A Conspiracy of Paper (14 page)

“As I was feeling enthusiastic, I saw no reason the synagogue should not benefit from my mood.”

“I find you flippant, Cousin,” she said with amusement rather than annoyance.

“I hope you take it not amiss.”

“May I ask you a question of a rather private nature?” she asked.

“You may ask me what you like,” I told her, “so long as I may do the same.”

My comment was perhaps a bit ungentlemanly, for she paused for a moment and appeared uncertain of how to continue. Finally she offered an expression that was not so much a smile as a thoughtful pressing together of her lips. “I shall call that a fair bargain. Your uncle, as you know, is a very traditional man. He seeks to shelter me from the world. I do not enjoy being cloistered, however, and so I try to learn as best I can.” She was silent for a moment, contemplating either my words or the wine. “I was never told of the reason for your break with your father.”

I had rarely spoken of the details of my rupture with my family to anyone. Part of my desire to speak of it with Miriam had to do with a wish to form a bond of trust with her, but part of it was simply the need to speak about these matters. “My father had hopes that I would follow him into business, become a licensed broker like himself. Unlike my older brother, I was born here in England, which meant that I was a citizen and would be exempt from the alien taxes, and I would be able to own land. It made sense to my father that José should return to Amsterdam to manage family affairs there, and I should remain here. But I was not very skillful at doing what was expected of me as a child. I often found myself embroiled in street fights, as often as not with Gentile boys who had tormented us only because they misliked Jews. I cannot say why I was so inclined. Perhaps because I grew up without a mother’s affection. My father hated that I fought, for he feared notice. I always told him that I felt honor-bound to defend our race, but I felt an even greater thrill from striking the other boys.”

I saw that I had Miriam’s full attention, and I basked in her gaze. Even now it is so very difficult for me to express why this woman captivated me instantly. She was beautiful, yes, but so are many women. She had a quick wit, but women of intelligence are not so rare as some unkind authors tell us. I sometimes believe that I thought she and I had so much in common, moving as we did, each in our own way, along the borders of what it meant to be both a Hebrew and a Briton. Perhaps that was why my story had arrested her attention so fully.

“I always somehow felt that it was his fault I had no mother—you know how a child’s thoughts are so nonsensical,” I continued. “She died, as I am certain you know, of a wasting disease when I was still but an infant. From an early age, I sensed that my father made but a scurvy kind of parent, and I found myself almost seeking to incur his displeasure. He was a stern disciplinarian and anything other than perfection made him angry.”

I paused briefly to sip from my glass, flattering myself that Miriam did not see the confusion telling my tale engendered in me.

“One day, when I was fourteen, he had entrusted me to bring payment to a merchant to whom he owed a debt. I was at the age when he was just beginning to teach me the rudiments of the family concerns. He wished to see me a trader upon the Exchange, as he was, but I fear I had little aptitude for mathematics, and I had even less interest in business. Perhaps my father ought to have begun teaching me of these things earlier, but I think he had been hoping I would mature and grow interested of my own will. But I was only interested in running about on the streets making trouble and haunting the gaming houses.”

“Yet he thought you mature enough then,” Miriam observed cautiously.

“So it would seem,” I told her, though I had often wondered if he had only wanted to give me the opportunity to fail. “My father was determined to make me useful, and he often had me run errands. Such an errand was this payment he wished me to deliver. It was a five-hundred-pound negotiable note. I had never had so large a sum in my own hands before, and I thought it a golden opportunity. I believed that with so much money to stake, I might go to a gaming house and be sure to win—as though my luck would increase proportionate to the amount I wagered. My plan was that I should win an enormous amount of money, bring the merchant the principal and I would keep the interest. I had visited gaming houses before, and had generally come away fleeced, so I had no excuse for my optimism. I was merely young and enamored of the power of the money I had upon me. So I went to the house and cashed the note with the intention of exchanging the coin back for it on my way out. This story is predictable, I suppose; I piled loss upon loss until I had less than one hundred pounds left, and I could no longer trick myself into believing I might recover the original sum. I dared not think of returning to my father and telling him what had happened. He had many times disciplined me severely for returning late from errands—I could not even speculate how he would respond to this crime.”

