by June Trop
Judah once told me about a regular customer who’d come to the shop to ask Saul to make the wedding ring he’d designed for his fiancée. When Saul called for Judah to assume the project, the man objected, insisting that Saul make the ring himself. Showing him Judah’s work, including rings more elaborate than the customer’s own design, Saul tried to persuade him that Judah was more than capable of alloying the gold and shaping the metal for the ring. When the customer insisted, Saul refused his business and sent him to another craftsman in the agora.
“Does he still have his cough?” I grabbed this opportunity to change the subject from the scrolls, but I could tell by Judah’s momentary squint and the slight turn of his head that I hadn’t fooled him.
“His cough persists, along with a shortness of breath when he lies down. That and the tremor make him too sick to continue working on our recipe.” His tone was dry, with a trace of impatience.
But then, after a thoughtful pause, he added in a more liquid tone, “If you have time, I could show you samples of the deadened copper he heated with a seed of silver to enhance the spirit of the mercury bath.” And, as if he needed to justify spending the time with me after my failure to return the scrolls, he muttered almost to himself, “I take my afternoon break now anyway.”
He took a few minutes to rewind his spool of wire, store the metal scraps in an earthenware cantharus, a two-handled drinking cup, and wipe his tools. When he stood, the folds of his gray colobium, a coarse, woolen workingman’s tunic, short-sleeved, cut above the knee, and belted at the waist, relaxed around his torso and whispered across his thighs. The air moved with him as he checked beyond his entrance to make sure no potential clients were approaching his stall. Then he closed and locked the wrought-iron grille but left the heavy wooden shutters open.
When he ushered me into his cubicle, I was struck by its astringent cleanliness and Spartan simplicity. With the few watery slices of light filtering in from the single louvered, east-facing window, I could see the sparse furnishings, only a covered sleeping couch, a washstand and basin, and a table and chair. Two raw pine shelves held a mirror, razor, and comb; a chamber pot; two amphora joined by a knotted rope (for hauling water from the public fountain); a smaller amphora (this one of wine); several ceramic flasks; a bronze oil lamp and shade (with a striker and trimmer); a tallow lamp (and candles); and a portable oil-burning lantern (fitted with a thin sheet of mica to direct the light). He also had some tin crockery and cutlery, a short stack of towels, and a wax tablet and stylus. Attached to the lower shelf were several hooks on which he hung his himation, a leather apron, a tunic of plain bleached linen for Shabbat and the holy days, a pair of low boots buckled together, a scroll of the Septuagint in an embroidered silk case, and a silver chain with an amulet of a bird in flight.
I was drawn to the amulet.
He followed the sweep of my gaze. “My mother gave me that shortly before she died to remind me of how she’d taught me to live, unencumbered and free of conventions, prejudices, and clutter. Instead, she encouraged me to respect who I am and what I’ve earned, to value economy and simplicity, and to make commitments sparingly.”
The Gorgon retracted her brazen claws and calmed her mane of venomous snakes when Judah entrusted me with that piece of his history.
But I also began to wonder whether he was warning me not to expect a commitment (as if he, not I, were the one betrothed) and whether he’d brought other women to his cubicle (as if he, not I, were the one filled with lust). When and how had I become not only a liar but a Siren ready to shelve all restraint and betray my steadfast and devoted Noah?
Roused from my self-recriminations by his footfalls on the mud bricks that paved his cubicle, I saw that he’d already gathered samples from a few of the flasks and arranged them on the table. When I sat on the chair before them, Judah moved behind me so the feeble light from the window could illuminate the array. Leaning over my shoulder, close enough for me to sense the cloud of sandalwood around him, he pointed to samples, explaining how each represented a step in the deadened copper’s transformation.
At that moment, I was absorbed more by the cloud of sandalwood than the samples of copper. Unable to calm my yearnings, let alone concentrate on his explanation, my senses reeling, my heart hammering, my breath quickening, I spun out of the chair intent on escaping the fire raging in my blood.
