The Liberated Bride (36 page)

O
N A QUIET
Saturday morning, in a modest apartment, shaded by pine trees, whose living room was lined with books that no one read anymore, a paralyzed man sat silently in a wheelchair. Slender and
erect, he wore an old blue suit with a red bow tie that was awry on his neck. Although the whites of his eyes had yellowed and faded, their blue pupils still shone with the bright chivalry of a judge who, years ago, had been compelled by moral scruples to take a purely fatherly and jurisprudential interest in a young intern with whom he had fallen in love. Even after her appointment to district judge, he had played the role of a stern teacher entrusted with her professional supervision. Now, in the methodical spirit of the German Jewry he sprang from, several low coffee tables, placed between a couch and some chairs, were set with refreshments. There were little dishes with squares of chocolate; silver bowls full of peanuts, pretzels, and petit fours; and, on an antique plate in the center of the table, a raisin cake sliced into quarters with a dollop of whipped cream by each piece. What you saw was what you got. Freedom of choice was coffee or tea.

Hagit, her cheeks hot, felt her heart go out to the old judge. While giving his veiny arm a squeeze, she seemed, in her distress at being a judicial minority of one, more in need of encouragement than he was. The former Supreme Court justice, however, though raising a yearning head toward her, could only move his lips sorrowfully, as if to say, Now, my dear friend, you're on your own. All you can do is remember all that I've told you, because I will never say anything more.

This left the conversation to Granot's wife, a slender, aristocratic woman of Yemenite extraction who had spent the last fifty years so immersed in Germanic kultur that—true freedom lying in obedience to the
kategorischer Imperativ
—she had practically become a dark-skinned German Jewess herself, though one tinkling with the antique silver Yemenite jewelry adorning her meticulous clothes. Refusing to be disheartened by her husband's stroke, she had taken it upon herself to represent him and his opinions to the world and had even begun to talk with his old voice, including a trace of a German accent. Now, she was telling her visitors about the painting they had acquired at its full, undiscounted price.

“You, Professor, see puppies or jackals, and your wife sees little children. You think you are looking at a sad woman in black, and your wife thinks it's a grotesque devil. . . . You never said it was grotesque? Pardon me. . . . Well, dear friends, the truth lies halfway between you.
Granot intended to paint children, not puppies. But what makes you think, Mrs. Rivlin, that they're being led by a devil? Really, I'm surprised at you. What would a devil be doing here? It's their natural mother, a quietly tragic woman who has gathered her children from all over the world in order to bring them home. That's why the painting is called
The Return of the Little Ones.
”

The paralyzed judge hung on the words of the woman speaking in his voice.

“Granot painted this wonderful work a year ago. Do you remember? You got out of bed that morning with the whole thing in your head. By noon the painting was finished. And it came out just as you wanted it to, didn't it? That's why it's so moving and well done. Our friends have fallen in love with it and wish to buy it. Well, what do you say? Shall we let them have it?”

The Supreme Court justice tried spreading his hands in a vague gesture.

“You see?” the Yemenite told him. “What a pity you've stopped painting this past year.”

“He's stopped painting?” Hagit exclaimed sadly. Her gaze clung steadfastly to the old judge's wide-open blue eyes, which seemed unable to fathom why his old intern looked so troubled.

“Yes, yes,” the woman chided, her German accent growing stronger. “Granot has stopped painting. He just sits all day and does nothing. He makes no use of his time. Isn't that so, Granot? You've become a frightful idler. That's very bad. All day he sits looking at me instead of at his easel.”

A heartbreakingly guilty smile creased the silent judge's face. Honest to a fault, he nodded to confirm his wife's verdict while his eyes filled with large tears.

But the woman just went on chastising him. “Paint, don't cry! Don't you see how everyone loves your paintings?”

Back in their car, Hagit laid the unframed painting in the back. “This is a good time to put me to work,” Rivlin told her. “I'm in the mood to go to the courthouse and clean out your drawers. We can't afford any more missed invitations.”

Yet no prospect seemed more dreadful to Hagit than having to go through her drawers, and her husband's eagerness only heightened her reluctance.

