“Of course, that would mean delaying your dissertation. I understand you’ve been laboring on that for quite some time?” She waited, the provocation deliberate, though she was surprised at her own sharpness. There was no reason for the sensation flaring inside her, as if he were a threat she must at all cost repel. He was a postgraduate student, that was all—and, from the sound of things, one on a rather ill-chosen mission. Darcy had said Aaron Levy was investigating possible connections between members of Shakespeare’s circle and Inquisition-refugee Jews of Elizabethan London. To Helen, the topic sounded better suited to a department of English, but evidently Aaron had campaigned for his chosen topic until Darcy had acceded. Specifically, young Mr. Levy was looking for proof that Shakespeare’s Shylock wasn’t modeled solely on the infamous Doctor Lopez—the Jewish physician of Queen Elizabeth who was executed for allegedly plotting her murder—but also drew on interactions with other hidden Jews of Shakespeare’s acquaintance. An ambitious and probably arrogant choice for a dissertation.
Had Aaron Levy chosen to study Shakespeare’s Catholic roots, it would have been different; that field had been blessed relatively recently with the astonishing gift of fresh evidence—a religious pamphlet found in the attic of Shakespeare’s father. That single document had upended and revitalized that arena of Shakespeare studies, leaving young historians room to work productively for years to come. Shakespeare as a hidden Catholic, Shakespeare as a Catholic escape artist sneaking in subtle commentary under the eye of a Protestant monarchy—there was fresh terrain.
The territory of Shakespeare and the Jews, in contrast, was well scoured. Other than Merchant of Venice and some fleeting or dubious references elsewhere, the plays offered no mention of Jews . . . and beyond the plays there was almost no direct evidence to examine. One might speculate about anything, of course: the identity of Shakespeare’s alleged Dark Lady or Fair Youth, or for that matter what the Bard might have favored for his breakfast. But without evidence, claims of any watermark of Jewish presence in Shakespeare’s work were no more than theories—and Shapiro and Katz and Green, among others, had covered those theories exhaustively. If the reigning lords of the field had been unable to find anything more solid, what was the likelihood that an American postgraduate would be able to do so? According to Darcy, the young man, for all his promise, was struggling.
Aaron’s expression betrayed nothing. He offered a slow, neutral nod.
“The documents are in Richmond,” Helen said, briskly now. “In a seventeenth-century house currently owned by a couple named Easton, who inherited the house from an aunt. The records I’ve seen thus far show that the residence was built in 1661—by Portuguese Jews, in fact. The house then changed hands in 1698, then again in 1704 and 1723. One wing was torn down and replaced in the nineteenth century, and the house was purchased in 1910 by the aunt’s family—who then allowed it to deteriorate.
“It seems that I was Mr. Easton’s tutor over a decade ago for a class in seventeenth-century history, during the course of which I evidently made some mention of the fact that I’d written several articles about the Marrano Jews of Inquisition Europe. Making me the only scholar of Jewish history he’d encountered in his life—and hence, all these years later, the recipient of his telephone call upon the discovery of some Hebrew writing in a space under the stair.” She felt a wry smile form on her lips. “I myself had no recollection of Mr. Easton. Apparently I found him unimpressive. But I am now”—she said—“sufficiently impressed.”
Two or three of her colleagues were passing down the hall. The commotion of their footsteps rose and subsided, the drafty Victorian hallways magnifying their transit to heroic dimensions. She set a hand on her desk, as though to steady something—but the pale light from the window struck Aaron Levy’s brown eyes and conferred on them a gentleness that mocked her: Helen Watt, sixty-four years old. Guardian of well-worn opinions and disappointments. The paths of her mind like the treads of an old staircase, concave from the passage of long-gone feet. She felt it ripple through the solidity of her book-lined sanctuary: only the slightest tremor of memory, yet it halted her. A scent of bruised herbs, of dust. And an iron dread, suddenly, in her soft belly. Yes, Dror had had those same tight curls, those almond eyes. But how different. For just an instant, then, Dror’s face was before her: his sun-browned skin, his jaw, his lips speaking, unhesitating and unsparing. Helen. That’s not true. You know it isn’t.
