The Liberated Bride (64 page)

“More or less. It was addressed to my father. Something like, ‘Despite
the separation imposed on us, the memory of you still shines with light and generosity. We feel a keen and vivid sorrow at your death.'”

“He really wrote that? Light and generosity? How strange . . .”

“Why?” Galya protested. “Despite all that happened, you can't deny, Ofer, that it was that which attracted you to him, too. But my father wasn't Fu'ad's problem any more. Your father was. And at the same time, Fu'ad liked him. You see, your father sensed right away that he was the weak point in the protective wall around me. At first Fu'ad watched from a distance while your father questioned me twice. You tell me: What good would it have done to tell him about your crazy fantasy and what I thought of it? Would he have felt any better? Would it have helped him to make you less stuck? Believe me, I knew about that too and felt bad for you. I still do. But I wouldn't let him corner me, not even when he absurdly tried playing on my feelings for you. I did agree to answer your letter, so as not to frustrate him completely. I even answered your second one, though both were as nasty as they were anguished.

“Your father wouldn't give up. He came to the hotel a third time, when I wasn't there. And now he began a relationship with Tili, who makes friends easily, especially with older men. It was she, by the way, who sent him to sleep in the basement. To this day I have no idea what she knows or suspects about us, because I don't know whether she noticed you that day. Perhaps my father managed to hide it from her too. I was afraid to ask. It was easier, after talking to Fu'ad, to get up and run away.”

“But what made him confess in the end? Was it my father?”

“No.” Galya felt a new fountain of emotion welling up in her. “It wasn't your father, although it did have to do with him. Your father could have kept haunting the hotel forever and Fu'ad still wouldn't have talked. All the Arab-speaking professors and Orientalists in the world couldn't have wormed that secret out of him, because even though he lost his pay raise when my father died, he hoped his keeping silent would be chalked up to his credit. No, Ofer, what made him tell the truth was another Arab, one he met through your father. That's when he cracked . . . I mean, opened up. . . .”

“Another Arab?”

“Rashid or Rasheed. Have you heard of him?”

“No.”

“Neither had I. But he made a big impression on Fu'ad. He's some kind of driver or guide your father employed. The haunt of the haunt, you might say. It was because of him that Fu'ad decided to discard what he called ‘my veneer of being nice.'”

Ofer winced. “Is that what he says it was? Just a veneer?”

“I'm sure it was more than that. He just said it because he was desperate and wanted to provoke me. I've known him since I was a child. It's not a veneer, it's his true self. He's become cynical now because the promise my father made him is dead and buried. Tili isn't looking for partners. She'd go to bed with him before she'd go into business with him.”

“But what did that other Arab have to do with it?”

“It started when he and your father talked Fu'ad into going to some poetry and music festival in Ramallah. Those Palestinians would like to be partners, too—in our country. Their own Palestinian Authority isn't enough for them. They can sing all the love songs they want, but in the end they'd like to pick us apart. Anyway, Fu'ad said it made him realize that working for Jews was getting him nowhere. And so he decided to take his severance pay and go back to his wife's figs and olives. Why be loyal to a dead man to protect a family from the truth that's making someone else suffer?”

“Me.” Ofer shivered.

“You, Ofer, you. You see, I'm not the only one who kept thinking about you. So did Fu'ad. That Rashid reminded him of you. Not the way he looked, but the way he was. Fu'ad says he, too, has an old love he won't let die. He's a displaced, restless soul. Fu'ad feels sorry for both of you, the way he did when he found you crying by the hotel. Only now he's wised up. He knows that all the poetry of love doesn't mean anything. It won't help Rashid, and it won't help you. I'm the only partner Fu'ad has left. He thinks we should leave the hotel together. Three days ago he took me to that gazebo in the garden and told me everything. I started to shake. ‘Go ahead,' he said. ‘You have to ask forgiveness to cleanse the baby that should have been his . . .'”

“M
INE?
” E
NCHANTED,
O
FER TURNED
to his ex-wife, clinging to their lost love. “So?” he asked. “You didn't bring me here from Paris just to tell me how Fu'ad scared you, did you?”

She raised her soft, weary eyes to him. “Perhaps,” she said discouragingly.

On the lit terrace across the street, an old woman was carefully spreading a cloth on a card table to prepare it for the next day's game of solitaire. He remembered his grandmother's insistence that he ask Hendel for forgiveness. And he had done it. Now it was being asked of him.