“Next weekend,” she said, with a smile, as if she were doing him a favor. “Won't you be in the mood next weekend?”

T
HAT
T
UESDAY
, midway through his introductory survey course in the large hall whose very air seemed jaundiced by long hours of lectures, the classroom front door opened slowly, and in came Samaher, wearing a black dress embroidered with little flowers and a white scarf wrapped around her head and shoulders.

Well, well, Rivlin thought with a streak of meanness: the pregnancy that never was is over. He watched his “research assistant” take a seat, her sudden appearance causing a stir among the Arab students, not a few of whom were her friends or relations. Had she recovered from her illness or simply run away from her mother?

She waited patiently, after the lecture, for him to finish talking to the last student, then stepped up to inform him, rather ceremoniously, that she had more material for him. Even though the room was empty, she spoke in secretive tones, as if the subject were not amateur North African writing but a dangerous narcotic.

Rivlin regarded the slender figure. Gently but unsparingly, he asked:

“Well, Samaher. Is this the end of your pregnancy?”

She shrugged. “So it seems. . . .” She declined to be more explicit, though her hand trembled as it gripped the edge of the lecture podium.

He felt a wave of pity for this Arab girl who was struggling to get her degree. “The main thing,” he said, patting her shoulder, “is that you're back on your feet.”

He pictured them, delicate, wriggling beneath her blanket as excitedly as a floating French baby.

“For the time being, Professor.” She sighed glumly, unwilling to rule out future indispositions.

“Why just for the time being?” he asked sharply, reaching to take what she had brought him. “You've been sick long enough.”

This time too, however, there was nothing very material about his Arab student's material. The new story, it turned out, existed only as a fever in her brain. She had read it with such excitement that she hadn't bothered to summarize it in her notebook, because she had said to herself, Hey, Samaher, this is an important story, really special, just the thing for your professor's research. Even Dr. Suissa had underlined it heavily, though his pencil marks had grown blurry from so much photocopying.

Of the stalwart bride who wrestled horses only the burning eyes, their sadness deepened by her mysterious illness, now remained.

“Then you understand what I'm looking for?”

“I think so.”

“Tell me.”

She gave a start, as if he were going to examine and grade her right now in the empty lecture hall:

“Maybe . . . I thought you wanted to find out, Professor . . . I mean . . . how it happened that the Algerian people, who suffered so much from the French, began to torture themselves . . . that is, to kill each other . . . just like that, for no reason . . .”

Although he had already realized it back when she was a first-year student, Rivlin had forgotten that she was really quite bright. The lecture hall was empty. It was 6:40 p.m. Soon it would be dark, and the campus would be swallowed by the shadows creeping out of the forests of the Carmel.

“But what's so special about this particular story?” he demanded, debating whether to listen to it now.

“What's special is that it's disguised. I mean, it's a story written by a woman, maybe even a young one, but signed by a man, the author. You can tell it by the style, the imagination, the feeling. That poor lecturer from Jerusalem knew it, too.”

“Dr. Suissa.”

“Yes, Suissa. I'm telling you, Professor Rivlin, it's a shame about him, because he was a special person, maybe really a genius—a Jew who grasped us Arabs from the inside, the way we are, without fancy
explanations. That's rare. At first I didn't understand why he wrote in the margin that the author was a woman in disguise. But when I finished reading the story, I said, Of course! Only a woman could write and feel such things. I can't stand thinking of the way he died, that Suissa. Believe me, if he were alive I'd go to Jerusalem just to thank him. I'd say, ‘Thank you, Doctor, for understanding the Arab soul so well.'”

The Orientalist felt a twinge of envy. “Well, Samaher,” he snapped, “now you know whom your Palestinians killed.”

She winced at his unexpected outburst. “But what can I do about it, Professor?” she answered stubbornly. “Every man has his fate. . . .”

S
AMAHER WANTED TO
tell him the story right away, while it was still fresh in her mind. Although he was impatient to get home to Hagit, who was waiting to eat supper with him, Rivlin, standing in the large lecture hall, agreed to listen to a digest of it. Just then, however, two Druze cleaning women entered the room with mops and sloshing buckets of water. He had no choice but to take his excited student and her story to his office.

