He then turned away as if he would deal with me no more. I was disgusted – to be taunted by common vendors outside of this door, and then to find such disdain amidst the shelter within.
-Who art thou? I asked, with a threat in my tone. I intended to tell my father of this man’s ill-treatment of me, and realized, just as the words left my mouth, that the world’s treatment of me was no longer a care of my father’s, but of William’s. I shivered with the indignity of this truth.
He turned, and there was a smile in his deep brown eyes. - My name is Daniel.
I fixed a cold gaze upon him. -What is thy family name? I demanded.
He did not seem to become flustered at my scrutiny. -Daniel will do, he replied quietly. -And now, my lady, is there some way that I may be of service to thee?
At the bottom of the page was scrawled a note in another person’s handwriting. A bold, black line and an arrow pointed to this area in the text. The words read as follows:
S. dijo: Fije un rato fijo para su estudio ..-....; diga poco y haga mucho, y salude siempre a cada persona con una sonrisa alegre (A : 1:15)
My high school Spanish was rusty, at best, and I could only make out a few of the words – estudio, poco, mucho, siempre – study, little, much, always.
I got up from the counter and walked down the hall to the museum’s library, in search of a Spanish dictionary, but when I reached the doors, they were locked. Frustrated, I returned to my desk. I knew better than to try to use one of the Internet’s online translation programs. Once, years ago, as a lowly exhibition assistant working on a translation for an exhibition of children’s drawings from concentration camps in Poland, the subtleties of the words in Polish that I had attempted to translate online came out completely incorrect – and, of course, made no sense in context – which I did not realize until my boss, Larry, who spoke fluent Polish, kindly pointed it out to me. By then, the labels had already been done, and I spent a very long night recreating them.
Picking up a pen, I wrote down the sentence and made a note on the pad by the side of the counter to ask someone on staff to help me translate it. I then returned to the first set of handwriting and continued along to the next page.
I straightened my shoulders at his rudeness and spoke with a shadow of warning in my voice. – Thou shouldst remember courtesy, I said, drawing myself up to my full height with a deep breath.
-I have no need of such, Daniel replied, for I am not at court.
-It is not only courtiers who require courtesy, I answered quickly, desirous of wounding him with a quick small arrow of my wit. Like thee, I am not at court, but I am the daughter of –
-I know who thou art, he said. -Thou art Mistress Margaret More.
I was startled by his recognition of me, this young man whom I had never before seen, with his voice full of a distant music and his eyes alight with a silent defiance I had not before countenanced in any man.
He spoke again. –Among those who tell of thee, it is said that thou art called the daughter of justice.
I stood back, greatly surprized by his words and the respect in his voice. A faint blush warmed my cheeks and I was stricken by an unfamiliar sensation of disquiet. No man had ever provoked such a response in me, and so I wrapp’d my discomfort in a cloak of wit as I answered:
-And should a daughter of justice be treated so unjustly? I smiled triumphantly, as if my conquest of his ill-temper was assured.
He bowed his head slightly and then raised it to me once again, and the smile in his eyes was genuine. –Forgive me, Mistress More, he said. –Thou art correct, there is no need for such illbehaviour. I can only beg pardon by saying that I was at study, and did not wish to be interrupted.
- Thou art of scholarly mind? I asked him. I could not help myself, for I was most intrigued by one in whose likeness I saw my own desire for knowledge.
-Yes, he said briefly. He looked at the door behind me and was silent. –Now is there something in which I may interest thee? I can only guess that perhaps thou might wish to find a text for thy father, without letting others know of thy errand, since thou hast come unaccompanied and in great haste.
I was stunned at his measure of my motives. -I am sure there was, I told him humbly, but I have forgotten.
He smiled graciously with but a drop of mischief in his eyes. –Then thou must be compelled to return, Mistress More, when thou hast remembered why thou hast come.
-I shall do that, I said, with all of the dignity I could falsely muster, and I swept out of the shop to the mockery of the silver bell over my head. I emerged into the rain, and hastened back along the road to where my father and betrothed waited to accuse me of rebellion, and where my sister waited to accuse me of treachery and falsehood. I sighed as I walked, and upon my return I slipped quietly in the doorway and trod, unheard and light of foot, the steps to my chamber.
Were William to find me, reader, or to look upon these words, I would surely be a bride disgraced, with no hope of the respect and esteem my father craves on my sorrowful behalf. Now, it is only the grace of darkness that lends me its fair self to conceal this story from his eyes. It is late, and my eyes grow dim with fatigue and distress.
Pray for me.
10
I returned home from the museum late that afternoon, with my mind still so focused on the words of the manuscript that I barely noticed what train I was taking, and almost boarded a rerouted weekend express instead of a local. Only the weather woke me from the manuscript’s trance. As I emerged from the station a couple of blocks from our apartment, I noticed the cold had finally forced the rain to surrender to an icy mix of snow and sleet, and the pavements were wet and slippery as I made my way back home and up our front steps.
Even Michael noticed how preoccupied I was. At first, he didn’t ask any questions. He probably assumed that I was still upset about our argument. After a while, he walked into the bedroom, where I was intently reading every Web document on Margaret More that I could scare up.