She shook off the assault. In its wake, a reverberating emptiness.
It was clear, wasn’t it, that seeing the papers had undone her. Why else this return of long-dead things?
The soft ticking of the electric heater. A postgraduate she’d never met, perhaps forty years her junior, stood opposite her desk. He was watching her, and his concentration was complete, as though he were hearing everything: all that she’d told, and all that she hadn’t.
She had not yet invited Aaron Levy to sit, she realized. “The Interregnum period,” she said, in answer to the question he hadn’t asked. Her voice came out more weakly than intended. She gathered herself and continued. “The first document I saw dates from the autumn of 1657.”
He gave a hum of recognition. 1657. The early days of the readmission of Jews to England, after nearly four centuries of official expulsion.
“The university’s ability to acquire the papers,” she said, “will depend on the whim of the vice chancellor, the disposition of the university librarian, and of course on the Eastons’ cooperation. It’s the Eastons I’m least certain of. While a rabbi’s letters hiding out under their staircase will certainly be a curiosity the Eastons will enjoy recounting over wine, that isn’t the history they’re interested in juxtaposing in this gallery of theirs. They’re being polite about it, to be sure. But I’ve seen their sort of cooperation before. It doesn’t last. And—”
“What’s in the documents?” he cut in.
“The documents, as I’ve said, are from the period of—”
“Yes,” he said, suddenly animated, “but what have you read?”
“It appears to me,” she said, slowing her speech to underscore his interruptions, “that one Rabbi HaCoen Mendes, apparently elderly, came here from Amsterdam and set up housekeeping with a small retinue in London in 1657. As far as what I have read, Mr. Levy, it’s a copy of a letter this Rabbi HaCoen Mendes sent to Menasseh ben Israel.” She paused to let the name sink in, and was gratified to see Aaron straighten in surprise. “A remarkable letter,” she continued. “Written just before Menasseh’s death. Also, a leather-bound prayer book, printed in Amsterdam in Portuguese and Hebrew in 1650.” She hesitated. “I can already say it’s significant material. The letter alone, even if it proves to be the only legible document in the entire set, addresses Menasseh in quite personal terms, not to mention confirming several things about the reestablishment of the English Jewish community that have been the province of sheer speculation. I believe this to be a most fortunate discovery.”
His arched eyebrows said Understatement.
She pushed on. “This finding is to be kept confidential until the university has finalized the acquisition. I’ve let the appropriate people know in no uncertain terms that they ought to do this and do it quickly.” Though it had meant asking Jonathan Martin’s help—then standing by silently as he verbally preened his feathers about the funds and political capital at his disposal. “Provided the acquisition is successful,” she said, “the university’s conservation lab will work on the documents, after which we should be able to study them through the library.”
“So,” he said slowly, “we don’t have access to the papers until they’re acquired and processed by the lab?”
“On the contrary.” She breathed. “It seems I’ve obtained permission for a three-day review of the documents in situ, before they’re removed to be assessed.”
He looked at her curiously. Slowly, then, his gaze moved past her, to the hearth. Then above it, to the framed sketch that hung there, its lines hasty b
ut clear: the profile of a flat-topped mountain standing alone in a rock-strewn desert.
It was a silhouette her colleagues on the history faculty didn’t comment on—to them, surely, it was merely an anonymous mesa in some anonymous desert. But a Jew—an American Jew who’d no doubt been to Israel on one of those self-consciously solemn tours of heroism and martyrdom—would recognize Masada. And would assume that any non-Jewish British professor who cared to put the silhouette of Masada over the hearth was guilty of a romanticized philo-Semitism—or, worse, the barbed sentimentality of those who poeticized the martyrdom of the Jews.
