The Final Testament (4 page)

Almost without conscious decision, he took the book off his lap and set it aside on his desk. Then he picked up his fountain pen, the implement of his trade, which he'd used to take notes on his famous patients. He brandished it, like a cowboy in one of the American movies he so deplored, strapping on his gun one last time, and reached for a notepad. Then he narrowed his eyes and tried to imagine Sauerwald stretched on the couch, instead of sitting in his green chair.

“Sauerwald, tell me something,” he said. “What is your purpose in writing this book?”

“Dr. Freud, I think I've been very clear about my motives.”

“Have you?” Freud touched his pen to the corner of a blank notebook page. “To write a book of any kind is a serious undertaking, requiring a great commitment of time and effort. I'm interested why you chose to write about these particular themes in a book that you've put my name on. The betrayal of Ishmael, the theft of Esau's birthright…”

“Very clever.” Sauerwald interrupted. “Perhaps you are onto something.”

“How so?”

“You mentioned that this book could be construed as helping our war effort.” Sauerwald's Adam's apple bobbed behind the tight red knot of his necktie. “But it could be said that it was written with an eye toward the future as well. And I believe the future belongs to the Arabs.”

“The
Arabs
?”

“Of course.” Sauerwald offered his palms like a waiter showing an expensive wine list. “Everyone else will be focused on the war here in Europe for the next few years. Eventually, though, the conflict will move to the Allies' colonial holdings in North Africa, where the Arab population is substantial. And where there is oil. And whoever controls the oil to feed the tanks and airplanes will win the war.”

“Excuse me, Sauerwald.” Freud picked the book off his desk again, where it had been sitting among his collection of totems and figurines. “But how would a fraudulent volume about ancient prophets possibly be of any benefit to twentieth-century Germans in the Middle East?”

“The leaders of these Arab countries will appreciate the attack on their blood enemies, the Jews, and support us in gratitude.”

Freud nodded twice, and then bowed his old bald head, as if he was resigned to the logic. The rumors about Sauerwald were undoubtedly true, he now realized. This was a man who could design bombs for the Nazis and then take credit for defusing them for the police the next day.

“But there is one obvious flaw in all this, isn't there?” Freud said. “How will this supposed Arab appreciation for an attack on the Jews redound to you and the Germans if the name on the title page belongs to an old Jewish doctor?”

Sauerwald crossed his arms in front of his chest and raised his chin proudly. “Dr. Freud, if you would only take the time to open this book and read it more closely, you would see there is an acknowledgments page. You give effusive thanks to your invaluable colleague and successor, Dr. Anton Sauerwald, without whom this final testament would not have been written. Through diplomatic channels, the Arabs will be made aware of the true authorship and then they will show their gratitude appropriately.”

Freud stared at his visitor for a long time without speaking. The quality of light changed in the room as the sun shifted. A clock chimed on the parlor floor. He heard the fluff of bedsheets as his wife changed the linens across the hall, and the tread of Anna's feet as she came up the stairs. A few stray pellets of water hit the windows behind him, and then began to land sequentially on the grass and peonies below, an English rain turning torrential on the garden.

“Sauerwald,” he said. “I believe you misunderstand yourself even more severely than you misunderstand my Moses book.”

“What do you mean?” Sauerwald's narrow shoulders went back into the upholstery of Freud's green chair.

“You say you have read my writing extensively. So did it never occur to you as you were creating this forgery that you were fixating on stories like Abraham's denial of Ishmael and Isaac's mistaking Jacob for Esau?”

“These are the stories in the Bible, Dr. Freud. I didn't create them.”

“But you
chose
to focus on them. Narratives about fathers and sons.” Freud made another note on his pad, to deliberately draw the guest's attention. “Does that not strike you as curious?”

“What are you driving at,
herr professor?
”

“You did not write this book for the Fatherland.” Freud reached over and tapped the leather cover with his crooked aged finger. “You did not write it for the Arabs either. In fact, you did not write it for the war effort at all.”

“Then why do
you
think I wrote it, Dr. Freud?” Sauerwald tried to affect a grin as his arms stayed wrapped tight around his chest.

“Isn't it obvious?” Freud shrugged. “You mentioned my great friend Dr. Josef Herzig from Vienna. You call yourself my successor. Is it that hard to imagine you see us both as father figures?”

Sauerwald shook his head. “I already had a father,
herr professor.
This is absurdly reductive.”

“It's not surprising you would say that.” Freud turned another page in his notebook and continued to scribble. “Most people are unaware of their own true motives. You are just an extreme example. It's plain that you come here seeking approval and absolution from me…”

“
Herr professor
, this is nonsense.” Sauerwald raised his voice, as his pant cuffs hiked up showing pale shins and black garters holding up his socks. “You cannot psychoanalyze me like one of your neurotic patients. I have the advantage here. I hold the cards, as you might have told Dr. Herzig. Your sisters' fate is in my hands.”

“Is it really?” Freud lifted the tip of his pen from the page and held it up for effect. “Didn't you tell me earlier in this conversation that you are not a high-ranking member of the Nazi party?”

“Yes, I said that, but I was being modest.” Sauerwald looked down and uncrossed his ankles. “Everyone knows I am in good favor with our leaders and my star is shining brightly in Berlin.”

