The Liberated Bride (17 page)

T
HAT
M
ONDAY THE
young officer was supposed get leave so that he could see his newly arrived uncle. At the last minute, however, he yielded his turn to a friend, a romantic soul with an urgent need to talk a girlfriend out of leaving him. Not knowing when he might get
another pass, Tsakhi asked his parents to bring Yo'el and Ofra to the base that evening.

And so once again they drove the winding roads of the Galilee. While the two sisters sat in back recollecting childhood trips, Rivlin patiently questioned his brother-in-law about developments in the Third World. Although these were enough to drive anyone to despair, he thought a knowledge of them might help him to understand his own tortured Algeria.

Early for their rendezvous on Mt. Canaan, they stopped for a bite at the same restaurant in which they had met the two corpse freezers. But Yo'el did not seem upset when told the story, perhaps because his travels in impoverished lands had inured him to the fate of corpses.

It was getting dark when they reached the double gate of the intelligence base and parked in its improvised picnic grounds, now ominously deserted. Rivlin opened two director's chairs for the women and took the émigré, who had never lost his love of the Israeli landscape, along the fragrant goat path running up the mountain. A full moon risen in the east bathed the mountains in a generous light that enabled them to keep an eye on their wives below, sitting near the gate. Confident that they would spy Tsakhi when he appeared, they walked on in the brightening night.

A large lizard scurried across their path.

“Watch out nothing bites you,” Rivlin warned his lanky brother-in-law, who was still wearing his biblical sandals.

“After all the times I've been bitten in Africa and Asia, what do you think the Middle East can do to me?”

Rivlin felt a wave of warmth for the man.

“I'm afraid you don't take us very seriously.”

“I do. But you're all terribly spoiled. You think all the tears in the world belong to you. As if there weren't a big, suffering universe all around you.”

The Orientalist lowered himself onto the same large rock that he had sat on ten days before and cast a glance at the two sisters below, who were looking lonely and abandoned. He was about to shout something encouraging down to them when his wife, catching sight of him and Yo'el, waved first.

The silence around them was profound. Little animals, satisfied that the invaders meant no harm, resumed their hidden munching. Yo'el looked around and breathed deeply, taking in the approach of the Israeli night. It occurred to Rivlin that he and Hagit hadn't made love in a week, nor could they possibly do so until their two guests departed. It was remarkable how, as the years went by, his desire for his wife grew stronger, as if their psychological intimacy only increased their physical passion.

Yo'el sat chewing on the stem of a plant. Now was the time, Rivlin decided, to talk about the facts of married life. If the two sisters were at all alike in their makeup, some pointers might be gained from it.

“I've been wanting to ask you,” he said, broaching the topic. “It's a small thing . . . you needn't answer if you don't want to . . .”

“Answer what?”

“Just don't get annoyed.”

“But what is it?” The longer Rivlin's prologue, the more bewildered Yo'el became.

“I've been wanting to ask you . . . just don't get annoyed . . . it's an odd question, I know . . . but do you and Ofra . . . ever shower or bathe together . . . I mean would she agree . . . because Hagit, you see . . .”

“But what makes you ask?” Yo'el gave him a puzzled smile. “I've never tried. How could I? You know Ofra. Half an hour in the shower is her minimum. My maximum is five minutes.”

An armed soldier emerged from the hidden entrance to the base.

“That must be Tsakhi,” Rivlin said, cutting the conversation short even though he knew it wasn't his son. And indeed, back in the parking lot, they saw it was the blond, baby-faced sergeant. He had been sent to inform the visitors that something had come up to prevent the young officer from leaving his post. There was no point in waiting.

“But what happened?” Rivlin asked, disappointed.

“There's a problem with some instrument.”

“What instrument?”

The sergeant gave him a forbearing smile.

“Tell him to come for just a few minutes,” Rivlin tried cajoling the messenger. “Just to say hello. His uncle has come especially to see him. He's leaving the country in a few days.”

“He knows that,” the sergeant replied calmly. “Don't think he doesn't feel bad that . . .”

Rivlin interrupted him brusquely. “Go tell him anyway.”

“Forget it,” Hagit said. “If he can't come, he can't come. Take his word for it.”

The sergeant nodded in approval at her common sense.

A
T THE UNIVERSITY
the next day, in the narrow hallway of the twenty-third floor, he found the messenger from Samaher. Sturdily built, sable-skinned, Rashid was eagerly awaiting his mission. Rivlin placed a pile of North African journals and newspapers in his arms and sent him to the library to photocopy the excerpts marked by the murdered Jerusalemite, plus some additional passages checked by himself.