“Did something happen at work?” he asked. “You seem distracted.”
“I am,” I replied, rubbing my eyes. “I don’t even think I’ve had a chance to tell you about this artifact.”
“The one you mentioned the other night? From the mystery donor?”
“That’s the one. It’s a diary of some sort.” I stood, stretched, and took from the printer the sheet of papers I had printed out. “Anyway, I’ve been reading it – carefully, since it’s in really bad shape. And if the authorship really is what it appears to be, it was written by the daughter of Thomas More, one of King Henry VIII’s advisors who was executed for treason and eventually was named a saint by the Church. I’m trying to find out what I can about her, so I might be able to have some clue as to whether or not it’s authentic.”
He seemed intrigued. “I know who Thomas More is. He was one of the greatest – maybe the greatest - legal mind of the Tudor period. What have you been able to find?”
“Not a whole lot.” We walked slowly down the hall and into the living room, and sat down together on the sofa. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information available about her, and what there is only relates to the fact that she was her father’s daughter, more than anything else. There is one fact that I find very interesting, however, from a scholar named Richard Marius, which I found quoted in an online biography of Thomas More. Listen to this.” I read from the paper in my hand. “Once, as Thomas More was conversing with the Bishop of Exeter, he accidentally took a letter from his daughter, Margaret, out of his pocket. The bishop took it and looked at it and saw that it was written by a woman. After reading it, he declared he would not have believed it possible for a woman to write such a thing, unless More himself had assured him that it was so.’”
I put down the paper and looked at Michael. “In some way, that statement goes along with what she writes – if she actually wrote it, that is — in this book. She talks about being a scholar, and a writer, and the fact that her father wanted he
r to marry a man that she didn’t like or trust at all. And then, another interesting thing surfaced today while I was reading.” I walked over to where I had left my work bag by the door, and removed the note I had out of from the manuscript from the inner pocket. I walked back into the living room and handed it to Michael. “How’s your Spanish?”
Michael took the note and peered at it. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I took Latin in high school.
“You’re no help,” I told him affectionately. “But what I wrote down here is what suddenly turned up, in what appears to be another person’s handwriting, in the margins of the story.”
“Is it some sort of note about the text?”
“I’m not sure, because I don’t know what it says. But tomorrow I’ll ask someone at work to translate.” I leaned back on the couch. “I’d just love to know whether or not I’m dealing with the something authentic. I know we should send it out to the lab, but it’s so expensive to send it to the better ones. And I’d hate for anything to happen to it.”
“Can’t you tell how old it is by comparing it to another artifact?” he asked.
“Maybe. I mean, we use all sorts of techniques to date things from the early part of the century, even some nineteenth century documents a few years back. But figuring out the age of a piece of paper is always the worst. The process is rigorous, and best left to the scientists. We know that they can tell from the elements of the paper’s content – the amounts of linen, fiber, cotton, or even tree pulp - approximately how old an object is. But there are a few different kinds of paper in this book – there’s one that is really thin, almost falling apart, and another, which I just discovered today, that’s in somewhat better shape, but still, not anything I would want to subject to the rigors of light or heat or acid.
“And the endpaper,” I continued, “looks Italian, even though the text says the writer is writing from somewhere in London. When we were looking at it the other day, Aviva said she thinks the endpaper is hand-painted, which means we might be dealing with a piece that is, in part, more fine art than artifact.”
He seemed to be thinking for a moment, and then asked, “Can you take the manuscript to another museum – maybe an art museum - and see if they have some sort of experience with this kind of object? Surely they’ve seen things like it before?”
I sighed. “You’d be surprised. If it’s something significant, I don’t want to tip our hand. So many institutions are looking to get their hands on big-ticket items.”
“But who would be nasty enough to lay claim to an artifact that would take the spotlight away from a Holocaust museum?”
“Oh, just about any institution trying to increase their attendance numbers. Not to mention contributions and financial support from members, board members, et cetera. The more attention you get in the press, the better it looks for the board members whose names are on the letterhead. It’s like they say in Development: prestige empties pockets. Or maybe it’s ‘prestige opens purses.’ Something like that.”
He grinned. “I see your point.”
“I suppose there are people around whom we could trust to take a look at it,” I said thoughtfully. “But honestly, only Aviva and I have seen it so far. We haven’t even shown it to anyone in the department, or even to our boss. Before I do anything, I really need to talk about it with Aviva, and see if she has any ideas about what our next steps should be.”
“What has she said about it?”
“She’s very cautious. Overly cautious, if you ask me. For some reason, she seems convinced that it’s a hoax. That someone associated with the ‘religious right’ might be trying to pull a fast one on us.”
“Well, Thomas More is a Catholic saint,” Michael reasoned, “in spite of the fact that he was an attorney.” I grinned at him. “Aviva might be right.”
“I don’t know,” I looked at Michael, and laid a hand on the soft fabric of his blue-jeaned knee. “She does have a good point, however, which is that I sure can’t figure out how this artifact has any sort of relationship to Judaism or Jewish heritage.”
