cracked and lifted. But the colors had held fast, as pure and as vivid as the day the paint was applied. Unlike the leaf on the spine, which had flaked away, the burnished gold of the illuminations was fresh and blazing. The gilder of five hundred years ago had definitely had a better grasp of his trade than the more modern Viennese bookbinder. There was silver leaf also. This had oxidized and turned dark gray, as you would expect.
“Will you be replacing that?” It was the thin young man from the museum. He was pointing at a distinct area of tarnish. He was standing too close. Because parchment is flesh, human bacteria can degrade it. I moved my shoulder so that he had to withdraw his hand and take a step backward.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.” I did not look up.
“But you’re a restorer; I thought…”
“Conservator,” I corrected. The last thing I wanted right then was a long discussion on the philosophy of book conservation. “Look,” I said, “you’re here; I’m instructed that you have to be here, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt my work.”
“I understand,” he said, his voice gentle after my abrasiveness. “But you must also understand: I am the kustos, the book is in my care.”
Kustos. It took a minute to sink in. I turned then, and stared at him. “You can’t be Ozren Karaman? The one who saved the book?”
The UN rep, Sajjan, sprang up, all apologies. “I am sorry, I should have made the introduction. But you were so anxious to get to work. I—Dr. Hanna Heath, please may I present Dr. Ozren Karaman, chief librarian of the National Museum and professor of librarianship at the National University of Bosnia.”
“I—Sorry, that was rude of me,” I said. “I expected that you’d be much older, to be chief curator of such a major collection.” I also didn’t expect a person in that position to look quite so disheveled. He was wearing a scuffed leather jacket over a crumpled white T-shirt. His jeans were frayed. His hair—wild, curly, neither combed nor cut—flopped over a pair of glasses that were mended in the middle with a bit of duct tape.
He raised an eyebrow. “You yourself, of course, being so very advanced in years, would have every reason to think that.” He kept a perfectly straight face as he said this. I guessed he was about thirty, like me. “But I would be very pleased, Dr. Heath, if you could spare a moment to say what you have in mind to do.” He shot Sajjan a glance as he said this, and in it I could read a volume. The UN thought it was doing Bosnia a favor, funding the work so that the haggadah could be properly displayed. But when it comes to national treasures, no one wants outsiders calling the shots. Ozren Karaman clearly felt he’d been sidelined. The last thing I wanted was to get involved in any of that. I was here to care for a book, not some librarian’s bruised ego. Still, he had a right to know why the UN had chosen someone like me.
“I can’t say exactly the extent of my work till I’ve thoroughly inspected the manuscript, but here’s the thing: no one hires me looking for chemical cleanups or heavy restorations. I’ve written too many papers knocking that approach. To restore a book to the way it was when it was made is to lack respect for its history. I think you have to accept a book as you receive it from past generations, and to a certain extent damage and wear reflect that history. The way I see it, my job is to make it stable enough to allow safe handling and study, repairing only where absolutely necessary. This, here,” I said, pointing to a page where a russet stain bloomed over the fiery Hebrew calligraphy, “I can take a microscopic sample of those fibers, and we can analyze them, and maybe learn what made that stain—wine would be my first guess. But a full analysis might provide clues as to where the book was at the time it happened. And if we can’t tell now, then in fifty, a hundred years, when lab techniques have advanced, my counterpart in the future will be able to. But if I chemically erased that stain—that so-called damage—we’d lose the chance at that knowledge forever.” I took a deep breath.
Ozren Karaman was looking at me with a bemused expression. I suddenly felt embarrassed. “Sorry, you know all that, of course. But it’s a bit of an obsession with me, and once I get started…” I was only digging a deeper hole, so I stopped. “The thing is, they’ve given me only a week’s access to the book, so I really need every minute. I’d like to get started.… I’ll have it till six this evening, yes?”
“No, not quite. I’ll need to take it about ten minutes before the hour, to get it secured before the bank guards change shifts.”
“All right,” I said, drawing my chair in close. I inclined my head to the other end of the long table where the security detachment sat. “Any chance we could get rid of a few of them?”
He shook his uncombed head. “I’m afraid we’ll all be staying.”
I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me. My work has to do with objects, not people. I like matter, fiber, the nature of the varied stuffs that go to make a book. I know the flesh and fabrics of pages, the bright earths and lethal toxins of ancient pigments. Wheat paste—I can bore the pants off anyone about wheat paste. I spent six months in Japan, learning how to mix it for just the necessary amount of tension.
Parchment, especially, I love. So durable it can last for centuries, so fragile it can be destroyed in a careless instant. One of the reasons, I’m sure, that I got this job was because I have written so many journal articles on parchment. I could tell, just from the size and scatter of the pore holes, that the parchments in front of me had been made from the skin of a now-extinct breed of thick-haired Spanish mountain sheep. You can date manuscripts from the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile to within a hundred years or so if you know when that particular breed was all the go with the local parchment makers.
Parchment is leather, essentially, but it looks and feels different because the dermal fibers in the skin have been reorganized by stretching. Wet it, and the fibers revert to their original, three-dimensional network. I had worried about condensation within the metal box, or exposure to the elements during transport. But there was very little sign of either. There were some pages that showed signs of older water damage, but under the microscope I saw a rime of cube-shaped crystals that I recognized: NaCl, also known as plain old table salt. The water that had damaged this book was probably the saltwater used at the seder table to represent the tears of the slaves in Egypt.
Of course, a book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand. The gold beaters, the stone grinders, the scribes, the binders, those are the people I feel most comfortable with. Sometimes, in the quiet, these people speak to me. They let me see what their intentions were, and it helps me do my work. I worried that the kustos, with his well-meaning scrutiny, or the cops, with the low chatter of their radios, would keep my friendly ghosts at bay. And I needed their help. There were so many questions.
For a start, most books like this, rich in such expensive pigments, had been made for palaces or cathedrals. But a haggadah is used only at home. The word is from the Hebrew root hgd, “to tell,” and it comes from the biblical command that instructs parents to tell their children the story of the Exodus. This “telling” varies widely, and over the centuries each Jewish community has developed its own variations on this home-based celebration.
But no one knew why this haggadah was illustrated with numerous miniature paintings, at a time when most Jews considered figurative art a violation of the commandments. It was unlikely that a Jew would have been in a position to learn the skilled painting techniques evinced here. The style was not unlike the work of Christian illuminators. And yet, most of the miniatures illustrated biblical scenes as interpreted in the Midrash, or Jewish biblical exegesis.
I turned the parchment and suddenly found myself
