A Conspiracy of Paper bw-1

by David Liss

  “Uncle,” I began. I wished to say that José had not sought me either, but the words sounded childish to me—and also disingenuous, for I had made a point of not being home when he had been in town so if he had called on me I could have avoided him.

  “Why do you hide from your own family, Benjamin? What happened with you and Samuel is long past. He would have forgiven you if you but gave him the chance.”

  I misbelieved that, but I said nothing.

  “This distance you have is about nothing, it stems from nothing. Now your father is dead, and you can never reconcile with him, but it is not too late to reconcile with your family and with your people.”

  I thought on this for some time—I know not how long. Perhaps my father had changed since I had last known him. Perhaps the cold tyrant I remembered was as much a product of my fancy as my experience. I could not say, but my uncle’s words stung me; they made me feel like an irresponsible wretch who had brought misery to his family. All these years I had always thought of myself as the one who suffered. I chose to separate myself from wealth and influence. Now I began to understand how my uncle saw my self-imposed exile—to him my absence had been senseless and selfish and had hurt my family more than I had ever hurt myself.

  “You are much older now, yes? Maybe you regret some of the things you did in your youth. Now you have grown into a respectable man. You remind me even a little of my own son, Aaron.”

  I said nothing, for I wished neither to insult my uncle nor speak ill of the dead, but I hoped most earnestly that I in no way resembled my cousin. “I shall need to know the name of the coachman who ran down Father,” I said, returning the discourse to business. “And I would like to know if there was anyone in particular you knew to be Father’s enemy. Maybe someone who had threatened him. Will you do this for me?”

  “I shall do this, Benjamin. In part I shall do it for you.”

  “Is there anything else that struck you as important? Any link you can see between my father’s death and Balfour’s? Balfour’s son believes there may be some connection with the dealings of Exchange Alley, and these financial matters are far beyond my understanding.”

  Uncle Miguel looked around. “This is no place to discuss concerns of family. It is no place to talk of the dead, and it is no place to order affairs of so private a nature. Come to my home tonight for dinner. Come at half past five. You will dine with your family, and after we shall talk.”

  “Uncle, perhaps that is not the best way.”

  He leaned forward. “It is the only way,” he said. “If you want my help, you come and have dinner.”

  “You would risk letting your brother’s killer go free if I refuse?”

  “There is no risk,” he said. “I have told you what you need to do, and you will do it. Protests only waste our time. I shall see you at half past five.”

  I left the warehouse astonished at what had happened. I was to dine with my family, and I anticipated this evening with a healthy quantity of dread.

  EIGHT

  I ARRIVED NEAR ENOUGH on time at my uncle’s home on Broad Court in the parish of St. James, Dukes Place. In the year 1719, foreign Jews were still not permitted to own property in London, so my uncle rented a pleasant house in the heart of the Jewish neighborhood, only a brief distance from the Bevis Marks synagogue. His house was three stories; I cannot recall how many rooms, but it was well-proportioned for a man living with a wife and a single dependent and hardly more than a handful of servants. Still, my uncle often worked at home, as my father had, and he enjoyed entertaining guests.

  Unlike many Jews who moved to Dukes Place and then left when they made their fortune—relocating to the more fashionable neighborhoods to the west—my uncle chose to remain behind to share his lot with the poorer members of his nation. It is true that the eastern parts of the city are none the most pleasant, for London’s prevailing winds blow every foul stench of a foul-smelling metropolis right to his doorway, but despite the odor and the poverty and the isolation of Dukes Place, my uncle would not think of relocating. “I am a Portuguese Jew, born in Amsterdam and moved to London,” Uncle Miguel told me when I was a boy. “I have no desire to move again.”

  As I walked toward the door it occurred to me that it was Friday night, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, and that my uncle had tricked me into attending a Sabbath meal. Memories of my childhood bombarded me—the warm odor of freshly baked egg bread, the din of conversation. Sabbath meals had always been held at my uncle and aunt’s house, for the Sabbath was, by tradition, a family occasion, and where I lived was less a family than a household. Every Friday before sundown we would walk from our house on Cree Church Lane to my uncle’s place, where we would share prayers and food with his family and whatever friends he had invited. My uncle would always talk to my brother and me as though we were adults, a habit I found both confusing and gratifying. My aunt would slip us jellies or little cakes before dinner. These meals were one of the few rituals from my childhood that I thought on with any fondness, and I felt a fleeting rage toward my uncle for exposing me to these memories once more.

