The Weight of Ink

by Rachel Kadish

  What little income Rivka had once earned was gone: no mending or laundering had been sent to their household in a fortnight at least—attending to a torn seam or soiled shift was no longer worth the risk of contact with another household. London mended its own seams now; lived in soiled clothing; baked its own bread or bought it in a furtive rush, as though the disease might spy the transaction and pounce. Even Mary had sent no word to Ester in weeks—not since their day on the river. Nor had she answered the three notes Ester had left for her at her door—for the servant, arms outstretched, had barred Ester from entering, as though suspecting Ester herself of carrying the plague, and had said, with an asperity Ester disliked, that Mistress da Costa Mendes was not seeing company.

  Shut in the house for long quiet hours, Ester read and reread the letters John had sent from his travels in the countryside, until their phrases made a strange poetry in her mind.

  My heart is eager to return to you in London after I complete this brief business I do for my father.

  I hear rumor of terrible things in the city, and hope not half of them be true. Are you well, my dear Ester?

  She’d not have known how to answer, even if his travels had allowed him to receive a reply.

  Only Manuel HaLevy seemed to intuit the privations that now pressed their household—and, unasked for, supplied what was needed. The pouch Rivka held was the third he had sent in as many weeks. The first two had been accompanied by letters requesting Ester’s company in the countryside. In each, Manuel’s hand was clean and decisive on the page.

  My father has completed building and appointing his new house. Its grandeur might amuse you, Ester. Abundant carvings of wood and stone, and a brick front to make the Jew-haters forget they hate us and come polish our boots instead. My father looks out from his window like a pontiff of the Thames . . . making me that most common (though but little acknowledged) phenomenon of the Catholic church: a pontiff’s son. And when you are the pontiff’s daughter-in-law you may conduct the household’s supper in the manner of a church service or a synagogue, or perhaps after the manner of the pasha of the Barbary Coast—if it pleases you, it’s equal to me.

  Ester had sat long over each of Manuel HaLevy’s letters, yet in the end answered them simply, sending back his servant with the written words I thank you for your kind invitation, but it is not necessary.

  Rivka had finished counting the money in the third pouch. She looked up. “No letter for you with this week’s coins,” she said. Ester couldn’t read her expression.

  A fleeting disturbance seemed to wring the rabbi now in his sleep. His mild face tightened—then, for the moment, the pain seemed to let go its grip. As his face eased, Ester saw plainly the purity that shone there. The last words he’d had her write had dried on the page before her: For I speak to you as a father to a son, and though your endeavor be beyond my reach, still I wish to gird you with all the understanding and love of God that I harbor in my heart. It is for this that I labor, for I believe it will be my last good deed in this world.

  If only she merited such words of trust and guidance as the rabbi addressed to his pupil in Florence.

  She stood. Rivka would need help in the kitchen. But as she stepped away from his desk, the rabbi raised his head and spoke clearly, as though he’d been thinking all these hours rather than sleeping.

  “You must leave this city,” he said. “And take Rivka with you. The physician said the disease is spreading.”

  “I’d no more leave you than my own father,” she said.

  He spoke softly. “But I ask you to do so. Preserve yourself. You and I have studied the four duties for which tradition commands one to sacrifice one’s own life. You know well that staying with the dying is not among them.”

  “It wastes your strength to argue for it.” Her words were more clipped than she’d intended. She returned to the table, picked up a volume. “Shall I read to you from Consolação?”

  He turned back to the fire.

  At the sight of his tilted posture—his frame unable to support itself upright even when seated—a fierceness rose in her. She knew she’d no right to call this feeling love, when she betrayed the rabbi daily. Yet even in her own writing, when she posed questions he’d regard as blasphemy, she carried the rabbi ever in her mind, and his goodness remained the standard against which she tested her understanding of the world. It was the highest love she was capable of: respect. Yet respect also demanded that when the very tools of logic that he’d given her argued against his beloved tradition, she must follow them toward conclusions he’d abhor. The greatest act of love—indeed, the only religion she could comprehend—was to speak the truth about the world. Love must be, then, an act of truth-telling, a baring of mind and spirit just as ardent as the baring of the body. Truth and passion were one, and each impossible without the other.

