The Weight of Ink

by Rachel Kadish

  “Your commentaries about the Torah,” she said. “Or the Mishnah. We’ll print them. Your words will be preserved. They’ll go out to other students, even far from here.”

  A great stillness came over him. When he spoke, something had kindled in his voice. “Perhaps,” he said, “my words might indeed help students see the wisdom in the teachings of those greater than I.” He listened long to the fire. Yet a moment later the spirit animating him seemed to subside. “No, Ester,” he said softly.

  “But why?”

  “The learned Rabbi Sasportas’s authority is new, and tender. It would not be right for me to raise my own voice now.” The rabbi shaped his next words carefully. “Surely too the Mahamad must approve all publications issued by Jews of this synagogue, and would not allow the printing of mine without Sasportas’s approval. I should not wish him to think I were endeavoring to supplant him.”

  Nor, Ester knew, would the rabbi wish to give the famed Sasportas an opportunity to step into the path of sin by blocking a rival’s publication. Never did an ill word regarding Sasportas escape the rabbi’s lips, though Sasportas, in all his months in London, had not called on the rabbi. Neither did the rabbi make judgment of Sasportas’s teachings—though on more than one Sabbath, peering through a gap in the curtain, Ester had watched the rabbi’s face tighten as Sasportas, with his thin nose and high forehead and mellifluous voice, recited a magnificent sermon that praised, condemned, and promised, yet gave no warmth.

  The silence muffling the room was impenetrable, London’s din a distant memory. Palm to palm the rabbi raised his hands, and lightly pressed them together.

  “Perhaps,” Ester ventured, “the press in Amsterdam might print it? I’ll write to Rabbi Aboab.”

  A ripple of longing disturbed the rabbi’s expression. She could feel his wish moving in the still room: To teach. To be heard.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He’d permit it. She blushed at his simple gratitude. “All your pupils will be pleased,” she said. “They wish your words to spread.”

  A pained smile lit the rabbi’s face. “Not all, Ester. But I thank you nonetheless.”

  She waited. The rabbi didn’t speak. “You refer to de Spinoza?” she said.

  The rabbi nodded.

  Would he rebuff her curiosity? “What sort,” she said slowly, “was he?”

  Rivka entered with the rabbi’s coffee. He waited until she had departed to answer—then spoke slowly. “I knew always, even when de Spinoza was a boy, that he exceeded me in intelligence. Yet could I only have imparted to him more of the beauty of our learning, I might have saved him from the path he chose. I failed to do so.” The rabbi paused, then continued with conviction. “But what a sage he could have become, Ester . . . and still might become, if only he wished it. Had they not banished him, he might yet be one of our great lights.” The rabbi turned his face intently toward Ester. “He visited me once, just before the ban. I’d sent word I wished to speak with him. I felt he might yet remain among us, if he only mastered his desire to so sharply rebuke those he thought in error. Yet though he addressed his former teacher with extraordinary politeness, he heeded naught I said. To my face he even carried his heresies further than I’d feared, further than I believe the other rabbis knew. Deus sive Natura: God or Nature. This was the spike with which he would pierce our tradition. God and Nature, he claimed, were indistinguishable—and he went even beyond this, he took pains to explain to me that we therefore are creatures determined by nature, lacking will of our own. In one breath he denied miracles, the holiness of the Torah, the soul’s endurance, heavenly reward or punishment. I believe, Ester, that in speaking to me thus he felt himself to be offering me a gift of truth.” A stain of regret on the rabbi’s face. “I could not persuade him.”

  The sounds from the kitchen had died, creating a fragile lull.

  “It is a shame upon the Amsterdam community,” the rabbi said, “that they could not hold one of their own sons. They would not bear his views of God. I endeavored to dissuade them. I went to the synagogue and said to all those assembled, the rabbis and the men of the Mahamad, ‘God himself has not struck de Spinoza down. Indeed, God countenances his rebellion, allowing de Spinoza to continue to walk this earth—for God knows truth always defeats misunderstanding. So must we welcome even a heretic in the byways of our own congregation until he sees truth.’ Yet even without knowledge of the new heresies de Spinoza had confessed to me, they closed him out from life. They said, ‘God’s jealousy will smoke against him.’”

