The Liberated Bride (33 page)

“
Be careful, Ofer. Such boundless love will destroy you. . . .
”

And now he's dead. And though he wrecked my marriage, I feel (you'll be surprised to hear) that I owe him a small debt of gratitude for that warning.

The divorce papers arrived a few days later. Although I was expecting them, I was so sad and depressed that for weeks I couldn't even sit down to a proper meal. I simply grabbed a bite now and then on the fly, especially at night, like a Muslim on Ramadan.

What have I left out? Nothing. And soon there'll be nothing. I'll shade the text, hit Delete, and poof.

Thank you. Thank you for forbidding me to send you “pointless and oppressive” letters. The thought of printing all these pages, putting them in an envelope, and mailing them to you just to torment myself by waiting for an answer that will never come. . . . Thank you for wanting nothing more from me. For walking off without leaving a trail. I should have realized it was merely my father's projection to think innocently you wanted a condolence letter from me. All he managed to do was entangle me with you again. But don't worry. It won't be for long.

Maybe it's because he never had a daughter that he always took such a paternal interest in you. But if he thinks your father's death is an opportunity to get at the truth I've been hiding, I'll repeat my first promise:

The truth will not out. Mum's the word.

“
If my requests still matter to you,” you write. Well, my misfortune is that everything about you still matters. That's why I'll keep silent.

And even though over the past five years I've once or twice allowed myself to wonder, “Maybe, Ofer, it was just a fantasy after all,” I've repressed
that doubt each time, always returning to the belief that the rift between us was tragic rather than dramatic—an inevitable fate. That's why, over the years, I've rephrased the confused emotion of it into precisely stated testimony like that I saw given in court, when as a child, I would visit my mother at work.

Your Honor

Dear Ima,

The day was Tuesday, 15 July, 1993. It was 10
A.M.
I was at work in the office of Harari, Architects & Urban Planners, 26 Hillel Street, Jerusalem (hereafter “the office”). Quite casually, I happened to mention a plan proposed by Yehuda Hendel (hereafter “my father-in-law”), the owner of a hotel at 34 Hagiv'ah Street, Talpiyot (hereafter “the hotel”), to expand its kitchen and dining room and—this was the exciting part—to have me, a beginning architect, draw up the plans. A colleague in the office advised me not to start working on the project before looking at the old building plans, which needed to be taken into account. At once, Your Honor, I telephoned my father-in-law to ask for them. But he was not (at 10:15) in the hotel, and my sister-in-law (hereafter “Tehila”), his right-hand woman, had gone somewhere, too, without saying when she would be back. I could, of course, have waited for one of them to return, there being nothing urgent about it. But in my childish enthusiasm, and my fear that my father-in-law might withdraw his generous proposal and—quite sensibly—turn to someone more experienced, I hurried to phone the Arab maître d' (hereafter “Fu'ad”), to ask him for the key to the basement so that I might look for the plans. However, Your Honor (and this is my first circumstantial evidence), Fu'ad tried to put me off, even though our relationship—in part because Professor Rivlin (hereafter “my father”) liked to chat with him in Arabic—was a good one. He said he didn't have the key and didn't know where it was. Since by now my desire to surprise my father-in-law with a plan—and my fear of being preempted—had made me impatient to proceed, I phoned my mother-in-law (hereafter “Naomi”) and asked for her assistance. I knew, of course, Your Honor, that this woman (a good-natured but passive and somewhat empty-headed type) was far removed from the practical affairs of the hotel, even though she had lived in it for twenty years. Still, the affection she had shown me as a member of her family encouraged
me to think she would talk to Fu'ad. And in fact, she turned out to be familiar with the basement—in which, before air conditioners were installed in all the rooms, the hotel's central heating system had been located. Although she hadn't been down there for years, she knew there was a storage room and an “archive” that Tehila sometimes used. And so, Your Honor, childishly eager and well intentioned, I left the office and hurried to see Naomi.

Does the Court wish to know what the weather was like on that fateful day? What can that have to do with my testimony? And yet, since I wish to establish my credibility with the Court, I will withhold no information. In short, it was an extremely hot, dry day, thirty-eight degrees Celsius in the shade. In the neighborhood of Talpiyot, which borders on the desert, the glare of the Jerusalem sun was blinding. Even on my motor scooter, speeding to the hotel, I felt not a breath of fresh air. Fu'ad, who must have seen me coming, slipped away before I arrived. At first I thought of going straight to the archives (the existence of which, incidentally, I had never heard of until that day). But even though, Your Honor, a year of marriage to my wife had made me one of the family, I didn't wish to step out-of-bounds. And so I hurried to the third floor, where I found Naomi, lounging in a light bathrobe over her second or third breakfast delivered from the hotel kitchen.

Is it possible—the Court may wish to leave the question open—that this passive, dreamy woman had a vague suspicion that the archives in the basement involved more than just the past? Was this why she encouraged her curious son-in-law to investigate them?

Needless to say, none of this, O wisest mother, has any relevance to the accuracy of my testimony, which is obliged to stick to the facts. Still, I wonder to this day whether the pain and disappointment that my divorce caused this amiable woman led her to guess that she, too, had played a role in it.

She gave me a glass of fresh orange juice and hurriedly dressed before going downstairs to ask Fu'ad for the key—which, Your Honor, I might have eventually managed to find on my own, though not without difficulty.

