4.
DESPITE THE HOUR, it seemed entirely natural to Hagit, halfway home between Amihud and Shfar’am, to ask the Arab driver to stop by an illuminated greengrocer’s stand, where she talked the two secretaries, as well as two young teaching assistants who had taken a fancy to her, into some late-night shopping, as if, Rivlin reflected, saddened to bid her Arab hosts good-bye, she were determined to bring home as a memento their freshly picked cucumbers, eggplants, squashes, and strawberries. His protests unavailing, he remained seated on the bus, boycotting the proceedings while regarding with amazement the sleeping Ephraim Akri, after his diatribe slumbering so sweetly that not even the sudden stilling of the motor could awaken him. Irritable and weary, he watched his wife circulate eagerly in the bluish light of a kerosene lamp. Several large dolls dangling from a thatched roof suggested idols in an ancient Canaanite temple. There she goes again, he thought angrily. Once more she was witlessly letting some shrewd merchant sell her a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables that would end up rotting in the refrigerator unless he ate them all himself.
A car drove up. Two young women climbed out and joined the midnight shopping spree. Despite his desire to intervene and put an end to it, the sight of the yellowish fog from a nearby gas station, into and out of which cars were pulling busily, had an immobilizing effect on him. Who would be left to rise early in the Jewish state, he wondered, if the Arabs, too, had begun to burn the midnight oil? His wife, meanwhile, having struck up a conversation with the two newcomers, added her spruce legs to theirs in another tour of the pagan greengrocery. The memory of the hale old grandmother sucking on the snake head of her narghile heightened his bile. How had he ever agreed to such a wasted evening? And especially when weddings, even of close family and friends, were becoming increasingly painful to him. Had he and Hagit stayed home tonight, they surely would have made the love that had disappointingly eluded them all week. And tomorrow he was expected to vacate his study for ten days in order to make room for Ofra, his sister-in-law from abroad, who would be staying with them until her husband joined her and they moved to a hotel. His prospects for the next week and a half were slim. The evenings without Hagit would be long, and the mornings with her short, not because she was attached to her only, elder sister by twin strands of love and guilt, but also because there would be no chance for him to make love to her while they were all together under one roof. A single item of Ofra’s clothing in the next room, even a pair of her shoes, was enough to banish all thought of sex from Hagit’s mind.
5.
RIVLIN’S BOYCOTT was dealt with by the simple expediency of having the greengrocer bring Hagit’s bulging bags to the minibus and arrange them there carefully. “Here you are, Your Honor,” he declared, having discovered who she was from the two lady passengers—recent law-school graduates entranced by their unexpected encounter with a district judge. Perhaps aware that, like all Arabs, he would sooner or later end up in court himself, whether in the dock or on the witness stand, the man seemed in awe of the genial magistrate who had chosen this time of night to patronize his stand.
“You should know better than to make friends with lawyers,” Rivlin scolded her. “Don’t you realize they’re out to make a dishonest man of every judge?”
“Man, my dear,” Hagit repeated with a grin. “You said so yourself. Not woman.” Producing a small comb from her handbag, she invited him, as if the night’s entertainment were just beginning, to run it through his hair. “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I know where the bounds are. And I make sure others do, too.” She could only have been referring to judicial bounds, because the minibus hadn’t gone far before she was opening the paper bags at her feet to probe their contents. She popped into her mouth several cherries whose pink globes must have reminded her of the munificent nipples she had sucked when she was a child, and deposited the pits carefully in the palm of her hand.
It was past midnight. The first guests to have been picked up by their driver, they were the last to be dropped off. First they had to awaken Akri. Although Akri’s antics had nearly ruined the evening, Rivlin watched him fondly as he walked with a springy gait to his apartment building. He was pleased that he had used his influence with the Appointments Committee to get Akri his promotion and tenure—thus relieving himself of the long-standing burden of running the department.
On the East Carmel his wife parted with affection from one of the secretaries, and, two blocks farther, just as lovingly from the other. The minibus snaked through a new housing development, looking for the street of a young instructor with a bright academic future. Only now did Rivlin notice that the instructor’s bashful wife was in the early months of pregnancy.
The two merry young teaching assistants got off downtown. A Jew and a Druze, they shared an apartment. At Carmel Center, Rivlin descended from the vehicle to lead an old professor emeritus, who never missed a departmental event, to the front door of his old-age home. They parted with unaccustomed warmth, as if an evening spent among Arabs had reawakened their sense of Jewish solidarity. In years to come, he knew, his wife’s keen memory would preserve, if not the name, then at least some identifying mark, of every person at the wedding.
Home at last in their new duplex on the French Carmel, to which they had moved half a year previously, they were happy to see that, as always, they felt no regret for the lush wadi that had abutted the terrace of their old apartment, where they had lived for thirty years before exchanging the wadi for the slow but sure elevator that now brought them and their shopping bags to the fifth floor. The Arab driver, a young man with almost sable skin and handsome, fiery eyes, was distrustful of elevators but insisted on accompanying them to their door and carrying their purchases inside. He was indignant when Hagit sought to tip him. How could she think of such a thing? He, Rashid, was one of the family. He was Samaher’s cousin and would do anything for her or her guests. Everyone in the village loved her and was proud of her. She had character and education and was one of Mansura’s most prominent young people. Samaher would go far, despite having been ill all winter.
