The Final Testament Read Online Free PDF

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.
    â€œBut 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.
    â€œSauerwald,” he said. “I believe you misunderstand yourself even more severely than you misunderstand my Moses book.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Sauerwald’s narrow shoulders went back into the upholstery of Freud’s green chair.
    â€œYou 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?”
    â€œThese are the stories in the Bible, Dr. Freud. I didn’t create them.”
    â€œBut 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?”
    â€œWhat are you driving at, herr professor? ”
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œThen why do you think I wrote it, Dr. Freud?” Sauerwald tried to affect a grin as his arms stayed wrapped tight around his chest.
    â€œIsn’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.”
    â€œIt’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…”
    â€œ 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.”
    â€œIs 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