The Liberated Bride (7 page)

H
E HEADED FOR
the third floor, where the family residence was tucked away in a wing of the hotel, but the arrows directed him to a reading room on the second floor, which had been converted into a receiving room. He was surprised to see how many callers there were, among them even some hotel guests. In a corner stood a huge table with some bottles of water and a large condolence registry tended by an elderly Arab waiter in a black suit and bow tie. His presence added a solemn formality to the occasion.

Rivlin did not wish to be recognized at once. First he wanted to spot the ex-daughter-in-law on whose account he had come and to observe the state she was in. To his disappointment and curious relief, however, a quick glance around the room revealed that she wasn't there. He had had no idea whether his sorrow for her could get the better of his old anger. On a leather couch, lugged upstairs from the lobby, sat Tehila and Ohad, her older sister and brother, supporting their widowed mother. Dressed in black, Mrs. Hendel was stonily gripping the shoulder of a small boy of about four, apparently a grandson, who had been set on a stool at her feet to help her maintain her equilibrium. For a moment, Rivlin considered beating a retreat. Mrs. Hendel, absorbed in her grief, still hadn't noticed him. Yet a second later Tehila, a tall, unmarried woman who had managed the hotel with her father, gave him a friendly smile, and with a look of respect in her whiskey-colored eyes rose to greet him.

Rivlin shook his head in commiseration and hurried to the widow, who glanced up at him with lovely blue eyes reddened and widened by tears, sorrow, and guilt. The sight of her discharged in-law come from afar to share her grief only reminded her of it anew, causing
fresh tears to trickle down her cheeks. More like a lost child than a grown-up woman, she fell into his arms, for the past five years no longer a kinsman's, asking only that he, too, like the others, embrace her tightly and understand, by the limpness of the flesh and bones in his grasp, that the inner kernel of her being had dissolved with the death of her husband.

Of course, anyone aware of the devotion that Mr. Hendel had demanded of his wife and bountifully received from her could have predicted the crushing effect of his abrupt disappearance. But what Rivlin saw now was a total collapse—for instead of feverishly reciting for the umpteenth time, as the newly bereaved are wont to do, the many details of her husband's death and the shock it had given her, she fell back out of his arms and onto the couch in a speechless daze, so utterly absorbed in her sorrow that, as if it concerned someone else entirely, she let her daughter tell Rivlin about it.

“But where is Galya?” he asked, interrupting Tehila, whose account was as long as her father's passing had been brief. “Does she still live in Jerusalem?” Apart from the news of her remarriage, which had reached him and Hagit belatedly, he knew nothing about her.

Galya, it seemed, still lived in Jerusalem. Indeed she lived quite close to the hotel, which was why she had taken a noonday break from the shiva and gone home to rest. Not, Rivlin was told, that he shouldn't wait for her. On the contrary, Mr. Hendel's youngest daughter, having been the closest to her father, was most in need of consolation, especially from someone who had traveled from Haifa for her sake.

Rivlin sat there dejectedly, with a wary brevity giving this family that was no longer his, a résumé of the recent life of its ex-son-and-brother-in-law, before taking advantage of the arrival of a delegation of somberly dressed Mormons, descended from Mount Scopus, to obey his wife's warning against tarrying too long. Rather than leave all at once, he withdrew to the bow-tied waiter, who recognized him and even addressed him by his name and title while pouring him a glass of water. Perhaps the professor, he said, would like to look at the condolence book and its messages, written in several languages, and add
a few words of his own. Actually, Rivlin thought such a volume seemed grandiose for a man of Hendel's rank and station. Nevertheless, addressing it not to the survivors but to the dead man himself, he penned a sentence:

Despite the separation imposed on us by your younger daughter, the memory of you over the years still shines with your light and generosity. We feel a keen and vivid sorrow at your death.

The Rivlin Family, Haifa.

