The Weight of Ink

by Rachel Kadish

  “Yes,” said Helen softly. “The marriage would have brought the end of her writing. I’m guessing she didn’t change her mind and fall in love with him, either. I’m guessing she married him to survive, after the rabbi died and she had no livelihood.”

  “Well, we’ll never have the chance to know, will we?” He turned to the window. “Even assuming we can get a professional handwriting analysis to confirm that ‘Thomas Farrow’ was Ester Velasquez, I saw in the précis of Godwin’s paper that he doesn’t have anything from Farrow after 1666.”

  A brief bloom of intellectual freedom, a spasm of conscience, a quiet death. That was Ester’s story in its entirety. It aroused in him both pity and a prickling sense of failure.

  Still standing, he let his fingers stray to his laptop, which rested open on the edge of Helen’s desk. A gambler uselessly spinning his roulette wheel—yes, that was him. Restlessly, reflexively, he toggled to his e-mail. There, like a bad joke played at his expense, was a single new message. As he stared at his screen, it struck him that the news of Ester Velasquez’s death had summoned this too, out of the void of all that had once flourished but now was lost. It had floated back to him, heralded by two young Patricias like figureheads on a prow: the flotsam of all he’d once confidently pursued.

  From: Marisa Herz

  Subject: Sit down

  He obeyed, sinking into the chair opposite Helen’s desk, taking the laptop with him.

  Aaron,

  First, my apologies for my abrupt cut-off earlier this year. I can only assume it was confusing.

  I know this is a shock, but I didn’t want to involve you until I knew for certain what my decision was. I’m having a baby. Yes, you’re the father.

  So much for the reliability of birth control.

  I’ve been through all the panic and denial and I’ve made my choice. Really it was clear to me from the start, but I figured I ought to give myself a little time to be sure of the decision, in case I was going through a hormonal thing.

  I’m going to live here and figure out a way to have the baby. I’m going to do it by myself. I’m sorting out the practical pieces—money, job, childcare. It’s going to work. And even if it doesn’t work, it will anyway, if you know what I mean.

  You’ll need to do some thinking of your own now. I’m not getting married, to you or anyone. I’m not inviting you to live with us, either. But if you want to meet your daughter you can. Let me know what you plan to do. If you don’t want to be involved with her, then let’s keep it clean and cut off contact for good. This is my choice and I take responsibility for it. Just send me a little medical history or something in case she grows up and develops bizarre traits—that way I can tell her they’re your fault.

  Sorry if the jokes seem inappropriate. I’ve been at this for a while now. You’re just at the beginning of taking this in, and I’m probably being too sharp. Sometimes I can be. I know myself, though, and I know I can’t take care of your feelings while I’m taking care of myself and building a life to support the little one. So let me know what you decide, but please also understand that I can’t hold your hand through your deliberations.

  You’re a good guy, Aaron Levy, despite all your attempts to convince the world you’re an arrogant bastard. Don’t think I don’t see through you. This little gal and I have a long road ahead of us. I’m not sorry you’re her father.

  Marisa

  His eyes reached the end of her message. Somewhere in his reading, he realized only now, a sound had escaped him. A single, winded Oh. It lingered in Helen’s quiet office.

  At first Helen didn’t seem to have heard. She was at her computer again, murmuring. “The Amsterdam archivist is sending a few other things, every document she found pertaining to HaCoen Mendes or Ester Velasquez—” She stopped.

  “I’ll just print it all to read later, shall I?”

  He didn’t take his eyes off his screen.

  He heard pages emerge from the printer, but Helen didn’t reach for them.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  He didn’t look at her.

  “You’re not all right.”

  He managed an unconvincing shrug. Slowly he turned. He tried to focus on her face, but the effort was too great. His gaze settled somewhere near her chin.

  “Do you need a moment?” She spoke briskly—but even through the veil that seemed to have shrouded his senses, he sensed that she wanted to ask what was wrong, and didn’t know how to do it.

  Slowly she stood. “I’ll leave you, then?”