He hesitated, then switched on the lamp on his father's desk. Casually, his hand brushed the shoulder of the women carrying the child that should have been his. Her confession done with, her face was tranquil and calm. Did she feel sorry? Had she acted out of love or only from pure calculation?

“Would you like to eat or drink?” he asked.

“Just a glass of water, please.”

“That's all?”

“Yes.”

He left the study and shut the door behind him, as if to keep her for himself a little longer. The outside world, temporarily erased from consciousness, regained its reality. His parents' duplex was dark and quiet. For a moment, he thought they had gone out. But no, they were in the living room, waiting quietly. Changing course, he went not to the kitchen but to their bedroom, where he found a plastic cup and filled it from the faucet in the sink. He drank, refilled the cup, and returned with it to the study. Galya sipped from it and put it down by the keyboard of the computer.

“You're not cold?”

“No.” For the first time, she smiled at him. “My baby keeps me warm.”

Why, he wondered, smarting, did she have to say “My”? Unless he breathed some life into the embers of intimacy that had begun to
glow again, they would soon go out forever. He wanted to get her back onto the couch, to sit beside her and feel her body. He would have given anything for the kisses and caresses of which the truth had deprived him. But she was too ensconced in his father's chair to be moved—all but her white-stockinged feet, which dangled in the air.

“Can't you at least feel some hate for your father now,” he asked, “for wrecking our love and marriage to save himself?”

“He was saving me too. I would never have survived your truth.”

“There you go again! If it was
my
truth, what are you asking forgiveness for?”

“I can't judge him.”

“But why can't you, damn it?”

“Because I pity him. I don't believe he wanted sex with her. He just couldn't get out of it.”

“But what do you know about it?” He felt like weeping. “How can you say that? How can you defend a man who was so brutal to me? I never even told you that I met him one last time after our separation. I begged him in your very words. I said, ‘I can't judge, I won't breathe a word of this. Just let me stay with Galya and your family.'”

“You did that after our separation?”

“Yes. I begged for my life. And he cynically blamed his betrayal on me.”

“No, Ofer. You're wrong about that. He simply felt that your promises meant nothing. That you only made them because you confused the hotel with me. He didn't believe your love would last. And he was right . . .”

“But how can you say that? How can you even think it when you see me so torn up, stuck for years in my blind loyalty to you? I walk the streets of Paris without even noticing all the beautiful women around me. All I see is the curve of your breast, the sole of one of your feet . . .”

“That's just because you're far away. If we had stayed together, your love would have died. You can't accept the cruel, sick complexity of this world. You fight it all the time. Your hatred and envy of my father would have driven you crazy and poisoned us both.”

“But your father is gone now. Why not come back to me?”

“Because the memory will haunt us. We'll never forget that you, too, were implicated. That's why you went poking in that basement, even though you were warned not to. There's nothing to regret. Our love was used up. You're just talking yourself into something.”

“Don't you dare say that!” He jumped to his feet, pacing the room like a trapped animal unreconciled to its loss of freedom. “
I'm
talking myself into something? I, who go on paying the price for my loyalty and hope? What is it that you want? If I got down on my knees, would you believe me? You say you've come to ask forgiveness, but what does that mean? I kept my promise. I never said a word. Now give me some hope that you'll come back to me, if not now, then some day . . . with your child that should have been mine . . .”

“I can't. Watch it . . .”

“The cup is leaking.”

“No, it isn't. That's not where the water is coming from. You'd better call your mother. She'll know what to do. . . .”

T
HREE HOURS HAD PASSED
and still the Rivlins didn't know to which hospital Ofer had taken his ex-wife or what was happening there. It was almost midnight. The French Carmel was quiet. The big searchlight in the navy base at Stella Maris shone with bright purpose in the thickening murk. Hagit undressed, got into bed, and switched on the TV. But the curly-headed newscaster whose smiles sweetened the hideous headlines was not on tonight, and she soon switched it off again.

“Come to bed,” she told her husband tenderly. “Walking up and down all night won't make that baby get born any quicker.”

“But suppose Ofer needs us?”

“At the delivery of another man's wife? You're too much! Come on, take off your clothes. You've had a hard day. And whatever happens, you'll have to take him to the airport tomorrow.”