  Yet a love as would willingly bring the roof tumbling?

  Such was thought cold-hearted in a man, and in a woman, abhorrent. Still, in her abhorrent, obstinate heart she called the ferocity she felt for her teacher love.

  The rabbi spoke so suddenly she started. “Did you write,” he said, “while I slept?” There was something in his voice.

  Softly she answered, “I wrote your words, I merely—”

  “No,” he said. He drew a long breath, and released it. When he continued it was not in Portuguese, but in Castilian. “I ask you now, did you write your own words?”

  She sat perfectly motionless.

  His countenance, lifted now to the blank ceiling, trembled, but he pressed his fingertips together and spoke. “You’ve been false.” He struggled in silence to master his face. “To whom do you write,” he said, “when you sit at that table?”

  She’d no answer that wouldn’t wound him.

  “Ester.”

  There was a long silence.

  “It’s for you that I’ve composed my letters to Florence,” he said. “It’s for you that I’ve shaped my interpretation of the verses concerning the Messiah, that you might clad yourself in their warmth and remember the God of Israel.” He breathed. “Since you were a girl, your mind has been restless not only for the truth of holy texts, but for forbidden questions beyond. I know not how you act on this ungodly hunger you were born with, yet I’ve felt the honesty in your spirit despite this error and I’ve wished, despite your actions, to remain your teacher. For this reason alone have I dared to argue boldly, challenging even those with greater authority than I . . . so as to illuminate for a mind such as yours the beauty of our tradition.” Slowly, slowly, he shook his head. “Already,” he said, “I have failed one of my keenest, most able pupils. I have done all in my power, Ester, not to lose the other.”

  She saw. She’d no words for the gift he’d given her, and no words for the shame she felt at his generosity. It struck her that he addressed her in Castilian not only because he was speaking to her of solemn things, but because—even now—he did not wish to shame Ester by allowing Rivka to learn what she’d done.

  “I must know now,” he said, “what you’ve wrought in my name.”

  “Please believe that I’ve never done it under your name, but under another.”

  After a moment he nodded. “I’m glad,” he said.

  “As to what I’ve written, and to whom, I beg you not to ask me, for I know my way of thinking is abhorrent to you.”

  He was quiet a long moment before speaking. “I will not ask. Yet let the blame for your errors, whatever they are, be put on me. It is I who shaped you amiss.”

  “No,” she insisted. “The fault is mine alone. I deceived you.”

  But he shook his head—then held up a finger to stay her from speaking further. He’d another matter to address. “You had a chance, once, to marry Manuel HaLevy. Rivka tells me you may still.”

  “No, I—”

  “Do it, Ester. If you must, then deceive your husband just as you deceived me—but you’ll do it with a full belly and a house with children. I wish”—his m
outh worked—“I wish you not to die, Ester. And not to know hunger. I wish that more fervently, God forgive me, than I wish for you to change your conduct. I know your obstinacy. My words won’t keep you from using the mind God gave you, even if you forget it’s God that gave it you. But allow me to be your teacher one last time. Marry, and have bread. And let your husband be more blind to your doings than was I.”

  She shook her head, hard. Of one thing she was certain. “Manuel HaLevy won’t be deceived,” she said. “He’s told me himself that as his wife I would write only to teach his children their letters. He . . .” She hesitated. “He’s a better man than I once thought. He’s generous and honest when he wishes to be. But he turns all his force and intelligence to building an edifice for his heirs. There’s much to celebrate in that life. But I fear it more than I rejoice in it. I’m not a woman who can be content where other women are.” She closed her eyes, wishing now to see no more than the rabbi did. “So God made me.” Behind her closed eyelids, the fire made small undulating patterns—an ocean of warmth and light dancing. And she saw that even as she’d tried to speak the truth, she’d fallen short of the mark. For were it John the rabbi was urging her to marry, she’d not claim herself incapable of joying in things other women wished for. And if it was so, that God had made her as she was, then whence this wild desire rising in her to entrust herself, soul and body, to an Englishman whose intentions she knew less than she knew Manuel HaLevy’s? How difficult it was to grasp even a single truth of her own spirit.

