The Weight of Ink

by Rachel Kadish

  Only later, rinsing the grounds from the bowl in the kitchen, would Rivka mutter her verdict: uma papa santos. A saint-sucker. Her rounded shoulders rolling in rhythm as she worked bread dough with the heels of her hands, she’d break her laboring silence to say abruptly to Ester, They’ve traded faith—for—gold. In truth, it seemed to Ester that Rivka’s condemnation encompassed any Portuguese Jew who’d succeeded in evading death, whether through true conversion or merely by donning a thin mask of Catholicism here in London. Only those who’d confessed to the Inquisition and been killed—or nearly killed, such as the rabbi—seemed to merit Rivka’s respect. Her thick back twisting to one side, then the other, her hair escaping her cap in limp strands, Rivka hove into the dough with the single-mindedness of one who knew death to arrive in the form of flying hooves and clubs—never in the form of a choice. The Inquisition, in her view, offered all of Sephardic Jewry a gift denied to her and the other Tudesco Jews: the opportunity to choose death, rather than having it descend unannounced. Death, for Rivka and her Polish kin, was a pogrom scouring all in its path—not an iron-wielding priest offering a small window to freedom that might possibly be unlatched by disavowing one’s Judaism. Once, wringing linens in the attic, she had said, In my village, they died without even a moment to pray. That’s how it was: The men with clubs came. The village died. Though Ester waited, there was no more. Rivka bent over the buck-basket in the dim attic. A sudden splatter of heavy droplets raining into the wash water.

  But if Manuel HaLevy knew that the woman who now served him coffee considered him a saint-sucker, he was indifferent to the charge. He raised his bowl in one hand and drained it at once. “More,” he said.

  Rivka removed the bowl.

  A knock at the door.

  Rivka, bowl in hand, opened it. The change in her expression was instant: the quick snuffing of a candle.

  “Well?” A voice like a curled ribbon, high and pretty—and familiar, though Ester was surprised to hear it at the rabbi’s threshold. “You did receive our letter saying we’d call?”

  Ester had long been struck by Rivka’s ability to make herself impenetrable in the face of Amsterdam’s wealthy, offering no detectable response in face or body to their scoldings as she tended their needs. Now Rivka, impassive, swung the door wide to admit Mary da Costa Mendes, the daughter of the rabbi’s nephew. Entering behind her daughter, Catherine da Costa Mendes chided in a fainter voice, “Mary, didn’t you know better . . . than to have my note delivered to a Tudesco?” Overriding Mary’s murmured excuse, her mother’s voice continued in bursts: “Next time, Mary . . . have the message boy deliver the letter to . . . someone who can read.”

  For the barest instant, Ester saw the ripple where the arrow went in—but by the time the two women had stepped into the house, Rivka’s face had closed and locked once more.

  They entered, mother and daughter, elegant dark skirts swaying fore and aft like bells as they walked. Mary’s dress was laced tight, placing her abundant bosom and the white flesh of her upper arms on full display. Her plump face was framed by immaculate black ringlets. She peered about the room with hungry fascination. Catherine da Costa Mendes handed Rivka her fox-fur tippet; then allowed Rivka to ease the cloak from her shoulders, revealing a broad farthingale and heavy skirt, each thickly embroidered with silver thread. Unbidden, Isaac’s name for such women rang teasingly in Ester’s memory: tapecaria andadoria: walking tapestry. But Catherine da Costa Mendes’s labored inhalations, audible from across the room, made Ester doubt she was in robust enough health to bear the weight of her attire about London.

  “Coffee,” the woman breathed at Rivka.

  Rivka disappeared into the kitchen.

