Ephraim Akri groaned in his sleep. To Rivlin it sounded like a general protest at the sorry state of the Middle East. Taking advantage of the break in Akri’s slumber, he asked the new department head if anyone had tried getting in touch with him.
“No one,” Akri avowed, his eyes shut. Discreetly turning his naked back, which was as smooth as a bar of chocolate, he added hoarsely:
“But don’t worry . . .”
In that case, Rivlin thought with fresh anxiety, she’s picked up the gauntlet I threw down. She, too, wants to loosen the reins of our love. Not, as I do, for Ofer’s sake, but for her own, to keep aloof from the mistakes that I’ve made and will make. And if that’s what she’s up to, why did I bother making two nights out of one by hurrying here to see if she had called? I could have stayed in the basement. The last thing he saw, as his mind went blank and he fell into a short but powerful and delicious sleep, was the angular face of the tall proprietress.
27.
IT WAS APPARENT as soon as Rivlin entered the lecture hall that the postponement had been for the worse. The political-science faculty that had come to hear Tedeschi the night before, only to be told he was in the hospital, had no way of knowing, as did his colleagues in Near Eastern studies, of his propensity for miraculous recoveries. When he mounted the dais, therefore, spreading out his notes with their new approach, barely a dozen people were in the audience, and these included his wife, the two colleagues who had slept in his home, and three young political scientists, the organizers of the event, who had hurriedly mustered several secretaries and typists so that the renowned polymath wouldn’t be demoralized. Tedeschi, however, was unflustered. Seeing Suissa senior enter the lecture hall in his gray fedora, along with Suissa junior’s widow, he gave them a friendly wave and invited them to sit in the front row. Then he glanced at the sunlight pouring through the window, stripped off his jacket like a prizefighter—unselfconsciously baring two puny white arms riddled with yellow intravenous marks—and began in a stentorian voice to relate the story of a play produced in 1867 in a little theater in the town of Antakiyya, not far from the Syrian border.
Though punch-drunk from a night divided between two such different and distant beds, Rivlin was all concentration, as if he had instantly reverted to the loyal and eager student of thirty years ago. And indeed Tedeschi started off in fine form, using his narrative skills to introduce his subject with a concise but vivid survey of the Turkish hill town’s geography, history, archaeology, and sociology, which broke down into Turks, Syrians, Greeks, Jews, and Armenians, each group with its distinctive occupations and religious and cultural institutions.
His tone growing dramatic, the Jerusalem professor invited his little audience to join him in entering a small structure that housed the town theater. The details grew thicker, as if he were now sketching not a distant century but a recent experience. Before raising the curtain on the stage, he described the layout of the little auditorium, the seats, the audience, and even the smell of grilled meats and the steam rising from the glasses of tea.
Rivlin, feeling a keen intellectual delight such as he had not experienced in ages, sensed in his old mentor’s glance, which came to rest on him increasingly, that the sleepless night’s revisions had been for his sake. Tedeschi had wanted to show him, the heir apparent, how a research project bogged down in dry, recalcitrant facts could be revived by a single, bold artistic stroke—at least enough to yield an article for a jubilee volume.
The curtain went up. He had never realized what a born actor his old teacher was. After reading the list of the cast, a medley of comically mangled Turkish, Arabic, and Greek names, the Jerusalem professor declaimed the opening lines with a comic leer, reciting them first in Turkish and then in a free Hebrew translation:
O despicable thief!
Where hast thou hidden my daughter?
Thou hast enchanted her, damn thy soul!
What sane man would not understand, as I do,
That, if not for thy enchantments,
No lovely maiden would have spurned such fine suitors
And fled her father for a black body,
Terrifying, not pleasuresome, like thine?
“Othello!” Hannah Tedeschi—who had not known of her husband’s change of plans—cried with childish glee.
“Right you are, madam, as always,” the lecturer confirmed, with a bow to his wife’s sagacity. “Perhaps our adaptation of this famous play can help us to understand, better than historical abstractions, the shift that occurred in the Turks’ perceptions of the Arabs as early as the mid-nineteenth century—a shift from an attitude of contempt, disdain, and disregard to one of suspicion, hostility, and even fear, especially among the upper classes. This is why, in the popular theater of Antakiyya, a town close to Syria, the Turkish translator and adapter of Othello chose to make of Shakespeare’s tragically powerful black man, a figure who appears like a hurricane from beyond the bounds of civilization with no tangible national or religious identity—yes, to make of this wonderful and terrible man, whose danger-fraught life has caused a nobleman’s daughter to fall in love with him—an addled, pompous, absurd general from the desert, a black Arab of unbounded ambition who joins the Venetians as a mercenary against the Turks and barbarously thinks that an accidental victory in a trivial battle entitles him to possess a paragon of Christian womanhood, even though she is culturally and psychologically worlds above him.”
The doyen of Orientalists paused, his heart going out to his old student, who, though now a full professor himself, albeit at a somewhat provincial university, was sitting open-mouthed in the middle of the morning, gaping like a freshman. To help him relax after a hard night of bed-hopping, he now faced him and explained, in precise, analytic language, how the Turkish adapter had killed two Arab birds with one stone—for not only had he made an Arab of Othello, he had done the same with his treacherous adjutant Iago, now known as Yassin. The latter, however, was an Arab of a different stripe: not a black savage from the desert, but a shrewd, educated, cunning Lebanese urbanite who knew the hidden codes of his Bedouin compatriot and used them to plant in him the maddening fantasy of being cuckolded by the unworldly Christian with whom he was mismatched.
And thus, moving from play to play and theater to theater, the Jerusalem professor demonstrated how already in the middle of the nineteenth century, even though nothing had changed in official Turkish policy, the sinking empire was permeated by feelings of enmity toward and estrangement from its Arab subjects, now seen as potential traitors. Little wonder, then, that these fears turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy at the end of World War I in the form of the Great Arab Revolt—which, aided by the British, brought four hundred years of Ottoman rule crashing down. Indeed, Tedeschi concluded, with a roguish wink, the bad feeling between the two peoples has persisted to this day, giving the Jews some hope that they, too, might find a corner of their own in the Levant.
28.
RIVLIN CAME FORWARD at the lecture’s end to congratulate Tedeschi for his original methodology and to say good-bye, nodding wordlessly to Suissa senior and his anxious daughter-in-law, who stood retiringly by her father-in-law’s side.
As he was in no mood to argue with Ephraim Akri about the latter’s harangue at Samaher’s wedding, or even about Tedeschi’s lecture, Rivlin let the department head do the talking while piloting them expertly northward. Loosely strapped into his seat, he listened with patient passivity to Akri’s opinionated views, which grew most vocal at stoplights. The deeper his silence grew, the more cheerfully pessimistic about the Arabs his junior colleague became. Had the hard night rendered Rivlin apathetic toward opinions that usually exasperated him? Perhaps his strength had been sapped by Fu’ad’s tale of Ofer’s nocturnal prowling.
Although Akri was hurrying to a meeting at the university, he detoured to drop Rivlin off at his home to reward him for being so agreeable. He hoped, he said in parting, that his senior colleague’s docility was not a sign that he was coming d
own with something. “I just may be,” Rivlin replied with a smile. “What else could make me put up with your racism?” Yet he immediately clapped his driver warmly on the shoulder to mitigate the remark, while affirming that he had not yet said his final word.
The thought that he might actually have caught something from the proprietress was not totally unpleasant. Nevertheless, as he emptied the mailbox of mail that he couldn’t read, his mood changed, and his lapsed anger at the woman who had recklessly broken his glasses flared up again.