  Ester’s heart beat strangely. She spoke, her voice too avid. “Which of de Spinoza’s heresies so enraged the rabbis?”

  The rabbi raised a hand as though to deflect the question. Then his hand fell to his lap. Quietly he pronounced the blasphemy. “That God does not intervene on our behalf.”

  Yet in the same instant, something within Ester said, That God is afraid. She barely understood her own thought—yet it pinioned her.

  In a rush she said, “I wish it could come to pass that you might speak with de Spinoza further. To impart more of your thinking.”

  A faint smile crossed the rabbi’s pale lips. “I do not believe, Ester, that my arguments could win him. But I would dearly like to hear my old pupil’s voice. I would like to tell him, at the least, that I endeavored to persuade the others to let him stay.”

  She understood that he’d say no more.

  Yet as she settled a blanket across his knees, and placed his neglected cup of coffee into his thin hands, a question rose in her: what if she herself could converse with de Spinoza—a man who dared challenge the rabbis?

  She knew in an instant what she’d ask. She’d demand explanation for what none, not even the rabbi, had yet been able to explain to her: how a just God might willingly make a youth—a child—an instrument of death. Isaac, her Isaac, was all the proof she needed that God was either indifferent to human life, or else must have no power to alter its course. Had de Spinoza come to believe God—God-or-Nature—indifferent? The God the tradition spoke of must necessarily wish for the well-being of His creations. Either there was no such God, then . . . or perhaps there existed only a God who could do nothing to alter the world’s evils.

  Then did God quake in helpless fear at the roar of fire, the cry of a mob? Did God too tremble at times with rage and confusion?

  It was for the rabbi, she told herself, that she added to her letter to Amsterdam an inquiry about contacting de Spinoza. Should the response be positive, she’d surprise Rabbi HaCoen Mendes with permission to write to his former pupil. So she persuaded herself, as she addressed the letter to one of the very Amsterdam rabbis who had banished de Spinoza. And perhaps, she reasoned as she watched the ink dry and lose its shine, the Amsterdam community’s ferocity toward de Spinoza had been in part a show, meant to serve as a warning to others. For could those rabbis truly be possessed of such fury for a fellow Jew—for his mere ideas? Wasn’t such lack of tolerance the manner of the Christians, rather than the Jews?

  She sealed the letter with a pang. None yet had been able to answer the questions that blew in her sometimes like hail. She’d seized now on the hope that the heretic de Spinoza might.

  She’d carried the letter to the courier this morning, her brother’s words rumbling within her even as she walked, forgiving her. You’re like a coin made out of stone . . . a house made out of honeycombs or feathers or maybe glass. If only Isaac’s impish spirit could steal its way into her, replacing the clenched, balking soul she herself possessed. The wrong one of them had lived, for Isaac had been finer than she.

  She’d sent the letter to Amsterdam; there was no calling it back.

  She stood at the threshold, the Mahamad’s pamphlet in her hand . . . nor shall they allow strangers to see their hair but instead shall keep it covered on the byways of the city. Nor shall the members of the community take their entertainment in the theaters.

  Stepping indoors, she closed the heavy door behind her and sh
ed her cloak; then dropped the pamphlet into the rabbi’s fire and watched as its edges curled. Yellow flames with dark cores danced through the words, two at a time, ten at a time. Then the page heaved, blackened and whitened at once, and dissolved.

  “It’s a puzzle.”

  A soft sound escaped her. She’d thought the rabbi asleep.

  He sat in the shadowed corner. His face was raised toward the empty light of the window across from his chair. He reminded her of a bird awaiting a current that would lift him into the white sky. He spoke softly. “Why does God create in fire a hunger for paper . . .”

  She tensed.

  “. . . and yet that hunger is never sated while the fire lives?”

  He waited for her response, then sighed. “I will pray to understand God’s mysteries.”

  “I was burning a proclamation of the Mahamad,” she said softly. “It regarded only women’s clothing and theater and such matters.”

  “I am certain,” said the rabbi, “that you burn only what must be burned.”