  Even after I had knocked upon the door I thought of running away, of abandoning my plans and my inquiry and Mr. Balfour and the idea that my father had been murdered. Let him stay dead, I nearly muttered aloud, but despite the urge to flee, I remained fast.

  Isaac, a short and stooped curmudgeon who had been my uncle’s servant since I was but a boy, met me at the door. Nearing, I suppose, sixty or more, he appeared to me in good health and as close to good spirits as he was capable. “Had you come but a few moments later,” he said by way of greeting me, whom he had not seen in a decade, “Mr. Lienzo would have had to answer the door himself.” Isaac had always been particularly nice about matters of religion, and he refused to work on the Sabbath, as Jewish law dictates. As my uncle refused to work as well, he could hardly resent the same adherence to the law in a servant.

  This house brought upon me a flood of ancient memories, for I had spent untold hours here as a child. Most of the furnishings were precisely as I recalled—the blues and reds of the Persian rug, the ornate woodwork of the stairway, the austere portraits of my grandparents upon the wall. More than the appearance, the scents recalled the Sabbaths of my childhood—stewed meats and boiled raisins and the sweet aromas of cinnamon and ginger.

  In the parlor I was greeted by my uncle, who sat alone with a paper. It looked to be one of the publications that specialized in the dealings of government issues and stocks in ’Change Alley. Upon my entrance he set it aside. “Benjamin,” he said as he rose from his seat, “I am so glad you came. Yes, it is a very good thing to have you here.”

  “You tricked me, Uncle,” I said. “You did not tell me it was a Sabbath meal for which you invited me.”

  “I tricked you?” He grinned. “Did I hide from you the day of the week? You ascribe to me more wile than I have—though I should be glad to be as clever as you say.”

  My retort was cut off by the entrance of my aunt, followed by a beautiful woman of perhaps one- or two-and-twenty. Aunt Sophia was an attractive older woman, a little inclined to be fat, and a bit silly in her manner. Her social interactions were almost exclusively with other Jewish immigrants, and she had never learned to speak English very well. Like my uncle, she wore clothing that spoke of her time among the Dutch. Her dress was of a thin black woolen, high in the neck and long in the sleeve, and her hair was piled up, pointing to a small, white bonnet upon her crown, so as to remind me of women in Dutch paintings of the last century.

  She clasped my shoulders with her arms and asked me questions in halting English, which I answered in equally halting Portuguese. I astonished myself at the happiness I took in seeing her. She was a kind woman, and she looked at me with no judgment—I saw only her pleasure at having me in her home. She was, in fact, just as I remembered her.

  “And this,” my uncle said at last, placing his arm around the beautiful woman, “is your cousin Miriam.”

>   The term cousin I knew was somewhat formal, for Miriam was my late cousin Aaron’s widow. I knew little of her or their marriage, for Aaron had wedded her after I had left home, upon the return from his first voyage to the Levant, but London is not so large that one does not hear stories. She had been my uncle’s ward, her own parents having died before she was fifteen, leaving her a handsome fortune. She had married Aaron by the time she was seventeen and been widowed of him by the time she was nineteen. Now, still in the bloom of her youth, and presumably possessed of a fortune, she remained within her father-in-law’s household.

  Miriam had a Jewess’s coloring—olive skin, black hair, which she let dangle down in ringlets like a fashionable London lady, and rich green eyes. Her dress, too—a gown of sea green with yellow petticoats—bespoke a particular attention to the styles of the town. I could not help but think of this lovely woman, who came complete with her own fortune, as somehow trapped in my uncle’s house, only wanting a rescuer. Though I came with no fortune of my own, I suspected hers might prove sufficient for the two of us, and I almost laughed as I considered that I, a Jew, should wish to play Lorenzo to her Jessica.

  I bowed deeply. “Cousin,” I said, feeling worldly and dashing. I was the wayward cousin returned, and I hoped that she might find me fascinating.

