Constantina de Almanza Velasquez had a nature that might have flowered in other climes, yet she was neither born nor constituted to be a matron of the Amsterdam synagogue. She escaped the terrors of the Inquisition and came as a young bride to live amid Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jews, who feared nothing so much as outspokenness, or any infraction that might visit upon them once more the troubles they’d fled in Portugal, a vale of blood and sorrow. My mother, who could not countenance being that thing she was to the priests of Lisbon, spent her days defying the elders of the Amsterdam community, her husband among them. Her spirit could not be bent, yet her rage found little purchase—and whilst I shall not enumerate her quarrels against her life, I witnessed much, and more did she confess to me. I chose never to reveal to my brother that one of her rebellions, unknown to any, led to his birth.
My mother’s nature was jailed in Amsterdam, and all her attempts at escape failed to free her. Had I the mercy of the world at my command, I would command it forgive her.
Though born in Lisbon in the house of her own mother and the man she called father, my mother did confide in me that she herself was conceived here in this England, in the city of London. Her true father, she did aver, was not her mother’s husband, nor any other Jew of Lisbon, but one Englishman of fine letters—a man bound in wedlock to another. My mother believed, or in her confusion and spite wished to believe, that the Englishman’s heart later misgave him and he spurned the woman he had loved and the child she bore. My mother averred that her own mother was a beauty to tempt away a man’s better angel, corrupting his saint to be a very devil, and she swore she herself would do the same when provoked, for men were faithless ever. The tale she told was mudded by time and drink and grievance. Yet despite all her fury, I heard in my mother’s words a different truth: that my grandmother and her beloved feared the wrath and reprisal of a world that forbade them from joining hands. That they bore this fate with dignity merely added to my mother’s rage. When my mother was but ten years of age, her own true father died without spurning all else to reunite with his beloved. This sin my mother never pardoned. For their love, my mother believed, was so great and capable of mending the broken world that its loss sundered all and could never be forgiven.
I know not whether to credit the drunken words of a spirit tormented by its own loneliness, yet my mother’s ragged tale seared in me the knowledge that the power of desire is sufficient to shake the roots of the world. I have recalled this ever, though love has proven not to be my own fate.
I will not indulge the gentle lie of claiming I have not grieved its loss. A woman such as I is a rocky cliff against which a man tests himself before retreating to safer pasture. I cannot fault any such man as takes what ease the world offers him. Nor shall I blame those who disdain the life I choose, and think it misbegotten. Yet this life I have conceived and have sworn to nourish. The choice is mine, and I have borne its burdens.
He read to the end, through Ester’s repeated avowals of her intent to burn her papers, the writing growing increasingly shaky.
Let the truth be ash.
He sat for a moment, Ester’s final page framed between his hands. Then he lifted it. Beneath it were two sheets of crisp modern paper. The first bore a half page of sharp black ink—the issue, Aaron realized, of the toner cartridge he’d installed in Helen’s printer. An e-mail from Dina Jacobowicz, in Amsterdam.
Dear Professor Watt,
Here is a reply addressed to Rabbi HaCoen Mendes by the Amsterdam Dotar. It was sent to London, but was returned undelivered to the Dotar, as neither the recipient nor any members of his household were any longer to be found at the London address.
I hope this proves helpful. Best of luck.
Aaron turned the page.
August 11, 1665
30 Av, 5425
Amsterdam
To the Honored Rabbi HaCoen Mendes,
It is with regret for the lateness of this reply that we pen it. It was some time before we ventured to open your missive, as there are those who say that any communication from London may bear the pestilence. We write in hope that this reply finds you recovered through a miracle of G-d, and that your welcome in the world to come has been delayed, that this world’s pupils might yet reap the fruits of your wisdom.
It is to our further regret that we inform you we are not able to provide a dowry for the Velasquez girl. This matter was discussed in the Mahamad with vehemence, for many recall the girl’s father and wish to honor his name. Yet to our great sorrow, the girl’s mother carried a wildness stamped deeply in the memory of this kahal. We wish you to understand this matter, distressing though it may be. The woman Constantina Velasquez, the mother of Ester, refused to circumcise her son, fighting with spirit and body until the child was wrested from her. Upon her comprehension that she could not prevent the community from fulfilling this duty, she wrote to this Mahamad a missive full of such spite as had never been heard in the walls of a synagogue, calling us cowards and mice, and informing us of her power to tempt the better angel of the most righteous among us, and corrupt his soul to be a devil—a witchcraft she claimed to learn from her own mother. She boasted, further, of her own mother’s adultery with an Englishman she claimed illumined all England with his merest words—she claimed that her own blood was admixed with such as made our community seem a laughingstock.
It was only in respect for the husband that the Mahamad issued no rebuke to her outrages, choosing instead merely to declare her madness a residue of the distresses of childbirth. Some members of this council who disputed that decision remain among our assembly, even these years later. It is therefore our opinion now that the community cannot support the marriage of a daughter of Israel who bears the stain of such a mother. Nor shall it be said that there is no consequence to insulting the authority of the Mahamad in Amsterdam.
On behalf of the Dotar, with prayers for your recovery and hearts eager for the coming redemption,
Efraim Toledano
Aaron sat for a long while, his face to the ceiling, trying to ford the sensation flooding him. The outrageous irony. History, coming back to him now like a torchlight procession—bearing a trick, a joke, a gift.
There was nothing more important right now than thinking clearly—and his mind, for the first time in what felt like months, was clear. As deliberately as he could, he worked his way through all he knew of Ester’s story, and her mother’s. Then, without warning, he found himself thinking, for a long and motionless time, about Marisa.
And then Helen’s voice returned to him, snapping with conviction as it had that day they’d fought in her airless office. This story, whatever it proves to be, belongs to all of us.
No one would believe it. A fresh bit of potential evidence in one of historians’ favorite head-scratchers, provided through a Portuguese refugee’s aggrieved, possibly self-aggrandizing tale?