Summary

Prior to receiving Aaron’s telephone messages about Aleph’s cross-written document, Helen had visited the office of Dr. Hammond. Helen’s doctor had insisted that she comprehend her diagnosis. She had meant to drive to the manuscript’s office from her appointment, but “she’d been seized by an insurmountable fatigue that left her scarcely able to focus on the road” (238). Helen drives to her house and wonders: “what if she simply chose not to face the mountain of exhilarating, terrorizing documents she now knew she wouldn’t have the strength to climb?” (239).

When she had met Aaron in her office, “she’d barely been able to speak”; Aleph’s document did in fact “violate everything that was known about the lives, literacy, and worldview of seventeenth-century Sephardic women” (239). Helen’s lack of reaction left Aaron humbled by a “moment of triumph turned...