  In austere silence, Catherine da Costa Mendes surveyed the rabbi’s study. Beyond offering a generous nod of greeting in the street or the synagogue, she’d not concerned herself with the doings of the household her husband supported. Even within London’s small constellation of Portuguese Jews, the da Costa Mendes family was set apart. Alone among the synagogue’s matrons, Catherine seemed uninterested in gossip—more than once Ester had seen her summon Mary from an avidly whispering cluster with a disapproving glance. Nor did the family come and go from the synagogue by foot, as did even the wealthiest of the other Jews. It was common to see the trio alight from a fine black coach, even on the Sabbath: deep-voiced, silver-haired Diego with a vigorous step, pattens protecting his fine shoes from the street’s muck; Catherine more slowly and with the air of one much older, as though the years had spun faster for her than for her husband. And, stepping onto the cobbles delicately—toe, then heel, as though confident of being watched, pausing with a white hand laid as if casually on the coach’s well-shined black veneer—their one daughter, sole surviving child of whatever number Catherine had birthed.

  The rabbi spoke—for a moment Ester had forgotten his presence. “Whom do I have the honor of welcoming in my home?”

  Catherine da Costa Mendes turned her head regally to gaze at the rabbi. She was not, it was apparent, accustomed to explaining herself. Broadening her gaze to include the HaLevy brothers, she summoned Manuel with a slight nod.

  The brothers rose—the younger with a quick and nervous smile, Manuel at his leisure but with respect.

  “Catherine da Costa Mendes,” said Manuel in a deep and formal voice. “And her lovely daughter, Mary.”

  Had something—amusement, perhaps?—flickered below those last words of his? Ester noted the color rising in Mary’s face.

  “Greetings to you, Uncle,” said the matron in Portuguese.

  The rabbi stood. It seemed to take him a long time, and longer before Catherine da Costa Mendes understood what was required and stepped forward and laid her gloved hand in his, not unkindly, for him to kiss.

  The rabbi sat. “Welcome to this home your family so graciously provides us.”

  Catherine, standing above him, replied with a nod, and opened her mouth to speak. But Mary spoke first—not to the rabbi, but to Ester. “We’re here to see you!” Mary said, as though the announcement were a gift.

  None had asked to visit with Ester since her arrival in London—she couldn’t fathom what Mary might wish with her. Dumbly she gestured at the quill and paper on the table. “I’ve yet to finish,” she said. “It’s for the rabbi . . .”

  But a lift of the rabbi’s head in Ester’s direction said she’d find no shelter in this excuse.

  She stood, straightened her skirt, and followed the two women to the small side room where Rivka was setting two bowls of coffee—not hot enough to steam, Ester noticed—on a small table between two seats. The room was cold, having no hearth, and musty from disuse. Until now, Rivka had kept the door shut, to prevent this chamber from stealing heat from the larger room.

  Catherine claimed the larger chair beside the window. Mary plumped down on the smaller seat, the fabric of her skirt covering most of the cushion and leaving only a narrow space beside her. “Sit,” Mary said to Ester.

  Ester lowered herself into the space.

  Mary looked at her mother with evident satisfaction, as though Ester’s obedience proved a point in an argument Ester hadn’t been privy to. Then, sitting so close that the abundant layers of her dress overwhelmed Ester’s paltry muslin skirt, Mary turned to face Ester full on. Ester found herself edging away until her leg pressed against the hard wooden railing of the seat.

  From the doorway, where she stood with her back to the closed door and her arms tucked behind her in a pose of compliance, Rivka spoke flatly. “Is the coffee to your liking?”

  Her tone invited no answer and the women gave none.

  “What’s your age?” Mary said abruptly.

  It took Ester a moment to muster an answer. “Twenty-one.”

  “Only?” said Mary, disbelieving.

  Catherine cast a glance at her daughter: I told you.

  A pout flickered across Mary’s lips; evidently she’d thought Ester older. “But the hair,” she said. As Ester’s han
d floated to her hair, Mary let out a ripple of eager laughter. “See her hair, Mother! A half silver and a half sable. Like a woman thrice her years, except her brows are black. She might as well don a periwig and be a proper Royalist gentleman.” She tugged a loose lock of Ester’s hair. “Or perhaps it is a periwig, you seditious girl.” Mary’s face shone with pleasure at her own daring. Then, as though Ester were a pet newly adopted, she tucked Ester’s arm under her own. “Well,” she said. “Lost color may be had again. We’ll turn it black soon, or whatever color suits.”

  Catherine frowned at her daughter, then addressed Ester. “How do you amuse yourself?”

  There was a silence. At last Ester echoed, “Amuse myself?”

