The Liberated Bride

by A. B. Yehoshua

  He stubbed out his cigarette, cleared the dishes from the table, and suggested dessert. He would bring them ice cream and coffee.

  “We’ll have neither,” Rivlin declared, getting to his feet. “We just came to see if you were still alive. It’s time we got back to the memorial.”

  “But what do you mean, Professor?” Fu’ad said, taken by surprise. “Aren’t you going to say hello to the management?”

  Rivlin felt a ripple of unease.

  “We can’t today. Another time.”

  “But how another time? I’ve told Tehila you’re here. And she said I should keep you here until she’s free, because she’s busy with all the guests whose tours were canceled. Bihyat Allah, ya Brofesor, hatta la y’hib amalha minnak.”‡

  Something gnawed at him.

  “Tell her another time. I’ll be back.”

  Yet even as he said it, he knew he would never be back. The chapter of the hotel had ended.

  “I can’t do that,” Fu’ad said.

  “Of course you can,” Rivlin told him. “We came for you this time, didn’t we, Rashid? And for you only.”

  “I’m honored, Professor.” Fu’ad put down the dirty dishes on the table and pressed his hands to a grateful heart. “I appreciate it. But that isn’t something I can tell Tehila.”

  “And Galya?” The image of the lost bride flashed before him as though in an old dream. “Why isn’t she here?”

  “In a snowstorm in the ninth month of pregnancy? She’s enormous. You could visit her, but I wouldn’t recommend it. She rests in the afternoon. This is her first child, and she’s nervous. You’ll see her at the circumcision.”

  “All right,” Rivlin said impatiently. “Rashid and I have to go.”

  But Rashid didn’t move. The always polite and reserved maître d’ was physically blocking his path. As though pleading for dear life, Fu’ad said:

  “I can’t let you go, Professor, without your at least saying hello to someone in the family. Go see Mrs. Hendel. I’m sure she’s up by now. You haven’t spoken to her since the week of the bereavement.”

  “Next time,” Rivlin replied, laying a friendly hand on Fu’ad’s shoulder. But the maître d’ stubbornly stood his ground. “I mean it,” Rivlin said more softly. “How is Mrs. Hendel doing?”

  “Still falling apart,” was the cruelly candid answer. “There’s nothing left for her here. Her son is in America with his family, and if we didn’t find someone to play cards with her now and then, she’d have only her own depression to keep her company. Maybe the new grandson will cheer her up. But that will be no substitute for a man who treated her like a princess. And she’s not going to find another one in this hotel, because there’s no one here but Christians looking for God.”

  Rashid grinned.

  “Come,” Fu’ad said, grabbing the Orientalist by the hand. “Do me a favor and say hello to Mrs. Hendel. She’ll be grateful that you haven’t forgotten her like so many of her old friends. I’ll send up coffee and cookies. Tehila will come if she has time.”

  “All right.” Rivlin blinked anxiously. “But only for a minute. And leave Tehila out of this. Another time . . .”

  And again he knew there would never be another time.

  From the stuffy, overheated room on the third floor, the snowy garden looked like a fairy tale. Gently he gathered the widow, delicate from falling apart, in his arms. Her new, unresisting gauntness made her large eyes that demanded his sympathy shine more brightly than ever. Although it was afternoon, her bed was unmade. Her hardly touched breakfast was still on the table. A black silk nightgown sticking out from beneath the quilt made the Orientalist feel a slight sexual qualm. His amiable smile gone from his face, Fu’ad quickly restored order, carrying the dirty dishes to the hallway, deftly making the bed, and folding the nightgown and putting it in a drawer.

  “It’s the professor, Mrs. Hendel,” he said as he exited. “He’s come to say hello and have coffee with you.”

  She offered him a small chair by her side. “I suppose I should be insulted that you forgot all about me while coming to visit my daughters,” she said.

  “All in all,” he answered, turning his chair to face the garden, “I’ve been here twice since the bereavement. The second time, you weren’t here.”

  “I wasn’t?” She seemed astonished to hear it.

  “You were in Europe with Galya.”