Only to pitch into his arms.
I remember my confusion, then embarrassment, that a muffled whine escaped from my lips, that he held me, his heat pulsating through me, our hearts pounding in synchrony, that a blush of shyness washed over me while an alarm blared in my ears. He raised my chin and searched my eyes to see whether I’d caught a glimpse of eternity or was merely in the throes of a seizure.
I asked, “Do you love me?” but only with my eyes.
“I’m no good for you, Miriam,” he groaned while stepping back. “You were meant for a life I can’t give you. You need to go home now, because if I did what I want to do, we wouldn’t stop, and before we knew it, you’d have to bear on your wedding night the stigma of this afternoon and maybe even the invectives that were hurled at my mother and me.”
His face blurred as my tears welled up, a few trickling down my face, but I caught my breath, leveled my gaze, and squared my shoulders. He turned and advanced toward the shop entrance while I lagged behind to give him just enough time to unlock and open the grille so I could cross the threshold without having to see his beautiful face pinched with pity, irritation, or contempt.
I plunged into the afternoon light, following my shadow this time as it lengthened toward the Jewish Quarter, my thoughts in concert with the thunder of the breakers crashing against the rocks and shoals of Pharos Island. Nevertheless, I vowed that with or without Judah’s love, I would become an alchemist to study the spirit of metals and prevent the sickness that comes from working with them, and that no matter what, I would recover the scrolls in time to return them to him next week.
Chapter 11
Late Sunday Afternoon
AFTER THE LOSS of not only the scrolls but the dream of a romance with Judah, I needed the tenderness of a friend. So, rather than return home, I dragged myself the extra blocks to Noah’s house even knowing that, of all people, I hardly deserved his sympathy.
Amram was not at home, but their narrow-eyed, bullish doorkeeper, Myron, emerged from his cell off the entryway to squint against the slanting sunlight and identify me through the grid of iron bars that covers the porter’s hole in their thick, metal-studded entryway door. Despite the many years since the flames of the Pogrom devoured their family, I couldn’t get used to this opulent, almost ostentatious fortress as their home, but I understood it.
After greeting me and taking my himation, Myron escorted me past a dark-skinned, knock-kneed lad sweeping invisible dust into an invisible pile and ushered me to a padded stone bench in the atrium. While I rested alongside its pool of floating lotus blossoms, beds of dark blue irises, and rows of alabaster statues bearing lamps of aromatic oils, he sent for two maids. One placed a bronze footstool under my feet, removed my boots, wiped my feet with a damp towel, and fitted me with a pair of slippers. The other brought me a small mahogany serving table set with a silver chalice, a pitcher of cold water, and a flagon of wine from Palestine.
When I’d refreshed myself, Myron guided me to the courtyard through a maze of spice-scented, marble-columned corridors. We passed rosewood tables bearing urns of fresh rose petals and baskets of lavender, calamus, saffron, and cinnamon; claw-footed cedar chests trimmed with bone; and airy drawing rooms (separate ones for men and women but opening one to the other) with islands of highly varnished, rigidly placed, massive furniture inlaid with tortoiseshell, ivory, and mother-of-pearl.
The corridor led us to an ivy-covered arch through which I saw Noah, his pale body dressed in a tunic of Scythopolitan linen embroidered with a border of r
usset leaves and belted with a wide leather strap studded with gold coins. Barefoot in the shade of a strawberry tree and surrounded by a hedge of red-flowering hibiscus, he was staring into the eyes of a marble griffin, its open beak spurting water into a circular, turquoise pool. Posed like a marble statue himself, his gaze unyielding, he was leaning forward on a speckled granite bench, his legs crossed at the knees, his left elbow balanced on his thigh, his chin resting on his folded manicured hand.
He looked up to welcome me with the toothy smile he always reserved for me.
“Mimi, how beautiful you look.”
