Benjamin Weaver 01 A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss

Author:David Liss [David Liss]
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Mystery
ISBN: 0-375-50504-0
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2001-09-02T23:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

I AIMED TO MAKE my way to South Sea House the next afternoon, but I first wished to visit my uncle and report to him of my adventures with Bloathwait. I was not yet certain that I wanted to tell him what I had seen of Sarmento, but I grew tired of playing these cat-and-mouse games. For the nonce I would inform him that the Bank of England director had made it clear that he had some interest in the inquiry.

I confess that my desire to meet with my uncle was in some way augmented by a desire to see Miriam once again. I wondered how the matter of the twenty-five pounds she borrowed of me would sit between us. A loan of necessity such as this could produce a discomfort, and I was determined to do all in power to keep such a thing from happening.

The irony of my interest in Miriam amused me; had I known more of Aaron’s pretty widow, perhaps I would have contemplated a reconciliation long before. And yet, even as I sang a little drinking ditty to myself as I walked, I wondered about my intentions. Despite the world’s opinion of widows, I could not think myself such a cad as to attempt to encroach upon the virtue of a woman who was very nearly a relation, and living under the protection of my uncle, too. Yet what could a man such as myself offer? I who scraped together, at the very most, a few hundred pounds each year, had nothing for Miriam.

As I approached my uncle’s house, coming on to Berry Street from Grey Hound Alley, I was shocked out of my reverie by an ungainly beggar man, who materialized with jarring suddenness. He was a Tudesco Jew—as we Iberian Jews called our coreligionists from Eastern Europe—perhaps of middle years, though he looked ageless in that way of men who are undernourished and oppressed with labors and hardships. My readers may not even realize that there are different categories of Jews, but we separate ourselves based on our culture of origin. Here in England, those of us of Iberian descent were the first to return in the last century and until recently outnumbered our Tudesco cousins. Because of the opportunities our exiled forebears found among the Dutch, most Jewish businessmen and brokers in England are Iberian. The Tudescos are frequently persecuted and harassed in their native lands, and when they come here they find themselves without skills or trades, and thus the largest number of beggars and old-clothes men about the streets are of Eastern European origin. These distinctions are not etched in stone, though, for there are rich Tudescos, such as Adelman, and there is no shortage of poor among the Iberian Jews.

I should like to say that I formed no prejudice against the Tudescos simply because I thought their appearance and language strange, but the truth is that I found such men as this peddler an embarrassment—I believed them to cast

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