  “Oh, yes,” she remembered. “That was when you tried to sleep here.”

  He smiled. “You see?” he said. “You know everything.”

  “Everything?” She bowed her pretty head sadly. “Far from it. I only know what I’m told.”

  “Well,” the Orientalist said, “I had no place to sleep in Jerusalem, and I remembered Yehuda telling me that I could always have an available room. It was foolish of me.”

  “Not at all!” Moved by his mention of her husband, she regarded him with bright, solicitous eyes. “He meant it. And while he lived, he was as good as his word. The promises he made, he kept. He didn’t want this hotel turning into the railway station it’s become. Of course, he wanted to succeed and make money. But he also wanted this place to be about more than just work. That’s why he always left an extra room for family or friends. Now that Tili is in charge, all that has changed. You’ve seen how full the place is. She overbooks so much that she has to put up guests in her own wing.”

  “Yes.” Rivlin grinned. “I got the basement.”

  “I heard about it. And about how you ran away in the middle of the night. It made me mad. I said to her, ‘Tell me, Madame Manager, have you no sense of shame? If you can’t treat an important guest well, it’s better to turn him away.’ But nothing fazes her. She’s as tough as nails. And her father’s death only made her tougher. He would never have dreamed of risking the hotel’s reputation. Tehila couldn’t care less. I sometimes wonder how I ever gave birth to someone so brash. She’ll ride roughshod over anyone.”

  “Yes.” Rivlin nodded. “My wife is sometimes like that, too.”

  “Your wife?” The revelation startled her. “Perhaps. . . .” She thought it over. “I suppose I did feel that kind of backbone in her, even though you never gave us the chance to get to know her. But she’s more gracious about it, a true lady. She’s cultured and has boundaries. Tili is a wild woman. You wouldn’t believe how afraid I’ve always been of her, even when she was a child . . .”

  “I assure you, I would.” Rivlin laughed candidly. “I’m afraid of my wife sometimes, too. Not that it stops me from loving her.”

  Mrs. Hendel’s face darkened with sorrow. The thought of her former in-laws’ love for each other, so palpable the first time she met them, made her feel the loss of her husband even more keenly. Only lovers, she told Rivlin, know love when they see it. “That was something I used to say to my husband. ‘I trust Galya’s choice of Ofer,’ I told him, ‘because his parents are like us. They’re loving and close. Ofer and Galya won’t have to improvise, because they have models.’ Only . . .”

  “Only what?”

  “Only then . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t!” he said heatedly. “And none of you will tell me. And that’s why I can’t help Ofer to get unstuck . . .”

  “But I don’t know anything, either. I asked Galya a thousand times and never got an answer. Even on our trip to Europe, when we shared a double bed at night. I said to her, ‘Gali, maybe you were embarrassed to tell your father, but now that he’s gone, learn from your sister, who’s embarrassed by nothing. Tell me what happened . . .’”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. She clammed up. But what does it matter? They’re not the first couple to have fallen out of love. At least it happened before it was too late. She knew how much I liked Ofer. But it wasn’t me who had to live with his fantasies.”

  “Fantasies?” There was that word again.

  “That’s what she called them.”

  �
�But fantasies of what?”

  “She wouldn’t say.”

  “You never asked?”

  “No.”

  “But it isn’t possible!” He flung the words at her angrily. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t believe me?” The delicate woman was hurt.

  “Don’t take him seriously, Mother.” Tehila had entered quietly through the door left open by Fu’ad. “He keeps thinking we’re hiding something from him. But at least that gives us a chance to see him.”

  He sat up in his chair, the afternoon sun in his eyes. The proprietress, in whose cropped hair he noticed the first streaks of gray, was not content with a handshake. Tall and stooped, a chambermaid’s apron tied by its strings around her waist, she bent to plant a ministering kiss on his forehead, as if he were a small boy with a fever.

  “Your coffee, Professor,” she said, with a hint of mockery, “is waiting downstairs.”

  “But Fu’ad said he would have it sent up,” Mrs. Hendel complained.

  “So he did. But I told him not to, because I didn’t want you to miss your lunch. We’re closing the kitchen soon.”

