The Liberated Bride (5 page)

R
IVLIN, WHO SOON
had to leave for the airport, was beginning to fear he wouldn't be able to exchange a word with the defiantly unconscious man, whose wife was now describing, with cruel academic exactness, their tribulations since returning to Israel. In Tierra del Fuego, she told Rivlin, Tedeschi's breathing had been normal, despite the hardships of the trip.

Rivlin, who had no idea why such a trip had been taken, tried to interrupt her torrent of words long enough to understand. “But what were you doing in Tierra del Fuego?” he asked. “what possessed you to go there?”

Tedeschi, it seemed, had been invited to Argentina for a lecture series. And since the government of Italy, many years ago, had volunteered to honor its responsibility toward the young victim of fascism by treating him to an annual week of convalescence from his asthma at any rest home of his choosing—anywhere—the Tedeschis had decided on a Patagonian adventure. After journeying all the way to the bottom of the world, they thought it a shame not to explore what lay beneath it.

Tedeschi's eyelids flickered with humorous anticipation. Having listened with enjoyment to his wife's account of his sufferings, he was now ready for the ironies of his loyal student, his first teaching assistant, whom he had sent to establish a new department of Near Eastern studies in Haifa before the two of them could get on each other's nerves—get in each other's way—in Jerusalem. With a wave of his hand he signaled his wife to remove his oxygen mask, so that he might converse with this visitor he was fond of—who, however, was more alarmed than ever by the old man's voice, weak and unrecognizably groping.

“How is Her Honor?” Tedeschi managed to whisper before choking almost at once. It was his way of conveying, Rivlin thought, that he would have liked a visit from Hagit, too. At heart, the old man esteemed
her more than he did the husband now bending compassionately over him.

Thirty-three years had gone by since the winter evening on which Rivlin, then writing his master's dissertation, had brought an aspiring law student doing her army service to his professor's home. He was already considering marriage and remembered exactly what she wore that night—a black pleated skirt, which made her look fuller than she was, beneath a soft red woolen sweater. Although Hagit hardly spoke and seemed ill at ease in the presence of the great scholar, Rivlin, by now familiar with Tedeschi's overbearing manner, noticed the sweet but ironic smile with which she regarded him. The great scholar, for his part, struck by some force in the young woman, kept trying to impress her with his wit. When, in a display of interest that was considered good manners in those days, she rose and went to the professor's large bookcase to inspect its contents, Tedeschi enthusiastically wagged his head behind her back and winked singularly to tell his pupil that he had made a good choice and should not let her get away.

Years later, when relations between the two men were sometimes strained by mutual accusations of academic betrayal, criticism, and neglect, their memories of this evening, on which the older man gave his fateful and sage nod of approval to the younger one, were still able to reconcile them. Besides being Rivlin's doctoral adviser, Tedeschi had also been partly his matchmaker.

Now, as the conversation continued to proceed along medical lines, including the results of Tedeschi's latest blood and urine tests, Hannah Tedeschi removed the plimsolls from her husband's feet to show Rivlin that, far from having just another attack of asthma, the famous Orientalist was suffering from a new and aggressive form of inner rot. Rivlin, unable to bear the sight of the chipped, yellowing nails on the old man's toes, reached for the volume of Bedouin love poems.

“I see you're working on a new book of translations,” he said, in an attempt to change the subject to more intellectual matters. Hannah, annoyed to have her case history interrupted, sent him a sharp glance.

“I read the five translations that recently appeared in
2000.
They're not only incredibly faithful, they're true poems in their own right, works of art. It's unbelievable how perfectly you captured the two
aspects, the comic and the chilling, of Al-Hajaji's great opening salutation. I've recited your rendition to my students several times in order to make them see that, one thousand four hundred years ago, the despotism of an Arab tyrant could also be delicately ironic.”

He positioned himself in the center of the room and recited:

“I, a man of much renown, still aspire upward. When I strip off my turban you shall know who I am. . . .

“O inhabitants of Al-Kufa! I see heads ripe for plucking. I, their master, see the blood between the turban and the beard. . . .”

“
As though
I see the blood. . . .” The translator corrected him gently.

