For the first time in memory, Helen wasn’t sure she had it in her to begin work. There was no longer any point in denying the obvious. Even if Wilton should stumble, other competitors would now surely arrive. “What kind of progress do you think we’re going to make in a couple of weeks?” she heard herself say. “We’re already miles behind Wilton’s group.”
“You’re right,” said Aaron immediately. “There’s no hope.”
Turning, Helen was startled to see him smiling at her. If she hadn’t known better—and she did—she’d think he was flirting. “There’s something I need to show you,” he sing-songed.
It occurred to her he’d gone insane.
“I received this last night just after reading Wilton’s article,” he said, “and I’ve been thinking it over.” He pulled his laptop from his bag and balanced it on his knees. “I finally got an answer from that graduate student, Godwin.”
“Godwin?”
“The one in Michigan who’s researching Thomas Farrow. You may recall I wrote to him a few weeks ago. I got a vague reply, not at all helpful. Now I know why.” He opened an e-mail on his screen. She squinted at the tiny print. With a frown, he enlarged the font, and, checking that no Patricia was in sight, set the computer on the table. “Godwin thinks Thomas Farrow is the next big discovery on the philosophy scene.” Aaron scratched his chin. “He’s a little unhinged about him, actually.”
Aaron,
It’s been a while since your note, sorry. I’ve been busy. In fact I’ve finally had a paper about Thomas Farrow accepted, out next year in Archiv für Geschichte Philosophie. So now I feel I can speak a bit more freely. Not to be paranoid, but . . . no one wants to get scooped, if you know what I mean.
So you want to know about Thomas Farrow. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say I believe I’m the world’s expert—a feat that hasn’t been hard to achieve, given that no one seems to know or care about him. I’m hoping to change that, if I can get anyone to listen.
Thomas Farrow was a son of minor gentry in Worcestershire. He had sisters but no brothers, and while his father had a small fortune he was apparently not particularly generous with it where Thomas was concerned. It seems Thomas’s profligate ways had made an impression on the father—yet the father somehow remained blind to his son’s deeper intellectual nature and potential. This blindness strikes me as rather pitiable, given what we now know about the man.
Thos. Farrow doesn’t appear to have attracted the notice of his teachers during his time at Oxford, and his education was interrupted by the war. His occupation during the Interregnum is unknown, but later he was an actor—a minor one, I believe, and already past his thespian prime (if he ever had one) by the time the theaters reopened under Charles II. But the striking thing is the way he bloomed as a philosopher in 1665–67. If you didn’t know better it might seem his brief outpouring of work came out of nowhere—though a thoughtful study of his output makes obvious how deeply he was drawing on his prior experiences and studies.
I detail all of this in my forthcoming article (due out in next winter’s issue, from what they tell me) so I won’t go on here, but thus far I’ve tracked down letters by Farrow in the archives of the Royal Society, and in the papers of Van den Enden and Adriaan Koerbagh. Some of the letters make bold assertions, others contain more detailed philosophical arguments. It’s clear, among other things, that Farrow took a position on the divine well past where even Hobbes was willing to go, which was an astonishingly risky thing to do. Farrow is frankly weighing atheism, at a time when that could mean death. His main concerns seem to be the nature of God and, depending how that question is answered, the nature of man’s moral and social obligation.
Farrow didn’t get much attention during his brief career because he never made the sort of allies who would spread the word about his work. The reason, I think, is that he was rude. He didn’t kowtow to other philosophers—none of those long flowery introductions, none of the “your mind is so great and mine is so paltry” demurrals. He went straight for the jugular. I’ve made a great find, if I say so myself: I’ve dug up a letter from Thomas Browne to a minor Royal Society member named Jonathan Pierce in which Browne complains about Farrow. He says, “This ill-mannered Farrow will unmake your argument in a single sentence brutal short.”
A single sentence brutal short. They respected Farrow at least, yes?
I owe you thanks, by the way. It’s been a slog trying to convince people this dissertation subject is worthy. Without detailing the slings/arrows of a graduate student’s life, which you’re surely familiar with, I’ll just say I was in a hole, not sure I’d even be able to get my Farrow article accepted for publication. Your e-mail threw me a rope—reminded me that people out there want to know about Farrow. To me, he is an undiscovered gem, and the fact that his career as a philosopher was cut short by his accidental death at the age of only 47 is a tragedy. The injustice of his being unknown is something I want to correct. Farrow may have been considered unimpressive during his early years, but underneath that unimpressive exterior there was a remarkable mind working. Goes to show, you never know which thinkers will turn out to be the real thing till you see what they come out with.
At least, that’s what I’m hoping my advisor will conclude, years from now.
Cheers,
Derek
Helen read the letter twice. When she turned to Aaron his face was bright with expectation.
“Do you think there’s a chance?” he said.
For an instant she considered pretending she didn’t think so, didn’t know what he meant, objected to the leap in logic that he was making. But the cautioning words she’d been about to speak dropped cleanly out of her mind. Why had she ever bothered speaking in that manner—that mincing academic language in which one pretended not to know what one knew in one’s heart, until it had been tested and objectively proved to death? What had it ever benefited her, to speak that way? And what, now, did she have to lose?
