After Jacob told me about his thievery, he forgave me for invading his privacy. With his rakish smile, he said it would be hypocritical to damn me for such a minor crime compared to his larceny. I think he was relieved to have finally unburdened himself. I stayed with him that night, and for the rest of the week, I spent most of my time at his apartment, helping him heal while he taught me to cook a few of his favorite dishes—chicken soup with matzo balls, carrots, and chunks of celery; an overcooked brisket that should have been tough considering how long it cooked but was instead so tender it didn’t need a knife. There was a noodle casserole with eggs, raisins, and cheese that I told him I could eat for the rest of my life. I’d never enjoyed being in a kitchen before, but being in one with Jacob was different.
Everything with Jacob was different.
I was a wordsmith; he was a visual artist. Even the way he cut carrots and put them on a plate was beautiful. Every corner of every room was artfully designed, down to the way the crystal candle holders were arranged on the mantel.
Jacob reminded me of my father in that way. Like him, he was an aesthete who reveled in finding beauty in everything in his life. Jacob was also an expert in subjects I knew nothing about, which made our conversations fascinating. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the Jews, as well as an understanding of European politics that sometimes was hard for me to follow.
Often after supper, we would take glasses of brandy into the parlor, light the fire, and sit beside each other on the couch, and he would tell me a story about a missing tiara or a jewel theft or a gift that had ruined a marriage. He kept me enthralled recounting these tales about famous jewels and the men and women who owned them and wore them.
My interest didn’t have anything to do with the article I was researching; rather, it was that Jacob was a natural storyteller who could spin a tale that combined both sweeping emotions and detailed descriptions.
After a little more than a week, on a Friday, I accompanied him for his follow-up visit with the doctor, who gave him the all clear to go back to work the following Monday. When we left the hospital, Jacob hailed a carriage and gave the driver an address different from his apartment.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
The carriage pulled up on Central Park West in front of the Gothic castle, otherwise known as the Museum of Natural History.
“I haven’t been here since I was a child. What are we doing?”
“You have so many questions about stones, and I don’t have enough examples to really show you. So…” He opened his arms, indicating the building.
He took my hand, and we walked up the imposing stairs and into the great hall. Without having to ask for directions, he led me down one corridor, through several galleries of dioramas of preserved animals and birds in recreations of their natural habitats, until finally we reached our destination, the department of mineralogy.
“This gem collection here is a combination of donations from Tiffany and Company, Bement, and J. P. Morgan. I first saw some of these pieces in 1889 in the America section of the Paris Exhibition. It won two golden awards and was one of the highlights of the fair. There were important specimens of all kinds of stones, but especially noteworthy were the sapphires, topazes, beryls, tourmalines, and garnets. Everyone, from the public to important scholars and lapidaries, was amazed by the assemblage. Mr. Morgan paid one hundred thousand dollars for the entire collection and donated it to the museum. He also donated the Bement collection of gems, which he’d already owned. Altogether, the gifts consisted of more than two thousand gems, two thousand pearls, and twelve thousand mineral samples. Other donations and purchases have made this the largest collection of its size in any museum.”
We were the only visitors at the exhibit, so we had the hall to ourselves. I watched Jacob’s face as he described the properties of the different stones and explained how they were mined, as well as the methods used for cutting and polishing. We spent a long time in front of the diamond exhibit, which had examples of gems in various states, from rough to a fully faceted and polished gem.
“This is what they look like when they are found in the mine.” He pointed to an unimpressive rough. “Michelangelo once said that when he looked at a piece of marble, he could see the figure deep inside and that his job was to take away the stone hiding it. A gem cutter feels the same way.”
He pointed to each example in the case, explaining the processes involved at every step, finishing with what it took to create the final, polished gem.
We moved on to the next case. “These look like different kinds of stones, but they’re all colored diamonds.” One by one, he explained the rarity of each. “And then there are blue diamonds,” he said, pointing. “These are excellent examples, but none, I think, has the magical lavender cast of the Hope.”
“How difficult would it be to make a paste copy with that same hue?” I asked.
“Very difficult.”
“But it could be done?”
He turned to me. “Why are you asking?”
“To find out if it would be possible for you to make a copy of the Hope Diamond.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To help out a friend of mine.”
“You’re going to have to be more explicit than that.”
I took a deep breath. “You know one of the people who wants to buy the stone is Evalyn Walsh McLean.”
“I am not supposed to talk about our clients.”
“OK, but I know she is interested. Our families are friends. Evalyn’s mother is like an aunt to me. She’s very worried about her daughter buying something with so much bad luck attached to it.”
“That I can understand.”
“So I had this crazy idea. You could make a copy and switch it with the real diamond, which Mrs. Walsh will take. Evalyn will get the paste copy. Without knowing it, of course. Everyone would have what they want. Mr. Cartier will have sold the stone at the price he asked. Evalyn will own what she believes is the Hope. Mrs. Walsh will be able to sleep at night.”
And, I thought, I could write up a story about Evalyn Walsh McLean owning a fake Hope Diamond and use that to tempt Mr. Oxley into blackmailing Mr. Cartier. I would make it a condition of doing the favor for Aunt Carrie that she would agree to go public if, in fact, Mr. Cartier insisted on it. That way, Mr. Cartier could call Mr. Oxley’s bluff without any fear of having his reputation besmirched.