They were the only ones in the elevator. Early shadows flitted along the corridor that connected the locked offices. Without bothering to ask about her family or the village, or even about Rashid, Rivlin led Samaher silently down the hallway, politely holding doors for her and ushering her into his little room on the twenty-third floor. Seating her across from him, by the window looking out on the Galilee, he thought of her perfume on the night of her wedding and of Ephraim Akri's warning. At least, he thought, smiling to himself, we're not in her bedroom this time. As he debated switching on the ceiling light or making do with the last sweet glow of the day that still clung to the sky, his student pulled off her white scarf and with quick, pale fingers gathered the hair that spilled out of it into a long ponytail.

“Are you all right?” he asked with a start.

She nodded. “Then wait for me here,” he said, stepping out into the dark corridor. Leaving the lights off, he used an old key to enter his
former room, now the new department head's. With a glance at Akri's grandsons, he dialed Hagit.

“Listen,” he said. “I'll be a bit late. That Samaher has just turned up with something new. She wants to tell me about it now, orally, the way she did in the village. I've become like Harun ar-Rashid in
One Thousand and One Nights:
all I do is listen to stories. Do you think I should tell her to come another time? Why don't you begin eating and I'll be there in half an hour, three-quarters at the most. She's come all the way from her village, and she's not in such good shape. . . . What do you think?”

“I hate to eat without you.”

“You could have your hair done while you're waiting.”

“My hair? What does my hair have to do with it?”

“Don't you have an appointment at the hairdresser's tomorrow morning? I thought you might be less pressured if you went now. Weren't you thinking of trimming it in the back?”

“What on earth for?”

“Then you could work on your dissent.”

This was already too much for her.

“Listen, Yochi. Stop finding things for me to do. Just tell me how much time you intend to spend with her.”

“None at all. Half an hour. Three-quarters at most. She's slightly mad, just as I thought. That whole pregnancy was her mother's fantasy or manipulation. Honestly, I feel sorry for her.”

“If you're feeling sorry for anyone besides yourself,” his wife said, “it's not an experience to miss. But keep it short. I'm hungry and I'm tired and I'm feeling low. Get it over with and come cheer me up. And don't forget to give her my regards.”

“Your regards?”

“Why not? I was at her wedding.”

“If I start giving her your regards, we'll never be rid of her. But fine. On the contrary. She'll be happy. Don't worry, it won't take long.”

From the corridor came a muffled but familiar-sounding whisper. Could it be the department head, coming to commune with his grandchildren? Rivlin hurried out, switching on the light in time to
catch a glimpse of a small silhouette, child or puppy, that passed by in the darkness. But it was already gone.

Samaher had opened the window and was standing beside it. She was staring, not at the landscape of the Galilee, in which the lights of her village glittered too, but at the paved plaza at the tower's base. Her ponytail, dark and quiet, fell down her back.

“My wife sends you her regards. Do you remember her?”

His student's suffering face lit up with gratitude.

“Who could forget your wife, Professor? Whoever likes you has to like her twice as much.”

He turned red and waved a hand. “All right, let's begin. And next time, please make an appointment. You may not realize it, but I'm a busy man. What's the new story called?”

“
Er-rakid u'immo et-tarsha.
”

“The Dancer and His Deaf Mother?”

“That's correct.”

The shadows were thickening in the room. The idea, given him by Tedeschi and the translatoress, of seeking inspiration in the posthumous papers of the Jerusalem genius now seemed preposterous. But I'll see it through to the end, he thought resolutely. He flicked on the ceiling light, although the last beams of the sunset were still honey clear. It would be inadvisable for a Druze cleaning woman to enter the room and imagine things.