“Samaher, ill? Rivlin objected. “You must be mistaken.”
Rashid stuck to his guns. Samaher had been ill.
“With what?”
He didn’t know the name of the illness. He only knew it was a bad one. This was the reason Samaher had agreed to be married as soon as she had recovered: to make up for lost time.
6.
THEY MADE DO with giving the driver a cold drink, pleased with his oohs and ahs over the duplex. Informed that he intended to rejoin the festivities, which would go on all night, Hagit asked Rashid what the name Samaher meant in Arabic. Rivlin, indignant she hadn’t turned to him, blurted:
“It means a javelin.”
The young Arab begged to differ. Samaher meant a lance, not a javelin. His coal-black eyes glowed as he pointed out the difference. Samaher, he repeated solemnly, was a lance. A samaheri was a lancer. And with that he took his leave.
At last they were alone. The first thing they did was check the voice mail for a message from Ofer, their older son, who had spent the last four years in Paris. None of the three messages were from him. One, quick and bashful with an Arab accent, came from the cleaning woman’s son, whose regular job it was to tell them she wasn’t well, especially when her illness was imaginary. The second voice—clear, good-natured, and always a pleasure to hear—belonged to their younger son, Tsakhi; an officer in the army; he was calling to apologize for unexpectedly having to be on duty over the weekend, which meant that anyone wanting to see him would have to visit his base in the Galilee. The last message was from Hannah Tedeschi. In crisp, firm tones she announced that although she and her husband had returned to Israel a week ago from a long trip to South America, they were not yet installed in their Jerusalem home because before they could unpack, Professor Tedeschi’s notorious asthma, having waited patiently for their vacation to end, had struck more cruelly than ever. If Rivlin wanted to see his old academ
ic patron and doctoral adviser, he had better come to Bikkur Holim Hospital, where the barely conscious professor could be found on the third floor, in Room 8 of Internal Medicine. He needn’t rush, though. This time, he was informed triumphantly by Hannah (an Orientalist herself and a first-rate translator of the poetry of the Jahaliya, the pre-Islamic “Age of Ignorance”), Tedeschi was in for a long hospitalization.
“It’s unbelievable how she loves him to be sick,” Rivlin said.
“Needs, not loves,” his wife corrected him. Often a single word was enough to remind him of how admirably clever she was. “Come, let’s go to bed,” she urged when he wanted to listen to Hannah’s message again, hoping to discern the difference between love and need with his own ears. “The house is a mess. And there’s no cleaning woman tomorrow. You’ll have to pitch in. I’ll need your help to tidy up a bit. . . .”
“A bit?” he repeated resentfully. He knew full well that in the end most of the work would fall on him. Unlike his wife, who had a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and a defendant all waiting for her to appear in court in her best judicial form, he had only the incomplete draft of a book that would be happy to be left for another day.
Hagit knew that her husband liked nothing better than to complain while taking refuge from his recalcitrant research in the chores of a malingering cleaning woman or an inadequate housewife. Careful to show no disrespect for the sacrifice demanded of him by her sister’s visit, she let him go to the kitchen and—grumbling loudly about the food she had bought—switch on the dishwasher despite the late hour. When he finally climbed the stairs to their bedroom, she was sprawled on the bedspread fully clothed, watching the TV news with a bowl of cherries in her lap. Her “presomnial relaxation,” as she called it, took precedence, like her postsomnial relaxation, over putting away the disorder of dresses, skirts, blouses, and shoes that testified to the difficulties of deciding what to wear to an Arab wedding.
“How can you possibly still be hungry?” Rivlin asked, scooping up a few cherries, more to help rid the bowl of them than because he was hungry himself.
“Why not?” She smiled serenely. “All I had to eat all night was ice cream. I never touched the lamb. That’s more than I can say for some people, who ate half of it single-handedly.”
“You’re sure it was only half?” His own smile was glum. He was already feeling nostalgic for the juicy meat heaped unceasingly on his plate by the villagers. It was gone now, devoured without a trace, leaving only the faint strains of Oriental music pulsing inside him. He turned to regard his wife, whose face was pallid with fatigue. As of tomorrow he would have his childless sister-in-law on his hands, ten days’ worth of advanced middle age. Though tired and dejected, he was determined as a matter of principle to assert his conjugal rights. Sitting at the foot of the bed, he lightly stroked the soles of Hagit’s feet, so as to gauge his own desire before making any claims on hers.
7.
HIS DESIRE, HE CONCLUDED, even though the next day’s chores were tediously waiting for him in a long line, would pass muster. He reached out, took the remote control from his wife’s hands, and muted the TV. The pictures remained on the screen.
“Not now,” Hagit said. “You won’t enjoy it either. Don’t force yourself. Let’s wait until morning. You know what happens when I’m not in the mood.”
