A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

“Still falling apart,” was the cruelly candid answer. “There’s nothing left for her here. Her son is in America with his family, and if we didn’t find someone to play cards with her now and then, she’d have only her own depression to keep her company. Maybe the new grandson will cheer her up. But that will be no substitute for a man who treated her like a princess. And she’s not going to find another one in this hotel, because there’s no one here but Christians looking for God.”

Rashid grinned.

“Come,” Fu’ad said, grabbing the Orientalist by the hand. “Do me a favor and say hello to Mrs. Hendel. She’ll be grateful that you haven’t forgotten her like so many of her old friends. I’ll send up coffee and cookies. Tehila will come if she has time.”

“All right.” Rivlin blinked anxiously. “But only for a minute. And leave Tehila out of this. Another time…”

And again he knew there would never be another time.

From the stuffy, overheated room on the third floor, the snowy garden looked like a fairy tale. Gently he gathered the widow, delicate from falling apart, in his arms. Her new, unresisting gauntness made her large eyes that demanded his sympathy shine more brightly than ever. Although it was afternoon, her bed was unmade. Her hardly touched breakfast was still on the table. A black silk nightgown sticking out from beneath the quilt made the Orientalist feel a slight sexual qualm. His amiable smile gone from his face, Fu’ad quickly restored order, carrying the dirty dishes to the hallway, deftly making the bed, and folding the nightgown and putting it in a drawer.

“It’s the professor, Mrs. Hendel,” he said as he exited. “He’s come to say hello and have coffee with you.”

She offered him a small chair by her side. “I suppose I should be insulted that you forgot all about me while coming to visit my daughters,” she said.

“All in all,” he answered, turning his chair to face the garden, “I’ve been here twice since the bereavement. The second time, you weren’t here.”

“I wasn’t?” She seemed astonished to hear it.

“You were in Europe with Galya.”

“Oh, yes,” she remembered. “That was when you tried to sleep here.”

He smiled. “You see?” he said. “You know everything.”

“Everything?” She bowed her pretty head sadly. “Far from it. I only know what I’m told.”

“Well,” the Orientalist said, “I had no place to sleep in Jerusalem, and I remembered Yehuda telling me that I could always have an available room. It was foolish of me.”

“Not at all!” Moved by his mention of her husband, she regarded him with bright, solicitous eyes. “He meant it. And while he lived, he was as good as his word. The promises he made, he kept. He didn’t want this hotel turning into the railway station it’s become. Of course, he wanted to succeed and make money. But he also wanted this place to be about more than just work. That’s why he always left an extra room for family or friends. Now that Tili is in charge, all that has changed. You’ve seen how full the place is. She overbooks so much that she has to put up guests in her own wing.”

“Yes.” Rivlin grinned. “I got the basement.”

“I heard about it. And about how you ran away in the middle of the night. It made me mad. I said to her, ‘Tell me, Madame Manager, have you no sense of shame? If you can’t treat an important guest well, it’s better to turn him away.’ But nothing fazes her. She’s as tough as nails. And her father’s death only made her tougher. He would never have dreamed of risking the hotel’s reputation. Tehila couldn’t care less. I sometimes wonder how I ever gave birth to someone so brash. She’ll ride roughshod over anyone.”

“Yes.” Rivlin nodded. “My wife is sometimes like that, too.”

“Your wife?” The revelation startled her. “Perhaps….” She thought it over. “I suppose I did feel that kind of backbone in her, even though you never gave us the chance to get to know her. But she’s more gracious about it, a true lady. She’s cultured and has boundaries. Tili is a wild woman. You wouldn’t believe how afraid I’ve always been of her, even when she was a child…”

“I assure you, I would.” Rivlin laughed candidly. “I’m afraid of my wife sometimes, too. Not that it stops me from loving her.”

Mrs. Hendel’s face darkened with sorrow. The thought of her former in-laws’ love for each other, so palpable the first time she met them, made her feel the loss of her husband even more keenly. Only lovers, she told Rivlin, know love when they see it. “That was something I used to say to my husband. ‘I trust Galya’s choice of Ofer,’ I told him, ‘because his parents are like us. They’re loving and close. Ofer and Galya won’t have to improvise, because they have models.’ Only…”

“Only what?”

“Only then…”

“Then what?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t!” he said heatedly. “And none of you will tell me. And that’s why I can’t help Ofer to get unstuck…”

“But I don’t know anything, either. I asked Galya a thousand times and never got an answer. Even on our trip to Europe, when we shared a double bed at night. I said to her, ‘Gali, maybe you were embarrassed to tell your father, but now that he’s gone, learn from your sister, who’s embarrassed by nothing. Tell me what happened…’”

“And?”

“Nothing. She clammed up. But what does it matter? They’re not the first couple to have fallen out of love. At least it happened before it was too late. She knew how much I liked Ofer. But it wasn’t me who had to live with his fantasies.”

“Fantasies?” There was that word again.

“That’s what she called them.”

“But fantasies of what?”

“She wouldn’t say.”

“You never asked?”

“No.”

“But it isn’t possible!” He flung the words at her angrily. “I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t believe me ?” The delicate woman was hurt.

“Don’t take him seriously, Mother.” Tehila had entered quietly through the door left open by Fu’ad. “He keeps thinking we’re hiding something from him. But at least that gives us a chance to see him.”

He sat up in his chair, the afternoon sun in his eyes. The proprietress, in whose cropped hair he noticed the first streaks of gray, was not content with a handshake. Tall and stooped, a chambermaid’s apron tied by its strings around her waist, she bent to plant a ministering kiss on his forehead, as if he were a small boy with a fever.

“Your coffee, Professor,” she said, with a hint of mockery, “is waiting downstairs.”

“But Fu’ad said he would have it sent up,” Mrs. Hendel complained.

“So he did. But I told him not to, because I didn’t want you to miss your lunch. We’re closing the kitchen soon.”

“You can send my lunch up too.”

“No, Mother. I have no one to wait on you today.”

“Then I’ll skip lunch.”

“No, you won’t. You think you will, but at three o’clock you’ll decide you’re hungry, and I’ll have to wake up the chef and make him light the oven. You need to show some consideration, because it’s been a crazy day even without the snow. And don’t worry about our guest. He’ll be back — won’t you, Professor? Just because we tell you we know nothing is no reason to believe us, is it?”

11.

TEHILA DESCENDED THE BROAD, old-fashioned staircase ahead of him to the ground floor. Her long stride made her look like an ungainly bird that had forgotten how to fly. If Ofer knew to what depths I’ve descended to look for the fantasy he’s marooned by, Rivlin thought, he’d wipe me from his mind instead of just cold-shouldering me. In the large lobby he halted, stuck out a hand, and said: