A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

“Then at least let your wife go.” The judge gave up on the stubborn old man. “Let her come with us.”

“Hannah?” Tedeschi chuckled at the thought and winked at his wife, who was sitting quietly by the lamp. “I don’t believe she’s at all eager to go to Ramallah tonight. She’s a bit under the weather herself…”

Once again the Haifa Orientalist felt his heart go out to the lovely student of former days, made old and worn before her time by an eccentric husband, so that she now stood in an old bathrobe, her hair that needed dyeing straggling onto her shoulders, ready for bed before the night had begun. He felt driven to join his wife’s attack on his old mentor, who was already by his computer, running his fingers absent-mindedly over the keyboard.

“Listen, Carlo. She’s coming with us. Why shouldn’t she? If you don’t want to live yourself, then don’t — but at least let live. Stop being such a killjoy. You can’t keep her chained to your depressions.”

“My depressions?” Tedeschi was startled by the unexpected salvo. “When do you remember me being depressed?”

“So it’s not your depressions. It’s your hypochondria. Or just your gloom.” He could hear himself speaking with Hagit’s voice. “Let there be some enjoyment in life. Give Hannah her freedom. Don’t you think she deserves a rest from you?”

The Jerusalem polymath did not reply. Half fearfully and half ironically, he pulled out a crumpled white handkerchief from his bathrobe pocket, waved it like a flag of surrender with an absurdly dramatic gesture, and made a bow.

The translatoress struggled to make up her mind. She was still torn between wanting, even longing, to get out of the house, and worry for her husband — who, having dismissed the comic-book figures with a tap of his finger, was already seated at his computer — when there was a quiet knock on the door. It was the sable-skinned messenger of many devices, come with a stocking cap on his head to transport his Jews to the festival.

9.

IN THE COLD, dark minibus, Rivlin made out at once the coal black eyes of a small boy, who was sitting beside a woman in an old fur-collared winter coat. It was the same coat that had hung for years in their own closet because Hagit had not wanted to part with it. Amused and alarmed, he glanced at his wife to see if she recognized it on the shoulders of Rashid’s sister. But the judge was busy talking to the translatoress — who, distraught over her sudden separation from her husband, had barely managed to clamber into the vehicle, where she now sat squeezed in the middle row, next to Rivlin.

He waited for the minibus to start moving before introducing Ra’uda to the two women. Though she was married to a West Bank Palestinian, he explained, she was still an Israeli of sorts and could even quote the poetry of Bialik. Rashid’s sister responded with a despairing laugh while Rivlin turned around to pat her son’s head. The boy did not flinch and even took off his cap and offered his head, like a pet dog.

Only then did Rivlin notice, huddled in the back on a jump seat that had been folded on the trip to Jenin, a pale young woman in a thick woolen shawl. Next to her, larger and darker than his brother, sat Rasheed. He was holding the horn-rimmed glasses meant to convince the Israeli border guards that he was his uncle’s natural son.

“Why, it’s Samaher!” Rivlin cried excitedly. “Samaher, this is my wife. You must remember her from your wedding.”

His still-ungraded M.A. student gave him a frail and poignant smile. “Who could forget your wife, Professor?” she whispered hoarsely, nodding to Hagit. “Never…”

The minibus turned right on Gaza Road, passed Terra Sancta, and headed for East Jerusalem, skirting the walls of the Old City — which on this wintry Saturday night were illuminated only symbolically, as if in discharge of a formal obligation. The rain came down harder as Rashid drove through the Arab half of town. “Don’t forget to stop in Pisgat Ze’ev,” Rivlin reminded him. “I’ll direct you.” But Rashid, having rehearsed the route earlier that day, needed no directions, leaving Rivlin free to turn around and chat with his “research assistant.” Her answers to his questions, though laconic, were to the point.

They reached Pisgat Ze’ev in northern Jerusalem. There, in the yellowish glare of the headlights, flagging them down at the bus stop where they had agreed to meet him — the same stop from which the murdered scholar had gone to his death — was Mr. Suissa in his gray fedora. With him was the murdered scholar’s wife.

“I hope it’s all right,” Suissa said to Rivlin, who reddened at the sight of the young widow. “She didn’t want me to go by myself. Do you have room for her?”

“Of course we do,” Rashid said, jumping happily out of the car. No one even had to move. He went to the back, opened the rear door, and squeezed the widow in beside Samaher.

They drove on to the Palestinian Authority. Although a black, overcast sky hid the first three stars that ended the Sabbath, these were surely glittering somewhere above the clouds — in token of which, despite the heavy rain, the streets filled with cars as the Jews of Jerusalem, exhausted by their day of rest, emerged to see what had changed in the world while they slept. At Atarot Junction the traffic lights were rattling in the wind, which soon turned to a howling gale. In the foggy darkness, with nothing around them but dim buildings and empty lots, it wasn’t clear whether they were heading in the right direction. But gradually the billboards changed from Hebrew to Arabic, and they saw that the border was close. In the end, they flew across it. The soldiers on the Israeli side, warming themselves around a campfire, showed no interest in the passengers bound for food and entertainment, while two gun-toting policemen on the Palestinian side were so eager to help that, although unaware of any festival, they piled with their weapons into the minibus, now equally full of Arabs and Jews, and guided it to the Ramallah police station.

In the stone building of the police station, the festival was better known. There were even name tags for the guests from Israel. Rivlin was told to climb some stairs to the second floor. There, in a large room whose long, curtained windows made it look like a cross between an office and a salon, sat a corpulent police officer decorated like a Russian general and surrounded by men, civilians or plainclothesmen, who made the Orientalist feel rather nervous. Taking some plastic tags from a drawer, the officer inscribed them with the names of the Israeli entourage and stamped each with a bloodred stamp.

There was a timid knock on the door. In walked a bewildered-looking Hannah Tedeschi, her thick glasses halfway down her nose. Drawn magnetically by her anxiety to the telephone on the officer’s desk, she inquired in quaint seventh-century Arabic whether she could call her husband in Jerusalem. Rivlin, putting a hand on her shoulder to calm her, hurried to translate her speech into something more modern, while introducing her, complete with all her academic titles, to the astonished gathering.

“Be my guest, Madame Doctor. It’s an honor.” The fat officer sat up, reached for the phone, and poised a long-nailed finger on the dial.

It took many rings to get the doyen of Orientalists to answer his wife’s call. While the officer and the plainclothesmen listened at one end to the shaky voice of the translatoress, the old professor at the other end was deliberately cool. He answered Hannah’s questions brusquely, was vague and uninformative, and soon hung up. As though reluctant to part with it, she slowly handed the receiver back to the fat officer and took out her purse to pay for the call.