A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

Rivlin, standing by the fresh grave, noted that it was the last empty one in its row. Tedeschi, in planning for his own death, had forgotten to think of his wife’s. The liberated translatoress, Rivlin thought sadly, would have to fend for herself. Although she had wanted him to give the eulogy, he had begged off. “Let the president or rector do it,” he told her. “In cemeteries they outrank me. There’ll be other chances to eulogize Carlo. Today I’ll recite the mourner’s prayer. And you should think of some parting words to say yourself.”

Indeed, Rivlin enjoyed the hush that descended on everyone, from the president down, as he read the kaddish in a strong, clear voice from an imitation-parchment scroll handed him by the undertaker, who shone a little flashlight on it. The translatoress, though freed at last from her marital bonds, was too flustered to speak. Taking the flashlight from the undertaker, she pulled from her pocket an ancient elegy from the Age of Ignorance, recently translated by her. “You’ll forgive me,” she apologized to the distinguished gathering. “This is what I know how to do.”

In hard, quick tones she read some lines by the sixth-century Arabic poet Thabata Sharan, put in the mouth of his mother after the death of a son:

You traveled far to run from death, but it caught up with you.

If only I knew how you fell into its hands.

Were you ill, alone without a friend,

Or did your enemies trick you into it?

How harsh the world

In which you may not answer me.

Your silence makes me

My own comforter.

O my heart,

Stand still a while!

I grieve that my soul

Was not taken forever

In place of yours.

1.

EARLY THAT WINTER the Rivlins were informed by Ofra and Yo’el that the two of them were planning to be in Israel on their way to a UN conference in Singapore. It would be a brief stopover, made possible by a ticket from Europe to the Far East.

The stopover was originally planned for five days. While the judge looked for ways to lessen her caseload, Rivlin hurriedly reserved a hotel room on the Carmel and obtained a list of that week’s concerts and performances from a ticket agency. Yet in the end, various constraints and obligations shortened the five days to three.

“Well,” Rivlin said generously, “if it’s only three nights, let’s cancel the hotel reservation and give them my study. We’ll want to spend as much time with them as we can.”

But the three nights did not survive intact, either. The visit was cut again, this time to twenty-four hours.

“If that’s the most your beloved sister can afford to give you,” Rivlin told his disappointed wife, “let’s take a day off from work and spend it and the night by Lake Kinneret.”

Two weeks before his in-laws’ arrival, however, a change in international flights scotched this plan too. The stopover was reduced to a few hours.

“This is already an insult,” Rivlin proclaimed, with an odd gaiety. “Not to Israel — it will manage without them. But what about us? Is that how little we mean to them? I intend to lodge an official complaint at the airport.”

“Just don’t say anything to spoil their visit,” warned his wife, who had no sense of humor when it came to her sister.

Once again they were in the arrivals hall of the airport with its plashing fountains. The two globe-trotters, tired but traveling light with only their hand luggage, were the first of their flight to emerge from customs. “It’s marvelous, even spiritual,” Yo’el said, giving his welcomers a big hug, “to enter Israel with only a light bag.”

“Yes,” Rivlin agreed. “Unfortunately, that’s the bag we’re left holding when you leave.”

“Stow it,” Hagit said, embracing Ofra.

Ofra, thin, pale, and guilt-ridden, threw her arms around her sister and promised that on their way back from Singapore they would come for longer. Meanwhile, they had decided to spend their few hours in Jerusalem, if only for the sake of the venerable aunt, whose survival from one stopover to the next was far from assured.

It was storming. Rivlin, wanting to make sure no one complained about the weather, praised the badly needed rain. They debated stopping for lunch in Abu-Ghosh at Fu’ad’s uncle’s restaurant, which was such a favorite of Yo’el’s that it almost seemed that the entire stopover had been planned with it in mind. Yet since everyone had already eaten, the visitors on the plane and the Rivlins at the airport, it was decided to postpone the restaurant meal until supper and make do with coffee and cake at a roadside diner.

Although the two sisters spoke regularly over the telephone several times a week, not even the longest and most audible of long-distance calls could compete with a face-to-face talk by the roaring fireplace of a diner. The conversation touched on everything, old, new, remembered, and forgotten, and when his in-laws asked about Ofer, Rivlin replied by bewailing his eldest son’s solitude in Paris. Ofer, he said, was still not over his divorce. Before he could proceed any further, however, Hagit changed the subject to the festival in Ramallah, her account of which — especially of the Lebanese nun’s fainting fit and the Arabic production of The Dybbuk —fascinated the visitors. “From now on,” Yo’el said, shaking his head with sorrow at Hagit’s description of Tedeschi’s death, “you’ll have to live your married life without its best man.” They smiled bittersweet smiles, and a tear shone in Ofra’s eye.

She went on dabbing at her tears until, eternally thin and pale, she gave Hagit a last, clinging embrace by the departures gate. So guilty and upset was she over their short visit that Rivlin forbore to comment. Why rub it in?

There had been more tears at their aunt’s, who was bedridden with a bad cold. The old lady, though her usual lucid, ironic self, told her beloved niece not to kiss her and concentrated on Yo’el, whom she had not seen in years, while sparing Rivlin her usual third degree. Perfunctorily expressing her sorrow at the death of his old teacher, she turned to the UN consultant and quizzed him about his conference in Singapore and the names of the participating countries.

Yo’el patiently reviewed the entire list of them. The old lady nodded her white head to confirm the existence of those countries she had heard of and inquired about those she had not. “And you, Yo’el?” she asked with a faint smile. “Will you be representing little Israel?”

“No,” the Third World expert replied. “My clients are ideas. Israel will be represented by its foreign ministry.”

The old lady frowned with disappointment. “What a shame!” she exclaimed. “You still look so Israeli with your khaki pants and your sandals. And that old safari jacket! I remember it from before I was taken ill….”

Yo’el beamed at her. “I’ll still be Israeli even when there’s no more Israel,” he declared. And regretting the remark at once, he bent to kiss her, cold and all.

“All right,” Rivlin said, interrupting the patriotic scene. “Let’s leave the women to their own devices and come back in an hour.”

2.

IT WAS 4 P.M. The rain was still coming down. “What would you like to do?” Rivlin asked his brother-in-law.

“It’s up to you, Yochi,” Yo’el said. “I haven’t been in Jerusalem for so long that anywhere you take me will be new.”

Rivlin thought for a moment. “In that case,” he said, “let’s go to a place I haven’t seen either. Whenever I’ve been there, it’s been closed. Maybe it will be open in your honor. An hour is all we need.”

They drove to Talpiyot, parked near the hotel, and walked to the gray Agnon House with its barred windows. Though it again looked deserted, it was, to Rivlin’s surprise, open to visitors. The person in charge, a small, vivacious woman of about forty, was standing on a stepladder in the kitchen, painting a wall.