The Liberated Bride

by A. B. Yehoshua

  Rivlin shut the door quietly and went to fetch the morning paper, of which he could read only the headlines. Then he went to the bedroom to see if Hagit was awake. Having been up half the night with Ofer, she would no doubt want to sleep. Yet, attuned to the woundup man who tiptoed past her bed, she opened smiling eyes and promised to join him at the breakfast table.

  By the time she did, he had eaten and was sitting by the unopened newspaper, which lay on the table as a mute testimony to his wife’s crime. “I really am sorry,” she said, picking up the paper and glancing at it. “If I had known how much you depended on those glasses, I would have been more careful. But you need to realize how impossible you sometimes are. It isn’t what you do, it’s what you hide.”

  “Please. Ofer is here. We agreed to a truce, so let’s keep it. Don’t be like the Arabs.”

  “The Arabs? Where do they come in?”

  “They’ve always been here. After so many years of living with me, it’s time you knew they’re part of my mental world.”

  He went to switch on the electric kettle and take the toast from the toaster while she leafed rapidly through the paper as if looking for something. She found it, read it without comment, and put the paper aside.

  “What were you looking at?”

  “A notice that the verdict is today.”

  “The verdict? Today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m glad the damned thing is over.”

  “What’s so damned about it?”

  “It just is.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe all those mysterious closed-door sessions got on my nerves.”

  “Why should they have mattered to you?”

  “They just did.”

  “I wish you’d cut out all those ‘justs.’ Try to explain yourself. Why did this particular trial, which you knew nothing about, get on your nerves? Don’t you have enough there already?”

  “I do. But it did anyway. And I don’t like your being a minority who can’t convince the other judges.”

  “It’s strange that you should need to feel I’m always in the right. Anyhow, the Supreme Court may rule that I was right on an appeal.”

  “You’re that sure he didn’t do anything?”

  “I don’t know what he did or didn’t do. And I’m sure that he’s a very shady type. But there simply isn’t enough evidence to convict him.”

  “Forensic evidence.”

  “Yes, forensic. Don’t make light of it.”

  “But when did you manage to write your dissent?”

  “The night you ran away to the Tedeschis. Didn’t you wonder why I never tried to get in touch with you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “It was so quiet without you that I had all the time in the world to concentrate and finish it in one sitting.”

  “How did it come out?”

  “It certainly convinced me.” Hagit bobbed her head charmingly and took another sip of coffee.

  “Will your opinion be in tomorrow’s paper?”

  “Only a few snippets. That’s all the censor will allow.”

  “I’d like to read the full text.”

  “You’d be bored by it. There are parts you wouldn’t follow. And I’d be in trouble if you blabbed about it afterward.”

  “Why should I blab?” he replied angrily. “To whom? Forget it. What I want to know is, what happened with Ofer after I went to sleep?”

  “He talked about Paris. He loves it more every day.”

  “Did he say anything about a girlfriend?”

  “No. I don’t think he has one.”

  “So what will be?”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Nothing? I don’t know about that. I suppose he criticized me.”

  “A bit. It’s hard for him that you identify with him so much. He finds it a burden.”

  “I identify with him? He said that?” For some reason, this gladdened him. “But why should that bother him? I wish someone would identify with me. . . .”

  “Don’t be so sure. It puts more spine in one to be opposed. And you think your identifying with him gives you the right to know things that he can’t or doesn’t want to talk about.”

  “Why can’t he?”

  “He just can’t. You have to respect that. He was as upset as I was that you took advantage of your condolence call to quiz Galya. I don’t want to say I told you so. But I did try to talk you out of going to that bereavement. All you did was complicate things.”

  “I didn’t complicate anything. I wanted to understand.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “At least I tried.”

  “Look at the price, though.”

  “What price? Didn’t you just say he said nice things about me?”

  “Because he loves you.”

  “He does?” Rivlin marveled, as though at something impossible. “Did he really say that?”

  “He didn’t have to. I know it.”

  31.

  YET NOT EVEN LOVE, real or potential, could wake the Parisian from his Israeli sleep. He’s so used to sleeping by himself that he doesn’t even dream anyone might be waiting for him to wake up, Rivlin thought sorrowfully, and proceeded to cancel all his morning appointments. He was hoping for a relaxed conversation with his son, not only to put the tensions between them to rest, but also, with the help of his night at the hotel, to uncover some new lead. Meanwhile, sans glasses, computer, notes, or reference books, he sat in his study ruminating in a giant scrawl about the Algerian language problem.

  . . . And so we have a situation in which different sectors of social activity, having no common language, remain totally distinct. Classical Arabic is the language of religion. French is used for economic, administrative, and scientific purposes. North African Arabic and Berber are spoken in the street and in the family. This is the great curse of Algerian identity. It’s not that such an identity does not exist, but that it is linguistically fragmented beyond any possibility of a synthesis. Thus French-speaking Algerians will say, “Ah, I completely fail to understand those Arab fundamentalists,” while Arabic-speaking Algerians think the French-speakers are neocolonialists in the service of France. No Arabic-speaker believes anyone can love Algeria in French, no Berber-speaker believes anyone can love it in Arabic, and no French-speaker believes any intellectual life at all is possible in Arabic. Each side sees the others as an alien, hostile force. Such an Algeria is an Algeria at war.

