The name of the man who came to the Beth Jacob synagogue that morning carrying his son — born eight days earlier — was Michael Spinoza. Michael himself was born forty-five years earlier as Miguel Despinosa in Vidigere, Portugal, where his father, Isaac, had settled, moving from Lisbon and hoping that in the small town he would be able to observe the law of Moses with no fear of the Inquisition. He came into this world in 1587, exactly forty years after the establishment of the Inquisition Tribunal in the kingdom, whose principal goals were the forceful conversion of Jews and the prevention of converted Jews from going back to their original faith. He remembered a single event from his childhood: one hot summer night when he was nine he dreamt of huge fish flying in the sky with blood dripping from their mouths. It was then, in this dream, that he heard the voice of his mother, Mor Alvares, crying out to him from this side of reality. When he opened his eyes he saw his mother and father hastily grabbing a few essentials: two loaves of bread, three handfuls of salt, a knife, a few tablespoons, a needle and yarn, and some clothing. While he was stepping over the threshold of his home for the last time together with his mother and brother and sister he saw how his father Isaac kneeled in the room, pulled a plank up from the floor, took several books out and put them under his arm. Later, when recollecting their flight, he would often take out one of those books, the Torah, and read Exodus again and again. At these times, he remembered again and again the tearful eyes of Mor Alvares staring at their little house which grew ever smaller and smaller, vanishing into the distance, while no one travelling in the wagon drawn by two horses had any idea of where they were going. For a long time, from every town in which they found shelter, Mor Alvares would send a letter, which she had previously dictated to Isaac, to her brothers, not knowing whether her brothers were aware that they had been indicted by the Inquisition for professing the Jewish religion. The Alvares family always sent their letters on the day they set off for another town, in case they were caught by the Inquisitors: the letters contained only the name of the town which they had just left, the name of a place in that town, a date, and a signal. Mor Alvares believed that her brothers would understand her messages. If the letter said, “Ponte de Lima, marketplace near the courthouse, 14th August, picking your right nostril with the little finger of your left hand,” it meant that she expected her brothers to appear on 14th August on the square near the courthouse in the town of Ponte de Lima, looking for a man who picked his right nostril with the little finger of his left hand, and that they were to give the same signal. In each of the towns in which they stayed for a few months, Mor Alvares and Isaac found a discreet Jew to whom they revealed the secret sign and the date on which he was supposed to appear in a particular place. They also mentioned to him the name of the town to which they were going so that the brothers would be able to find their sister. In all of the towns they passed through, Isaac and Mor Alvares left people jumping on one leg in the square, crouching and standing up near the harbour, or clapping their hands in front of the cathedral, but Mor Alvares’s brothers never appeared. She often dreamt of a large piece of paper and the hands of her brothers writing something, but as she was illiterate, it was difficult for her to recognize the unfamiliar symbols, and also to remember them so that her husband could interpret them all after she woke up. So she decided to learn how to read and write to be able to interpret her dreams. In every town they stayed in she learnt three letters, and when she learnt all the letters of the alphabet, she managed to read the following text in her dream: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” When she woke up, Mor Alvares spoke of her dream to her husband, but since she had already forgotten much, what she remembered was as scrappy as a dead body devoured by vultures: “To every thing there is a season: a time to die; a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill; a time to break down; a time to weep; a time to mourn; a time to cast away stones; a time to refrain from embracing; a time to lose; a time to cast away; a time to rend; a time to keep silence; a time to hate; a time of war.” The words sounded familiar to Isaac, but he could not remember where he had heard or read them. From that day on Mor Alvares had no more dreams and sent no more letters. She only hoped that one day she would find a comfortable home for all of