“What books did HaCoen Mendes order?”
“The Path of Knowledge, which seems to have been a commentary on the Midrash. And Montaigne. Essais. In French.”
Helen raised her brows.
“Then there was a bill for some volumes of Talmud from the Hebrew press in Amsterdam, and then a small ledger for the rabbi’s household in London, this one in decent condition, containing records for about a fifteen-month period—1657 to 1659. Food, sea coal and firewood, writing supplies—sounds like the rabbi ran a small household with fairly modest expenses, other than the books.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Quite a contrast with a house like this.” Aaron paused, craning his neck for a moment to look at the paneled ceiling. “I wonder what it’s like upstairs. How many bedrooms, how luxurious. It might help to learn a bit about how the HaLevy family lived.” Setting aside his sandwich, he stood. “I’ll just run up and see how many rooms they have up there.”
She didn’t budge. “You can’t go up without the Eastons’ permission,” she said.
How could she sit and not move a muscle, when her curiosity must be piqued? A simple look upstairs would at least give them a sense of how spacious the rooms might have been, how the people who stored away these papers might have lived. Yet Helen Watt’s posture was rigid, her hands planted firmly beside her dark slacks on the wooden seat.
Have it her way, then. He’d go upstairs on his own some other time, when he could get her out of his hair.
She was looking at him suspiciously. “Those are the rules,” she said.
Goddamn Brits.
“And of course, the rooms probably look nothing like they did in the seventeenth century.”
He didn’t respond. Let her try to penetrate his silence for a change. He returned to his seat and made a show of imperturbability.
“Anything else of note in the ledger?” she said.
He let her wait a long moment. “What surprises me,” he said, “is how vague it is about the income of HaCoen Mendes’s Creechurch Lane household, given how meticulously it records expenses. There’s no list of the names or the tuition payments of his students. There’s a category for ‘contributions’—I’m guessing that could be the income from HaCoen Mendes’s teaching—but it feels almost deliberately obscure. Given that Cromwell had made the Jewish community’s presence officially legal, I’d think they might have started to let go of their caution.”
She was shaking her head. “Then you haven’t been paying attention.”
He let out a short, irritable laugh.
“You’re American,” she said simply. “You think straightforwardness is a virtue.”
A muttered curse escaped him, but she spoke steadily over it. “I don’t mean that as an insult, Mr. Levy. It’s merely a fact. English people usually make the same mistake. Truth-telling is a luxury for those whose lives aren’t at risk. For Inquisition-era Jews, to even know the truth of one’s Jewish identity could be fatal. Someone detects Jewishness in the way you dress, in your posture, in your fleeting expression when a certain name is mentioned—well, even if there’s nothing they can do to you in England except perhaps expel you from the country, still, months later your relatives back in Spain and Portugal might be arrested and die gruesome deaths.” She’d stiffened. It occurred to Aaron that she was angry, but not at him. “The Anglo-American idea of noble honesty, Mr. Levy”—she stopped herself, then fell silent, as if performing some inner calculation. Evidently he wasn’t worth the risk of whatever she’d thought to say next.
“What else?” she said.
She’d just stayed her hand from something. He didn’t know what. He decided he didn’t care. “There’s a sermon,” he said. “HaCoen Mendes wrote it for someone else to deliver, on the death of Menasseh. It contains an argument against false messiahs.”
She sat forward in her chair.
“But before I tell you about the sermon,” Aaron said, savoring the sudden sharpening of Helen Watt’s focus, “I should tell you that just this morning I happened to do some of my own research on Rabbi HaCoen Mendes.” He continued, his voice nonchalant. “As you know, despite being an influential teacher HaCoen Mendes was limited enough by his blindness that he published only that one text of his own—his pamphlet titled Against Falsehood, printed posthumously in London by an admirer.” He’d begun his delivery slowly—but as he went on his excitement carried him. “It took a little work to track down the actual text online, but I did. And actually, it’s quite something.” In fact, HaCoen Mendes’s pamphlet was probably the best contemporary reasoning Aaron had read against mass hysterias of the late seventeenth century. The argument was lucid, solidly constructed, even poetic at times in its warning against the temptations of false messiahs. The entire text of it had been appended to the brief article Aaron had found after a long search—the only scholarly article that seemed to exist about HaCoen Mendes. The article, written decades ago by an obscure scholar, had touched on HaCoen Mendes’s tribulations under the Inquisition, praising Against Falsehood and comparing it favorably to less forceful anti-Sabbatean arguments of its day. It was surprising, the scholar noted parenthetically, that a writer of that caliber should have produced no other published works.
But it was the pamphlet’s dedication that had leapt out at Aaron.
“That pamphlet HaCoen Mendes wrote?” he said to Helen Watt now. “It was dedicated to Benjamin HaLevy.”
She said nothing.
“The same Benjamin HaLevy,” he persisted, “who once owned this house.”
Her eyebrows rose: was he under the impression she’d failed to catch that connection?
But he could see her thinking. And he could see what she was thinking: now they knew how the documents had most likely gotten here. Benjamin HaLevy must have been a patron of the rabbi’s, and would naturally wish to collect and preserve his papers.
Helen gave a thoughtful nod. “And what’s in this sermon you just read, on the occasion of Menasseh’s death?”
“It is not God’s will,” Aaron quoted, “that Jews should wager on the Messiah as dicers will.”
She actually smiled, a gossamer smile so innocent, a person could imagine she had once been nicer. “That’s a real find. So HaCoen Mendes was already cautioning against false messiahs in 1657. How long is the sermon?”
“Four pages,” Aaron said. “And then there’s another copy of it in English—maybe they translated it for the younger generation growing up in London.”
“Make sure to read through all of the English,” she said.
“Sure, but it’s just a translation.”
She sat straighter. “Didn’t you hear what I said about these people? They might have written different things in Portuguese than they did in English.”
You and me, Aleph, he thought. Except your boss wasn’t a witch.
He took a large bite. He chewed, enjoying it. Clearly his sandwich made her cross.
“When is Sotheby’s coming?” he asked. Sotheby’s made her cross.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
They sat: he chewing, she waiting for him to finish. A parody of a companionable lunch hour. “So tell me,” he said, his affect neutral. “How did you come to history?”
She wasn’t fooled by his attempt to soften her. Still, she sat in silent consideration as though the question had been sincere. Facing the window, she sucked in her cheeks, a gesture he’d noticed she made when thinking. Calculating, again, whether he was worth a response.
A bitter humor took over her face. She said, “I was forced to it.”
6
October 2, 1657
8 Heshvan, 5418
The English Channel