  Catherine gestured loosely, impatient to be understood. “What are your amusements?”

  “I’ve none.”

  Catherine lifted her eyebrows. “Good,” she said.

  Ester withdrew her arm carefully from Mary’s. “I don’t understand the nature of this visit.”

  “Well, then.” Catherine drew herself up. “Here’s the nature.” She waited through two shallow breaths before continuing. “All London is eager for folly. I don’t call it wrong. The city has been overfed with strictures, and now clamors to shake off Puritan ways. New entertainments now begin. And our Mary is enamored of every one that’s dreamt of—whether or not it be madness.” For a moment Catherine gazed at the wall as though it were a window. But this dignified show of distraction was, Ester sensed, only a way to rest from the taxing act of speech. Even through carefully applied powder, Catherine’s face showed marks of long and heavy strain. Ester was surprised at an impulse to stand, loosen the woman’s stays, rub her broad back. The desire tightened her own chest. It was a feeling she hadn’t known she still possessed: the wish to tend to a mother.

  “Mary is overfond,” Catherine continued at length, “of being at the fore of every new fashion. Nonetheless, a young woman wishing to marry well requires to be seen in society. Within certain limits.” There was little tenderness on Catherine’s face as she spoke, Ester noted, but rather a weary fear that seemed to have long ago vanquished all other maternal feeling. “My daughter,” she said, “is in need of a companion. And as perhaps is evident, I am hardly in constitution to accompany Mary on foolish errands through London.” Catherine fixed Ester with a stare. “Breathing,” she said faintly, “no longer seems to agree with me.” She turned away. “The country air improves it, but my husband requires his household and business here in London.”

  She seemed to have finished.

  In the silence, Mary’s soft, cautious breaths mingled with Ester’s own. Ester shut her eyes to savor the sound. In memory it merged with the steady long-ago sound of her brother’s breathing. A foolish thought welled in Ester: what might it be to have a sister?

  She spoke swiftly to counter such indulgent visions. “I can’t serve as Mary’s companion,” she said. “The rabbi requires my presence.”

  “The rabbi,” said Catherine, “will release you as we require.” Her gesture took in the furnishings, the small room, the house. She said drily, “I’m certain he’ll feel he owes us at least that thanks.”

  Mary had turned once more and was surveying Ester. “She’ll need to learn the English manner of dress.”

  Without warning Rivka spoke from her station by the wall, her voice harsh. “We shame them,” she said. She was addressing Ester, and the direct force of her small brown eyes was shocking, wrenching Ester from what remained of her reverie.

  When Catherine answered, her eyebrows lofted slightly, she addressed her words only to Ester, as though it were a matter of good taste to ignore such unaccountable rudeness. “It’s no matter of vanity,” Catherine said levelly. “Though you may look on us and think it so. You are still foreign and unaccustomed to London ways. We”—a slow sweep of her hand—“we dress and speak as Englishwomen do. You sail here from Amsterdam, make house in the place provided by my husband, and proceed to walk about the parish dressed in such manner that a placard saying Jewess might as well be hung on your back. It’s your choice to do so, I’ve maintained—though other women of the community have disagreed with me. But if you’re to accompany my daughter about London, then it becomes very much my concern how you dress.”

  “It concerns me, Mother,” Mary interrupted. Her voice had turned both prettier and harder-edged. She seemed both affronted and puzzled by Ester’s disinclination to follow her about London. “I agree with the others. These two do shame us. Now that all London knows there are Jews about, do you wish the ladies promenading on St. James to be whispering about Jewesses who dress like”—she hesitated, then gestured at Rivka in her cap and work dress; then more vaguely at Ester, who flushed in sudden awareness of how she’d allowed the quality of her own dress to degrade—“like nightsoil men?” Mary let the merry question hang for a moment, her high, round cheeks and rosy lips sweet under black brows and bright black eyes—but Ester noted that Mary’s flickering gaze landed near but not quite on her mother’s face.

  Then, seeming to tire of defiance, Mary twisted to search out something in a soft cloth pouch she’d set beside her. Straightening, she reached over without warning and her finger slid hard across Ester’s lips, spreading something slick.

