The Liberated Bride (42 page)

He glanced at his watch. Either the dim light or the lack of his glasses kept him from making out the hands.

“What time do you have?”

“Eight-thirty.”

“My wife broke my glasses yesterday. I haven't been able to read or write for a whole day. Just talk.”

“Isn't that enjoyable?”

“It depends whom I'm talking with.”

“Even with me.”

“With you it's painful.”

“You brought the pain with you. Don't blame me for it.”

“Perhaps,” he admitted softly. “But you've made it worse.”

She regarded him sympathetically, then asked, with a flush:

“But how did she break them? She doesn't strike me as the type who goes around breaking things.”

“Not unless she wants to.”

Now it was his turn to blush. He snorted to play down the remark. But the proprietress nodded, grateful for the shared intimacy. Her long, shapely fingers searched for bits of uneaten crab. She did not use the brass implement, but cracked them with her teeth, sucking the hidden meat. Her whiskey-colored eyes clouded.

“You'll still need a place to sleep tonight. Don't think that will be easy at this time of year.”

“I have a place. My old professor at the university has a room for me. It's just that I have to share it with a colleague who came from Haifa for a lecture. I'm not dying to lie next to him and wake up in his dreams.”

From the dining room came the strains of a pilgrim hymn, blessing the Lord for the meal. Rivlin tried making out the words.

“I can save you the trouble.” Tehila smiled. “I know all their hymns by heart. It's the twenty-third Psalm, ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want.' Very appropriate for wealthy American Christians.”

Fu'ad entered the lounge cautiously. He emptied the last of the wine bottle into the two glasses and cleared the table with a suppressed grin, adding the decimated crab shell from Tehila's plate to the nearly intact half on Rivlin's.

“
Haruf, ya Brofesor, kan ahsan lak. . . .
”
^*

“
F'il mara 'l-jay. Lazim adir bali aktar. . . .”
^†

“What did you two say?”

“It's time, Tehila, that you learned some Arabic,” the maître d' said.

She waved a dismissive hand, took out a cigarette, and waited for him to light it.

“What for? Russian is more practical.”

“Russian?”

“In a few years, when Russia is back on its feet, we'll get pilgrims from there too. Why not? I once read that in the days of the czar, Russian pilgrims were so devoted that they crawled all the way to Jerusalem.”

Fu'ad laughed. “They could never have afforded your prices.”

Her eyes glittered.

“You know very well, Fu'ad, that I could make even a crawling pilgrim pay up.”

Fu'ad nodded and reported a problem with some rooms on the second floor. Should he tell the front desk that the proprietress was in the lounge?

“No,” Tehila said. “I'm sick tonight. I only got out of bed so as not to hurt the professor's feelings.”

“But they're hurt anyway. We haven't found him a place to sleep.”

“He knows there's nothing we can do about it.”

With a snakelike movement, almost losing the dishes on his arm, the maître d' bent to whisper to the proprietress.

“Down there?” She grinned at the thought. “You can't be serious.”

“About what?” Rivlin asked.

“Never mind. It was just a thought.”

“I've already told you there are no ‘justs.' That's what my wife says. Every ‘just' has something behind it.”

“Fu'ad suggested putting you up in an impossible place.”

“What's impossible about it?”

“It's not a real room, just an office. There's a bed there, which our accountant used to sleep on, but I wouldn't feel right about putting you in it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's down in the basement. It's clean and well aired, but it's still a basement.”

“So it's a basement.” Rivlin jumped at the idea. “That's fine. I prefer it to taking a taxi to my old professor's and sitting up half the
night listening to him run down other scholars. What's wrong with a basement?”

“Nothing . . . it's just that . . .”

The visitor burst into laughter.

“You know, my mother used to call your hotel ‘The Little Paradise.' If your basement gets its air from Paradise, that's good enough for me.”

T
EHILA, DESPITE HER
real or imaginary illness, took him down to the basement herself. A small door at the rear of the kitchen, which was now hectically filling up with cleared dishes, led to a concrete staircase that descended to a narrow corridor. A bucket of congealed plaster, a dusty girl's bicycle, and an ancient tire leaned against the wall. Tehila, who clearly knew her way, found the light switch in the dark at once. A yellowish glare fell on a row of padlocked closets. He was looking, she told him, at the hotel's archives. The “accountant's room,” in which he would sleep if he had not changed his mind, was farther down the corridor.

But why change his mind about a brief absconding that was less in retaliation for injury than in opposition to love's tyranny—his love for his wife and the love to which his son was chained? Here, at least, he thought, following Tehila's swift, sure steps, is a woman who needs no protector.

She passed a large iron door, checked that its handle was locked, and continued down the corridor until they came to a space in which pipes running down from the kitchen gurgled with water. An old black boiler in the middle of it brought to mind a petrified primeval beast. Strewn around it, like the bones of its prey, were a twisted baby carriage, a green tricycle, and a crib with some little toy animals on its dusty, oilcloth-covered mattress.

Overcome with sudden grief for the grandchild that had never been born, Rivlin felt as though he were mourning his own death.

“When is your sister giving birth?”

The question took Tehila by surprise.

“In early winter, I think.”

“Do they know the sex of the child?”

She wrinkled her brow, her little eyes naughty.

“That's a good question. I think it's either a boy or a girl. The truth is that I don't remember what Galya told me. But why should you care?”

The old despair clutched at his heart again. His vision blurred without his glasses, he watched the bony woman, whose sallow skin looked almost sickly, choose the right key for a windowless room jammed between the foundations of the building. In it was a large desk, two metal bookcases filled with file holders, and a narrow, unmade bed. Tehila halted in the doorway. She wasn't sure, she said, that the room, in which she hadn't set foot since her father's death, was suitable even for a night. It hadn't been used since their accountant, a cousin from Tel Aviv who had come every month to do their books, died seven years ago.

“Where does this place get its air from?”

She pointed to the ceiling. His naked eye made out two small, dark vents covered with rusty netting.

“You're sure it's real air?”

She laughed.

“Do you think we would have asphyxiated a wonderful accountant who saved us so much money? Relax. It is a bit strange down here, but it's clean and it's safe and I always liked it, even as a child. In summertime I came down here to get away from the heat and the sun; it was always cool at night here. And in winter it was so warm that I could take off my clothes and be totally cut off from the world, with no one to bother me or even to think of me. I tell you, if it weren't for all the germs in my bed, I'd send you upstairs to sleep in that and happily spend the night here myself.”

She bent down and pulled a wooden linen chest from under the bed. Carefully choosing some white sheets, she sniffed their scent of laundry soap; then, whipping them in the dark air like the wings of two snow-white swans, she let them fall on the bed with a sharp crack, one after another, and made the bed as deftly as an experienced chambermaid. No, Rivlin thought again. This is not a woman who needs protection. This is a woman who gives it.

“Look here,” she said. “This place may not be up to your usual standards, and my father would be upset to know I'd put you here, but you'll enjoy the bed. You're getting two honest-to-God starched and ironed cotton sheets such as we don't use anymore, because it costs too much money. Nothing feels better than a smooth, cool cotton sheet. Come and see for yourself.”

Rivlin could not move. His absconding was getting out of hand. Despite her illness, he feared, the Circe of this cave was up to no good.

“It's strange how two sisters can be so different,” he said in a subdued voice. “My wife and her sister are like that, too.”

She threw him a suspicious look.

“I remember your wife very well. She has a style of her own. Your sister-in-law I saw only once, at the wedding. But you're right. Galya and I are complete opposites. My father quite thoughtlessly gave me not only his height, which is more than any woman needs, but his eyes and a metabolism that doesn't leave an ounce of fat on me. Galya's eyes are my mother's, and so is her tendency to put on weight. Do you want the blue blanket or the green one?”

“It makes no difference.”

“Come over here and make up your mind.”

His face felt on fire. He didn't move.

There was a knock so soft that the door opened before anyone could hear it or say “Come in.” The maître d', minus his bow tie, stood in the doorway holding a big pillow in a flowery pillowcase. He did not look at the proprietress, who seem displeased by his sudden appearance.

“
T'zakart, ya Brofesor, inno el-m'hadeh hon sarlha yabseh,
^*
so I brought another.”

