Though perhaps the cheer part was something one attained only after completing a Ph.D. Asking English postgraduates How’s your work?, Aaron had discovered, elicited only some variation on Bloody torture. Nor was this followed, as it would have been in the United States, by an invitation to confide about his own struggles, or perhaps even go for a commiserative drink or run in the park. If there was camaraderie on offer here in London, Aaron didn’t know how to access it. Or perhaps the English postgraduates simply didn’t like him. In fact the absolute freedom of being a postgrad here—no classes or exams, just acres of time in which to research and write—had swiftly revealed itself to be a glorified form of orphanhood. Which was why he’d been startled to be hailed in the hall by Darcy, even if all Darcy wanted to discuss was the possibility of a favor for a colleague with some intriguing papers to sort. The whole exchange had taken perhaps a minute; upon obtaining Aaron’s assent, Darcy had clapped him mildly on the shoulder—Good man—then turned to greet a passing colleague, dismissing Aaron. Was the conversation, Aaron wondered only later, a test? Did Darcy suspect just how far Aaron was from any sort of meaningful progress in his own work—and if Darcy did, was this invitation to take up a temporary project in fact the English version of dissertation euthanasia? He should have refused.
Now, as the afternoon traffic bore them out of the parts of London he knew and into genteel suburbs, Aaron couldn’t escape the feeling of being trapped, carried against his will away from a duty he desperately needed to fulfill. Or was it a sickbed he needed to attend to? There, back in the part of London they’d now left in their wake, was the hidden corner of the library he’d haunted nearly every waking moment for the past fourteen months. Shakespeare and the Marrano Jews: the research that yielded nothing coherent, just tantalizing bits of information that resisted his every effort to shape them into an argument . . . and that would, in the space of even this brief absence, be cooling into unmalleable rock.
Helen Watt’s car, a spare navy-blue Volkswagen, had an unprotected feel that derived somehow from the absence of either amenities or clutter. No food wrappers, no envelopes with directions scribbled on the back. No tape or CD player, just a simple radio. When he cranked his window, the flimsy passenger-side handle had the stiffness of disuse.
“The documents,” Aaron said. “Are they primarily in Portuguese or in Hebrew?”
She tooted her horn at a sluggish sedan and completed a broad right turn before answering. “Unknown.”
“And the house where the documents are,” Aaron said. “When did you say it was—”
“1661.”
He didn’t do himself the indignity of persisting. In fact his desire to ask questions, the thickening of his pulse that had accompanied her description of the documents in her staid book-lined office, had died on the slow walk from her office to her car. A substantial walk, at such a pace. She did not use a disabled parking space, nor did she have the license plates, though he was certain she’d qualify. She soldiered along in slacks and blouse and unbuttoned coat, satchel on one shoulder. Unadorned, save the thin gold chain securing the dark-rimmed bifocals that swayed at her prominent breastbone; apparently oblivious to the wind that gripped the exposed back of Aaron’s neck. One foot, in its ordinary brown oxford, dragging, as though reluctant to follow the course she had commanded.
He had only the vaguest idea where Richmond upon Thames was—upon the Thames, he presumed—but understood he’d further erode his position with Helen by asking. So he merely watched from the window as the stores thinned through Chiswick and gave way to homes. Those shops that still cropped up here and there had turned resoundingly upscale. This part of London seemed to be built entirely of brick, in colors ranging from deep red-brown to pale orange. A row of stately houses slid past Aaron’s window, each fronted by a brick wall topped with winter-dulled moss. Pebbled drives led through the walls, inside which Aaron glimpsed ivy and climbing tree-vines, and yards paved in patterns of more moss-speckled brick. Bordering the side streets were strict lines of those bizarre English trees, pruned so the ends of their naked limbs looked like balled fists ready to take a swing at the clouded sky, should it encroach.
Helen piloted up a long, curving street lined by boutiques and small restaurants and one arty-looking movie theater; then into a maze of narrow residential streets that hugged the slope of a hill. Somewhere below, Aaron noted, obscured by ivy and the occasional tree and more brick walls, was the river.