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  She didn’t. She stood leaning on her cane. He saw she had no inkling what to do with herself. He’d asked her to stay. Stay and sit? Stay and murmur words of comfort? Twice she opened her mouth as though to speak, but thought better of it. After a time, she sat.

  He said nothing.

  She played with the handle of her cane, fitting it into her palm over and again as though measuring the heft of a suddenly unfamiliar object. Aaron, gazing emptily at her, caught his pale reflection on the glass face of the clock on the side of her desk. Even blurred, there was no masking the truth written in that reflection. He saw his face, for just an instant, as others might. And tried to imagine himself, instead, as he wanted to be: a man who moved cleanly through life, because he understood some essential, elemental thing. A man irreducible, undivided, inseparable from himself. A man who deserved a baby.

  The distance between himself and that man was so great as to be uncrossable.

  He breathed evenly, and watched the golden second hand traverse the clock’s face and his own. Needle-thin, alive with its own infinitesimal pulse, it passed through Aaron’s reflection once more, then again, like some innocent and prophetic creature aware of what Aaron was capable of, yet keeping its own counsel.

  24

  July 25, 1665

  13 Av, 5425

  London

  The ringing of the bells. Day and night, the churches marked the departure of each perished congregant, every peal thickening the blood of the city. Sometimes half a night passed without a single tolling. Then a first heavy clang followed by a silence, long enough to draw breath in, as the bell swung back to speak again. Sometimes one tolling came on the heels of another—then the unseen hands working the belfry’s rope abandoned their efforts quickly, letting each clanging dull and subside. Six times in an hour. More.

  In the heat of day, the da Costa Mendeses’ windowpanes fogged. Mary, jumping up from an hour-long torpor by the front window, stumbled through the house flinging windows open—her sudden rage like a tide sweeping along all the members of the household. Ester trailed mutely behind, and Rivka as well—Rivka’s heels striking hard on the wooden floors as she grimly slammed each window shut—one, another, a third. Bang. “Plague seeds float in air!” Rivka cried after Mary—but Mary had already gained the second floor, where she threw herself sidelong onto her unmade bed and cursed Rivka viciously in Castilian terms that made even Ester call Mary’s name in protest. Ignoring Ester, rolling onto her back and slapping her belly with a storm of blows, Mary cursed it in English: “Foul lump.”

  Was it a fortnight since Ester had spoken to any others? More? Those few who passed their door saw the painted cross there, and walked faster. Bescós’s cross had hidden them from London—yet it remained unknown whether this made them safer or less so.

  With each passing day of silence Mary’s vexation seemed to sharpen. Once, washing at her basin—a feat she accomplished with umbrage, for her belly now impeded her—she turned on Ester: “How can you bear to stay in this cage?” she cried, her face dripping with water she didn’t bother to wipe. “Don’t you want air?”

  Ester blinked at her. How to explain that this reverie was all she wanted—that it was the world outside that had turned vertiginous? The pestilence, the bells, the rabbi. John. Unbearable, sickening thoughts.

  Mary shook her head hard, droplets flying, her hair fanning about her like a wild creature’s.
Then she stopped and leaned forward, propping herself on her hands at the dressing table. In the mirror she looked at Ester, the tender hairs on her temples clinging to her pale skin. “You’re glad to hide here,” she accused.

  It was true. Ester had lain awake that morning, her thoughts making a wide wary arc as though skirting a precipice. With her head heavy on the pillow, she’d endeavored to trace a logical argument. It began: Love causes pain.

  Why does it cause pain?

  Because it depends on another. Because it is not self-complete and therefore cannot be contained within one spirit.

  She hadn’t been able to follow the logic further. That part of her that had known how to inscribe clear lines of argument on the lurching world had fallen mute.

  “Ester, if John spurned you”—Mary was searching Ester’s face in the mirror—“well, then.” She struggled visibly for unfamiliar words of consolation. “He was never so lively, was he? In truth, I thought him a bore! You can find another.” Mary’s expression darkened a moment. “Not like me.” She stared long into the mirror. “But,” she murmured, letting go of the dressing table to press palms to her belly, “Thomas will want us.” Before Ester could answer, Mary fled the room, in her haste nearly knocking into Rivka, who was climbing to the second floor with a stack of pressed linens.