We found Fu'ad outside in the hot sun, decorating the gazebo with flowers from his village. He was so annoyed that I had enlisted the owner's wife on my behalf that he barely looked at me. “I swear, Mrs. Hendel,” he
said (I'm quoting from memory), “what's the rush? Mr. Hendel and Tehila will be back soon and will show Ofer everything.
”

Naomi, an easygoing woman, was upset by the refusal of an old employee to obey her. She felt she was not being taken seriously. “All I'm asking of you, Fu'ad,” she told him in an injured tone, “is a key.” But the well-bred and soft-spoken maître d' answered her brusquely. “I'm telling you, Mrs. Hendel,” he said, “there is no key.” But she wouldn't yield. It flattered her that I had come to ask for her help, and she wanted to prove herself worthy of it. “Fu'ad,” she said, “what are you talking about? You always have the keys with you. Come on, take them out.
”

Looking back on it now, Ima, I can see that this tactful, middle-aged man, who never lost his composure, was on the verge of a breakdown. He fumbled in his pocket as though looking for something that wasn't there, then changed his mind and took out a large ring of keys. Before he could claim that the basement key wasn't on it, my mother-in-law reached for it in an unusually aggressive manner. Red as a beet, he let her have it, flinging it into her hand. “You Jews,” he blurted (once again, I'm quoting from memory), “want to swallow everything in one gulp, and then you wonder why it sticks in your crow.” (Yes, that I remember: he said “crow,” not “craw.”)

The large, heavy key ring, Your Honor, was then handed to me. I had no idea which key was the right one. Mrs. Hendel, exhausted from the heat, smiled triumphantly and retired to her room. I went to the basement. The door, it turned out, was unlocked.

I descended some stairs and came to a long corridor in which an old bicycle was leaning against a wall. Next to it were a bucket of dry whitewash and a torn tire. Farther on was a closet, padlocked with an old yellow lock inscribed with the number 999. I found a small key on the ring with the same number and opened the lock at once. The closet was full of files, arranged by subject. There were thank-you letters from guests, correspondences with the municipality, and the old building plans of the hotel, which was originally (did you know this, Galya?) designed to be a school building.

And that, Your Honor, would have been the end of it, with nothing gone amiss, had I not said to myself, “As long as I'm here, I may as well have a look at the actual foundations before studying the plans for them.” And so I followed the corridor as far as a metal door. Although I assumed it was
locked, I tried the handle. It yielded slightly, as if bolted from within. From the ceiling came the gurgle of running water and a clatter of pots and pans, which told me I was where I wanted to be, right beneath the dining room and kitchen. I found a light switch and continued down the corridor until I came to a dark, cold space on my left, in which stood an old boiler that looked like a predatory fossil. The bones of its victims were scattered around it: an old baby carriage, a green tricycle, and a crib with some dusty toys lying on an oilcloth-covered mattress.

Well, my dear Your Honor, I stood there and thought that I should go get a stronger lightbulb and come back to take measurements. But as I was about to go upstairs, I said to myself: Just a minute. If everything is open apart from that metal door, what was the Arab making such a fuss about? And I took the key ring and went to the door, which was old except for the lock. It was a standard lock, like the ones I had seen in the hotel's rooms back in the days when I was courting my wife in them. Even though I now had the building plans, I was still annoyed at Fu'ad, who had always been so friendly and courteous. That's why I took the yellow master key and turned it in the lock. The door opened. I didn't enter the room, which was lit by a hidden lamp. I stood there flabbergasted for all of five seconds, whispered “Excuse me” to my father-in-law, and left.

The Court may ask how much anyone can see and understand in five seconds. My answer is, worlds, especially if you're familiar with the cast—the other member of which was a woman unaware of my presence. She lay sleeping, or daydreaming, in a fetal position, her face to the wall and her long, naked buttocks, which I never would have imagined could be so pure and virginal, exposed.

That was all. On the face of it, it wasn't much. I couldn't tell from the surprised look of my father-in-law, who was reading a newspaper with a cozy intimacy I didn't associate with him, whether I had intruded before or after. And perhaps it was neither. I didn't stick around long enough to find out. All I wanted to do, Ima, was to tell my wife, my life's companion, the soul of my soul, how shocked I was.

PART V

T
HE EVENINGS SPENT
on either side of the border must have left you hungry if, after a sleepless night full of surprises, you head not for bed but for the kitchen, where you remove the cellophane from the containers that have been impatiently waiting for you on the marble counter and permanently renounce, in the crystalline light of a brightening morning, a Ramadan fast half-jestingly and half-wishfully partaken of. Your resentment of the housekeeper, who so flagrantly ignored your instructions just to clean and not to cook, has dissipated your resistance even to the leftovers cramming the refrigerator, though in truth you prefer the fresh dishes that have spent the night anticipating the return of the mysteriously vanished master of the house.

And yet, what effect can the master's orders have if the mistress of the house is so intimidated by her own housekeeper that she turns to jelly in her presence? And since you forgot to tell her that the judge would be gone for several days, the housekeeper quite naturally decided to spend her leisure time preparing the judge's favorite dishes. Still, you can't be averse to them yourself, if you now sit eating them while perusing her note, which says:

Aluminum foil
Oil
Bread crumbs
Detergent
Flour
Garlic.

Beside it lies another note from her, informing you that the new owners of your old apartment have a package for you that was mistakenly delivered to your old address.

As if to spare you the pain of it, an invitation to her son's wedding has been left in a less conspicuous, though still respectable, place behind the glass door of a bookcase. You slip the gilt-edged card back into its envelope as quickly as you can and let it fall on the shelf beneath the books in the hope that it will be forgotten there, for your envy does not skip even the marriage of the thin, dark boy who, when brought to your house by his mother, sat bashfully in a corner of the living room playing with Ofer's old toys or appeared timidly at the door of your study to ask for a pencil and paper.

To sleep or not to sleep . . .

At two o'clock there's a meeting of the appointments committee, at three you have office hours, and at four you give your introductory survey course, for which you still haven't prepared. Yet having turned day into night in an Arab village, why not do the same in a Jewish duplex, even if later that will mean turning another night into day, without a wife in your bed to solace your sleeplessness?