Hannah reddened, but after an instant she realized that Miguel mocked not her but Daniel, and so she joined him, and together they laughed at her husband.
“May I ask a favor of you?” she said, and then squirmed uncomfortably at the sound of her own words. She had thought to wait longer before mentioning it but found she grew impatient and nervous. Best to have it said.
“Of course, senhora.”
“May I once again try that coffee-tea you let me drink before?” What else could she do? She dared not steal any more of Miguel’s diminishing supply, and she had eaten all the fruit she’d taken. Besides, now that she knew that it was supposed to be a drink and not a food, she did not think there would be as much pleasure in grinding down the berries with her teeth.
Miguel smiled. “It would be my great pleasure, so long as you recall my request of your silence.” Then, without waiting for her reply, he rang the bell for Annetje, who appeared too rapidly to have been searching through Hannah’s trunks. She allowed her eyes to lock with Hannah’s, but Miguel alone spoke to her, reminding her of how to prepare the drink. When the girl left, Hannah could feel her face turn hot, but she was almost certain that Miguel did not notice-or that he was most adept at pretending not to notice, which was nearly as good.
Hannah burned in the heat of his attention. He smiled at her; he met her eyes; he listened when she spoke. This is what it would be like to have a husband who loved her, she thought. The women in stage plays must feel thus when they talked to their loves.
Still, she knew it was but fantasy. How long could she talk with him? How long before a clever man like Miguel recovered from his stumble and moved into his own house, leaving Hannah alone with her husband? Not alone, of course. There would be, God willing, her child, and her child-her daughter-would be her salvation.
“Were you to marry again and have children,” she asked, “would you allow your daughters to learn?”
“I must be honest with you, senhora, and tell you that I have never thought about it. I always assumed your sex cared nothing for learning and was happy to be spared the pains of study, but now that you tell me otherwise I would look at the matter with new eyes.”
“Then you and I are of a mind.”
After moving to Amsterdam, Daniel had been busy with his studies, learning the ancient tongue and the Law, and Hannah thought she should do the same. If she was a Jew, she should know what it meant to be a Jew. She could not know how her husband might respond to such a thing, but she had hoped he would warm to her display of interest. She considered the wording for days, playing out conversations in her mind. Finally, one Shabbat night, after they had engaged in the mitzvah of marital relations, she decided she should never find her sleepy and sated husband in a more receptive mood.
“Why have I not been taught the Law, senhor?” she asked.
There was only a vague hastening of his breath.
“I have thought,” she continued, speaking hardly above a whisper, “that I too might learn to read and understand Hebrew. And perhaps I might learn to read Portuguese too.”
“Perhaps you might learn to transform rods into serpents and to part the waters of the sea,” he had answered, rolling away from her.
Hannah lay there, afraid to move, gritting her teeth with anger and shame. He must have felt some remorse for dismissing her, for a few days later, when he returned home in the evening, he pressed into her hands two silver bracelets.
“You are a good wife,” he said to her, “but you must not wish for more than what belongs to a wife. Learning is for men.”
“It must be,” she now said to Miguel, “that learning is not forbidden to women, else the Tudescos would not allow it, for they have the same Law, do they not?”
“It is not forbidden,” Miguel explained. “I am told that there have even been great Talmudists among the ladies in times past. Some things belong to Law, and some things belong to custom. It is written that a woman may be called to the Law, but her modesty ought to forbid her from answering. But what is modesty?” he asked, as though puzzling out the question himself. “These Dutch-women know nothing of it, and yet they do not feel immodest.”
Annetje now arrived with the bowls of coffee. Hannah breathed in the scent and salivated at the thought of drinking. More than its flavor, she loved how it made her feel. If she had been a scholar, she would have been able to unravel any point of Law. Had she been a merchant, she could have outwitted any man upon the Exchange. Now, she again lifted the bowl to her lips and tasted the engaging bitterness, a taste, she realized, that made her think of Miguel. This is the taste of Miguel, she told herself: bitter and inviting.
She waited for Annetje, who flashed all sorts of knowing looks, to leave before she began to speak again. “May I ask you what happened between you and the council?”
Miguel opened his mouth in surprise, as though she had spoken of something forbidden, but he also appeared pleased. Perhaps he found her boldness exciting. How bold should she be?
“It is nothing of substance. There were some questions about business partners. Some on the council do not like the people with whom I trade, so they placed me under this cherem for a day as a warning. These are pretty questions from so pretty a woman.”
Hannah turned away so that he would not see her blush. “Do you suggest that a woman should not ask such questions?”
“Not at all. I delight in an inquisitive woman.”
“Perhaps,” she suggested, “you delight in an inquisitive woman in the same way you delight in defying the council.”
Miguel smiled warmly. “I think you may be right, senhora. I have never much cared for authority, and I love to see it challenged-be it the authority of a husband or the Ma’amad.”
Hannah felt herself redden again, but met his gaze all the same. “When you were married,” she asked, “did you love to see your wife challenge you?”
He laughed. “Most times,” he said. “If I am to be honest, I must say that I am as prone to grow comfortable in authority as any man. That is no reason why I should not be questioned, however. I might have followed my father’s example and never studied the ways of our race had I not thought this way, for it is what I love best about the teachings of the rabbis. Everything must be questioned and disputed, looked at from all angles, examined and held up to the light. The parnassim and men like-well, like many men I know-forget that. They wish to see things always as they are and never ask how they might be.”
“And is this the reason, your delight in challenge, why you were called before the Ma’amad? My husband tells me you have defiled Holy Law.”
“As I say, senhora, there is law and there is custom, and custom is often little more than a fable. So long as I tell the parnassim what they want to hear, all is well.”
“What they want to hear?” Hannah asked, permitting herself the slightest of smiles. “You lied to them?”
He laughed. “Only little lies. They do not want to hear important lies.”
“But is it not a sin to lie?”
“You tease me, senhora. I suppose it is a sin, but an insignificant one. A man of business lies all the time. He lies to put trades to his advantage or to construct circumstances just so. A man may lie to make his position look better than it is, or weaker than it is, depending on his goals. None of these are the same as lying in a way that may harm another man. These lies are merely the rules of business, and such rules surely apply when dealing with the Ma’amad.”
“But those rules would not apply to a woman speaking to her husband?” Hannah had meant only to clarify, but she realized the moment she spoke the words that they carried weight she had not intended.
“It depends on the husband,” Miguel answered pointedly.