The Weight of Ink

by Rachel Kadish

  “Good afternoon,” he said to her in English.

  She answered with a nod.

  Instantly he was alert. “You’re not well?”

  With his fawn-colored coat and matching boots, his soft curling wig and pale cheeks and slight body, he looked like a boy playing at adulthood. She told herself to move along; she’d no wish to speak to him. He couldn’t help her.

  “You’re unwell,” he affirmed, eyes widening.

  “I’m well in body,” she said.

  He turned to his companion and with a few words detached himself. With a glum expression, the girl followed the others to the bench they were making for, looking back once with visible curiosity.

  “Even if you don’t wish for my company,” said Alvaro, falling in beside Ester, “I thank you for the excuse to step away.” Ester was surprised at the soft mischief that lit Alvaro’s face, though in an instant he’d sobered, as though afraid of his own honesty.

  “Why not go to her,” she spat, “and enjoy your wooing.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.

  She shook her head, shamed by her own spite. There was no need to vent her fury on one who would never be bold enough to defend himself. Yet she hated him for the simple reason that, regardless of his lack of boldness, the broad road of life lay open to him. She stopped on the path and turned to face him. “Why do you walk with me?” she asked in a low voice. “Go to that one”—she pointed to the beribboned girl on the bench—“or another girl. Go to ten girls, go to a hundred. Find a bride.”

  His shock showed on his pale face. But instead of hurt or anger or bewilderment, he had turned alert. He was reading her expression, hesitant, as if seeking permission to speak as he wished. “I would marry,” he said, “if I were wise enough—”

  “I would not,” she snapped.

  He held her gaze uncertainly, as though his eyes might utter the words his lips dared not speak.

  The others had decided to set out for a farther spot and were calling for him to join; Ester heard Manuel shouting some mockery to his brother, though his words were lost to the breeze. Alvaro’s companion had stood from the bench, her irritation legible in her stance even from a distance.

  “I’m cursed,” he whispered to Ester. “I shall never have what I wish.”

  “Why?” she said, loud. And as she saw his eyes widen with struggle, the thought struck her that he was her unnamed suitor.

  A pitiable trust washed his face, and she had no answer for it.

  Around them, strangers’ voices like surf.

  “I’m cursed,” Alvaro repeated at last. His shining eyes dropped from hers.

  She watched him return to the young woman at the bench, who took his arm and hurried them down the path toward the others.

  A sick feeling in her stomach.

  She could marry a soul like Alvaro. He would be kind to her. He had wealth. Her life would be graced.

  Yes—but had the widow Mendoza not said that this suitor required that Ester renounce her studies?

  Once, before the fire had burned away all pretense, she might have become the sort of wife who would shutter her desire to learn, keep a civil tongue, profess happiness with what was available to her. She was no longer that person. The human heart—her mother’s, her grandmother’s, her own—was a chaos of desire. And she could counter it only with the life in her mind. By living in words and books and cool reason. Recording the map traced by her thoughts, though it be an infinitesimal gesture, small and unseen. A fingernail’s scrape on a prison wall.

  The prospect of sheeplike Alvaro HaLevy and a house full of his children, their eyes trained on her while she pretended to be what she was not, made her walk faster. She couldn’t marry Alvaro. She would come to punish him out of her own discontent.

  She was unnatural; so it must be.

  She walked on. After a time she recognized the crawling in her belly as hunger. She’d no money to pay the vendors who sold rolls and oranges from laden trays. She’d left the rabbi’s without anything but her thin cloak. Now the air was cooling, and although the park was still alive with those loath to let go the day, the crowds had begun to depart.

  A weightless dusk stole over the green. What had she imagined—how did she think to sustain herself? Away from the food and shelter of the rabbi’s household mere hours, and already she faltered. The truth choked her: the rabbi had been correct. What choice did she have in this world, but marry or else give her life over to the crushing labors of a housemaid?