Three hours later the Arab returned, with two thick binders of photocopies, red for the poems and green for the stories. Each entry had been indexed by author, with the date and place of publication in red ink. The originals, too, had been reorganized and were now arranged chronologically. Explanatory flags in Hebrew and Arabic, written in a clear, curling hand, were attached to them.

“About these stains, Professor . . .” Rashid pointed to the yellow flecks on the newspapers. “I didn't make them. . . .”

“Of course not.”

Rivlin revealed the awful truth.

Rashid cursed the suicide bomber roundly. “That's life,” he said.

Rivlin was taking a liking to the young man. “Tell me,” he asked him confidentially, “what really is the matter with Samaher?”

“
Ya'ani,
she has moods. It's her nerves. She's feeling low. But she'll get over it. She's strong. And smart as a whip. Believe me, I tell everyone: Just wait, in a few years you'll see Samaher in the Knesset.”

“The Knesset?”

“Yes. Someone like her belongs there.”

“Because she's so depressed?”

Rashid laughed.

“Because it's so depressing.”

His handsome eyes, the color of coal, had a hypnotic warmth.

“But really, what's the matter with her?” This time his tone was sterner. “What's going on?”

“She's tired. Exhausted. And her husband is the nervous type. He has no patience for her.”

“She should have married you,” Rivlin blurted unthinkingly. “You seem patient enough.”

“Me?” The blood rushed to Rashid's face, as if a leak had sprung inside him. He gave a start. “Why not?” he laughed. “Her father would never have agreed, though. . . .”

“Because you're cousins?”

“Because I'm dark. Too dark for his taste.”

The Orientalist asked the affable young Arab about himself. For two years, Rashid said, he had been a university student too, in the electrical-engineering department of the Haifa Technion. Then he left. Engineering didn't interest him, nor did he believe he could find work in the field. He had bought a minibus and made good money transporting passengers. Perhaps next year he would audit a few classes.

Rivlin handed him a sheet of paper and dictated the demands he was making of his ailing student.

One: A precise but literary translation of all the poems into Hebrew.

Two: A Hebrew summary of all the stories.

Three: A list of motifs common to both.

That was all. It was pitifully little for an M.A. seminar paper. Yet what else could he do? He was beginning to feel sorry for Samaher. And there was all the more reason for her to hurry, because he was tired and ill himself and no one else in the department would put up with her shenanigans.

“Ill? With what?”

“Never mind. Just don't tell anyone. Not everything has to be public knowledge. That's something we Jews need to learn. Life needs its little secrets. Just see to it that Samaher is warned. There'll be no more postponements or excuses. Let her do what I've asked within a few weeks and she'll get her grade. And please—let's leave her mother, father, and grandmother out of this.”

18.4.98

Ofer,

It would have been the right thing not to reply. Not only so as not to violate our “honorable silence,” as you call it, but also because a condolence letter with poisoned arrows in it doesn't deserve a reply. You've forced me to violate, not only our silence, but the sacred vow of fidelity made to my husband, since I am concealing this letter from him.

And in the dark night of my sorrow, which knows no consolation, nothing but longing for a beloved man (and only a man), you still won't give an inch. Again you allude to your unspeakable fantasies.

(To think I once loved you so much.)

Your father, with whom I genuinely sympathize, is still tormented by our failed marriage. He believes that you don't understand what happened.

You?

You don't understand?

I've conveyed your condolences to my mother. She thanks you. For some reason, she still grieves for you.

Please, don't answer this letter. Let's return to our old silence. It may not be so honorable anymore, but it's just as important.

Galya

R
IGHT UP TO
the day of the wedding, Ofra, fearful of being left alone with Yo'el's family, tried persuading her sister and brother-in-law to join them. Yet having had the foresight to purchase two tickets for a biblical play in Tel Aviv that evening, Rivlin was not going to let even an exemption from gift-giving force him to attend a wedding he didn't have to be at. Hagit's efforts to sway him, born of sympathy for her sister's plight, only led him to deliver a harangue. What did Ofra want of him? She spent her life traipsing around the world like a middle-aged princess, with no worries or family duties. It would not be so terrible if for once she had to meet her obligations unassisted. At most, he was prepared to drive her and Yo'el to the wedding.
Perhaps even to drive them back, although this was already going too far.