The afternoon light was honey clear, the living room clean and tidy, and the food left in its pots on the counter by the housekeeper still warm. Although he had absconded for barely a day, his isolation from his wife, with whom he had not spoken since their quarrel, made the time seem much longer. Still unwilling to make up, however, he decided, even though he wasn’t hungry, to eat lunch without waiting for her, which was something she hated. After eating, he went to his study. Unable to make out the letters on his keyboard, he took some paper and scrawled a few thoughts about the four languages that contributed to the conflict of national identity in Algeria. Now and then he paused to glance at the ghost of his mother sitting unconcernedly on her terrace in a summery green dress, her heavy arms bare and her stout, pale legs propped on a chair.
Yet reading and writing were impractical. Better, he thought, to lie down and ascertain whether he had really brought back a fever from Jerusalem. To his surprise, he found the bedroom neatly arranged, as if his wife had wished to prove she could make order without him. He pulled off his shoes and stretched out with a bittersweet feeling, then rose to lower the blinds and draw the curtain to make the room dark. He took off his trousers, unbuttoned his shirt, and tried to picture—a difficult task in such bourgeois surroundings—the dark depths of the hotel’s basement.
It was not the basement, however, that he saw in the half-light. It was the tall, bony woman who had talked without inhibition while making the swan-sheeted bed with quick, snapping movements. She must have a crush on me, Rivlin thought with a start. Perhaps, despite her resentment of her dead father, she misses having an older man in her life.
Though his wife would soon be home from court, it seemed absurd to return to his study and to the old ghost on the terrace. And so, hearing the front door open, he pulled the blanket over him and turned to the wall. Hagit entered the bedroom without switching on the light. She lowered herself comfortably onto the bed and softly laid her hand on him as if nothing had happened and there were no need to ask.
“You’re not going to fall asleep now anyway,” she said. “Come, let’s go to the kitchen. I shouldn’t have to eat alone after a hard day’s work.”
The scent of her soft, full body bending toward him triggered his old love for her. He fought against it while trying to think of something sarcastic to say about lunatics who went around breaking glasses. Yet knowing well that any reply would lead to a conversation that—as sooner or later happens between rational people—would bring about the reconciliation his wife craved, he stubbornly clung to his silence.
Rebuffed anew, she gave him a hurt look and went to the kitchen to eat by herself. When she returned, she switched on the light, took off her dress, and put on a light robe. “I have news,” she said directly. “Do you want to hear it? Or would you rather go on mourning your glasses?”
But his silence was out of control. It was stuck in his throat like a bone. Rising from the bed with a hangdog look, he buttoned his shirt and pulled on his pants with the intention of returning to his study. Hagit sat up and grabbed him. “I want you to listen,” she said with a reassuring smile. “It’s good news. Ofer is coming for six days. The Jewish Agency has given him a ticket to escort some youth group, but he only has to be with them on the flight itself.”
Yet even this could not break his silence. As much as the news filled him with joy, it also made him realize that he feared his son’s coming. With pretended nonchalance he bent to put on his shoes, conscious of how he was trying not only his wife’s patience but his own.
“Will you stop it!” she cried with a desperation that wasn’t like her, clutching at his shirt. “What is wrong with you?”
He shut his eyes and didn’t move, to keep the shirt from tearing.
“Stay. Take off your clothes. Take them off! Lie down and rest. Don’t start in again. Aren’t you happy Ofer is coming?”
He didn’t open his eyes or speak. He simply froze, feeling her fingers undoing, perhaps for the first time in her life, the buttons of his shirt. They touched his skin. They stroked it, clawed at it. Shameless and demanding, they grabbed at the zipper of his pants. It had never happened before. She wanted him, now, as her friend—her lover—her man. Shocked and thrilled by the frank desire of a woman who had always had to be courted patiently, with no end of cajoling words, he waived all rights to an apology or explanation and made his peace with a hasty, wordless reconciliation in which, slowly, the sweetness of absconding, now over with forever, faded and went out.
29.
