Ignoring his burning knuckles, he copied out the Hebrew on the fourth page, searching it for meaning—it seemed to be the end of a declaration or confession, but of what nature and of what kinship to the Portuguese text he couldn’t say, nor could he guess the significance of the English quotation at its end. Some time later he had Patricia invert the letter so he could read, beginning to end, in Portuguese; then had her invert it again so he could read end to beginning in Hebrew. He rechecked his transcription, crossing out and adding notes.
Over and over he returned to the sixth and final page of the Portuguese letter. Below the rabbi’s sprawling signature and the initial of the scribe Aleph, was the word, decorated with a small and elegant scroll, Finis.
But turn the page upside down and, in the same elegant hand, the Hebrew read, Here I begin.
Here I begin.
I am one soul in a great city.
I am the hand that moves over the page.
The rabbi speaks. I write. This has been my task and my refuge. I scribe for a man not honored by those who ought honor him.
I would do him honor.
But I do not. Instead I pose questions forbidden to men, though I myself am blameless of violating the law.
The words that leave my hand are my life.
I’ve brought forth no other life in my days, and believe I shall not.
This day, Manuel HaLevy, a man of a temperament to use a folio of verse to wipe his boots, came to the rabbi’s study to scoff at his own brother’s cruel impressment onto an English ship. I have observed this HaLevy these years, and know the force of his contempt for all of more delicate temperament.
When I refused his offer of marriage, he asked me what I am.
I gave this answer: I am an empty vessel.
It is not so. I am a vessel that brims with desire.
I write. Were the truth known of what I have wrought in the rabbi’s place, I would be counted among the most wicked of souls. Yet forgiveness I do not ask. If it be the nature of God’s universe that our lives must be made false to remain true, then be my conscience clear and scoured as my heart.
Where words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain, for they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
As soon as Aaron had checked over his full translation, he stepped out of the rare manuscripts room and left a message on Helen’s telephone. Several minutes later he left another—then a third, feeling vexed to the point of madness, in which he read to her answering machine the first lines of the cross-writing. He was considering leaving a fourth when his phone rang.
“Mr. Levy?”
How long was it going to take for her to use his first name?
In his phone messages he’d said things that would have piqued any historian’s curiosity. Yet now Helen didn’t ask him a single question. She simply said, “I’ll meet you at my office.”
Walking across a series of narrow courtyards toward her office, weaving between drifting clumps of students, he took a moment to imagine Helen Watt as a child. No thank you, Mother, I prefer to wait and open my Christmas presents next month.
She wasn’t in her office when he arrived. He leaned on the wall beside her door, then after a time slid down to sit cross-legged on the floor of the empty hallway. He tugged his laptop out of his bag and opened it.
Aaron,
I don’t want to be in touch with you right now. Sorry to be abrupt, but I’m telling you directly to spare you the experience of sending e-mails into a void.
Marisa
The words made no sense. He read them again. He closed his eyes, opened them, and found the words still on the screen.
At the sound of Helen Watt’s cane he shut his laptop, stood, and mutely followed her into her office.
As she settled at her desk, and he into the wooden chair opposite, he thought for an instant that Helen looked unwell. Then, under her unblinking stare, he decided he’d imagined it.
“Tell me what you found,” she said.
He began his description of the cross-written document—and the act of speaking righted him. Marisa’s bewildering, eviscerating e-mail receded . . . surely it would make sense later. As he addressed Helen, the full force of his excitement returned to him. Two texts singing together in harmony—it was a work of art. It read almost like a poem, he told Helen Watt: a personal diary meted out in crisp lines that stood apart from one another like islands. Perhaps it was simply something scribbled by a seventeenth-century woman in a meditative moment—but it had the feeling of a coded message. Certainly it hinted at some intense human story behind this collection of documents . . . yet that closing quote, for which Aleph had switched to English, was from Shakespeare’s Richard II—Aaron had already checked it online. And that phrase about desire—he’d have wondered if it might be a reference to Spinoza’s Ethics, only Ethics wouldn’t be published for more than a decade after this was written. Still, what were they to make of this sort of philosophical language? Wasn’t such discourse banned to Jewish men, let alone women?
When he’d finished, Helen Watt said nothing. She was staring out the window, her face stony with some fierce inner focus.
He decided to wait out her silence. If she could act as though the earth hadn’t just shifted under their feet, so could he.
Then, the clock on her desk ticking with obstinate stupid slowness, he couldn’t. Something had pricked a hole in his confidence. Marisa’s words flew back into his mind and lodged. How could he have so offended or disappointed her that she couldn’t even tolerate his e-mails? The very thought of Marisa was, abruptly, a body blow. He shook his head involuntarily, ignoring the sharp glance this drew from Helen Watt.
Who had still said nothing.
However disoriented he felt, Aaron was not confused—not in the least bit—about the document he’d seen today. Didn’t Helen understand what he’d discovered? All forms of diary were extraordinarily rare in early-modern Jewish communities. There was no Jewish Augustine, no Jewish Julian of Norwich. There was Leon of Modena, true; but the only known diary by a Jewish woman of the early modern period was that of tedious Glückel of Hameln, filled with moralistic pronouncements and details of dowries. Didn’t Helen see what they had in their hands? If there were more notes like this in the trove—more personal margin-scribblings or cross-writing, or maybe even a more coherent passage by Aleph in which she’d explain what the hell she’d meant by that cryptic counted among the most wicked of souls—maybe this could be the new Glückel, except without Glückel’s plangent materialism. A young, philosophy-dabbling, melodramatic Glückel; that’s what he’d write up for his dissertation.
“This could be the new Glückel,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
“And combined with the information in HaCoen Mendes’s letter about a Sabbatean crisis in Florence . . .”
Still Helen refused to respond.
He continued sharply. “Florence being a community that’s been thought of until now as a fairly safe haven from Sabbateanism. Making this find doubly important.”
Helen inclined her head. “Correct on all counts.”
He stared at her. She still wasn’t looking at him. He made no effort to mask his anger. “This could be the new Glückel and we’ve got fresh information on the influence of Sabbatai Zevi in Florence. One of those things alone is a huge find. Together?”
Still looking at the window, she said, “I’ll check the translation of the Portuguese first thing in the morning.”
He sat straight-backed in his chair. Again, some vague agony—something to do with Marisa that he hadn’t yet wrapped his mind around—thudded dully inside him. With effort, he held himself perfectly still. “That’s all you have to say?”
Helen stared at the window as though she hadn’t taken in a word. As if waiting for him to leave. As if she too had decided she preferred not to be in touch with him right now.
“So you won’t believe it until you double-check to see if my Hebrew vocabulary is up to scratch?” His hands, loose at his sides, felt hot. “Is that it?”
She raised her eyebrows in the manner of one annoyed by a far-off sound.
“Well,” he said, “if you’re not going to trust me as a scholar, you ought simply tell me that right now.”