“Thanks,” Aaron said. “You’ve been tremendous. Truly. I’m . . .” He didn’t know how to say what he was. “You’ve been tremendous,” he finished.
He could hear the intake of Anne’s breath, then a brief hesitation. “Would you like me to search a few more years of records?” she said. “I can see if I can find anything else about the HaLevys . . . or perhaps the house’s subsequent owners.”
He pressed his palm onto the top of Helen’s desk, watching his fingers splay. He was beginning to suspect that he, Aaron Levy, was many wretched things, and that some of that wretchedness was indelible. But he suddenly had a wish to be, at the least, a man who didn’t lead Anne Fielding on. “Yes, I’d be grateful for that,” he said, in as indifferent a tone as he could summon. “I’ll call you next week to follow up. My girlfriend is visiting right now.”
His heart hurt just a little for Anne as she drew in breath—and said, with the impressive dignity of a girl practiced at recovering from such disappointment, “I’ll hear from you, then.”
He hung up and turned to find Helen regarding him skeptically.
He answered her silent query with a moody shrug. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend.” To prevent Helen from asking more, he said, “Ester died in 1691. No children on the record. So then, that’s it. She lived twenty-six years after writing the last documents that were under the stair.” He scratched at a nick on Helen’s wooden desk. “No mystery as to why she stopped writing, is there? With Manuel HaLevy for a husband. What was Ester’s phrase? A man of a temperament to use a folio of verse to wipe his boots.”
“Yes,” said Helen softly. “The marriage would have brought the end of her writing. I’m guessing she didn’t change her mind and fall in love with him, either. I’m guessing she married him to survive, after the rabbi died and she had no livelihood.”
“Well, we’ll never have the chance to know, will we?” He turned to the window. “Even assuming we can get a professional handwriting analysis to confirm that ‘Thomas Farrow’ was Ester Velasquez, I saw in the précis of Godwin’s paper that he doesn’t have anything from Farrow after 1666.”
A brief bloom of intellectual freedom, a spasm of conscience, a quiet death. That was Ester’s story in its entirety. It aroused in him both pity and a prickling sense of failure.
Still standing, he let his fingers stray to his laptop, which rested open on the edge of Helen’s desk. A gambler uselessly spinning his roulette wheel—yes, that was him. Restlessly, reflexively, he toggled to his e-mail. There, like a bad joke played at his expense, was a single new message. As he stared at his screen, it struck him that the news of Ester Velasquez’s death had summoned this too, out of the void of all that had once flourished but now was lost. It had floated back to him, heralded by two young Patricias like figureheads on a prow: the flotsam of all he’d once confidently pursued.
From: Marisa Herz
Subject: Sit down
He obeyed, sinking into the chair opposite Helen’s desk, taking the laptop with him.
Aaron,
First, my apologies for my abrupt cut-off earlier this year. I can only assume it was confusing.
I know this is a shock, but I didn’t want to involve you until I knew for certain what my decision was. I’m having a baby. Yes, you’re the father.
So much for the reliability of birth control.
I’ve been through all the panic and denial and I’ve made my choice. Really it was clear to me from the start, but I figured I ought to give myself a little time to be sure of the decision, in case I was going through a hormonal thing.
I’m going to live here and figure out a way to have the baby. I’m going to do it by myself. I’m sorting out the practical pieces—money, job, childcare. It’s going to work. And even if it doesn’t work, it will anyway, if you know what I mean.
You’ll need to do some thinking of your own now. I’m not getting married, to you or anyone. I’m not inviting you to live with us, either. But if you want to meet your daughter you can. Let me know what you plan to do. If you don’t want to be involved with her, then let’s keep it clean and cut off contact for good. This is my choice and I take responsibility for it. Just send me a little medical history or something in case she grows up and develops bizarre traits—that way I can tell her they’re your fault.
Sorry if the jokes seem inappropriate. I’ve been at this for a while now. You’re just at the beginning of taking this in, and I’m probably being too sharp. Sometimes I can be. I know myself, though, and I know I can’t take care of your feelings while I’m taking care of myself and building a life to support the little one. So let me know what you decide, but please also understand that I can’t hold your hand through your deliberations.
You’re a good guy, Aaron Levy, despite all your attempts to convince the world you’re an arrogant bastard. Don’t think I don’t see through you. This little gal and I have a long road ahead of us. I’m not sorry you’re her father.
Marisa
His eyes reached the end of her message. Somewhere in his reading, he realized only now, a sound had escaped him. A single, winded Oh. It lingered in Helen’s quiet office.
At first Helen didn’t seem to have heard. She was at her computer again, murmuring. “The Amsterdam archivist is sending a few other things, every document she found pertaining to HaCoen Mendes or Ester Velasquez—” She stopped.
“I’ll just print it all to read later, shall I?”
He didn’t take his eyes off his screen.
He heard pages emerge from the printer, but Helen didn’t reach for them.
“Are you all right?” she said.
He didn’t look at her.
“You’re not all right.”
He managed an unconvincing shrug. Slowly he turned. He tried to focus on her face, but the effort was too great. His gaze settled somewhere near her chin.
“Do you need a moment?” She spoke briskly—but even through the veil that seemed to have shrouded his senses, he sensed that she wanted to ask what was wrong, and didn’t know how to do it.
Slowly she stood. “I’ll leave you, then?”
“Don’t go,” he said.
She didn’t. She stood leaning on her cane. He saw she had no inkling what to do with herself. He’d asked her to stay. Stay and sit? Stay and murmur words of comfort? Twice she opened her mouth as though to speak, but thought better of it. After a time, she sat.
He said nothing.
She played with the handle of her cane, fitting it into her palm over and again as though measuring the heft of a suddenly unfamiliar object. Aaron, gazing emptily at her, caught his pale reflection on the glass face of the clock on the side of her desk. Even blurred, there was no masking the truth written in that reflection. He saw his face, for just an instant, as others might. And tried to imagine himself, instead, as he wanted to be: a man who moved cleanly through life, because he understood some essential, elemental thing. A man irreducible, undivided, inseparable from himself. A man who deserved a baby.
The distance between himself and that man was so great as to be uncrossable.
He breathed evenly, and watched the golden second hand traverse the clock’s face and his own. Needle-thin, alive with its own infinitesimal pulse, it passed through Aaron’s reflection once more, then again, like some innocent and prophetic creature aware of what Aaron was capable of, yet keeping its own counsel.
24
July 25, 1665
13 Av, 5425
London