by June Trop
Dizziness swept through my hollow belly as I struggled to stand and slide my feet into the slippers. When Noah rushed over—whether to help or divert me, I can’t say—I could see that the sweat on his face had congealed into a waxy film and his eyes were glazed with fever.
“Mimi, please. Please don’t go. I see I’ve offended you. I had no idea the scrolls were so dear to you. Please, my most beautiful darling, you must forgive me.”
At that moment, I had more important things to do than listen to him gush. I had to deal with my father’s urgent need for money and the disappearance of the scrolls. I knew I’d have to deal with the betrothal sooner or later, but now—when I was feeling only a keen desire to hurt him—was hardly the time.
Chapter 12
Monday, Early Morning into Early Afternoon
“ARE YOU READY to go, Phoebe?”
I was helping her on with her lacerna, a long, hooded, homespun cloak, her mission being to catch any hint in the early-morning gossip swirling in and about the agora that the scrolls were for sale. I was ready to sell all my jewelry to recover them, even the pieces that had belonged to my mother, except, of course, the Alexandrian pearls, which had been part of her dowry. According to tradition and as specified in our parents’ marriage contract, if my mother predeceased my father, then the eldest son would inherit her dowry.
“And you, Miriam?” Phoebe had fastened the fibula to my himation and was stooping to adjust its folds.
I was venturing out early too, but only locally, to get the fruits and herbs to make Papa’s favorite salad, anything to allay his defenses while I prodded him with questions.
Phoebe and I were in the atrium. The first pale streaks of daylight were peeping through the compluvium, the open circle in the roof above the pool. They spun a soft gray glow on the water and edged the walls in silver. After checking our reflection in the pool’s glassy surface, we plunged into the morning chill. As we parted at the corner of our two streets and she made her way west, I listened until I could no longer hear her footsteps and then turned eastward.
I’d forgotten the sounds of the awakening city: the moan of the surf ebbing and resurging, the faint toll of the buoys, the steady throb of legionnaires’ hobnail boots, the distant growl of waking dogs, and the rumble of produce-laden carts passing through the city’s gates. The raw scent of the sea hung in the greasy air as I dragged my shadow through the still-deserted streets. Wending my way toward the local plaza, I passed the stable yards and villas of the most affluent Jews, their columned entrances adorned with carved architraves imported from Libya and Asia, their citron-scented gardens filled with whimsical statuary cavorting under arcs of jetting water. Their manicured lawns behind walls of box and rosemary and their crushed-shell walkways gave way to shoddy, sun-scoured, mud-brick tenements jammed together with hardly a slice of sky between them. Pigeons roosted above their listing doorways, squirting excrement on their crumbling lintels while their shutters stayed latched against the dramas of the night.
As I approached the plaza, the rising sun splashed color on the rectangles of silver and slate, and the long shadows resolved into familiar sights. Skirting eddies of trash whirling with the wind and sidestepping dozing idlers slumped against sun-bleached shacks, I spied a hunchbacked beggar wading through heaps of stagnant garbage in a rubbish-strewn alley and a knot of drunks squabbling with a rush of doves over a handful of spilled barley. I heard horses nickering and an old woman humming as she mopped the dusty pavement in front of her shop, and I caught the pungent scent of tethered animals before I saw them switching their tails against the swarms of hovering flies.
Nestor, our produce vendor, stood by the curb in front of his cart, his sturdy body crammed into his colobium, the skirt rippling across his meaty thighs, the flesh of his neck folded in tiers over its collar. His thickly corded arms strained the sleeves as he brushed the sweat-lathered coat of his mule and crooned a melody of praise to the beast.
“Good morning, Miss bat Isaac. You’re looking more like your beautiful mother each day. How are you and your blessed father this morning?” His lilting voice gushed with gratitude. Before I was born, my father had financed the purchase of Nestor’s first cart and mule. Then, at the time of the Pogrom, when all the businesses in the Jewish Quarter failed, my father forgave the balance of the debt. Nestor never forgot my father’s generosity.
“It’s just for my father that I’m here this morning, to buy the ingredients for his favorite salad: mangoes, kiwis—”
“Oh, I know what he likes, Miss Miriam. Also oranges and raspberries, right? And some crushed mint leaves too. Your beautiful mother made it for him all the time. How could I forget either of your parents?”
