The Deadliest Lie

by June Trop

  That’s Noah, believing that his wealth makes him invincible, especially against anything as amorphous as a vapor.

  “—And I wanted to keep my experiments private, at least until I could surprise you and so no one could spy on me. I remembered how important you said it was to protect the secrets in these scrolls.

  “Mimi, tell me you forgive me and that we can be married soon.”

  Another rush of bile, this one surging up my gorge, burning my throat, stinging my mouth, and coating my tongue with slime.

  He took my hand and squeezed it, but once again, his eyes clouded over, his lids drooped, his grip relaxed, and he drifted away. When his cough returned, it was more virulent than ever, a wracking, hacking, chest-rattling, ear-grating, convulsive cough, culminating in a violent fit of gags and heaves as plumes of a crimson lava gushed from his mouth, cascading down the front of my tunic and painting the polished floor tiles red.

  “Noah!”

  And then he was silent.

  Choking.

  Clutching this throat.

  His eyes first pleading, then bulging, frantic.

  His mouth open, twisting in a silent scream.

  His tongue fighting the obstruction.

  His complexion blanching.

  The semicircles under his eyes darkening.

  Fast.

  I tilted his head back, and holding open his mouth, I reached inside to the back of his throat, sweeping through the effluence with my index finger, probing for the obstruction in his airway. I picked out some unidentifiable chunks of partially-digested food but nothing more before he slipped into unconsciousness.

  “Noah, please.” Then louder, “Noah, breathe.”

  I pounded his chest, but he stared past me, his eyes opaque.

  I grasped his shoulders and shook him, but he paid me no mind.

  I pulled him to a sitting position, but his head just flopped over.

  I slapped his back, but he folded forward.

  I shouted in his ear. “Noah, please, one more breath.”

  But he couldn’t hear me.

  He’d already surrendered his connection to this world and crossed into the World- to-Come.

  So I lowered him back onto the chaise lounge.

  I squatted beside him, closing his translucent lids, caressing his still-warm face, bending his elbows, and folding his arms across his chest as if they were the fragile wings of a wounded bird. And I thought with shame how much easier he is to love like this.

  With his confession, my rage had given way to guilt. What’s more, the guilt was suffused with shock, even panic. How would I ever cope without him? Who else could read my every nuance? Who else even cared to? True, I hadn’t wanted to marry him, but I still pictured our growing old together. I counted on his friendship to sustain me, especially after Binyamin’s departure, to share the memories of our childhood, even to lavish me with compliments when I looked and felt my worst. And who else could advise my father about our investments?

  But to my shame, the guilt, shock, and panic were marbled with relief, as if a storm had just passed, its thunderheads having given way to fans of sunlight to dry the rain-soaked landscape. Nonetheless, I beat my chest for having trifled so long with his affection, wishing like a foolish child I could turn the time back to last Friday. Why couldn’t I have declared my intention then of breaking the marriage contract, first with Papa and then with Noah, before he took the scrolls? That question would inhabit my body like a ghost.

  Otherwise, I felt detached, as if I were looking down on someone else’s drama, observing a woman who only looked like me as she knelt caressing the brow of a prone statue. Or perhaps I was there but only as an actress playing that woman’s part. Or best yet, while waiting for Noah, I’d fallen into a scene from a Tartarean dream. When he returns, I thought, he’ll awaken me. Then we’ll sip cinnamon tea while he chides me for having let it steep too long. We’ll munch on sugared almonds while the breeze fans the scent of the flowering oleander and cools the ferns arching over their hanging baskets.

  Can it be that Noah has really left this world? That he’ll never again dine with us on Shabbat, read to me from Aesop’s Fables, welcome me with his toothy smile, tell me I’m beautiful when I’m disheveled, or grouse about Alexandria’s political corruption, violence, extravagant festivals, lascivious entertainers, cloying beggars, or clamorous street philosophers? Impossible. Not with the honeyed light of this ordinary day. Not with the skipper butterflies darting above us. Not with the hum of the bees, the burble of the fountains, and the mumble of the leaves beyond the peristyle. No, it cannot be.

