Inconveniences did not matter. He did not care for luxury. There was an outhouse beyond the shop and a washbasin on the dresser. He shaved only every other day, and tied his hair back with a string of leather. He sold the houses first, which paid off debts and gave the business a tidy sum to invest. Rachel came with him to walk through the empty houses. First they went to his uncle Isaac’s house. There was an echo on the tile floors, a thickness to the air. She stopped on the threshold of the chamber she had shared with her husband and held out her hands if in some sort of prayer. Frédéric stood beside her, his throat raw.
“She’s gone.” Rachel’s expression was grave, her black eyes piercing.
“She?” Frédéric asked, thinking he must have heard incorrectly. Surely it was his uncle Isaac to whom Rachel referred.
“The ghost.”
“Ah,” Frédéric said, relieved that she was not still mourning her husband. “So the house was haunted.”
“You don’t believe me?” Rachel threw her shoulders back as if ready for a fight. “She was his first wife. The one he loved.”
“He loved you,” Frédéric said before he thought better of it.
“Why would you say that?”
Frédéric shrugged. “Because he’d be a fool not to.”
They walked along the empty loggia that adjoined the rooms. All the furnishings had been sold and taken away. There was a poppet in a corner, a child’s toy.
“You’ve seen the way he managed the business.” Rachel’s voice was soft. It was terrible to walk through an empty house, lost by mistakes of fortune. “Maybe he was a fool.”
“Well, I’m not,” Frédéric said simply.
They went out to the porch, then down to the gate decorated with herons. The sky was opalescent. Rachel shielded her eyes so that she might look into his. Doing so was like stepping into the rain.
MR. ENRIQUE WAS GIVEN the title of manager, and in return he worked long hours, teaching Frédéric the business. He was a good teacher and as talented at numbers as Frédéric was. Rosalie often brought them their dinner when they worked into the night. It wasn’t long before Frédéric realized there was something between them, a tenderness brought by years of intimacy. “Your wife?” he asked one evening.
“Is that your business?” Enrique turned away, and Frédéric dropped the subject.
Later, as they were closing up the office for the day, Enrique said, “I had a wife once, but we argued. Now I don’t know if she’s alive. This was all on another island, another lifetime. So how can I marry?”
They kept their attention on the ledgers after that, for a discussion of one’s personal life could lead to trouble. They both agreed that the store was the most profitable piece of the estate, and they concentrated on increasing the importance of sales, as Mr. Enrique suggested, for the shipping business was besieged by bad weather and pirates and taxes. Fate was a terrible business partner, Mr. Enrique told him. Frédéric took his manager’s advice in all things: they would sell molasses and rum and let other men take their chances on shipping and ruination.
When he wasn’t careful, Frédéric dreamed of Rachel. He kept his distance. He heard stories about her at the synagogue. He overheard other women say she thought too highly of herself, that she spoke her mind as if she were a man and was never polite to the other ladies. He walked away from such conversations. It was none of his business anyway. Still, when members of Blessings and Peace invited him to dinners, he had little choice but to attend. They were formal events, and he had only one black suit, which Rosalie pressed for him every time he went out in the evenings. He realized he was being introduced to all of the unwed young women and girls. At one dinner he was so overheated and nervous that he went into the courtyard, taking a glass of rum with him. It was even hotter outside, but at least he was alone. Or so he thought. At first there seemed to be a heron on the patio, one of those strange blue birds he’d spied in the marshes. Then Frédéric realized it was one of the older women from the congregation, wearing an azare-colored dress.
“Do you know what a sin is?” the old woman called to him.
“Pardon?” he said, taken aback. He waved away the moths that seemed to be attracted to the hair tonic he used.
“It’s what you want and know you cannot have.” It was Madame Halevy.
“Are you referring to the rum?” he asked in an amused tone.