Rivlin let out a relieved laugh and laid a hand on the Arab's shoulder.

“Thanks. It was kind of you to think of me.”

“
Leysh la, iza ana kunt ili akna'tak t'nam hon e-leileh? Min hazna likbir inno hawajja Hendel ma irfish inno na'umnak hon, li'inno kan y'kul daiman inno mamnu' nist'hir hatta iza fi deif binam bi'balash.
”
^*

Tehila burst into their exchange. “What's that about Mr. Hendel? What did you say, Fu'ad? Why are you sticking Arabic into every sentence tonight?”

The Arab took the rebuke in stride.

“Why shouldn't I? When you were little I taught you many Arabic words, and you were very sweet when you used them. Why not learn them again and be sweet once more?”

“Give me a break, Fu'ad,” Tehila said impatiently. “Just tell me what you were saying about my father.”

“I said it's a lucky thing that the late departed doesn't know where we're putting our honored guest.”

“But whose idea was it?”

“And who agreed to it?”

“Just give me a break. What's with all this Arabic? You forget I'm walking around with a fever.”

“How can I have forgotten your fever when I've come to escort you to bed because of it? Just do me a favor and stop off at the reception desk on your way. There's a problem with some rooms on the second floor. Your evangelicals have run out of religion and sung their last hymn, and now they're quarreling over the rooms like little children. It takes your brains to solve this one. And you needn't worry about our extra pilgrim, because we've already put him in your wing and locked him up so that he won't bother you. He's a very old man, but a lively one and a great believer in the Resurrection.”

Rivlin could feel the tall woman's agitation. Angrily she yanked the pillow from Fu'ad and stood hugging it instead of placing it on the bed. Her yellow, predatory bird's eyes strayed back and forth between the two gray-haired men, as if trying to decide whose good graces she sought. Equally aroused and alarmed by her unwillingness to leave
him, Rivlin turned for help to the maître d', who stood there, resplendent, in his black suit. A thin smile tickled his silver mustache. With the fatherly air of a family servant taking his old master's orphaned daughter in hand, he gripped her arm, put his hand on her waist, and said, “I think, Tehila, that if you're running a fever, you should let our guest go to sleep. There's no need to leave him the key, because the door has a bolt.”

He slipped the key ring from the door, opened the side pocket of his employer's dress, and slipped the keys into it as if he were in charge of a little girl. Appeased, she brushed Rivlin's cheek with her warm lips, the naughty gleam back in her little amber eyes.

“If you haven't caught anything from me yet, you won't now, and if you have, it doesn't matter,” she said. “You can pass it on to your clever wife. What should I tell Galya? That you were here looking for her again? Or nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all,” was his unhesitating answer.

A
BSCONDING TO THE
hotel's basement was his deepest and most dangerous absence yet. Though committed in his native city and among Jews, it was entirely self-willed, an absence within an absence, for he had already absconded to Jerusalem itself, to ease the fear of his love.

He slid the bolt into place. Leaving on the light, he took off his shirt and shoes and lay down on the cool cotton sheets spread in his honor. Unable to read the yellowed newspaper that lay on the table, he stared patiently at the overhead vents as if hoping to ascertain whether the air he was breathing was real or imaginary. The deep silence around him was broken only by the gurgle of the hotel's water system.

Despite his concern that his abandoned and anxious wife might swallow her pride and find a pretext to phone his old mentor, with whom he was supposed to be staying, he had refused to send her a reassuring signal. And in any case, an expert on the criminal mind like her could easily have guessed that his erratic behavior since Hendel's death was likely to lead him for a third obsessive time to where stubborn love had chained their son.

He pulled off his pants and slipped on the pajamas he had brought, leaving them unbuttoned. All I need is a few hours of sleep to get my strength back, he thought, and I'll be off. Convinced he could fall asleep with the light on, he lay with his back to the door and his face to the wall, on which hung two old still lifes of sunflowers and a faded photograph of a young man—no, a woman—standing in shorts by the gazebo. Even his unaided eyes could see that the pointy features, cropped head, long, bony legs, and slight stoop belonged to a much younger Tehila. Beside her stood an elderly man in a dark suit and tie. The avuncular arm he had put around her conveyed that he was a friend or relation—perhaps even the accountant, who had hung the photo to look at himself while he tinkered with the books.