  For some moments, without realizing it, she’d been watching a portly woman walking slowly in a cloak and dressing gown. A sable tippet was draped about her shoulders, her hands were buried in a fur muff, and a black felt mask covered the upper part of her face. Some lady of wealth, no doubt, unable to resist the freedom of the balmy air but loath to be recognized in her dressing gown—another soul leaning for just a moment into the freedom of the damp, greening park.

  As their paths converged on a shallow rise, Ester noted something familiar in the ponderous gait, the soft jowls, the head held obstinately high. Ester reached the woman, who stopped her laborious progress. From behind the mask, watery dark eyes found Ester. “Today,” the woman said after a moment, “London’s air may be breathed.”

  Catherine da Costa Mendes, Mary’s mother. From behind the black mask, she gazed into Ester’s eyes with the peaceable blankness of one struggling too much to judge or be judged. The sloping path, Ester saw, was her master.

  “I’m glad to see you well enough to venture abroad,” Ester said. Such direct reference to Catherine’s health, she knew, might be improper. But she’d no strength in her for delicacy.

  Catherine snorted in grim appreciation. “I’m not,” she said, “well enough. Yet I chose to accompany Mary on this excursion. And Mary awaits me now, I’m sure, with little patience.” With her chin, she indicated the edge of the park, where her daughter was presumably already seated in the waiting coach. A moment later she looked back at Ester—and a silent acknowledgment of all that Mary was and was not passed between them.

  Catherine leaned heavily on her walking stick, each of her soft breaths audible. The light was fading, and the park was fast emptying of the women who considered their honor too precious to be left out after dusk. A trio hurried past, lifting their trailing gowns, their speed curtailed by their elegant shoes; they glanced at Ester and Catherine with curiosity. Ester watched them cross the last margin of grass and reach the street, one turning to the others, her speech indistinguishable from this distance save a high laugh of relief. Most of those wandering the paths about them now were men, and the better dressed stepped briskly.

  “You’ve been walking without purpose,” Catherine said. “I’ve seen. But surely you have one.”

  “I’ve come to see the greenery,” Ester said.

  She could sense that Catherine was taking her measure, though the older woman’s eyes were hidden behind her mask.

  “Let us not be polite,” Catherine said. “I no longer have breath for lies.” When she was able to continue, her words were flinty. “Lies served me, in my time. Now they peel away. Nor do I have tolerance anymore for idle gossip . . . a change that vexes my daughter greatly.” She breathed. “The least of the thousand things that vex her, to be sure.” She searched Ester’s face and nodded at what she found there. “You and I risk nothing by speaking the truth. It will not take long, you see, for any words you speak to go with me to the grave. And I”—a fierce expression tightened her face for a moment, before loosening its hold—“I should like to hear truth.”

  The park was quiet. Even like this, masked and struggling for air, Catherine still had the erect, stern bearing of a woman whose judgments others feared.

  A broad laugh broke the surface of the quiet. Two women, dressed in low bodices and scarlet skirts that advertised their trade, were leading patrons into a stand of trees.

  Ester spoke first. “Why do you press Mary to choose me as a companion? When
she summons me now, she tells me it’s upon your insistence.”

  Catherine bowed her head, then spoke with slow force. “You may think of me what you wish for what I’ll now say. But know that I am no fool easily swayed by shadows and portents.” She waited for Ester’s nod of acquiescence, then spoke without pity. “I dreamt I was in my grave. And yet I saw through the eyes of a bird on the rooftops, and I saw that Mary was in need of aid. I dreamt I flew from roof to roof looking for one who could help my daughter.” She breathed. “There was no one. So the dream ended, Ester. With no one.”

  The twilight had inked Catherine’s mask to a yet deeper black. For a moment Ester indulged the notion that someone else looked out from behind it—someone dear to Ester, someone she belonged to. Could Catherine know how near her vision had trod to Ester’s own dreams, which too often raked her sleep? Her mother in her green dress, with her wounded glance; her father with his velvet eyes, calling her name. Her brother upon the docks, his voice echoing with some urgent request.

  To push back shadows with the hard edge of reason, she spoke. “I don’t believe dreams instruct us,” she said. “They confuse and weaken, and are false signs.”