“But shouldn't we at least find out what hospital they're in? Suppose her mother or sister want to know. And where in the world did that husband of hers disappear to?”

“If he's not worried about her, you can relax too. You're not part of this birth.”

“Why not?”

She raised her head from the pillow to regard him with amazement. Her hair disarrayed, her face wild with anger, she had lost her last shred of patience.

“Because you aren't! You'll wait for Ofer to get in touch—if he does. And you'll let him live out this day, and his meeting with Galya, and whatever is happening right now as he pleases.”

“Of course. Naturally.”

“Promise me you'll stay out of it from now on.”

“I promise.”

“Swear you won't phone or go looking for anyone while I'm asleep.”

“All right. All right. . . .”

“No, it's not all right. Swear!”

“I swear.”

She smiled. “And now get into bed. You'll sleep better for having sworn.”

He undressed and got into bed, turning out the light and snuggling up to her. But the more regular her breathing grew as it carried her surely off to sleep, the more awake he became. His excitement getting the better of him, he disengaged himself and rose. Sleeping pills were out of the question on a night like this.

He entered his study apprehensively, as if the amniotic sac that had burst a few hours before might still be dripping. Hagit, with unusual alacrity, had mopped it up before he could get a look at it. Now, though, in the light of the desk lamp, he saw that his chair was still damp. Overcoming his qualms, he bent to sniff it. The stains had a slight, soapy scent. With a shiver of revulsion, he noticed what looked like bits of white, nearly colorless matter.

Galya had left her overnight bag on the couch. It was open. In it, beside her toilet articles and a book, were rolled her wet dress and underpants. He closed the bag and put it on the floor. Then, covering the chair with a sheet she had slept on as one covers the mirrors in a dead man's house, he sat down, switched on his computer, loaded a chapter of
his book onto the screen, and set to work on it. He was getting closer, he thought, to the crux of things that he had been groping for since the spring. Though still not out of the woods, he felt confident that he was onto something real. Yet he wondered if he would ever find out what it was, or if he would remain like a faithful courier with no idea of the message he carried.

True to his pledge to Hagit, he waited to hear from Ofer. One might have thought his son could pick up a telephone and tell his parents, “Galya had the baby.” Or, “We're still waiting.” Or how the delivery was proceeding, or whether Jerusalem had been informed, or if Tehila and Bo'az were on their way. Or, at the very least, “I'll be home soon,” or “I'm staying at the hospital,” or “Go to sleep, Abba,” or “Wait up for me.” Hagit was asleep. He could easily phone every hospital in town and find out. But he had sworn not to.

The editing went well. He worked on the chapter and made such progress that he was almost up to the next one. It was nearly two o'clock. For a moment he imagined that Ofer and Galya would soon come home from a disco, as in those distant days before the wedding.

It took him a while to realize that the tapping on the front door was not imaginary. He hurried downstairs. Through the frosted glass he made out a blurry figure. It was Tehila, standing in the darkness. As though continuing a conversation, she remarked, without saying hello:

“Tell me, am I wrong or did you once live somewhere else, in a fantastic wadi all your own?”

“We moved,” Rivlin said. She had hennaed her cropped hair, increasing her pallor.

“I'm told Galya made quite a scene.” She gave him a mischievous look as he stood there, blocking her way. “Listen, I'm sorry it's so late, but she asked me to get her bag.”

“But what's happening? Has she given birth?”

“There's still time, I suppose,” Tehila said, with the nonchalance of an old maid who knows nothing about such matters. “The nurse in the delivery room says she's still not dilated. Bo'az wants to take her back to Jerusalem. We came in the hotel's tourist van, and there's plenty of room for her to lie down. It will be better for everyone.”

“But where is she now?”

“Not far from here, at Carmel Hospital. It's nice and clean and she can give birth with a view of the sea. But we have a room reserved for her at Hadassah on Mount Scopus. She'll have to make do with a desert view there, but at least it's the one she grew up with.”

“Who told you she was at Carmel?”

“Ofer. It was his decision to call us, because I think Galya would have been perfectly happy giving birth first and telling us later. But he didn't want the responsibility, so he left us a message, and we came running. Just imagine, we even brought my mother!”

“How is Ofer?”