  But if he’s still among us, then why are his lips colorless and his nail beds gray? Why has his body turned to wax, his skin to paste? And why is he deaf to my words? I cast about for some explanation while taking a few deep breaths to confirm that I myself was still alive.

  The impossible had happened, and I couldn’t undo it. Rocking backward onto my heels and straightening up, tottering as if the horizon had tilted, I steadied myself on the arm of the chaise lounge while beads of sweat from the back of my knees trickled down my calves. I staggered back into Noah’s sitting room, reeling from a wave of dizziness, and forged a path through the wreckage, through the smithereens of broken glass and the islets of torn drapes, all the while my eyes smarting as I held my breath against the toxic vapors. Heading straight for the table, I grabbed the open scroll, rolled it up pell-mell, and scooped up the other two. I carried them like infants in my arms as I brushed past the foot of the table, closed the door, heard the click of the latch, and set out to find Amram.

  Chapter 29

  Early Friday Evening

  WAS IT ONLY last week that I was positioning not just two but all three of these couches in an arc facing the courtyard, running my hands over their woodwork and plumping their cushions? Was it only last Shabbat that I was listening to Papa first bait Noah and then Binyamin while they waited in the library for Amram? As I prepared to serve Shabbat dinner to Papa, Aunt Hannah, and myself, the dining room seemed oddly bare, the air static as if no one lived here anymore. That and a queer chill were all I felt as I directed my limbs to perform the routines that even a crisis cannot subvert.

  Throughout that afternoon, whenever I’d relive the morning’s calamity, fresh tears would burn a salty trail down my face and spill onto my tunic. Others would cling to my cheeks and sting like beads of acid. Amram had been at the Gymnasium, so I’d sent his bearers to fetch him. Surely he had an inkling that something was dreadfully wrong when Myron, in the absence of Noah, settled him with a goblet of wine on a bench in the atrium.

  I’d been waiting in the courtyard, re-rolling the scrolls, checking them for damage while trying to compose myself and rehearse some comforting words for Amram. But when I entered the atrium and sat down next to him, Myron standing behind me, I could see that Amram was already anticipating the news. With his eyelids fluttering, his lips pinched, his shoulders hunched, and his chin pressed to his chest, he was rocking back and forth, his arms folded across his lap, one hand dangling the goblet, the last of its contents bleeding into the seams between the tiles.

  Taking hold of his goblet and handing it to Myron, I grasped Amram’s bloodless hands—they felt like sheaths of desiccated papyrus—and pressed them between my own. I mumbled something—I can’t remember what I’d memorized—but I needn’t have bothered. When Amram raised his head and saw my crimson-soaked tunic and shock-filled eyes, he knew. That’s when the pain ripped through his body, when he released an unearthly wail that reverberated through the house, when his eyes clamped shut and his face contorted in anguish, when his body folded over and crumpled to the floor. He’d been gored, but his soul not his blood was spurting from the wound.

  In spite of the showy blossoms floating in the pool, the beds of irises along its perimeter, and the bouq
uets of freshly-cut roses pluming over their free-standing urns, the atrium, like Amram, had lost all its color. Myron carried his broken master to bed, the shallow rise and fall of Amram’s chest the only sign he was still alive.

  I sent Amram’s bearers to the Bruchium Quarter again, this time to Aspasia’s for an extract of mandrake root. Then, retracing my steps through the maze of corridors to the courtyard, I grabbed from one of the tables a long, oval basket, its handle arched over sprays of budding lavender. I distributed the sprays among the other baskets and brought the now empty basket to the courtyard, where I packed it with the scrolls. Threading one arm through its handle and cradling it against my hip, I toddled home on swollen feet while my head wagged in disbelief, my stomach churned with guilt, and my ears buzzed with the kind of shameful excitement that follows a tragedy when it’s not your own.

  Objects clattered in my wake as I lumbered about the house in the fading afternoon light to complete the Shabbat preparations. I’d feel anesthetized and think I’d reached the point when I could weep no more only to find my cheeks wet again. Fresh waves of grief and guilt, remorse and recrimination, would flood me with the memory of Noah’s last breath, his plea for forgiveness without an iota of reproach for my having seeded the gossip that propelled him to take the scrolls.