H
E REGRETTED THE
words as soon as he had written them. Yet so great was the appreciation with which the old Arab waiter read them that he was embarrassed to cross them out, and merely turned a few pages of the book to keep them from being the first thing to strike the next person's eye. New callers kept arriving, increasing the noise in the room. The conversation, veering from the subject of Mr. Hendel's death, now touched on the family's plans for the future. His wife, Rivlin thought, had been right. As always. What had made him insist on coming? A brief letter would have been enough. In half an hour the telephone would ring at his sister's and his wife would be on the line, wanting to know why he still hadn't arrived from a visit that he never should have made. He went back to the widow, who sat up like a wind-up doll at his approach. More than words she appeared to need physical contact that could be placed as a warm compress over her dislocated self. Next he said good-bye to Tehila, who seemed upset, even aggrieved, by his departure.

“I'm terribly sorry,” he said. “It's by pure chance that I came to Jerusalem, and I have a sister-in-law to pick up at the airport. I'll wait outside a little longer. If Galya doesn't come, please be sure to tell her I was here.”

“But of course she'll come.”

He went back down to the lobby. A gray light from the desert deepened the somberness of the late Jerusalem day. Springtime clouds, not
yet fled before the rainless summer, made intricately changing patterns in the sky. The air was astir with something. Scanning the guests in the lobby for a familiar face and noticing that each was seated before an identical piece of cake, he realized that they were a group of Christian pilgrims from America, Mormons or Evangelicals, of the kind Mr. Hendel had specialized in. Feeling excluded, he retreated farther—not, however, out to the street, but rather back to the garden, with its red gravel path leading to the flowering gazebo. He stood gazing at the entrance to the hotel. Should his ex-daughter-in-law arrive, he would have a chance to scrutinize her from afar before deciding whether to approach her or—relinquishing her forever—slip quietly away.

It was four-thirty. Although there was still plenty of time before the plane landed, he was beginning to feel guilty toward his wife. She had been more farsighted than he had been. What was he to the Hendels, or the Hendels to him, anymore? Nothing tangible in memory could compensate for the ignominy of what had happened or assuage the longing that had reopened like an old wound. It was time to depart the magic of Jerusalem and set out. The dead man wasn't worth the gesture he had made. Rivlin remembered the bitter taste left by their last conversation, five years ago, when—telephoning without Hagit or Ofer's knowledge—he had made a fool of himself trying to find out why the marriage had so shockingly broken up. “Even if I accept it,” he had said to Hendel imploringly, “I'll have no peace until I understand the real reason. And I don't think Ofer understands it either. You're the person Galya trusts most. I think you should find out the truth from her and share it with me.”

Mr. Hendel had flatly refused. He and his family, he said, were just as pained by the sudden rift, which no one could possibly feel happy about. But if it had to happen, it was better happening sooner than later. Better, too, quickly, rather than nerve-rackingly bit by bit. He had faith in his children and would never want to know more than they wished him to. Besides, anything his daughter might tell him would be treated with strictest confidence. And sensing that Rivlin, who wanted only to cut short the conversation, felt hurt, he had ended on an optimistic note.

“You needn't torment yourself. In a year or two it will all be forgotten.
Why worry about it? They're young. Their life is still ahead of them. Each of them will find someone else.”

A
ND IN FACT
, he had no cause for complaint. The optimist willing to wait for the truth to emerge in time could not possibly understand the sufferer driven in the depths of him to breathe it into life all at once. It gave him a feeling of pleasure, therefore, when Tehila, who took after her father physically as well as in a business sense, now hurried after him along the garden path to beg him to wait for Galya. She was sure to arrive any minute. He couldn't allow himself to miss her after coming so far to see her.

“But I'm the last person she would want to be consoled by.”

“How can you say that? Even after the separation, she always spoke of you in the friendliest tones when you were mentioned. She was in awe of your wife. I think she must have been afraid of her.”

“Afraid of Hagit?” The thought amused him. “Why not of me?”

Tehila leaned smilingly toward him. “How could anyone be afraid of you? She had warm feelings for you. More than warm. If you ask me, she loved you.”

