A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

The eulogist regarded his audience. It suddenly struck him that the elegant young woman seated several rows behind the eternal fedora of Mr. Suissa, her eyes riveted on him in the dim auditorium, was not an Italian consular worker but Mrs. Suissa junior, who had come to express her sympathy for a colleague of her murdered husband and for a newer widow than herself. The sight of this restless soul, looking calm and pretty with her hair pinned up, a new life ahead of her now that she had freed herself from the clutches of her in-laws, should have gladdened him. Instead, however, he was flooded with such sorrow for his own son that an involuntary groan escaped him. Seeking to obey his wife’s bidding, he fought to concentrate on his feelings for Tedeschi. The dead man deserved no less.

“Nevertheless,” he continued, “though the Turks, ancient and modern, became Professor Tedeschi’s main concern, he did not neglect the Arabs completely. Indeed, having reached a stage in his career in which he could afford to take a panoramic view, he grew increasingly worried by our inability to understand the Arab mind. While he did his best to conceal it, he was fearful that we Jews, having failed catastrophically in Europe, were about to fail again in the Middle East — that the new homeland meant to be our final destination could become another bloody trap. Despite the natural optimism of a man who had taken his fate in his hands and saved his own life by coming to this country, he felt torn, as Israel’s leading Orientalist, between his responsibility to warn his colleagues of the pitfalls of wishful thinking and his reluctance to sow despair by declaring — he, who had educated generations of Arabists! — ’It is hopeless to try to understand the Arabs rationally. Back to their poetry, then, for that is all we have to go on!’

“Ladies and gentlemen, from this inner rupture came Tedeschi’s many imaginary illnesses, whether they were an escape from the harsh truth of reality or a cry for help to his friends, asked to come still his fears.”

The profound silence told him that he had said something unexpected and true. Reaching for the glass of water on the lectern, he took a slow sip while summoning his strength for the love and compassion he had promised his wife. It surprised him that no one had turned on the lights to dispel the darkness that had become almost palpable. Perhaps this was because Rashid, an anguished look on his face as he strained to hear the eulogist’s painful words from the back of the hall, was standing in the way of the light switch.

14.

DESPITE THE PATCHES ON her eyes, she knew it was her younger brother even before he opened his mouth. The intimacy of a childhood shared in one room in their parents’ small Jerusalem apartment had taught her to sense him from afar.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I told Hagit it was too much for you.”

“It’s all right. It was on my way.”

“Did that Arab at least drive you?”

“Yes. I’m lucky he sticks by me.”

“But why does he? I’ve heard you don’t even pay him.”

“Don’t ask me. It’s he who doesn’t want to take anything.”

She lay, small and thin, on a couch in the head eye doctor’s office, a black patch on each eye, waiting for the doctor to finish an operation and determine whether the low-temperature laser suture performed that afternoon had repaired her retina and made surgery unnecessary.

“In which eye did it happen to our father?” he asked.

“The same one. The left one.”

“Couldn’t you think of a better way to take after him?” He couldn’t resist teasing his sister, even while she lay dismally in the dark, with her good eye covered too — a precaution taken, she told him, not on orders from the doctor, but on the suggestion of a nurse. Although her son’s kindhearted wife had spent the afternoon with her, she had only made Raya’s fears worse by overidentifying with her condition. Now Rivlin’s sister lay waiting for her son to appear with his calming presence. Her brother, glum and tired, was not having a reassuring effect. On the contrary, he soon lapsed into a listless silence, from which she tried to arouse him by changing the subject to the snow in Jerusalem.

“That old bitch!” she declared of their mother, as angry at the age of sixty as if she were still a teenager. “All the kids were outside having fun while we were protected from pneumonia by having to ski a doll in a bowl of snow in the bathtub.”

“What doll are you talking about?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember!” Just because she couldn’t see she was not about to give up on her never ending struggle to keep her childhood memories alive in him. “That little black doll you went with everywhere…”

His silence only deepened as he tried remembering the black doll. He had no wish to rage with his sister against their mother. He hadn’t seen her ghost for ages. Would he end up having to eulogize her too?

Two hours ago he had been speaking in honor of Tedeschi. The lights in the auditorium had come on, the light switch behind Rashid having been discovered, just as he was describing in a tremulous voice how the translatoress of the Age of Ignorance, that pre-Islamic period so crucial for understanding the Arabs, had combined scholarship with her love of poetry and devotion to her husband’s health. But had it been fair to say what he had about Tedeschi’s illnesses, or had this been cheap psychologizing on his part? Before he could answer that, his son’s dreary solitude again pierced the twilight of his mind. For the first time, he felt no sympathy for Ofer, only anger. That’s it, my boy, he addressed him in his thoughts. I’ve failed just as you hoped I would. There’s no more hotel and no more Arabs to help me.

As in a dream, this, too, quickly faded. Now he saw his pale, lanky Circe, curled on the basement bed like a long fetus, osmosing into her own freedom.

“Listen,” he said to his sister. “I’m getting hungry. Shall I bring you something to eat too?”

“I’m too worried to eat. But I can feel how edgy you are. Why don’t you go home? It’s late.”

“It’s all right. Hagit made me promise to stay until Ayal comes.”

His sister smiled, reaching out a blind hand toward him.

The corridor outside was empty. The visitors had gone home. The nurse on duty sat reading a book. There was no telling whether the patients, lying in their rooms with bandaged eyes, were awake or asleep. A large figure was blocking his path.

“What’s up, Professor?”

To his amazement, he found himself looking at his sister’s former husband, a tall, thin, balding ex-playboy. Hearing from his son that Raya was in the hospital, he had come to have a look. Although he was a strange, difficult man who had given his wife a hard time, Rivlin felt a nostalgic affection for him.

“Look who’s here!” he said, giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder. “I don’t believe it! Come, say hello to Raya. She’ll flip when she sees you.”

“Shhh,” his ex-brother-in-law said. “If she does see me, she’s liable to detach her other retina.”

“But isn’t that what you’re here for?” For some reason, his encounter with this man, whom he had not run into for years, had improved his mood.

“To see Raya? What a thought! The head eye doctor is my tennis partner. Ayal asked me to speak to him.”

“But as long as you’re here,” Rivlin persisted. “why not look in on her? Don’t be childish. What are you afraid of? She won’t even know it’s you. Her eyes are covered.”

“They are?” The temptation to be invisible in his wife’s presence was too great to overcome. Silently, he followed Rivlin to Raya’s room.

She was still lying on the couch, small and thin. A lamp, buzzing softly on the table, lit her face. The black patches over her eyes gave her the look of an airplane passenger trying to get some sleep. For a moment, Rivlin thought she was drowsing. But sensing her ex-husband, who was standing in the doorway with a crooked smile, she raised her head and asked anxiously: