Whether despite or because of this, their lovemaking was especially delicious. He rose from it contented, while his wife resumed from beneath the blanket her investigation of his frowned-upon condolence call. In her years as a district attorney, before being appointed to the bench, she had acquired a reputation as a shrewd cross-examiner, and he now answered her questions warily without denying that he might have, between expressions of sympathy for the bereaved, alluded to the painful mystery of Ofer and Galya’s separation.
Hagit put on her glasses to study the defendant she had made love to.
“That’s all there was?”
“More or less.”
“What else was there?”
“That’s all.”
“I hope you realize even that was too much.”
“What was?”
“Mentioning Ofer to her. Wanting to know and understand everything. Come to my courtroom some day and you’ll see the terrible things people do because they don’t stop to think.”
He made no reply.
“Let it go,” she urged him gently. “Let it go. It only causes you grief. It’s time you separated from her, too.”
“Me?” Rivlin laughed and reddened. “I’ll never see her again.”
“I mean psychologically. That’s why I was against your going to the hotel and wallowing in your old misery and begging for explanations. It’s demeaning. For me, too. And most of all, for Ofer. It’s over with. Let her be. She has a new husband.”
“Yes,” he murmured, delivering a counterstroke. “I think she’s pregnant.”
“Pregnant?”
“Unless she’s just put on weight. She’s lost her good looks, by the way.”
“But what makes you think she’s pregnant?”
“It just struck me . . . when we were saying good-bye. . . .”
“What struck you?”
“Nothing. You know what I mean. Forget it. She’s really broken up over her father. I felt it when I said good-bye. . . .”
“Felt what?”
“Just for a second. It was like the old days. I hugged her . . . just to comfort her . . . and I thought I felt . . . this heaviness. . . .”
“A heaviness?”
“Forget it. It’s only an image. Don’t pounce on every word.”
“But what made you hug her in the first place?”
“I just felt like it. It wasn’t really a hug. I was feeling sorry for her. Why are you so hard on her?”
“It’s you, not me, who’s been angry with her all these years.”
“That’s so. I was. I still am. But she suddenly seemed so sad to me. She’s too young to lose a father. What did I do wrong?”
She threw off the blanket, rose from bed naked, and put on a bathrobe. Going over to him, she took him in her arms and kissed him so hotly that he trembled.
“I just can’t. . . .” He choked. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Ofer has been in limbo for five years, without a woman in his life. That’s the reality. Why shouldn’t I try to understand what happened . . . to make some sense of it. . . .”
She rested her hands on his shoulders and shook him lightly, the bounty of her breasts showing through her robe.
“I know how it hurts you.” Her loving tone had a reprimand in it. “I’m on your side. That’s why I’m asking you to put it behind you. All your worry and anxiety just make it worse for Ofer, even if you’re far away and think he doesn’t know. If you don’t free yourself of that woman and stop trying to understand more than she does, he’ll never be free, either. Not of her and not of you.”
“But he has to know.”
“Know what?”
“That her father died.”
“Why? Why does it concern him?”
“He can’t not write a condolence note.”
“Why not?”
“Because the first thing she asked was whether he knew. She expects to hear from him.”
“Let her expect. Sooner or later he’ll hear about it and do what he wants. Whatever that is, it will be right for him. It’s his affair, not yours. Do you hear me? It’s none of your business!”
“But how can I not tell him I went to the hotel?”
“Just don’t. Why should you? To make him want what’s lost forever?”
3.
SOMETHING RUSTLED IN the bushes. Rivlin reached for a stone in case it was a snake. An animal, mole or rabbit, peeked worriedly from underneath some branches and took a step toward the Orientalist as if meaning to ask something, before changing its mind and darting off.
A soldier emerged from the hidden entrance of the base with a message for Tsakhi. The young officer rose, embraced his aunt, kissed his mother, and glanced at the mountainside in search of his father. Rivlin waved. Although the gesture meant, “Don’t worry, son, get back to work and we’ll see you soon,” Tsakhi came running toward him.
“You didn’t have to run all this way to say good-bye,” Rivlin scolded him warmly. “You’ll be home on leave in a few days. War won’t break out before then.”
“I suppose not.” The young officer blushed. “Well, I’ll be seeing you,” he said, touching his father’s arm lightly.
Although the housekeeper had risen from a sickbed to prepare a large lunch for them, Hagit preferred as usual to eat out. Her one concession to the pot roast waiting at home was to choose a dairy restaurant with a fancy menu. Rivlin, undeterred by the elaborate descriptions, ordered at once and hurried off to the rest room. He knew his sister-in-law needed time to deliberate, turn the pages, and make inquiries of the waitress. Although she and her husband were inveterate travelers and diners out, she still harbored the pristine illusion that every restaurant had its culinary apotheosis if only one knew what to ask for.
Finally the decisions were made. Even the waitress seemed satisfied. A first round of wine was poured, and the judge lit a slim cigarette and persuaded her nonsmoking sister to join her. Far removed from the depressing memory of their mother’s cooking, they were happiest together in restaurants. Now, after summarizing the virtues of the gallant young officer, they proceeded to the wedding that was the formal, if not the sufficient, cause of Ofra’s coming to Israel. Hagit wished to plan her sister’s outfit and appearance.
