The Liberated Bride (49 page)

W
INTER CAME EARLY,
prolifically. After two years of little rain there were no complaints about the torrential storms and gale-force winds, only about the unpreparedness for them—especially in Tel Aviv, where streets were so flooded that they looked, at least on television, like the canals of Venice, without their gondolas and lovers. Meanwhile, the official opening of the Khalil es-Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah was postponed by a month and rescheduled for Christmas, which coincided with Hanukkah that year. The abbess of the Greek Orthodox convent in Baalbek had not considered a poetry contest, or even a fifty-year-old United Nations resolution to partition Palestine
between two headstrong peoples, sufficient reason to send his singing nun to Ramallah and had preferred to wait for the holiday season to cast its religious aura over the event.

That Saturday morning it rained so hard that Rivlin, anticipating crawling back underneath the big quilt for an afternoon nap, did not bother to make the bed. Now, to the cozy patter of the rain and the shriek of the wind, he lay wondering whether the Palestinians of Ramallah deserved to be visited in such weather.

“I've seen enough real Arabs in the last few months,” he grumbled to his wife. “From now on I'd rather meet them on my computer screen.”

The judge, who had been looking forward to the event with keen curiosity, refused to hear of this.

“You've lost all joie de vivre,” she accused the big gray head sticking out from the quilt. “Life with you is becoming unbearable. You're so busy controlling everyone that you can't enjoy yourself anymore. You can't even sit through a movie. At night you can't wait to go to bed, and in the morning you can't wait to get up and start eating your heart out again. I'm not calling off a trip we've been planning for so long. And you promised Carlo and Hannah that we'd take them with us.”

“They'll just change their minds in the end anyway. They'll be afraid to go to Ramallah at night.”

“But what is there to be afraid of if that Arab of yours . . .”

“Rashid.”

“If Rashid takes us and brings us back, the way he took you to Jenin. What's the problem? Why are you backing out?”

“That festival can go on all night.”

“Let it. I'm off from work tomorrow. We can return to Haifa in the morning. I need to get out into the world and see some new faces.”

“In Ramallah?”

“What's wrong with that? Do you have a better suggestion? There's sure to be good food, just as there was at that village wedding that I enjoyed so much. And this isn't a wedding, so you don't have to envy anyone. Besides, I want to see that nun you were so wild about . . .”

“Don't exaggerate. I wasn't so wild about her.”

“What does it matter? Live! Experience! Lately you've been pure gloom. Every day you're nursing some new injury.”

“What are you talking about?”

“About that young lecturer who attacked your theories a bit. You were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Every fly on the wall puts you in a panic.”

“In the first place, he didn't attack them a bit. He attacked them a lot. And secondly, he's no fly on the wall . . .”

“So he's not a fly. He's a screwed-up young man who wants to be original at any cost. I knew what he was up to when I saw him at that wedding in the Galilee. It was enough to see how he put down his wife.”

Rivlin smiled with satisfaction, rubbing his feet under the blanket. His mood brightened. In the west, a patch of blue sky was showing through the rain. His love for his wife, who now lay down beside him, welled within him. “All right,” he said. “But on two conditions. You know the first. And the second is that we leave early and get to Jerusalem in daylight.”

You couldn't exactly call it daylight. The wet city, when they arrived, was struggling with a premature darkness brought on by the storm, contravening the laws of nature by being darker in the west than in the east. As it was too early to rouse the Tedeschis from their Sabbath nap, Hagit suggested driving to the Agnon House to see whether it was really closed on Saturdays.

It was indeed, and looked gray and unwelcoming with its little window bars. Rivlin had no intention of following the trail of the tattooed widow into the dismal yard. The hometown of any famous French or German author, he thought, would do better by its native son.

He put his arm around Hagit and steered her down the little street for a view of the tail end of sunlight that was wriggling between the desert's pinkish curves. He didn't know whether he felt more glad or alarmed when she said unexpectedly, with one of her wise looks:

“All right. As long as we've come this far, I'm ready to take a look at the happiest memory of your life.”

“Now? Are you sure?”

“We won't enter the hotel. We'll just have a look at the garden.”

“Then let's walk.”

“It's not too far?”

Even though the rain was more illusory than real, they shared a black umbrella. Arm in arm, they headed up the wet street toward the hotel, which had not yet switched on its lights, cut through the parking lot, and quietly entered the murky garden from the rear. Rivlin took a wary route through the bushes, apprehensive of encountering the tall proprietress. He had to hand it to Hagit: although she had not been in this place for years, she spotted the gazebo at once and went right to it. True, she did not notice that it had been moved from its old location by the swimming pool. But even if it was not her happiest memory, there was no denying that the night of her son's wedding had been a joyous one. Little wonder that she gripped her husband's arm tightly as he led her on a tour of the wet, fragrant garden.

The large glass door of the hotel swung open. Rivlin's heart beat faster as he saw a tall, thin figure appear in the rectangle of light, from which it looked out at the dark garden before vanishing. All at once, the little lanterns along the garden paths lit up. A young maintenance worker came out to remove the table umbrellas before it could storm some more. Although he did not wish to call attention to himself, Rivlin could not resist asking if Fu'ad was around. No, the maintenance worker said. He had taken a few days off for some festival.

“A festival?” Rivlin asked. “In Abu-Ghosh?”

No, not in Abu-Ghosh. If it were in Abu-Ghosh, the maintenance worker would be going to it too.

A
T THE
T
EDESCHIS',
whose little street ran down from the president's house in a small but perfect question mark, he soon confirmed how well he knew his old mentor. The doyen of Orientalists had indeed decided to dispense with the trip to Ramallah on so stormy a winter night.

“At least you didn't run to the emergency room,” Rivlin joked, slapping his old doctoral adviser warmly on the back. In response, Tedeschi demonstrated his resolve by putting on his bathrobe and exchanging his
shoes for a pair of slippers. “
Eyri fik,
”
^*
he said, laughing gaily at the juicy Arabic curse. His old red sweater, showing through his open bathrobe, gave him a puckish look. “
Eymta bakun hatyar hasab fikrak hatta t'sadkini fi amradi?
”
^†
he complained.

Hagit, who could sometimes guess what simple Arabic sentences meant, was up in arms. “What is this? We were so looking forward to spending the evening with you. What's Ramallah after Tierra del Fuego? It's just a suburb of Jerusalem.”

“And crossing the border, Your Honor, once in each direction, is nothing to you?”

“Don't worry,” Rivlin said. “We have an Arab-Israeli driver who cuts through borders like a knife through butter.”

“That makes it sound even more frightening.”

“But why?” Hagit asked petulantly. “What kind of Orientalist are you, Carlo? Don't you ever feel a professional need to meet real, live Arabs?”

“Reality is what I write on,” Tedeschi said affably, pointing to his computer, on whose screen saver little comic-book figures were cavorting. “Real-life Arabs, let alone real-life Jews, make me too dizzy to think straight.”

“Leave him alone,” the translatoress of Ignorance said morosely. “He's embarrassed to tell you that he's been up these past few nights with chest pains.”

“That's because he gets no fresh air,” Hagit said doggedly. “I'm telling you, Carlo, I won't take no for an answer. Come on! Don't be afraid. Do you remember that trip we took together to Turkey twenty years ago, and what a good time we had? Come! It's not like you to be such a party pooper. Let's have a good time with the Arabs like the one we had with the Turks. When will we get another chance? It's a poetry and music festival. No politics and no speeches. There's sure to be good food. And there'll be a Lebanese singer, some sort of nun, who got Yochi so excited last summer that he had all kinds of new ideas . . .”

“New ideas?” The Jerusalem polymath perked up. “What ideas?”

Hagit, however, stuck to the subject.

“Never mind, Carlo. Not now. Don't be such a professor. Come with us. We'll have a good time. I promise to look after you. I'll stay by your side, fair enough?”

Her eyes shone. Her cheeks were ruddy from the heated apartment. Rivlin, smitten anew by her, marveled at the youthfulness of this woman of over fifty, whose short sheepskin coat left her shapely legs uncovered. Tedeschi, flustered, rose and hugged her.

“But really, my dear, what do you need me for? I'll just begin to cough and spoil the evening. Where will you find me an emergency room in Ramallah?”