“Of course.
As though.
What a marvelous version of the line,
Waka'ani anzaru ila al-dimai' bayna 'l'amami w'al-laha.
You've done a great thing, Hannah. We'll never forgive you if you go adventure-hunting again in Tierra del Fuego instead of giving us more ancient Arab poetry in such wonderful translations. Who else could do it so well?”

Standing in the middle of a hospital room with her husband's plimsoll in her hand, kept from finishing her stirring account of his maladies, the translator, though her work had already been acclaimed in a weekly literary supplement, was unprepared for such kudos from a full professor. Granted, Rivlin's field was history, not poetry, but he was a connoisseur of the latter, too. The bitter resentment on Hannah's face yielded to a look of surprise. She seemed not to know what to make of Rivlin's sudden panegyric. The bright flush in the sick man's face, however, left no room to doubt that he took pleasure in the compliments lavished on his wife. He broke into a cough that grew steadily more violent.

W
HETHER TO CALM
her husband or merely keep him from talking, Hannah hurried to replace the oxygen mask.

Tedeschi shut his eyes painfully, his cough burbling out in a fresh supply of oxygen. Unbuttoning his pajama top, he bared a chest that rose and fell like a bellows.

“Where,” sighed the translator, “am I to find the peace and quiet to
translate love or battle poems? You know that Carlo's jubilee volume is supposed to be coming out soon. All the material is ready except for the article you promised.”

Rivlin scratched his head. “Yes. That article. I can't seem to finish it. . . .”

Tedeschi's eyelids fluttered again. Choking or not, he wanted to hear his ex-student explain why it was so difficult to finish an article.

“We've just moved to a new apartment in a new building. The whole transition, not to mention the actual construction, has been brutal. Hagit can't take time off from her trials, and the whole burden has fallen on me. I've actually become stupider this past year. My brain has shrunk. I've lost my concentration. And the Arabs have driven me to despair. How can you write with any sympathy about the Algerian freedom fighters of the nineteen forties and fifties when you see the terrible carnage going on there now? It's insane, the terror they've let loose.”

“But what do you care if they're murdering each other now?” Hannah Tedeschi rebuked him. “You're writing about the past. And who says you have to love Arabs to write about them? You promised us an article. Don't you see the state Carlo's in? We can't put out a jubilee volume in his honor without the participation of his best-known student. Think of how it would look. . . .”

Rivlin smiled uncomfortably. “Most successful student” or simply “best student” would have made him happier. He did not always like having his name linked to that of the Jerusalem scholar, whose recent work was rather weak. He glanced at his watch again. It was time to leave for the airport. Relieved that he had eaten before being exposed to Tedeschi's feet, he laid his arm on the old man's shoulder in farewell. “It's all psychological,” he almost reiterated, feeling impelled to repeat his diagnosis. But he caught himself in time.

“You can expect another visit tonight. A ritual one. Ephraim Akri wishes to do his religious duty. And Hagit and I may come together on Saturday.”

Tedeschi looked agitated, as if unwilling to part so soon.

“What is it?” asked his ex-student with genuine concern. The old professor did not reply. His face was angry and tense. Fearful of another
spasm, he kept on his oxygen mask and pointed, with an arm connected to an IV drip, to the empty bed by the door.

What does he want of me now, Rivlin wondered: to become the patient next to him? If the amusing farce of Tedeschi's illnesses turned into a soap opera, little would remain of the old man's charm.

But Hannah understood better. “Carlo is right,” she said, happily remembering. “We forgot to tell you who just died. We watched him fading all night from a stroke. What's the name of your son's father-in-law?”

“My son's father-in-law?” Rivlin took a backward step and regarded the folded mattress as if the death might still be hiding in its crevice. “Who are you talking about? My sons aren't married.”

Tedeschi, who was following the conversation intently, began to strangle beneath his mask.

“But you know who I mean. Your in-law!” Hannah fought to uphold the death that had taken place. “Don't be stubborn, Yochanan. Listen to me. I'm telling you a fact. They brought him here a few days ago, at night. It only lasted a few hours, but we both recognized him. He was your in-law. Your ex-in-law, anyway. I just can't remember his name. . . .”

