Unable to think of an excuse not to, he stood. Shunning the upholstered pews, the group had arranged folding chairs in a circle near the bima, and as he settled into one near the girl with the headband, he saw that another member of the group—a bearded young man—was pulling a drum out of a cloth bag. A middle-aged man had a violin, and a woman with wild curly hair soon produced both a guitar and a flute. She—the woman with the guitar and flute—seemed to be the leader of this service. But so did the drummer, and so did the violinist, and so did the girl in the headband and two freckled teenage boys. With no fanfare beyond a round of smiles, they sang “Shalom Aleichem,” then a psalm in Hebrew, set to a tune Aaron vaguely recognized—the flute sounding the melody simply under the ornate dome. The whole service, it soon became clear, was to be sung. No sermon would be delivered in sermon-voice; no freighted pauses would be sculpted before each next solemn declaration. In the seats around him, some people swayed or sat with their eyes shut; some tapped rhythm with their hands on their metal seats. Aaron nearly laughed aloud. No wonder the wary fellow in the vestibule hadn’t thought this service worth mentioning—among the more old-school American Reform congregations this sort of service was still viewed askance; doubtless it went against the very DNA of the English Reform. The people on either side of Aaron seemed determined to wind as many harmonies around each melody as it could carry—or perhaps the harmonies were the main show and the melody was just along for the ride, but either way the sound was beautiful. Aaron himself had never believed in God. But whether or not these bright-faced people did, it was clear they believed in something they liked to sing about. Maybe they believed in singing. To Aaron, closing his eyes for a long moment amid the bed of voices, it seemed worth believing in.
Abruptly, the music stopped. Announcements. The woman with the curly hair gave the particulars of an upcoming dialogue about the Israeli-Palestinian situation. “Wherever you stand on Israel today,” the woman was saying, “whether you’re right or left or confused, we want to come together to grapple with these dilemmas.” Nods around the circle; someone spoke up to clarify the location of the event. Then the singing resumed. And it struck Aaron: history, the god he’d worshiped all his adult life, was the wrong god.
He’d always pitied those ensnared in the time periods he studied—people captured in resin, their fates sealed by their inability to see what was coming. The greatest curse, he’d thought, was to be stuck in one’s own time—and the greatest power was to see beyond its horizons. Studying history had given him the illusion of observing safely from outside the trap. Only that’s what the world was: a trap. The circumstances you were born to, the situations you found yourself in—to dodge that fray was impossible. And what you did within it was your life.
Hadn’t Helen tried to tell him so?
The singing ended. He watched the service-goers pack up their instruments under the absurdly ornamented dome and gather in clusters to share wine and challah. Neither synagogue nor prayer would ever be his thing. But it seemed to him nonetheless that the god these people had just prayed to was the present: a world in which they felt compelled to act, stepping into the history flowing right in front of their feet; making choices in the knowledge that they might fail.
Outside the synagogue, he dialed Library Patricia.
When he reached the stoop on Cranley Place, Patricia was fumbling with the key. She turned at his step, and let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” she said.
Inside the tidy, shadowed flat, a single softly glowing lamp.
Patricia called Helen’s name once, and then again.
Silence.
As they made their way through the rooms, Aaron touched each object he passed: the modest sofa and armchair, the low coffee table with its neat stack of journals, the wooden frame of Helen’s bedroom door. And he touched Patricia’s elbow to steady her as she swayed at the foot of the bed, in which Helen lay beneath her covers as though asleep.
When it was time to speak, he said to Patricia, “What do we need to do for her?”
It was late when he left Helen’s flat. He’d followed Patricia’s directives, obtained phone numbers, unlocked the door for the man from the funeral home. And while Patricia made calls he’d lingered over Helen: slight as a child under her plain white coverlet, her pale face eased into an expression of girlish peace. He’d pulled over a chair and sat by her bed, and with both hands had grasped and held, through the covers, the curve of her right foot, as though the touch might at last tell her what he wanted her to know: you’re not alone.
He’d lingered even after the man from the funeral home had taken over—but finally there was nothing left to do. Nowhere to go, it seemed, but home. It occurred to him that at an appropriate moment—perhaps tomorrow—he ought to tell Patricia Starling-Haight that Helen might have left valuable papers with Patricia Smith in the conservation lab.
In truth, with Helen gone Aaron found the existence of those last Richmond letters implausible. So desperately had Helen traded for that last folio that its contents now seemed synonymous with her life, and just as ephemeral.
But wherever the letters were, they now belonged to some unknown relatives of Helen’s. At the right time, Aaron would need to reach out to those relatives—or, better, have Darcy do it. With luck, Darcy might dissuade them from selling to a private collector who would restrict scholarly access. Regardless, Aaron knew better than to hope he’d ever get his hands on those letters again, except perhaps as a peripheral member of Wilton’s group. Maybe not even that. A postgraduate undone by his own dissertation could hardly expect to be trusted with such significant documents. He wasn’t sure he’d hire himself for the job.
As he zipped his jacket beside Helen’s front door, though, Patricia called his name. “This was on her kitchen table,” she said.
Into his hands she placed a thick folder. Taped to it, slightly askew, was a small white square of paper that said, in Helen’s shaky handwriting, For Aaron Levy.
Seeing he’d no words with which to respond, Patricia opened the door gently and let him out into the night.
He did not open the folder then, or on the train, or on the walk home, but held it to his chest until he’d reached his doorstep. He opened it there, his hands unsteady. Inside, a single sheet of lined paper was laid atop a folio he recognized instantly.
He read.
Dear Mr. Levy,
If you’re holding these pages, it’s because I’m no longer able to.
I’m not a sentimental person—a statement you’ll surely find unsurprising. Yet you should know that I did wish very much to work with you on these documents. Your receipt of this file, however, means that that could not happen. Nonetheless, I’ve made my decision about the fate of the documents in my absence.
Here is your dissertation.
These papers are yours now. I lied when I said the last were damaged. It seemed to me important to read them alone. When you arrive at the next-to-final page of Ester’s confession, please set it beside the letter from the Amsterdam Dotar. I’ve little doubt, Aaron, that you will recognize the repeated words. When you read them, think of our argument, please, concerning to whom this story belonged. You were very angry, and perhaps I returned your feelings in equal measure.
You were correct, Aaron, about who owns Ester’s history. But so was I, though I never dreamt of this possibility. Perhaps you’ll think the possibility remote. Certainly it is. But I feel I’ve earned the right, at this hour, to assert without proof that I believe it.
From the first, you recognized what a museum I’d made of my life. It would seem I found that insupportable. My apologies for my poor behavior.
Do what’s right with these papers. I trust you.
Helen
He entered his apartment. He turned on the lights, unsteadily prepared tea. He read Helen’s letter thrice more before opening the folio and beginning.
There you are, he said to Ester.
There you are.
Yet though I saw myself straying ever farther from the path laid before me, I cried out then and still: why say woman may not follow her nature if it lead her to think, for must not even the meanest beast follow its nature? And why forbid woman or man from questioning what we are taught, for is not intelligence holy?
The world and I have sinned against each other.
He read each section slowly, and reread before moving on. He took notes, reflexively, on the single paper within reach—a grocery list he’d begun halfheartedly the night before, and abandoned after only three items. Below cereal and coffee and bread he filled the page with notes—transcribing phrases and even whole sentences, as though he didn’t trust these pages not to dissolve once he’d read them. He wrote blindly, barely lifting his eyes from Ester’s words.
Reaching the second-to-final page, he set his pen down, lifted Ester’s thick paper, and held it in his hands.