A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

Equipped with the coupons and Hagit’s instructions, he set out. His first stop was a shopping mall, where, after climbing up and down many flights of stairs, he came to a small office near the washrooms, signed a form in triplicate, and was given a large, green plastic carrying bag. Next, in a department store, he received a beach towel and an apron. From there he went to a supermarket and after patiently standing in line was rewarded with two small bottles of olive oil and — for only two extra shekels — a bottle of detergent.

A second shopping mall, at the southern edges of the city, was his next-to-last destination. Here they were out of Teflon frying pans and offered him a choice between a saucepan with a transparent cover and six flower-patterned Turkish coffee cups. Lacking clear directives, he phoned the courtroom and found Hagit between trials. A brief discussion ended in a decision to take the saucepan. “When do we ever drink Turkish coffee?” Hagit asked. Finally, he went to a store where, although his coupons for it had become invalid, he obtained a rather odd-looking desk lamp as a premium for buying a cookbook of pasta recipes. Burdened with his acquisitions, he returned home in time for lunch and wrote the following letter to the municipality:

Traffic Department

Municipality of Haifa

Re: U-turns at the intersection of Moriah and Ha-Sport Streets.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wish to propose a way of facilitating U-turns at the intersection of Moriah and Ha-Sport Streets. Such turns, though legal and unavoidable for drivers heading from Carmel Center for the shops and cafés on the east side of the street, are impeded by the unnecessarily wide sidewalk. As a result, even cars with power steering, like my own, must make a broken U-turn, reversing in the middle of the intersection and in the face of oncoming traffic.

A careful examination has led me to conclude that, were the unnecessary pavement on the left-hand side of the entrance to Ha-Sport Street (which is of little use to anyone, since it slopes and is fenced off from the street) to be reduced, it would be possible to execute a U-turn in a single maneuver, making it easier and safer for drivers in both directions.

I would greatly appreciate your giving this matter your careful consideration. I would also be happy, should it be deemed helpful, to come to the municipality in person to explain my plan.

Sincerely,

Professor Yochanan Rivlin

Department of Near Eastern Studies

University of Haifa

7.

HANNAH TEDESCHI TELEPHONED EVERY day to consult with Rivlin about the memorial conference in Jerusalem. If Hagit picked up the phone first, Hannah took advantage of the opportunity to ask for legal advice regarding Tedeschi’s first wife, never divorced by him despite her many years in an institution.

Ever since Tedeschi’s retirement from teaching eight years previously, his connection with the Near Eastern Studies department at Hebrew university had grown tenuous. Hannah was concerned, therefore, that if the conference were left to the department to plan, it would become a dumping grounds for second-rate papers unpresentable elsewhere. And so, making Rivlin her adviser, she chose the lecturers herself, leaving only the administrative details to the university. She asked Rivlin to give the main lecture, on the subject of literary sources of the Algerian Terror.

“I’m sorry, Hannah,” he excused himself. “Carlo knew this was a subject in which I was still groping in the dark. I’m still not prepared to lecture on it. But I will give a eulogy. I’d like to talk about Carlo’s humanity.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“That’s my secret.”

“Be careful, Yochanan. There are sensitive areas…”

After much debate and changing of minds, the program was decided on. The morning would begin with two Ottomanists, one discussing the age-old relationship between Turks and Arabs, and the other, Ataturk in retrospect. They would be followed by a scholar with some new ideas about the period of the great Abbasid caliphate, on which Tedeschi had written his doctorate, after which the translatoress would present several Sufi texts by Al-Hallaj, polished versions of her improvisations in Ramallah.

The afternoon session would begin with Dr. Miller and a provocative lecture in the spirit of Said’s Orientalism (a book Tedeschi had been surprisingly tolerant of) on the profession of Near Eastern Studies. Then would come two traditional scholars, the “Sudanese” from Bar-Ilan and an “Iraqi” from the Dayan Center, who would defend their approach against Miller’s revisionism.

In the evening, as dusk appropriately fell, the Orientalists would be joined for the last, memorial session by a number of prominent Jerusalemites and members of the city’s Italian-Jewish community. There would be a violin and flute duet and three eulogies. The first of these would be given by the head of the Near Eastern Studies department in Jerusalem, who would review Tedeschi’s scholarly work; the second, by a speaker from the Truman Institute, who would talk about the Jerusalem polymath’s public activities; and the concluding one by Rivlin, who, if not as the dead man’s successor then at least as his close friend, would mourn Tedeschi’s passing and reveal a secret.

“But what kind of secret?” Hannah asked again.

“Wait and see.”

“Just be careful you don’t say anything you’ll regret, Yochanan. Don’t be carried away by truths no one needs to hear. I’m still living, remember?”

“How could I forget?”

Meanwhile, the winter that had petered out returned full force. The skies clouded over, and fierce winds blew. Three days before the conference, the forecasters predicted snow in Jerusalem. Hannah Tedeschi now phoned several times a day. What should they do? Should the conference be postponed? Who of Tedeschi’s elderly Jerusalem friends would brave the heights of Mount Scopus in a snowstorm?

Rivlin pooh-poohed the snow warnings. If it snowed in Jerusalem every time somebody said it would, he joked, the city would be known as the Geneva of the Middle East rather than as its disaster zone.

But the warnings came faster and more furiously. Snow had blocked roads in the Galilee and a blizzard had closed the ski slopes on Mount Hermon. Hannah’s telephone calls were more and more hysterical. Perhaps, she said, the event should be moved to a hall in town. “On the contrary,” Rivlin replied. “Snow on Mount Scopus will tell us who Carlo’s true friends were.”

Yet on the day before the conference, as he was putting the finishing touches to his eulogy, the news bulletins announced that the capital had been closed to everything but buses and vehicles with four-wheel drive. The translatoress, afraid of losing him too, phoned at once. Rivlin turned to Hagit and said, “Why spend a day on buses when I have a better idea? I’ll hire Rashid. How much could he ask for?”

8.

HE PHONED RASHID AND got straight to the point:

“Does your van have four-wheel drive?”

“For you, Professor,” Rashid said, “I’ll have four-wheel drive.”

“What do you mean?” Rivlin asked.

In a village near Mansura, the messenger told him, was a hunter who rented out his jeep.

“Then let’s hunt for Jerusalem tomorrow in the snow,” Rivlin asked. “Just tell me what the pleasure will cost me.”

There was silence. Then Rashid almost whispered:

“What have I done to you, professor, to make you insult me?”

“Either I pay you, Rashid,” Rivlin said, “or we don’t go.”

Hotly, however, the Arab explained that he had been intending to visit Jerusalem anyway. He wanted to apply again at the Civil Administration Bureau for an Israeli identity card for his sister, and there was no better day than a snowy one, when the lines would be short. Rivlin relented. “But only on the condition that I come with you and try to use my influence,” he said. “I heard from Samaher’s mother that there’s a GSS official in the Bureau who’s a former student of mine.”