  She didn’t answer. She let the noise from beyond the window reign. A laden dray passing down the narrow street, a cart edging past in the opposite direction. A clamor of iron-clad wheels on stone. “A woman visited here while you were out,” the rabbi continued. “The widow Isabella Mendoza. She’s in London to see a cousin, but wished to speak to me. She claimed she’d sent more than one letter this past year proposing that she find a match for you. She was sorely insulted to receive no reply.

  “Perhaps,” the rabbi said, “her letters were lost in the delivery?”

  Outside, a vendor calling for kitchen scraps: Any kitchen stuff have you, maids, any kitchen stuff, any—

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He considered, then nodded. “I believe you, Ester. And forgive.”

  She waited.

  “I told her I would think about her offer and give my reply.”

  She stiffened, her spine a stave. She pushed her palms away from her body as though to shove away the words. “I don’t want it,” she said. “Not now.”

  The rabbi’s face was turned toward her. She felt the growing weight of his thoughts.

  Could she walk out right now without his knowledge? Leave him to address the empty room?

  “Then what is your wish for the future?” he said.

  She spoke more quickly than she’d intended. “I have no wishes.”

  A flicker of a smile crossed his face at her defiance, but gave way to solemnity. “But what of marriage?” he said.

  The sounds from the street had drained away.

  “I will die,” said the rabbi in the silence.

  She took a step toward the door but could not bring herself to leave him alone.

  “This household will dissolve,” he said. “My nephew will not maintain it after my death.” He raised a hand to his temple, and his splayed fingers prisoned his face. “I’ve been selfish. I’ve ignored your well-being for the sake of my own.”

  “But—”

  He lowered his hand. “The skills you’ve practiced here are useless to a wife. They will repel suitors, as I’ve known. And yet I’ve let you continue, and so dimmed your prospects. Ester, you are”—he gestured—“a remarkable pupil. Perhaps you don’t know it, but I, who have taught many, do.” His mouth worked. “To study with an able mind is to escape prison, for a time.”

  With a resolve that filled her with dread, he continued. “I so prized your love for learning and my own, I let myself forget the cost to you. Marry, Ester. You have my permission, my urging. And my apology.”

  “For what?”

  “For allowing you to blight your life.”

  “It was my wish,” she said. “It is my wish.”

  He shook his head. “It’s fear that speaks in you now. You’ve lost much, so you fear losing this home as well. I understand. But Ester, there is no other future for you. After my death, Rivka can go on to wash or bake or labor in the household of a wealthy family. And you? Is your constitution strong enough to labor all your days for bread? Rivka thinks it isn’t, and I believe she speaks honestly. She reports you grow dizzy with the exertions such labor requires.” Slowly, slowly, he shook his head. “I cannot be selfish any longer. I cannot condemn you to such a life or such a death.”

  His words closed on her, a heavy lid.

  “In years to come,” he said softly, “you’ll be glad of the choice. You’ll have someone to see after you in your old age, Ester, as I’ve had you.” He turned in his seat, and raised a hand toward her. “I won’t deny you the blessing that you and Rivka have given me. I say it even though I know the loss of our study together will grieve you.” He pressed his lips together. “It grieves me.”

  “Perhaps,” he began, and halted. “Perhaps long after I’m dead, after you have raised children, if it is the will of God, you may find some small leisure for study once more.”

  She spoke, the words hollow. “You’ll be left in darkness.”

  He nodded. Then added, “I’ll do what is in my power to secure you a good match.”

  She laughed aloud.

  Startled, he seemed to choose his words with care. “Your mother was spoken of as a beauty. Surely you cannot be so ill favored that a husband wouldn’t wish your care.”

  How strange that the rabbi could know her these years, yet have no notion of the color of her eyes or complexion. “My form is neither pleasing nor displeasing,” she said. “But I’ve let the world see how little I care for its verdict.”

  “The widow Mendoza,” he said slowly, “tells me there is some young man of the community who, she promises, won’t shun you for the work we’ve done together, provided you now turn your attention away from it to tend his home. She was careful not to give me his name, as neither I nor the young man in question has yet employed her or agreed upon a fee. So at the moment, Ester, I have only her word on the matter. But I think, whether or not her meddling was wished for, she’s sincere in believing a match might be possible.”

