A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

“Forgiveness for what?”

19.

SEATED IN THE EMPTY lecture room like the last student to finish an exam, Galya realized that this man who had pursued her with his frenzied questions hadn’t a clue. As much as she needed his help, she wasn’t about to give him one now. If Ofer wanted to tell him, that was his business. He had had the past six years to do it in, even though she had asked him not to. She respected him for that. He had acted not from weakness or guilt, but from gallantry toward a woman he loved. She would never compromise him.

As in their meetings at the hotel, Rivlin felt that his ex-daughter-in-law still harbored a resentment against him. He had to nurture the new trust between them if he didn’t want to lose her again. He reached for her bag, surprised to feel how heavy it was.

“But why are we standing here?” he asked, adopting a light tone. “Giving birth in this lecture room won’t get your child free tuition in the future. Let’s go to our place. We’ll call Ofer and tell him you’re waiting for him. Believe me, he would have come running even without the ticket you bought him. It’s his attachment to you that’s made me so worried about him. That’s why you mustn’t be angry at me for saying that, quite apart from forgiveness, the truth matters, too.”

She bowed her head, as if the truth he saddled her with were too heavy for her. Carefully, she eased her way out of her seat. How strange, Rivlin thought, that of all the women, Jewish and Arab, who had asked to be taken under his wing this past year, she had waited to do so until now, in the final days of her pregnancy. Yet in spite of everything, he would grant her wish and be the father she had lost.

Gripping her arm lightly but firmly, he led her through the gloomy corridors of the building, which had been designed without any provision for letting in the copious sunlight from outside. Passing the large show window of the library, in which were displayed new works by the faculty, he thought sadly of his own book, held up by this, his parallel quest for the truth. The university, he told the perfunctorily nodding Galya, had grown enormously in recent years. Her steps faltered as they entered the dark underground parking lot, along a wall of which some cartons with old files were waiting to be thrown out. But they were already at his car, stowing her bag and his briefcase in the back. He adjusted the front seat for her, as if to let the baby know that the world was making room for it.

The late winter day was bright and crisp, the rainstorms of the past months now a pleasant memory. It was Galya’s first visit to Haifa since leaving Ofer. “I forgot how beautiful it is,” she said, gazing at the sweeping view of the bay and sea. “Well,” he answered, half in jest and half temptingly, pointing at a large hospital on a ridge of the Carmel, “if you feel like it, or don’t manage to get back in time to Jerusalem, you can always give birth up there, with a nice view. Does the baby have a name?”

The question seemed to upset her. It had had one, she told him, and then fell silent, as if she had begun to say too much and had changed her mind.

Rivlin lapsed into silence, too. He did not wish to risk losing his mysterious stake in this child with a careless word. In the parking space of his building on the French Carmel, he backed into a spot and exclaimed when Galya went on sitting in her seat belt:

“But I haven’t told you that we moved!”

“To here?” She looked disappointedly at the discolored brick paving and the old houses farther down the narrow street. “How could you have given up your beautiful wadi?”

“If you hadn’t left Ofer,” he said, with dark humor, “you might have talked us into staying. But don’t make snap judgments. Our new apartment is quieter and has more light. And it has another advantage for old people like us or pregnant ones like you…”

He pointed to the elevator, which brought them slowly to the fifth floor. The sight of the spacious apartment, with its familiar couches, armchairs, rugs, and bookcases, was reassuring to her. So was Hagit’s not being there.

“She’s at the beauty parlor,” Rivlin said familiarly. Taking advantage of this to establish facts on the ground, he took Galya to his study, placed her bag by the couch, and asked discreetly if she wished to wash up first or call Paris at once. She chose the former, and he led her to a large, colorfully tiled bathroom, asking wryly whether she remembered the WC in their old apartment, small and dark despite the glorious view outside. Her smile, which he had forgotten, made his heart twinge. He handed her a towel and a fresh bar of soap, as befitted an honored guest, and went to make her bed in his study, pulling out the convertible couch and spreading sheets and a blanket on it. Although the results were less grand than the royal bed made for Hagit’s sister, he regarded them with satisfaction. Now that the truth had arrived at his doorstep of its own accord, he meant to take good care of it.

Washed and refreshed, Galya gave the bed an approving glance and sat in the chair Rivlin offered her by the telephone. He wrote Ofer’s number for her on a piece of paper, then wondered out loud whether he shouldn’t speak to him first. After all, he said, he didn’t want his son to think he might be fantasizing again. She reddened at that, but agreed. She would get on the line if Ofer wished.

“I’ll leave you alone as soon as you do,” he promised her.

He dialed Paris. His son wasn’t in. There was no longer a Hebrew announcement on his voice mail, just a laconic French one, as if only routine calls were expected. Rivlin, however, chose to leave a complicated message. With one eye on the terrace across the street, on which now appeared his mother’s ghost with her bag of garbage, he told Ofer of Galya’s arrival and imminent delivery, and of the ticket to Israel awaiting him. He was still talking when a beep informed him that he had used up his recording space. “Did I say too much?” he asked his ex-daughter-in-law, who had been listening intently.

“You were fine,” she said, regarding him as if for the first time. Her old beauty, Rivlin saw, thought by him to have been lost, was still there. He glanced with amusement at the old woman across the street, her ear pressed to empty space to catch the sound of the approaching garbage truck. Did Galya remember his mother? She nodded slowly. “Would you like to see her?” he asked.

“But…” She shivered. “I thought…”

“Yes, she’s dead. But I’ve brought her ghost from Jerusalem. She’s across the street. I put her there to keep an eye on her….”

Galya did not smile. Apprehensive, she shifted her gaze from the old woman with the garbage bag to the idiotically grinning man at her side.

“But how are you, Yochanan?” she asked. “Are you better? You had us all worried at the bereavement.”

“Yes,” he confessed awkwardly. “It was a false alarm. But who is ‘us all’? You’re the only one I told.”

“You also told Fu’ad.”

“Did I? That seems unlikely.” Although he found it hard to believe that he could have made such a fool of himself with the maître d’, his memory forced to him to admit otherwise. “You’re right,” he said softly, chagrined. “I must have wanted him to know how desperate I felt. Well, suppose I did? Did he run to tell his boss?”

“Tehila? She’s not his boss any more.”

“How is that?”

“He quit his job a week ago. For good.”

“Fu’ad quit? But why?” He felt there was more to it than met the eye. “He was so proud of that job. How will Tehila manage without him?”

“Why can’t she? You know her by now. She’s become so strong-willed since my father’s death that it’s not only the staff she can manage without. It’s…” Galya paused, as if surprised by her own words. “It’s her own family too…”