  Aunt Hannah was in the library. She’d been playing her cithara but must have heard some moths fluttering against the window pane, because she put it aside, my signal to prepare my spirit to welcome Shabbat. I blessed G-d for being the Creator of life even in the face of Noah’s death. Then I inserted the candles in my mother’s candlesticks and lit them to usher in the sacred day. Reassured by this familiar ritual, I added my own prayers to the traditional blessing:

  “May Noah’s soul, sheltered by Your divine wings, be treasured among the souls of his mother, sisters, and all the other righteous people who merit a place in the World-to-Come. And may You comfort Amram as he mourns the loss of his only son.

  “May You grant me the strength to safeguard the League’s sacred secrets for the Seed of Abraham, Your Chosen People, so that the vulgar and ignorant cannot pervert Your Great Work. May You lead me on a journey toward spiritual purity so that I might, in memory of Noah, merit Your Holy Insights and so perfect the bodies and spirits of base metals along with those of all the people who are sick. And may You teach me to be compassionate, especially toward those who have entrusted me with their love.”

  As I concluded my prayers, I resolved that as soon as Shabbat was over, I would construct and test the apparatus for vaporizing and condensing mercury that I’d detailed in my scroll so that others would not die as Noah did.

  And then I heard a voice in the atrium.

  “Please, Mr. ben Asher, may I speak with Miriam?”

  Only one voice could seize me like that.

  The heels of Judah’s boots cut a staccato rhythm across the mosaic tiles.

  Papa ushered him into the dining room. I hoped he was coming for the scrolls, that Saul’s condition had improved enough for him to have asked Judah for them.

  But no. Judah’s mournful face told me otherwise.

  When he looked at me, a fleeting squint creased his face. He must have noticed the bruises on my face, the discolorations more a yellowish green today than yesterday’s flamboyant purple. I felt a blush creep up my neck, but as soon as he spoke, it receded.

  “Miriam, Saul passed away late this afternoon. The boy is staying with him until after Shabbat, when the undertaker will prepare his body for burial Sunday morning.”

  Then, noticing the Shabbat candles, he raked his hands through his hair and turned to Papa.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. ben Asher. I didn’t mean to interrupt Shabbat. I got here as soon as I could, but I see Shabbat arrived before I did.”

  A heavy silence threatened to fill the room.

  But Papa dipped his head in a slight nod and twitched a tight smile. “You’re welcome to stay, Judah.”

  Then, looking at me, Papa gestured expansively and cleared his throat as if to address an audience. “Miriam, please ask Phoebe to make a place for Judah in the dining room.”

  “Come, Judah,” I said, taking pleasure as I heard his name from my own lips. “Let me seat you in the courtyard while Phoebe prepares the dining room.”

  I accompanied him to a chaise lounge just as an opalescent sky was settling into layers of lavender, lilac, indigo, and violet. The moon had begun its climb through the tangled net of evening stars, and the date palms and plane trees sliced the delicate light into long shadows.

  With Judah seated by the fountain, I excused myself to help Phoebe reposition the third couch around the ivory table and add a place for dinner. On the way, I asked a maid to bring Judah some sesame cakes and a goblet of wine, refreshments he’d yet to touch by the time I returned to the courtyard. Instead he sat hunched forward, his mouth compressed, its corners pulled down, his hands clenched, his fingers intertwined, his brow furrowed, his eyes staring into the distance.

  I perched on the edge of the chaise lounge to face him.

  I unlocked his hands and held them.

  Their warmth felt comfortable.

  We didn’t say anything for a while.

  He took a deep breath that became a sigh, and when he spoke, his voice quavered. “I want to find Eran, to tell him our father has passed away.”

  Now I was the one to squint. “What do you mean? Saul was Eran’s father, not yours.”