“Then at least let your wife go.” The judge gave up on the stubborn old man. “Let her come with us.”

“Hannah?” Tedeschi chuckled at the thought and winked at his wife, who was sitting quietly by the lamp. “I don't believe she's at all eager to go to Ramallah tonight. She's a bit under the weather herself . . .”

Once again the Haifa Orientalist felt his heart go out to the lovely student of former days, made old and worn before her time by an eccentric husband, so that she now stood in an old bathrobe, her hair that needed dyeing straggling onto her shoulders, ready for bed before the night had begun. He felt driven to join his wife's attack on his old mentor, who was already by his computer, running his fingers absent-mindedly over the keyboard.

“Listen, Carlo. She's coming with us. Why shouldn't she? If you don't want to live yourself, then don't—but at least let live. Stop being such a killjoy. You can't keep her chained to your depressions.”

“My depressions?” Tedeschi was startled by the unexpected salvo. “When do you remember me being depressed?”

“So it's not your depressions. It's your hypochondria. Or just your gloom.” He could hear himself speaking with Hagit's voice. “Let there be some enjoyment in life. Give Hannah her freedom. Don't you think she deserves a rest from you?”

The Jerusalem polymath did not reply. Half fearfully and half ironically, he pulled out a crumpled white handkerchief from his bathrobe pocket, waved it like a flag of surrender with an absurdly dramatic gesture, and made a bow.

The translatoress struggled to make up her mind. She was still torn between wanting, even longing, to get out of the house, and worry for her husband—who, having dismissed the comic-book figures with a tap of his finger, was already seated at his computer—when there was a quiet knock on the door. It was the sable-skinned messenger of many devices, come with a stocking cap on his head to transport his Jews to the festival.

I
N THE COLD,
dark minibus, Rivlin made out at once the coal black eyes of a small boy, who was sitting beside a woman in an old fur-collared winter coat. It was the same coat that had hung for years in their own closet because Hagit had not wanted to part with it. Amused and alarmed, he glanced at his wife to see if she recognized it on the shoulders of Rashid's sister. But the judge was busy talking to the translatoress—who, distraught over her sudden separation from her husband, had barely managed to clamber into the vehicle, where she now sat squeezed in the middle row, next to Rivlin.

He waited for the minibus to start moving before introducing Ra'uda to the two women. Though she was married to a West Bank Palestinian, he explained, she was still an Israeli of sorts and could even quote the poetry of Bialik. Rashid's sister responded with a despairing laugh while Rivlin turned around to pat her son's head. The boy did not flinch and even took off his cap and offered his head, like a pet dog.

Only then did Rivlin notice, huddled in the back on a jump seat that had been folded on the trip to Jenin, a pale young woman in a thick woolen shawl. Next to her, larger and darker than his brother, sat Rasheed. He was holding the horn-rimmed glasses meant to convince the Israeli border guards that he was his uncle's natural son.

“Why, it's Samaher!” Rivlin cried excitedly. “Samaher, this is my wife. You must remember her from your wedding.”

His still-ungraded M.A. student gave him a frail and poignant smile. “Who could forget your wife, Professor?” she whispered hoarsely, nodding to Hagit. “Never . . .”

The minibus turned right on Gaza Road, passed Terra Sancta, and headed for East Jerusalem, skirting the walls of the Old City—which on this wintry Saturday night were illuminated only symbolically, as if in discharge of a formal obligation. The rain came down harder as Rashid drove through the Arab half of town. “Don't forget to stop in Pisgat Ze'ev,” Rivlin reminded him. “I'll direct you.” But Rashid, having rehearsed the route earlier that day, needed no directions, leaving Rivlin free to turn around and chat with his “research assistant.” Her answers to his questions, though laconic, were to the point.

They reached Pisgat Ze'ev in northern Jerusalem. There, in the yellowish glare of the headlights, flagging them down at the bus stop where they had agreed to meet him—the same stop from which the murdered scholar had gone to his death—was Mr. Suissa in his gray fedora. With him was the murdered scholar's wife.

“I hope it's all right,” Suissa said to Rivlin, who reddened at the sight of the young widow. “She didn't want me to go by myself. Do you have room for her?”

