The Liberated Bride (9 page)

H
E WAS STILL
prying open with a finger the shiny eyes of his sister's granddaughter's doll when a plate of golden fritters, their crisp warmth enclosing little slabs of fried cheese, was set before him. It never ceased to amaze him how, despite his sister's indefatigable and never ending hatred of their mother, she continued to make all her dishes, as if determined to demonstrate how simple and even improvable they were. It wasn't easy for him to resist an improved taste of his childhood. In the end he had to plead with her—just as he had pleaded with his mother in her day—to stop plying him with more fritters and to wrap them in aluminum foil for his sister-in-law, who was by now probably circling overhead.

As he had feared, however, it was half past eight before, weary and exhausted, he was able to hold yet another woman in his arms—the fifth of the day by his count, although without a doubt the prime mover of the five. He embraced her gingerly, knowing that her youthful-looking body, which, after a single miscarriage, had borne no children, was thin and fragile at the age of sixty. Five years his wife's senior and a year older than himself, she stiffened self-protectively in the innocent embrace of a devoted brother-in-law who had spent the day on his way to the airport to welcome her.

Ofra herself had been en route from British Columbia for thirty hours. Yet her small, delicate face, rather than showing signs of tiredness, was lit by a spiritual elation only further refined by the six-hour delay for repairs in Dublin. She and her husband, Yo'el, who worked for the United Nations as a consultant on the agricultural economies of developing countries, were not only frequent flyers who had accumulated zillions of points with four different airlines, but also conscientious travelers who loved wandering through the duty-free shops of the world, the details of which they studied as intensely as if they were back in the Zionist youth movement, in which they had met in Tel Aviv, memorizing the clues of a treasure hunt.

What was the point of commiserating with an abused traveler who had enjoyed every minute of the flight and even managed to catch two or three catnaps that, however brief, more than rid her of her jet
lag? And so without further ado they set out on the road to Haifa, over which the spring night had scattered its scents and lights, while he told her the latest news of his family, but especially of the young Army Intelligence officer, her favorite (if only because he was named for her father).

“Yo'el and I worry about him each time there's an incident in Lebanon,” she said.

“It's not him you need worry about,” Rivlin rebuked her, as if annoyed that the two Israeli émigrés didn't convey their concern over the situation in Lebanon to a more appropriate address. “I've explained to you several times that he's at a well-guarded base in the Galilee. If this entire country were to go up in smoke, he'd be the last to be affected. He wouldn't even hear the screams.”

Ofra didn't crack a smile. Like her sister, she disapproved of fantasies of violence, even ones designed solely to illustrate how safe her nephew was. She and her husband, though gone from Israel for over thirty years, still considered themselves temporary absentees entitled to demand of those who had remained behind that they take good care of the country.

“I still don't understand what he does there.”

“You can't get anything out of him. If you ask me, he's listening to the radio communications of Syrian pilots. Maybe they'll tell us what's going to happen in the Middle East.”

“All in Arabic?”

“Unfortunately, that's the language the Syrians use.”

“He knows it that well?”

“Well enough to know he's hearing it. And also, I hope, to understand it.”

“You wait and see, Yochi. He'll end up an Arabist like his father.”

“What for? So that he can be driven to despair? Who needs it?”

She dropped her eyes without answering. “Despair,” as his brother-in-law Yo'el told them candidly, was a taboo word at the conferences on developing economies, which were held in the most hopeless of deteriorating countries, that he regularly attended in the loyal company of his wife.

Rivlin switched on the radio. Perhaps a brief exposure to the hourly news bulletin would help acclimatize his passenger to the homeland she hadn't been in for three years. In fact, he doubted whether she would have come now, had it not been for a wedding in Yo'el's family. The two of them were inseparable. If he, for his part, took her along with him into his conference rooms as if she were an agricultural expert herself, she returned the compliment by letting him attend her sessions at the beauty parlor, where he sat reading a newspaper on a revolving chair by her side while giving advice to the hairdresser. Their mutual dependence was so great that he had taken to putting his driver's license and credit cards in her purse, leaving only a few coins in his pocket like a small boy's allowance. He had agreed with reluctance to Ofra's coming to Israel two weeks before him, during which time he would have to go around with his own wallet.

“It's a lucky thing,” Rivlin teased his sister-in-law good-naturedly, “that you people have an occasional wedding in this country. Otherwise we'd never see you at all. . . .”