  Catherine weighed Ester’s boldness for a moment. “You’re wise, perhaps, not to heed them,” she said. “Nonetheless, I have not forgotten this one dream, which differed from any other that has visited me in all my years. Mary will need a friend. I want you to be one to her.”

  Ester drew a sharp breath. How foolish she’d been to think for even a moment that Catherine might care for her well-being. To a woman like Catherine da Costa Mendes, Ester could never be other than a servant—a salve for Mary’s troubles.

  “Mary has all she needs,” Ester said, obstinacy rising in her voice. “Even if she doesn’t marry, she’ll have an inheritance and everything she requires. It’s not she who deserves pity.”

  She’d rarely dared utter the word, not after the deaths of her parents, nor even of her brother. But now a toothed hunger seized her. Pity. A charity none save the rabbi had troubled to offer.

  Catherine took a step back as if to shield herself from Ester. “I birthed five children,” she said. Below the outline of her mask, the set of her mouth had tightened. “Did you know that? Only Mary, my youngest, lived past six years.”

  Ester’s face would not submit to her will.

  “Hear me, Ester. I cannot be mother or shepherd to another soul. The world has crowded all but the last breath from me. I’ve no pity to spare for you, though you might merit it.” Catherine breathed. “I’ve no pity left,” she murmured, “for any on this earth.” A moment later she added simply, as though to explain something to herself once more, “It’s spent.”

  “What of your husband?” Ester said. “He can help Mary.”

  “My husband,” said Catherine, “will hardly think of Mary after I die. He remembers her but little now, while I am still living to remind him. So I require another to look after her—and I cannot entrust the task to a girl with her own prospects.”

  A high laugh escaped Ester. “I have prospects, though it must surprise you. I have a suitor. And yet I’ve told the rabbi I refuse to marry.”

  Catherine pursed her lips. “Then you’re a fool. How will you live?”

  Ester said quietly, “I wish to study.”

  There was a small sound of surprise from Catherine. After a moment, she lifted her walking stick and continued up the rise.

  Slowly they climbed. To one side, behind bushes, the rustle of some struggle on the grass—a dim cry of ecstasy or dismay. The park was transformed; lanterns had been lit by figures gathered on the edge of the green, but the safety they promised was still distant, and the calls of those who held them were remote and the names they called as unrecognizable as if in another tongue. Ester moved through the dark, matching Catherine’s slow pace; whatever fate might bring, they would be at its mercy.

  Abruptly, Catherine stopped. “I have seen it,” she said, “though perhaps never so brazenly as you might wish to imagine. A woman may in some circumstances acquire what she desires without the protection of a man.” She regarded Ester. “If you find a way to live as you wish, unnatural though it might be, you’ll carry on your shoulders the weight of a thousand wives’ wishes. Though aloud all may curse you as a very devil.”

  The boughs overhead had nearly dissolved against the sky. In the dark, Catherine’s face and her mask seemed indistinguishable.

  “Then look for any window that opens, Ester.” A soft, rasping cry for breath. “Any crack through which you may lever yourself.” In the silence, then, a rustle of cloth: Catherine, leaning hard on her walking stick with one arm, was raising the other. Cool, trembling fingertips brushed Ester’s cheek, once, before falling away.

  They reached the verge of the park, and left it behind.

  From the da Costa Mendeses’ coach window, her shoulder jostling gently against Catherine’s, Ester watched the city settle into night. On the bench across from them, as they bumped through the streets, Mary peered curious and sullen, first at her mother, then Ester. Outside, the winds that had whipped London into unrecognizable form had subsided at last, and all was still.

  When she entered, the rabbi was by his fire as though he’d not moved in all the hours since her departure. Rivka had piled his hearth high and the room danced with an orange light not customary for this hour.

  “God has preserved you,” the rabbi said hoarsely. “I could not rest.”

  She closed the heavy door softly behind her. Slowly she hung her cloak on a peg.

  With effort the rabbi stood from his chair. His form was skeletal, and it unfolded painfully. “What angel saw you safe past the thieves and cutthroats?”