  Sealed away though they were from the city’s soot and dirt, Rivka had asserted a strict routine of housework to which she held herself and Ester, ignoring Mary as hopeless. In truth the fine things of the da Costa Mendes house seemed to exert on Rivka a kind of enchantment. Ester would come across Rivka running a hand over linens trimmed with point; sanding the iron clean yet again; adding indigo to the white starch to produce a still finer white for the linens of a household whose owners she neither liked nor respected—yet Rivka seemed to hold the possessions of the da Costa Mendes family blameless for their owners’ sins. And while Mary paced about the house, sometimes muttering prettily to herself and sometimes snorting fragments of an argument—“I’ll not be your doxy”—or with tearful disdain—“He’s something like!”—Ester drifted down the stairs to labor alongside Rivka. For once Ester was grateful for the trance of work—her body pounding and wringing in a rhythm that obliterated thought. The very drudgery she’d hated for tearing her from her beloved studies was now salvation—and what was it, after all, that she had so treasured about her ability to think? What desire could she have had for the open landscape of her mind, when it harbored fearful things or—worse, now—a vast, featureless stillness? The papers she’d carried with such care from the rabbi’s lay untouched beneath the mattress of her bed. She feared to look at them, as though they accused her of crimes she couldn’t deny.

  Rivka insisted that only she herself go abroad in the city, claiming she could not fall ill of the plague—for, she said, she’d suffered many girlhood illnesses in her Galician village and these strengthened her humors against disease. Mary scoffed at this reasoning, griping to Ester that Rivka only wanted all the freedom for herself. But Rivka seemed to trust in it, and often during their confinement Rivka slipped out late in the day to purchase provisions, returning just before curfew.

  One evening, shortly after Rivka’s return, a man’s voice on the street roused Ester. She’d been sewing in the fading light from the downstairs window, mending a small tear in a seam of a sheet, her fingers stiff from working the needle. The bell had signaled three deaths already that hour.

  “See here, the wily Jewesses!”

  It was Bescós’s voice. She rose, dropping her mending to the table.

  “You’ve multiplied.”

  He stood on the street outside the window, too close. His face, intent, peered at the pane. Then his eyes fastened on hers.

  His face was thinner, and something about it was changed. Even in her fear, a strange thought occurred to her: he’s in danger.

  But the thought was banished by the sharp rasp of Mary flinging open an upstairs window. “It’s true!” she shouted. “I’ve friends with me now.”

  Stepping back to squint up at her, Bescós shielded his eyes. Then he laughed. It was a long laugh, with time in it for him to decide what sort of man he wanted to be. After a moment, Ester saw him decide.

  There were no other passersby. The shutters had now been drawn in every visible dwelling along the street—every house’s eyes sealed by plague.

  “So this is your new family?” Bescós called to Mary.

  “Why, does it concern you that I’m no longer alone?” her voice sailed back.

  “I’m only curious,” he said. “Which of you is the mistress of this brothel? I’d have guessed the silver-headed one”—his eyes still fixed on Mary, he gestured at the window behind which Ester stood. “Yet judging by what Thomas was able to get out of John, she’s taken to selling her own wares.” He wagged his head, disappointed. “Or offering them without pay.”

  Abruptly, he turned and banged a palm, hard, on the wall of the house. Ester started, her heart thumping in her chest. From behind her, she heard Rivka’s low gasp. Bescós was laughing—he’d guessed, even from the outside, how hollow the rooms must echo.

  “The idiocy of some women,” he mused, speaking slowly once more, “to give freely the only salable asset they possess. But unless you’ve some spare Jewesses I haven’t yet seen, then the bald one must be the mistress?”

  Ester turned at a quiet intake of breath behind her. Rivka stood, a half-unwrapped parcel in one hand.