  As Ester recoiled, Mary laughed. “Rose madder,” she said. “Here.” She thrust a small wood-framed glass into Ester’s hand, just large enough to nestle in her palm.

  A face looked back from the glass wavering in her hand—the lips gleaming a soft, dark red. For a vertiginous instant it was not Ester’s own, but her mother’s: cascading hair, eyes black and dangerous.

  Since she’d last looked in a glass, her face had changed, thinning in such a way that the resemblance to her mother was sharper. She’d known from stray hairs in her comb that the years since the fire had marked her. Yet a true storm of silver had begun in Ester’s hair—she touched it. It was as Mary said. Only her arched brows remained pure black. The face was young, but its crown old. Small wonder Mary hadn’t been able to guess her age. Wobbling in the glass, her own face fractured and assailed her. Her father’s large and solemn eyes warring with her mother’s ample, mocking mouth.

  “Some young man will beg to kiss you now,” Mary lilted.

  Ester wiped hard at her mouth with the sides of her fingers. She wished to rebuke Mary but could summon no words.

  “But why dash it away?” Mary cried.

  Catherine’s reprimand bore down on Mary. “Because, Mary, this one is wiser than her own mother.”

  Shouldn’t Ester have guessed that her mother’s ill reputation would follow her from Amsterdam? Constantina, trapped within her own fury. Beauty and spite entwined. Ester tore away from the image.

  Yet Catherine, head tilted and scrutinizing Ester’s stiff posture, seemed to see something that eased her. “No,” she said slowly. “This daughter won’t mimic that mother, though she does possess some beauty of her own.”

  Mary’s coquettish tones had faded to impatience. “She can serve as my companion then?”

  Slowly, pensively, Catherine’s fingertips circled in the air: something still troubled her.

  “What else now, Mother?” Mary cut in, querulous. “Is it the brother?”

  As Catherine hesitated, anger leapt in Ester’s belly. She rose, brushing aside Mary’s staying hand. How dare this woman in fine fabrics deign, in a single shallow breath, to judge Isaac’s life and death?

  But before Ester was fully on her feet, Catherine nodded decisively. “I’ll permit it,” Catherine said.

  “No!” Ester’s thin hands had balled into fists, her nails biting at the flesh of her own palms.

  “Ester?” The haughtiness was gone from Mary’s expression—she looked lost. Her bewilderment stilled Ester.

  “I can’t,” Ester managed.

  For a moment, then, Catherine’s eyes touched Ester’s as though recognizing something there that she respected. “But you can,” said Catherine slowly. “My daughter, it
happens, has a nature that requires supervision by one without foolish vanities of her own. You, it happens, have no foolish vanities. Nor do you have prospects. It’s a suitable task for you. And more than that, it will improve your chances.” Of a good marriage. Catherine raised her eyebrows, awaiting acknowledgment of the wisdom of this. “You’re young,” she continued after a moment. Her voice was not ungentle, and Ester found herself wondering how many daughters Catherine had buried. “Fate might yet shelter you.”

  Turning at a small sound of protest from Mary, Ester saw that a vague envy suffused her face, as though she’d just watched something inaccessible pass between her mother and Ester.

  Catherine closed her eyes a moment, then nodded: the matter was decided. “You’ll go to the dressmaker immediately, and acquire a dress suitable for society.” Bending forward stiffly, Catherine gestured: she wished the servant’s help to stand.

  So fully had Rivka retreated into silence since her outburst that Ester had nearly forgotten her presence; but now she stepped forward. Whatever further opinions she held were writ on her in an obscure language. She helped Catherine to her feet.

  For a moment Catherine stood opposite Ester, her rigid bodice straining at each inhalation. Under her thick face-powder, her expression flickered—the faintest hint of conspiracy, even humor?—then faded. Her face slackening now with fatigue, she turned away, listing on Rivka’s arm.

  Matching her mother’s slow pace, Mary stepped out toward the waiting coach, pausing once to gaze with dull apprehension at the cinder-gritted wall blocking one end of the street, the balconies crowding overhead, the pale gray smoke from the tanneries draping the narrow strip of visible sky.