“It was Crocus’s fault really, not yours,” he said. I’d only meant to convey sympathy, not admit fault, but if it was translating Aquinas that had made him lose his vision it was indeed partly my fault. “I’ve wondered sometimes if it’s Providence, if it’s punishment for what I did to you and destroying your joy.”

“No,” I said at once, then wondered. Could it be? “I have had plenty of joy, even though I was afraid. And I still do.” And I can read, I thought, looking at my bookshelves.

“I think it would have happened more quickly and more directly,” he said. “If this is a punishment for anything it’s probably for buying those books.”

“Forbidden books,” I said. “How did Crocus know you had them?”

“And he was there. I told Sokrates about them. Sokrates couldn’t read Aquinas, because it was in Latin, of course.” He hesitated, and sipped his wine. “Speaking of Latin and forbidden books, could I ask you to read something to me?”

“Of course,” I said, with no hesitation.

He pulled a book out of his kiton. It was black and had a cross on the cover. I recognized it immediately as a Bible. “It’s Jerome’s Latin Bible,” he said.

Written on the cover was Versio Sacra Vulgata. It was the Vulgate, the Latin Bible of the Catholic Church. I had heard about it but never seen it before. We didn’t allow it in the Republic, of course, and I had only read the King James Version when I was young.

“I thought you allowed Bibles in Amazonia?”

“We have Bibles compiled from memory. It’s surprising how much people knew, and of course I had this and could fill in some pieces nobody remembered.” I took it from him and leafed through it. It was printed on the same Bible paper I remembered from my childhood, with the initials of verses printed in red.

“So what do you want me to read?”

“Jerome’s prefaces. Of course nobody had memorized those.” He smiled. “Nobody else. But ever since I heard about Ficino’s death, I’ve been longing to re-read Jerome’s preface to Job, where he talks about the difficulties of translation.”

I turned the pages until I came to it. I had never read it, and reading it aloud now I laughed when I reached Jerome’s comparison of translating to wrestling an eel, which gets more slippery the harder you try to hold on. When I came to the end of the preface, I kept on reading. I had not read Job since I was a girl, and I was surprised how much it still meant to me. We both had tears in our eyes when I stopped reading.

“Come to Florentia and have dinner,” I said, handing him back the book.