“He's his usual excited, discombobulated self. And very sad-looking. Just see what you've done, Professor. Instead of liberating him as you planned, you and your Arabs have only complicated things. Now he has not only her but her baby to be attached to. Believe me, I still don't get why she had to make him come all the way from Paris. A nice letter would have been simpler and cheaper. But never mind. It's her right. It's even her right to buy him an expensive ticket and charge it to the hotel. As long as you're happy . . .”

“Me?” Rivlin mumbled. “Happy? I haven't the vaguest idea what it's all about.”

She smiled brightly, satisfied with herself as always. “By the way,” she added familiarly, “if your wife is awake, I'd love to say hello to her.”

“She isn't,” he said, horrified by the thought. He had to get rid of Tehila. “Wait here and I'll bring you the bag,” he told her.

Yet no sooner had he left his post at the door than she was in the house. Nor did she wait for him in the living room, but instead followed him upstairs, as if he were showing her to a room in a hotel. He had to wheel and turn back when, respecting no bounds, she stopped by the open door of his bedroom to look at his wife—who, curled fetally in a tangle of sheets and blankets, was sleeping peacefully. Shutting the door angrily, he pulled her after him to his study, where she inspected the bookshelves, desk, and couch before reaching down wearily to take her sister's bag and return with it to the bottom floor.

He didn't invite her to sit. She asked for a glass of water, drank half of it, and left, clearly loath to depart.

What was he to make of it all? Although he felt calmer knowing that Galya's family was with her, he was still in the dark.

There was nothing to do but wait for Ofer. No longer in the mood to work at his computer, he sank onto the couch facing the TV and watched, with drowsy disinterest and the sound turned off, an old black-and-white thriller.

At four-thirty there was still no sign of Ofer. Had Galya stayed in Haifa to give birth? Or had they all gone back to Jerusalem together? It was a bad business either way. He went to the bedroom, determined to ask Hagit to absolve him of his pledge not to make phone calls. Although sound asleep, she so logically confuted the case he tried to make that he crawled into bed and dozed off beside her.

H
E HAD HARDLY
—or so it seemed to him—plunged to the depths of sleep when he was dredged up from them again. His wife and son, both fully dressed, were standing by the bed.

“Go back to sleep,” Hagit said. “Everything is fine. Ofer just wanted to say good-bye. He's promised to return this summer, perhaps for good. I'll take him to the airport. Don't worry.”

Rivlin roused himself. This was no way to say good-bye.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did she give birth?”

“No,” Hagit answered. “She still has time. They took her back to Jerusalem. Now say good-bye to your son and go to sleep. We don't want to be late.”

But he wasn't about to miss the ride to the airport. “You can't leave me here by myself,” he implored them. “Take me with you. I promise not to be a backseat driver.”

They couldn't say no. Unwashed and unshaven, in a polo shirt and old jacket, he heaved himself like an empty sack into the rear seat. Ofer, his eyes shut and his head thrown back at an odd angle, sat next to Hagit, who gripped the wheel tensely. The traffic, although heavy despite the early hour, moved at a good clip. Rivlin, dead to the world, did not wake up until they arrived at the airport.

After Ofer had checked in, they went for coffee at a small, noisy corner counter.

Father and son, both groggy from their brief but deep sleep, regarded each other with wonder and suspicion, like two lawyers faced with summing up a case that had been thought to be interminable. Rivlin gulped some coffee, not knowing whether his son was as sad as he looked or merely tired and pensive.

“And so in the end,” he said, a note of resignation in his voice, “you're leaving us without a clue to what happened or why anyone had to be forgiven.”

“That's right,” Ofer replied. He gave his father a faint smile, the first in recent memory. “Although you did your best to wreak havoc, you'll have to go on guessing, because you'll never know or understand more than you do now.”

Hagit shifted her glance from one to the other, afraid of a last-minute row.

“But why?” Rivlin asked with bitter fatigue, refusing to accept defeat. “Why can't we know? Is it only because you still believe she'll come back to you?”

Ofer said nothing, avoiding his mother's pitying eyes.

Rivlin threw caution to the winds. “You'll be worse off than ever,” he declared.

The judge squeezed her husband's thigh like an iron vise.

“No, I won't,” Ofer answered serenely. He looked, Rivlin thought, less sad than lonely.

“Why not?”

“Because even if I'm still tied to her in my thoughts, and maybe in my feelings, I'm morally a free man. And that, Abba, is all you should care about.”

He swallowed the rest of his coffee, got to his feet, hugged and kissed his father, and disappeared through the departures gate.