“You must have been terrified,” she said quietly.

“Terrified, yes. But strangely liberated. I felt as though I had been waiting for that moment all my life—the moment when I would not return to that house. And suddenly it was upon me. I resolved to take the remaining money and set out on my own. To conceal my whereabouts from him, I took upon me the name of Weaver. It was not many months later that I discovered I could earn my bread—sometimes barely that and sometimes far more than that—by doing what I loved most: fighting. I sometimes fancied I might save my money and return to him with the amount I had taken, but I always postponed this project. I had become attached to my newfound freedom, and I feared that this freedom had tainted me forever. In my mind I had already returned and been cast off, so I felt in my breast as though I had been wronged and was morally obliged to stay away. I imagine that some part of me always knew this idea to be a false one—a mere excuse, for I had never liked being beholden to the laws of our people.”

She said nothing, but her eyes suddenly locked on mine. I had uttered the words she had never dared to say aloud.

“On my own, I could eat what I liked, work when I liked, wear what I liked, spend my time with whom I liked. I let a youthful error grow, and my mistake became in my mind the appropriate response to the harsh and unforgiving treatment of an unjust father. And so I convinced myself until I received the news of his death.”

Miriam stared into her glass of wine, perhaps afraid to look at me. “Yet you stayed away even then.”

I had tried to remain detached as I told the tale; it was one I had told myself so many times that I should have been able to recount it without giving it a single thought. And yet I found myself profoundly saddened—a condition I attempted to rectify by finishing the wine in my glass. “Yes. Even then I stayed away. It is hard to change more than a decade of habit. I always believed, Miriam, that my father was an unnaturally unkind man. But it is strange. Now that I have not seen him in ten years, now that I shall never see him, I begin to wonder if it was I who was not a good son.”

“I envy you that freedom,” she said, eager to change the subject to one that would make me less pensive. “To come and go as you please. You can eat anything—speak with anyone—go anywhere. Did you eat pork? And shellfish?” She sounded at once like an excited child.

“They are but foods,” I said, curious at my desire to diminish the thrill I had felt from the freedom to eat those victuals forbidden by our law. “What signifies one kind of meat or fish over another? What signifies its method of preparation? These things only appeal because they are forbidden, only delight because of the enticement of sin.”

“Englishmen therefore do not enjoy oysters because of their flavor?” she asked skeptically.

I laughed, for I was fond of oysters. “I am not sure I mean that,” I said. “But now it is your turn to answer my questions. Let us begin with your suitor, Mr. Adelman. What think you of him?”

“He is not so much my suitor as a suitor of your uncle’s money,” she said, “And rather old besides. What is your interest in my opinion of Mr. Adelman?”

My pride would not allow me to express the depth of my interest, though I was certainly delighted to learn that Adelman was no rival. “I shared his coach with him last night, and let us say I found his conversation a bit unsettling. He struck me as a devious man.”

Miriam nodded. “He is deeply involved with politics, and many of the papers think very ill of him,” she explained to me, her cheeks ruddy with pride that she knew of these things—usually the province of men. I wondered how my uncle, who cared so little for her knowing of social amusements, felt about her reading the political papers. “Much of the hatred directed against our people,” she continued, “that you find to be so present in fashionable circles, stems in no small amount from a distrust of his influence over the Prince and the ministry. That is reason enough, to my mind, to have nothing to do with him. I should hardly relish being tied for life to a public villain, guilty or no.”

The boldness of her way of expression utterly charmed me. She understood what it would mean to marry a man like Adelman, and I could not but applaud her wish to have no part of it. “And yet my uncle appears to permit this courtship. Does he wish to see you married to Adelman?”