  “You can send my lunch up too.”

  “No, Mother. I have no one to wait on you today.”

  “Then I’ll skip lunch.”

  “No, you won’t. You think you will, but at three o’clock you’ll decide you’re hungry, and I’ll have to wake up the chef and make him light the oven. You need to show some consideration, because it’s been a crazy day even without the snow. And don’t worry about our guest. He’ll be back—won’t you, Professor? Just because we tell you we know nothing is no reason to believe us, is it?”

  11.

  TEHILA DESCENDED THE BROAD, old-fashioned staircase ahead of him to the ground floor. Her long stride made her look like an ungainly bird that had forgotten how to fly. If Ofer knew to what depths I’ve descended to look for the fantasy he’s marooned by, Rivlin thought, he’d wipe me from his mind instead of just cold-shouldering me. In the large lobby he halted, stuck out a hand, and said:

  “Thank you. I’m afraid I’m running late. I’ll have my coffee on Mount Scopus.”

  “But why?” She gave him a whiskey-colored glance. “The coffee is ready. What can you be late for? You have plenty of time until your talk.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw an ad for the conference in the newspaper. The afternoon session starts at four, and your eulogy comes at the end of it. You’re in no hurry. And where are you going on a day like this? Don’t let the sunny skies fool you. The temperature is dropping.”

  “I see you’ve decided to manage me too.”

  “Let’s say I’m giving you a bit of friendly advice. Not that you couldn’t use some managing—especially when you’re away from your wife, with no one to keep an eye on you.”

  He recoiled. “My wife,” he said softly, “keeps an eye on me everywhere—from within me . . .”

  There was an awkward silence. Her birdlike face, sharp, hard, and offended, lost its teasing look. He felt suddenly sorry for this ugly Circe of the hotel, her bright apron perched absurdly on her hips like a chambermaid’s in an Alpine inn.

  “All right,” he relented. “Let’s have some coffee. I wouldn’t want to hurt Fu’ad.”

  The little table in the smoking lounge was set with elegant cups and saucers and a plate of cookies. Rivlin looked for Rashid. “I gave him a bed to rest in,” Fu’ad said, pouring their coffee. “He’s feeling low because of all those forms for his sister’s children. Why does an Arab have to be sick to be allowed back into his own country?”

  “What’s wrong with having to live in a village near Jenin?” Tehila asked, warming her ivory hands on her coffee cup. “Isn’t that Palestine too?”

  “But Ra’uda grew up in the Galilee.”

  “So what? Why must every one of you live where he or she was born? What babies you are, missing Daddy and Mommy’s home when you’re parents and grandparents yourselves! I swear, you deserve a spanking, not a state.”

  Fu’ad glanced at Tehila and then down at the floor, unsure what to make of her barb. His arm in the sleeve of its black maître d’s jacket trembled as it lifted the cover of the canister to see how much coffee was left. “Afay’o, ya Brofesor?”* he glumly asked of Rashid.

  “Give him a few more minutes,” Rivlin replied. “He needs to rest. Sar majnun u’murtabir min kul el-ashyaa illi hawil yi’milha.”†

  “Mitl el-masrahiyya,”‡ Fu’ad said. “Hada el-dibbuk illi mat.”§

  “A jinni,” Rivlin said. He looked wearily at the proprietress, who was nursing her coffee in slow sips. Sallow and sickly-looking, she sat plotting her next move while trying to follow the Arabic conversation—until, with a gesture of impatience, she signaled the maître d’ to be gone.

  “As long as your driver is resting, you may as well, too,” she said to Rivlin when they were alone. “Is your eulogy ready?”

  “More or less.”

  “Will you read it?”

  “I’ll speak from notes.”

  “Good,” she said approvingly. “That way you can cut it short if you’re losing your audience.”

  He regarded her sardonically. “Don’t worry. That’s never happened to me.”

  “I should hope not. But tell me, what made this Tedeschi such a big shot that he’s getting a whole day in his honor?”