them: for her children, Fernando, Miguel, Maria Clara, for her husband, Isaac, and for herself. The reply to all her letters arrived a month after she died in Nantes, France, in 1616. The reply came in the form of Sara, her brother Gabriel’s daughter. While Sara was explaining that her father and the other two Alvares brothers had died having been tortured at the hands of the Inquisitors, Miguel Despinosa, recently renamed Michel D’Espinoza, stared at the missing fingers of his cousin’s left hand. Noticing his bewilderment, Sara put her fingerless hand close to his face and said: “They cut them off so that I cannot turn the pages of the Talmud they found under my pillow.” A few days later, while sailing away from Nantes, leaving it for good, Michel D’Espinoza continued to gaze into the harbour until Sara’s fingerless hand waving him goodbye disappeared into the distance. In Rotterdam he received his third name, Michael Spinoza, which he bore until his death. It was in this city that he had a premonition that the Dutch Republic would remain his home until his stay on earth came to an end. One day in November 1622 he moved to Amsterdam and married Rachel, the daughter of his uncle, Abraham. Towards the end of the following year their first child died before it could even have been named on the eighth day after its birth, and in the Spring of 1624 their second child died at birth. Rachel fell gravely ill and became weaker and weaker. Soon, whilst sitting in front of her front door, she would have to put stones in her pockets so that the wind would not blow her away. She died one morning in February 1627, and the people who bathed her body said it was lighter than a seagull’s wing. As soon as he arrived in Amsterdam, Michael had become active in commerce with the support of his uncle, Abraham Spinoza. A year after the death of Rachel, Michael Spinoza married Hanna Deborah Senior, the daughter of Baruch Senior and Maria Nunes. Their daughter, Miriam, was born in 1629. A year later, Maria gave birth to their son, Isaac, and on 24th November 1632, they had another son.
        The man who came to the Beth Jacob synagogue that morning in December 1632 was Michael Spinoza, and the eight-day old child he brought to the shrine to be circumcised and given a name was myself. The name they entered in the synagogue register was Bento Spinoza; they called me that at home and it was with that name that I became a merchant. I was registered as Baruch in the Talmud Torah school, and it was this name they used in the cherem through which my excommunication from the Jewish community was proclaimed. Following the cherem, the people called me Benedictus. All three names had the same meaning — the blessed one — the first in Portuguese, the second in Hebrew, and the third in Latin.

        My mother’s name was Hanna Deborah Nunes, and I never knew the name of the place where she was born. I knew for certain that she was born in Portugal, twenty-four years before bringing me into the world. Somewhat earlier she had given birth to Isaac and Miriam.
        In the evening, before going to sleep, I could hear my mother’s warm voice singing psalms. Here are the first things I remember: my mother standing beside a window, the light coming in gives a silver glow to the contours of her figure, and she sings something I cannot understand. The next thing I remember is that I have learnt to ask questions. I am asking her all kinds of questions: what is blood, what is a temple, what is Jerusalem, what are servants? And my mother has all the answers. I continue asking her: what is Babylon, what is a willow, what is a harp? Slowly, with that voice, a dream unfolds, and in that unmarked territory between dream and reality, I can hear the voice of my mother singing of the heathens who have invaded God’s inheritance, defiled the holy temple and laid Jerusalem on heaps. In my dream I am beginning to see how the heathens give the dead bodies of God’s servants to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and the flesh of God’s saints unto the beasts of the earth. I am dreaming how their blood is shed like water round about Jerusalem. Another evening her warm voice is singing about the rivers of Babylon, and once again the dream is rekindled inside me; I see men, women and children sitting beside the rivers of Babylon crying and hanging their harps upon the willows. The warmth of her voice is slowly turning into a warmth created by some kind of sinking, by a total fall into something that is bottomless, and is at the same time something that emerges, something that has no upper limits. My being seems to be turning into a dream that spreads continuously throughout a space with no boundaries.