When Aaron turned back to her there was amusement in his expression. Let him believe what he would, she told herself. Even were she to explain every last piece of it, he’d never understand why someone like Helen might keep a sketch of Masada across from her desk where she was forced to face it every day . . . a framed reminder to chasten her, should she indulge the notion that she might have embraced a different life. And a reminder too of the sole faith that still offered her a semblance of comfort, so long after she’d stopped believing in comfort—the faith that history, soulless god though it was, never failed to offer what must be understood.
And because history cared not at all if the negligent left its missives unread, she insisted on caring. She, Helen Watt, picked up each piece of evidence—she’d devoted her life to picking up each piece of evidence, retrieving the neglected minutiae of long-ago lives. Reconstituting a vessel shattered by a violent hand.
Still, an unpleasant sensation lingered, as if she’d just given something intimate over to Aaron Levy—as if he could somehow sense all that the sudden appearance of these documents seemed to have shaken loose in her. She kicked the feeling away. She was not such a fool—not yet, at any rate—as to be so easily unseated by a resemblance . . . nor to think it gave a stranger the power to sully what mustn’t be sullied.
“Do you follow what it is that I require?” she said. “I’m in need of an assistant capable of working efficiently and to high standards.”
She braced for the obvious question: what was her rush? Even a postgraduate would know that three days’ time was too little for real scholarship—and that ultimately it was Sotheby’s opinion, not theirs, that would persuade the university to purchase the papers. Nor could a scholar of Helen’s age, less than a year from mandatory retirement, plausibly have illusions about altering the course of her career by pushing for rogue access to documents that hadn’t yet been catalogued. She readied her rebuttal: it was the documents and the documents alone that mattered—and it was for the documents’ sake that Helen Watt had demanded these three days. Manuscripts had lain undisturbed more than three hundred years. They awaited the touch of human hands. Now that the discovery had been made, delay was unconscionable.
Unconscionable.
A clear, rational word.
Behind it, though, floated another truth. Uneasily, she forced herself to acknowledge it: the only real urgency here derived from an unwell woman’s need to avoid delay. From this ominous feeling that had begun in her the instant she’d first seen the documents: the astonishing sensation that her mind—her one refuge amid all the world’s tired clamor—was tinder.
To her surprise, though, Aaron seemed to have decided not to challenge her motives. “I’ll do it,” he said. His head tilted, he gave another lofty smile, adding, “I believe I can free up the next three days.”
She almost laughed, so evident was his need to declare his importance.
Slowly she set her two hands on her desktop. Her right hand, for the moment, was still. Enemy hands—she let the phrase ring loud in her mind.
She rose. His eyes fell to her cane, which she reached for with intentional vigor: nor was her failing health his concern.
When his eyes met hers again, she felt his deliberate indifference.
She let him pass, then closed the door firmly behind them. He walked toward the street and didn’t slow to accommodate her. Her cane sounded a hollow rhythm as she followed him, his step light, his tall frame taking possession of the hall.
They would work together in pursuit of whatever it was their lot to discover. He didn’t like her. But neither did he pity her. At least there was that.
2
November 15, 1657
9 Kislev, 5418
London
With the help of G-d
To the learned Menasseh ben Israel,
It is with a quaking heart for the death of your son that I write. Word that he had been gathered to his forefathers reached me only after my arrival here in London. I am told I arrived only a scant number of days after your departure from this teeming city to bear your son’s body back to Holland. I am told, also, that you are not well in body, and that your quarrel with the community here was fierce in the end.
It is my hope that as you accompany his body to its rest, you yourself will find comfort, and also renewed health.
As I am unable to speak with you in direct and intimate counsel, therefore I speak now on paper with the aid of one who sets down these words for me. I ask no reverence for my counsel, for surely you have better advisors than one so infirm as I. Yet, my esteemed friend, I have known you since you were a child at the knee of my friend your father. I pray, therefore, that you will consider my voice in this matter.
