The Weight of Ink

The narrative resumes in August 1667. Ester is now living happily in Richmond, and has been married for almost a year. After she proposed her plan to Benjamin HaLevy in September 1665 and he agreed, he sent word to summon his son Alvaro home. Months later, Alvaro made his way home to England, and while the Great Fire raged in London, Alvaro and Ester married in Richmond in September 1666. Benjamin records the marriage as occurring between Ester and Manuel (leading to subsequent incorrect records) because he is still embittered about the loss of his other son.

Over the next few months, Ester nurses her father-in-law and he dies peacefully less than a year after the wedding. Ester tells her husband the truth about her desire to write, and he encourages her. When she learns that Thomas Farrow has died in an accident, Ester begins using different names. She also arranges to publish some of Rabbi Mendes’s writing. Ester writes to John once, and hears that he is married and happy; he admits that he was not willing to take risks in the same way that she was. As John confesses, “I am not a bold man, Ester, except in my own wish to be so” (518).

Ester and Alvaro have a happy and companionable life together. He has a discreet relationship with another man, and Ester is happy to see him loving and being loved. However, they disagree on one thing: Ester often asks Alvaro to promise to destroy all of her writings and papers upon her death, and he always refuses. Eventually, Alvaro implies to Ester that he will destroy the documents if she predeceases him.

The narrative resumes in April 2001. Alone in her home, Helen looks at one document that she withheld even from Aaron when they looked at the folio together. The document, in Ester’s handwriting, is dated from the week before her death. In this document, which she frames as a confession, Ester summarizes the key events of her life. She expresses her frustration with how, as a woman, she had to fight so hard to have an intellectual life, and her regret that she lied to and deceived Rabbi Mendes for years. However, in the end, Ester is unrepentant: “I was ever ill-suited for this world and could not bend my nature to it” (531). Ester also writes lovingly of her family, and their own struggles and regrets. At the end of the document, Ester affirms that she wants Alvaro to burn all of her documents, and accepts that she will leave nothing behind.

After she finishes reading, Helen writes a document of her own. In the morning, she goes to the post office and mails the letter to Israel.

In August 1667, Ester and Alvaro frolic together in the river near their home. He teaches her how to swim.

In April 2001, Aaron has not heard from Helen for several days, and leaves her anxious messages. He is surprised that she has not been in touch in the wake of purchasing the additional documents. While he waits to hear from Helen, Aaron tells his supervisor that he wants to switch his dissertation topic and focus on the findings from the Richmond documents. Then, he goes to attend a service at a London synagogue. When he has still not heard from Helen, he and one of the librarians go to her flat. Inside, they find Helen, who has passed away. It is implied that she may have died by suicide rather than face a slow decline.

After Aaron makes all of the arrangements, he finds an envelope addressed to him on Helen’s desk. Helen tells him that she wishes she could have worked on the documents with him, but that her time had come. She entrusts the documents she purchased to him, and urges him to make use of them for his dissertation. Stunned, Aaron reads through the final document that Ester wrote before her death (the one that Helen initially hid from him). In the document, Ester details the lives of her mother and grandmother, mentioning her mother’s story that she (Constantina) was the child of an affair between Ester’s grandmother and an English writer.

Ester quotes a phrase that Constantina sometimes used to brag about her beauty, and the beauty of her mother; this exact phrasing is also substantiated from other documents that Aaron has seen from the Amsterdam Jewish community. Notably, the phrase is the same one that Shakespeare used in Sonnet 144, describing a woman he loved but could not be with. Based on the dates, it seems possible that Ester’s grandmother could have had an affair with William Shakespeare, and that Ester could therefore be one of his descendants.

Aaron is overwhelmed by all of the content he has to work with. First and foremost, he wants to tell Ester’s story, but he is also eager to explore the possible link to Shakespeare. Aaron quickly thinks about future plans: He will continue to work with his current supervisor, and make sure that Helen receives credit for the publications detailing Ester’s scholarly contributions. He thinks he may eventually collaborate with Wilton, after all, and he plans to eventually sell the papers, earning himself enough money to support Marisa and their child. Hastily, he reaches out to Marisa, telling her that “what I have to say is complicated but really very simple” (555).

A short chapter depicts Ester swimming in the river, marveling at the security and happiness she has achieved.

This chapter reprints the letter that Helen composed the night before she died— even though he has been dead for years, she wrote to Dror. She expresses her love for him, and her awareness that her own death is coming soon: “I never understood how truly a wounded heart could love” (558).

A short chapter depicts Ester in the river with her husband, learning to swim and trusting him to help her feel safe.