The Liberated Bride

by A. B. Yehoshua

  But Rashid hadn’t come this far in order to back down.

  “You could at least promise—to the GSS man, say, who was your student—to handle the human-rights organizations.”

  “Human-rights organizations?” Astonished by the sophistry that went on inside the white building visible through the fogged windshield, he regarded the agitated messenger. “Don’t tell me the GSS is afraid of the Israel Civil Liberties Union!”

  “They’re afraid of whoever they want to be afraid of.”

  Yet on this snowy morning at the Civil Administration Bureau, not only was no one waiting in line, no one was waiting to receive anyone either. Even his old student had chosen to stay in bed. Rivlin, worn-out from the drive, followed Rashid down a long corridor in which the Arab knew every door. He tried opening them one by one while asking where everyone had disappeared to—which might have gone on forever had not a woman cried out a surprised hello. “What did I tell you, professor?” Rashid crowed. “They all know you here. I’ll bet that lady was a student of yours, too.”

  The woman, who was roly-poly and henna-haired, came hurrying toward them up the dark corridor. Although Rivlin had forgotten her name, he was quite sure she had once taught introductory Arabic in Haifa. “What brings you here in a snowstorm?” she inquired. Pointing at Rashid by way of explanation, he was invited to warm up in her room. This did not look like a government office. With a sofa upholstered in flowery fabric and a large flowerpot with a dwarf tree that would, the woman said, bear fruit in the spring, it looked more like a comfortable residence.

  Rivlin let his weary body drop onto the sofa with an odd relish, toasting his feet by the mock flames of an electric fireplace while signaling Rashid—who, standing in the doorway, seemed to be debating whether the woman could be of use—to join him. He now recalled, watching her put up a kettle to boil in a kitchenette, that she was an Egyptian Jew who had learned her Arabic in the streets of Cairo. He grimaced with the almost physically painful effort to remember her name, but in the end had to ask her for it apologetically. “Georgette,” she replied, wagging a finger. “How could you forget such a nice name?” Rivlin clutched his head.” “Of course,” he said. “My mind just doesn’t work well when it’s snowing so early in the day.”

  The snow was piling up in thick, heavy flakes on the windowsill. Georgette, it turned out, had heard of Tedeschi’s death and of the conference that brought Rivlin to Jerusalem. While she had never studied with the Jerusalem polymath, she had had the greatest respect for him and was thinking of attending the closing session to hear the eulogies and meet old friends, some of whom she began discussing with Rivlin.

  The Orientalist, however, mindful of his mission, was more interested in what Georgette did. The answer was that, having changed not her profession but only her students, she still taught Arabic. Yet her salary was better, for she was now paid both to improve the Arabic of the young GSS investigators and to teach them her linguistic methods for detecting lies in that language. A divorcée with children living abroad, she was so devoted to her work that she sometimes slept in her office. Hence, its resemblance to a private apartment.

  Rashid just stared at her.

  They chatted for a while before Rivlin disclosed why he had come and asked Rashid to produce his documents so as to be advised by Georgette as to who in the GSS might be suitably softhearted. Flattered and amused to be asked, she leafed through a packet of Palestinian birth certificates and tattered old Israeli passbooks in which Rashid and Ra’uda were listed as brother and sister. When she was done she said that although she was no expert on such things, she imagined that to turn little Palestinians into Israelis more was needed than a mother’s longing for her native village.

  “Such as?”

  An intelligent woman, she stopped to think. Did any of his sister’s children, she asked Rashid, have a chronic disease or rare health problem that called for treatment in Israel? A medical reason, she explained to the Orientalist, who nodded while stretching his hands out to the electric flames, was better than an emotional one, perhaps because the Jews thought their curative powers made the Arabs more trusting and less dangerous. . . .

  An enigmatic smile played over Rashid’s lips.

  Rivlin turned to him. “Well?”

  He shrugged. As far as he knew, both of his nephews in Zababdeh were healthy. If there were no other choice, however, he would try to find something wrong with them.

