How strange that the rabbi could know her these years, yet have no notion of the color of her eyes or complexion. “My form is neither pleasing nor displeasing,” she said. “But I’ve let the world see how little I care for its verdict.”
“The widow Mendoza,” he said slowly, “tells me there is some young man of the community who, she promises, won’t shun you for the work we’ve done together, provided you now turn your attention away from it to tend his home. She was careful not to give me his name, as neither I nor the young man in question has yet employed her or agreed upon a fee. So at the moment, Ester, I have only her word on the matter. But I think, whether or not her meddling was wished for, she’s sincere in believing a match might be possible.”
The rabbi’s face was inscrutable. The fire beside him had settled to coals. Ester made no move to revive it.
“I understand well your wish to study, Ester, but you must consider your choices. I cannot pretend God created you a man, who might earn his keep as a scholar.” He paused. “God has planted in us endless hungers. Yet we master them in order to live. So I was forced to master my own wishes, after the loss of my sight made it impossible that I would become the scholar I wished to be, or the father of a family.” His voice had dropped to nearly a whisper. “I’m sorry. I led you to believe you could be a scholar. You were a fine one.”
A helpless fury took her. “As were you,” she said. “But now there will be none to write the words from your lips.”
He bowed his head. “I won’t force you to marry, Ester. But neither will you scribe for me any longer.” In the thin light from the window his skin was almost translucent. “In my selfishness I’ve sinned against you. I ask your forgiveness.”
In a blinding swath of tears she rose, not knowing where she went. She took her cloak and left, the door standing open behind her.
Outside, a city torn by warm gusts. The heavy sea-coal smoke had lifted visibly, like a draped fabric suddenly lofted high over the city. Above the street, sheets of it shredded slowly, floating like the tissue of some living thing. The noxious odors of the kilns and tanneries were being blown far off to the countryside today, it seemed, and a fresh wind was blowing in, leaving the air bright and confusing. All of London was in the streets, nags pulling clattering carts to the distracted calls of their drivers, flocks of pigeons rousing and settling in great restless waves.
She cast her way along the alleys, her vision still blurred. Where now? She’d no destination in mind. She knew only that she had to escape this congestion of noise and traffic. To the park, then—she’d been there twice with Mary, who loved to show herself beneath its leafy canopies. She knew the way, though she was accustomed to seeing it pass from the window of Mary’s coach. She walked swiftly to stop her eyes from filling: Cheapside, Newgate, Holborn, but as the streets narrowed, the people seemed only to grow in number. In her blindness it seemed that the rills of strangers emerging from side streets had come only to gape at the unnatural girl from Amsterdam who would not wed. She shook off the thought—she was invisible amid this tide of city dwellers.
Reaching the park, she saw its paths were already full, as though this first taste of spring warmth were a universally acknowledged holiday. Workers in stained aprons or smudged eyeglasses were out taking the air, and the menagerie included animals as well as people: spaniels trotted on the leash, solemn greyhounds paced before gossiping owners, and a shirted monkey in a harness trailed the old man who pulled it, making its way along the path with jerky, wheeling steps. Coaches and horses lined the edge of the park, and amid them, she saw the da Costa Mendeses’—Mary, she thought with a burst of self-pity, must have found some other escort, one better suited to her temperament.
She cast her way along the path. Strangers walked before and behind her, shouts of jollity rose up from knots of people, the smell of churned dirt was in her nose. Across the open greenery strolled cross-tides of Londoners, some in finery: painted faces, elaborately curled wigs. Gatherings of the well-dressed and the plain drifted, separating and reattaching like the flocking birds, like the smoke high above.
How long did she walk? Fear crowded out thought, and without thought there was no time or sequence, only faces, and the rhythm of her feet on soft dirt, and more faces, and the babble of strangers.
Then, among the faces, Mary’s—and then, dizzying her, others she knew. She stopped as they hailed her: four couples carrying parcels—food for a midday meal in the open air. Mary, on the arm of Manuel HaLevy, glanced at Ester and then away. There was a tight expression on her face that Ester hadn’t the heart to wonder about, though perhaps it had something to do with her companion. Manuel HaLevy, in turn, stared at Ester in the keen hard-eyed manner Ester had all but forgotten, for it had been more than a year now since the HaLevy brothers had last visited the rabbi’s home. Nearly tripping on his elder brother’s heels was Alvaro HaLevy, grown from a puppyish boy to a puppyish young man. On his arm, a tall, impatient-looking girl whom Ester had seen in the synagogue, the daughter of the Cancio family. Alvaro stared at Ester as though she’d stepped out of a dream. A look of misery and longing swept his face and he faltered, forcing his companion to stumble to a halt.
“Good afternoon,” he said to her in English.
She answered with a nod.
Instantly he was alert. “You’re not well?”
With his fawn-colored coat and matching boots, his soft curling wig and pale cheeks and slight body, he looked like a boy playing at adulthood. She told herself to move along; she’d no wish to speak to him. He couldn’t help her.
“You’re unwell,” he affirmed, eyes widening.
“I’m well in body,” she said.
He turned to his companion and with a few words detached himself. With a glum expression, the girl followed the others to the bench they were making for, looking back once with visible curiosity.
“Even if you don’t wish for my company,” said Alvaro, falling in beside Ester, “I thank you for the excuse to step away.” Ester was surprised at the soft mischief that lit Alvaro’s face, though in an instant he’d sobered, as though afraid of his own honesty.
“Why not go to her,” she spat, “and enjoy your wooing.”
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
She shook her head, shamed by her own spite. There was no need to vent her fury on one who would never be bold enough to defend himself. Yet she hated him for the simple reason that, regardless of his lack of boldness, the broad road of life lay open to him. She stopped on the path and turned to face him. “Why do you walk with me?” she asked in a low voice. “Go to that one”—she pointed to the beribboned girl on the bench—“or another girl. Go to ten girls, go to a hundred. Find a bride.”
His shock showed on his pale face. But instead of hurt or anger or bewilderment, he had turned alert. He was reading her expression, hesitant, as if seeking permission to speak as he wished. “I would marry,” he said, “if I were wise enough—”
“I would not,” she snapped.
He held her gaze uncertainly, as though his eyes might utter the words his lips dared not speak.
The others had decided to set out for a farther spot and were calling for him to join; Ester heard Manuel shouting some mockery to his brother, though his words were lost to the breeze. Alvaro’s companion had stood from the bench, her irritation legible in her stance even from a distance.
“I’m cursed,” he whispered to Ester. “I shall never have what I wish.”
“Why?” she said, loud. And as she saw his eyes widen with struggle, the thought struck her that he was her unnamed suitor.
A pitiable trust washed his face, and she had no answer for it.
Around them, strangers’ voices like surf.
“I’m cursed,” Alvaro repeated at last. His shining eyes dropped from hers.
She watched him return to the young woman at the bench, who took his arm and hurried them down the path toward the others.