The Harem Midwife (16 page)

They moved out into the garden and stood outside the workshop where Möishe sat bent over his loom. He stared at the woman, the shuttlecock still in his hand. Tiny golden filaments of thread floated into the air, some of them settling on the guest’s red dress, making it shimmer.

Hannah looked at Isaac, who stood gazing at this stranger, standing too close to her, his mouth open.

“I am your sister-in-law, Leon’s wife. I am Grazia. And,” she said, turning to Matteo who was also gazing at her, mesmerized by her beauty, “I am your aunt.” She took a slender finger and ran it down Matteo’s nose, then lightly pinched one of his cheeks.

Was this really Leon’s wife? And if so, what in the world was she doing here in Constantinople, so far from Rome, and so soon after her husband’s death?

Hannah wiped her hands on her apron and kissed Grazia, aiming for her cheek but kissing the tip of her ear because Grazia turned her head just as Hannah bent toward her. She inhaled the fragrance of citrus and bergamot. She and Isaac had received a letter from Yehuda, Leon’s son from his first marriage, advising them that Leon had died, but a visit so soon? Had Isaac known Grazia was coming but neglected to tell her?

“Very pleased to meet you,” Hannah managed to say.

If Hannah had known Grazia was coming, she would have put on her best blue dress and washed her hair. A guest such as her sister-in-law deserved special dishes, a clean house, a new coverlet for her bed, and new curtains. The spare room needed to be whitewashed. The room was not a guest room at all but more of a storeroom, piled high with mothing trays and skeins of silk thread. Was it too late to tell Zephra to prepare a special dessert of ground pistachios and spiced apricots?

“You must be exhausted from your journey,” said Isaac.

In fact, she looked nothing of the kind. She looked as though she had been enjoying excellent meals and had just
emerged from the baths. A garnet wedding ring, too loose on her finger, and earrings set with amethysts were her only jewellery.

Hannah tugged at the patched grey dress she always wore when she did housework, riddled with holes from the splash of lye when she made soap.

“I sailed on the
Aphrodite
,” said Grazia. “A long trip, nearly seven weeks, but I find the sea air so bracing.” She smiled, displaying teeth as white and even as pearls.

When Hannah had arrived in Constantinople two years ago after her sea voyage from Malta, she looked like the survivor of a shipwreck—wishbone thin, with matted, lousy hair. Matteo and Isaac had been the same sorry spectacle. This slim woman in fitted velvet seemed to have survived the voyage without so much as a grease stain on her skirt, or a tear in her sleeve.

“The sea is rough this time of year,” said Isaac. They returned inside where Isaac picked up Grazia’s valises and moved toward the stairs leading to the guest room.

Matteo, usually shy, surprised Hannah by scampering over to Grazia to bury his face in her skirts.

Grazia bent down so they were at eye level. She threaded her fingers through his curls. “Look at you! Such a big boy! Why, you are as tall as a bouquet of lilies.”

“Matteo, can you say hello to your aunt?” Isaac said, with what seemed to Hannah to be too much insistence.

Matteo stared at Grazia.

Grazia said, “We shall be great friends by and by.”

“What a pleasure to have you here,” said Hannah.
If only Grazia had not arrived just now, when Hannah had so much on her mind. Grazia would be another mouth to feed, but maybe they would chat and laugh and exchange confidences like sisters. Hannah missed the company of women from her part of the world. “We have no family in Constantinople,” Hannah said, “which makes you especially welcome.”

While Isaac led her through the workroom and upstairs to their living quarters, Hannah hurried out to the summer kitchen in the garden to see if Zephra was finished picking beans. The old servant was adding more broth to the soup.

From overhead, she heard Grazia and Isaac walking back and forth in the guest room between the cupboard where the bed was rolled up and put away for the day, and the wall niches for storing clothes. She heard the scraping of Grazia’s valise being dragged across the floor. When Shabbat was over, Zephra could clear it out and place sprigs of lavender between the bedsheets and hang the pillows out the window to air. Isaac came downstairs.

Hannah spoke with Zephra about dinner and then climbed the stairs and joined Grazia in the spare room. She had already unpacked a suitcase containing three dresses and hung them in the clothes press. They looked too big for her, but perhaps Grazia had lost weight on the voyage. Exactly how long was she expecting to stay with them?