  “The problems people have,” Rivlin sighed as the messenger gently shut the door and headed for the ground floor to obtain application forms for medical treatment in Israel. He took another sip of his tea.

  Georgette shot him a distrustful look. “What do you want us to do, open the gates to all of them? Don’t we have enough of them already?”

  “Excuse me,” he said, turning crimson as if accused of high treason. “Those children are half-Israeli.”

  “So is the West Bank, which is why it should be good enough for them. I see no reason to separate them from their father. Tell me, Rivlin: how did you get involved with this Arab in the first place?”

  “He’s sometimes my driver. And also . . .”

  “Also what?”

  “Jinni ’l-aziz alay. . . . ”*

  9.

  FOR A SECOND, the falling snowflakes wavered between turning to sleet and keeping their pristine whiteness. Yet those falling quickly behind them stiffened their frozen resolve, and the white carpet outside the window grew thicker. Under a large umbrella they stepped back onto it, the careful Jew and the glum Arab, whose pockets were stuffed with useless medical forms. It took a moment to spot the jeep, now a white mass like the cars around it. Perhaps, Rivlin thought amusedly as he directed his driver toward a majestically white Mount Scopus, the snow was Europe’s farewell salute to the young man it had tried to murder sixty years ago. The idea so appealed to him that he decided to include it in his eulogy.

  In the university parking lot, he sought to part with Rashid. “Why waste the day waiting for me?” he said. “Start back now. I’ll make it to Haifa on my own. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for your sister’s children. We have to sit down and work out a plan.”

  “No plan will work if no one has a heart,” Rashid said. “But thanks for trying.”

  He put a gentle hand on the Arab’s shoulder. “Don’t give up. It’s not like you.”

  “It may not be like me, but it’s how I feel.”

  “It’s not like you at all,” the Jew repeated reprovingly.

  Rashid turned a dark, stubbled face full of anguish toward the road. His profile against the snow made Rivlin think of the dybbuk’s white shrouds. “If this snow keeps up, Professor,” he said, “you’ll need a jeep to get out of Jerusalem.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rivlin said. “I’m tenth generation in this city. I know these Jerusalem snows. By this afternoon the sun will be out and it will all melt.”

  But even if Samaher’s teacher was holding up his cousin’s grade, the messenger insisted on sticking by him. He had no other work lined up for the day, which he would spend in Jerusalem, returning for the Orientalist’s eulogy at the end of it. An Israeli Arab in a jeep could go where he wanted in this two-part city. Perhaps he would visit Fu’ad at his hotel. The two of them had got along well on the night of Tedeschi’s death. He had even stopped in Abu-Ghosh on his way back to Mansura because Samaher hadn’t been feeling well.

  Rivlin felt a sweet frisson.

  “Don’t worry about me, Professor,” Rashid said. “The ride to Jerusalem was my treat, and the ride home will be too. Your wife will feel better if she knows you’re with me.”

  Rivlin smiled at Rashid’s intuition. “Listen,” he said, reminded by the gurgle of melting snow in a nearby drainpipe of the basement of the hotel, the symbol of his lost and longed-for happiness. “Come back at lunchtime and we’ll go together. Fu’ad will feed us.”

  He took an invitation to the conference from his pocket and handed it to Rashid, showing him th
e building and the number of the room in which he would be.

  The auditorium was empty. Hannah Tedeschi was pacing irritably up and down, her eye on the white maelstrom outside the window. The dark, masculine suit she had on looked as though it might have been Tedeschi’s. Though they had spoken often by telephone since the day of the funeral, he was surprised to see how she had changed. Thinner, and with a new, short haircut, she suggested, despite her makeup and high heels, a melancholy youth. “I warned you!” she scolded Rivlin despairingly as soon as she saw him. “We should have postponed it or moved it to town, where at least the streets are plowed. You forgot, Yochanan, that Jerusalem can cope with war, siege, and terrorism but not with snow—and especially not on Mount Scopus.”

