FRAN?OIS EHRENSHTAMM, philosophe, had a trick that for the sixty years since he was fourteen he had used to seize the audiences of his lectures, speeches, monologues, dialogues, and his dominating appearances on panels. He would stare at the crowds as if he would not be able or would choose not to speak, for long enough, sometimes minutes, to hypnotize them with suspense. Then he would explode into brilliance they would never forget. If he were on a panel, it didn’t matter who else was on stage. Like a magician, Ehrenshtamm would make them disappear. Those unwise enough to have a go at him would end up as mute as swans, mere decorations on either side of the ferocious, passionate engine that was Ehrenshtamm. His effect on the imaginations of his listeners was like that of an arsonist in an excelsior factory.
The trick? First, it is important to understand that though charisma often masquerades as brilliance, the two seldom go hand in hand. With the passage of time the charismatic disappoints as soon as, like an egg, his smooth surface is pierced and broken by his dullard essence seeking a way out. But Ehrenshtamm, Jules Lacour’s closest friend, was as charismatic and intelligent in combination as anyone could be. Although neither as smart as Einstein nor as charismatic as Rasputin, he was a lot more charismatic than the former and far smarter than the latter.
This and his bee-like industry enabled him at a very early age to secure for himself the premier position at Sciences Po, the Major, and later an unprecedented dual professorship there and at the école Normale Supérieure, followed by a dozen well-received tomes that passed academic muster and were devoured by the intellectual public as well, election to the Academy (of course), and an electronic ubiquitousness across Europe that made his face familiar not only in French and Danish living rooms but at German truck stops, Italian Alpine huts, and Greek pool-side bars. His books alternated in fours: totally inaccessible philosophical works such as his Fluxion and élan Vital in Bergson’s Dissent from the Homogenous Medium; much less puzzling tomes on Voltaire or Bastiat; serious political books addressing the most controversial questions, such as his To Be French, The Meaning of Liberal Nationality; and looser, best-selling, inflammatory works such as What’s the Word for Stupid People Who Think They’re Smart? There Isn’t One But There Should Be Many. He covered the waterfront, and traversed the spectrum.
Phenomenal energy, zero reticence, extraordinary memory, faultless courage, consistent accuracy, mesmerizing delivery, and high eloquence. He read at least one book every day, not superficially, and he could turn out a captivating essay during a taxi ride from his house to whichever was the first of his scheduled interviews. He might have been wealthy but for the stunted scale of monies in the intellectual world, his four ex-wives, one current wife almost forty years younger than he, and seven children, including a newborn, one at Harvard paying full tuition, one living on the beach in Goa (“Please send 120 Euros”), one very neurotic banker, one ophthalmologist, and so on.
He never had enough money, a condition that led him not only to a constant frenzy of activity but actually to borrowing small sums from Jules Lacour, whose income was not even a tenth of his, but who spent very little and saved at a rate that though hardly possible given his earnings still had not led to much accumulation. Nothing like Ehrenshtamm, Jules was rather like the friend of Yeats whose work had come to nothing. Although he had composed steadily, little had been performed, and that only long ago. The rest had found its way onto several shelves of neat red binders as motionless as the dead. There was no money in what he did, and, despite its unquestionable power, the final product – music sounded out – whether as a result of teaching students or his own playing, was born into the air only instantly to die.
The relative positions of the two men in society didn’t impress an imbalance upon their friendship, which had begun when they were children who knew innocently the true value of things and one another, and that over time the strains of living – like cataracts, or storm tides that smother low-lying green fields in floods of gray – were the cause of a gradual blindness to life and color. When Jules and Fran?ois were together, they were sometimes as fresh and full of enthusiasm as boys, even though these days they enjoyed not only their left-over and intermittent vitality but, as well, the quiet resignation that comes from approaching the end of the line.
Ehrenshtamm’s trick was simply that he saved the best for last. It was most important, he maintained, to release the frappe de foudre, the lightning strike, just before the close. This was appreciated not merely because one tended to remember conclusions, but because it was the opposite of life itself, which closes most times in gradual loss rather than in a strong light flashing through golden dusk.
Justifying his technique, he would say, “A dim light at the end does little to illumine the profound darkness that follows. A lightning flash, however, has intriguing potential even in relation to eternity. After all, in theory, light can travel infinitely far.”
IN THE EARLY EVENING, as soon as Jules got home after rowing, Fran?ois Ehrenshtamm called and Jules went out again. Fran?ois’ new wife and baby were in Biarritz, where he would join them in a day or two. “I have to stay until Thursday afternoon,” he said. “In the morning I have an interview with Polish television. The Poles are serious, capable, and we’ve always underestimated them. Anyway, my books sell extremely well there, and God knows, I need the money. Would you like to have dinner? I can’t come out to Saint-Germain-en-Laye: I have a radio interview later this evening – Japan – but we could meet in Neuilly if you can do it.”
In travel time, Neuilly was equidistant from both of them, as Fran?ois lived amid the hives of the Sorbonne. Although Jules was tired, he said, “I can.”