Now, nearing Nature's Corner, he found himself growing gloomier by the minute as his car followed the lanterns waved in the fading light by the young parking attendants whose job it was, before changing costumes and turning into waiters, to divert him from the highway onto a dirt approach road that looped through fields of crackling stubble. He stepped on the brakes as soon as he reached the parking lot—whence, pounded by music that would grow more savage as the night progressed, a stream of elegantly dressed guests flowed toward a green buckboard propped decoratively on its shaft as though on loan from an old Western, beyond which a bridal gown and bright glasses of wine glimmered through the branches of trees. This was as far as he went. Putting his foot down, he refused even to congratulate or greet the parents of the bride, fearing to encourage the illusion that he might stay. Although his sister-in-law, wearing the dress he had failed to talk her out of, delayed their parting as if still hoping to change his mind, he swung the car determinedly around, wove through a phalanx of arriving vehicles, and sped back to the highway and their biblical drama.

The audience entered slowly, advancing toward a stage in the round, on which they were invited to sit as though part of the performance. To heavy but clear-toned music, twelve young actors and actresses dressed in black took their places, microphones attached to them so that they might speak, or even whisper, the words of the ancient text naturally and from the right inner place.

My heart is sore pained within me,
And the terrors of death are fallen on me.
Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me,
And horror hath overwhelmed me.
And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!
For then would I fly away and be at rest.
Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness.

Selah.

A
LTHOUGH
R
IVLIN HAD
no idea how the play would develop or what was in store for them, the somber prologue from the Book of Psalms, cast into the black space of the auditorium, made him sit up. He smiled encouragingly at his wife. She nodded back, secretly pleased to have been rescued from a wedding that, even if it did not arouse her envy, was eminently forgoable.

Two actors began to recite? declaim? read? speak? act? passages from the story of the Creation.
In the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens
. . . . The story of Cain and Abel . . .
This is the book of the generations of Adam.
The grand biblical language soared with contemporary freshness. Though hardly a sentence or word did not come from Scripture, the female director had taken liberties, rearranging and editing the text for the benefit of the spectators, who sat in the dark with quiet yet skeptical attention, slowly sipping old wine, its taste unfamiliar to many of them, from a new bottle.

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos. And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died.

And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan. And Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters.

Emerging from a far corner, a solemn young actress enumerated the generations while crossing the stage in a long, slow diagonal, her floating gait trancelike. In the middle of her path several young men lay twisted on the floor, tormented by the venerable ages of the endlessly begetting ancients. Slowly, the tedious list of names and numbers, accompanied by a distant peal of bells, took on meaning and drama, perhaps because of the way the young actress enigmatically paused before each repetition of “. . . and daughters.”

Rivlin sought to catch his wife's eye, to convey that he liked the performance so far and hoped it would continue to hold his interest. But Hagit's gaze was riveted to the stage—to which he, too, turned intently back so as not to miss a movement or a word. He admired the director for seeking to breathe life into forgotten and unpoetic biblical texts that were tediously plain: dry laws, harsh commandments, blessings, warnings, curses, lists of clean and unclean animals—all backed by electronic music and made amusingly real by sprightly actors in striking costumes.

Now, as two shaven-headed actors leaned over a large table, discussing between them, with the cackling pedantry of old men, ancient sexual prohibitions both commonsensical and bizarre, a tall, striking actress with golden curls falling to her shoulders took out a small white handkerchef and alternately brandished and tore at it with dancelike, repetitive movements as though it were a flag of protest or surrender. With sorrowful irony she joined the exchange, reciting the mordant laws, intricate and outrageous, meted out by the biblical legislator to the virgin raped by a stranger in a city or a field:

If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones so that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife; so thou shalt put away evil from among you.

If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

“Marvelous!” he whispered to his wife, watching with pleasure as a barefoot actor and actress sat down near them to lament the childlessness of Abraham and Sarah prior to the birth of Isaac.

“
Now Sarah and Abraham were old,
the plump actress related,
and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.
She moved contortedly in her envy of the concubine who
bore Ishmael to her husband, describing in a deep, sobbing voice not only her own anguish, but that of the bondmaid she tormented:

“
And Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thine hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.
”

All at once, without knowing how or why, the Orientalist felt a lump in his throat. It was as if the sobbing of the barren Sarah were meant for him, were in him. And while Abraham, the defiant believer, promised Sarah in God's name that she would have a son before the year was out, the plump actress writhed on the floor, clinging to her despair and renouncing all hope in a tragic, sardonic voice:

“
After I am waxed old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?
”

So powerful and convincing was her renunciation that a wordless sorrow moistened his eyes. He froze, afraid to let his wife see. She, however, aware of his tears, laid a light hand on his knee.