Raising his bushy eyebrows and tapping his forehead with his thick, bent index finger, his weathered cheeks broke into creases of cheer around his rosy nose.
He filled my basket and then handed it to me. “Only the freshest ingredients for Mr. ben Asher and his daughter.”
As we exchanged good wishes, I pressed a coin into his palm and was on my way.
By now the plaza was coming alive. Peddlers were hawking over the screech of wheels, the clatter of hooves, and the shouts of a gathering crowd. Orbits of activity had replaced the calm of a few minutes ago. The sun stroked my face and glinted off the mica-flecked cobblestones as I shouldered my way through the human river. Sedan chairs bobbed around me as I passed wobbly stands and shabby stalls where the aroma of fresh bread mixed with the scent of men at work. Other drunks and idlers had claimed the outskirts of the plaza, but the hunchbacked beggar was still in his alley. His twisted body now supine on a pile of rubbish, his restless hands scratched at his filthy tunic and greasy hair while a stray sunbeam teased his eyelids. The remaining sunbeams hammered down on my basket while I trudged the last few blocks, at last turning our corner absorbed by the prospect of news from Phoebe.
I KNEW PHOEBE would hardly be racing home with the scrolls. Still, while the morning hours dragged a bloated sun above the trees in the courtyard, that very hope would flash through me. I’d picture her skipping with glee, the hood of her lacerna wagging behind her, the breeze wafting wavelets of her dark hair, a dew of perspiration across her brow, and above all, the scrolls secure in her arms. That hope would advance to an expectation whenever I heard footfalls beyond the thicket, even though she’d likely approach our house from the west rather than from the north via our side street.
In the meantime, I was either slumped forward on the edge of the lounge picking at my cuticles or circling the fountain, pounding my fists against my thighs, digging my nails into my palms, and stifling a shriek that, when audible, sounded like the high-pitched whine of a mosquito in orbit around my ear.
I’d long since taken more than the necessary care to make the salad for Papa. I’d loaded the fruits into a wire basket and lowered them into our well to chill. Then I washed them, removed any pits, seeds, and peels, and cut the larger fruits into bite-size pieces. Next I sliced Phoebe’s date nut bread into wedges just the way he likes it, and setting aside the uneven pieces and slices, I arranged the rest: the fruit in a cut-glass bowl, each piece flanked by one of a contrasting color, and four wedges of bread precisely stacked in a rattan basket, which I covered with a starched linen napkin.
So immersed was I in the fantasy of returning the scrolls to Judah that I started when I heard Phoebe shuffle into the courtyard. At first I could read nothing but fatigue in her sagging shoulders, but then her eyelids fluttered, her breath expanded into a sigh, and her words spilled out in a hollow voice and a stream of tears.
My Phoebe had been everywhere, beginning with the Public Records Office inside the Palace of Justice, where municipal slaves archive public documents and, as a sideline and for a fee, secure personal documents. Then she’d gone to the soup kitchens, laundry lofts, smithies, and slave dealers’ sheds. She’d eavesdropped outside barber
shops and bath houses, taverns and whorehouses, cookshops and kapeleia, inns and bakers’ stalls, and at the scores of dice games and money changers’ tables in the agora. She’d listened to the conversations of citizens and freedmen, soldiers and stevedores, peddlers and artisans, masons and mule drivers, slaves and serfs before the midday heat wrapped the streets in silence. Nothing. Either the scrolls had yet to reach the streets, or they weren’t for sale.
Relief and despair clutched me in turn, but I still had hope of learning something when I’d present the fruit salad to Papa.
Chapter 13
Monday Afternoon
“PAPA, I BROUGHT you something, your favorite fruit salad to have with Phoebe’s date nut bread.”
I placed the bowl and basket on his desk so their handles were aligned.
“Miriam, you remind me so much of your mother.”