        The house with the orange paint peeling off is our house. There are carob trees in front of our house just as there are carob trees in front of all other houses in our street. In Springl and early summer I would wake up with the smell of carob trees: we, the children, slept in one of the attic rooms that the branches of a blossoming tree touched. Shortly before the carob trees finished flowering, my mother would come to our room, grab the branches and pick the blossom. During the winter she made carob tea for all of us. In wintertime all of us slept in one of the ground-floor rooms where, close to the large red canopied bed in which mother and father slept, there was a fireplace in front of which father often stood. He would move his fingers in a magical way, their elongated shadows projecting onto the wall, symbolizing the fight between David and Goliath, or the suffering of Job, the righteous man. But what we wanted our father to show us most of all through this play of shadows was the Flood — its announcement by God, the building of the arc, the preservation of a pair of every animal species, the rain and the flood itself, the search for land, the arrival on Ararat and their final salvation. Father was engaged in the wood trade, among other things. I remember barges pulling tree trunks along the canals of Amsterdam, later carried to his shop which bore the sign “Michael Spinoza” and which was situated in the street leading to the fish market. Sometime later he abandoned this business, saying it was much easier for him to sell dried fruits, spices and wine.
        In the beginning I preferred to stay in the attic room rather than in any other room in the house. I never went out to play with the other children in front of the houses: I just wanted to watch, to be an observer. During the night, if the barking of a dog or a nightmare woke me up (and such nightmares woke me up frequently in my childhood: I saw my mother and father moving away from me, running away from me, but when I caught up with them, they did not recognize me), I would quietly get up, not rousing Miriam, Isaac and Rebecca from their sleep, open the window and look at the stars for a long time. I wanted them to be wormholes through which you could enter into another sky, and from there, from the top of that other sky, to see another city and another Bento wishing, through the window of his own room, he could reach a distant star. The thought of watching myself from above seemed both attractive and repugnant to me. I remember that the big mirror some people brought into our home one day, placing it near the fireplace, took me away from the window completely: instead of watching others, I began looking at myself. I stood bewildered in front of the mirror and became even more bewildered seeing my own bewilderment. I smiled and the smile would turn into laughter. As soon as my laughter subsided, I would touch my face as well as the face reflected in the smooth surface. Mother, lying on the bed even during the day as she was often sick, watched me all the time and told me to go out and play with the other children. I refused; I stood in front of the mirror from morning to night until one day mother told me that the mirror could charm me and swallow me up, and that I might remain imprisoned on the other side forever. After her warning, I would glance at myself in the mirror for a fleeting moment as I passed by, to make sure that I really existed, but for a very brief moment indeed, lest I disappeared into it.
        I also remember the first time I visited the synagogue. It was situated in two connecting houses; in the first room there was a fountain where we washed our hands. I remember how the women separated themselves from us and went upstairs to sit on the balcony. I remember how I tried to see them when we entered the main room, and how father gave me a book and told me not to look upwards. Everyone wore white shawls over their caps that came down onto their shoulders and held books in their hands. Four men sat in the central section on a platform three feet higher than floor-level where all of us were sitting. I later learnt their names: Rabbi Mortera, Rabbi David Pardo, Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel and Rabbi Isaac Aboab.
        Coins were jingling, the scent of cinnamon, dried figs, dates, pepper, apples and quinces mingled together, and the voice of the man who asked for Algerian pipes mixed with my whisper while I was reading something, sitting in the corner of my father’s shop. When there were no customers, father would sit close to me on the floor and say to me:
        “You are going to be a rabbi. In two years you’ll start going to school and one day you’ll be a rabbi.”
        I turned the pages, I read them slowly but better than my brother, Isaac, who had been going to the Talmud Torah school every day and who had taught me the signs.
        “You are going to be a rabbi,” repeated my father every day. One of the rabbis, Mortera, often came to our shop and bought mustard seeds, pepper and tobacco, but never any sweets. Then I would move slowly around him, make circles around the rabbi who twisted his beard between his thumb and index finger, watching me. I just wanted to see how I would look one day when I became a rabbi.
        All of a sudden the event that would interrupt my existence and mark the start of my life occurred. It began with the heavy breathing of mother, her exhaustion evident, her whisper addressed to father in the darkness of the night, when they thought that we, the children, were asleep, but I could hear them:
        “I’m afraid of falling asleep. I’m afraid that if I fell asleep, I might forget to breathe.”