  “No, Miriam. He was my father too. He told me so shortly before he died. He might never have told me, but when I was taking care of him, I found his amulet, an exact match to mine in not only the design but the alloying of the silver and, of course, my mother’s mark. So I asked him about his relationship with my mother and why he’d kept it a secret from me even after his wife died.

  “He told me he was afraid that on the one hand I’d feel an obligation toward him beyond my duty as his protégé, a tribute he felt he didn’t deserve. On the other hand, he was afraid I’d reject him for having been responsible for the derision my mother and I had to endure.

  “He couldn’t face the prospect of that rejection, especially after Eran disowned him. Somehow Eran had long suspected the affair with my mother. Although Saul denied it vehemently and repeatedly, each denial only heightened Eran’s irritability and increased the acrimony between them. Saul was afraid that if he did acknowledge the affair, Eran might, in a fit of indignation, hurl the painful truth at his mother and thereby exacerbate her mania. What’s more, his acknowledgment, he said, could precipitate a manic episode in Eran himself. According to Saul, Eran, like his mother years ago, had begun to exhibit periods of heightened impulsiveness, belligerence, even delusions. Saul was afraid that during such an episode, Eran might fixate on identifying and punishing the woman he saw as violating the sanctity of his family and arrogating his father’s affection.

  “And, of course, Saul was ashamed of himself, ashamed that he’d betrayed his wife, that he hadn’t shared in our humiliation, and after Dinah’s passing, that he’d continued to withhold the truth from me.

  “Anyway, Eran left Alexandria almost fifteen years ago. Saul figured he became a jeweler. At least he began to train with one in Judea. He never came back to Alexandria, and Saul never heard a word from or about him again. He had no idea where Eran was or even what name he could be using. All he had was a vague idea of what Eran might look like—Eran was born with a port-wine stain across his forehead—and that he’d be twenty-eight years old.

  “So, I know I have a brother, and I want to find him.”

  I sat with him in silence, the prick of tears gathering behind my eyes and tightening my throat.

  I LAY ON MY sleeping couch that night with Phoebe kneeling on the pallet beside me, listening to my lament and reaching up to wipe each tear before it could trickle through my hair. La
ter, between gusts of grief, when I felt strangely composed, I vowed to the Almighty that before too many days had smudged the details, I would record the events of this past week for young women everywhere. Let them see that I lived the deadliest lie, pretending to be Noah’s betrothed, and now must bear the responsibility for his death as surely as if I’d unleashed the poisonous vapors myself. Let them judge me, even blame me, but above all let them learn from me so they too can claim their future, but forthrightly, without the trail of harm I’ve caused.

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  AS I READ THIS, my completed manuscript, I’m surprised by what I’ve written, even astonished by how much I managed to recall. Still, I’m sorry I didn’t express more appreciation for Papa and Noah: Papa for his staunch desire to protect and provide for us—not only me but Binyamin and, of course, Aunt Hannah—and Noah for his steadfast and unconditional love. Henceforth I’ll try to be more mindful of their virtues. Otherwise, I’m content to let this account of that terrible week stand.

  This past year has been the traditional mourning period for me, Noah’s betrothed, as well as for Amram. Despite his seclusion, Amram has welcomed the men from the Synagogue who, along with Papa, have formed the minyan for his daily prayers. And he’s looked forward to my visits every Friday, to our sharing the afternoon’s last light. In addition to bringing him a Shabbat dinner, some mandrake root, and news of Philo, all of which would lift his spirits, I’d light his candles to usher in the peace of Shabbat. After that, if he felt up to chatting, he’d reminisce about the sweet Shabbatot he’d spent as a student, young husband, and father.

  I’ll continue to remember Amram in my daily prayers and visit him, though not so regularly now as I work to carve a worthwhile life out of the misfortune I’ve caused. This past year I experimented with metal, clay, and glass to construct the apparatus for safely condensing the vapors of mercury in accord with the design I recorded just before Noah took the scrolls. I’ve named the apparatus Noah’s Still, but because it’s a modification of the kerotakis, the charcoal burner artists have been using for centuries to keep their paints from hardening, my colleagues in the League persist in referring to it by that more familiar name.