  “I have heard much of you, sir,” she said, with a smile that showed white and healthy teeth.

  “You honor me, madam.”

  “We are in England, not France, Benjamin,” my uncle said. “You may omit the formalities.”

  That I had no clever response was fortunately hid by a knock at the door. “The sun,” my uncle said, “is too far set for Isaac to answer that.” He and my aunt walked forth to greet his visitors.

  “Do we expect others?” I asked Miriam, pleased with the early opportunity for conversation.

  “Yes,” she said with a scowl that for a moment I thought directed at me. She circled around the sofa upon which I sat and gracefully lowered herself into a well-cushioned armchair across from me. “Do you know Nathan Adelman?” Her displeasure, I saw, belonged to another.

  I nodded. “I know of him, certainly. An impressive dinner guest.” Adelman had come to England from Hamburg to join King George’s court five years earlier, in 1714. He, as my father had been, was one of the handful of Jews allowed to hold the title of licensed broker upon the Exchange; he was also a powerful merchant with ties to the East and West Indies, the Levant, and, surreptitiously, to the South Sea Company and even to Whitehall itself. Rumor held that he was the Prince of Wales’s unofficial adviser in all matters financial. I knew no more of him but that the displeasure so evident upon Miriam’s face suggested she took no delight in his company.

  When he walked into the room, the situation unfolded itself. He offered an optimistic, almost exuberant smile at Miriam, who was near thirty years his junior. Adelman looked only slightly younger than my uncle—he was a short, plump, handsomely dressed man, clean-shaven, attired in a full, black bob-wig and looked for all the world as much an English gentleman as anyone in a respectable London coffeehouse. It was only his voice that gave him away. Like my uncle, he had clearly worked hard to eliminate much of his accent—though in his case, having a touch of the German in his speech offered perhaps some advantage in a court with a German king. It was well-known that King George’s first priority was his German principality, Hanover, and Adelman’s first priority was King George’s son. This dedication to the Prince left Adelman in a ticklish situation, for at the time the Prince and the King were feuding, and Adelman therefore lacked the King’s ear, which he was said to have in the past possessed.

  Miriam offered him a disaffected nod, while I arose and bowed deeply upon my introduction. By the time I sat again I understood that it did not take a man trained in uncovering secrets to read the relationships before me. Adelman wished to marry Miriam, and Miriam had no desire to marry Adelman. I could not even venture a guess as to how my uncle felt about this courtship.

  After a few moments of polite conversation concerning the weather and the political situation in France, a knock at the door produced our final dinner guest. My uncle disappeared briefly and then returned, one hand pressed in a friendly fashion to the back of Noah Sarmento, a clerk who worked within my uncle’s warehouse. This was a very young man with a polite but severe countenance. He was clean-shaven, wore a small, tight wig, and though his clothes were not of poor quality, they were of nondescript grays and browns and of equally bland tailoring.

  “Certainly you know Mr. Adelman,” my uncle began.

  Sarmento bowed. “I have had the pleasure many times,” he said with a cheer that seemed ill-suited to his features, “though not so many as I should like.” Sarmento’s smile rested as naturally upon his face as an admiral’s uniform upon a monkey. This image is perhaps a false one, however, for to liken Sarmento to a monkey would be to suggest there was something playful and mischievous about him. Nothing could be more false. He was as dour a man as I had ever met, and though I know many philosophers argue against the science of physiognomy, here was one man whose very character could be read in the pinched and unwelcoming shape of his face.

  Adelman returned a shallow bow as my uncle introduced me in such a way as to avoid the mention of my assumed name. “This is my nephew Benjamin, son of my late brother.”

  Sarmento nodded only briefly before he abandoned contact with me. “Mrs. Lienzo,” he said, bowing in her direction. “It is a pleasure to see you once more.”

  Miriam nodded, half-closed her eyes, and looked away.

  “Tell me,” Sarmento began to address Adelman, “what news in South Sea House? The coffeehouses are all a-flutter to see what shall happen next.”

  Adelman smiled politely. “Come sir. You know that my relationship with the South Sea Company is purely informal.”

  “Ha!” Sarmento slapped his thigh. I could not see if he did so with pleasure or to spur himself on. “I hear the Company makes not a move without consulting you.”

