Bridgette laughed prettily. “It’s a fact that there were Jews in the building’s early history—my aunt always said so, and the records confirm it. But rabbis?”
Bridgette had the long, tensile body of a dancer and, Helen noted, the habit of arranging herself in her seat rather than sitting in it.
“We don’t know yet,” Helen said very slowly, “whether any rabbis lived here. The papers could have been moved from another location. As for when we can relocate the documents to allow for your renovations, that depends on the condition of the papers. They need to be assessed before they can be safely moved.”
Bridgette shook her head tersely: this was unacceptable. “The Richmond Preservation Council hasn’t forgotten, you understand, that my aunt refused their invitation to make her home part of their annual walking tour. We’ve been ready to do these renovations for over a year, but the council has made things impossible at every turn. Delays of months for the simplest approvals. It’s not as though we want to change anything major”—Bridgette waved her fingers dismissively—“but apparently they’re still hysterical over Orleans House getting bulldozed in the 1920s.”
“Of course, their concern is understandable,” Ian interjected. “We all value the local history.”
Bridgette, her white blouse crisp, a sheer green scarf knotted at her neck, pursed her lips and leaned forward to pour tea. The amber liquid was loud in the silent room. “My aunt lived here alone, and she never added so much as a coat of paint to the place. There’s been a preposterous amount of labor involved in making this house presentable. Any additional delay at this stage would be”—Bridgette stopped stirring her tea for just an instant. Her narrow wrist, with its delicate bottle-green bracelets, was flexed, the small spoon poised midair as though she were trying to choose the precise words with which to warn Helen against any further attempt to thwart her.
“Quite regrettable, really,” Ian finished for her.
Bridgette, displeased, gave her husband a significant look.
And now Helen remembered Ian Easton: a boyish student trying to fit his lanky body at a seminar table that would never suit him. One of those affable young men from a mildly wealthy family, well-liked and serviceable on a rugby field, smart enough to suffice in secondary school but not university. Still, she recalled, he’d labored hard in her class despite his clear lack of talent.
On shelves behind the Eastons were piles of sun-faded leather spines: books that might have been valuable if only they’d received proper care, here and there topped by sloppily stacked design magazines with covers featuring monochromatic furniture and jarring abstract art. One long stretch of shelving was littered with worn paperbacks, doubtless dating from the aunt’s tenure in the house—soon to be discarded, Helen guessed. Helen’s upbringing among her parents’ circle might have been one relentless tutorial in how to categorize strangers in a heartbeat—but she couldn’t deny there were moments when the training was useful. Already she’d taken the measure of Bridgette’s fading old-money family—who, Helen guessed, approved of everything about Ian, except, not that they mentioned it except when drinking, his undeniably middle-class upbringing. They’d be the sort of family that was quite liberal in word, but in deed was unlikely to stray far from its privileged roots. And gallery plans notwithstanding, Bridgette herself didn’t strike Helen as the sort inclined to make sacrifices for art. Perhaps Bridgette was merely keen on the imprimatur of sophistication—or even the income—a seventeenth-century showplace would bring. Somehow, though, Helen doubted that even establishing a successful gallery would quell Bridgette Easton’s restlessness.
Was it the towering height of the windows or simply Helen’s own weariness that made them seem so like children to her? Ian and Bridgette Easton, seated at the narrow table in the downstairs room of their long-awaited inheritance. Unaware that the real treasure in the house might well be the very papers they were so eager to be rid of.
“I’ll begin,” Helen said, “with just one of the many possible explanations for what your electrician uncovered behind that staircase panel.” Bridgette’s face tightened. No matter; pedantry, in this case, might be to Helen’s advantage. She began at the beginning. She explained how the biblical fourth commandment—yes, the one about name of the Lord in vain—had been interpreted in Jewish communities from antiquity to mean that any document that contained the name of God could not be thrown out, but instead had to be buried as a person would be buried (the Eastons’ eyes glazing over at the word antiquity, but Helen was accustomed to this). How synagogues and religious communities, from antiquity onward, stored these document troves, called genizahs, until such time as burial could be arranged. How the richest of these troves contained not only worn-out prayer books and drafts of sermons, but nonreligious material: letters, business ledgers . . . any document at all could qualify, given the traditional Jewish practice of opening all correspondence with the phrase With the help of God.
“The tea,” said Bridgette. “It’s too hot?”
Without raising a hand from her lap, Helen offered a narrow smile. “Soon enough,” she said. As though it were the temperature of the tea that kept her from lifting the delicate cup to her lips, rather than her certainty that the sight of her trembling, tea-spilling hands would give everything away . . . that somehow the Eastons would see in that tremor not only Helen’s ill health but her very heart, beating inside her as it hadn’t in years.
Raising her voice just enough to be commanding, she pressed on, and Bridgette subsided warily. Had the Eastons heard of the Cairo genizah, with its evidence of daily Jewish life going back more than a thousand years, its findings still being sorted by shamelessly possessive scholars though the genizah had been opened in 1896? (The Eastons shook their heads, two reluctant schoolchildren accepting a scolding.) She’d continued, her words rapid, aware she was gaining the upper hand, aware she mustn’t falter. She impressed on them the astonishing good fortune of finding these documents, be they a genizah or some other manner of collection, in the center of the house, rather than in the fluctuating humidity of a basement or the heat of an attic. Explained the durability of flax-based paper, unlike modern wood-pulp paper, with its fatally acidic lignin.