“Isn’t Mrs. Walsh worried about having the Hope in her possession and tempting the bad luck herself?” Jacob asked.
“She’ll keep it in a vault and not ever touch it. Wearing it is the only way to invite the bad luck, correct?”
“So Mr. Cartier says.”
“Will you do it?” I asked.
Jacob didn’t answer.
We walked past a display case of emeralds.
“These are interesting gems,” Jacob said as he stopped. “Unlike diamonds, every stone has some type of inclusion visible to the naked eye. Instead of using the word flaw, dealers and jewelers use the expression jardin, which, as you probably know, is French for garden. Ancient Egyptians believed they were symbols of eternal youth. And according to legend, it was believed that putting an emerald under the tongue would protect against evil spirits and give some the gift of clairvoyance.”
It wasn’t lost on me that Jacob had chosen not to give me an answer regarding the Hope. Somehow I had to convince him. While I hadn’t worked out all the details, I knew the first step in my success was putting a fake Hope Diamond into play.
“Can you make paste emeralds?” I asked.
“Yes, but they are more difficult to create than diamonds. All the colored stones are. But Vera, please don’t ask me questions like these in public.”
“All right, I’m sorry.”
We walked over to another case, and Jacob began lecturing on topaz.
“Actually,” I interrupted, “I admire your pluck. You must have nerves of steel to do what you do.”
“No, what I have is an amplified sense of injustice.”
“I share that,” I said.
“What do you do about it?” he asked in a tone that was almost judgmental.
“My family and I support several charities. I’ve told you about the ones my father founded,” I snapped back defensively. It wasn’t the answer I wanted to give him, but it was all I could say.
He didn’t respond. Was he thinking that wasn’t enough? I certainly wouldn’t have been impressed by a wealthy socialite giving away money in between teas, galas, operas, and summers in Newport.
“I care very much about changing the world,” I added.
“I suppose caring is the first step.”
“Yes, it is.”
“But you could get more involved,” he suggested.
I wanted to tell him just how involved I was. But to do that, I would have to tell him that I had been lying to him all along. And that even when he had shared his secret with me, I still had held on tightly to the one I had that really mattered.
“This is one of my favorite places to come when I’m upset,” Jacob said. “The rocks are ageless. Scientists can’t even guess how old some of them are. Yet we mortals think we are all so important and powerful. We think we matter. Have you ever considered that we are not even grains of sand in the history of who has come before us and who will come after? Our time here is not even a fraction of a fraction of how long these rocks and crystals have existed on earth. I think I love gemstones most because of their timeless grandeur. They put my life in perspective. They make me realize how petty I am. How petty we all are…” He paused.
Jacob was staring into a star sapphire. As I examined its depths, I thought about what he’d said. To Jacob, gems weren’t about money or fame or status. They were a connection to the earth. To history. He found peace studying and reflecting on these stones. They gave him a way to live through tragedy. A way I hadn’t yet found and might never find.
“Your whole life has been about stones, hasn’t it?” I asked.
He nodded. “I suppose it has.”
“What will you do when you have filled all fifteen of those boxes?”
“I’ll retire.”
“From being a jeweler?”
“No, that’s in my blood.”
“From what, then?”
He winked.
“Ah. Turn to a life of virtue.”
He laughed. “What is your whole life about?” he asked me.
“I don’t know, exactly.”
I did, of course. And this was the moment to tell him. And oh, how I wanted to. I yearned to tell him about Charlotte and the abortion clinic and the factories and the tenements and the articles that I and my sisters in arms had been writing since my hero Nellie Bly had herself interred in the mental institution to expose it. I desperately wanted to tell him about the risks I’d taken to help right injustices and watch his face as I listed the changes I’d helped bring about.
But I couldn’t tell Jacob any of that now. It was too provocative for someone he thought didn’t do much but who lived off her family fortune and dabbled in charitable work. I wanted to tell him what I did and who I was so he could be proud of me, and that realization surprised me. I cared what Jacob Asher thought of me. But it would have to wait until I accomplished what I had set out to do.
We were in front of a case filled with ruby crystals in various formations.
“I think you do know but don’t want to tell me. Is that possible?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“The thing about precious gems, Vera, is that they don’t look precious or even special to the uninformed. Look at these.” He took me by the arm and guided me over to another case, positioning me so that I was looking at a single, plain, gray, roundish rock.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“A rock.”
“Pretty?”
“Not particularly.”
“Valuable?”
“Well, it is here.”
“All right, Miss Smarty Pants, suppose it was in the park.”
“No, not valuable.”
“Now look,” he said, moving me a few inches to the right so I could see a similar gray stone, but this one was cracked open, revealing an interior of royal purple crystals.
“It’s a treasure trove of amethyst,” he said.
“Now look at this.” He pointed to a dark gray rock that I would never notice if it were in the woods.
“What gems do you see in its surface?” he asked.
“I don’t see any.”
He pointed. “Look harder. Do you see those bluish bits there?”
“Yes?”
“Those will be priceless sapphires when they have been cut out and polished.”
“So we’re walking over millions of dollars of precious gems all the time? Not seeing any of them because we don’t know how to look?”
“Exactly. But we can learn to see what others don’t. Not just with rocks. But with people, too.”
And the way he was looking at me made me shiver. I just couldn’t tell if it was with fear, or longing, or a bit of both.