Ofra acknowledged the justice of his reproach. And since he knew she was too tactful to mention Ofer's wedding festivities of six years ago, to which she and Yo'el had dedicated a month of their lives, he took the liberty of telling her about his former in-law's sudden death. Unlike Hagit, she took in stride his desire to revisit the original site of Ofer's botched marriage. She remembered it vividly and listened attentively to his descriptions of the new swimming pool, the refurbished garden, the bereaved ex-daughter-in-law, and her tall second husband with the ponytail.

He was tempted to relate his conversation with Galya. It might serve, he mused, as a trial balloon to gauge Hagit's probable reaction. But Ofra had already shut her eyes and was enjoying, between Zichron Ya'akov and Atlit, one final nap, as though on the last leg of her flight. He glanced at her slender sixty-year-old form. The years were embalming her as an eternal adolescent. He really should get up the courage someday, Rivlin thought as the lights of Haifa came into view, to ask Yo'el about their married life. Perhaps there were a few useful lessons in it for him.

T
HE APARTMENT HAD
even more sparkle now than in the morning. Brightly lit and adorned with flowers, it awaited the arrival of the guest who, having followed via floor plans and telephoned reports the tortuous drama of its construction, was now seeing it for the first time.

The two sisters threw their arms around each other. Happy tears mingled with sad ones. Rivlin deposited the cheese fritters on the food-laden table and went to bring Ofra's suitcases to his top-floor study, which had been further transformed in his absence. The big desk had been pushed to one side, the table lamp was replaced by a reading light, and a third pillow now graced the royal bed. Beside it lay folded a new woolen blanket from which the price tag had yet to be removed.

He proceeded to the bedroom, turning off two or three unnecessary lights on the way while grumbling about the lengths to which his wife was prepared to go in order to appease the critical eyes of visitors, even her own sister's. Without taking off his shoes he lay down on the bed, careful not to rumple the covers before his sister-in-law's tour of inspection was over.

He thought with a smile of Akri. At this very moment his skull-capped colleague was bending cautiously over Tedeschi's rotting feet to confirm the dark prognosis of the translator of Jahaliya poetry. He let his thoughts wander. Across them fell the shadow of the bereaved hotel.

What bizarre inner devil had driven him, in his quest for sympathy, to invent a fatal disease? Would this succeed in extracting his ex-daughter-in-law's secret? Yet perhaps she herself had no comprehension of what she had done.

One way or another, he would have to warn her to say nothing.

Gently and reasonably.

Had she believed him? Or had she thought he was hallucinating?

But hallucinations are an illness too.

Take the asthmatic Tedeschi in his oxygen mask. Or Samaher and her grandmother with the narghile.

Hagit would hit the ceiling.

How could he have sunk so low?

A trap. That was what it was. And his wife wanted them to wait patiently until their son-in-exile found someone else, even though the five years that had gone by had led to nothing. Ofer was at the end of his rope. He was nearly thirty-three. What good was patience? It wasn't time that freed you from traps. It was truth. And he would fight for it. Cunningly and untiringly.

He mustn't give up. Never mind the eternal judge below, whose ringing laughter was now calling him to come down and join them for supper.

“Don't you first want to show your sister the bedroom and the Jacuzzi?” he called down from above.

“Soon. There's no hurry. Let's have a bite first.”

She was in a good mood, wide awake from her long nap and her sister's arrival. Rivlin turned on his side to reflect on an ancient and unrealized ambition that thirty-five years of marriage had not quelled. He still hoped one day to persuade his wife to share a bubble bath with him.

It was midnight when they remembered him and went to look for him.

“So you conked out, eh?” laughed Hagit. “My poor darling . . . and with your shoes on, yet. You didn't even shower.”

He opened his eyes, feeling their radiant sisterly warmth.

“How do you like the apartment?” he asked his sister-in-law of the brightly jet-lagged cheeks.

“It's much nicer than I imagined from the floor plans.”

“Well, I paid for it with my mental faculties,” he said, not for the first time. “I've lost my power of concentration. While Hagit was having a fine time with her criminals in court, I was jousting over every brick, faucet, and electric socket with a crooked Jewish contractor and his wily Arab workmen.”

“At least it ended well,” Ofra said comfortingly.

“It wasn't as bad as all that,” Hagit added. “Go to sleep. You ran yourself ragged today with all your needless expeditions. And last
night,” she told her sister with satisfaction, “we went to an Arab wedding in the Galilee and came home late.”

“An Arab wedding?” marveled Ofra. “How come?”

He tried picturing Samaher's wedding. It seemed to have taken place, not a day, but a year ago.