We were in his study again, the same scent of roses sweeping in from the courtyard and the same breeze billowing and snapping the drapes. But this time, unlike Friday, I sat tall before his massive desk, pretending that ropes connected to a block and tackle were pulling my head and shoulders toward the ceiling. My father was studying the accounts he held with Amram, his brow pulled down in concentration, his index finger sliding down a column of numbers, his bronze pen borrowing its glitter from a stripe of sunlight. Standing next to his desk was his abacus, an antique marble-topped table marked with parallel lines and intersecting perpendicular grooves.
“How’s business, Papa?” I was angling for a way to broach the subject of our household finances.
“Fine, Miriam, just fine. Noah’s participation in our partnership is bringing us unexpected prosperity. I need not remind you that, aside from the fact that his family has considerable wealth, Noah himself is a shrewd investor. You must be the envy of every maiden in the quarter.”
“Papa, you know we agreed to postpone any discussion of Noah until the end of the week. Why do you keep bringing him up?” Determined to keep the mounting exasperation out of my voice, I raised my chin and twitched the briefest smile.
His face had hardened to stone, but I could hear his agitation in the rattling of his pen as he set it down on his desk. He waited several seconds before answering.
“Because I’m embarrassed. That’s why. I’ve run out of excuses to give my long-suffering friend. I’ve told him that your body, like your mother’s, is not yet mature enough to bear children, that you need to see Binyamin settled, that Aunt Hannah needs you, that your astrologer needs more time to divine an auspicious date. In short, I’ve told him everything but the truth, that you’re preoccupied with these alchemists and, for all I know, with that bastard jeweler in the agora. I curse the day I ever sent you to collect his mortgage payment.”
I blinked at him while dust particles danced in the stripes across his face and a stream of bile swirled in my belly.
“Speaking of payments, Papa, didn’t you tell Phoebe that we have to economize? That we need to practice thrift when purchasing our provisions, that we should go to the pantopoleion instead of our usual vendors?”
“That’s absurd!”
Three vertical furrows cut a fan between his eyebrows as he slammed his fist on the desk, upsetting the basket of bread and causing the bowl of fruit salad to skitter across the table and teeter on the edge before crashing to the floor.
The silence gathered, seeping into every cranny of his study until broken by the flutter of pigeons in the peristyle.
“Did Phoebe tell you that? Has she nothing better to do than spin tall tales? That girl should be scourged.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest to contain the fury rumbling through me.
But then he sighed, spread out his palms, and pleaded with me in a muted tone.
“Why are you questioning me about our finances? Haven’t I always given you the best?”
Flames of duplicity spread across his fleshy face and down his barrel-shaped neck.
Weary of his dodgery and the smell of his lies, I waggled my head and flicked my hand to fend off this latest ploy to put me on the defensive. If he’d stoop to manipulate me, then he’d lie to my face and steal behind my back. Still, his motive for taking the scrolls was obscure to me. Was it to advance my marriage to Noah? Was this pressure for me to marry based on Papa’s embarrassment over the delay, or on something more, like the imminent financial collapse of our family?
I leaned over the desk but kept the anger in my voice under control.
“I’ve always thought of us as partners in running this household. It’s true that you make the business decisions, but I’ve been the mistress of this household for years, just as Mother was, defining the routines, directing the staff, scheduling our purchases, planning the menus, welcoming our guests, and performing righteous acts. Why would you go to Phoebe about our budget? And more astonishing, why would you yourself go to Moshe to place an order?”
He faced me with the look of a wounded animal, but I held fast to my courage and continued.
“I’m sorry you’ve been embarrassed in your relationship with Amram. Truly I am, and we can discuss that on Friday, but I too have been embarrassed as your partner in running this household. Moreover, I’m worried that something under this roof is so terribly amiss that you’ve acted without consulting me and continue to evade the issue with me even now.”
The only response was the metallic cry of a gull circling the courtyard.
It seemed pointless to ask him about the scrolls, to give him yet another opportunity to either lie or scold me for being preoccupied with foolishness while neglecting my duty to Noah and our families. So, with nothing more to say, I prepared to leave, this time without requesting permission and without hurrying.
On the contrary, I stalled. I edged out of the chair, heaved a sigh, stretched out my arms, and cupped my knees before lifting myself out of the chair, shaking out the skirt of my tunic and smoothing its folds, hoping he would change his mind and confide in me. When he didn’t, I turned toward the atrium, looking back from the mahogany doors but once to see his face twisted in a grimace. His was holding his head in his hands, the heels of his palms pressed against his temples like a vise, as if he were mending a crack in his skull. I realized then that I would have to unearth the answers myself, why he needed money and whether he took the scrolls, even if Charon had to ferry me across the River of Pain to do it.