  The current civil war in Algeria is more a war of languages fighting for cultural space than it is a war between religious and secular society. The fundamentalist Arab must oppose the written civilization of the West with the Koran because that is the only sacred text he knows. The real choice facing Algeria, therefore, is: French or the Koran.

  The writing flowed easily, carrying him along almost blindly, so that he forgot to keep his letters large and was soon unable to read what he had written. Although this had the advantage of making corrections or revisions impossible, such writing could not prevent him from thinking of his sleeping son. He rose from his desk, descended a few steps of the duplex, and stood midway between its floors, listening for a sign of life. But it was not until noon that the sound of water in the bathroom told him that the visitor from Paris was up.

  They sat facing each other in the kitchen over a breakfast that turned gradually into lunch. Rivlin felt his way cautiously, seeking to cross no forbidden lines. Both he and Ofer avoided mentioning their harsh phone conversation, and Rivlin, afraid Hagit might have carelessly told Ofer about his second visit to the hotel, said nothing about the first—that springtime condolence call that now, at the end of a tedious summer, seemed so distant. And while he would have liked dearly to tell the spurned husband how much the new proprietress missed him and how she had lauded his architectural judgment, he knew very well that an allusion to his third, underground visit would never be forgiven.

  And so, tur
ning to the future, he tried finding out from his son when he planned to return to Israel. The night security guard of the Jewish Agency, however, was too much in thrall to the past to have any patience for the future. Dressed in old gym shorts and a T-shirt, his face unshaven and his eyes swimming from unsatisfying slumber, he replied that he had no plans. To listen to him, Rivlin remarked, one might think he was an adolescent still needing to experience life, rather than a grown man of over thirty. Not at all, Ofer replied. There were many new developments in the field of kitchen and restaurant design, both practical and theoretical, with which he ought to acquaint himself before leaving Paris. Meanwhile, gastronome that he now was, he criticized the housekeeper’s pot roast, which he had eaten with relish in his benighted pre-Paris days.

  “Why not make us a meal to demonstrate what you’ve learned over there?” Rivlin suggested.

  Ofer was not keen on the idea. He and Tsakhi were returning from Sinai on Saturday, and on Monday he was flying back to Paris. That left barely a day.

  “A day,” his father said, “should be enough.”

  “We’ll see,” was the only commitment received.

  Ofer went to phone his brother and came back with the news that Tsakhi’s request for leave had been approved and that a soldier under his command, who lived across the bay in Acre, had enough diving equipment for the two of them. He would have to drive there now to pick it up.

  Rivlin, thinking sadly that his son should be looking at baby carriages rather than at diving equipment, gave him the keys to the old jalopy. Soon Hagit came home from court. Setting the table for a second lunch, he allowed her to tell him about the two-to-one verdict, dismiss his criticisms of Ofer, and go to the bedroom to nap while he returned to his study in the hope of recapturing the morning’s inspiration. But the writing that had gone so easily then had dried up and now felt pointless.

  The front door opened and shut with a bang. It was Tsakhi. Rivlin went down to set the table for a third time. Although the young officer had already eaten at his base, he agreed to eat again for his father’s sake. And in the end, still in his uniform with its officer’s bars, he did so heartily.

  “Listen, Tsakhi,” Rivlin said. “You and Ofer will be spending a few days in another world. We’re happy that he wants to spend most of his vacation with you. Ever since he went to France and you’ve been in the army, you haven’t had a chance to be together. Now you’ll have a few unpressured days on the beach. It will be an opportunity to find out what happened to him. What’s bothering him. Why he can’t find another woman.”

  His son’s large eyes regarded him attentively.

  “Are you listening?”

  “Of course.”

  “All right. So you’ll try tactfully to find out what happened. How and why his marriage fell apart. Maybe there was some mistake . . .”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  “Even a fantasy.”

  “A fantasy?” The young officer seemed alarmed.

  “I said maybe. What do we know about it? Nothing. But in the peace and quiet of a beach in Sinai, you can find out more. Okay?”

  Tsakhi gave no sign whether it was okay or not. He just went on listening with the same concentration, although by now looking distinctly uneasy.

  “You’ll have lots of time to find out—just do it unobtrusively—why he’s so secretive. You should know that he loves you and trusts you without limit. You can let us know afterward, in a general way, what he told you, so that we can think of how to help him. You know I’m worried sick about him. Do you follow me?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you promise to try?”

  The young officer put down his knife and fork and said nothing. His fretful glance made Rivlin think of the rabbit he had seen hop out of the bushes on his walk near his son’s base.

  “Are you listening?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you’ll do it for me? You promise?”