Actually, my tunica interior was drenched, my chiton askew, my face tear-stained, and my hair bedraggled. The pins that held my braid had come loose so my crown had slipped into a dissolute tilt, and the curls across my forehead hung like limp streamers. Plus, my toes had been cramped all day inside hot leather boots, the shooting pains easing only as the swelling in my feet began to subside. But to my surprise, I no longer cared how I looked to Noah.
I flopped onto the cushioned wrought-iron chair across from him, kicked off the slippers, pulled my knees to my chest, smoothed my chiton over my knees and ankles, and wrapped my arms around my shins. My back to the fountain, a teak table between us, I shaded my eyes with my palm to avoid squinting into the late afternoon sun.
“I was out walking and wanted to see how you were. You left Shabbat dinner feeling so sick.”
“It was just a headache, Mimi.”
Maybe so, but the skin around his jaw tightened, and his body stiffened.
Then I noticed his right hand and arm were bandaged to the elbow.
“Noah, what happened to your arm?”
“On the way home from your house, I was attacked by a pack of hounds. They wanted the grilled lamb. Anyway, once I hurled the food basket, they sprinted after it and left me alone.”
“Oh, Noah. Let me make a salve for you and massage it into your arm. Remember how you nursed me through my convalescence from the bee stings?”
“Yes. I also remember how you visited me every day when my mother and sisters were killed. I had only you to comfort me. My father was too distraught, too grief stricken and guilt ridden to realize that he still had a son who’d lost a mother. Only you understood what that loss meant. But, Mimi, the arm is nothing. It’s just a little sore.”
“Let me at least freshen the bandage.”
His eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline.
“No.”
“Then let me see how it’s heal—”
“No, no, no.” He flicked his hand to end the discussion.
He was resisting my attempts to minister to him, and I didn’t know why. Not then.
During the silence that grew between us, I heard the ping of glassware and the clink of cutlery as a maid approached balancing a silver tray across her pillowy breasts. Perching the tray on the edge of the table as she covered it with a cloth of bleached Indian cotton, she unfurled a starched napkin for each of us with an efficient snap of her pudgy wrist. Then, unloading the tray, her reddened hands served us grapes and an assortment of cheeses on a gold-leaf platter; two small silver dishes, one of pistachio nuts and the other of mixed berries; a crater of wine; a pair of crystal goblets; some silver utensils; and a cut-glass bowl of floating red roses.
When she’d left, Noah pushed the small dishes together as if to choose one or the other, but instead he plucked the grapes with his long, bony fingers and concentrated on lining them up across the cloth. When he was satisfied with the arrangement, he scooped up a handful of nuts and popped them in his mouth before ladling some wine into a goblet and raising it to his lips. He drained the goblet, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he took measure of me over its rim.
His silence was making me nervous, so I poured a goblet of wine for myself.
“Noah, you were gazing at the fountain as if you’d never seen it before.”
He shrugged, and then, sputtering some nut fragments, he spoke to the space above my head.
“I have to find a new scribe to replace Drakon. He’s worked long hours without complaint, has a keen memory, and speaks and writes Latin as well as you do, but I’ve caught him snooping more than once. Just this morning, he was copying my list of prospective clients. As soon as he heard me enter the office, he stopped, and in a stream of rapid prattle, proffered some convoluted excuse for having opened my files.”
“Is he the one with the pockmarked face and the wolfish gray teeth who brings documents for Papa to approve? I always sensed something furtive about him.”
“Well, never mind him.” Noah shrugged his shoulders. “That’s only business. How are you, Mimi?” And then lowering his gaze and giving me a long, pointed look, he asked, “What’s that gash on your forehead?”
“I fell early this morning on a step in the library.” I launched into the story of the missing scrolls and how, in my panic, I’d gouged my forehead on the edge of one of the risers. “I must get those scrolls back, Noah. I feel as though I’m teetering on the edge of an abyss.”