“And the Spanish doesn’t exactly point you in that direction,” he agreed. “Still, as you said, it came from a survivor. And something that old is pretty cool.”
I nodded. “So much of what we deal with only relates to the war years. It’s interesting to be focused on a different era of history.”
“I think that’s great,” he said, placing his hand over mine. “Imagine all the new ideas, and new history for you to learn about. A great, big, beautiful world just might be out there, waiting for you to emerge from the sadness.”
“All right, let’s settle down, people,” I said, as I walked into the conference room and raised my voice to be heard over the voices of seven junior registrars and curators who, as usual on a Monday morning, were busy relating stories of the various forms of mischief they had gotten themselves into over the weekend.
I was late for work that morning as the result of a train delay, even though I left the house early, after realizing right around midnight that I had totally neglected my usual preparations for the morning staff meeting during the time I had been in the office on Sunday.
Having been so preoccupied with the manuscript, I forgot that today was my day to lead the meeting. And then, when I arrived, there was no sign of Aviva, and when I checked my voicemail she had left a message saying that she was going to a doctor’s appointment. It was already twenty after nine, and so I gathered my notes and the assignment charts from my desk, hurriedly grabbed my half-full coffee cup, and walked down the hall to the conference room. I was definitely cranky and I felt unprepared, but I was determined not to let them see me sweat. From my pocket, I took the piece of paper on which I had scrawled the Spanish words, and unfolded it and tucked it into my notebook.
“Sorry I’m late. I hope everyone had a good weekend,” I said, putting my cup down on the table and taking my seat at the front of the room. “I know we’re getting started a little late this morning, but before you give me your rotation status reports, and before I give out the catalog database assignments, which I know you are so very eager to receive on this early Monday morning —” there was a little laughter “— here’s a quick question. Who here speaks Spanish?”
Fern, the youngest and most earnest of the curators, raised her hand. “I studied abroad for a year in Spain.”
There was a distinct murmur of scorn from two of the less motivated staff members. “Josh and Meredith, settle down,” I said. “Fern, thank you for volunteering. I need this translated, please.”
I opened the notebook and passed the paper down to her, and watched as she unfolded it and looked at it.
“’S. dijo,’” she read aloud. “’Fije un rato fijo para su estudio …diga poco y haga mucho, y salude siempre a cada persona con una sonrisa alegre’.” Easy. The translation would be “’S. – whoever that is – says: set a fixed time for studying’ – and then there seems to be a word missing here. The rest of it is ‘say little and do much, and greet every person with a glad smile.’ I don’t know what the letter A and these numbers – 1:15 - mean. But it looks like a citation of some kind.”
“Set a fixed time for study?” Robert asked, looking up suddenly from the status report he had been reading. “I recognize that. It’s from Pirke Avot –Ethics of the Fathers. Hang on a second.”
As he pulled a Blackberry out of his pocket, I watched his hand brush against the fringes of his talit katan –the garment that marked him as religiously observant - which he wore every day. “Don’t laugh, but I’ve got the online Encyclopedia Judaica stored in here.”
I smiled. I liked Robert, who was older than most of the others. He was extremely well-versed in Jewish studies, and definitely the person I hoped would be taking over some aspects of the upcoming new exhibition in Aviva’s stead while she was out on maternity leave.
Robert had trained as a historian, but since we already had a senior historian on staff, who definitely wasn’t
going anywhere for a long time, he willingly learned how to be a registrar. He had been an exhibition assistant on a team that I led the year before, and during some of the late nights during installation, he told me a little about himself. I had assumed he was born into a religious family because of the way he dressed, wearing tzitzit and a kipah every day. But I was wrong; his father was Jewish, and his mother was not, and he had converted to Judaism about ten years earlier.
“Here it is,” he said. “Chapter one, verse fifteen. ‘Shammai said: Set a fixed time for the study of Torah; say little and do much, and always greet every person with a cheerful smile.’”
“That’s what it says?” I was mystified.
“According to what this paper says, and what Fern translated,” Robert told me, looking over the paper she had handed to him, “the ‘S’ stands for Shammai, one of the great rabbinic sages, to whom the comment is attributed, and the word ‘Torah’ is the one that’s missing from the rest of the quote.” He looked puzzled. “You found this written somewhere in Spanish? What’s it from?”
I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should tell them about the manuscript. I knew how excited it would make them, and also thought about the time and research they would put into helping me to authenticate it. But they all had a lot of work to do for the new exhibition, and I realized I wanted to talk to Aviva about first informing Larry about this artifact. I decided to say nothing to them, for now.
“It’s nothing. Just some research I’ve been doing. But you guys have so many hidden talents,” I said with a broad smile. “It would be a shame to let them go to waste. Now, let’s get started with the status reports. Fern, will you go first?”
11
“Aviva, guess what? There’s a Jewish connection in the manuscript,” I said jubilantly, when I saw her sitting at her desk after the meeting. She didn’t respond. I touched her shoulder. “Aviva?”
She turned to face me, her face swollen, her eyes red. I stepped back. “Oh, my God,” I said. “What happened? Is it the baby? What did the doctor say?”
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