“Leave your unpacking, Grazia. Come downstairs. Zephra will bring us some tea while you tell us of your journey. Isaac will join us in a moment. He went to talk to Möishe about some matter.”

Her sister-in-law smiled and dropped the chemise she had been folding to put away in the wall niche. “I understand Ottoman ladies do nothing all day but sip tea.”

Hannah laughed. “Just the rich ones with lots of servants.” She turned to the door and said over her shoulder, “Come, we shall have a cup.”

Hannah and Grazia went downstairs, pausing in the kitchen where Hannah asked the maid to prepare the strong black tea that she and Isaac favoured. Matteo was playing with his ball and stealing glances at the beautiful stranger who had suddenly entered their lives.

Hannah and Grazia sat under the wisteria arbour, and minutes later Zephra emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray. Isaac joined them, taking a seat on the bench next to Grazia. For a moment, the three of them were silent. Hannah tried to catch Isaac’s eye to prompt him to ask his sister-in-law what it was she had come for. But Isaac did not so much as turn Hannah’s way. He focused steadfastly on Grazia.

“Of what did my poor brother die?” he asked. “Yehuda did not say in his letter, only that Leon died suddenly.”

“His heart gave out. His death was a terrible shock. He was at his writing desk and toppled to the floor, hitting his head.”

How unusual, thought Hannah, who said, “He was a relatively young man.”

“It was a terrible shock, but at least he did not suffer.”

“You sailed from Venice unaccompanied? Quite an undertaking for a woman,” said Isaac.

“I was not alone. I had friends on board. A couple from Rome. They were of great comfort to me. They have sailed on to Aleppo.”

“I wonder that you would undertake such a voyage so soon after Leon’s death,” Hannah ventured. If Isaac died, she would be unable to move from the house for months, never mind endure weeks on storm-tossed seas.

“I felt I must visit you,” Grazia explained. She bent forward and patted Isaac’s knee. “You and my stepson, Yehuda, are my only kin, now that Leon is gone.”

A strange and unfamiliar feeling rose in Hannah, one that was not at all pleasant. Was it jealousy or simply a feeling of being left out and ignored?

“It seems only yesterday that my father wrote me the details of your wedding,” Isaac said, putting his hand on top of Grazia’s. “And now he, too, is dead.”

“I was sixteen when I married your brother,” Grazia said. “So long ago! Ten years.”

Their marriage had been an unusual one.

“My father wrote and told me what a lovely bride you were. I was not able to travel to Rome for your wedding, but my father’s description made me feel I was there.” Isaac smiled. “My father admired the bone buttons on Leon’s coat. He wrote he had never seen anything so fine.”

Grazia reached for her tea. Hannah was glad she was no longer touching Isaac. Had Leon captured Grazia’s heart in the same way Isaac had captured hers? She would ask Grazia when they got to know each other better.

Grazia said, “Oh yes, those buttons! Leon was missing
one from his frock coat. I had sewn it on, but it popped off during the meal. He was mortified.”

Isaac nodded.

“Leon ate so much lamb that night, the grease stained his suit. The Gypsy
musicians
played until dawn and then fell asleep on their feet like horses.” She leaned back in her chair and played with a tendril of hair at the side of her face. “Our only entertainment at the wedding, but it was enough.”

“There was something else. I am sure of it,” said Isaac.

“It was so long ago. All I could think of was what was to come that night in bed.”

Hannah looked at Isaac, but he did not react. It was a bold thing for a Jewish woman to say in front of a man, never mind a man she hardly knew. There had been rumours Grazia was carrying a baby conceived before the
ketubah
, the marriage agreement, was signed. The wedding had to be arranged in haste. It was not something of which to be proud. Seven months after the wedding, a baby boy was born, the birth cord wrapped around its neck.

Isaac brought a hand to his forehead. “Now I remember! My father wrote about jugglers, a troupe of five men from Edirne who tossed about lighted torches.”

“Yes, that’s right! An amusing display.” A shadow passed over her face.

Was all this talk of her wedding saddening her? No one from Grazia’s side of the family had attended, Hannah recalled, because they were so shocked by her conversion to Judaism.

