Paris: The Novel

farther to the east.
    Not a sign. Either his daughter had taken some other way, or they were still hiding in the city. Or, just perhaps, it had all been a mistake, and she had come safely home after all. It could be so. He prayed to God that it was so.
    But if not, then he faced a huge problem. How to explain her absence? Could he pretend that she had died? He went over the possibility in his mind. He couldn’t say that she had fallen sick. Quite apart from the fact that no physician had seen her, the two servants in the house would know it wasn’t true. Might she have had an accident outside the city? Could some story be concocted that would satisfy the authorities? Could the little family mourn behind an empty coffin, watch as it was lowered and bury the memory of his daughter safely in the ground?
    But what if she came back again?
    Yet somehow the business had to be covered up. No one must know what Naomi had done.
    Jacob ben Jacob was a small man with thinning hair and pale, kindly blue eyes, and he loved his daughter Naomi with all his heart. But he also thought of his dear wife Sarah. She had gone gray when Naomi was still a little girl, but for all her loyal and silent suffering, the skin on her face was still as smooth and her eyes as bright as they had been twenty years ago. How much more would she suffer, if the business were discovered?Even her little brother would be implicated—at the very least the object of suspicion for years. As for himself—he tried not to think of what the consequences would be. And all this Naomi knew very well. He could not help it therefore if, despite his love, he cursed his daughter now.
    The sun was already sinking when he crossed the Seine and made his way northward up the rue Saint-Martin. When he got to his house, he went in quickly. Sarah was standing in the hall.
    “Well?” he cried. “Where is she?”
    “I do not know, Jacob.” His wife shook her head sadly. Then she handed him a piece of parchment.
    “What’s this?”
    “A letter. It’s from her.”

    Jacob slept badly that night. He rose at dawn and decided to go for a walk. Putting the letter in a pouch on his belt, and wrapping his cloak around him, he stepped out into the street. His house in the rue Saint-Martin was not far from one of the northern gates. From the gate, he took the lane that he and Naomi had taken so many times before that led toward the little orchard he owned on the high ground.
    It was Friday, the thirteenth of October. A misty morning. As the lane wound its way to the upper slopes, he was greeted by the sight of the sun rising over the eastern horizon into a blue sky, while below, the great walled city and its suburbs were hidden by the mist, except for the towers of Notre Dame and half a dozen medieval pinnacles, which emerged and seemed to hang, as if by magic, over the silvery carpet. And as Jacob gazed at this lovely sight, he wondered: How could any soul, Jewish or Christian, fail to be uplifted by these exquisite citadels floating in the heavens?
    Jacob ben Jacob loved Paris. It was his home, as it had been for his father and grandfather before him. Even as a boy, he’d loved the wide sweep of the Seine, the vineyards on the hills, the aromas in the narrow streets; even the beauties of Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, although they belonged to a religion not his own. And he still did. He never wanted to leave it. Yet now, the sight of Paris brought him nothing but despair.
    He took out Naomi’s letter and read it once more.
    There was no doubt about one thing. The letter was clever. Very clever. The huge lie it contained was obvious to him; but she intended anyoneelse who read it to believe what she wrote. And her trick might work. It might.
    But that did not alter the one, awful fact. He had lost his daughter. Perhaps he’d never see her again.

    Was it his own fault? Certainly. The Lord was punishing him. He had committed a terrible crime. Now he must pay the price.
    Jacob shook his head sadly, and wondered: Had he been making bad judgments all his life? When had he started to go wrong?
    Alas, he knew the answer to both these questions all too well.

    His childhood had been happy. His father was a scholarly man who made his living as a physician. His standards were high. “The best Jewish scholars are in Spain and the south,” he liked to say, “but Paris is not so bad.” He also had a mild disdain for the intellect of the rabbi, of which the rabbi was aware. But