"`Gonzaga said to Isabel,'" said Victoria in a deep voice, officiating for the first time, "`I take the fever from you and you offer up your suffering' The novice looked at him sweetly and loved him even more.'"
Sr. Adria suddenly opened his eyes, as if he wanted to be sure that it was Victoria who had uttered those words. A few lines of silence. She took it as a reproach and hastened to finish:
"Forse the no by Giuseppe Grilli, Naples, 1912."
Thirty-five new old books and some mysterious inquiries later, when his sore throat was a distant memory, Sr. Adria knew that Toni was named Toni Demestre, was not an EMT but a nurses' aide, was twenty-five years old, often went whoring, and was fooling around with somebody named Lourdes Coelho. He knew all of this, but he wasn't sure he should explain it to Victoria. Spying was ugly, but making accusations was even uglier. So the only thing holding him back was aesthetics? And Victoria's happiness? Wasn't it more important to sacrifice his image as a discreet person if by doing so he was saving Andromache from the error of a bad love?
Now he heard her working in the hall and wondered if it was a good time to tell her everything he knew. But doubt made him hesitate. For the last few days he'd noticed a different, more powerful, brightness in her gaze. Twice when he'd gone in afterwards, he'd been able to confirm that Victoria had taken a book with her into the bathroom. Sr. Adria dreamed that perhaps one day he would convert Andromache into a reader. Because emergencies take precedence over important things (cf. Feliz Resolucao by Antonio Albes, Lisbon, 1957), Sr. Adria asked himself again what he should do, tell her the truth about the EMT or pretend ignorance? Would he be brave enough to expose himself to the shame of Victoria's contempt for having been a snoop? Who'd told him to start spying on other people's lives? (That's what she'd say, imitating Felisa Graves, with her hands on her glorious hips.) Or maybe not, maybe she'd be eternally grateful to him for having opened her eyes. Or not. Or…
Sr. Adria kept the secret file with information about Andromache in the big armoire, with the bedclothes, and he sailed, astonished, on an ocean of doubts. And I don't know whether to tell him I think it's strange that he's filled out only five cards in the last month, as if he no longer believed in what he was doing, as if we could allow Orokkon-orokke (Kalman Szijj, Budapest, 1922) to be buried forever with no eyes tilling the furrows of its words (cf. Letters and Papers by T.S.Taylor Jr.) to rescue it from oblivion. He's distracted, preoccupied, as if he weren't interested in reading, and it pains me to see that the last thirty-five books he's bought have gotten no more than a distracted, apathetic glance, like that of Oliver Cage's Dorothy. What about Mazzarino, Spender, Caballero-Rincon, Seabra Pinto et alteri? What's he thinking about all day long, poor Sr. Adria? Sometimes Victoria thought that the fevers of the sore throat had damaged his brain.
As if enlightened, like the anointed one she was, with the confidence inspired by knowing that what you do is just, Victoria climbed down from the ladder where she'd been cleaning AFRICAN POETRY and went into the study. She took Sr. Adria gently by the arm, handed him the feather duster, whispered that he absolutely had to finish AFRICAN POETRY, in the hall, and sat down in the chair in front of the table in the study. Sr. Adria looked at the feather duster, cast an attentive eye around him and left the room without saying anything. Andromache didn't pause, because she already knew what she had to do: Seabra Pinto's reflections on life in Coimbra between the wars would have more hidden secrets than William Spender's religious sonnets. She opened the book and realized that the spine, though it hadn't been on any shelf, was starting to attract dust. She made a grimace of disgust and wrote on a piece of paper that as soon as Sr. Adria stuck his head in, she'd tell him that the books on the table had to be clean as well. She was only on page 3 when she found a good quote: "You are not alone, Coimbra, if the windows of your houses are opened every day, making the shutters bang happily against the walls." The happiness of the shutters, the happiness of the woman who opened her home to a new day in Coimbra… Victoria would have liked to be in the presence of Seabra Pinto as he was writing this thought; she had to be satisfied with reading it many years later, with the author dead. She read it again, with respect, she transcribed it onto a card and added "Coimbra." Antonio Seabra Pinto, Lisbon, 1953. Immediately it occurred to her that it might be interesting, now that she'd broken off with Toni because putting up with him was getting harder and harder (he and Lourdes on the sofa in his house: that was the last straw), now that she had more time for herself, she could find the relationships, the indelible but ethereal links among the works: because Seabra Pinto's very direct, very latinate description (ibid.) had brought to mind "the port was covered with a thin patina of dust that only his sensitive heart was able to perceive" (cf. Selbstaufopferung by M. Haensch, Berlin, 1921).
In the hall, the dust from AFRICAN POETRY made Sr. Adria sneeze. He figured that he had a good hour of work ahead of him if he wanted to do a good job, book by book, spine by spine, and so keep Andromache's splendid library from falling into the disrespect and carelessness of oblivion.
Eyes Like Jewels
And Jaweh said to me: "I have made your forehead like the diamond, harder than the rock. Do not fear the sons of the house of Israel, do not tremble before them, for they are a caste of rebels."
tshak Mattes stood up solemnly and embraced the young man. Why such generosity? Why, the Lord be praised, has the venerable Maarten of Amsterdam chosen to favor me? Standing, speaking slowly in his cultured Yiddish so Baruch would understand him, he said, My son, may this Sabbath celebration be forever engraved on our memory. And the whole Mattes family, except for suspicious Chaim, said Amen. And the Lord heard their prayers and the family never forgot that Sabbath. Never did the honorable ltshak, or his wife Temerl, or their beautiful daughter Sarah, who was observing the newcomer with eyes like jewels, or her suspicious older brother Chaim, the scholar of the family, uninterested in the world of gems and devoted to the study of the Torah, or little Aaron and Daniel, still far from their bar mitzvah, or the vague uncles recently arrived from Warsaw, forget that Sabbath or the four days that followed it, the night that ltshak Mattes, raising his palms before Baruch Anslo, invited him to tell his story.
Baruch, after casting the eyes of his memory far back, began the narrative with a prologue. He said that his name was Josef Cohn and that he had undertaken that long winter journey because of the express desire of his venerable master, and that he wanted them to know that during the inclement weeks of the endless journey between Amsterdam and Lodz, despite the extreme difficulty of the conditions, not once would he have traded a single prayer of the Arvit in the imprecise light of dawn or one single Aixer Yotsar for the the small and innocent pleasures of a good straw pallet at an inn or a piece of cheese purchased in a village market.
(He is a holy man. So much the better.)
"My master," continued Baruch, "is called Maarten Claeszoon Sorgh and he is a famous diamond cutter in Amsterdam."
"May Adonai have him in his glory when his hour arrives, for he is a just man," said ltshak, and everyone but Chaim said Amen.
"One day I noticed that my venerable master seemed worried, bent over the account books that took up more of his time each day to the detriment of the gems, due to his gradual loss of sight. `What is wrong, Master Maarten?' 1 said. And he answered that I was the only one who could carry out a task for him, but he dared not ask it of me. `What task, Master Sorgh,' 1 protested, `do you imagine 1 could not carry out for you?' The venerable master looked at me with his gray eyes full of wisdom and he said that he wanted to render homage to Master ltshak Mattes in the city of Lodz, in distant Poland."