He opened his eyes, took aim, pinched the lower edge of the page, and before her outreached hand could stop him he’d stood and in the same instant he’d torn the paper—a two-inch gash up the bottom left side of the page, far from the inked words.
She couldn’t put it together in her mind, as though she’d witnessed an act of violence done on a living body. “Aaron?”
Aaron had thrown up his hands. When he called for Patricia, it was in a voice so contrite that Helen could have believed it genuine.
“I’m never going to forgive myself,” he said as Patricia approached. “I’m so sorry. I’m”—he raised his palms: words failed.
Patricia’s eyes found the torn document.
Aaron held out the zipper on his sweater, he zipped it up and down as he spoke as though to demonstrate its unruliness. “It caught on the paper as I was standing up,” he said. “I must have leaned forward and the page caught, and then the string weights were holding it down so it ripped as I stood. I’ll never wear anything like this again, I had no idea that could happen. I am so, so sorry.”
On the other side of the room, Wilton’s team looked up. As Aaron went on with his abject litany, one of Wilton’s postgraduates turned to his mates with a condescending grimace that said Bumbling git. But Wilton himself, with the charitable air of someone focused on a greater prize than humiliating an already-bested competitor, merely lofted his eyebrows and returned to his work.
The longer Patricia was silent, the harder Aaron seemed to try to fill the silence with apologies. But Helen could see Patricia’s face—and she observed, to her surprise, that Patricia wasn’t unmoved. Having seen that the damage was minor and didn’t affect the inked portion of the page, Patricia seemed satisfied by Aaron’s contrition. What’s more, she looked impressed that he’d finally seen the worth of the physical manuscripts.
“Perhaps,” said Patricia at last, “we need to add another rule to our protocols here.” She sniffed. “Though the rules have never seemed to constrain you.”
“I’ll write the sign for you myself,” Aaron said. “No Zippers in the Rare Manuscripts Room. I’ll police everyone. I’m serious. I’ll make this a buttons-and-Velcro-only zone.” Helen could almost believe his anguish as he reached a futile hand toward the torn document and said, “Can it be repaired?”
Patricia shook her head. “That’s for Patricia to decide upstairs.” She regarded Aaron. “Conservation Patricia. With her laser-beam eyes.”
He accepted the rebuke in silence. “I hope it won’t be too much labor for her,” he said. “I know she’s already busy with other documents, and doesn’t have time to jump every time a student does something unbelievably clumsy. Please do send her my sincere apologies.”
And Helen saw. “I think we’re through for the day,” she said to Patricia. And then, surprising herself, she stood and gave Aaron’s shoulder a single, awkward pat. “I suspect we’ll need to settle our nerves before continuing.”
Patricia took the document and left for the conservation lab. Helen heard the door of the lift slide open, then shut.
Aaron was packing his bag. When he turned back to Helen, he wasn’t wearing the cocky expression she’d expected. He looked unnerved. “It hurt to do that,” he said quietly. “More than I expected.”
Helen’s hair had escaped its barrette and the gray strands striped her vision. “You’re bloody brilliant,” she said.
A smile broke slowly over his face. And the haggard mien she’d noticed in him recently—the look that made her think perhaps Aaron Levy might understand something of life after all—vanished under the onslaught of his grin, as it can only in the still-young.
“That!” he cried, so loudly she startled. “That was it!” Slowly he clapped his hands—big, emphatic, hollow claps that would have brought Patricia running, had she not been occupied bearing her wounded up to the conservation lab.
Helen couldn’t mask her embarrassment. Even Wilton had lifted his leonine head and was watching now. “What?” she snapped.
“A compliment.” Aaron stood opposite her, addressing her with a beatific expression. “I knew you’d get the hang of it.”
18
April 10, 1665
To Benedictus de Spinoza,
My name will surely be unknown to you. Yet it is my wish to enter into an exchange with you, out of respect for your philosophy. I am in hope that you will entertain a correspondence with one writing from afar, for as you must know there are those who hunger to understand truth even though they be scattered to all points of the compass.
I have read your text Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae and admire it. You establish a firmament of clarity in its pages.
Yet I feel in those pages the weight of much you do not say. Your sentences hold back thoughts as a stone wall might hold back a hillside—only for a time, as the earth grows ever heavier under the saturating rains, and soil and rock must, come what may, unprison themselves.
It has reached me that you assert in private speech that God is nature. If this be so, then as man in all his varieties is encompassed within nature, it must also be that God does not choose any one thing or person to hate or love, as so many claim, but rather is equally present in each member of creation. Therefore God does not enter into any contest between peoples.
This must be correct, by my thinking. Yet it would relieve my spirit to know that another spirit argues this in cool reason.
I wish to understand more plainly, as well, what you mean when you speak of God—for here again, the words of yours that have reached me promise much, yet hold back much as well.
It has long been my wish to converse with you. Yet my own lack of practice in the foment of philosophical conversation bade me approach your friend Van den Enden before writing to you, in the hope that through exchange with him I might learn the manner of speech and argument you employ with one another, and address you as one less untutored. Yet Van den Enden does not engage my correspondence. It is my hope you will choose otherwise.
I await your response and will then say more.
Thomas Farrow
April 11, 1665
20 Nisan, 5425
To my beloved pupil Daniel,
Your silence troubles me, and so I write again, though perhaps you may not welcome this intrusion. Yet I remain in great alarm over your words. I fear what the Jews of Florence will do in service of Sabbatai Zevi, yet I fear still more what they will do after he is revealed as an imposter. I have seen what the raising and dashing of hope wreaks upon the spirit of a community, the shame and divisions it sows. Sabbatai Zevi will not leave your Florence as it was, just as a fire does not pass through a stand of trees and leave them living.
Please inform me whether my letters have found you, even should they have proven of no use to you. I fear for your safety in this mysterious upheaving world. In my infirmity I am able to carry but few of the duties I would assume were I whole, yet this one duty I carry with all my heart: my love for my pupils, who are sparks of light in this dark world. So I beg your forgiveness for this demand of mine to know your welfare, yet I will not rest until I hear word that you are well.
Rabbi HaCoen Mendes
?
April 29, 1665
To Benedictus de Spinoza, whose thoughts I hold in esteem,