A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

I was getting hungry. Between Ismail and the old woman, I didn’t eat any supper, so I broke off a leaf and chewed it and thought, maybe it’s poison and I’ll die before Babba. I felt sorry for leaving him all sick and pale in the church. What if the Abuna forgets to take care of him? And I felt bad that I hadn’t opened his present or said thank-you, so I looked in my pocket and there it was, wrapped in some newspaper, and I took it out and it was a little pen, and I wondered what would happen when Babba died, and I missed him and wanted to cry and go back.

There was a fishy smell. I went to see what it was. A flashlight shone on me. “There he is,” someone whispered. That’s right, I thought, here I am, but why are you talking in Arabic?

AFTER THE SMALL GAME of Gilboa had eaten all the bait and vanished without a shot being fired, Netur Kontar decided to leave the spring for a new spot on Brave Men’s Hill. They drove over Buttercup Pass and down the Old Patrol Road for five hundred meters. Once again they spread the alfalfa and put out the milk and cheese, into which they now tossed the fish’s tail. This time the Druze remained below and told the two Christians to climb trees.

The more the night progressed, the more temperamental Netur Kontar became. He began to order the doctor and lawyer around as if they were trackers under his command, barking at them what to do and demanding such silence that not only laughter but smiles were forbidden. “Who does he think he is?” the lawyer whispered indignantly to the dentist. “we didn’t stay out of the Jews’ army in order to serve in a Druze’s. We haven’t caught a damn thing tonight.”

But as Netur was determined to trap the lambcat, and the keys to the jeep were in his pocket, there was nothing the two Christians could do but climb into their harnesses and up two wet-branched trees. They perched there in their windbreakers, the victims of Netur Kontar’s father’s fantasy. They would, they decided, give it until three in the morning. If the lambcat had not turned up by then, they would look for other game.

The silence was total. Although the rain picked up again, the dentist and the lawyer soon fell asleep in the branches. They were half-dreaming when the Druze shone his flashlight on the bushes and whispered, “There he is.” By then it was too late to stop him.

AND I THOUGHT, if they’re talking Arabic, I haven’t reached the border and it must be Ismail coming to spank me. “Don’t,” I wanted to beg him. “Go easy. Don’t spank me too hard, ’cause I’m worried about Babba, who’s sick and all alone, and I’m mad at Mamma for leaving him.” It was wet and cold and dark and I ran and I ran until I couldn’t run any more and I heard my brother growling beneath a tree. He wasn’t shouting or cursing, just making these crazy animal sounds. I was good and scared. So I ran some more and my present fell from my pocket and I bent to pick it up and something whistled and I felt an awful pain as if Babba’s pen were stuck in my back.

AN EXPERIENCED HUNTER LIKE Netur Kontar knew at once that no animal moved or made sounds like that. Perhaps, he thought, the beast that had fired his father’s imagination was a werelamb. Waking the two Christians in the treetops, he signaled them to slip quietly down and execute a flanking movement and — though he had been warned by his father to catch the lambcat alive — opened the safety catch on his shotgun and took off in hot pursuit.

It was too dark to see anything. Yet the Druze hunter was used to such nights and tracked the animal by ear. Now and then, glimpsing a silhouette that didn’t match his father’s description, he wondered if it might have changed shape again.

But it was too quick for him. And so after a while, fearing to disappoint his father, he stopped running, dropped to his knees, and began making friendly animal noises, yowling, bleating, purring, and sighing to convey his good intentions. Yet the beast that had been so playful with his father refused to approach his father’s son, though it did pause for a moment in the bushes to stare curiously at him with its coal black eyes. That was when, desperate, Netur Kontar menacingly shouldered his shotgun. The doctor and lawyer, running up to him at that moment, barely had time to say “Hold it,” as he pressed the trigger in spite of his father’s warning…

IT WASN’T MY BROTHER or the pen. It was some metal in my back that knocked me down and didn’t let me move. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t see. All right, I thought. I’ll forget about Grandmother in the village. Just let me go back to Babba, ’cause he’s sick in the church and I want to be with him. But I couldn’t make a sound, not even a whimper, and my head hurt real bad. Something heavy pressed on me and pinned me down. I wanted to go to sleep and die. Oh, Babba, Babba, oh, Abuna, help me, help me and save me from this earth.

18.

MIDWAY THROUGH YOUR CLASS, the door at the top of the lecture hall opened, and a bulky woman with an overnight bag walked in and sat down in the last row.

Startled, you lost the thread of your lecture for a moment. Since it wasn’t the origins of French colonialism in North Africa that had brought this very pregnant woman to the last class of the winter semester, she had to be a former student coming to display her condition before asking for an extension on a term paper. Yet a second later, your heart did a flip-flop. It was Galya, the lost bride herself. You waved to let her know she should wait for you after class, then resumed your lecture.

The lecture ended. She struggled toward you with her bag down the tiered rows, carrying her pregnancy as though it were a gift for you. While the students crowded around you to ask about their final exam, she sat again and waited for them to leave. Gone from her glance were last spring’s haughty impatience and anger at her father’s death, their place taken by a wistfulness that verged on defeat. She made a move to get to her feet. You told her not to and hurried to her from the lecture podium. “I almost didn’t recognize you,” you said, bending to embrace her before she could reply. Her body yielded willingly, soft and unresisting like her mother’s. She seemed not to know what to say. It was as if, having come all this way and received a warm welcome from you, she no longer remembered the reason.

But you weren’t asking for it. You treated her sudden appearance as a perfectly normal family visit, gave her big belly a fatherly appraisal, and asked when she was giving birth. The due date, she answered with some embarrassment, was this week, perhaps even today or tomorrow.

This was already too much for you. Was she planning to have her child in your lecture room? “What kind of time is this to be running around the country?” you rebuked her mildly, as if the baby in her womb were partly yours too.

Her overnight bag at her feet, she tried to defend herself. First births were usually late. She was counting on that. She had come to see your son. She needed to speak to him immediately, if possible before she gave birth. Of course, she could have got his telephone number from you. But she wanted your help in persuading him to come to Israel. After all, you were also responsible.

“I am?”

Yes, you were. She was firm about that. That’s why you had to help her. She would pay for Ofer’s ticket. She had already reserved a seat for him on tomorrow’s flight from Paris. She had a face-to-face confession to make, and she needed to ask his forgiveness, if only for her baby’s sake. She had sworn to herself that she would do it.

Her voice echoed emotionally in the empty lecture room. You were beside yourself with joy. At last, though you had no idea what it was, the truth sought by you for nearly a year was about to materialize. You asked, not recognizing your own happiness: