The Liberated Bride (16 page)

H
ER HUSBAND'S LARGE
hands alone, in Ofra's opinion, could handle her fragile body without breaking it. Although they had been separated for only ten days, she and Yo'el clung to each other tightly, as if also embracing the children never born to them. It was a while before Yo'el turned to Hagit and gathered her, too, in his arms, after which he clapped Rivlin on the back and asked what was new in Algeria.

A spring dusk was descending when they reached Haifa. Gazing from their terrace at some trees bordered by two streets that ran down toward the sea, the distant gleam of which was invisible in the twilight, Yo'el—having been taken on a tour of the duplex by his now knowledgeable guide of a wife—acknowledged that the loss of their old wadi was not so grievous. Then, over bowls of grapes and cherries, the forgotten taste of which quickened the senses of the Israeli émigré, Rivlin decided that the time had come to relate the story of their moving.

“It's pure theory until you have to do it. You know, we lived in our old place for nearly thirty years. We thought we had some control, or at least some idea, about what went into it. A total illusion! Even the mover, who came to give us an estimate, turned out to be a wild optimist.

“The day before we packed was a Saturday in spring, just like now. We were sitting on our terrace overlooking the wadi, saying good-bye to our view of the sea. The apartment was still in one piece behind us. The pictures were still on the walls, the wineglasses were in the cupboard, the cheeses and the soft drinks and the containers of food were in the refrigerator, the books were on the shelves next to the photo albums—just the way it is now. Except, that is, for the sacks and the folded cartons, which were waiting in a corner for the packers to arrive the next day. Suddenly I had a mild attack of panic. ‘Hagit,' I said. ‘How can we be sitting here sitting here so calmly? Before the storm strikes, don't you think we should at least sort through what we're taking?' But in the immortal words of Oblomov in the Russian novel, ‘If there's work to be done, let someone else do it.' We went on sitting on the terrace.

“Early the next morning, we're drinking our coffee and reading the newspaper while listening to the birds in the wadi, not at all like two people whose lives are about to be turned upside down, when in walk two packers. They looked like two little ants, a dark woman of about thirty-five, a chain-smoker as thin as a match, and her scrawny twelve-year-old son, a boy with a black skullcap on a black head of hair. ‘How will just the two of you manage?' I asked. ‘Don't worry about us,' the woman says. ‘Just tell us where to start.'

“Well, they attacked the house like two locusts. A pair of zombies couldn't have gone around with less plan or method, stuffing everything into sacks the way they did. The boy flew everywhere without a sound. He was like some blind, wingless grub, grabbing one thing after another and filling sack after sack. Imagine, I'm shaving in the bathroom when he walks in after me and scoops up whatever he can, the toothbrushes, the shaving cream, my bifocals, everything. I barely managed to retrieve my glasses from his sack. We spent the first two weeks after moving trying to figure out into which of dozens of sacks and crates our lives had been thrown by those maniacs and sprinkled with the mother ant's cigarette ashes.

“But I'm getting ahead of myself. The next morning six Arab moving men show up with a big truck and a little Jewish driver. Our new apartment was so close by that I was sure we'd be done by the afternoon. Well, by the time the first truckload pulled out it already was the afternoon, and the apartment was as full as ever. And when evening came and a second big truckload left, we still hadn't made a dent in anything, I started to cringe every time I saw a moving man. Something, humanly, had gone wrong. I mean, naked we come into this world and naked we leave—what were we doing with so many things? Were they all to prove our existence or simply to maintain it?

“The movers, every one of whom we now knew by name, address, and individual moving style, were getting restless. Halfway between the two apartments, the Jewish driver, who had been declaring all day that he had never been given such a job in his life—four flights of stairs from the wadi to the street, and four more from the street to the duplex, and with ‘all those goddamn books'—threatened to quit on us. And when the new owner turned up with three workers with
hammers, who began knocking down the walls for his renovation while we were still moving out, I began to feel my whole life was a mistake. Luckily, Hagit took command at that point and calmed the mutiny with a smile and a pay raise. The extra money did wonders. By midnight the old apartment was empty, and the last truckload had arrived with that big bookcase over there. The only problem was that it didn't fit into the stairway and had to be hoisted onto the terrace with ropes and pulleys.

“It was now two
A.M.
I was standing on the terrace with the head mover, who was having a fine time giving orders how to maneuver a bookcase that no one could see in the darkness. You could only hear it lifting off the ground, gaining altitude, and banging into things as it rose. I was too happy we were finished to give a damn. I felt so grateful to the movers for not abandoning us in the middle that I said to them in Arabic, ‘You're fantastic! We could conquer the world between us. Let's draft you all into the Israeli army and march on Iraq.'”

“Iraq?”

“Iraq.”

“Why Iraq?”

“Why not? Search me. I was punch-drunk by then. That must have been when I began losing my faculties. Since then I've lost a little more of them every month trying to get this place into shape.”

“What did they say?”

“Who?”

“The Arab movers.”

“What should they have said? They were so glad to be done that they would have taken on Iran too. . . .”

A
S DARKNESS DESCENDED
, Yo'el fell merrily asleep in the middle of a sentence, and Hagit went hurriedly off to make a second bed in the study—which, Rivlin announced, hoping thus to prevent the long-dreaded judicial inquiry into his free hours in Jerusalem, he was donating to his in-laws for the remainder of their stay. Not that he could work in his office at the university, where the students, secretaries,
and teachers gave him no peace. But in any case, he intended to spend the next few days in the library with the journals and newspapers he had brought from Jerusalem, even though they were unlikely to be of great value.

The judge, stretched out fully dressed on their bed after a delightful day, agreed at once to his proposal. However, not only did she appear to take it quite for granted, but it did nothing to prevent her from wanting to know what he had done in Jerusalem. By way of reply, Rivlin invented a long stroll taken by him on the promenade south of the Old City. Since the two of them had once walked there together, he would not be asked for an account of it.

But Hagit was not through with him. “Is that all you did?”

For good measure he decided to throw in a visit to the Agnon House in Talpiyot, if only to demonstrate that he didn't need her agreement to go there.

“The Agnon House? It wasn't nice of you to go by yourself.”

“But you never wanted to come.”

“Only because I didn't want to run into Galya or her parents.”

“What would have happened if you did?”

“Nothing. I just didn't want to see her.”

“And now?”

“Now I don't care. She's ancient history.”

“You can't mean that.”

“Of course I can.” Hagit yawned. “What's the Agnon House like?”

“I don't know. It was closed,” he said, realizing in the nick of time that he would have to describe a place he had never been in.

“So what did you do then?”

“Then I rejoined you and Ofra.”

I
N HIS ROOM
in the university tower, facing the bald top of Mount Hermon in the distance, he tore open, with a slight trepidation, the wrapping paper containing the scholarly remains of the Jerusalem prodigy. The old, moth-eaten pages, many from the house organs of North African trade unions, were mimeographed or printed on rough
paper. How could he tell the old stains from new ones made by blood or spattered brain? Since, like the blots in a Rorschach test, the dim yellow marks could tell him only about himself, he decided to ignore them and concentrate on the printed words.

The Tedeschis had been right. The amount of fiction and poetry in old North African newspapers and publications from the 1950s and '60s was amazing. It left the impression that the Arabs of the Maghreb had cared less for their struggle for independence than for their own private lives—their personal loves, friendships, and griefs, and the villages and landscapes they inhabited. Many of these compositions, marked in red by the murdered scholar, had been singled out by him for analysis.

But an analysis pointing to what?

A spark of inspiration, Rivlin concluded after leafing through the old pages, which left his fingers smelling of an unfamiliar spice, would not be found here. He was too much a believer in the tried-and-tested approaches to history to have much faith in the potential of such writings. Still, it might be possible, as Tedeschi had suggested, to use the odd poem or story to illustrate popular attitudes discussed in his book. Yet this called for precise translation, and the marked passages, though written in standard literary Arabic, had, as he had anticipated, expressions in local dialect that would give his critics a field day if he misconstrued them. Of course, he could always consult Ephraim Akri, who was a better philologist than intellectual historian. Yet a full professor had to be careful about exposing his academic weaknesses to a junior colleague eager for promotion.