  Rivlin defended himself calmly and logically. In the first place, there was no guarantee that a more suitable place in town would have been available at the last moment. Secondly, even if one had been, there hadn’t been time to inform the public. And thirdly, what would Carlo have said had he known that a little snow would make them forsake a campus that meant so much to him? After all, not only had his entire career taken place on it, he was almost killed trying to break through to it in a relief convoy during the 1948 war.

  “A little snow? Yochanan, don’t you see what’s going on out there?”

  Once again Rivlin trotted out his Jerusalem pedigree to make light of the snow. By noon, he promised, the skies would clear and there would be nothing left but a white frosting. The timid souls who missed the morning session would surely have enough northern blood in them to turn out in the afternoon.

  “You wait and see,” she accused him. “This snow will be an excuse to trample on his memory. We’re in for another disaster like the Othello lecture. He never said a word about it, but I know how hurt he was.”

  “But what made you take him to the emergency room?”

  “He was afraid.”

  “Of those political scientists? You’re kidding.”

  “But he was. All those theoreticians frightened him. He didn’t know what they were talking about.”

  “Neither do I. So what?”

  She looked startled. “You don’t?”

  “Not always. But to hell with them. You have new glasses.”

  “Just the frames. Was it wrong to change them?”

  “Of course not.” He moved closer to her, feeling pity. “On the contrary. Since his death, Hannah, you’re even more lovely.”

  She flushed, hotly. “Don’t be silly. The things you say! I feel so lost . . .”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  Yet not even her tears were an incentive to come to the morning session. Although one of the two Ottomanists managed to make it through the snow, he had to speak to empty seats. If not for Suissa senior, who—his fedora covered in plastic against the rain—turned up at the last minute as a gesture to his son’s admirers, there wouldn’t have been a dozen people in the hall. The dean of the liberal-arts school, an art historian who couldn’t have cared less about the Turks, delivered a few welcoming words, shut his eyes, and fell asleep, chin in hand, on the podium. Fortunately, the secretary of the Near Eastern Studies department, who had always been fond of Tedeschi and his witticisms, handed the dean a note summoning him to an imaginary meeting, thus sparing him further embarrassment.

  Rivlin sat through the lecture with a sense of tedium. It didn’t help that the lecturer let himself be sidetracked from the complex subject of Turkish-Arab relations to a discussion of Kurdish nationalism and its “historic,” as opposed to merely “emotional,” roots.

  “Be careful, children,” his mother would tell Rivlin and his sister on snowy days in Jerusalem, on which she had made them stay home. “Snow lulls the brain to sleep.” So that they might enjoy the snow anyway, she would send their father out to fetch a bowl of it, which they were allowed to play with, under her supervision, in the bathroom. Now, feeling his eyelids droop, he wondered whether she hadn’t been right. Others around him were yielding to the same effect. Although the lecturer, a delicate homosexual once labeled by Tedeschi “the True Turk,” was struggling valiantly, in the extra time provided by the absence of the second speaker, to return to his original theme, the Kurds, whose muddled identity was typical of the minorities of the Ottoman Empire, kept distracting him. Now and then, in a concession to the occasion, he mentioned some old idea or forgotten publication of Tedeschi’s. But the audience was too sleepy and too small for it to matter.

  Rivlin, despite his sympathy for the Kurds, could barely keep awake. He went on repeating his mother’s words like a mantra. And indeed the snow soon stopped falling, and a first patch of blue gleamed through the windows. Slowly the sky grew calm and clear, just as he had predicted in the name of his ancestors. He nodded encouragingly at Hannah, as if to say, “See, things are looking up.” By evening, he was sure, there would be a full house.

  The rear door of the auditorium opened. Rivlin turned around to see who was there. It was his trusty driver, the dybbuk.

  10.

  ALTHOUGH THE CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS had given the lecturers meal tickets for the cafeteria, Rivlin excused himself.

  “I’ve been up since early morning, and all this snow has made me sleepy,” he told the disappointed translatoress. “I need some fresh air, not more academic chitchat. You’ll manage without me. I’ll give my ticket to Mr. Suissa.”

