“What books did HaCoen Mendes order?”
“The Path of Knowledge, which seems to have been a commentary on the Midrash. And Montaigne. Essais. In French.”
Helen raised her brows.
“Then there was a bill for some volumes of Talmud from the Hebrew press in Amsterdam, and then a small ledger for the rabbi’s household in London, this one in decent condition, containing records for about a fifteen-month period—1657 to 1659. Food, sea coal and firewood, writing supplies—sounds like the rabbi ran a small household with fairly modest expenses, other than the books.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Quite a contrast with a house like this.” Aaron paused, craning his neck for a moment to look at the paneled ceiling. “I wonder what it’s like upstairs. How many bedrooms, how luxurious. It might help to learn a bit about how the HaLevy family lived.” Setting aside his sandwich, he stood. “I’ll just run up and see how many rooms they have up there.”
She didn’t budge. “You can’t go up without the Eastons’ permission,” she said.
How could she sit and not move a muscle, when her curiosity must be piqued? A simple look upstairs would at least give them a sense of how spacious the rooms might have been, how the people who stored away these papers might have lived. Yet Helen Watt’s posture was rigid, her hands planted firmly beside her dark slacks on the wooden seat.
Have it her way, then. He’d go upstairs on his own some other time, when he could get her out of his hair.
She was looking at him suspiciously. “Those are the rules,” she said.
Goddamn Brits.
“And of course, the rooms probably look nothing like they did in the seventeenth century.”
He didn’t respond. Let her try to penetrate his silence for a change. He returned to his seat and made a show of imperturbability.
“Anything else of note in the ledger?” she said.
He let her wait a long moment. “What surprises me,” he said, “is how vague it is about the income of HaCoen Mendes’s Creechurch Lane household, given how meticulously it records expenses. There’s no list of the names or the tuition payments of his students. There’s a category for ‘contributions’—I’m guessing that could be the income from HaCoen Mendes’s teaching—but it feels almost deliberately obscure. Given that Cromwell had made the Jewish community’s presence officially legal, I’d think they might have started to let go of their caution.”
She was shaking her head. “Then you haven’t been paying attention.”
He let out a short, irritable laugh.
“You’re American,” she said simply. “You think straightforwardness is a virtue.”
A muttered curse escaped him, but she spoke steadily over it. “I don’t mean that as an insult, Mr. Levy. It’s merely a fact. English people usually make the same mistake. Truth-telling is a luxury for those whose lives aren’t at risk. For Inquisition-era Jews, to even know the truth of one’s Jewish identity could be fatal. Someone detects Jewishness in the way you dress, in your posture, in your fleeting expression when a certain name is mentioned—well, even if there’s nothing they can do to you in England except perhaps expel you from the country, still, months later your relatives back in Spain and Portugal might be arrested and die gruesome deaths.” She’d stiffened. It occurred to Aaron that she was angry, but not at him. “The Anglo-American idea of noble honesty, Mr. Levy”—she stopped herself, then fell silent, as if performing some inner calculation. Evidently he wasn’t worth the risk of whatever she’d thought to say next.
“What else?” she said.
She’d just stayed her hand from something. He didn’t know what. He decided he didn’t care. “There’s a sermon,” he said. “HaCoen Mendes wrote it for someone else to deliver, on the death of Menasseh. It contains an argument against false messiahs.”
She sat forward in her chair.
“But before I tell you about the sermon,” Aaron said, savoring the sudden sharpening of Helen Watt’s focus, “I should tell you that just this morning I happened to do some of my own research on Rabbi HaCoen Mendes.” He continued, his voice nonchalant. “As you know, despite being an influential teacher HaCoen Mendes was limited enough by his blindness that he published only that one text of his own—his pamphlet titled Against Falsehood, printed posthumously in London by an admirer.” He’d begun his delivery slowly—but as he went on his excitement carried him. “It took a little work to track down the actual text online, but I did. And actually, it’s quite something.” In fact, HaCoen Mendes’s pamphlet was probably the best contemporary reasoning Aaron had read against mass hysterias of the late seventeenth century. The argument was lucid, solidly constructed, even poetic at times in its warning against the temptations of false messiahs. The entire text of it had been appended to the brief article Aaron had found after a long search—the only scholarly article that seemed to exist about HaCoen Mendes. The article, written decades ago by an obscure scholar, had touched on HaCoen Mendes’s tribulations under the Inquisition, praising Against Falsehood and comparing it favorably to less forceful anti-Sabbatean arguments of its day. It was surprising, the scholar noted parenthetically, that a writer of that caliber should have produced no other published works.
But it was the pamphlet’s dedication that had leapt out at Aaron.
“That pamphlet HaCoen Mendes wrote?” he said to Helen Watt now. “It was dedicated to Benjamin HaLevy.”
She said nothing.
“The same Benjamin HaLevy,” he persisted, “who once owned this house.”
Her eyebrows rose: was he under the impression she’d failed to catch that connection?
But he could see her thinking. And he could see what she was thinking: now they knew how the documents had most likely gotten here. Benjamin HaLevy must have been a patron of the rabbi’s, and would naturally wish to collect and preserve his papers.