The Eastons exchanged subtle glances as they assessed her: the gray-haired, blue-eyed scholar they’d conjured—perhaps unwisely?—from the university, lecturing them about document conservation while sitting unnervingly still at their table. Hands pressed into her lap, tea untouched.
It was Ian who asked the question Helen had been waiting for, though she hadn’t known in what guise it would arrive. Setting his teacup in its saucer, he lifted his eyebrows slightly as though the question were of no importance to him.
“Will you take the papers to your community, then?” They watched her.
“I’m not Jewish,” she said flatly.
Their relief was so obvious, it made them seem foolish to her: the easing of those fine lines around the mouth, the hands relaxing on the wooden table, Bridgette’s long torso arrayed more languidly against the seatback. Nor did she blame them. Clearly they’d assumed that her work in Jewish history meant she herself was a Jew. And now it was plain what had been behind Bridgette’s warning glances to her husband. Helen could guess that in the hour since Ian had phoned her, the Eastons had had time to rue what they might have set in motion. Probably they’d been advised that the Jewish community, if it got wind of this, would make their lives impossible. She imagined the sequence of the Eastons’ worries: ogling Jewish-American tourists knocking on their door, heaven forbid. Or worse, the Israelis, who didn’t waste time ogling but had simply ripped those murals by that murdered Jewish writer, Bruno Schultz, out of a wall in Ukraine to smuggle them to Israel. The Richmond Preservation people might be irksome, but at least they had a sense of procedure.
Not, of course, that Jews didn’t.
Helen said nothing, waiting it out. Sure enough, as the seconds passed the Eastons’ relief gave way to the puzzlement tha
t she’d come, over the course of her career, to expect. The new question dawned as plain on their faces as if they’d spoken it aloud: What was she doing here across the table from them, then? What had drawn a non-Jewish woman of her generation to this obscure life as a specialist in Jewish studies?
“Perhaps we ought to leave it to them to handle the papers?” Ian said carefully. “The Jews,” he added.
“No!” The single word shot out before Helen could stop it—and in the silence that followed, the rest rang unspoken: the papers are mine.
Instinctively she rose from the table, as though to escape the shame of what they must think she’d meant—the academic pettiness, the Christian arrogance, the sheer desire to possess.
The Eastons stood with her.
“What I mean,” she said, “is that these papers are yours and they’re mine—the papers are all of ours, they’re England’s history. They belong at a major research university.”
Words none could refute.
“I’ll alert the head of my department immediately, and start the acquisition process. You’ll hear from our librarian.” Then she added, “You’ll be paid, of course.”
The Eastons’ faces went neutral, but Bridgette’s had gained a faint flush. Her husband might be too conscientiously genteel to care about the money; Bridgette wanted to know how much.
Ian’s eyes met Helen’s—and she saw that despite his stylish clothing and well-cared-for hands he was a straightforward man. “The main thing is to do what’s right,” he said. “And to get the papers out of here so we can continue with our renovations.”
Helen nodded—and proceeded as though her next request were mere common sense. “To strengthen the argument for the university to purchase the documents,” she said, “I’m going to ask you for three days to make a basic assessment. I’ll have to do it here. I don’t want to risk moving fragile papers; that’s a job for trained conservators.”
Bridgette looked nettled.
“You have my promise that I won’t remove anything from the premises without your permission.”
Bridgette glanced at Ian as though warning him not to respond.
Helen worded the next carefully. “If the university is interested, they’ll ask you to bring in an outside evaluator—Sotheby’s, perhaps—to estimate a price.”
Bridgette’s eyebrows rose. Sotheby’s.
“Given your circumstances, I’m sure they can be persuaded to move quickly,” Helen said. “Our archives feature a large collection from the Interregnum, and the fact that your papers seem to date from that period may be enough to persuade the librarian to make the purchase.” Turning to Ian, she assembled her face into a mask of mild professorial impatience. “I will warn you,” she said, “that inviting hobbyist collectors to come pick through the papers for second opinions is likely to not only damage the documents, but scare off serious interest.” She turned from Ian to his wife, and lingered on Bridgette’s clear, unblinking gaze.
“Understood,” Ian said. He took his wife’s hand, his large palm enveloping hers, and after a brief hesitation Bridgette pressed it with a small smile. Ian’s face broke into a grin of relief. “Just a short delay until the papers go. Looks like we’ll have our gallery, then?” He kissed the top of Bridgette’s golden head and after a moment her smile turned genuine.
