Frédéric told me that Monsieur DeLeon had taken him aside. He cared for me and had known me since I was a child. “I’ve done all I can on your behalf,” he told Frédéric, “and will continue to do so, but this has always been the rule here. No marriage inside of a family.”
“I’m not her family,” Frédéric insisted.
“Do you run her father’s business? Are you her husband’s nephew?” The men exchanged a look. “On this island, that’s family,” Monsieur DeLeon informed him.
The council’s advice was that Frédéric return to France with haste, before the Danish authorities became interested in what was a personal matter between Jews. Frédéric came home from this meeting exhausted and sick at heart. He had always been the good son, the reliable brother and cousin, the young man who could be called upon and trusted. The judgments of others weighed upon him. Rosalie told me that in the market, people said I was a witch and had cast a spell upon him, and perhaps that was true. Indeed I wanted him to defy everyone, even God if necessary, not that I believed God would be against a love like ours. We had nothing to repent for and nothing to feel guilty about.
Because we were unmarried, my son’s name wasn’t written into the Book of Life, which charted every birth, marriage, and death in our community. That meant he did not exist within God’s sight, and should he die, he could not be buried in our cemetery. Eight days after our son’s birth, Monsieur DeLeon brought over a man whose duty it was to circumcise boys of our faith. The ceremony was performed after dusk, when no one was aware that this man was in my house. Rosalie cleaned off the kitchen table, and put down a clean white linen, and even when there was blood the child did not cry.
Since no one at the synagogue would list him in the official records, I was forced to see to it myself. The old man who was the caretaker let me in because I behaved as though I belonged. I told him I’d been sent to tidy up and brought a broom along to convince him. A woman who knows what she wants, Adelle always told me, is likely to receive it. I was sure of myself, at least on the outside. I nodded and passed through the synagogue’s gates without the least bit of trouble. The caretaker bowed and called me Madame. I didn’t correct him or let him know that most people in the congregation would have referred to me as a whore. I thought I spied a heron in the garden, or perhaps it was a woman sitting in the dappled shade where there was a small stone fountain.
It was exactly two o’clock, the hottest hour of the day, when most people went home to drowse in their parlors or bedchambers, and the stores and cafés were shuttered. My youngest children were being cared for by Rosalie, which allowed me the freedom to ensure that my newborn would be known to God. I found the most recent book and wrote in the date of Joseph Félix Pizzarro’s birth, with myself and Frédéric listed as his parents. My script was careful and legible, so that no one would refute my son’s rights to be a member of our community. When I put away the book, I discovered that the files could indeed do with tidying, though I had no intention of doing so.
Funnels of dust rose into the air. Many of the papers piled up were decades old, the ink faded on those that had been exposed to the sunlight. My father had taught me how to read documents and ledgers, but these files were completely disorganized. In the Books of Life, records had been charted one on top of the other, in spidery scrawls set down by a series of secretaries and assistants, all of whom had invented their own puzzling systems of notation. Perhaps it was fate, or perhaps it was God’s will, that I should stumble upon my cousin Aaron’s birth record. The date set down was three years after my own birth. I’d always been told Aaron’s parents had been lost at sea, and that they were distant relatives, but this document showed otherwise. He’d had an unmarried mother, a member of our congregation. The symbol for this was an X. I scanned through the files, and this symbol occurred many times. I wondered how many women had lost their children due to a single letter. Aaron’s father had been marked down as unknown. Inconnu. Aaron’s mother’s name had been inked out, making her unknown as well. I could not read the original print even when I held the paper to the light. My mother had been listed as the official guardian, and the baby’s surname, Rodrigues, was one of her family names long before they had fled Spain and Portugal.
There was no way to know if the woman who’d given Aaron life had given him up of her own accord, or if he’d been taken from her. Most likely she’d had little choice in the matter; perhaps she’d eased her mind by imagining that a wind had carried him away so that he might be sheltered in a treetop, watched over by parrots until my mother came for him, delighted to claim the son she’d always wanted. What Aaron had told me in the garden long ago had been true. Our mother would never have allowed him to marry Jestine.