“Of course we do,” Rashid said, jumping happily out of the car. No one even had to move. He went to the back, opened the rear door, and squeezed the widow in beside Samaher.

They drove on to the Palestinian Authority. Although a black, overcast sky hid the first three stars that ended the Sabbath, these were surely glittering somewhere above the clouds—in token of which, despite the heavy rain, the streets filled with cars as the Jews of Jerusalem, exhausted by their day of rest, emerged to see what had changed in the world while they slept. At Atarot Junction the traffic lights were rattling in the wind, which soon turned to a howling gale. In the foggy darkness, with nothing around them but dim buildings and empty lots, it wasn't clear whether they were heading in the right direction. But gradually the billboards changed from Hebrew to Arabic, and they saw that the border was close. In the end, they flew across it. The soldiers on the Israeli side, warming themselves around a campfire, showed no interest in the passengers bound for food and entertainment, while two gun-toting policemen on the Palestinian side were so eager to help that, although unaware of any festival, they
piled with their weapons into the minibus, now equally full of Arabs and Jews, and guided it to the Ramallah police station.

In the stone building of the police station, the festival was better known. There were even name tags for the guests from Israel. Rivlin was told to climb some stairs to the second floor. There, in a large room whose long, curtained windows made it look like a cross between an office and a salon, sat a corpulent police officer decorated like a Russian general and surrounded by men, civilians or plainclothesmen, who made the Orientalist feel rather nervous. Taking some plastic tags from a drawer, the officer inscribed them with the names of the Israeli entourage and stamped each with a bloodred stamp.

There was a timid knock on the door. In walked a bewildered-looking Hannah Tedeschi, her thick glasses halfway down her nose. Drawn magnetically by her anxiety to the telephone on the officer's desk, she inquired in quaint seventh-century Arabic whether she could call her husband in Jerusalem. Rivlin, putting a hand on her shoulder to calm her, hurried to translate her speech into something more modern, while introducing her, complete with all her academic titles, to the astonished gathering.

“Be my guest, Madame Doctor. It's an honor.” The fat officer sat up, reached for the phone, and poised a long-nailed finger on the dial.

It took many rings to get the doyen of Orientalists to answer his wife's call. While the officer and the plainclothesmen listened at one end to the shaky voice of the translatoress, the old professor at the other end was deliberately cool. He answered Hannah's questions brusquely, was vague and uninformative, and soon hung up. As though reluctant to part with it, she slowly handed the receiver back to the fat officer and took out her purse to pay for the call.

“
La, walla la, ya madam, la!
”
^*
the Palestinians cried at once, commiserating with the strange Jewess. “Don't insult us. What's a telephone call to Jerusalem? Nothing. You can call all you like . . . even to America . . . to Japan . . . a
kul hal, b'nidfa'sh el-hasab l'isra'il.
”
^†

There was a sense of merriment in the room. When they left it, properly name-tagged (Rashid must have told someone he had important passengers), a jeep with a machine gunner was waiting to escort them. The rain had tapered off to a thin drizzle. They traveled in a little convoy through the streets of the brightly lit Palestinian city. At the new Khalil el-Sakakini Cultural Center, teenagers holding torches directed them to a nearly full parking lot. If last summer he had crossed the border as a one-man show, Rivlin thought, he was now heading a multinational, multisexual, and multigenerational delegation. He took care to keep his five women together as they climbed out of the minibus, while saying some encouraging words to Mr. Suissa, who had sat in the car looking tense. Meanwhile, Rashid handed each of his nephews a small carton and disappeared with them around the back of the building.

They climbed some stairs to the aristocratically arched stone entrance of the Cultural Center, which looked like a wealthy private mansion. There to greet them was the festival's director, Nazim Ibn-Zaidoun, an energetic, gap-toothed, baby-faced man who in his old leather coat, Rivlin thought, resembled a trade union official. Ibn-Zaidoun shook hands briskly with the Israelis, introduced them to the British judge of the poetry contest, who towered over him like a thoroughbred horse, and urged them to help themselves to refreshments on the second floor. Tonight's festival, he assured them, was meant for body and mind alike.