“But why don’t you come with us?” Ofra sought to persuade them. “Yo’el says his family sent you two invitations that weren’t confirmed.”
“Yo’el is mistaken,” Rivlin said, regarding the dish put before him with disappointment. It looked small and insipid, and he stole a glance at his wife’s plate to gauge her appetite and the prospects of sharing her meal. “We confirmed that we weren’t coming.”
“But why not? Wouldn’t you like to be with us? Yo’el needs your help to get through the evening with his horrid family.”
“How horrid can anyone be at a wedding?” Rivlin chuckled. He had heard more than one juicy story about the crudity of his brother-in-law’s clan.
“Horrid enough. They’ll ask nosy questions about why people our age have to go traveling to the ends of the earth, or what happens if Yo’el gets sick somewhere. . . .”
“But they have every right to be worried,” he warmly rebuked the girlish frequent flyer.
Rivlin’s sister-in-law, however, refused to equate his and Hagit’s genuine concern with the spiteful criticisms of Yo’el’s envious family. “We need you there to defend us,” she insisted.
Hagit wavered. “After all, we don’t really know them . . . and we didn’t invite them to Ofer’s wedding. . . .”
“Who remembers Ofer’s wedding?” Rivlin’s sister-in-law exclaimed aggravatedly, heedless of the feelings of the two people in the world she felt closest to. “All that matters is that they invited you and want you to come. It will be a big, outdoor affair at a new caterer’s. We’ll spend the evening together. There’s so little time on this visit to be with you.”
Rivlin cast a warning glance at Hagit, who was already asking about this new caterer.
“It’s c
alled Nature’s Corner. It’s in a woods on the banks of a stream.”
Hagit was weakening. “For my part . . .”
But Rivlin, having foreseen the danger, had already taken preemptive action. He and Hagit, he announced, had tickets that evening for the theater, for a new play, on a biblical theme, that had opened to rave reviews.
“You can change them to another night,” Ofra pleaded. “We’ll come with you. Yo’el loves mythological subjects. We need you at the wedding. You don’t have to buy a gift. Ours will be from you too.”
“It’s not a matter of a gift. The last thing I need is more weddings.”
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind going,” Hagit told her sister. “But weddings make this man of mine so depressed that he’s a menace to the bride and groom. The only weddings he can put up with, more or less, are Arab ones. . . .”
“More less than more,” Rivlin said. “I felt depressed even at that Arab wedding in the middle of nowhere two days ago. I can’t help it. I was programmed that way by a cruel mother. Never to forget. Never to let go. Never to give in. Always to fight on. And after talking to Galya and meeting her new husband, the need to know what happened to Ofer’s marriage is eating away at me like a cancer. . . . Why go to a wedding in Nature’s Corner just to be miserable?”
“I hope you’re not about to cry,” Hagit said, with a smile.
“Suppose I am?”
“Well, don’t. Do it some other time.”
“Not even a little?”
“Not even. I warned you against going to that bereavement.”
“But how could I not have gone?” He appealed hotly to his sister-in-law. “How could I have overlooked his death? It’s simple courtesy for an ex-in-law to express his sympathy in such circumstances.”
But the judge was not inclined to be judged.
“A condolence note would have done nicely. You should have seen,” she told her sister, “the touching letter he sent not long ago to the widow of an academic rival who died unexpectedly.”
She cut a large slice from her quiche and placed it, without asking, on her husband’s empty plate.
It failed to placate him. His confession of fatal illness in the hotel garden now filled him not with guilt but with compassion—for himself and for the young woman in black who had sat, shocked, across from him.
“Hagit wants nothing to do with them. She’s too . . . I don’t know what. Proud, or secretly angry. She doesn’t even want to tell Ofer that Hendel died.”
“You don’t?” The visitor turned to her sister timidly, reluctant to interfere in a family squabble that had broken out when they were having such a good time.
Hagit didn’t answer. Pushing away her plate, she lit a cigarette and signaled the waitress to bring the dessert list.
Rivlin persisted. “You be the judge. Should we tell Ofer or not?”
“But what difference does it make?” Hagit asked, glaring to let him know that no matter how great the intimacy between her and her sister, no one in the world could or should settle their disputes for them. Angrily he snatched the proffered menu while informing his sister-in-law, who was regarding them with mild anxiety:
“Nature’s Corner will do without us. Weddings get me down so that I could wreck not only a corner of nature, but the whole works. If it isn’t too late, we’ll come after the theater to rescue you.”
4.
A COUPLE THEIR own age, an overdressed woman and a man with a goatee, entered the restaurant and recognized Ofra with cries of joy. “Look who’s here! Are you back in Israel?”
Ofra squirmed, as if reluctant to admit that she knew them. However, once they had demonstrated a knowledge of her name and Yo’el’s, and given proof that all four of them had recently been together at an Aztec ruin in Mexico, she abandoned the pretense.
“Just for a wedding. Yo’el is coming in a few days.”