Chapter 14
Late Monday Afternoon
“MISS MIRIAM, A messenger delivered this letter to you while you were with your father. He said it was urgent.”
One of our maids had been waiting for me in the atrium. I’d been about to look for her, to ask her to clean up the shards of glass and the fruit salad swimming on the floor of Papa’s study.
The moment she handed me the thin tube inscribed with my name, I recognized the clarity and evenness of Judah’s upright penmanship and the simplicity and elegance of his seal. Curling my hand around my neck to check the rising blush, I wondered what news he could be sending me. Had he himself chanced upon the scrolls? As much as I longed for their recovery, I knew I’d drown in shame for the rest of my life if he’d happened upon them.
Suddenly wet, my fingers were almost too slippery to unfurl the papyrus.
Miriam,
Saul’s condition has worsened. I am going to him now. Please meet me there. He lives in the tenement closest to the public fountain on the lane behind The Flamingo’s Tongue. Go to the apothecary shop and ask for his landlady, Aspasia.
Judah
My shoulders sagged with relief, but when I imagined Saul slipping into unconsciousness, his cheeks either hollowed to the bone or swollen with infection, I slumped against the bench, dropped my head, and shut my eyes in shame and then indelible sorrow.
I called out to Phoebe. She scurried in from the kitchen still holding the tray
of hard-boiled eggs and goat cheese drizzled with honey that the cook had cobbled together for my father’s lunch.
“Please run to a livery stable outside the quarter and hire a sedan chair for me while I put together a basket of food and some medicinal herbs. I need to rush to an apartment in the Bruchium Quarter. The bearers of a chair for hire will know the backstreets there. Find a pair we don’t know so no one can report to Papa that I’ve gone to see Judah, and have them meet me around the corner.”
Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “You’re going to meet Judah at his apartment?”
“No. It’s not that. Saul is sick, I suspect dying. I need to help Judah. Hurry!” I could have forestalled any gossip by taking her with me, but I wanted to go alone and indulge in the hope that Judah would tell me he loved me.
By the time I’d gathered some willow, garlic, and fennel, wrapped a few bandages, and packed everything in a basket with the remaining fruit salad and date nut bread, Phoebe had returned with the sedan chair and come inside to whisper that the bearers were waiting for me around the corner. Planting herself in front of me, holding me by the elbows, she spun me around in a proprietary check to see that none of the spilled fruit had stained my tunic. Next she draped my himation over my crown of braids to veil the sides of my face. After a hug, she let me go, handing me the basket and waving good-bye with an index finger pressed to her lips.
I passed beneath our portico and circled around to the side street. Hanging in the western sky, the orange sun cast a prickly shadow of me against the thicket that shields our courtyard. Just ahead I met the oily, calculating eyes of a tall, ferret-faced Greek. He must have been the lead bearer because when I recited Judah’s directions to him, he measured me with his eyes, scratched his head with dirt-rimmed fingernails, pursed his lips, drew his eyebrows together, and looked up as if searching for a sign in the sky. Then, nodding, he lowered his gaze and stunned me with the fare. I must have blanched, but with no time to haggle, I readily counted the small bronze coins into his cupped palm. The other bearer was compact with round eyes set in a chinless, ruddy face framed by a tangle of dark fringe flaked with dandruff. He handed me a soiled cushion still bearing the sweaty imprint of the last patron and ushered me with a courtly bow to a tattered wicker chair mounted between two stout bamboo rails and shaded by a sun-bleached, leather parasol. He must have seen me hesitate when my gaze caught the iron fittings lacy with rust, but I offered no resistance when he seated me. Then they lifted me above the glistening pavement and whisked me across the Way. We passed a few legionnaires parched by the sun, propped against each other with an intimacy shared by only soldiers and drunks, and a one-legged beggar. He was slouched against a pillar dozing under its portico, his crutch cast aside, his arms splayed, his neck slack, his head lolled to one side, his mouth agape.