When an entire people is linguistically confused, what hope is there for dialogue or communication?
Four languages mingle in Algerian life, leading to a chaotic identity:
First, there is Berber, the indigenous language of the Maghreb, spoken by close to a third of the population.
Second, there is North African Arabic, known to every Algerian.
These two languages are oral media not used for writing, even though Berber once had a written form.
The two written languages of Algeria are French and classical literary Arabic. Neither, however, is a mother tongue. Both are in effect foreign languages. Classical Arabic comes with Islamization and French with Western colonialism. The first arrived as a sacred tongue, the second as a secular one.
It is obvious that, historically considered, reading and writing are forms of submission and penetration that create an intricate dialectic between the individual and the written language. To write in French is to betray. To write in Arabic is to profane.
Each of the four languages used in Algeria is thus subject to the dichotomies of the powerful/legitimate or sacred/secular. All four conflict at various levels of writing and speech. Each forms a discrete system having little significant contact with the others.
The complexity of this situation is problematic for every Algerian. Fully living an Algerian identity means knowing four languages, being at home in four cultures, and adapting to four different psychological standpoints.
Practically speaking, only 10 percent of the population of Algeria is proficient in all four languages. Such a small group is unable to bring about an integration of four different worlds. And even if such an integration were possible, it would be inaccessible to the majority of Algerians.
Rivlin scratched his head and paused before writing a last sentence.
This unique and problematic linguistic configuration has contributed to Algeria’s rapid descent into violence.
30.
COULD HE REALLY still be wearing the same old army jacket? And had he put on weight, or was he just slower and more cumbersome, an old soldier fighting a rear-guard battle with himself? Rivlin, though happy to see his son, was worried by the figure that appeared on the closed-circuit screen above the exit from Customs. Yet Hagit, standing excitedly in the crowd of welcomers, their numbers undiminished despite its being the middle of the night, was unperturbed. She spread her arms wide to Ofer, overjoyed to see him.
“Where is the group you were supposed to escort?” Rivlin asked, after giving his son’s forehead a kiss. “Aren’t you still responsible for them?”
Ofer’s responsibility, it turned out, had been virtual. The Jewish youngsters he was supposed to accompany for his free ticket had returned to France a week ago.
“Well, then,” Rivlin laughed, “your only duty is to be with your parents.”
But Ofer hadn’t come to Israel to be dutiful to his parents. He had already, he informed them, phoned T
sakhi from Paris and suggested a diving expedition to the Sinai. The young officer, enthusiastic about the idea, was now working on getting leave.
“You see!” Rivlin exclaimed, crowing at his two sons’ initiative. “In order to be with you, he’ll pull a few days’ leave out of a hat. But when we visited his base with your aunt and uncle, he didn’t even have time say hello.”
“Why must you always blame him for what isn’t his fault?” Hagit protested, coming to Tsakhi’s defense. “It will be wonderful,” she told Ofer, “if you two can spend some quiet time together after having been apart for so long. I’d give a lot just to be able to see you.”
“Why not dive with them?” Rivlin teased.
“Come to think of it, why not?” she said, reddening.
He awoke in the morning with the first light. Descending to the bottom floor of the duplex, he carefully opened the door of his younger son’s room, in which Ofer was sleeping, his crew-cut head on the pillow. Brimming with compassion, Rivlin stood looking at him as though searching for some sign of his hopeless struggle with lost love.
Two years had gone by since they had last seen him, in Paris. The dear face so often pictured by them, now covered by two days’ growth of beard, was broader and fleshier, perhaps a result of his classes at the Academy of Cooking in Montparnasse. For a moment, Ofer’s eyes seemed to open. Then he turned his face to the wall. Had the father scrutinizing him been the subject of last night’s conversation with his mother, with whom Ofer had sat up after Rivlin, unable to stay awake, had gone to bed? Or had he kept his grievances to himself?
The Liberated Bride Page 41