“That is a topic upon which he has remained unclear. I can only imagine that the idea of his son’s widow marrying another man—any man at all, I should think—must sit ill with him. Nevertheless, so near a connection to a man of Mr. Adelman’s status must prove itself a powerful motivation, but Mr. Lienzo has yet to make a case to me on Adelman’s behalf.”

“ ‘Has yet to.’ ” I repeated her words. “You think he may yet?”

“I believe that your uncle’s sentiments about his son must eventually yield to his desire to form a closer bond with Mr. Adelman.”

“And what shall you do,” I asked slowly, “should he attempt to force your hand?”

“I shall seek protection elsewhere,” she said, affecting a lightness I sensed she did not feel.

I thought it odd that Miriam said nothing of setting up her own household; that she believed her only options were the protection of some man or another. But I could find no way to press this point without offending her, so I moved on in another direction. “You say he wishes my uncle’s money, yet he is surely an enormously wealthy man.”

“True, but that is not to say he does not covet more wealth. The belief that one cannot have too much money is, I am told, one of the prerequisites of a successful man of business. And he grows older and wishes for a wife. A wife to him must bring him money, but, I suspect, she must also be a Jewess.”

“Why? Surely a man of his power could marry any of a number of Christian women if he so chose. Such things are not unheard of, and what little conversation I’ve had with Adelman suggests to me that he has no love of his own race.”

“I believe you are right.” Miriam pursed her lips and shrugged. “I suppose he could marry a Christian lady, but it would be unwise for a man in his position.”

I nodded. “Of course. His enemies fear him as a force of consuming Jewish power. Were he to marry a Christian, his inability to . . . contain himself, perhaps, would be perceived as threatening.”

“I also believe he would like to convert and become a member of the Church of England. Not that he has any religious inclinations toward that faith, but because it would be easier for him to do his business. But Adelman also recognizes, I suppose, the enmity this move would produce in both communities. And so he casts his eye upon me, a Jewess who comes with a marriage settlement and who is not tied to the ancient traditions.”

I thought about Miriam’s analysis for a moment. “If I may ask an indelicate question, may I inquire more about Adelman’s desire to acquire my uncle’s wealth? Would it not be
your
wealth that he would acquire upon marriage?”

She set down her glass of wine, nearly toppling it as she did so. I was sorry to have asked so awkward a question, but she had raised the point after all, and it was important to understand Adelman’s motivations.

“I have brought this question upon myself, so I should answer it with good cheer, I suppose.”

I held up my hand. “If you wish to defer, I shall in no way press you.”

“You are too good, but I shall answer. Aaron, as you know, was a factor for, not
with
, your uncle. When he died, he owned very little himself, really only what had been settled upon him by my parents’ estate at the time of our marriage. And much of that money had been invested in the venture that Aaron had been upon, a venture that ended disastrously, as you know. I am, myself, mistress of a very small fortune, and I owe much to your uncle’s generosity.”

I sensed something caustic in her last comment, but I did not believe this to be a topic that I might delve into any deeper than I had already. “So, my uncle has offered a settlement on your behalf to Adelman if he should marry you?” I inquired.

“He has not said so,” Miriam explained, “but I can only speculate that is the case. Your uncle should see it as an investment to purchase such influence of Adelman. Is it true,” she asked quite suddenly, now in a less dire tone of voice, as though she had changed the topic to music or stage plays, “that your father failed to consider you in his will?”

My first instinct was to wave my hand and show my lack of concern, but I knew such a gesture to be a mere façade, and one that I did not wish to erect before this woman. Instead I nodded. “I feel no resentment. Indeed, I consider it a kindness, for had he left me any sizable estate, the guilt at my neglect would surely have been more than I could endure.” Miriam remained silent—not because she judged me harshly, but because, I believe, she did not know what to say. I attempted to turn the conversation to a topic less awkward. “And what of Mr. Sarmento?”

Her face betrayed what I took to be astonishment. “You are a very clever man, Cousin, to have noticed Mr. Sarmento’s attentions. Yes, he too is my suitor.”

“It is sometimes hard to tell if he is not, perhaps, Mr. Adelman’s suitor.”