  And going over to the bereaved father, he clasped his hand with his own two and said, “It’s wonderful to see you following in your son’s footsteps.” Suissa accepted the voucher gladly. “How is your daughter-in-law?” Rivlin asked. “She’s left Jerusalem and gone to look for work in Tel Aviv,” the father of the murdered scholar replied. “And the children?” “For the time being, they’re with us.” “I thought she and you were getting along better.” “I thought so, too,” Suissa said sadly. “But there’s nothing to be done about it. She’s a young woman in a hurry to live.” “How old is she?” Rivlin asked, blushing as if he had committed an indiscretion. “Twenty-five next spring.” “That’s all?” He had thought she was older. “With all she’s been through,” he said, “you wouldn’t think she would be hurrying anywhere.”

  In the garden of the Hendels’ hotel, the snow lay fresh and virginal on the paths and formed frisky little snow cubs of the bushes. Rivlin walked ahead, with Rashid following carefully behind him. Stopping to inspect a fringe of ice gaily trimming the old gazebo, he yielded to temptation and mentioned the wedding. Only six years ago, he told his driver, they had all been standing here. And as if to make up for the disappointment of the Civil Administration Bureau, he related the story of the unexpected and difficult divorce.

  “They were only married a year?” Rashid asked, a sardonic glint in his coal black eyes.

  “To this day, I don’t understand what happened.”

  “It must be painful for you to come back here.”

  “It is. But real knowledge, Rashid, is born of pain.”

  “And what do you know?”

  “That’s just it. I can’t get an explanation from anyone. Not even from Fu’ad, who knew exactly what went on here.”

  “Fu’ad?” Rashid read his mind. “Hada ma bihki k’tir. Hada arabi kadim, b’tist’hi k’tir.’”*

  The Orientalist smiled. “B’tist’hi min sham eysh?”†

  “B’tist’hi yehin el-yahud.”‡

  “But why should anyone be offended?”

  “There’s no reason. Bas ahyanan, b’kulu andna, el-yahud biz’alu min el-hakikah ili bifatshu aleiha b’nafsehum.”§

  A few minutes later, the old-fashioned maître d’ was surprised to find the two uninvited Israelis in his dining room, standing in line among the Christian pilgrims at the buffet with large, empty plates in their hands.

  “What are you doing here in all this snow?” he asked, startled to see them. “U’sayara ma t’zahlakatesh”?*

  “Ahadna jeeb bit’harak min el-amam,” the Arab explained to the Arab, “u’safarna mitl ala
zibdeh.Ӡ

  But though the Jerusalem snow was child’s play for the pious Christians from the American Midwest, it had blocked roads and canceled tours all over Israel, so that, as on Rivlin’s previous visit, the dining room was full up. Rather than wait for Fu’ad to apologize, he filled his plate and headed for the smoking lounge favored by Mr. Hendel, whose death now seemed to belong to the distant past.

  “You see,” he said as Rashid sat down next him, “I’m still family despite my son’s divorce.”

  The unexpected crush kept Fu’ad running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room. Still, he found a few minutes to drop by the lounge and even to smoke a cigar, reminisce about the eventful trip to Ramallah, and ask about the scholar who had died.

  “As a matter of fact,” Rivlin said, “I’m in Jerusalem on a snowy day like this is for a memorial conference in his honor.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s already been a month!” the maître d’ marveled. It seemed to him just a few days. Sometimes, falling asleep at night, he still thought of the face he had covered with a sheet. “And how is the widow?” he asked. “What a poet!”

  Rivlin clucked with sympathy. “She’s coming around slowly,” he said.

  The maître d’ asked to be remembered to her. He could still hear her declaiming Al-Hallaj’s lines—My soul is his, his is mine. Who has heard of the body In which two souls combine?—as if they had been written in Hebrew. He was so moved by the great Sufi poet that he had even tried writing a few mystical poems of his own. But who had patience for such things? “Ya’ani, el-hawa ma bikdar yimsikha.”‡

  “Kif el-hawa?” Rashid asked.*

  “El-jow.† Mysticism needs peace of mind. In this country everyone just wants to hear the next news bulletin.”