So intense was his concentration as he labored to decipher, without noticeable success, the murdered Arabist's motives for singling out certain passages, the strange smell of whose paper was now on his face as well, that he failed to hear the light knock on his door. As though in a dream, a nervously smiling woman in her middle forties, well groomed and perfumed, slipped into the seat across from him and began to inquire, in typical Arab fashion, about him and his family without bothering to introduce herself or explain why she had come.

He pushed away the newspapers and cast a friendly glance at the
woman, whose attractive features caused an old memory to flicker pleasantly. Sure from his smile that he had recognized her, she was now telling him how hard it was to find his room. It wasn't clear whether she was complaining or expressing her wonder at the size of the university. Still groping for her name, he suddenly remembered her standing guard outside a clean, fragrant bathroom and exclaimed happily, “Why, it's . . .”

“Afifa.” Her modest smile bared two rows of marvelously white and flawless teeth.

Judging by his response, the name pleased him greatly. His interest in her feminine ripeness, which spoke more to an aging heart like his own than did the flaunted sexuality of the young students who flitted down the university's hallways, was indeed growing. Was it possible, he wondered with amused alarm, that this middle-aged Arab woman had taken seriously his casual suggestion that she return to her studies?

“How is the newlywed?” Rivlin asked. “We haven't seen her since the wedding.”

“That's why I've come. . . .” Afifa's face fell. “Samaher isn't well again.”

“Not well?” He snickered incredulously, rocking back and forth in his chair. “Don't believe her. She's just afraid to show her face. There's a small criminal case awaiting her.”

“A what case?”

“Criminal.
Jina'i.
”

“I know what that means.” She was insulted by the idea that she needed the word translated. “But what has she done criminal? She's an honest girl, Samaher. Ever since she was a baby. . . .”

“Why don't you ask her? She can tell you all about how she gave old term papers of hers to friends who copied them and handed them in as their own.”

“Copied them?” Samaher's mother apparently knew all about it. “She just let those bums read them, to see how it's done. Why blame her? She has a good heart. She's too kind. That's always been her problem. We could never even slaughter a chicken or a sheep without her crying and calling us names. . . .”

“
Shu ma l'ha issa? Shu m'dayi'ha?
”
^*

“Pardon?”

“
Shu indha il'an?
”
^†

“She has that sickness of hers again,” Afifa answered, declining to speak to Rivlin in Arabic. “She wants me to ask you for another postponement for that composition she owes you.”

Who, Rivlin wondered, did the woman think he was—a grade-school teacher on Parents' Day? Yet, loath to offend her, he asked gently again in Arabic:

“
Shu maradha?”
^‡

The attractive woman crimsoned as brightly as if she had been to Tierra del Fuego herself. A tear, dabbed at in vain with a little handkerchief held in her hand, dropped from her large, almond-shaped eyes. The handkerchief was torn by a wail, a primitive bleat of pain that burst from her throat and sent a seductive shudder through his loins.

When had a woman last cried like this in front of him? Only on television. Hagit was too accustomed to the sobs of her defendants to indulge in such a thing herself, while his sister cried only over the telephone—hardly the place for the cleansing, eye-dilating tears he was looking at now. As if reluctant to let go of them, Afifa went on dabbing at them with her little handkerchief even when he carefully nudged toward her a box of tissues.

But at least now she gave in and switched to her own language. In a colorful village patois, she described Samaher's depressions, which had grown so bad a year ago that her daughter had had to be hospitalized for a while in Safed and put on powerful drugs, which affected her concentration and ability to write. Ashamed to tell her professor about it, his M.A. student had blamed her grandmother, who loved her dearly and would do anything for her.

Rivlin thought of, but did not mention, his wife's opinion of psychiatrists. Why undermine the Arabs' faith in the Jews' ability to cure
them? It surprised him that he had not noticed anything amiss in Samaher, who, her usual chatty self, had sat in the second row of his seminar class. Even in her “Hamas period,” as she referred to the year when she'd come to his classes in a long dress and white shawl, she had retained her vivaciousness. Was his knowledge of his students that superficial? Or had he become so detached from reality himself that the aberrations of others seemed normal?