After a while, unable to fall asleep with the lamp on, Rivlin switched it off. He was now, together with the desk and the files on the walls, in near total darkness. Only a vague radiance shone through the vents, from which came a light, monotonous buzz. Though at first he found this bothersome, it soon made him shut his eyes and ground down his wakefulness.

His sleep was a private affair. And yet a foreign presence weighed on it. Whirled in its depths, he fought to separate the distress of the young widow appealing for protection from the fevered appeal of the bold Circe, who could not have been easily categorized even by his wife, the judge.

The first prime minister's famous four hours of sleep were granted him, too. At three in the morning he awoke. Opening his eyes, he struggled to reconstruct the spatial dimensions of the room, which had vanished somewhere inside him. A tremor, like that of a slight earthquake, appeared to bend the walls toward him, making it hard to breathe. But it wasn't lack of air he suffered from. It was surplus of desire. Being slapped by a wife who broke his glasses had made him, so it seemed, fair game for every young woman.

Rolling out of bed, he turned on the light and groped his blurry way to the photograph of the tall young lady—who, after her father's death, had built up his thriving business still more by means of small
but well-calculated come-ons. Indeed, she might very well have come on to him too, had not Fu'ad appeared in the nick of time with the pillow. Yet what, apart from a low-grade fever, could he have got from it? If she, too, was unable to help him discover the secret by which he was driven, he could only be bound by her even more to this place, which was rapidly becoming dangerous.

Yes, he had gone too far this time. If Hagit were to need him, his absence-within-an-absence would badly rupture the trust he had always put before everything. And so although it was still long before dawn, he put on his pants, unbolted the door, retraced his way along the corridor past the primeval silhouette of the discarded boiler, and hurried up the concrete stairs, hoping find the door to the kitchen unlocked.

It was. He strode past rows of pots, griddles, ladles, and frying pans and emerged in the lobby, where he looked for a place to check out, even though he had never checked in.

At the reception desk was a night clerk reading an Arabic thriller. This being a land in which Arabs were accustomed to confessing to Jews all they knew, he had no difficulty in extracting Fu'ad's whereabouts. The maître d' was lying in his underwear on a cot in a small bedroom, half asleep and half awake, his black suit and white shirt on a hanger. Rivlin's noiseless appearance brought him to his feet at once.

“Well, Professor,” he said, surveying his visitor blearily, “I see that all of us were wrong—I for suggesting it, Tehila for agreeing, and you for accepting. It's not so simple to fall asleep surrounded by income-tax files. Once I slept down there myself and dreamed, don't ask me why, of an earthquake. I just hope you didn't run away because you thought there was no air. There's enough air down there for an entire family. The bad smell doesn't come from the plumbing or the old boiler, but from all those files. First it was Mr. Hendel who wouldn't throw them out, now it's Tehila. They want to keep the proof that they never cheated on their country. . . .”

“Never mind, Fu'ad, I've slept enough,” Rivlin said to the maître d', who had meanwhile risen and donned a pair of gym shorts.

“If you say so.” Fu'ad sighed. “An hour slept is an hour gained. Now tell me how you want your coffee—
arabi willa franji?
”
^*

“Leysh ma n'ruhesh ma'a l-arabi?”
^†

“
Heyk lazim y'kun.
”
^‡

He bent over a little cabinet and took out an electric hot plate, a sooty beaker, and a long spoon. Filling the beaker with water and coffee, he sat waiting patiently for it to boil.

The profound sadness of a last good-bye had the Orientalist in its grip. He sat on the edge of Fu'ad's cot, rubbing his eyes hard in the hope of restoring clarity to a world gone hazy. Uncertainly he asked:

“Shu
lakan? Bitfakirni majnun?”
^§

Fu'ad was startled. “
Kif majnun, ya Brofesor?
”
^∥

“Because of the way I keep coming back in order to understand what happened to my son's marriage . . .”

