Light Fell Read Online Free PDF

room. It was a study, with high ceilings and Persian carpets and an antique desk polished to a bright gleam. But most notable were the bookshelves lining all four walls, full to bursting from floor to ceiling with books of every color and size. From what he could gather, more than one whole wall was taken up by biblical commentary, and commentary upon the commentary, two thousand years of biblical exegesis that made Joseph’s limbs feel heavy. He ran his fingertips over the gold lettering and leather bindings but did not remove a single tome from its place. On the next wall he found several shelves of Passover Haggadahs. He pulled out one oversized volume, an illuminated manuscript with instructions for leading the Seder night in Italian. The third wall seemed to be organized by subject, but here the logic and order of the other two shelves broke down. There were a few series, but mostly there were individual titles. Here he found physics and history and linguistics and astronomy but more than anything else literature and literary criticism, in English, French, Latin, German.
    A small volume sitting on the desk caught Joseph’s eye. It was tiny, nearly compact enough to fit into the palm of his hand, and the cloth cover reminded him of thick wallpaper he had seen once in a European castle. It was a book of French verse dated 1629. He understood nothing of the poetry, but was interested in the frantic scrawl in the margins, a bewildering combination of French and Hebrew written in varying shades of ink that had left smudges, stains, and even punctures in the paper.
    “You’ve discovered my passion.” The rabbi, so tall he had to duck coming through the doorway, was carrying a silver tray that held a china tea set, fresh sliced cake, and a bowl of fruit. “I am in love with books. And that one’s a personal favorite. It was written by a monk who had taken a vow of silence. The man was tortured by his private thoughts. He spent his life seeking refuge from his mind and his soul.” He placed the heavy tray on a table in front of the chair Joseph was meant to occupy, then straightened to his full height. “He went in for floggings and periods of starvation and had several ‘insignificant’ appendages removed from his body, the better to feel pain and distraction. His one pleasure in life was the writing of these poems, which he did at night, a poem a night in place of sleep. It’s easy to see him as crazy today, but I respect his single-mindedness, the way he tried in earnest to control his passions, the love and sensuality he was so determined to squelch. There are few men of his stature today.”
    The rabbi lowered himself gently onto the sofa. Joseph marveled at the grace of such a large man. Rabbi Yoel poured tea for them both and added sugar to their cups. Joseph replaced the small book on the desk and sat in the chair opposite his new friend.
    “Were those your notes in the margins?” asked Joseph.
    The rabbi raised his eyes slowly to meet Joseph’s. “Some. Some,” he admitted reluctantly. “The others I assume belong to the person whose name is inscribed on the first page, a village priest who lived in Aquitaine in the mid-eighteen hundreds. I did a little snooping around about him once and found out he’d been committed to an insane asylum, where he died by his own hand.” The rabbi cut a wedge from a small tart apple and offered it to Joseph. “He was definitely coming unhinged when he owned this book. He makes comments like ‘delicious,’ ‘naughty,’ and ‘angelic,’ then toward the end of the book he begins filling up the margins, page after page, with verse of his own, in the same spirit as the monk’s, but vile and vulgar. He uses the foulest language of the period; I’ve had it verified. And on a blank page at the very end of the book he wrote a confession of sorts that makes the Marquis de Sade seem tame. The man knew his Scriptures and was determined to desecrate everything written