  “I won’t marry,” she said.

  There was sorrow on his face. “It’s as I thought,” he said. “Ester. I’ve wronged you.”

  She said nothing.

  For a long time there was no sound other than the hollow rushing of the fire. Then the rabbi groped for the walking stick that leaned against the wall. “As you are silent, so will I be.”

  Slowly he began his progress across the room to the hall, to his dim bedroom.

  She wanted to follow at his heels, light a lamp he didn’t need, set the pillow beneath his head. Instead she lit a rushlight in the hearth and, holding it before her with wintry hands, climbed the stair.

  15

  December 17, 2000

  London

  She lifted the page closer to read the too-faint printout.

  Here I begin.

  She had, right here on her desk, a piece of autobiographical writing by a seventeenth-century Sephardic Jewish woman. Aaron had been correct, of course: this was a remarkable find, she’d known it the moment she’d heard his final telephone message yesterday morning.

  Only that message could have compelled her out of the torpor she’d fallen into upon her return from Dr. Hammond’s office. As always, she’d taken the first appointment of the morning so as to be past his chastisements early; she’d planned to drive straight from his office to the rare manuscripts room. Instead, leaving Dr. Hammond’s office, she’d been seized by an insurmountable fatigue that left her scarcely able to focus on the road. She drove clutching the wheel, only half aware of the other cars drifting around hers—a sudden fragility caging her as though she must not, at all costs, be jostled into reconstructing Hammond’s words—or worse, the expression with which he’d said them. Without meaning to, she drove not to the university but to her home. She climbed the impossibly steep steps and unlocked the narrow door to her flat, every movement leaden. In truth, she hadn’t slept properly for weeks. Was her fatigue the crack Dr. Hammond had perceived in her armor, his cue that today was the day to press his point at last, insisting that she comprehend? She entered her flat. Gained the kitchen and then the long, cool hallway. Reached, finally, the bedroom, where she lowered herself onto the bed she’d slept in for forty years. What if—her thoughts turned slowly, shadows moving in the d
epths—she didn’t go to her office today? What if she simply chose not to face the mountain of exhilarating, terrorizing documents she now knew she wouldn’t have the strength to climb? Shutting her eyes, she let the clock’s tick slowly fill her hearing to the brim; and under its weight she finally capitulated, and slipped into the sleep so many nights had denied her.

  It had taken that third message—the one in which Aaron impatiently recited several lines from a document he urgently wanted her to see—to rouse her. She’d steeled herself into her shoes, into her car, through traffic. Greeting him at her office, she’d barely been able to speak, let alone find the proper words to acknowledge what was plain: Yes. He was right. Yes. This cross-written document he’d just discovered did violate everything that was known about the lives, literacy, and worldview of seventeenth-century Sephardic women.

  She owed Aaron Levy, at the least, a strong show of appreciation. Instead, right here in her office, seated opposite him, in full awareness of the potential of the discovery they were making together, she’d lost him.

  He’d brought it on himself. But if she’d ever imagined there might be pleasure in seeing Aaron Levy’s arrogance humbled, she’d been wrong. For once he’d made no eye contact, his lean frame bent in defeat. He’d handed her his translation, mumbled “You need a new printer cartridge,” and left her office without another word.

  After Aaron had left, she sat in her office, listening to the steady thrum of the heater, her hands loose on the fabric of her skirt, her eyes unable to settle on any one thing. It had taken her a full ten minutes to calm herself enough to turn to the pages on her desk. When she did, she was stricken to see what Aaron had been referring to: the printout of the transcription was so faint as to be barely readable. The imprint of a seventeenth-century mind and spirit, lost for almost three and a half centuries and finally salvaged . . . only to be thwarted by her drained printer cartridge. It was almost funny. But nothing was funny to her, nothing had been funny for years. Was that the problem? Was it her humorlessness—her stiffness—that had prevented her from giving Aaron his due when he’d presented his findings? Was that why he’d left with that humbled air she never expected from Aaron Levy, his moment of triumph turned to defeat? When had she become such a mirthless, ungiving person?