“Then why are you in London, trying to blackmail an old man with cancer?”

Freud picked up the book that Sauerwald had brought and tossed it down onto the carpet between them. It landed on its side with a muffled thud and splayed open, with a couple of its pages spilling out. So much for Vienna's finest bookbinder.

“Dr. Freud, that was a mistake.” Sauerwald's face began to turn bright red.

“Spare me, please.” Freud shook his head. “Your promise to protect my sisters is meaningless. Even if you were sincere, you do not have the power to do anything for them.”

“You don't know that.” Sauerwald puffed up in the seat.

“Herr Sauerwald, I will die very soon,” Freud slowly lifted his eyes from the book on the floor. “You will die sometime after that. Probably not in as much pain, which is as good a proof as any that there is not a just and fair God. And long after we are both gone, there will still be good and bad men. And good and bad books. There will be people with characteristics of the Jews and those who hate them. What we do and say here today won't matter. So throw your stupid book away when you leave here. Don't disturb the forests any further by causing trees to be cut down for the paper to print such nonsense. Submit to the dust.”

Sauerwald stood up abruptly and snatched the book off the floor. He closed it carefully, wiped the cover with his palm and then hugged it tightly to his chest.

“You should not say such things,
herr professor
.”

“Why? Do you still insist I should fear you?” Freud closed his notebook and put down his pen. “I'm an old man at the end of his life. My immediate family is safe here in England with me. And my sisters are beyond your control. So why exactly should I not say such things?”

“Because they are not the truth.” Sauerwald's voice cracked like an adolescent's before he caught himself. “I mean to say, they are not the whole truth. Yes, it's a fact; I cannot save your sisters. But I did save you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I speak honestly now.” Sauerwald's eyes had begun to brim. “You cannot dismiss me so easily. Without my help, you and your family never would have gotten out of Vienna alive. I made it possible to get back your passports. I could have had you all arrested for stashing money in foreign banks and sent to the work camps, where you would have surely died horrible deaths. You would not have had the chance to finish your Moses book. I could have wiped you all out and—
yes
— advanced my career to the very top of the hierarchy with just one phone call.”

“Maybe so…”

“And my good deeds continued even after you were gone.” Sauerwald pointed to objects around the room, his voice rising close to a hoarse shout. “All these beloved possessions that comfort you in this terrible time? I was the one who arranged to have them sent to you. Your books. Your rugs. The rare antiquities you have arranged just so. Your photographs and paintings. The chair you're sitting in. I could have withheld them from you. Just as I could have withheld the passports for your most precious possessions, your children, your legacy…”

In his high dudgeon, Sauerwald failed to notice that Anna was standing in the doorway, alarmed. Freud looked at her sternly, forbidding her to enter or interrupt.

“I could have denied you all of that.” Sauerwald shook a fist. “I could have made your final days a misery, to my own lasting benefit. But I did not.”

“And why didn't you?” Freud looked up at him with quiet owlish curiosity.

Sauerwald's fist fell to his side. “I'm not entirely sure,” he said haltingly. “I've asked myself the same question several times.” He gathered himself up and took a deep breath, as if to deliver a speech he'd practiced to himself. “The Fuhrer, who of course knows best, realizes that the Fatherland is in a state of siege. The Jews, due to their internationalist leanings and their tendency toward individualistic behavior, cannot form a reliable part of the population. Thus they have to be eliminated. This might be deplored, but the end justifies the means. This does not mean, however, that an individual should not be permitted to alleviate individual hardship in selected cases.”

“Perhaps that's true.” Freud opened a desk drawer. “Some aspects of human behavior cannot be explained by any theory. They are mysteries that cannot be solved. And sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.”

He took out a new Cubana Reina and stuck it in the corner of his mouth, defying Anna to stop him.

“And in that case, there is nothing more for us to say to each other. Goodbye, Sauerwald.”

“Goodbye.” Sauerwald turned to leave, his shoulders sagging as he saw Freud's daughter had witnessed the end of the exchange.

“And Sauerwald, one more thing.”

“What,
herr professor?
”

Freud gestured with his unlit cigar at the loose pages on the floor. “Don't forget to take the rest of your book with you.”

Background note:
Anton Sauerwald was a true historical figure. He was a former student of Freud's good friend Dr. Josef Herzig, who was later assigned by the Nazi party to oversee the confiscation of assets from the Freud family's publishing venture. Sauerwald did, in fact, discover that Freud was circumventing the law under occupation by transferring those assets to foreign banks. However, despite, his own good standing as a member of the Nazi party, he did not alert his superiors. Instead, he made it possible for Freud to escape with family members to England, where Freud died on September 23, 1939.

Sauerwald went on to serve as a technical expert in the Luftwaffe as part of the Nazi war effort. He was arrested by the Allies and sent to an American prisoner of war camp, then released in June, 1945. He was re-arrested several months later at the insistence of Harry Freud, a nephew of the famous doctor, then serving as an officer in the American army. Sauerwald was accused of abusing his position as a trustee to rob the Freud family of valuable assets, including cash, manuscripts, artwork and books. His trial lasted eighteen months, with Sauerwald held in detention throughout. He was released when Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna wrote a letter to the court, declaring that the Nazi officer had helped her family. Sauerwald later moved to the Tyrol and died in Innsbruck in 1970.