The Dancer and His Deaf Mother

“I already told you, Professor, that this is a story written by a woman pretending to be a man. It's about this Frenchwoman named Colette. I think the author had to hide who she was because the story appeared in a semireligious magazine called
Al-Masjid al-Zhagir
,
^*
which also published, if you can believe it, sermons from mosques. So how does a story like this get into such a magazine? That beats me. Even the date of publication is given according to the Muslim religious calendar. But there's a teacher in our village who can turn Muslim
dates into Christian ones, and he told me it's May 1948. Isn't that the period in which you're looking for—how did you put it?—the black hole of identity that spawned the Terror of the nineties? If I follow you, you want to prove that it didn't come from the Algerians themselves, but from the French. . . .”

“From the relationship between them.”

“Right. From the relationship. It's as if, if I follow you, the French left this poison behind when they pulled out.”

“Something like that.” Recalling that Hagit was in a bad mood, which rarely happened with her, he wished his student would hurry up. “Get to the point, Samaher.”

“I thought this story could help you with your research because it's more realistic than the others. There are no miracles or poisoned horses in it. It's understated. I had tears in my eyes when I read it. And my mother and grandmother cried, too, when I read it aloud to them.”

“Come on, Samaher, give us the gist of it. We don't have all night.”

“All right. The woman telling the story is French. She's fifty-five years old, born in Algeria at the end of the last century on a big colonial farm. She writes about this Muslim woman, a Berber, who was born deaf and dumb in a nearby village. The deaf and dumb girl's parents are poor, simple shepherds and don't know what to do with their daughter. And the farmer, Colette's father, is a really good-looking man who was an officer in the French army. One day he sees this deaf and dumb shepherdess with her goats and sheep and feels sorry for her, because she's beautiful and has a good heart, even though she keeps losing her flock. That's because she can't hear its bells or make anything but funny gurgling sounds. And so he goes to her parents and says, ‘Let me have your deaf and dumb girl. She'll help my wife around the farm, and we'll teach her sign language.' You see, Professor, they'd just invented sign language in Europe.

“The parents, who have nine other children, like the idea. They say, ‘Why not? Take her and do what you want with her. When it's time for her to marry, we'll lend a hand.'”

“Lend a hand?”

“That's what they say. Don't look at me, Professor, it's in the story. So the Frenchman takes her to his farm to help his wife. You see, she's a weak, tired woman, all worn out by the desert and the heat, and she's always thinking of her parents in France and going to visit them. Well, you can see what's coming, Professor, can't you? It's obvious. The deaf and dumb Berber girl learns sign language, and the Frenchman falls for her quiet beauty. But even though he's very smart and educated, he's not careful, and he gets her pregnant. And she—not only is she unable to tell her parents, she doesn't want to, because she's happy with the Frenchman.

“Colette describes how she has grown up with this Berber woman on the farm. The woman is half a sister and half a mother, and Colette has become attached to her. But in the meantime, there's this matter of the pregnancy. The Frenchman goes to the Berber parents and tells them that it's time to keep their promise and help their daughter get married. It can be with anyone, he says. She'll give birth in her husband's Berber village and then come back with her child to the farm. And that's what she does. They marry her off to this deaf and dumb shepherd from a far-off village, a good, simple man who doesn't know sign language and can't talk to a wife with a French education, and she goes back to the farm when her baby is born.”

“Is there much more to this?”

“It doesn't look so long in writing,” Samaher apologized. “But it's very condensed. It gets longer when I tell it. Maybe that's because I add explanations. What should I do, Professor? Should I go on?”

“As long as we're here, you might as well. You say the story was published in a religious magazine in the 1940s?”

“Semireligious.” His “research assistant” wanted to be precise. “But it's always like that. If a story has the right ending, it can be about anything.”

Rivlin smiled with pleasure at her insight. Samaher, encouraged, whisked her ponytail around from her neck to her throat.

“So now she's his mistress.” She took out an index card and glanced at it. “It's called a
maîtresse.
That's the French word. It's the one used in the story, maybe to avoid offending readers. Colette doesn't like the
idea that her father has two wives, a French one who talks normally and a Muslim one who talks sign language. But at least she has the Berber woman's child, who's like a little brother to her. She takes him with her everywhere, even to visit friends on the nearby French farms. And it's the beginning of the century, and the latest dance craze is the cancan, and they bring this teacher from Paris to give them lessons.”