“Hendel?”

“Hendel? Let it be Hendel. We weren't told his name. It went with him when they wheeled him out of here.”

“But where did you know him from? How did you know who he was?”

“What do you mean, how? We remembered him from the lovely wedding you made for Ofer here in Jerusalem. The tall man who owned a hotel. It was him. You can check for yourself. How could you not have known? Don't you read the newspapers? You haven't been in touch with the family?”

“W
HY SHOULD
I have been?” Rivlin answered angrily, his departure now strained. “What for? There were no grandchildren to share with them. We haven't heard from them for five years. There was no need
to stay in touch. Not that we have anything against them. But there's nothing going for them either. I must have told you: the marriage ended suddenly, after a year. There were no explanations. Ofer's wife simply left him. . . .”

A few minutes later he was in the corridor. Without waiting for the elevator, he dashed excitedly down the stairs as if in hot pursuit of this latest death, one half-suspected by him of being purely imaginary, the joint hallucination of two hypochondriac Orientalists who, not satisfied with the real patients, doctors, and medical instruments all around them, had gone and invented even more.

He hurried to the parking lot, stopping at a public telephone to make sure before driving back down to the coastal plain that his sister-in-law's flight was on time. Not only was it not on time, however, it was delayed, he now was informed, by a shocking four hours, as if it had run out of gas in midair. His first thought was of how annoyed his wife would be when she found out that he had left early for Jerusalem. Had he remained in Haifa, her usual good luck would have enabled her, with this assist from the airplane's engines, to join him at the last moment on the ride to the airport that she liked so much.

For a moment he considered not calling her. However, knowing that she would later interpret this as a deliberate evasion, perhaps even an admission of guilt to an indictment he could not foresee, he phoned home, and felt relieved when no one answered. Leaving a short, vague message on her voice mail, to strengthen his alibi he dialed the court. There he was informed that Hagit's session had ended and she had set out for home. He knew she would take her time making the rounds of the bakeries, delicatessens, and flower shops that would turn their immaculate home into a sumptuously festive one.

Keys in hand, he stood uncertainly by his car. Should he leave Jerusalem, the city of his childhood, and drive to his sister Raya's home, which was near the airport, where he could rest? Or should he remain here and take advantage of the blank hours at his disposal to renew some old tie that had lapsed or carry out some neglected obligation?

Already, however, his legs were carrying him back to the hospital to confirm the Tedeschis' cheerfully delivered obituary. Doing so was easy. Considering the obstacles put by large hospitals in the way of
those trying to locate the living, the process of uncovering the well-documented fate of the dead posed no problems. Before long he had all the information he wanted. Tedeschi and his wife had not misled him. The folded mattress had indeed belonged to his former in-law, who had hastily departed the world three days earlier. Rushed to the hospital in the evening with an excruciating headache, he had lost consciousness that night and died the next morning.

There was, Rivlin thought, something fitting about the freedom, even the sense of mission, with which the hospital's officials disclosed the details of Mr. Hendel's death. With these details in hand he adjourned to the cafeteria, where he sat trying to put in order his welter of emotions. Above all, he felt sad for the deceased, an impressively optimistic man his own age who left behind—Rivlin remembered her well—a delicately attractive, childishly dependent wife. She could easily, he imagined, feel lost and driven to despair. There flickered in him an old regret for the loss of his burgeoning relationship with her gentlemanly husband. Warm, although restricted to practical matters, it had been cut short abruptly five years ago.

And yet as he sipped his Turkish coffee, which he was counting on to keep him awake through the long day still ahead, he was not surprised to detect in his regret, like the grain of cardamon in his drink, the sweet, subtle taste of revenge. He felt it not only toward the daughter of the dead man, now deprived of a father to whom she was greatly attached, but toward the deceased himself, who had refused to join him in preventing the bitter divorce or even understanding the cause of it. Rivlin shuddered, struck by the realization of a new loss. Besides the friendship written off five years ago, he was now deprived of his last link to what had happened. Ofer himself behaved as if the young wife who left him was forgiven, perhaps even forgotten. But a father's heart knew better. His son was only pretending to have gotten over it.