I write now to ease your heart as much as words on paper may. It is said in London that you believed your mission here to have failed. Yet it is my belief that in your days here in London you have planted a hardy sapling. This land will yet provide a safe home for the persecuted of our people, not in my days and perhaps not in yours, but surely in the lives of those now borne in their mothers’ arms. So said the old man: As a boy I gathered fruit from the trees planted by my forebears. Am I not, then, required to plant the trees that will sustain my grandchildren?
I come now in hope to the very London you rebuke. I departed Amsterdam not because I was forced to, for I was blessed in Amsterdam even in my infirmity to be supported by our community and aided by my students, so that my poverty was no burden in that city. Yet I chose to accept my nephew’s summons and to spend my remaining days here in London—yes, in this very community that refused your great hopes.
Your hopes were great indeed, my friend. There is no higher labor than that which you undertook, and the pledges you were able to secure for the Jews of this land surpass those any before you achieved. Yet no man can bring the Messiah unaided, no matter how his groans and the groans of our people rack the earth.
I beg you, then, to cease your bitter regrets, which give your soul no rest.
Your father, blessed be his memory, may perhaps never have told you that he and I suffered side by side under the cruelty of the Inquisition in Spain. Together we endured and witnessed what I shall not describe, your father being summoned thrice to torture and I twice, the second time resulting in the loss of my sight. Yet my ears remained undamaged, and I, alongside your father, heard daily the cries of those burning on the pyre. Do not think that all their words were holy.
Do not condemn, then, those who heed the call of fear.
May the names of the martyrs be blessed.
If my words cut, then let them cut as the physick’s knife, to restore health. And let my own imperfections, numerous as grains of sand, not mar my message.
My ship, with the help of G-d, proceeded through untroubled seas to London, and my nephew Diego da Costa Mendes has secured for my household a small residence on Creechurch Lane. I shall spend my remaining days offering my learning to these Jews who step so slowly in the direction of all you have envisioned for them. They have invited my meager scholarship, my dear Menasseh, because they are not ready for the force of yours. So you must know that your tenderest message of hope has indeed entered their spirits.
We are four: myself, my housekeeper, and the two orphans that I have taken with me, son and daughter of the Velasquez family of Amsterdam, both brother and sister being of good ability although the
young man is lax in his studies, and it is with difficulty that I recall him to them. I venture out but little, for I have no yearning for the wonders of a city my eyes cannot see, but desire only to labor here until such day as the community may merit a greater leader such as yourself. I pray that you preserve yourself in good health until that day. I speak in the belief that anguish of the soul and of the body are but the two sides of one leaf, and I will say plainly that I fear for your well-being, which while G-d safeguards, he yet requires that we also shepherd.
My friend, I urge you. Do not succumb to darkness. Lack of hope, as I learned long ago, is a deadly affliction. And in one so highly regarded as you, it is not merely a blight on one precious soul, but a contagion that may leave many in darkness. Recall that the light you bear, though it may flicker, yet illuminates the path for our people. Bear it. For in this world there is no alternative.
If I could but offer to you the patience of the blind.
May G-d comfort you along with all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
R. Moseh HaCoen Mendes
3
November 2, 2000
London
She—the professor, Helen Watt—drove silently and without so much as a glance in Aaron’s direction. In fact, in the twenty-minute drive from her office Aaron’s questions had brought only perfunctory replies—as if she’d rethought her decision to include him in her project, and was stonewalling until such time as she could conveniently eject him from her car.
Well, if she was regretting her choice, she wasn’t the only one. The farther they drove, the more it seemed to Aaron that he’d made a mistake in accepting Darcy’s offer—a small holiday, if you’re so inclined, doing a spot of work for one of my colleagues in need of temporary assistance. The request had been impossible to refuse, delivered as it was in Darcy’s perennial air of wry cheer—a demeanor Aaron was certain was tattooed onto the English genome, right beside wry despair.
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