She glanced at him, surprised, as though the question of trust hadn’t occurred to her. She spoke with unexpected mildness. “I’m simply stating that I intend to check these translations before we proceed further. It’s a matter of prudent scholarship.”
Fuck prudent, he enunciated in his thoughts. Fuck you.
She resumed her inward focus, as though too preoccupied to notice that the other person in the office with her was staring at her with as much hatred as he’d ever felt for another human being. His fury had lifted him almost out of his seat, his hands clenched by his knees as though he were being threatened with fists rather than her bludgeoning indifference. Helen Watt, imperious expert in Jewish history—a woman with Masada framed on her wall, as though to prove she loved the Jews and their suffering. How sick he was of English people who loved martyred Jews. How sick he was of her. He would not leave this office without being acknowledged. “Do you see what this could mean?” he repeated, and this time he didn’t disguise the demand in his voice.
She turned to face him so suddenly, his body braced as if in self-defense. Her voice was extremely quiet. “Yes, young man. I have seen it all along.”
There had been, perhaps, a point when he could have stopped, when he could have prevented a conflict that would change everything. But as he opened his mouth to answer her, he knew that point, if it had ever existed, had passed.
“You could’ve hired a child to turn pages for you,” he said. “You should have. They work cheaper than postgraduates, and they don’t mind being ordered around by someone who hasn’t a vestige of consideration. Even better”—he continued, not caring anymore, wanting only to fire back at the blanched, haughty woman to whom he’d been enslaved because of his own desperation—“children don’t challenge Brits who get their kicks out of dissecting other people’s histories without the least—”
She cut him off. “I have as much right to research Jewish history as you. Perhaps more, if you count years of—”
He didn’t care. He wouldn’t care. “Spoken like an old-fashioned colonialist.”
He had, at intervals throughout his life, burned himself badly through an inability to control his temper once he got started. He could go years without an incident—he could go so long that he came to believe his Teflon Man moniker. And then, without any warning he himself could see, he would erupt as though there were no such thing as a consequence. Thus far he’d damaged himself very little, allowing his temper to fly in the faces of those who held only paltry power over him—so he’d been able to proceed with full confidence to the next mentor, the next study group, leaving in his wake only a thin trail of muttering TAs or resident advisors, whom he would never use as job references and whose ill opinion of him would never reverberate into his future. Now he felt it happening with Helen Watt and had no wish to stop it. He wanted only to blow the flames higher, to see how high they could rise—how quickly this whole enterprise, the entire fantastical trove under the staircase, this golden chance to save his stalled academic career that gave this bitter woman such intolerable power over him, could blow to ash.
Faint pink patches had arisen on Helen’s cheeks. “Mr. Levy, you are on very shaky ground.”
“Bullshit.” He got up out of his chair. “Bullshit,” he said again, as though it were necessary to repeat this from his new vantage point. The word strengthened him. The way her nostrils flared—as though everything about him were odious—strengthened him. “This story, for example, belongs to the global Jewish community. Florence. Sabbatean crisis.” He spat the words. “Rabbis sending advice across Europe. Yet you go along with Jonathan Martin’s plan to skirt the Freedom of Information Act, because you don’t want to share this with Jewish scholars. You don’t want to share it with anyone.” He was arguing against his own interests now and he didn’t care. All he cared about was humbling her. And something else, something seductive suddenly flurrying inside him—the prospect of succumbing to reality. There, he’d thought it: so he wouldn’t get a Ph.D. He didn’t need Shakespeare, he didn’t need Helen Watt, he didn’t need drizzly England and its sodden queues and waterlogged personalities. He didn’t even need history; he could make his life without it.
The only pinch of regret he felt, as he spoke on, was at a momentary image of the documents, packed so carefully on their shelves in that stairwell in Richmond. The tide of lines on paper, written by a steady unknown hand, speaking to him across the fraught silence of centuries.
He blinked it aside.
“The university,” he said to Helen, “has gotten queries from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. From Harvard’s Judaic Studies Department. The Patricias whisper about it, you ought to know. If you love the pursuit of Jewish history so much, the least you could do is urge Martin to expedite the release of the papers so a larger pool of scholars can tackle them. Yet you haven’t raised a finger.”
Helen’s posture was taut. “This is not a Jewish story. This story, whatever it proves to be, belongs to all of us.”
“Awfully convenient of you to say that,” he spat, “as you cooperate in elbowing everyone else away from the table. What, did you spend a summer in Israel? Just because you once read a Jewish newspaper or ate a kosher hot dog or maybe”—some instinct propelled his words forward, the line of his argument a heat-seeking missile—“once for a month you had a Jewish boyfriend, it doesn’t mean that you own this history.” He swallowed. “Exclusively.”
On her cheeks, the flush had deepened. “You believe I’m just profiteering from someone else’s heritage?” Her voice was neutral, as though his answer didn’t matter to her.
He didn’t have to say more. He knew, in some confused way, that he’d hit a target, and the satisfaction that spread in him pushed aside all else, keeping at bay for the moment the wave of regret he knew was coming.
“Well,” she said, and was silent.
“I’ll go, then.” He picked up his bookbag. “Perhaps we can have a more sensible discussion about this tomorrow.” He knew they would not. He would walk out with his head high, organize his papers, and give notice to Darcy that he was no longer in Professor Watt’s employ.
And then, after he’d done that, perhaps he’d just go ahead and tell Darcy he’d be taking a leave from Shakespeare. Why not? Did he dare? And who would stop him?
As he slung his bag over his shoulder, he imagined a phone call with Marisa—in his mind he’d already reached out across the miles, persuaded her to talk to him—in which she’d celebrate his explosive liberation from academia. Perhaps, now that he’d shaken loose some old and outdated version of himself, she’d even encourage him to join her on some adventure in Israel or travel with her around the world. What was there to stop him from choosing some completely different life, after all?
Nothing but the fact that he’d never wanted a different life.
He felt his exuberance crest. The total, pool-still silence of something at equipoise. And the beginning of what he knew would be freefall.
Had Marisa guessed this about him, then? Had she, out of all the women he’d slept with, seen through his cool and his vanity and understood what he’d long secretly feared: That underneath it all, Aaron Levy lacked the courage for an authentic life? That he had not the slightest idea who he was without praise, without steady advancement toward a degree and title, without organized competition for some elite goal?
A secret no one had yet guessed. Except Marisa—who had summarily decided she wanted nothing to do with him.