  And still the young officer said nothing. Not wanting to hurt or embarrass his father, he kept his large eyes on him, their pain and anxiety growing. Only now did it dawn on Rivlin what his silence meant.

  32.

  ON HIS WAY to the university the next day, he stopped by the optician’s to demand the speedy delivery of his new glasses. Five days had gone by since his old pair was broken. “You mean demolished,” the optician smirked, promising that during his lunch break he would fetch them himself from the lab in Haifa Bay.

  It was the summer-vacation doldrums, and the campus was quiet. Ephraim Akri was in Florida, at a conference sponsored by the University of Miami to mark the twentieth anniversary of Edward Said’s Orientalism. One of the conference’s organizers, having read some of Akri’s articles in various semischolarly magazines, had been impressed by their metahistorical sweep and intellectual boldness. Hearing that the man was a Middle Easterner not only by birth but by looks and had a remarkable command of Arabic despite being Jewish, he had immediately invited him as a counterweight to the Palestinian professor’s disciples, who were terrorizing the academic community.

  Consequently, although the fall semester was still far away, Rivlin had been asked to be the temporary department head, if only to prevent the university’s dean and rector from taking advantage of Akri’s absence to pirate a disputed half-time teaching slot. Reluctant to use Akri’s room, Rivlin functioned from the main office, where he’d had to ask the two secretaries to read the mail to him. He was in the middle of tearing up and throwing out some routine circulars and giving instructions to the pair, who seemed glad to have him back, when in walked Dr. Miller and asked to have a private talk. He had just received, he told Rivlin, a tempting offer from Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba and had come to inquire about his long-deferred promotion. Did he have a future in Haifa, or should he accept the invitation from down south?

  Rivlin refrained from revealing that he was chairman of the secret committee considering Miller’s case. Promising rather vaguely that the promotion was on its way, he pointed to the window and said, with a smile:

  “If I were you I’d be patient before moving to the desert—if not for the university’s sake, then at least for this view’s.”

  The promising young scholar, however, was not appeased by the bluish hills of the Galilee. Not even the gleaming expanse of the Mediterranean could make up for the delay in his promotion. And since his keen analytical mind told him that the guileful professor was on the secret committee, he had come to present him with an ultimatum. Rivlin nodded, remembering Miller’s bleached-out wife, who had been pregnant at Samaher’s wedding. When, he inquired discreetly, was she giving birth?

  “Giving birth?” The young scholar glanced askance at him.

  Rivlin felt his cheeks burn.

  “Excuse me. It’s just that . . . at Samaher’s wedding . . . I thought that . . . or at least I guessed . . .”

  He had guessed correctly, Miller told him. Unfortunately, the pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” the Orientalist said, without feeling sorry in the least. He promised to speak to the dean without waiting for Akri to come back from Miami and asked in return, with a twinge of anxiety, whether his analytically minded colleague would care to look at a recently written first draft of an article on Algeria. Not that Algeria was Miller’s field, but there were some theoretical points that might interest him.

  His head felt heavy. Late last night he and his wife had driven their two sons to the bus for Eilat, after which he had been unable to fall asleep. Not wishing to usurp the department head’s armchair, he took the cup of coffee given him by the secretaries and went to his room at the end of the corridor. There he shut the door and dialed Fu’ad.

  “Wallah, Professor!” boomed the deep voice of the maître d’ from Jerusalem. “I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. But if you’d like, I can write a new . . . what’s the word?”

  “Elegy.”

  “Elegy? Sorry. The same as a
t a funeral. That must be why I can’t remember it.”

  Over the phone came the sound of a woman’s laughter.

  “Who was that?” Rivlin asked. “Let me talk to her.”

  “So,” the voice chortled, “you ran away in the middle of the night! What happened to you? Don’t tell me you were afraid of the tax authorities.”

  He joined her laughter. “For a second I thought there was an earthquake.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s imagined that. But believe me, all that ever quakes down there is one’s heart.”

  “How is your cold?”

  “Thank you for remembering it. It has no time to get better. Every little problem at this hotel ends up in my lap.”

  “That’s your own fault.”

  “Naturally.”

  “You know,” he surprised himself by saying, “Ofer is here from Paris for a week.”

  “Then tell him to come. Galya left two cartons of his things in the basement.”

  “Cartons?”

  “Yes. She came back from abroad bursting with energy and started housecleaning. Either he takes them or I throw them out. I’m not turning this hotel into a warehouse.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Why don’t you come, too? That will be twice as nice.”

  “I’ll see,” he said, his heart skipping a beat. “Let me have Fu’ad for a minute.”

  “Aiwa, ya habibi.”*

  “Ala kul hal, dawwar ala l’marthiyi l’adimi.”†

  “Min shanak hatta taht al-ard.”‡

  He hung up and sat thinking of the unreal night in Jerusalem. His coffee had no taste, and he went to the cafeteria to look for a stronger brew. Although it was vacation time, the cafeteria was packed with older people who were taking summer extension courses.