“You will be,” he promised, as if there were a switch he could press for that, too. Squirming free of him, however, she demurred. He couldn’t tell if her resistance came solely from fatigue or also from something more ancient.
“In the end you’ll leave me all alone.”
“No, I won’t.” The stirring in his loins firmed his resolution. “Don’t worry. I won’t come without you.” He switched off the overhead light, leaving only the reading lamp.
“Then talk to me!” she protested, with an inner anger that made her tense when he embraced her. “Say something! We’re not animals. You know how hard your silences are for me. You never have time for a loving or caring word.”
And again there was no telling whether she was pleading with him to overcome her resistance or—already cradled by an exhaustion stronger than his arms—looking to fend him off. But he would not take no for an answer. Perhaps it was the sobbing grace notes of the music. Or else the lamb had been in heat, or he was haunted by the image of his attractive former student Afifa, now puffing on a narghile with Samaher’s healthy old grandmother. He was not about to back down. As excessive as declarations of love seemed when he, too, wanted only to sink calmly into sleep, he managed to dredge a few sincere ones from his depths.
Hagit listened with eyes shut, a smile playing over her lips. She took words seriously. They counted with her even more in the bedroom than in the courtroom. Spreading heavy arms, she invited him to rise from his crouch by the bed and join her face to face. She kissed his forehead and eyes. Yet her kisses were lukewarm. Though there was a will, the way to her heart was blocked.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, irritated.
“Nothing. I told you. I’m dead tired. Why insist on it? Did someone turn you on at the wedding?”
“How could you say such a thing?”
“I don’t know. Forget it. You smell funny.”
“I do? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t take it personally. Something must have rubbed off on you in the village. Some strange perfume. Did you touch anything? Maybe it was the soap you used. It’s nothing. Just wash your face. It’s not a good smell. Perhaps we should both shower. We’ll feel better if we do. You go first. We’re both sweaty. It’s been a long, sweaty day. We’ll wake up fresh in the morning and have time for everything.”
8.
FINIS. EVEN INTELLECTUALLY, the life had gone out of his lust. He stepped into the shower, thoroughly soaping his face and private parts. Unsure the smell was gone, he embraced his wife when their naked bodies collided outside the bathroom, menacingly offering her his forehead to smell. She burst into laughter and hugged him back, her marvelous breasts pressed against him. They would make love in the morning, she promised, kissing the proffered brow. It was a promise, he knew, backed by nothing. Who knew what the morning would bring? Things could go wrong even in their dreams.
And in fact the approach of her beloved sister, though still oceans away, roused Hagit from bed at dawn to vacuum the house, scrub and scour the windows and mirrors, refill the dishwasher repeatedly with dishes that had already been washed, and stoke the washing machine with clean towels and sheets. As a crowning touch, she made a bed fit for a princess, with starched, scented sheets, light, fluffy blankets, and brand-new eiderdown pillows—all in unspoken competition with the crisp and fragrant luxuriance that, carefully arranged by her sister, always awaited her on her visits to America.
Rivlin, whose wife was usually happy to let him and the cleaning woman manage the house, while she relaxed amid her dresses and fruit pits after a hard day in court, listened to her instructions without protest. He knew how much her sister’s rare visits meant to Hagit. Like an old drill sergeant ordered about by a new officer, he helped hang another round of laundry while moving his belongings from his study. Although his sister-in-law would only be staying with them for ten days, this meant emptying all three drawers of his desk, clearing his books from a shelf, and transferring his computer to his small office at the university. He was actually fond of Hagit’s sister and wouldn’t have wanted her to be blamed for impeding his work, which had gone slowly since the move to the duplex.
The morning passed quickly. Soon the judge would don her black robe and join her colleagues waiting in the wings of the courtroom for the crier to announce them. Yet by working efficiently, he and Hagit had managed to accomplish more in two hours than the cleaning woman did in a day. The floors were spotless. The windows and mirrors gleamed. The guest room, its couch opened into a sumptuous bed, looked airy and inviting. Flowers, cakes, and other good things would arrive with the judge, bought on her way home from court. She wo
uld not accompany her husband to the airport. The trial was a long and secretive one, held behind closed doors, and there was no chance of an early recess.
9.
THE UPSHOT WAS that he had to start the second car for her—the little old model she wasn’t used to driving—and once again explain the dashboard, the meaning of whose clocks and gauges she kept forgetting. Fortunately, Hagit was a relaxed but careful driver, which was the only reason she ever arrived anywhere in one piece. Nor was she in any hurry to depart now, even though she was late. First she had two requests of him. One was direct: as soon as her sister passed through customs, she wanted to be informed. The other was more complicated. Could he please, before leaving for the university, launder the curtain in his study? Only now had she noticed how filthy it was.
“What do you mean, filthy?”
“Filthy,” she said gently, “really filthy. You, my dear, never notice such things.”
“Suppose I don’t. This is where I draw the line. I’m not laundering any curtains. The room is for your sister, not for some dowager queen.”
“Dowager queen?” The expression struck her as oddly belligerent. What did queens have to do with her sister? It was his study. When he moved back into it in ten days’ time, he’d appreciate a clean curtain too.
The Liberated Bride Page 2