Magic Lessons (Practical Magic) - Alice Hoffman Page 0,97

attentions to another line of work, one that was within the realm of the law. He could import rum from Curaçao, or bolts of silk from France; he could find himself a warehouse, and an office nearby if he lived on Maiden Lane. “If he were here, you’d know when he was coming down with the fever. He’d be in your care.”

Maria threw Abraham a look. “That won’t happen,” she assured him, brewing herself a cup of Release Me Tea, a mixture that loosened love’s hold on a person, especially when combined with bitters and fresh radish root.

“He could be convinced,” Abraham said. “Especially if you helped me do so.”

In Abraham Dias’s opinion, if a man had to live on land, there was no better choice than Manhattan. Portuguese Jews from Brazil had come in 1654 when Portugal reclaimed Brazil from the Dutch, bringing the Inquisition with them. These original Portugals were greeted by governor Peter Stuyvesant, who had been unwilling to accept the group of twenty-three souls with no country and no home until he was pressured to do so by the original owner of the house on Maiden Lane, Jacob Barsimon, who had worked for the Dutch West India Company. The new immigrants were not allowed to build a synagogue, but the men met daily, and Abraham Dias had gone to these gatherings on Friday evenings in a small house near the harbor. In 1655 Jewish taxpayers had paid for nearly ten percent of the price to build the wall, later the site of Wall Street, to separate the city from the wilderness beyond. Although they were outsiders, Jews were watchmakers, tailors, butchers, importers of rum and chocolate and cocoa. Manhattan was a tolerant city, and if you didn’t provoke your neighbors or call attention to yourself, you could do as you pleased and worship as you liked.

“Let your son be who he is,” Maria told Abraham. “A man who lives at sea.”

“A man can change,” Abraham Dias assured her. After all, he was about to plant vegetables in the garden, his hands deep in the earth, which, at this late date, he found to be an unexpected pleasure.

* * *

Maria went to the North River on the west side of the city to buy haddock and cod so she might simmer a broth of fish bones for Samuel’s supper, to strengthen his constitution. He had been healing all through the month of his recovery and was much improved. In the afternoons he sat in the garden with his father in the pale green sunlight, listening to stories he’d heard dozens of times before, and enjoying each one. He’d recently helped his father put in a row of lettuce, which distressed Maria. Why would Samuel bother with planting vegetables when he wouldn’t be there to see them grow?

She predicted he would be gone by the end of the week, and once away from her, he would be safe. The Queen Esther was docked, and it was likely most of the crew had begun to run out of funds and would soon be ready to be back at sea. If Maria wasn’t mistaken, she could see a flicker of longing for the sea in Samuel’s eyes when the wind picked up and the sea chilled the air, a hunger for his old life in which he didn’t have to sit at the dinner table at an appointed hour, here where the stars weren’t half as bright as they were out at sea. He was drawn to the harbor, where he stared out beyond Hell Gate. New York was blue and gray, a city surrounded by water, which called to him even though he wished to stay. The broad North River, later to be renamed the Hudson, ran two ways: seawater rushed to the north; fresh water flowed into the ocean. It was a river that couldn’t make up its mind, and Samuel appreciated that. He was born under the sign of water, and was himself often of two minds. He yearned to leave and he didn’t want to go. He had recently constructed a boat out of parchment by folding it this way and that for Maria’s amusement. Men on ships found all sorts of entertainments to while away the hours at sea. How to make a valentine out of shells, how to turn paper into cranes and birds and fish and boats, how to tell stories, how to be completely silent. When Maria set the paper boat in