A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

Even now, however, the old hunter refused to give up. Despite his eighty years, he set out in pursuit of the fleeing beast, at first on foot, and then, seeing that it was following the road to Afula, in his old pickup truck. Near Mount Gilboa, not far from the Jordan, the mongrel vanished from sight.

“And then?” the dentist asked. He had listened with no sign of emotion while disinfecting and arranging his tools.

And then a week went by. The old hunter’s wounds were treated by a doctor, who gave him anti-tetanus shots. Fearing to be made fun of by his family, he said nothing about the beast that had clawed him and waited for his son to come home from the army. He was prepared to tell his story to him alone.

The dentist felt concern for the Druze officer still sitting in the revolving chair, his eyes red from lack of sleep. Not only had he just had a tooth pulled, he had lost a tracker earlier in the week. “With all due respect to your father’s wounds,” said the Christian dentist, who had heard his share of Druze tall tales in his life, “don’t you think he might have imagined it?”

Netur Kontar frowned. He knew his father well. He had learned to hunt from him. They had spent long nights together in the mountains. Although he questioned the mysterious lambcat’s sexlessness, he didn’t doubt that the beast existed. His father, though possibly confused, was not making it up. He had been hunting since the days of the British Mandate and had seen every animal there was, and if he said at his age that he had found a brand-new one, he was to be taken at his word. Indeed, it was the duty of every hunter to bring the lamb-cat alive to the Nature Authority, or else to the University of Haifa or even the government in Jerusalem, since it was sure to be named for its discoverer, thus bringing scientific glory to the Kontars and the entire Druze community.

“But where do you suggest looking for it?” the dentist asked gently. He was beginning to wonder whether his old friend was in his right mind.

“On Mount Gilboa. That’s where it was last seen.”

“But where on Gilboa? It’s a big mountain.”

“It’s not as big as all that.”

“It’s also a nature reserve on which hunting is forbidden.”

At this the Druze officer turned livid. Forbidden? To whom? To an officer like himself who risked his life day after day for the State of Israel? You might think he was proposing to kill the animal and eat it in revenge for its having clawed his father. All he wanted was to further scientific knowledge of the country’s wildlife.

The dentist feared his friend might burst out crying. He would think about it, he said. Meanwhile, he urged Netur Kontar to wash up, change his clothes, and lie down in a little side room of the clinic.

The Druze officer took the dentist’s advice and was soon fast asleep. Going to the telephone, Marwan called his fellow hunter Anton, the lawyer in Nazareth, to ask for his opinion of the story. The lawyer tended to agree that it was all the old man’s fantasy, taken seriously by his son out of filial loyalty and mental exhaustion from his long service in Lebanon. Still, he, Anton, would be happy to hunt the lambcat together with them tomorrow night. “Don’t worry, Marwan,” he laughed loudly. “Even if we’re arrested for poaching, I’ll file such an appeal with the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, arguing that we can’t be convicted of hunting a nonexistent animal, that the judges will pee in their pants. So why not spend a night on Gilboa protected by an army officer? While we’re looking for Netur’s animal, we may bag a boar or a nice juicy gazelle. In Nazareth we say, ‘The Arab harvests the Druze’s dreams.’”

16.

AND THEN YOU KNEW it. Calamity burst from you like a dream become a reality, and though you leaped barefoot in the dark to head it off, it was too late. Its swift shadow passed through the room you had prepared and merged outside the window with the certainty awaiting it, gathering speed along roads of awakening light, rolling as all calamities do to a place you had never imagined. The lamb fled to the hunter who dreamed a dream.

Now they all say, “Enough, stop blaming yourself! It was Fate. Only God knows the reason, and God will make good on it.” Idiots! Go explain to them that Right is stronger than Fate and mightier than God because it alone promises sweet Justice.

It found you outside the Civil Administration building, hopelessly stuffing your jacket pocket with forms as though it were a garbage pail for hope. “Take me with you!” it cried. “Take me from this Jerusalem slush. Even the Jew, though you led him here through a blizzard, can only go tsk and mumble vague promises. Take me with you, Rashid! If not now, when? I’m light and I’m clear and I won’t weigh you down. Enough of the hypocrisy of colored forms — forms for the government, and forms for the army, and forms for tired bureaucrats and officers with their games. ‘Yes, by all means, bring your sister and her children, just make sure they’re dying of some illness’—as if any illness could be fatal enough. Take me with you, O Arab of Israel, O displaced citizen who has his rightful place!”

And so you threw away the forms, and Right jumped into your arms like a lion cub, emboldening you so that you asked for your full pay, and the shocked Professor laughed but forked up. And that night, when you reached the village, even the horse sensed that Right was with you and backed away from the gate. Samaher and Afifa turned over in their sleep, hearing Right pass down the hallway, and Grandmother lay with open eyes by Grandfather and smelled it as if sniffing fresh vegetables. “Careful, Rashid, my love,” she thought. “Don’t do anything crazy with this Right you’ve brought home.” Yes, Grandmother. The Law blows up in the lawmaker’s brain, and Right stabs the hearts of the righteous. But what else can I do when it and I have embraced and there is no turning back?

That night you began clearing out your room for Ra’uda and her children. You felt sad giving up the place that had been yours since childhood, the solitary room of your hopes and dreams, of your books and self-abuse and love for the young cousin you protected. It was hard to empty out the drawers, collect the books, and fumigate the same mattress the Jew slept on. But when you took down the colored memos and the pictures, baring ugly patches on the faded walls, you realized that childhood had gone on long enough and love had grown too entangled. It was time, O wise one, to choose exile.

You spent the day painting and plastering. And in the evening, when all came to see, the village informer came too, for who knew what juicy bit of information the police might pay for? But Right was stronger than all payment, and even the old informer could only say “Well done” and depart. Your old enemy alone, Samaher’s husband, was gloomy and nervous and refused to believe that anything had changed. “O husband of my beloved cousin,” you should have said to him, “are you not glad the jinni is leaving?” But he knew that the return of Ra’uda and her children would only strengthen your foothold in this house, even though you had moved to the far end of the village.

Was it he, in desperation, who informed on you that night?

Yes, Calamity burst from you like a dream become a reality, and though you leaped barefoot in the dark to head it off, it was too late. Its swift shadow passed through the room you had prepared and merged outside the window with the certainty awaiting it. Over the hills, in the awakening light, it rolled as all calamities do to a place you had never imagined. O rash Rashid, how could you deliver the boy into the hands of poachers?”

It was afternoon when you arrived in Zababdeh. The winter sun was mild. As on the night of Paradise, you crossed the fields and — noticed only by Calamity, which followed you — kicked down a section of fence. You suspected nothing, happy to see the children in the churchyard looking so nice in their clean clothes, dream-Israelis about to become real ones. Ra’uda was wearing the Jewish judge’s hand-me-downs in honor of her return. You gave her sick old Christian husband a package of your old clothes, too, and some books to pass the time with when his children were gone, and you went to say good-bye to the Abuna, who showered you with twice as many blessings as usual because he sensed that Calamity was on its way. After that you went for a last meal in the basement. The Christian sat silently at the head of the table, eating his soup from his army mess tin in a mood of great fear, as if Calamity were directly overhead. You alone were not frightened or confused. You were as pleased with yourself as if Right and you were now bedfellows.