He lowered his eyelids, compressed his lips, and shook his head in a narrow arc as if he had the wisdom of Solomon and I had the brain of an imbecile.
“Oh, Mimi. How can you say that? Sometimes you’re so melodramatic. Soon we’ll be married. We’ll have a family. I think our wedding is the only event that can ease my father’s grief and restore his health—”
I’d begun to wonder whether Amram’s melancholia all these years could have been treated with an extract of mandrake root.
“—He loves you like a father, and I love and yearn for you like an eager bridegroom.”
Beads of perspiration began stippling his brow.
“Unless I return those scrolls, and I mean soon, before their absence is noticed, I will live in shame. Not only will I have broken a promise, but should the secret leak out that some Jews are fabricating precious metals and gems, we’ll all be at risk for another pogrom.”
The beads on his brow were coalescing.
“What bothers me almost as much as their disappearance is that my father or brother would do such a thing. Someone lifted the scrolls between Friday afternoon when I began my preparations for Shabbat and early this morning. Papa and Binyamin were the only ones who knew about the scrolls and had a motive and opportunity to take them during that time.”
Even Noah, who might have been jealous of my preoccupation with the League, couldn’t have taken them. I had personally wrapped him in his himation, escorted him to our door, and watched him until he disappeared around the corner.
He lifted his chin and, with a gusty sigh, rolled his eyes as if pleading to the heavens for patience.
“Oh, Mimi, why would either of them even want the scrolls?”
“They each need money, money that could come from selling them. The secrets would be worth a fortune on the black market. Binyamin needs to finance a voyage to Rome and then a trek to Capua. And my father? I have no idea why he needs the money, but he does, and I intend to get to the bottom of that too.”
Noah arched one eyebrow. “Come on, Mimi, don’t be so silly. They’ll turn up. You’re overreacting. I’m sure you’ve just misplaced them.”
His condescension stung me like a lash. Blinking at him in disbelief, I leaned across the table, close enough to smell his foulness.
And then I pounced on him.
“How can you say such a thing? How dare you say such a thing! How can you be so dismissive of my distress? You know my routines, how meticulously I adhere to them, and you know how important honoring a commitment is to me. I thought you’d be sympathetic, that you’d understand the magnitude of this loss to me.”
I couldn’t believe how shrill my voice had become. I lifted my goblet to take a sip of wine, but my hands were trembling so much that the wine sloshed over the ri
m. So I put the goblet down.
By now, his face was slick with sweat, and his narrow shoulders began to shake as if he’d caught a chill.
“What about honoring your commitment to me?” He muttered the question without inflection, his eyes narrowed, his mouth morphing into a mirthless half smile, the edges of his front teeth bared, while he poked a grape with the tip of his knife.
A swell of anger rolled up my spine. My father had made the commitment, not I. And that was when I was too young to understand and the prospect of marriage was more remote than real. Still, Noah was right. I’d been evading the commitment. So I suppressed my flight instinct and sidestepped his bitterness.
“Oh, Noah! What on earth is the matter with you today?”
“I’m amazed, even alarmed, Mimi, that you could be so upset over having misplaced a couple of scrolls belonging to some feckless dreamers, let alone how you could occupy yourself with their nonsense. I’ve never seen you so frantic. And how could you ever imagine that your father or Binyamin would steal them to sell on the black market?”
“I can think of no other explanation for their disappearance.” Ice poured out with my voice. “Papa or Binyamin could and would steal and sell them if desperate enough and didn’t realize the consequences.”
I refrained from mentioning that my father might have taken the scrolls simply to discredit me before the League and propel me toward marriage. Little did Papa realize that even death held less sway over me now than the prospect of marrying Noah. I gagged whenever I imagined his toothy kisses; his rolling on top of me, forcing his tumescence inside me, arching his back to penetrate me, grunting and spewing his fetid breath with each thrust; and coating my skin with his foulness before flopping his sticky manhood on my thigh.