New York was different. Like Boston or Philadelphia, it had enough mature masonry to reassure Will. And the Public Library was a perfect example, a structure that could have been plucked from London or Oxford and dropped onto Manhattan island from the air.
On their way in, Will’s phone had buzzed once more. The message: 3 times I kiss the page. It seemed obvious that this was the final instruction they needed. Pardes Rimonim was the name of the book, that much TC had worked out. This was telling them where to look, perhaps even the page.
TC fairly galloped up the two flights of stairs to the Dorot Jewish Division. She told the librarian which book she wanted to see, prompting a sharp intake of breath. ‘You mean the 1591 manuscript of Pardes Rimonim?’ TC and Will looked at each other. ‘You do appreciate that that is an extremely rare and precious book. Only the manager of the reading room or her deputy is authorized to bring out that manuscript. Could you come back tomorrow?’
‘I really need to see it right away.’
‘I’m afraid a book such as this needs special permission. I’m sorry.’
‘Who’s that woman there? The one drinking coffee.’ TC was nodding towards a back office.
‘That’s the deputy manager. This is her lunch break.’
‘Hello! Hello!’
Will could have cringed with embarrassment. TC had all but shoved the librarian aside and was leaning across the counter, shouting and waving to catch the deputy manager’s attention – here, in the solemn quiet of a library. Scholars at the reading room’s five tables were craning to see the cause of the commotion. If only to restore order, the woman in the back office put down her mug of coffee and came over.
It worked. TC was asked to write her name and address in the visitors’ book, fill in a form and leave ID. Still huffing, the woman disappeared to retrieve the manuscript from a locked cabinet inside a locked room – twenty long minutes in which Will paced, studying the faces of the weekend researchers all around him.
‘Here it is,’ said the woman eventually, standing over the table where Will and TC had pitched camp. She did not hand them the book, nor did she lay it on the table. Instead she propped it up on a pair of wedge-shaped black Styrofoam blocks, so that the spine did not fully open. TC pulled out her notepad and reached for a pen.
‘Pencils only, I’m afraid. No pens near a book of this quality.’
‘I’m sorry. Pencils it is. Thanks very much. I’m sure we won’t be too long.’
‘Oh, I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right next to this book until it’s back in its cabinet. Those are the rules.’
TC began turning the pages with slow deliberation. The manuscript was a relic from a vanished era; hand-crafted in Cracow, its pages were thick with four centuries of history. TC was wary even of touching it.
Will sat at her side, staring at the latest text message. Mindful of the woman watching over them, he whispered, ‘Is that some religious thing, to kiss the page?’
‘Jews do kiss their prayer books when they’re closed, or if they drop them on the floor. But not three times. And not specific pages.’ TC was speaking without looking away from the book. She seemed to be in awe of it.
Will took out his notepad. Maybe this was an exercise in mathematics; perhaps if it was expressed as arithmetic. Will wrote ‘3 times’ as ‘3 x’. Perhaps I was the figure 1. What would that give him? 3 x 1 = 3. No good.
Then he took a second look at what he had written. Hold on. Will’s mind suddenly went back to the Wednesday afternoons he had spent as a nine-year-old boy, in Mr McGregor’s Latin class. McGregor was an old-school schoolmaster, all black gown and hurling the blackboard eraser, but every word he taught had stuck. Including the games he used to play with the Lower Remove to teach Roman numerals.
Hurriedly now Will wrote out ‘3 times’ as three x’s in succession: xxx. Now for ‘I kiss’. Of course. The I was an i. And how did you denote a kiss, except with the letter x? (For only a flash, Will remembered the first time Beth signed off a text message with an x. Just one x, after her name, but it thrilled Will. They were in that brief, delicious overture of a relationship, falling in love, but not yet having said the L-word out loud. That x of Beth’s was a taster.)
Now he wrote it out: xxx for ‘3 times’, ix for ‘I kiss’: xxxix.
‘Turn to page thirty-nine.’
TC was slow, handling the text before her with solemn care. Will wanted to tear at the pages so that he could just see whatever they were meant to see right now.
‘OK,’ said TC finally. ‘This is it.’
Before them was a page dominated by a graphic: ten circles arranged in geometric fashion and linked by a complex series of lines. Will had a faint memory of such drawings and it took him a while to place it. This reminded him of the chemistry textbooks of his youth, depicting molecular structures in two dimensions.
Except each circle had a word written inside it. Will had to squint to see that the script was Hebrew. It was jarring, geometry and scientific neatness in a drawing that was medieval.
‘What are we looking at?’
He could see TC did not want to answer. She was hunched over the image, her shoulder all but blocking Will’s view. ‘I’m not sure yet. I need to look.’
‘Come on, TC. I know you know what this is.’ Will was shouting in a whisper. ‘Tell me.’
Self-consciously, and aware of the hovering librarian, TC started to point and talk. ‘This is the key image of kabbalah.’
‘Kabbalah? As in Madonna? Red string and all that?’
TC rolled her eyes, then moulded her face into an expression that said, Where do I start? ‘No. That’s just some bullshit celeb cult. It’s about as close to real kabbalah as, I don’t know, the Easter Bunny is to Christianity. Just listen.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Kabbalah is Jewish mysticism. It’s a very arcane form of Jewish study, closed off to most people. You’re not meant to look at it until you’ve reached the age of forty. And it’s for men only.’
‘What about this picture?’
‘It’s like the starting point of kabbalah. It contains everything. They call it the Tree of Life.’
‘My God.’
‘That’s sort of what they think this is. It’s a diagrammatic representation of the key qualities of God. Each of these circles is a Sefirah, a divine attribute.’ She pointed at the lowest circle.
‘See, it starts at the bottom with Malchut, that means Kingdom. That refers to the physical realm. Then it branches off into Yesod, Foundation, Hod, Glory and Nezah, Eternity. Then it progresses, into Tiferet, Beauty, Gevurah, Judgment and Hesed, Mercy. And finally, at the top of the tree, there is Binah, which is kind of like intellectual understanding. And on the right, Hochmah, which is Wisdom. And at the summit, Keter, the Crown. Something like the divine essence.’
‘So we’re looking at the image of God.’
‘Or the closest we’re ever going to get to it.’
Will could not say anything. A shiver had run down his spine as TC had spoken. Maybe it was all just crankish hokum, but this series of lines and circles, drawn so many hundreds of years ago and taught down the generations only to those deemed able to cope with its secrets, seemed to radiate a kind of power.
TC