  The rabbi’s face was inscrutable. The fire beside him had settled to coals. Ester made no move to revive it.

  “I understand well your wish to study, Ester, but you must consider your choices. I cannot pretend God created you a man, who might earn his keep as a scholar.” He paused. “God has planted in us endless hungers. Yet we master them in order to live. So I was forced to master my own wishes, after the loss of my sight made it impossible that I would become the scholar I wished to be, or the father of a family.” His voice had dropped to nearly a whisper. “I’m sorry. I led you to believe you could be a scholar. You were a fine one.”

  A helpless fury took her. “As were you,” she said. “But now there will be none to write the words from your lips.”

  He bowed his head. “I won’t force you to marry, Ester. But neither will you scribe for me any longer.” In the thin light from the window his skin was almost translucent. “In my selfishness I’ve sinned against you. I ask your forgiveness.”

  In a blinding swath of tears she rose, not knowing where she went. She took her cloak and left, the door standing open behind her.

  Outside, a city torn by warm gusts. The heavy sea-coal smoke had lifted visibly, like a draped fabric suddenly lofted high over the city. Above the street, sheets of it shredded slowly, floating like the tissue of some living thing. The noxious odors of the kilns and tanneries were being blown far off to the countryside today, it seemed, and a fresh wind was blowing in, leaving the air bright and confusing. All of London was in the streets, nags pulling clattering carts to the distracted calls of their drivers, flocks of pigeons rousing and settling in great restless waves.

  She cast her way along the alleys, her vision still blurred. Where now? She’d no destination in mind. She knew only that she had to escape this congestion of noise and traffic. To the park, then—she’d been there twice with Mary, who loved to show herself beneath its leafy canopies. She knew the way, though she was accustomed to seeing it pass from the window of
Mary’s coach. She walked swiftly to stop her eyes from filling: Cheapside, Newgate, Holborn, but as the streets narrowed, the people seemed only to grow in number. In her blindness it seemed that the rills of strangers emerging from side streets had come only to gape at the unnatural girl from Amsterdam who would not wed. She shook off the thought—she was invisible amid this tide of city dwellers.

  Reaching the park, she saw its paths were already full, as though this first taste of spring warmth were a universally acknowledged holiday. Workers in stained aprons or smudged eyeglasses were out taking the air, and the menagerie included animals as well as people: spaniels trotted on the leash, solemn greyhounds paced before gossiping owners, and a shirted monkey in a harness trailed the old man who pulled it, making its way along the path with jerky, wheeling steps. Coaches and horses lined the edge of the park, and amid them, she saw the da Costa Mendeses’—Mary, she thought with a burst of self-pity, must have found some other escort, one better suited to her temperament.

  She cast her way along the path. Strangers walked before and behind her, shouts of jollity rose up from knots of people, the smell of churned dirt was in her nose. Across the open greenery strolled cross-tides of Londoners, some in finery: painted faces, elaborately curled wigs. Gatherings of the well-dressed and the plain drifted, separating and reattaching like the flocking birds, like the smoke high above.

  How long did she walk? Fear crowded out thought, and without thought there was no time or sequence, only faces, and the rhythm of her feet on soft dirt, and more faces, and the babble of strangers.

  Then, among the faces, Mary’s—and then, dizzying her, others she knew. She stopped as they hailed her: four couples carrying parcels—food for a midday meal in the open air. Mary, on the arm of Manuel HaLevy, glanced at Ester and then away. There was a tight expression on her face that Ester hadn’t the heart to wonder about, though perhaps it had something to do with her companion. Manuel HaLevy, in turn, stared at Ester in the keen hard-eyed manner Ester had all but forgotten, for it had been more than a year now since the HaLevy brothers had last visited the rabbi’s home. Nearly tripping on his elder brother’s heels was Alvaro HaLevy, grown from a puppyish boy to a puppyish young man. On his arm, a tall, impatient-looking girl whom Ester had seen in the synagogue, the daughter of the Cancio family. Alvaro stared at Ester as though she’d stepped out of a dream. A look of misery and longing swept his face and he faltered, forcing his companion to stumble to a halt.