        At that moment all my dreams and my sleep lost their sweetness. I believed that if I tried not to fall asleep, I would help mother not to fall asleep. I was afraid that if I did fall asleep she might also fall asleep and forget to breathe. The fear in me was so strong that I grabbed only brief periods of sleep during the day, when mother was cooking or went to the market. When she returned, saying: “The carob trees have not flowered this year,” I slowly opened my eyes, forgetting what I had just dreamt. Indeed, I kept on forgetting my dreams for virtually the rest of my life.
        Soon mother became too weak to go to the market or cook. Miriam took over most of mother’s domestic duties, as well as taking care of her: she made her tea, and put cold and warm compresses on her forehead and chest. Within a few months I saw how a shadow of old age was spreading over Miriam’s face. She was only nine at the time and, besides looking after the house and mother, she had to take care of little Gabriel as well.
        “The carob trees have not flowered this year,” repeated mother between two bouts of coughing, between two periods of dozing off on her thick pillow, between two morsels of bread soaked in milk. Soon she began to black out; even when she was awake she looked as if she was sleeping. Her pupils would not remain still, they seemed to vacillate: as if she was staring at a pendulum somewhere on the horizon, following its movements to and fro, again and again. Her powerlessness saddened me in a peculiar way, as if something pungent was poking me inside my chest, and I wanted to cry. It was a pain very much like when you hurt your knee after running and falling, or bite your tongue eating. Something, however, prevented me from crying and froze my voice. I was constantly hanging around the large red canopied bed on which mother was lying. I tried to smile, but my lips trembled. I am still puzzled how a six-year old child like me could act in such a way, trying everything to cheer mother up by whispering parts of the Torah in her ear, or to make her angry by pinching her with my fingers or loudly stomping my feet on the floor close to where her head lay. But she remained motionless most of the time, breathing heavily — only her pupils were moving slightly, wavering to show that she no longer saw anything. One morning, following several days of silence and just after Miriam had given her some food, mother opened her mouth and asked:
        “Have the carob trees flowered?”
        “It is too late for them to flower now. They’ve skipped this year. Snow has fallen already,” said Miriam, looking out the window. When she turned to mother, she saw that her pupils, the only thing that gave a sign of life to mother’s face, remained still and calm. “Mother,” she cried, and tried to bring her back to life, shaking her arm and sprinkling her face with water. “I’ll go and fetch father. Stay here!” she told me and ran out of the house.

        Ever since I can remember, I have felt a need not to show my feelings in front of others, to hide them somewhere where no one will be able to see them, presenting a different mood, like the painter who puts a new layer of paint over the paint he hastily applied before, like the light of the stars that changes until it has reached this planet. While Miriam was still in the room, I watched everything that happened with great composure, almost indifference. But when she ran out of the room, I rushed to mother shivering, leaning my head on her bosom to be sure that she was still breathing. I believed that her life would be prolonged if I was there to hear her breathing. What I heard was a strange sound, something like a slow erosion, like a quiet and irreversible passing away. All of a sudden, something moved vigorously in her dying body. I could hear a sound mounting inside her, a sound that came from my mother’s chest, a sound that instilled both fear and hope in me, a sound that was so strong and whose strength came from a mixture of the annunciation of death and the need to continue living. At that moment I believe I heard mother whispering my name. I will never know whether I really heard those two syllables or I only wished I had heard them. I only know that I lifted my head and saw that the lips of mother were blue and contorted, whereas her eyes were making an attempt to open. Her right hand made a barely perceptible movement, or at least it appeared to me to do so, a movement with which she tried to hold me and move me away at the same time. Then the strange sound in her chest grew very strong, turning into a cough that seemed to remain within rather than coming out, as she could barely open her blue lips. Her eyes opened slightly and her look, which was discernible under her dark eyelids, made me shudder from head to toe. I no longer recognized that look, it was completely alien to me, and the fear it caused inside me was even