Isaac blew on his tea and took a sip. “When we were
growing up, Leon protected me from street toughs in the ghetto. He was so much older, more like a father to me than a brother. As we grew up he became—and there is no tactful way to say this—difficult. I loved him, and as a child I looked up to him, but he could not have been an easy man to live with.”

“He grew kinder with age,” Grazia said, taking a sip of tea. “He was very fond of you, Isaac.”

Tears filled Isaac’s eyes.

Grazia reached out to touch Isaac’s cheek. “May Leon be looking down on us as we talk.”

They were silent for a moment. Matteo brought over his ball and sat cross-legged at Grazia’s feet, leaning against her skirts. Grazia toyed with his curls with an air of familiarity, as though she had known him since birth.

Hannah folded her hands under her apron. Her skin was chapped, her knuckles swollen from stretching canvas onto the moth trays in readiness for the mounting season. When she had a moment, she would rub them with her own ointment made of beeswax, olive oil, and lanolin.

“You must give me a tour of your workshop,” Grazia said to Isaac. “They say the silk here is the best in the world.”

“May that always be true,” Isaac said, rising to his feet. “Come.”

Grazia placed her teacup on the little table next to her. The two of them, Matteo trailing behind, trooped into the workshop without as much as a glance back in Hannah’s direction. Hannah saw Möishe eyeing Grazia again. Did all men react this way to blue eyes, white skin, and a slender waist?

“Cochineal,” said Möishe, leaving the loom and approaching her for a closer look. He rubbed a fold of the sleeve between his fingers.

Hannah realized she had misjudged him. He was studying Grazia’s red dress, not the woman inside it.

“Look at this, Isaac. I have not seen this hue since I left Lucca.” He gave Isaac a nudge. “If I had some of that to work with, eh? The ladies of the harem would be clamouring for our tents.”

Isaac turned to Grazia. “Leon had some cochineal, did he not? He once wrote to tell me that he took a pouch of it in payment of a debt from a Sephardic dyer. Do you recall anything about it?”

“Leon did not discuss business with me,” said Grazia—rather tersely, Hannah thought.

“I will write to Yehuda. Maybe he knows something.”

“Oh, do not bother. I will do it myself,” Grazia said. “I must write him anyway to let him know I arrived safely.”

They spoke of this and that and soon the shadows in the garden lengthened and Zephra emerged from the kitchen to summon them to the table. Isaac and Grazia walked back to the house, arms linked. Hannah followed, trying once again to catch Isaac’s eye, but he refused to meet her glance. There were so many things that puzzled her about this unexpected visitor. Didn’t Isaac feel the same way?

After Shabbat dinner, in the privacy of their bedchamber, Hannah said, “Isaac, what on earth does she want from us?”

“Hannah, she is family.
That’s
what she wants from us,
love and support after losing her husband. How can you be so inhospitable and unkind?”

Maybe he was right. Perhaps she was just jealous of such a beguiling woman living in her house. But then again …

“Odd that she did not remember the jugglers at her own wedding.”

“Why do we remember some things and not others? Why do you recall the details of every childbirth you have ever attended and I can hardly remember what we ate for dinner yesterday? Memory is a slippery eel. You can grasp one end, or you may grasp the middle, but you never can grasp the entire creature.”

“You defend her because she is pretty,” Hannah said. Her remark was made in jest but there was an element of truth in it.

Isaac patted Hannah’s rump. “She’s too skinny for my taste. If she was a heifer, I would graze her on richer pasture.”

Hannah was heartened by his comment. It meant he was no longer angry about the incident at the harem and her part in it. Maybe that would just fade away and be forgotten. Hannah hoped so.

“Grazia was in a great hurry to see us. She must have departed from Rome on the first ship out of port in the spring, a week after Leon’s death, without a period of mourning.”

“There may be another reason she has come,” said Isaac.

“I do not understand.”

“I wrote to Leon last year when our silkworms died of jaundice. He lent me Grazia’s dowry money so that I could
replace them. He said he could afford it, that Grazia’s family was wealthy, and that nothing would give him greater pleasure than to help me with my business … But let us go to sleep. We will talk in the morning.”

They slipped off their clothes and washed in the basin in the corner. Hannah donned her silk nightdress. Isaac put on his nightshirt.

They settled into bed together, the horsehair mattress creaking under their weight.

“That is all? Talk to me, Isaac.”