She’d not have known how to answer, even if his travels had allowed him to receive a reply.
Only Manuel HaLevy seemed to intuit the privations that now pressed their household—and, unasked for, supplied what was needed. The pouch Rivka held was the third he had sent in as many weeks. The first two had been accompanied by letters requesting Ester’s company in the countryside. In each, Manuel’s hand was clean and decisive on the page.
My father has completed building and appointing his new house. Its grandeur might amuse you, Ester. Abundant carvings of wood and stone, and a brick front to make the Jew-haters forget they hate us and come polish our boots instead. My father looks out from his window like a pontiff of the Thames . . . making me that most common (though but little acknowledged) phenomenon of the Catholic church: a pontiff’s son. And when you are the pontiff’s daughter-in-law you may conduct the household’s supper in the manner of a church service or a synagogue, or perhaps after the manner of the pasha of the Barbary Coast—if it pleases you, it’s equal to me.
Ester had sat long over each of Manuel HaLevy’s letters, yet in the end answered them simply, sending back his servant with the written words I thank you for your kind invitation, but it is not necessary.
Rivka had finished counting the money in the third pouch. She looked up. “No letter for you with this week’s coins,” she said. Ester couldn’t read her expression.
A fleeting disturbance seemed to wring the rabbi now in his sleep. His mild face tightened—then, for the moment, the pain seemed to let go its grip. As his face eased, Ester saw plainly the purity that shone there. The last words he’d had her write had dried on the page before her: For I speak to you as a father to a son, and though your endeavor be beyond my reach, still I wish to gird you with all the understanding and love of God that I harbor in my heart. It is for this that I labor, for I believe it will be my last good deed in this world.
If only she merited such words of trust and guidance as the rabbi addressed to his pupil in Florence.
She stood. Rivka would need help in the kitchen. But as she stepped away from his desk, the rabbi raised his head and spoke clearly, as though he’d been thinking all these hours rather than sleeping.
“You must leave this city,” he said. “And take Rivka with you. The physician said the disease is spreading.”
“I’d no more leave you than my own father,” she said.
He spoke softly. “But I ask you to do so. Preserve yourself. You and I have studied the four duties for which tradition commands one to sacrifice one’s own life. You know well that staying with the dying is not among them.”
“It wastes your strength to argue for it.” Her words were more clipped than she’d intended. She returned to the table, picked up a volume. “Shall I read to you from Consola??o?”
He turned back to the fire.
At the sight of his tilted posture—his frame unable to support itself upright even when seated—a fierceness rose in her. She knew she’d no right to call this feeling love, when she betrayed the rabbi daily. Yet even in her own writing, when she posed questions he’d regard as blasphemy, she carried the rabbi ever in her mind, and his goodness remained the standard against which she tested her understanding of the world. It was the highest love she was capable of: respect. Yet respect also demanded that when the very tools of logic that he’d given her argued against his beloved tradition, she must follow them toward conclusions he’d abhor. The greatest act of love—indeed, the only religion she could comprehend—was to speak the truth about the world. Love must be, then, an act of truth-telling, a baring of mind and spirit just as ardent as the baring of the body. Truth and passion were one, and each impossible without the other.
Yet a love as would willingly bring the roof tumbling?
Such was thought cold-hearted in a man, and in a woman, abhorrent. Still, in her abhorrent, obstinate heart she called the ferocity she felt for her teacher love.
The rabbi spoke so suddenly she started. “Did you write,” he said, “while I slept?” There was something in his voice.
Softly she answered, “I wrote your words, I merely—”
“No,” he said. He drew a long breath, and released it. When he continued it was not in Portuguese, but in Castilian. “I ask you now, did you write your own words?”
She sat perfectly motionless.
His countenance, lifted now to the blank ceiling, trembled, but he pressed his fingertips together and spoke. “You’ve been false.” He struggled in silence to master his face. “To whom do you write,” he said, “when you sit at that table?”
She’d no answer that wouldn’t wound him.
“Ester.”
There was a long silence.
“It’s for you that I’ve composed my letters to Florence,” he said. “It’s for you that I’ve shaped my interpretation of the verses concerning the Messiah, that you might clad yourself in their warmth and remember the God of Israel.” He breathed. “Since you were a girl, your mind has been restless not only for the truth of holy texts, but for forbidden questions beyond. I know not how you act on this ungodly hunger you were born with, yet I’ve felt the honesty in your spirit despite this error and I’ve wished, despite your actions, to remain your teacher. For this reason alone have I dared to argue boldly, challenging even those with greater authority than I . . . so as to illuminate for a mind such as yours the beauty of our tradition.” Slowly, slowly, he shook his head. “Already,” he said, “I have failed one of my keenest, most able pupils. I have done all in my power, Ester, not to lose the other.”
She saw. She’d no words for the gift he’d given her, and no words for the shame she felt at his generosity. It struck her that he addressed her in Castilian not only because he was speaking to her of solemn things, but because—even now—he did not wish to shame Ester by allowing Rivka to learn what she’d done.
“I must know now,” he said, “what you’ve wrought in my name.”
“Please believe that I’ve never done it under your name, but under another.”
After a moment he nodded. “I’m glad,” he said.
“As to what I’ve written, and to whom, I beg you not to ask me, for I know my way of thinking is abhorrent to you.”
He was quiet a long moment before speaking. “I will not ask. Yet let the blame for your errors, whatever they are, be put on me. It is I who shaped you amiss.”
“No,” she insisted. “The fault is mine alone. I deceived you.”
But he shook his head—then held up a finger to stay her from speaking further. He’d another matter to address. “You had a chance, once, to marry Manuel HaLevy. Rivka tells me you may still.”
“No, I—”