The street where Helen finally slowed was more modest than some they’d passed, and was lined with homes—some sizable, others small—all undeniably old and all with well-tended yards enclosed in brick and ironwork. There were no pedestrians—evidently those residents who were not at work or school had found livelier attractions elsewhere. On one side of the street, incongruously, two storefronts punctuated the line of houses. One was a narrow grocery that didn’t look up to par with what Aaron had glimpsed elsewhere in the town. The other was a pub named Prospero’s, a small establishment with a faded black-and-mauve façade. It looked empty, despite the lights on inside—a business, Aaron thought, that could clearly use an infusion of hip.
And you would be able to tell them how to be hip? He imagined Marisa’s bracing laughter, and it warmed him, and at the same time tightened some ratchet inside him so that he grimaced.
The wrench of the parking brake cut the silence.
Helen reached behind him and drew her cane from the backseat.
The house she led him toward was far larger than the others on the street, a fact initially obscured by the tangle of trees in the garden and the stone wall’s heavy coating of moss, which felt not like a mark of distinction, but of neglect. As Helen Watt struggled with the gate’s heavy latch, Aaron turned to survey the scene: a lifeless neighborhood, a dead-end street where Aaron had been sent on a dead-end mission in support of someone else’s work. This whole enterprise was going to be a disaster, a distraction he ought to extract himself from at the earliest convenience. He let the wash of his mood carry him as far as it would.
Trailing Helen at length through the gate, he glanced back one final time at the pub across the way. Prospero’s. How fitting. The one play of Shakespeare’s he’d never understood.
He followed her up the path, her cane leaving small depressions in the withered grass.
The building was made of faded red brick—but now that Aaron looked closely, he could see what hadn’t been obvious from the street: the chipped bricks revealed startling variegations, yellows and pale oranges coming through, patches of green moss or dark brown staining. The façade, three towering stories, was mottled with age. It was clear this building was older than the venerable houses to either side—and that it had once been grand. Side walls, topped here and there, with large round pieces of ornamental stonework that looked like nothing so much as upside-down pineapples, extended from either side of the house as though opening to embrace an abundant property; but the walls were truncated at the neighbors’ fences on either side, giving them a forlorn, unrequited look.
Beneath Aaron’s feet, a path had emerged: small unmatched stones of different shapes and shades, black and brown and gray, square and round, mortared together and so smooth with age they would have given away the building’s antiquity even if it weren’t for the windows that now loomed before Aaron. What was the word for that shape? Like the spade on a deck of cards, the tall narrow windows swooped in at the top and pointed sharply upward. They were tightly divided in that crisscross diamond pattern that so frustrated the view—Aaron had been inside such historic buildings, had tried peering out through such heavily sectioned glass, only to get the feeling he was trying to see out of a prison. It was something he could never get used to in England: here, sandwiched between other houses on a residential street, sat a building so obviously old he wanted to gawk. In the United States a building like this would have been preserved as a museum. He didn’t wonder that someone wanted to turn it into an art gallery—though he wouldn’t
bet a penny on its success. The whole neighborhood seemed sunk in a hundred-year sleep.
Helen banged the knocker heavily on the arched door. It was answered a moment later by an attractive blond woman dressed in stylish charcoal gray, her smooth, shiny hair in a bun and her narrow hips accented by a mauve belt.
Perhaps the street wasn’t as lifeless as he’d thought.
She shook Helen’s hand with a polite nod. “Bridgette Easton,” she said when she saw Aaron, and he extended a hand with an appreciative smile.