The old maître d', his sturdy body looking young in its undershirt and gym shorts, did not answer. He fingered his silver mustache, broodingly watching the coffee slowly boil. As if remembering something, he asked:

“
Inteh b'tush'ur halak ahsan, ya Brofesor?”
^#

“
Aa. Ahsan. . . .
”
^**

“God be praised. You Jews worry too much about your health. A person can get sick just from that.”

Rivlin did not even smile. He watched the Arab search for cups at the bottom of the cabinet.

“How is it possible that even you don't know what happened?” he protested.

“How? That's simple.”

“But you can find out whatever you want to about this hotel, Fu'ad.”

“Perhaps I can, Professor.” The Arab spoke hotly. “But I don't want to. Someone like myself, who isn't Jewish and has a master key to every room, has to be careful—very careful—not to step out of bounds. He has to make sure—really sure—that he doesn't see or hear what he shouldn't. Why do you think, Professor, that I'm still here, after starting out as a simple worker twenty years ago, when Galya was still a baby? How would I have worked my way to the top—because today I'm part of the management—if I hadn't stayed out of the family's problems? I even said as much to the late departed. And that's why I didn't argue with Tehila tonight. They respect me for that. ‘Please,' I've said to them, ‘don't say anything bad about one another in front of me. I don't want to know about your quarrels. I have to take orders from all of you, and I can't afford to lose my honor with any of you.
U'heyk, ya Brofesor, kult kaman li'ibnak laman balash yibki kuddami. . . .
”
^*

“When did Ofer come crying to you?”

“When he split with Galya. That last autumn.”

“Last autumn?”

“Yes. After they separated. He used to come here at night and lurk in the street or in the garden. He was hoping for even just a glimpse of her. I swear to God, it was hard for me too. It was hard for us all. But I didn't want him hanging around. I didn't want to have to listen to all his stories and accusations that I had no business knowing about. And that night he stepped out of line with me. I was standing at the bus stop, waiting to go back to my village. All of a sudden he drives up on his motorcycle and shines the light on me and shouts without taking off his helmet, ‘Get on, Fu'ad, I'm taking you to Abu-Ghosh. Don't tell me you're afraid to ride.' You can be sure I wasn't. I have a brother with a bike twice as big. But I didn't want to talk to him, and so I said, ‘Yes, I am, Ofer. I'll take the bus. I'm too old for your motorcycle.' He took off his helmet, and I could see that his eyes were on fire. And then, Professor, I swear, listen to this and tell me if I wasn't right, I said to him—I remember every word because I was
upset—'You, Ofer,' I said, ‘as much as I respect you and your parents, please don't ask me anything. If you're a man, then be a man with me too, and not just on your motorcycle. You're not getting anything out of me. Nothing. Because you'll leave this hotel, and you won't come back, and God will help you,
inshallah,
to forget your troubles. But I'm staying right here. And that's why I don't want to hear a single bad word about the family. Not about Mr. Hendel, and not about the missus, and not about their children, and not about anyone. Because I want to be honored and treated well, no matter who tells me to do what. That's why, my friend, I'm asking you to keep your problems to yourself, just as I do mine.'
Il-mazbut
^*
he was very hurt, and embarrassed to be crying in front of an Arab, and he put his helmet back on and drove off without a word. My heart was aching for him, but what could I do? You tell me, Professor. Nothing. That was the last time I saw him. I felt so bad I even wrote a poem when I got home.”

“A poem?”

“
Ya'ani, ishi makameh z'ghireh
.”
^†

“What kind of rhymes?”

“
Makameh, b'ti'raf shu ya'ani makameh
. . . .
^‡
I was always good at rhymes, even as a boy in school. Even now whole lines of them sometimes come to me, one after another. Little poems, when the heart has too much sorrow or happiness. And that night, I thought—I swear—about you, Professor . . . so I sat down and wrote an energy. Is that the right word?
Marthiyya.
”

“Elegy.”

“Elegy? Isn't that what you say at a funeral?”

“That's a eulogy.”

“I didn't know there were so many words. Well, I wrote an elegy for your Ofer.”

“What happened to it?”

“Search me.”