The Final Testament Read Free Page B

sculptor choosing his stone. “Yes, I believe it’s possible that is what happened, but I never claimed to be an historian or an archeologist. I’m just an old man speculating.”
    â€œOf course, doctor, that is what you do in analyzing the human mind. You speculate. You conjecture. You make an educated guess. And as your fame and status suggest, you have very often been right.”
    â€œ ‘Often’ is not the same as always ,” Freud demurred. “I have been spectacularly wrong more than once.”
    â€œDon’t be modest.” Sauerwald took several more pages from the top of the manuscript and placed them on an old mahogany side-table. “We’re coming to the best part. The murder mystery.”
    Freud tried to shift the pressure from the right side of his jaw to the left, lest the remains of his fragile face collapse from the way he was grinding his teeth.
    â€œAre you under the impression you were reading Sherlock Holmes?”
    â€œNot at all. I know I am reading a book by Sigmund Freud. Because no one else could have written it. In the midst of this scholarly work, you have posited something even more astonishing. You accuse your own people of one of the greatest crimes in all of history. ”
    Freud tried to swallow, but his salivary glands would not cooperate. “You misunderstand my work.”
    â€œI don’t think I do, herr professor .” Sauerwald tapped the pages with a shiny fingernail. “You say the Jews killed their own prophet and then covered up the crime. You state this with absolute clarity and boldness in your writing. You say the strictures of this severe new religion were too much for these wandering Hebrews. And so they rebelled and murdered their leader. And then buried him somewhere in the sands of the Sinai desert, where his bones would never be found. And that generations later, the unexpiated guilt of this sin rose up in their souls and led them to proclaim Moses’s one god as their own and conveniently forget the fact that they had murdered Moses for saying the exact same things many years before. It’s brilliant and original. Only you could have written it, Dr. Freud. And I can see why you’ve been so afraid to publish it.”
    Freud winced and sniffed. Hating the fact that this swine was half-right. Just the other day, his neighbor, the great Jewish Bible scholar Abraham Shalom Yehuda had stopped by and, just on the basis of the relatively tame Imago excerpts, pleaded with Freud not to publish this scandalous Moses book. His voice had joined with the letters the doctor had received from Jews in America, who had heard rumors of the text and begged him to suppress it. Especially now, when the world was on the brink of war, and recent events in Germany suggested that their tribe in Europe would soon be threatened with annihilation.
    â€œ Sauerwald …”
    The name sounded like a curse, a damp and swampy thing laden with foul-smelling funguses.
    â€œI find it hard to believe that you traveled all the way from Vienna to London in order to speak to me about a book that has not yet gone to press.”
    â€œ Yet? ” The visitor’s nostrils flared. “Is this deliberate or one of the famous slips you accuse others of making?”
    â€œI do intend to publish this book.” Freud jabbed an unsteady finger into the air. “I’ve spent my life saying things that most people in polite society think should never be said. Why would I stop now?”
    Sauerwald stooped his shoulders and offered his palms. “Because some people think you would be giving support to enemies of your race?”
    Freud cleared his phlegm-ravaged throat and glared. “You are mistaken. The point of my book is not to discredit the religion of my people. It is to consider the distinctive characteristics of the Jewish people and to try to understand how they might have evolved over time.”
    â€œBut you must