“But what is it that you want?” he asked, reverting to Hebrew before their intimacy could grow too great.

“
Iza b'ti'dar, Elbrofesor Rivlin, aazilhha shwoy elwaza'if.
”
^*

“Another postponement? I've already given her too many. . . .”

“Then
ahsan shi tilghi'ha bilmara
.”
^†

“But I can't just forget about it!” He rocked again in his chair, amused by the impudence of it.

“Because she'll never finish it. She'll lose a whole year's credit. And she's pregnant and has to stay home because the doctor says school is bad for her depressions. Why can't you? What difference would it make? Give her an exam instead of a paper, anything to help her get the degree.
Maskini, ishtaghlat ketir lisanawat adidi.
”
^‡

“It's out of the question.
Shu fi hon, su'
?”
^§

“But why a marketplace?” The affront made her flush. “Why can't you give her an exam instead of a paper? Isn't it the same?”

“Not at all.”

“But you can make it the same. Samaher says so. Professor Rivlin is the best and most important teacher, she says. Everyone listens to him.”

“Ha!”

“Everyone does. They all say so. You're the one who has the power. The head of everything. That's what she told us from her first day as a student. He's the man, she said. The one worth studying for. The most interesting and important. Much more important than that dark, nasty man who was at the wedding. She's always talking about you. At first her father was afraid for her. He thought she'd gone and
fallen in love with some young teacher. ‘But he isn't that at all,' she told us. ‘He's an elderly, dignified man. He could be a grandfather.'”

Rivlin smiled a melancholy smile.

“Listen,” he said. “It's no use. This is a university. I'm not the one who makes the rules. You can't change a paper to an exam. If it's too much for her, she can put the M.A. off. She already has a B.A. That's enough for the time being. She can continue later. We'll help her.”

“How? Once you drop out, you're out.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What about me? The secretaries at the wedding said I'd have to start all over again.”

“If you really wanted to go back to school, we could make a special arrangement.”

“You see? You can do it if you want to.”

He grinned.

“Well? What do you say?”

“I'm sorry. First she needs to shake off her depression. Let her have some children. Then we'll see. Trust in Allah.”

He didn't know what in the world had made him say that. And yet why not? Allah was a handy word.

The little room fell silent. The woman, refusing to accept defeat, remained in her seat. Her glance drifted past him to the hills of the Galilee, returning to regard him with a quiet hostility that only increased her beauty.

“It's no tragedy,” he said soothingly. “Unless you're interested in an academic career, there's no great difference in Near Eastern studies between a B.A. and an M.A. Samaher can get a government job with just the B.A.”

Her mother placed a soft white hand despairingly on the table.

“You're making fun of us, Professor. Samaher, a government job? You think she needs to work? The degree is for her honor. For ours, too. We promised the groom's parents. They didn't like her depressions. They only agreed to the marriage because we explained how educated she was to be getting her M.A.”

He shut his eyes for a moment, wishing she would cry some more.

“I'll tell you what.”

Afifa regarded him.

“Tell Samaher to come see me. I'll give her a new subject. An easier one.”

But she just kept at him.

“Samaher can't come to the university now. Her husband won't let her leave the village.
Hayif ti'malu-lo doshe
.”
^*

“Ay doshe?”
^†

“
Ma ba'aref. Huwa bahaf min el-habl
.”
^‡

This time the bleat was stifled. Rivlin reached out cautiously and gave the moist, pudgy hand on his desk a friendly pat.

“I'll give Samaher something in place of a paper. Something from the newspapers you see on this desk. She'll read some passages and summarize them. Nothing complicated. Just a few stories and poems. She can do it at home. She won't need a library. Maybe it will even help get her out of her depression.”

“I'll take them with me now.”

“Easy does it! In the first place, they're too heavy for you. And second, I have to photocopy them. They're rare material and not mine. Why don't you send Samaher's husband to make copies?”

“Forget about her husband. He has no time. I'll send someone else. The cousin who drove you to the wedding.”

“Rashid.”

“Rashid.” She was surprised Rivlin remembered the name. “Rashid is best. He'll take care of everything. Stories and poems are just the thing for her.”