greater: it was obvious from mother’s pupils that I was also alien to her: she could not recognize me either. As her blue lips began to open due to her cough, I thought that the body lying on this bed was not the body of my mother, that the dark face, the mute lips and the hostile look could not be hers. With the cough, blood came from the mouth of the body lying on the bed and flowed onto her chest. I was watching the blood that was in sharp contrast to mother’s paleness, as if a piece of her soul had remained in the red fluid. I reached towards her chest, took a drop of blood between my thumb and index finger and brought it close to my face, looking at the drop (the drop that seemed to pulsate between my thumb and index finger) as if it were the last thing in which I could see mother. At that moment I felt something cold clenching my arm. But I did not look at where I felt the grip, I looked instead in the mirror. There my eyes met the dead eyes of mother: they gazed into the mirror and from there they gazed into me. I remembered my mother’s words, that the mirror could charm me and swallow me up. Hence I turned my eyes away from the mirror and looked at the drop of blood between my fingers, the last thing that bore witness to mother’s life. Then I looked at her, at her dead, half-open eyes, gazing into the mirror, and I became aware again of the cold grip on my arm. I looked at my wrist — the dead fingers of mother were clenched there. Suddenly my fear turned into a scream, a scream that burst out loudly and penetratingly, an intense red scream that grew darker and darker, as my eyes moved along the triangle created by my mother’s eyes, the fingers that powerfully clenched my wrist, and the drop of blood between my fingers. In the scream that grew darker and darker there seemed to be something that was tearing apart deep inside me, moving away from me, but I was not aware what it was. Only the colour of my scream, which was turning black as it began to die out, told me that I was losing something permanently and that the lifeless body that was gripping me so firmly was only a part of that loss.
        By the time Miriam, Rebecca and father came running into the house, my scream had already died out. My voice now seemed so feeble that I could say neither “yes” nor “no.” Miriam and Rebecca began crying seeing mother’s body, and father tried to remove the dead fingers of mother from my wrist, shouting that I was turning blue, that I was breathing heavily and that there was no blood in my hand. He asked me to say something while he tried to release me from mother’s grip, but her fingers were clenched too tightly around my wrist. Just as I began to wish that I stayed tied to her forever, that this remained an eternal bond — so that the loss would then only be partial — I saw father spreading mother’s fingers enough for my hand to be pulled free. After that I ran to the corner in the room, curled up and involuntarily fell asleep.
        I did not go to mother’s funeral. I did not see her body put in a coffin, nor did I see her coffin put into a boat on the canal. I did not see her body being carried to the Jewish cemetery, and I did not see her buried in the ground. When I woke up two days later, my thumb and index finger were still tightly clenched together. I moved them apart and I saw a dry red speck. I put the speck in a handkerchief which I later always carried with me. It was this red speck that broke up the circle of my endless existence, turning my life into a line segment with a beginning and end. I noticed through the window that father had cut down the carob trees in front of our house. Forgetful for a moment that mother was dead, I thought that, since the trees were no longer there, she would never pick carob blossom and make us carob tea in winter again. After that, every winter, as early as the first days of November, I would begin breathing quickly and heavily, like when something is taken away from you, like when you have irreversibly lost something. Only a little bit of mother remained in my memory: her hand giving me food, her figure reaching through the open window for the carob branches to pick their blossom, her foot stepping on and knocking over the little bowl of milk left at the door for the cat. I forgot how she used to sing sections of the Torah to me, I forgot how she used to explain the meaning of words to me, how she told me about the difference between a dream, imagination and reality, I forgot how she told me that the mirror could charm me, I forgot how she was dying. All this did not occur consciously or deliberately; I forgot everything during those two days of sleep. Everything had been erased from my memory and was all lost until shortly before my death, like the way you lose a heavy stone in a badly sewn pocket. After mother died, I no longer had any dreams. I would begin remembering my dreams again only when my death was drawing near.