“It was her handwriting,” Helen said. “She wrote Thomas Farrow at the bottom of that page.”
If Ester had masqueraded as Thomas Farrow, then a world of possibilities opened. Had she used that fake identity to carry on a clandestine correspondence? What of the real Thomas Farrow—was it just a coincidence that she used his name, or had she known him?
“Can you ask to see the proofs of Godwin’s article?” she said to Aaron.
“Already have.”
She nodded approval.
“Wilton seems to think the cross-written lines were some kind of schoolgirl swoon,” Aaron said. “But what if everything she said was for real? What if Ester wasn’t being coy, but was telling the truth, as clearly as she dared, about her decision to write under someone else’s name?”
Yes. Yes. Helen could hear the protestations of every scholar in the field: Jews of the seventeenth century had no tradition of confessional literature; they didn’t disburden themselves on paper; any literate women put their literacy to use in running a household. Helen didn’t care. For no reason at all, she was certain: Ester had cross-written on discarded drafts not to be clever, and certainly not to practice penmanship—but because there was a secret she had tamped down until it was a murderous weight inside her . . . and she needed there to be, somewhere in the world, at least one place where the truth existed.
Helen seemed to have abandoned logic, and so she could not explain why the final lines of the cross-written letter came to her now: Where words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain, for they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
She spoke the words aloud.
“What do you think that means?” said Aaron.
She shook her head. “Don’t know. But I think she’s telling us something. About her life. Or maybe,” she added after a moment, “about regret.”
She’d turned away from the screen, as had he. His eyes were dark and arresting, they were Dror’s and his own, and she wanted to hold the image in her mind forever.
<
br /> They turned to the documents. Their pencils scratched uninterrupted on notebook paper; Helen kept her eyes averted from Wilton’s table. After a half-hour, Library Patricia appeared bearing a third and fourth document for Helen and Aaron, no longer seeming to care if Wilton’s group saw—clearly she’d seen the Early Modern Quarterly article too. As they worked, Patricia came and went unbidden like a magical apprentice, bringing and removing documents.
Helen had just turned to her fourth document, another list of household expenses. It was written in Portuguese in Ester Velasquez’s slanted hand. Yet again, no household income was listed. The document was dated May 4, 1665. She scanned it quickly, as she did with each before she set to the work of translation. At the base of the third and final page, beneath the usual tally of expenses and the initial aleph, Helen’s eye caught a line of cross-writing in a different ink, as though it had been added after the fact. No, not even a line. It was a single word, inked thinly and carefully between the lines of the inventory, like a spider hanging barely visible in a corner.
יתבהא
An assault, a rebuke across the years. An outstretched hand.
The inverted letters spelled the single Hebrew word that meant “I loved.”
20
June 17, 1665
London
To the Esteemed Benedictus de Spinoza,
Your brief response to my last missive would persuade any less determined than I that it were folly to continue this exchange. Indeed modesty ought impel me to conclude that you do not consider my crude thoughts worthy of your time. If this indeed be the reason for your refusal to engage in dialogue with me, then I must apologize and retreat. But in my stubborn folly, Sir, I maintain that despite the flaws that surely mar my argumentation, it is my wish to weigh the merits of atheism that makes you refuse to debate with me. It may be that others, be they the enemies of toleration in your land or even spies of the Inquisition, have endeavored to entrap you into such speech. It is natural you might fear that I claim loyalty to some cause hostile to free thought.
Yet I swear, though it bereave my heart, that I labor to shed all loyalty save that to truth. For every loyalty, whether to self or community, does impose a blindness, and each love does threaten to blur vision, as few can bear to see truth if it harm that which is dear to us. In separating you from your community, mayhap the ban issued upon you in Amsterdam offered a manner of freedom. Vanishing from your people’s reach, you shed the unbearable sorrows of the martyrs of your people, which any soul must be stirred by. While you were yet beholding such sorrows, surely some thoughts—those with thorns that prick one’s own people—would seem unutterable.
I am gladdened to believe that you employ your freedom now to loose your tongue and pen, and speak as you could not before. Yet caution follows one everywhere, for this world is not a safe one.
If there be any further freedom than the one granted by excommunication, perhaps it is the freedom not to exist.
Existing, you and I and all thinkers are in danger. Is this why you say less than you believe? You insist you do not argue against the existence of God. Yet I would therefore know what manner of divine existence you claim. The folly of those who cling to notions of divine intervention is evident every instant, for the babe born deformed did not merit the life of pain that awaits it, nor do those who dedicate their lives to purity merit the torment and suffering they are so often meted. Therefore it must either be that God cares naught for suffering, or that God lacks the power to provide more tenderly for creation. Unless immortality exist to balance these equations after man’s death, they remain unbalanced. And as I endeavor to dismiss all for which I can locate no proof, and as I have yet located no proof of life after death, then these thoughts must lead me toward either a theism in which the divine possesses power without mercy or justice, as though a vast infant ruled over the universe dispensing decrees at whim; or rather toward the thought that the force commanding the universe possesses will but no power, for which notion I might be charged with atheism. It is from this stance that I embrace your conception of God as nature. Yet I remain unsatisfied with my understanding of this notion.