Helen gave a thoughtful nod. “And what’s in this sermon you just read, on the occasion of Menasseh’s death?”
“It is not God’s will,” Aaron quoted, “that Jews should wager on the Messiah as dicers will.”
She actually smiled, a gossamer smile so innocent, a person could imagine she had once been nicer. “That’s a real find. So HaCoen Mendes was already cautioning against false messiahs in 1657. How long is the sermon?”
“Four pages,” Aaron said. “And then there’s another copy of it in English—maybe they translated it for the younger generation growing up in London.”
“Make sure to read through all of the English,” she said.
“Sure, but it’s just a translation.”
She sat straighter. “Didn’t you hear what I said about these people? They might have written different things in Portuguese than they did in English.”
You and me, Aleph, he thought. Except your boss wasn’t a witch.
He took a large bite. He chewed, enjoying it. Clearly his sandwich made her cross.
“When is Sotheby’s coming?” he asked. Sotheby’s made her cross.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
They sat: he chewing, she waiting for him to finish. A parody of a companionable lunch hour. “So tell me,” he said, his affect neutral. “How did you come to history?”
She wasn’t fooled by his attempt to soften her. Still, she sat in silent consideration as though the question had been sincere. Facing the window, she sucked in her cheeks, a gesture he’d noticed she made when thinking. Calculating, again, whether he was worth a response.
A bitter humor took over her face. She said, “I was forced to it.”
6
October 2, 1657
8 Heshvan, 5418
The English Channel
How brilliant the moon. Its sharp disk shedding a halo against the high black sky. A moon so bright it seemed impossible it made no sound.
Every weathered board of the deck plain in the marble light. Every wavetop aglitter. Every trough bottomless, rushing with the truth of the unthinkable chill bel
ow. The sails bellying overhead, their severe shadows rocking with the motion of the ship. Black, white, black. The shadows crossing and recrossing her slim fingers as they lay still on the rail.
A night waiting for someone but to pronounce what was already evident.
Swathed in blankets on a low bench beside the rail, the still form of the rabbi seemed to float like the foam on the sliding waves, his white beard and pale face rising and falling on each breath of the ocean.
Beyond them, nearly lost in the shadows near the ship’s prow, her brother stood silent. Not a word to her since their departure from Amsterdam. As though he had determined to leave some last shred of softness behind, and a mere glance at her face could undo his resolve.
The water clapped hollow against the prow and the vessel slipped under the fine pricking of the stars, toward a dark solidity on the horizon.
England.
A sickening hope, like a gall in her stomach.
7
November 4, 2000
London
Helen was stiff with chill. The thick sweater she pulled tighter around her shoulders was little help, and the small heater she’d brought with her didn’t seem to reach this side of the library. But the tall windows here provided the best light.
All afternoon, Bridgette had made it her business to pass by the room in her high-heeled boots and a multi-hued green scarf of dizzying intensity, inquiring yet again into their progress or enunciating solicitously over the phone words Helen was clearly meant to hear: “I’m awfully sorry I had to change the plan, but the schedule has gone into someone else’s hands. I sincerely hope this delay doesn’t make a mess of the whole project.” Ian might have been cowed by Helen’s insistence on three days’ reading to persuade the university to make the purchase; not so Bridgette. Today was to be Helen’s final day with the papers, and Bridgette had made known that it would end early: Sotheby’s was due at the Eastons’ in late afternoon to begin assessing the manuscripts.
That morning, before leaving for Richmond, Helen had called Jonathan Martin’s office once more to check on his progress. Notably, he had gotten on the phone himself rather than relay a message through his secretary, to tell Helen that he’d spoken personally with Ian Easton, and that Ian had struck him as “an affable fellow”—which Helen understood to mean “pliable”: Jonathan Martin’s favorite sort of person. Martin, meanwhile, was planning to discuss the question of purchasing the documents with the vice chancellor over lunch.
The possibility almost made her laugh aloud: for once, after all these years, might Jonathan Martin’s ability to silk his way around the system work in her favor? Until this week, she’d felt assured of finishing out her remaining months with minimal contact with the man. She’d stopped attending his lectures and receptions years ago—let the junior faculty show up to flatter, she’d no interest in competing over office-space allocations. She’d be long retired, thank goodness, before the department’s move to the renovated wing Jonathan Martin had been so delightedly raising funds for these past years: connectivity, convenience, creative development of space—nothing, that is, to do with the real work of history, and everything to do with Martin’s wish to once and for all declare superiority to the rival department over at UCL.
Yet now this was the man on whom her fate seemed to depend: Jonathan Martin, who, when she’d told him about the documents earlier that week, had sat silent a full seventy seconds. She knew; she’d watched the clock in his office. In fact, she wouldn’t have put it past him to watch it himself. Seventy seconds: enough time to make the uninitiated squirm. But she was well acquainted with the man’s ostentatious deliberations.
“Helen, this is a major find,” he’d said—still staring out the window. Posing for Rodin, she supposed.