  “Now,” said the rabbi, his voice weak, “you will write for me a letter to the Dotar, in Amsterdam. If you won’t marry Manuel HaLevy, then perhaps a dowry from them will raise your prospect of another marriage. Ester. You must think of your future.”

  She said nothing.

  “Write it,” the rabbi said. “I believe, Ester, that obedience is due me now.”

  At dawn she rose, heavy with sleep. Through the night she’d fetched blankets and water at Rivka’s request, venturing no closer—though the rabbi’s shallow breaths sounded everywhere in the quiet house, measuring the passing hours. In the pale morning light, she read John’s letters yet again.

  I think of you in that meadow, and the deer that allowed us so close. I think of your fist clenched so tight in the carriage after that foolish play, and the slow labor of unclenching your fingers. How I long to see you unclench your spirit until the full weight of your trust rests with me. For I see life has been hard with you and your trust is a thing not readily given.

  My business here finished, I return to London now with apprehension of the pestilence but full of joy at the prospect of seeing you.

  All morning, her thoughts bounded with confusion and hope, shielding her from her surroundings. At the apothecary’s shop, ringed by grim-faced women trading advice about anti-pestilential herbs, Ester closed her ears to tales of children risen from their churchyard graves to comfort grieving mothers. When one woman raised a finger and pronounced that she could hear the comet in its dreadful passage through the heavy skies, its roar the voice of God’s vengeance, Ester tightened her grip on the coins in her pocket and fixed her eyes on the apothecary’s table. And carried the small vial of laudanum home, where she let Rivka administer it to the rabbi, herself staying at a distance. So it was Ester who stood close to the door when a messenger knocked, delivered a letter, and fled.

  I stay with Thomas on Downgate Street, for he is in need of company as well as counsel. But I see London’s sickness all about, and I would not linger. I have papers to travel, dear Ester, and wish to leave this city with all haste. Come with me. I’ll take you to see green such as you’ve not guessed at in your life.

  Ester, my father will wish your conversion. I cannot but say that such a choice would ease your life, though I won’t press you for it. Even should you do this, whatsoever affections you hold for the beliefs of your people remain a matter of your own conscience, and I will cherish your conscience.

  At noon she slipped from the house. Crossing Gracechurch Street, hurrying along Lombard, she opened her eyes as she had not in days, and saw London as John now must, having been absent during the weeks of its swift transformation. On Candlewick Street, a man had taken off his clothing and was waving it above his head, his ribs a piteous ladder, his private parts a dark smudge, shouting something Ester couldn’t make out as she hurried by. Down a narrow alley she glimpsed a cross painted in rough white strokes on the wooden door of a house, warning all away. The plague had extended its fingers everywhere now, and grasped the city whole. Two men strode quickly past her, wearing nose cones of herbs and walking in the center of the streets so as to avoid coming near to any residence. They stepped aside only when a cart passed, bearing two bodies on the way to burial, one a man and one a small girl who seemed to rest her head on his chest. Ester glimpsed the dead girl’s face, beautiful in its slumber despite the sores that marked it, as she slept alongside her father.

  John answered Thomas’s door.

  Before she could greet him, he set a hand on her elbow and pulled her close. His kiss was light and questioning, then glad. He held her about the waist.

  “Where’s Thomas?” she said.

  “Gone to see Mary. She begged him to visit, which he hadn’t done these weeks. Is Mary well?”

  “I wish I knew. She hasn’t responded to my letters, nor would she come to the door when I visited.”

  John shook his head slowly. “It’s not Thomas’s first such trouble, I’m afraid. He dances away from it.”

  “Yes,” Ester said. “We all understood that, save Mary.”

  John pursed his lips. “Perhaps one never can foresee what one hopes not to see.”

  “Perhaps not,” she said.

  There was no more to say on the matter. They stood together in the entry. After a moment John laughed, dispelling the silence. “You’ll come with me, then? I wish to leave in the morning, no later.”

