women too, stood laughing, stunned into amusement at the hyperbole of this lady’s rage. The fair-haired boy’s milky face had become crimson with anger and humiliation, for he stood laughed at by a crowd of Jews for an insult he had not even understood.
“I damn you for a bitch,” he shouted at Mrs. Cantas in the tremulous voice of an agitated boy who wishes to be taken for a man, “and I spit upon your gypsy curse.” And, indeed, he did spit upon her, directly into her face.
I am ashamed that no one but myself moved to give this urchin the pummeling he deserved, but the crowd only looked on in shock, and Mrs. Cantas, who had invigorated herself with her insults, now appeared to me on the precipice of tears. For my part, I had been raised to show a much greater deference to women, and for whatever reason, this lesson was one that I had taken to heart while so many others had received only my contempt— perhaps because my own mother had died when I was but an infant, so other folks’ mothers held a special place in my heart.
I cannot even now explain my reasoning, only describe my actions: I struck this boy. It was a clumsy, poorly planned blow. My hand clenched into a fist, I raised it above my head and pounded downward, pummeling his face as though with a hammer. They boy fell to the ground, only for an instant, and then picked himself up and ran off, his friends following closely in tow.
I expected the crowd to cheer for me, Mrs. Cantas to proclaim me her savior, but I saw only that I had caused embarrassment and confusion. My actions had not been those of a protector, but of a troublemaker. Mrs. Cantas nervously pushed herself to her feet, but avoided my gaze. Around me I confronted the backs of those I had known all my life—shopkeepers crept back into their stalls, their patrons moved hurriedly away. All tried to forget what they had seen and to hope that their forgetfulness would make others forget as well and that my violence would not bring upon us an Inquisition here in England.
I would not have my joy so easily sabotaged, however. I ran home, hoping that someone in our house would hear the story and praise me as I thought I deserved. As my father was the first person I saw, he was the first to hear the tale, though the version I gave him showed a certain lack of narrative imagination.
“I was down at the market,” I said in a panting voice, “and a nasty, ugly boy spat upon Mrs. Cantas. So I beat him,” I proclaimed. I broke away from my father’s grip and swung my fist through the air by way of illustration. “I felled him with one blow!”
My father hit me hard in the face.
He made no habit of hitting me, and I fully admit I was the sort of boy who wanted hitting from time to time. This was the hardest he had ever stuck me—indeed, it was, at that time, the hardest I had ever been struck; he hit me with the back of his hand, curled almost into a fist, aiming, I believed, to hit bone with the bulky ring he wore upon his third finger. The blow had come unexpectedly, lashing out like a serpent, and the force of it reverberated through my jaw and down my spine, until my limbs felt light and tingly.
I suppose he was scared; my father hated trouble and hated anything that might draw attention to our community in Dukes Place. Sometimes, in the hopes of making me more of a man, or rather more of his sort of man, he invited me to join with him and his guests for their after-dinner bottle; there he always talked of remaining invisible, of avoiding trouble, of angering no one. This blow of his—I knew what it was about. My father saw everything in patterns, everything as woven together—one act always engendered a hundred others. He feared I should make a habit of beating upon Christian boys. He feared my rashness should bring the plague of hatred down upon the Jews. He feared a gathering momentum that began with my violence against this one boy—a momentum that would lead to persecution and torment and destruction.
His expression changed not at all. He stood there, his features twisted into a mask of unease and fear, and perhaps disappointment that I had not dropped to the ground. His eyes fixed suspiciously upon the red welt he had left upon my face—as though I had somehow falsified the evidence of his violence. “That is what it is to be hit,” he said. “It is a feeling you would be wise to avoid.”
My pride had fled, but my indignation remained—and I remembered thinking,
It was a moment that I think anticipated my career in the ring, for it was in fact more than simply not that bad—there was a strange kind of pleasure in it. It was the pleasure of endurance, of knowing that I had been able to take the pain without dropping, without flinching, without weeping. It was the pleasure of knowing I could endure another blow, and another after that—perhaps enough blows to make my father too weary to strike again. It was on that day that I first began to think of my father as weak.
But my uncle was a different sort of man—his smuggling trade had taught him more subtlety than my father ever understood. He had advised patience to my father; he always argued that I should find my own path, that my father should not demand that I be like my brother. As I sat in my uncle’s warehouse, it occurred to me that I owed him something for the understanding he had always advocated on my behalf, even if the well of understanding had now run dry.
It seemed like a quarter of an hour that we sat there, saying nothing, but I suppose the time was only a few seconds. At last my uncle spoke, softening his tone, hoping, perhaps, to spare me embarrassment. “Do you need money?”
“No, Uncle.” I was anxious to disabuse him of the idea that I had come a-begging. “I am here, in a way, upon business of the family. You told me once that you believed my father had been murdered. I want to know why you think so.”
I now had his attention. He was no longer contorting himself, attempting to find the correct attitude with which to face the wayward nephew returned. He now stared at me hard, trying to determine for himself why I had come to him with this question. “Have you learned something, Benjamin?”
“No, nothing of that sort.” Skipping over any superfluous details, I told him about Balfour and his suspicions.
He shook his head. “Your uncle tells you your father has been murdered, and you ignore him. A complete stranger tells you the same thing and now you believe it?” In his agitation, my uncle’s Portuguese accent grew more pronounced.
“Please, Uncle. I have come for information. To find out if my father was murdered. Does it matter why?”
“Of course it matters. This is your family. I have not seen you since Samuel’s funeral, and not for ten years before that.” I sighed and began to speak, but my uncle saw that I grew impatient and anxious, and he censured himself. “But,” he said, “that is the past and this is now. And if you want to do something good for our family, that is the important thing. So, yes, Benjamin, I suspect your father was murdered. I told the constable as much, and I also told the magistrate. I also wrote many letters—to men I know in Parliament, men who owe me money, I might add. All say the same—that the man who killed your father is a wretch, but there is no law to punish an accidental death, even if we can prove that the accident was due to carelessness or drunkenness. Samuel’s death is but an unfortunate mishap to them. And I, for thinking otherwise, am an excitable Jew.”
“What is it that makes you believe he was murdered?”
“I am not certain that he was murdered, but it is something that I suspect. Samuel was a man who made many enemies simply because of his trade. He bought and sold stocks—and as many people lost money of him as made it. I don’t have to tell you how much the English hate stockjobbers. They depend on them to make their money, but they hate them. Is it just a coincidence that someone runs him down in the street? And that Balfour, with whom he had dealings, should die as he did? Perhaps, but I would like to know for certain.”
I hesitated before asking my next question. “What does Jose say to this?”
“If you want to know what your brother has to say,” my uncle replied tartly, “maybe you should write to him. You know he came to London shortly after Samuel’s funeral—he dropped everything and sailed for England as soon as he heard. You knew he would, and you did nothing to seek him out.”
“Uncle,” I began. I wished to say that Jose had not sought me either, but the words sounded childish to me —and also disingenuous, for I had made a point of not being home when he had been in town so if he had called on me I could have avoided him.
“Why do you hide from your own family, Benjamin? What happened with you and Samuel is long past. He would have forgiven you if you but gave him the chance.”
I misbelieved that, but I said nothing.
“This distance you have is about nothing, it stems from nothing. Now your father is dead, and you can never