Under the blinding patterned light of the windows, the Eastons had sealed the agreement with a few final niceties. Helen could read their relief. They didn’t care, in truth, whether the university or the British Library or even the chief rabbinate of Israel ended up with the documents. They’d be able to tell their friends they’d done the right thing. The Eastons had passed their own test, remaining fair-minded as their beloved gallery-in-the-making was threatened by two crammed shelves of strange Semitic lettering. They’d now be rewarded with a worthy story to relate over drinks, proof of the quixotic personality of their demanding old house. What’s more, like virtuous characters in a fairy tale, they’d be granted a bag of gold as well as the fulfillment of a pressing need: to have these foreign-tongued remnants, someone else’s long-dead hopes or prayers or sorrows left orphaned under their staircase, gone.
But the papers. Leaving the Eastons at their door, Helen had closed herself into her car, shut her eyes, and allowed the image to fill her vision: two shallow shelves of papers, visible through the rectangular space the electrician had opened in the side of the staircase. As perfectly packed as the contents of a small library. Folded letters, more than three hundred years old, with broken wax seals, aligned with unbound quires and faded leather-bound spines. And slumping into a gap where the electrician had removed a bound volume, one loose off-white page. Kneeling on the cold floor in the shadowy corner beneath the stair, Helen had reached out, and touched, as if her own wish to touch were still the most natural thing. A thirst that merited slaking.
A single inked page, resting on the quaking bed of her palms. The writing hand graceful and light, the ink a faded brown. The Portuguese and Hebrew words had been finished here and there with high, distinctive arches that sloped backward over the letters they adorned: the roofs of the Portuguese letters sloping to the left, those of the occasional Hebrew verse to the right, the long unbroken lines proceeding down the page like successive rows of cresting waves approaching a shore, one after another, dizzying.
In the hollow silence of her office now, she caught her reflection on the glass face of the clock on her desk. Even blurred, there was no masking the sharp vertical lines that caged her mouth, or the taut line of her chin, or the ropy tendons of her neck that betrayed her habit of skipping or rushing through meals. The cheeks, sloping steeply from high, round cheekbones, were colorless, feathered with wrinkles. She saw her face, for just an instant, as her younger colleagues might. Leaning closer, she breathed evenly, and watched a faint fog cloud the glass.
It had, long ago, been a face that had attracted attention, if not for its beauty then for another quality.
The most truthful face I’ve ever seen, Dror had once said.
But sometimes truth hurt.
She turned away from the reflection; she would not indulge the fallacy of wondering what her life would have been, had she been born to a different face.
A knock on the door. “Come,” she said.
He was young, tall. He stepped into the office, took off his ski cap, and folded it into the pocket of his jeans. He wore a T-shirt and a wool overshirt: casual enough to raise eyebrows, even among those history faculty who fancied themselves too modern for such concerns.
“Professor Watt?” he said.
The old combativeness reared in her. She’d long intimidated her peers as a matter of course, before the effort of interacting with them at all had become too much trouble. “You’re late,” she said, “Mr. Levy.”
She watched Aaron Levy register her rebuke. He didn’t seem perturbed by it. He had a lean body and handsome face, but that American softness about the mouth. The effect was a confident friendliness that might at any moment become a smirk.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There was a delay on the bus line.”
He spoke with a slight lilt. She hadn’t expected him to be so Jewish. It was going to cause problems. But it wasn’t this, but something else, that disturbed her. Another errant spark of memory. Dror.
She said, “You might have telephoned.”
He studied her. “I’m sorry,” he said evenly. A countermove rather than an apology.
She was staring, she realized. She corralled her focus. She wouldn’t let the excitement of one day turn her into a fool. Yes, Aaron Levy bore a physical resemblance to someone—someone she’d cared for very much. And what of it? People, on occasion, resembled one another.
She spoke sharply. “Do you understand, Mr. Levy, the professionalism that will be required of you?”
Surprise and indignation pinked his cheeks. Then, a heartbeat later, she watched him accomplish a willed descent into leisure. He relaxed visibly, his thin frame angl
ing back to lean against the wall. His eyes crinkled at the corners, his face went quick with mischief. He was, she saw, a man used to getting around women through flirtation.
“I tend to like a challenge,” he said.
No, she told herself—he was nothing like Dror.
“Required by these papers,” she enunciated. “By the documents that have been found in Richmond. Or did Darcy not explain the situation sufficiently?”
She had his attention. Something in those eyes flickered and engaged her gaze, this time seriously—as though the smooth Aaron Levy had yawned and exited the party, leaving someone else in his wake. “Andrew Darcy said that the last discovery of an untouched genizah of this age has to have been more than five decades ago.”
“Six,” she corrected. “And we won’t know for certain whether it’s a genizah until we examine the documents.”
“He said you might need someone who can translate Hebrew and Portuguese.”
“I am perfectly capable of translating those languages.”
He folded his arms.
“If you’re to join this effort,” she said, “you’ll devote the next three days to following my instructions. Based on what I’ve already reported to Jonathan Martin”—the head of the History Department, whose cozy relationship with the vice chancellor and cherished goal of outshining rival UCL might at last be working in Helen’s favor—“the acquisition process is soon to be underway. And assuming the evaluation of the documents goes well, the university will attempt to purchase them. If it succeeds, which I believe it will . . . and if your skills are sufficient, which I’ve yet to see”—she let the words linger—“I might be able to offer you the opportunity to work on these papers going forward.”
He said nothing.
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