        Miriam and Rebecca cried all the time that winter after mother died. It was enough for them to open a drawer and just see a mother’s handkerchief (once a jar of rose preserves slipped from Rebecca’s hands, breaking on the floor), and both would burst into tears. Sometimes I could not stay in the same room as them, since I had visions of mother picking carob blossom, giving me food or knocking over the bowl of milk. I had to get away and run, crossing the bridges over the canals of Amsterdam. I came to despise tears: I would never again shed a tear in my life. In the evenings I was unable to fall asleep. I used to stay up late watching father who played chess with himself, or I invented stories and retold them to myself quietly so that no one would hear me. When I really wanted to sleep, I had to lie down and press the pillow firmly over my face so that the throb of my blood in my head sounded like the steps of sleep coming towards me.
        I spent most of the time looking through the window or looking at myself in the mirror. I was no longer afraid that the mirror might charm me and that I would remain imprisoned there: I had forgotten what mother had said to me. When there was no one in the large room on the ground floor, I stood in front of the smooth surface, looking at my face. I was no longer confused about there being another me there, nor did I laugh in front of the mirror any more. I looked at the expression on my face — that quiet sorrow articulated in the trembling which became noticeable only after long and careful observation, a trembling that began imperceptibly near my chin, continued along the sides of my lips, mildly inclining downwards, and ending at my eyebrows. Under my eyebrows, the only undisturbed part of my face, were my eyes, but their calm, which stretched from the iris to the pupil and then seemed to continue deep inside them, further reinforced the impression of sorrow that was reflected in my face.
        I developed a love of corners; they attracted me greatly. With unusual tenderness I would touch a book’s corners. The corners of new rooms I went into fascinated me, arousing an inexplicable curiosity in me. I would go to one of the corners, and it seemed to me that there I was alone and that no one could hurt me or do me any harm. The next autumn after mother’s death, I started going to school, and while the other children jostled to sit in the front benches, I dragged myself to one of the classroom’s corners. Later everybody noticed that wherever we went, I always wanted to be near the place where three lines met: in the synagogue’s garden, in the schoolyard, everywhere. That is why, although I was recorded in the school books as Baruch, everyone called me Corner. When I looked through the window, I did not look through the window, but through the window’s corners: I wanted to see that section of the external world framed by the window’s corners. I no longer watched clouds moving across the sky, but clouds approaching one of the corners of the upper window pane and then disappearing behind it. I no longer watched water flowing in the canal in front of our house, I watched how the canal was cut by the lower right-hand corner of the window.
        My days in the Talmud Torah school were filled with a strange anguish. Everything was all right as long as the rabbis instructed us how to pray, as long as they explained the interpretations of the Torah and we translated texts. My anguish began at the instant the classes ended. I felt myself to be different from the rest of the children, and the children felt the same. They certainly could not see that I myself felt to be different, but they sensed I was different from them. In that difference, in my inability to talk to them as they talked to each other, they seemed to find a kind of inherent sin, something they chose to punish with contempt and hatred. Hence, immediately after the classes ended, at eleven o’clock sharp, I ran home, and came back to the school at two, only a minute before the afternoon classes began. Even during that one minute I felt extremely uncomfortable, I could feel them watching me, though I always stared at the corners of the table in front of me. At the same time, I could hear their voices very clearly, including the words of scorn they shouted at me, forcing me to make imperceptible movements towards the corner of the room. It was impossible to go any further, I was virtually squeezed against the wall. The funniest thing of all for the children was when I sometimes took out my handkerchief, moved it between the fingers of one hand and the fingers of the other, and then put it back in my pocket again. Then they used to nudge each other, stare at me and make fun of me, taking care not to be noticed by the teachers. One day, when the classes were over, some of the children from my form gathered in a group. Two of them took hold of me, a third took the handkerchief out of my pocket, and the rest started laughing loudly. Then they would throw the handkerchief to each other, darting away from me as I tried to grab it from them. Finally, when they reached the bridge across the canal in front of the school, Joseph stretched out his hand holding my handkerchief over the canal. I tried to snatch it, on the verge of tears from the pain of it, but he pushed me away, took one step further and opened his hand. I extended my arm as far as I could to catch the handkerchief but it was too late. While I watched it falling into the canal, I thought that a part of mother’s soul concentrated in that speck of blood on the white tissue was merging with the water.
      
        Translated by: Filip Korženski