The building was cooler than he’d expected, and smelled of old ash. A free-standing heater ticked quietly from across the entryway, whatever heat it generated vanishing into the gallery above. Aaron caught a dim impression of the third story—a carved balcony ringing the entryway, wide doorways hinting at spacious rooms beyond.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” Bridgette said. She led them swiftly across the entrance hall, past boxed artwork and a card table bearing an open laptop, deeper into the house. “I need to leave just now, but do make yourselves comfortable.” There was something about her manner—a hungry energy beneath the upper-crust polish. She turned and bestowed on Aaron an appraising smile. He watched the two thoughts cross her face: That he was good-looking. And that he was Jewish.
He smiled at her again, this time openly flirtatious. She blushed slightly, and he felt amused and then dulled, as though he’d scored a victory that did not interest him.
“Coffee is in the kitchen,” Bridgette said. “Please help yourselves.”
Aaron followed Helen past a capacious stone hearth set in a long wall of decorative paneling, some sections adorned with simple fluted borders, others carved with intricate wooden wreaths. Their footsteps echoed in the unfurnished room. He trailed her through a large doorway to the left, on the other side of which rose a broad wooden staircase.
And there he stopped. Nothing of the building’s exterior—not even the stone walls, with their once-giant wingspan—had prepared him for this. The staircase was opulence written in wood. The broad treads ascended between dark carved panels featuring roses and vines and abundant fruit baskets; gazing down from high walls, their faces full of sad, sweet equanimity, were more carved angels. And halfway up the stairs, two arched windows let in a white light so blinding and tremulous, Aaron could swear it had weight. Windows to bow down before, their wrought-iron levers and mullions casting a mesmerizing grid across the carved wood: light and shadow and light again.
Helen had lifted her cane and was pointing.
He turned away from the windows, into the nook alongside the base of the staircase, and saw the gap opened in the paneling.
It was easy to see what had happened. The electrician had simply identified the easiest way to access the space beneath the stair, and had worked open a locked panel—a small and modestly decorated section of the staircase’s side wall, with a small keyhole cut into its corner. The panel, now slid to one side, was still partly visible—and to judge by the sawdust speckling its surface, its keyhole had received an enthusiastic working over by whatever tool the electrician had used to prize open the lock.
Inside, in the dim cavity, he could see papers.
“Wow.” He expelled a long breath. “Nobody discovered this till now?”
Helen’s voice sounded almost reverent. “This house is almost three hundred and fifty years old. It must have a half dozen hidden cupboards, jib doors in the paneling to hide the passageways the servants used, heaven knows what else.”
Aaron nodded. A plain panel tucked in a shadowed corner, eclipsed by the front entrance and the distracting grandeur of the staircase, wasn’t likely to capture anyone’s attention.
“Apparently the aunt kept a side table positioned in front of it”—Helen indicated a small antique-looking end table standing beneath the nook’s small window—“and for all we know, her own parents or even grandparents had placed it there.”
“Still,” said Aaron, “three hundred and fifty years, and no one thought to jimmy the lock?”
Her voice sharpened. “How closely do you look at what’s right in front of you?”
He waited a moment. In the silence the accusation dissipated, and he shrugged it off. Something about him, it was true, did seem to make certain people angry. Certain women. He generally found it amusing.
In truth, he saw how the panel could have remained unopened by the house’s various owners—how a few halfhearted attempts to pry open a locked panel could subside easily into That’s the panel that doesn’t open. If no one had the key . . . if no one had any reason to believe there was anything inside . . . ? Time and history might march on, but human nature didn’t change.
Aaron knelt in front of the opening, which measured roughly one foot by two feet. Through it two shelves were visible, packed with obvious care. An archive in miniature: leather-bound spines lined up meticulously alongside the brittle edges of loose documents.
He leaned closer.
Heavily lettered parchment bindings flush with stab-sewn quires. Here and there glimpses of broken and crumbled wax seals in faded browns and reds. Had he ever dreamt this? He felt certain he had. It was as though someone had reached through the centuries with a message: Here it is. I left this for you. As though an ancient library had breached the border into now, into the life of Aaron Levy, who had not until this moment understood how powerfully he needed something like this.
He extended his fingertips.
“Wash your hands,” Helen snapped from behind him.