  “You do me too much honor,” Adelman assured him.

  I valued this discourse only because Miriam and I exchanged quick glances to express our mutual lack of interest. We soon moved to the dining room, where I continued to find the conversation awkward and halting. My uncle several times pressured me to say the prayers traditionally uttered with Sabbath dinner, but I pretended forgetfulness of what had been so ingrained upon me as a child. In truth, I felt an odd inclination to participate, but I was unsure that the prayers I remembered were the correct ones, and I did not wish to err before my cousin. I did not say as much, but I suggested that I thought of blessings upon food as so much superstition. When my uncle uttered these prayers, however, I felt the tug of something—memory or loss, perhaps—and I took a strange pleasure in the sound of the Hebrew words. There had been no prayer in my house when I grew up; my father sent my brother and me to study the laws of our people at the Jewish school because that was what men did, and we attended the synagogue because my father had found it easier to go than to explain why he did not.

  I looked about the room to see how the others responded to the blessings. I thought it odd that Sarmento, who had demonstrated a clear admiration for Miriam before, could hardly allow his gaze to waver from Adelman. “Tell me, Mr. Adelman,” Sarmento began once my uncle finished with the prayers, “will the recent threats of a Jacobite uprising affect the sale of government issues?”

  “I’m sure I have nothing to say that is not said throughout the coffeehouses,” Adelman demurred. “Upheaval always promotes fluctuation in the prices of the funds. But without such fluctuation, there could be no market, so the Jacobites do us some small favor, I suppose. But that, as I say, is but common knowledge.”

  “There could be nothing common about your opinions,” Sarmento pressed on. “I should so much like to hear them.”

  “Indeed, I believe you,” Adelman said with a laugh, “but I wonder if our friends who do not spend their time in ’Change
Alley are as curious as you.” He bowed his head at Miriam.

  “Perhaps I might make an appointment to meet with you then at another point.”

  “You may call on me at any time,” Adelman responded, although with such little warmth that he should have frightened off all but the most determined of sycophants. “I am often to be found at Jonathan’s Coffeehouse, and you may always send a message there knowing I shall receive it.”

  “If we may not talk about the funds, then let us talk of the amusements of the town!” Sarmento cried, with a loudness I suppose he meant as enthusiasm. “What say you, Mrs. Lienzo?”

  “I should think that my cousin can speak more to that topic,” Miriam said quietly, carefully avoiding my gaze as she did so. “I am told he knows something of London amusements.”

  I knew not how to take her comment, but I could detect no insult. I could only be sure that Sarmento had asked Miriam a question and she had deferred to me. I rose to the challenge, feeling that I now had the opportunity to impress her. I spoke only of what I had heard of the new theatrical season, and I gave my opinion on a variety of players and performances from the previous year. Sarmento proceeded to seize upon each of my points, using them to launch some discourse of his own on ideas about acting or plays and such. This popinjay would never dare to insult me in public, but here, at my uncle’s dinner table, he made no effort to hide his contempt for me; I could hardly embarrass my uncle by challenging his puppy. Instead I pretended not to understand his looks and gestures, and silently hoped I should have the opportunity to meet him elsewhere.

  It was a tradition in my uncle’s household that, with the servants dismissed, the resident ladies would serve the meal on the Sabbath. And so it was, and to my delight I observed that Miriam seemed particular about both avoiding Sarmento and Adelman—leaving those gentlemen for my Aunt Sophia—and to seeking me out when delivering her bowls of soup or plates of cardamom-scented lamb. I looked forward to each new course, that I might bask in her proximity: the rustle of her skirts, the scent of her lemony perfume, and such tantalizing hints of her bosoms as her bodice offered. Indeed, the third and final time she served me she caught my eyes indulging in such pleasures, and she trapped my gaze within her own. In an instant I braced myself, for London ladies know of only two responses to a gaze such as mine, and I knew not if I would receive the hard scowl of chastisement, or the equally disappointing lascivious smirk. I cannot adequately describe my confused pleasure when Miriam declined to pursue either of these courses, and only offered me a smile of knowing amusement, as though the joy I took in her nearness was a secret we both shared.