smells the odor of his father’s burning flesh. Where is the God that created this kind of world? Why does He permit such things? Do you blame me for asking that?” Franco looks deeply into Spinoza’s eyes for several moments and then continues. “Surely a man named ‘blessed’—Bento in Portuguese and Baruch in Hebrew—will not refuse to speak to me?”

Spinoza nods solemnly. “I will speak to you, Franco. Tomorrow midday?”

“At the synagogue?” Franco asks.

“No, here. Meet me here at the shop. It will be open.”

“The shop? Open?” Jacob interjects. “But the Sabbath?”

“My younger brother, Gabriel, represents the Spinoza family at the synagogue.”

“But the holy Torah,” Jacob insists, ignoring Franco’s tugging at his sleeve, “states God’s wish that we not work on the Sabbath, that we must spend that holy day offering prayers to Him and performing mitzvahs.”

Spinoza turns and speaks gently, as a teacher to a young student, “Tell me, Jacob, do you believe that God is all powerful?”

Jacob nods.

“That God is perfect? Complete unto Himself.”

Again Jacob agrees.

“Then surely you would agree that, by definition, a perfect and complete being has no needs, no insufficiencies, no wants, no wishes. Is that not so?”

Jacob thinks, hesitates, and then nods warily. Spinoza notes the beginnings of a smile on Franco’s lips.

“Then,” Spinoza continues, “I submit that God has no wishes about how, or even if, we glorify Him. Allow me, then, Jacob, to love God in my own fashion.”

Franco’s eyes widen. He turns toward Jacob as though to say, “You see, you see? This is the man I seek.”