  They were near the same height, and she held his eyes. “I came to tell you why I cannot. Not yet.”

  He gave a slight, disbelieving laugh.

  “The rabbi is too ill to travel,” she said. “He’s dying. I have to stay with him.”

  “You’ll not get a travel permit if you wait, Ester. Already petitioners are waiting days, some only to be denied. The disease spreads too rapidly, hardly a parish is felt safe any longer.”

  “I know this,” she said. “And if he should die tonight I’ll be with you tomorrow. But understand, I can’t leave him while he lives.”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. “In fact, Ester, I don’t understand. If what you feel for me is love”—he laughed again, as though countering a child’s foolish logic, and spoke to her slowly. “Your loyalty to the rabbi is an honorable thing. I respect it. But Ester, London is shuttering to burn itself to embers in this sickness. This is love, Ester, and it wishes to save you.” He regarded her with an intensity she’d not seen in him before. “If you refuse, we might not see one another again. Does love matter so little to you?”

  Words caught in her throat. “You misunderstand,” she began. But how to explain what she felt, the absurd hopes he raised in her? She couldn’t fathom a happy fate for herself—yet the very thought of him was a seed germinating, threatening to crack stone. The hour they’d spent beside the river had offered such a shock of beauty, she couldn’t choose whether to banish it from her mind or think of nothing else. His quiet riveted her in a way all the proud promises of Manuel HaLevy could not. She wished to say even some small piece of this, but the words terrified her, like a prayer so full of hubris it might invite a curse.

  She said, “I’ve done a wrong to the rabbi. I’ll tell you of it one day. I cannot set it right, but I can accompany him now in his final days. If I fail to do that, I’ll never be a spirit you wish to stand beside.”

  He nodded—a nod that gave away nothing. His face had altered. Something was awry.

  Please, she thought.

  But he was looking at h
er as though she’d beckoned him far, far out onto a narrow ledge and then, as his own balance trembled at the awesome height, excused herself from daring it. “I told Bescós he was wrong,” he said. How ready to tumble he seemed, his expression pitching between ardor and sickness. “He said a Jewess will always pick her tribe over any other loyalty, and I said he was wrong.”

  “No,” she said. “No, it’s not that way. I choose with my heart, and my heart is for you.” As she said it she felt her heart insisting within her ribs—indeed, for the first time in her life she almost could see her heart, and to her astonishment it seemed a brave and hopeful thing: a small wooden cup of some golden liquid, brimming until it spilled over all—the rabbi breathing in his bed, the dim candlelight by which Ester had so long strained at words on the page, the dead girl with her father in the cart. All that was beautiful and all that was precious, all of it streaming with sudden purpose here—to this place where they now stood.

  John.

  She laid her hands on his chest, his heartbeat rapid as her own. “The rabbi has been my father since my own died. I owe him comfort in his final hour.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  But she saw that he didn’t. She saw that his own ability to save her had taken root in his mind; that it meant something prodigious to him; that this was the beacon he’d chosen to follow. He’d determined to be a pure and simple thing to her—her savior.

  For the first time, she understood that words and logic could not convey all. They could not make John understand what she was willing to pledge to him, even as she refused his offer.

  The image came to her of her grandmother’s hands, delicate and sure on the spinet. She lifted her own hands from his chest. She set one on his shoulder. Then the other, and, stepping forward, she pressed against him as though walking through a door. Shocked by her boldness, he rocked back—then, tentatively, forward. The kiss he pressed on her lips was firmer—a test of something new—and she showed him in answer that she’d speak plainly to him with all she had. Swiftly, blindly, she led him to a side door, then another, behind which they found a bed, and there she lay him down beside her—and she chose not to think of Mary’s fate, but helped John to unlace and unpin, her fingers atop his trembling ones, guiding them until she was bare beside him and he—realizing with absurd gentlemanly embarrassment that he alone wore clothing—hastened to join her, both of them laughing at the comedy of his shirt and breeches confounding him as he tried to slip them off in too much haste.