In your second missive you offer me a crumb of your philosophy as though to dismiss me with it: you say that God is substance. Sir, I remain hungry. Of what manner and purpose be this substance?
I have seen the blinded eyes of the rabbi HaCoen Mendes. In questioning faith, we scathe all faithful such as he. How cruel, then, must seem the atheist to the martyr.
Yet without willingness to speak honestly, does the philosopher not take irons to the eyes of truth?
T. F.
She set down her quill and read over the words. Would she dare send such a thing? She’d written the words to see how far she ventured to speak her mind.
The rabbi slept in his chair. Even when Ester could find in herself no belief in the God of the psalms or prayers, she believed in the holiness of Rabbi HaCoen Mendes’s spirit. She, in her deceit, must then be his truest enemy.
Yet the change she noted lately in his arguments was undeniable. On his own behalf, she’d long observed, the rabbi dared little, muting his disagreements, ceding to other authorities. Yet on behalf of her imagined Daniel Lusitano, he spoke with his own authority. His face livened; his language was sharper, tearing falsehoods apart. Only in his love for his students, Ester saw—first de Spinoza, and now Daniel Lusitano—could the rabbi thus assert his thoughts. And as she penned his words onto pages that would never be sent, she felt her hand transcribing a wakened, vigorous spirit.
So she justified her own treachery, further proving her baseness.
She slid the page she’d been writing beneath the letter it had rested on, which had arrived two days earlier.
June 5, 1665
Ester,
You will find here the sum of £7 to maintain the household of Rabbi HaCoen Mendes, and those who live with him. I know you will not be so foolish as to refuse such aid, for though you might deny yourself, you won’t deny those in your household.
Consider this gift, and from whom it comes to you.
I leave soon for the countryside, which is untouched by the seeds of the plague that sprout now in some parishes of the city. At present I plan to go alone. That need not be so.
Manuel HaLevy
Half the coins that had arrived with Manuel HaLevy’s letter had been spent immediately on household provisions. The rest Rivka was carefully husbanding. Ester had not yet replied.
She drew out a blank page now.
To Manuel HaLevy,
I thank you for your letter, and for the support it grants us in our need. Your act is generous beyond expectations. We could not hope for more.
She sat for a long time, searching for further words that would not betray her. Beneath Manuel’s letter lay a page inked to de Spinoza and signed under a man’s name—a letter that told the truth of her spirit. Yet the truths of her body were undeniable: the hunger in her belly, the ache of her feet from treading the streets in shoes worn past repair. And another hunger she hardly dared acknowledge.
I cannot consider your offer of marriage, she wrote slowly.
At the sound of the clock chiming the hour, she rose and washed the ink from her hands. Upstairs she hesitated a moment over a dress Mary had had her purchase long ago, when Catherine first insisted that Ester accompany her daughter. She’d worn it but few times, yet surely it would still fit as she recalled, the elegant cloth falling away smoothly from her waist? For a moment she ran her fingertips along the pale blue taffeta.
Stilled, one hand on the crisp fabric, she acknowledged it. Yes: she betrayed herself, and hoped. But for what? That an Englishman with kind eyes forgive her for being a Jewess? That he love her . . . and then what? Marry her? And in his kindness make her relinquish, more gently but as surely as Manuel HaLevy would, the thing that animated her spirit?
She turned and pulled her plain daily dress from its hook, nearly tearing the seam when the fabric ca
ught. Cursing, she watched the figure fumbling over the buttons in the narrow glass. A hate welled up in her for her life.
A sound from the street; the da Costa Mendeses’ coach arrived. Hurriedly Ester descended the stair, as Rivka opened the door to Thomas Farrow.
“Good morning,” Thomas sang.
His worn red doublet was unbuttoned to show a waistcoat of blue silk, his breeches open at the knee above blue hose, red-heeled shoes with their red lining turned down in the shape of a bow. He stared frankly at Rivka—as though he’d heard of thick-bodied, scant-haired Tudesco Jewesses with smallpox-rubbled cheeks and whiskers on their chin, but had not until now believed that such creatures existed. Rivka, in turn, stared back: first at Thomas’s bright attire, and then up at his face, its own fainter smallpox scars nearly masked by an application of ceruse—the patent, careful vanity of a man pretending to be younger than he was.
Slowly Thomas doffed his black velvet riding hat to Rivka, who didn’t twitch a muscle in response. It occurred to Ester that Rivka wouldn’t weep to see Mary’s reputation trounced, nor by such a man.
Ester parted the leather curtain and entered the coach, settling beside John, who greeted her, quickly shifting to make room. He too was dressed in doublet and hose, but the difference between Thomas’s attire and his was the difference between a peacock and some self-contained brown-and-white river bird.
The Weight of Ink Page 40