  “You don’t have to be such a big shot to get a day for dying. But he was an important scholar. And a dedicated and much-loved teacher.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said, with a sly gleam. “Yours is a generation that still loves its teachers. Nowadays, I’m told, university faculties are full of dumb women.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” He felt a chill of fatigue. “You’ve never even been to a university.”

  “What if I haven’t?” She took another calm sip of coffee. “It’s not because I couldn’t have, as you seem to think. It’s because I went to work for my father, helping him to put the hotel on its feet. Believe me, I’ve learned more from life here than I could have at a university. But you’re cold!”

  “Something is wrong with the heating.”

  “Nothing is wrong with it. Fu’ad likes to save electricity, especially when he’s mad at me. As soon as the dining room empties out, he turns the heat off. This part of the building cools quickly. Down in the basement, where you were the last time, you wouldn’t know the difference, not even when it was freezing out. There’s natural heat down there.”

  “Natural heat?” He scoffed at the idea. “It must come from those old tax files.”

  “Perhaps,” she said with a hearty laugh, throwing back her head as though remembering something. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.”

  “So you want to stick me in that hole again?” He met her small, eagle eyes, their gaze fearful with anticipation.

  “You can rest there undisturbed, polishing your eulogy beneath a warm blanket in perfect equilibrium.”

  He smiled uncertainly and glanced at the thick curtain on the window. A ray of blue light slipped through the space between the hooks and the curtain rod. Why was it, he wondered, that during the year of his marriage Ofer had hardly ever mentioned Tehila? He had only enthused about Galya’s father and the hotel. Had he paid no attention to his wife’s shrewd sister, or was she, too, part of his “fantasy”?

  “Yallah, ila l-amam.”* He rose and touched her bony shoulder. “Ta’ali nitdafa shwoy bil-kabu.”†

  For the third time, he found himself walking through the hotel kitchen. In the between-meals silence, the carving knives and cleavers gleamed above the big, clean vats and the empty tables and cutting boards. They passed the large freezer and came to the little door whose concrete steps led to the underground corridor with its broken bicycle, torn tire, and bucket of hardened whitewash. A new broom was the one addition to this display. In the space at the corridor’s end the baby crib stood beside the old boiler, whose chimney was rammed into the ceiling like the
tooth of an ancient, petrified mammoth that still gave off its secret heat.

  Rivlin watched the tall woman search in vain for the key to the accountant’s room beneath the oilcloth mattress of the crib. The door to the dark room was open. Sound asleep on its bed was the protean driver-messenger-brother-cousin-uncle–displaced citizen–and-dybbuk for a day. Undressed, he lay dead to the world with his face to the wall, the splendid rear of his dark, smooth, naked body pointed at the door.

  The proprietress was startled by the liberty taken by the maître d’. Yet touched by the sight of the naked Arab, who had instinctively availed himself of the freedom offered by this subterranean grotto, she asked Rivlin for his name, knelt by his side, and gently poked him as if he were a soldier being awakened for guard duty. “All right, Rashid,” she said. “You’ve slept enough. Give someone else a chance.”

  His name spoken by an unfamiliar woman, followed by her gentle touch, caused the sleeper to bolt to an upright position and wrap himself in his sheet, the hot coals of hastily extinguished sleep still glowing in his eyes. As if he were in the midst of a dream whose interpretation they were, he groped with a beseeching hand toward the two Jews. Before he could utter an apology, if not for his sleep itself, for which he had permission, then at least for his nakedness, he was fully clothed and holding a folded sheet beneath his arm, with which he departed, to return it to Fu’ad.

  “Wait. Don’t turn on the light,” Rivlin told the proprietress, who had shown no sign of doing any such thing. In the gloom pierced by a few murky rays coming from the direction of the staircase, he moved the accountant’s chair to the desk and sat down with his arms on his chest. He did not look at his Circe—who, instead of remaking the evacuated bed for him, sank onto it like a white ghost. It’s hopeless, he told himself, and there’s no time for it anyway, but if I don’t ask her now I never will. And although she had still made no move to do so, he said again, “Don’t turn on the light. Maybe it will be easier in the dark to tell me what you know about your sister. You can see how I’m suffering. Be kind just once.”