He could not bring himself to look at her. He found a narrow green-painted washroom behind a paneled door. When he returned, Helen had made no move toward the documents.
There was a single loose page in the gap on the shelf. She nodded him forward, as though toward a skittish animal.
“Take it,” she said.
He couldn’t understand why she didn’t simply reach for it herself. A test? If she thought he’d tolerate having to prove himself at every turn, there would be a confrontation in the near future. For an instant he met Helen Watt’s eyes. Cornflower blue. The even features and pale complexion of a privileged English face, blanched of anything he recognized as emotion.
Reaching a hand cautiously into the stairwell, he stopped abruptly. He checked his balance, one palm against the solid wall to his left. He’d felt, for just an instant, alarmed by the fearsome weight of his own body—as though he might stumble forward and crush the fragile documents, the image like snuffing out a life.
A heartbeat later, though, he’d shaken the feeling—and reflexively began to compose how he would describe the sight before him to Marisa.
The shelves were perfectly packed, he’d write. Like a gift someone had prepared for us. He moved his hand toward the shelf, and as he did so he told himself, Mine is the first human hand in more than 350 years. He touched the loose page. The paper was raspy but pliable between his fingers. Pulling it gently from the shelf, he saw it was a letter, in Portuguese. He read the Hebrew date, Heshvan 5420, and he calculated the English date: October 1657. The salutation read To the esteemed Menasseh ben Israel. The handwriting was eloquent—elegant and decisive on the cream-colored page.
It was signed by the same HaCoen Mendes who had written the letter Helen Watt had described.
At Helen’s direction, Aaron set it down on a small table positioned beneath the nook’s narrow mullioned window, modest cousin to the mighty windows on the landing above. But as Aaron pulled up one of the Eastons’ rickety-looking ancient chairs, Helen turned him back.
“That book too,” she said.
He returned to the stairwell. Reaching in again, he withdrew the stiff leather-bound book that was next on the shelf. It was a thin volume, the edges of the pages marbled in dull purple and black, and well worn.
The last person to hold it: dead three centuries.
He stepped toward Helen, conscious of the radiating warmth of his own body, the thrum of his pulse in his temples. For a moment, he lingered beside th
e table. Then slowly, ceremoniously, set the book down.
She flicked on the small lamp, its glow weak beside the stark diamonds of light shed by the window.
The cover of the book was embossed in Portuguese. Livro-razao, it said. Ledger. He opened it. Abruptly, a flurry of brown ash assaulted him—in his face, his hair, a bitter sediment on his tongue. “Jesus!” he spat.
“Careful!” she snapped at the same time.
A fine dust clung to his lashes. His fingers, still holding the ledger half open, were coated as well—dark with the remains of now irretrievable words. Something living had just died at his hands. Tears of shame prickled at his eyelids and he shook his head as though against the dust. Then shook it again, as his revulsion with himself rebounded in an instant toward Helen. Straightening, he glared at her.
Her eyes were on the book. “Iron gall ink,” she said after a moment.
Following her gaze, he understood that the damage had been done before he ever touched the ledger. The pages were like Swiss cheese. Letters and words excised at random, holes eaten through the page over the centuries by the ink itself. What remained, blurred brown ink on thick paper, appeared to be a detailed accounting of a household’s expenses, the pockmarked entries clustered in Portuguese and Spanish and Hebrew, the handwriting varied. He didn’t dare touch the page. Moving as gently as he could, he closed the book; perhaps something could be salvaged in a more controlled environment. He spat the dust quietly into his sleeve.
“The letter.” Her voice was tense.
His words rang with petulance, surprising even him: “Maybe you ought to handle this one.”
Her gray hair had fallen into her eyes. There was a silence, long enough for him to feel the first sting of shame. Then, her face impassive, she raised one hand in the air.
Dumbly he watched Helen Watt’s palm and saw it waver incomprehensibly—the thick fingers working the air as though to spell words in some obscure sign language.
The Weight of Ink Page 4