“She did?” Rivlin felt a tremor. “Come on! The way she broke off all ties with us was heartless. It was totally out of the blue. She never bothered to explain anything.”

“I'm sure she meant well. She just didn't want to cause you more pain. I want you to know that if, God forbid—God forbid!—it were your wife to whom something had happened . . .” Tehila crimsoned. “If it had been the opposite, God forbid . . . your wife or someone close to you . . . she would have gone straight to see you, just as you have come to see her.”

He weighed her words and nodded in gratitude, as if the return call paid by his son's ex-wife on the Carmel had already taken place. Affectionately, he reached out to touch her shoulder. She had inherited not only her father's hard, bony face but also his lanky, aristocratic frame.

“Well then, I give in. But only for a few minutes.”

“Why don't you rest while you're waiting? You can even stretch out
in this gazebo. How do you like the changes we've made? The place is a lot pleasanter now. I'll bring Galya as soon as she arrives. In the meantime, Fu'ad will be at your service.”

E
VEN THOUGH HE
had no wish to cause his wife, who would soon be speaking to his sister, the slightest concern, he decided not to phone her. The longer he could put off the accounting she was sure to demand of him, the better. Meanwhile, over an emptied coffee cup and the last crumbs of his cake, he pondered the encounter awaiting him. The bougainvillea flowering on the old gazebo, which had changed its location but not its charm, and the Jerusalem air freshening toward evening gave him new hope that it still might be possible to redress, if only in small measure, the consequences of the parting five years ago. There were still two hours before his sister-in-law landed, and in any case, she was a woman who took her time and divided her luggage into many small pieces that never arrived on the conveyor belt all at once. Keeping on the safe side, he had at least an hour to get to the airport.

It was twenty after five when Tehila returned with Galya. With them was Galya's new husband, a tall fellow with a short ponytail. One glance at Galya was enough to make Rivlin understand why Tehila had insisted that he wait, for he could see at once that her mourning was of a different and more passionate nature.

She was dressed in black, like her mother, and still wearing her ritually torn funeral blouse. He couldn't tell whether it was the thinning of her hair or her lack of sleep, or something else that had happened over the years, but she struck him as less pretty and more awkward than the image preserved in the wedding album in his Haifa home. The satisfaction this gave him softened his sense of grievance. Hurriedly, before he could say a word, her outstretched little hand still in his, she apologized for her lateness, as though they had had an appointment she had not come on time for.

How different was the stormy bereavement of Hendel's youngest daughter from the quiet composure of her unmarried sister, who
stood smiling beside her! Even the new husband, judged by Rivlin to be older than his son, appeared startled by his wife's agitation, at which he slowly wagged his ponytail back and forth.

“There are people,” Galya said to Rivlin, “who, because they can imagine their own death, can also imagine the deaths of those they love. It helps prepare them for it when it strikes. But not me, Yochanan. Nothing could have prepared me for this. I keep feeling it as if my father were dying in front of me over and over. There's no net to hold me. Our family—we were more like Hagit's than like yours—we never talked or even thought about death. It was as if life would go on forever. Maybe our brains were addled by all those Christian tourists talking about eternal bliss.”

The perfect naturalness with which she mentioned his and Hagit's families gave him a sensation of fresh, intimate directness, as if the separation of five years ago had never taken place. Heartening too, for some reason, was her failure to introduce her husband.

“Has Ofer heard?”

“How could he have?” Rivlin simpered at the childish question. “I myself only found out today—and by pure chance. I was visiting an old teacher who was hospitalized in the bed next to your father's. He remembered him from the wedding. That's the only reason I'm here. Honestly.”

The contingency of it, he could see, displeased her. Full of her father's death, she wanted the world to have room for nothing else.

Tehila interrupted them. “I'll leave you two here and go back to my mother,” she told Rivlin. She had her father's small, shrewd eyes. “The next time you're in Jerusalem, Yochanan, don't overlook us again. You needn't wait for someone else to die.”

She turned to Galya's husband, whose birdlike face wore a worried frown. “You,” she said to him, stating a fact, “will come with me.”