If it was childish to indulge her distaste for him by keeping up a withering internal monologue as yet another of Martin’s silences ticked by, at least it kept her from rising from her chair and pounding her bony fist on his hardwood desk for him to stop curating his own image—Jonathan Martin, with his well-groomed graying hair and impeccable shave—and start doing what any head of a history department in his right mind ought to do.
At last he turned back to her. “An extraordinary find to conclude a career with, I must say.” Behind the words she could read his regret that the one to make such a find had been Helen Watt—a dried-up scholar, inconveniently unphotogenic, on the cusp of a mandatory retirement no one but her would rue. How much better if one of Martin’s bright young hires had made the discovery! Someone who could be relied on to hitch a ride on the publicity that might come from this, become an academic star, and accrue years of benefit to the university.
She watched Jonathan Martin flick aside his displeasure. For the moment. And reach for his telephone and, in his basso profundo voice, instruct his assistant to connect him—immediately!—to the university librarian. It so happened, he confided to Helen as he waited for the connection, that he had some funds available for just such a purchase, from a longtime donor eager to help raise the profile of the department. If that’s what it took to get the papers before some other university made news by acquiring them, he’d be glad to have the History Department contribute a portion of the expense . . . though for that contribution he’d naturally expect a certain consideration.
Which meant, Helen knew, that he’d lean on the librarian to give his scholars preferential access to the documents. A violation of the Freedom of Information Act, but of course there were ways around that for a political creature like Jonathan Martin.
“Afternoon,” Bridgette breathed as she entered the room, this time wearing a black wool coat and carrying an armload of magazines. Aaron looked up as though startled by her entry—as though he could possibly have missed the staccato footsteps approaching him. He gave Bridgette that smile, the one that involved only one side of his mouth. Helen couldn’t help but watch. The princely, cocky tilt of his head. The smooth olive planes of his face, the heavy lashes, the dark almond-shaped eyes. Only a boy who’d been raised in luxury could carry his good looks that way.
Dror. Even his good looks hadn’t belonged to himself alone.
Bridgette seemed about to stop—then regained stride, deposited her magazines on a shelf of the library, and returned to the entryway. Aaron stood at the table, watching her go, looking entertained.
Slowly, magisterially, he turned his head in Helen’s direction.
The outer door shut, making her jump.
Aaron had turned back to his document. Adjusting the gloves around his narrow, sinewy wrists, he emitted a grunt of annoyance.
She’d required that he wear gloves, of course. At the store, the clerk had given her a choice between latex surgeon’s gloves or a pair of prim white dainties left over from another century’s afternoon tea: the opportunity to make Aaron look like a forensics hero while handling the documents, or like a nineteenth-century fop. As the clerk rang up her purchase she’d chided herself for her own satisfaction.
He peeled off the thin cotton gloves, dropping them inside out on the tabletop, and sat, pulling his laptop toward him. “Don’t worry,” he said without looking up. “I’m not checking my e-mail.” He typed for a few seconds, then waited, eyes on the screen.
With a vexation she didn’t fully understand, Helen turned back to the letter before her. It was addressed to HaCoen Mendes. Fragments of the old red wax seal remained where the recipient had pulled the folded page open. The ink had faded to a dull brown but was legible, the paper torn at one end but otherwise intact.
February 17, 1658
13 Shvat, 5418
Amsterdam
To the learned R. HaCoen Mendes,
News of your praiseworthy labors reaches us here in Amsterdam, as David Rodrigues brings report of your work to welcome the children of our English brothers under the tent of the Torah and to further the work begun by Menasseh ben Israel of blessed memory, as it is written, It is not incumbent upon you to complete the labor, nor a
re you free to desist from it. In these days when our hearts recoil from further ill news of our people’s suffering in Portugal, it is our prayer that your labors will succeed and find favor with G-d. He will bring peace and redemption within our days, and we are assured that it will be so.
We will send the books that you require by the end of the month, and are pleased that you aspire to find among the Jews of London candidates for the study of such texts.
There is one matter that remains of concern to us. Rodrigues noted with sorrow your tidings of the Velasquez boy, who surely walked in the shadow of the great curse with which G-d afflicted his family in the form of the fire that consumed the parents’ lives, the understanding of which is G-d’s alone, as it is written, The ways of G-d are a pure light wrapped in darkness. Rodrigues was disturbed, however, by the presence of the young man’s sister in your house of Torah.
We understand well that learned scribes are few among the London community. It is a wilderness of ignorance that you tame, pupil by pupil, and it may be that no Jewish family of London has a son learned in the necessary languages. Yet the Velasquez girl is at an age when she must seek marriage, and it is therefore only a reasonable kindness to her that she not be burdened with duties and thoughts beyond her realm. Although there be differences among our kahal on the principle of female learning, and we recognize that the girl’s own father was known to favor such indulgence while he lived, still even he would surely disapprove a long continuance of such labor for a daughter. I myself trust in the words of Rabbi Eliezer of the Talmud, For the word of the Torah should be burnt rather than taught to women. I remind you that the girl has no dowry, and I am told that even the Dotar is not eager to provide her one, due to the ill reputation of her late mother. We advise you to consider that continuance of her labors as your scribe will deny her any remaining prospect of marriage.
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