Page 4 of The Phoenix Bride
I still find some satisfaction in the physician’s art, at least. It is gradual and questing, a science of minutiae: in the recording of symptoms, measuring of ingredients, and application of treatments. Each measure is a drop, a teaspoon, a single swallow. There is an exceptional wealth of things to memorize. Myrtle berries calm a burning stomach, this is simple enough, but then the doctor must learn how to administer them. Bought dried or fresh; given in a julep, decoction, oil, or electuary; made into a conserve, preserve, troche, or pill; how much sugar to use, how often to administer. The remembrance of these things must be as habitual as prayer. And the plants themselves, their properties and their constituents—roots, vines, fruits, leaves, and barks—must be as familiar to me as the pattern of moles on my skin, the sound of my father’s voice, the tying of my bootlaces. I am a walking herbal.
Physicians are gardeners, in both mind and body. Most of myingredients I buy, but the plainer sort—those that grow easily in an English climate—I maintain in a plot behind the house. When we first moved here, the place was nothing but a brick wall and a patch of dirt. At first we had pretentions of order. I sowed in rows and labeled each seed, as if I did not know each plant by sight. On the walls, we no longer needed the crosses we had hung in Lisbon, so we replaced them with hooks to dry herbs upon, and dangling beads of glass and feathers. They are still there. When the light hits them, they scatter color and chaos across the ground, and they clatter in the wind: half song, half shatter.
The rest of the garden is pandemonium. Great tangles of herbs burst over dead twigs; cracked clay pots compete with parasitic vines. The sole wooden bench is marked by a dozen names and talismans carved by my father’s knife. My mother was the one who tended the herbs in Portugal, andthatgarden was a paradise. Every plant she touched thrived. She was particularly proud of her lettuce, which grew in great leafy hearts and blessed our table every Passover. When my father and I left, she gave me some seeds to bring with us. By that time, my parents were not speaking to each other. She folded my fingers over the pouch as I bade her farewell. “Tell Gaspar to plant them,” she said. “He will know the best place.”
I did not follow her advice, and I planted them myself. They never sprouted. Later, my father tried his hand at it with new seeds. They grew, but poorly. The bitter variety of lettuce we favor prefers a warmer climate, just as my mother does. My friend Manuel came to inspect the garden one day before Pesach—we were hosting this time—and the leaves were so withered he had to hide a laugh behind his palm.
I groaned. “It is the London air,” I said. “The seder plate may have to go without.”
“It isn’tthatbad,” he replied, dark eyes dancing.
“It is.”
His gaze softened. “You are too hard on yourself, David. You are providing so much for us.” Leaning forward, he took my hand in his. “All will be well.”
He’d always run hot; at that moment the heat of his touch—less a burning than an ache, a candle flame at a distance—seemed to run up my arm and into my neck, sit in my throat, make me swallow dryly. Manuel, patient and earnest and more trusting than any man I have ever known, saw my discomfort and assumed it was still about seder. “All will be well,” he repeated.
Sara came out to the garden then, and he let go of me. She was gorgeous that day, as she always has been—dark skinned like her brother, with a crown of black hair that sprawled like a lion’s mane. She wore a gown of ruby silks, made from fabrics their father had imported. “Gaspar says you must come inside,” she said, and so we went, lettuce and all.
The Cardozos had come to England around the same time we did. They were from Andalusia originally, although they had lived in Amsterdam for some years before moving to London. We’d all soon become dear friends—Sara, Manuel, and I—sneaking into Royal Society lectures, arguing with beadles at shopping galleries, neglecting synagogue in favor of debates at coffeehouses. That spring—spring one year ago—I was preparing to introduce them to Jan, a new friend of mine whom I knew Manuel would adore. The meeting would never come to pass.
Seder that night was wonderful, despite the pitiful state of the lettuce. My father drank too much and argued uproariously with the Cardozos about the ideal amount of salt for pickling a cucumber; plates were picked clean, songs sung, blessings said. On occasion, Sara would smile at me from across the table and tuck her hair behind her ear. I was too distracted to realize whatthose smiles meant. I was busy watching Manuel, who was leaning forward in concentration over the Haggadah, a curl falling over his forehead and brushing his cheek.
Adonai forgive me, I must forget him entirely. That spring before the plague came, when we held hands beside the lettuce and prayed for joy and celebration: It is dead to me now. I have buried it alongside my mother’s dead seeds. I cannot cope another way.
I left so much behind when I came here. I left behind our Lisbon garden, the winding streets of my childhood, the simple beauty of the ocean greeting me from my window each morning. But London permits me to live openly as a Jew without deception, to wear a beard and hang a mezuzah on our doorframe. It has given me great joy and even greater grief.
Was it all worth it? Perhaps I’ll never know. Moses may be dead, but Adonai endures.
I wonder what he thinks of me now.
—
It is a stiflingly hot summer, one perhaps warm enough for my mother’s lettuce. One year ago, I was in an oiled coat and a beaked mask, visiting plague patients and checking my armpits each night for buboes. Today, I tie my cravat and button my doublet in preparation for a morning free of appointments. Just as London did, I survived last year—and I will survive this one. I must.
I leave the house early, to request the rebinding of three books at my printer’s near Fleet Street. Once I return, I examine my father. His heart quickens, but otherwise, he is well; he hasn’t had his chest pains for some time. It is the fifth day of turmeric for his joints, but we see little improvement. It seems the gingerwas better, and I may combine them. I have ordered bayberries to make an ointment.
Meanwhile, all else has been accounted for. The pantry and the herbal have been stocked, and the deliveries arranged. The new maid no longer hides behind doors to avoid me. Her name is Elizabeth Askwith. I ought to be calling her Mistress Askwith, really, but the first time I addressed her I was exhausted from a day of appointments, and I couldn’t remember which English title was correct. Instead, I said her full name, and I established a precedent of such. So now, when I need her, I call “Elizabeth Askwith,” and she thinks it is the manner of all Jews to use both names, so she replies, “Yes, David Mendes.” Perhaps she is jesting, but she doesn’t seem the sort to jest. She has the severity of a Puritan, if not their faith. Last week, I saw her stripping nettles for soup with her bare hands. I asked her why she refused to use gloves. She said the nettles made her fingers strong.
“A good maid must be stout, David Mendes,” she told me as she threw the weeds into the cauldron. She has dark, curtain-like hair, in harsh contrast to her pale skin, and at that moment it looked something like a monk’s hood. “My mother could wring two chickens dead at once, one in each hand.”
I have stayed out of her way since then, but this morning I must find her. I am calling upon Sara, who sits shiva for her father, and I should bring food with me. I go to the kitchen, where Elizabeth Askwith is kneading dough. I say, “Where are the tarts?”
“In the pantry, David Mendes, I shall fetch them,” she replies. She flings the dough down with unaccountable violence and goes to the pantry door. When she returns, she has a tray of four tarts.
I frown and scratch my beard. “Were there not six?”
“Gaspar Mendes had two of them with supper,” she replies.
“Gaspar Mendes is not permitted to eat tarts with supper.”
“Gaspar Mendes says that he is the head of the household, till you get you a wife.”
I huff. “I am the one who pays you, am I not?” I ask.
She pauses at that. “Aye, David Mendes, that is true,” she admits, but she makes no further comment as she wraps the tarts in cloth. She gives me a basket to carry them, and I take it with me to my father’s room as I bid him farewell. He is whittling in bed, which I have often made complaints of, for it covers the sheets in wood shavings and gives him splinters. The thing he has produced seems to be either a wolf or an otter.
He sees my frustrated expression, and the basket in my hand. “I had only two,” he says.