  “You might have found a better advertisement,” Bescós continued. “The doxies are tolerable pretty, but their keeper needs a wig.”

  If ever Ester had thought Rivka beyond hurt, she was corrected by the sound of Rivka’s treads fading to the pantry. A moment later, the soft pounding of a pestle.

  Now Bescós neared Ester’s window. She shrank back—two steps, three, deeper into the dim room. But he addressed her calmly through the glass panes, as though confiding some casual bit of information. His voice was low, the words for her alone. “Mary thinks she’ll sit on her father’s fortune like a bird,” he said, “and lay her brat in a nest of silver. But you don’t care about the money, do you?”

  She didn’t speak.

  “Tell me, are there enough books for you here? Enough heresies of mind and body? An unnatural girl needs not only a man’s stuff, but an entire library to appease her wild appetites.” His voice rose. “Whereas a true maiden—”

  He stopped.

  For an instant he looked dizzy, uncertain of himself.

  Then he continued as though there had been no interruption. “—needs only to trust. And remain pure.”

  A strange certainty pierced Ester: she’s dead. Bescós’s hoped-for love, his maiden of fine quality—their union blocked for a time by her father . . . and now, Ester thought, forever.

  Through the mullioned panes, Bescós looked like a man assembled out of tiles, each laid alongside the next to form the semblance of a man. She thought: he’s partitioned himself like this city—one portion shuttered from another. As Ester watched, he closed his eyes as if in fatigue, held them shut. Then opened them onto the street. It was like witnessing someone waking from a dream to a pitiless landscape, and swiftly calculating an acceptable path through it. So if this is the world . . .

  With a jolt, she thought: it was like witnessing herself waking from a dream.

  Looming closer, Bescós braced one arm at the top of the window, and spoke slowly through the glass. “According to Thomas’s telling,” he said, “John looked sick at the mere mention of you. Your appetites got the best of poor John, did they? Yet even as you try to prove your worth, you disprove it. For only one sort of woman is true, and all others repellent.”

  Her limbs had gone leaden. A line from a sonnet, read in a volume she’d paged at a bookseller’s table, floated dimly to her. Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight.

  From above, a slow scrape of wood on metal, then a foul splash on the pavestones beside Bescós. Mary had emptied a bucket from
her window—urine or slops, or perhaps only dirty wash water. It missed Bescós narrowly, but some of the splash hit his boot and lower leg.

  He jumped, cried out, and for a long minute shook his leg as though terrorized by the filth. In his struggle he appeared on the verge of weeping. It would have been comical, yet it seemed to Ester that she’d never seen a thing more dangerous, and she cringed at the sound of Mary’s loud laughter from above.

  Then all was still. The arch smile Bescós had worn earlier did not reassert itself. He leaned into Ester’s window again, and his expression was wholly somber. Sharply, just once, he knocked on the glass with his signet ring, so hard she thought it would shatter.

  He departed.

  From behind Ester came Rivka’s voice, low and quiet as breathing. “He’s going to bring a mob on us,” she said.

  Ester turned.

  “With someone tired of waiting for what he wants,” Rivka said. “That’s how it starts. That’s how every evil in the world starts.” She gestured, cloth in hand, at the da Costa Mendeses’ silver, their tapestries. “He wants this.”

  Slowly Ester shook her head. “I think what Esteban Bescós wants is dead.”

  But Rivka only closed her own eyes and tapped her eyelids gently, almost caressingly, with two thick fingers. “I’ve seen.” She opened her eyes. “I know.”

  Ester picked up her mending. What difference if he was driven by love of silver or his lost maiden?

  But a wish for silver could be appeased.

  It was several days before Rivka ventured out again, and she was gone hours before she returned. She’d searched out three bakeries before finding one that hadn’t been closed, if not by deaths then by rats—for since the cats had been killed, the rats had multiplied a thousandfold, the storerooms were plundered nightly, and there was no traffic into the city to restock London’s shelves. Rivka didn’t describe what she’d witnessed trawling the city’s streets for bread—but as she stacked six loaves on the shelf, she said softly, “Now this city understands.”