Summary

Helen sits in the parish records office, searching for the rabbi’s name: “she’d felt she owed it to the Rabbi HaCoen Mendes … accompanying him to the very final words of his story” (445). She recalls last November, going up the stairs in the Eastons’ manor and “watching the river through the uneven glass” of an upstairs window (446). Aaron had come up the stairs, “unable to resist the lure of defying Helen’s explicit orders” (446). His face showed “the same astonishment” as hers had, “that he, Aaron Levy, had the great good fortune to stand in its cavernous embrace” (446).

Helen is due in Jonathan Martin’s office at 2 pm for “the standard pre-retirement send-off” (446). As she scans the pages for the rabbi’s name, “her finger stopped at a name that had no business being there”: Manuel HaLevy had died of the plague on...