The Weight of Ink

The narrative resumes in June 1665. Ester continues to secretly correspond with Spinoza; Manuel HaLevy has also now repeatedly offered her money, knowing that times are hard for the household. While Ester feels compelled to accept the gift, she tells Manuel that she still refuses to marry him.

Thomas and John take Mary and Ester to sail along the river Thames in a rented boat. During the outing, they notice that many people who can afford to do so are beginning to move out of London due to increasing outbreaks of the plague. Mary confides that her own father has moved out to the countryside; she refuses to join him because she dislikes the woman he is now living with. Manuel HaLevy has also told Ester that he is going to leave London.

They sail out of the city and then disembark, where Ester marvels at the beauty and peace of the countryside. While Mary and Thomas slip away, John and Ester kiss for the first time. Ester finally concedes that she is attracted to him, but struggles to explain to him that he does not know who she truly is: “[S]he wasn’t the kind of woman he thought she was. He had to know” (359). John misinterprets what Ester is trying to tell him: He thinks that she is ashamed of sometimes hiding her Jewish faith, and reassures her that it is only natural to hide who one is when one is persecuted.

Before Ester can explain further, they have to board the boat to go back. By now, Thomas is drunk and seems agitated. While sailing down the Thames, Thomas takes the boat down a dangerous route and nearly capsizes them. Mary and Ester are both terrified. After some passersby help Mary and Ester back to the shore, Mary confides what has led to Thomas’s reckless behavior: she told him that she is pregnant with his child. Ester is very worried by this news. Mary seems to accept that her father is going to disown her, and believes that Thomas is going to provide for her and their child. Later, John attempts to comfort Ester and she allows herself to briefly fantasize about what a life with him could be like.

In March 2001, Helen and Aaron come to the end of the documents, which end abruptly with the death of Rabbi Mendes on July 8, 1665. The only remaining document is one that is still sealed and is being carefully prepared to be opened. Helen and Aaron wonder about Ester: She might have died during the plague of 1665, or she might have married and stopped writing once Rabbi Mendes died and no longer needed her.

Aaron tracks down further evidence in the local records of Richmond (where the documents were discovered, although not where the Rabbi or Ester seem to have lived). There is a record that on September 4, 1666, Ester married Manuel HaLevy in Richmond. This also clarifies how the documents got to the house in Richmond: Ester must have brought them with her when she married.

Aaron finds himself saddened by what this seems to have revealed about the end of Ester’s story: After Rabbi Mendes died, she stopped writing and resigned herself to the security that came with marrying a man that she had previously rejected. Aaron asks the archivist in Richmond to let him know if she finds a record of Ester’s death. In a melancholy haze, Aaron wanders over to the house in Richmond where the documents were first found. Bridgette greets him, and they resume the flirtation they experienced when he was first looking at the documents months earlier. Bridgette and Aaron have sex, but when he leaves afterward, he feels more confused and lonelier than ever: “[I]t was simply that a spontaneous hook-up was no longer right for him […] He’d changed enough in these past months to know that his old life was hollow” (383).