Another shake, Benjamin mute. “Physician to the king, and your own kin you cannot cure?”

ON the night the levees gave way, Mother broke too.

The River Elbe rose and flooded the banks of Glückstadt — the streets, the houses; the rain came down in sheets and swept away anything still standing. Including Mother.

Even though she was in her bed, safe in Hamburg miles away, that night Mother drowned.

*

I was too young to know all of this, of course. Glückstadt was barely built in 1620, the Danish king’s prayer of a hope against Hamburg. But I have spent my childhood since sifting through whispers, carelessly uttered phrases, spaces between words, to find the pieces of who I am. Who my parents are. Who they were. I take those pieces and with painstaking care place them one atop the other, in an attempt to build an edifice that will not collapse.

I only know the Mother who drowned. Reuben knows who she was before the first flooding of the town Father will never give up on, but even my brother does not know who Mother was before him. He only knows the Mother from Hamburg, I the one from here in Glückstadt… but neither he nor I ever knew the one in Lisbon.

The Mother I grew up with, the Mother now tossing and turning, thrashing like an animal in a hunter’s snare, this mother has always been a stranger to me. Reuben, her firstborn, is the only one who can ever induce those pale and cracked lips to widen, the sunken eyes to glimmer. But now he stands at the far right of Mother’s bed, still wearing his traveling cloak, and she does not know him.

Father is to the left and strangely still, a dim halo around his hat from a weak ray of sun making a last attempt to light up the misery in this bedchamber.

Filipa has moved to the corner opposite me, in deference to my father and brother. It makes my eyes burn to see her, clenched hands, twitching shoulders. There should be moments when a family is left to its private affairs without the presence of servants — no matter how many decades they have been in service — even personal servants of the mistress.

And yet Father has not seen fit to dismiss Filipa, to direct her below stairs, perhaps, to oversee the food preparation. And so she stands here, a fixture tolerated if not welcome, while I…

Benjamin is hidden from my view, no doubt hunched over the cabinet as he mixes a draught to calm Mother. If my uncle does not succeed in quieting her soon, I shall have to escape, but in doing so will be found out.

I do not exist. I clench my fingers around the richly embroidered drapes that shield me from the room’s occupants and shut my eyes. You do not exist, Gracia.

“Alvaro,” her voice rasps through the sudden silence as she lies still.

Father rushes towards her bed, kneels.

“Alvaro.”

“What is it, Beatriz, what can I do?”

Reuben has stepped closer to the bed. Benjamin comes into my line of sight holding a vial.

“Alvaro…” so weak, so weak. My ears feel warm, neck tilted, straining to hear words I don’t want to hear. The room so silent now, the heaviness in my chest.

“…priest. Confess.”

Father’s outstretched hand drops. Reuben steps back quickly, face turned away.

“...confess now. Alvaro.”

“Beatriz…” But Father cannot continue, his face ravaged by something so raw I shut my eyes again. Just for an infinitesimal second, to weaken the pain, to let me breathe again.

“This will make her sleep.” Benjamin holds up the vial, only to have it dashed to the ground with such swiftness I do not see Father’s arm come down before the sound of it shattering assaults my ears.

Father grips his brother’s shoulders. “Do something. By all that is holy, Benjamin. Something!” A fierce shake. “All your studies in Italy did not prepare you for a situation such as this?” Another shake, Benjamin mute. “Physician to the king, and your own kin you cannot cure?”

I cannot bring the air I need into my chest. I cannot be here, I cannot.

I must not move.

You do not exist.

Benjamin’s hands come up, remove Father’s hands from his shoulders.

“I am doing all I can, Brother.”

“Nothing.” And some more words that evaporate before they reach me, but the anger, the rage I can see on Father’s face.

Reuben moves around the foot of the bed, perhaps sensing something I should know is going to happen. Father glances back at Mother, who has resumed her thrashing.

And then he shoves Benjamin with such force that they both stagger, Father stumbling past the drapes out of the chamber, Benjamin backward where I hear more shattering — our hearts together with his useless potions.

(Excerpted from Calligraphy: Pesach 5785; Mishpacha Issue 1057)