Eager to reestablish a tie forged by a chance meeting far away, the couple asked to be introduced to the Rivlins.
“We were on this wonderful Geographic Society tour,” they explained, “when who did we run into on a godforsaken hacienda in Mexico but Ofra and Yo’el?”
They held out their hands in a show of friendship, hungry, so it seemed, for new relationships at home as well as abroad. Or so Rivlin construed their insistence on giving their names and occupations and asking for his and Hagit’s.
Near Eastern studies made no impression. But a judge was something else.
“A justice of the peace?” they asked avidly.
Hagit chose to reply to the question with an indifferent exhalation of smoke.
“A district judge,” Rivlin answered for her.
“You don’t say! We’re thinking of suing a Jerusalem hospital for price-gouging. Maybe your wife could tell us what our chances are.”
Hagit’s continued silence was a sign that her inner radar was blipping strongly.
Rivlin, with an embarrassed smile, tried thinking of how to cut the conversation short without offending anyone. Although he sensed the shudder that ran through his sister-in-law, who seemed to know what was coming next, he couldn’t resist inquiring what the court case was about.
“You’ve probably guessed,” the man with the goatee said intimately to Ofra. “It was your husband who placed the call to Israel for us. Perhaps he even remembers and would like to testify on our behalf.”
“But what’s it all about?” Rivlin asked, deliberately ignoring his wife’s restraining hand.
There was no longer any stopping the couple from telling their story, which they related while standing between two tables and forcing the waiters to detour around them. The husband was an accountant, the wife a teacher of music. With a mixture of cynical amusement and dense innocence, they told how, two days before they set out on a grand tour of Central America for which they had registered with friends and made a hefty down payment, the music teacher’s octogenarian father had died in an old-age home. Because the week of bereavement would have caused them to miss their dream trip, they decided to postpone the funeral by freezing the deceased—a nonbeliever who would have raised no religious objections—in the hospital morgue. Nor was the reason they gave—namely, the need to give relatives abroad sufficient time to get organized—entirely imaginary, since the deceased’s son, the music teacher’s brother, had pressing business in Chicago and preferred a later date. “Enjoy your trip,” he’d told them. He was sure their dead father would not have wanted to spoil their plans. He would have all the time in the world to spend in the ground; meanwhile, the worms could dine on someone else.
Rivlin glanced at his wife. She had been served her dessert, a chocolate parfait topped with maraschino cherries, and was staring over it at the standing couple. The obvious repugnance they aroused in her having failed to head them off, she now confronted them directly, head up, eyes riveted to them, mouth slightly open in concentration.
At the hospital the couple had had good luck. The morgue pathologist, a slightly alcoholic Russian, agreed to accommodate the deceased in his freezer with no time limit or questions asked. He had an available drawer and was willing to charge a fair price.
“How much?” Rivlin asked curiously.
“Less than a hundred shekels a day, VAT included.”
“Not bad.”
And so the orphaned music teacher and her husband set out on their tour with their friends. Between one Mayan temple and the next, they planned the fine funeral they would have. Unfortunately, several days after their departure from Israel an inquisitive hospital official, an observant Jew, dropped in on the morgue and discovered that one of its occupants was overextending his stay. A fuss was made, the Russian pathologist was reprimanded, and a search began for the next of kin. When these were discovered in Central America, they were encouraged to return at once—by a steep price hike.
“How much?” asked the professor, suddenly brimming with high spirits.
“Five hundred shekels a day, without VAT.”
; “That’s pretty stiff.”
“Disgraceful. Criminal. Unjustifiable,” complained the man with the goatee. “Pure vengeance. And when we got home and demanded the original price, that little religious bastard, with all his talk about the dignity of the dead, wouldn’t let us bury my wife’s father until we forked up the extra cash.”
“How was the funeral?”
“Grand! My brother-in-law came with his whole family. Lots of cousins and friends were there, too. We told them the whole story. After all, we’re enlightened, rational people. Well, what do you think?” the man asked the judge, whose spoon was suspended in midair. “If you tried the case, would we stand a chance?”
“A very good one,” Hagit pronounced.
“You don’t say!” The two were thrilled.
“Of going to jail.”
“To jail?” They were dumbfounded. “But why?”
“For excessive enlightenment.”
They crimsoned and laughed.
“We’re onto you!”
Hagit did not take her eyes off them.
“You’re so enlightened that you’re a public danger.”
No one spoke.
As usual, Rivlin found himself full of admiration for his wife. Yet when he turned amusedly to Ofra, he was surprised to see a frightened look on her face. Anyone capable of freezing his own father-in-law, she no doubt thought, might do even worse things in the middle of a restaurant on a peaceful Sabbath in the Galilee.
“Well,” the man said, a sly smile above his goatee, “it’s a good thing there are courts of appeals.”
“For sure,” the judge agreed. “They’d not only acquit you, they’d declare you national heroes.”
She lifted a cherry from her parfait with two careful fingers. The situation was now decidedly awkward. With a brisk farewell, the couple retreated to a table. Rivlin was about to swear at them when the judge, extricating her spoon from the chocolate parfait, silenced him by passing him her dish.
The Liberated Bride Page 9
