Paris: The Novel

had made the terrible decision.

    Jacob had been baptized into the Christian faith a week later. Renard had made the arrangements with a priest, and it had been discreetly done. For Jacob had been so afraid that the shock of his conversion might cause his wife to miscarry that neither she nor Naomi had any idea of it until two weeks after his son had been safely born. They called the little boy Jacob, since it was the family tradition. During this time, he did not go to the synagogue, but allowed it to be thought that this was because he would not leave his wife’s side.
    When at last he told Sarah, she had been greatly shocked. He explainedto her in secret what Renard had told him, and why he had done it. When he had finished, she said nothing for a few moments, and then remarked with some bitterness: “So, I am to lose every one of my friends.”
    Had she not been nursing her baby, and caring for Naomi, he supposed she might have said a lot more than she did.
    As for Naomi, the little girl was mystified. The first night after she was told she was to be a Christian, he had come to say prayers with her as usual, and she had begun:
    Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu adonai ehad …
    But there he had gently stopped her, and explained that from now on she should begin her prayers with a new prayer.
    “It is a very beautiful prayer,” he promised. “It is addressed to the one Lord, the God of Israel, and of all the world. It begins ‘Our Father …’ ”
    “Am I not to say the Shema anymore?” she asked.
    And with a sudden pang of grief he found himself telling her: “Christians sometimes say the Shema, too, in Latin. But it’s better that you use this other prayer instead.”
    When Naomi asked her mother about it the next morning, Sarah told her firmly that she must obey her father and that he knew best. But that afternoon she came in crying because another little girl had told her that the prayer was used only by the enemies of her people. Soon, none of the other children in the quarter would speak to her.
    She could not be told the secret about the coming expulsion. It was too dangerous, and she was too young. Jacob could only watch her suffering and comfort her as best he could.
    It was clear they had to move.
    If Henri Renard had been the cause of all this pain, he certainly kept his promise when it came to helping his friend once he had made the fateful decision. He had already prepared the ground, both with the priest who baptized Jacob, and with a wide circle of influential merchants and their families.
    “You’ll remember his father the physician, of course,” he’d say. “One of the most trusted men in Paris. So Jacob grew up among Christians like myself from his childhood. He couldn’t discuss it publicly, of course, but to my certain knowledge he has been considering converting for nearly adecade.” Technically, since he himself had broached the subject to Jacob years ago, this was true, if somewhat misleading.
    As a Christian, Jacob was not supposed to practice moneylending. But in no time Renard had got him into the merchant guild. There were plenty of opportunities for a man of his skill and fortune to make money as a merchant, and he was soon an active dealer in the city’s great cloth trade. Renard had also helped Jacob find the house in the rue Saint-Martin.
    “It’s only a short walk from Les Halles, and it’s in my own parish of Saint-Merri, so we can hear Mass at the same church,” he explained. And he ensured that the newly converted family—for Sarah and Naomi, however unwillingly, had also been baptized—were welcomed by their fellow parishioners. So at least they now had neighbors who spoke to them, and Naomi had the chance to make new friends.
    The greatest relief for Jacob, however, had been the health of his newborn son. The birth had not been as difficult as feared. The baby was in good health, and within weeks was giving every sign of being robust. So far, at least, it seemed that God had not turned His face away from Jacob. Indeed, Jacob even wondered if it was possible that the Lord might be pleased with his conversion.
    Strangely, during the whole business, the reaction that troubled him the most, the words that haunted him, came from a man he didn’t even care for.
    The morning after his conversion had become known the rabbi came straight to his house.
    “Is this true, Jacob ben Jacob? You have converted? Tell me this is not true.”
    “It is true.”
    He had