A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

20.

THE FRONT DOOR OF the duplex opened. Before it could shut again, Hagit’s voice traveled through the house in search of his. He quickly closed the study door and hurried downstairs to tell her about their surprise guest. Seductively painted by the beautician, her eyes regarded him with the infinite patience of someone used to assembling the facts before passing judgment. Not even the news that he had made the bed in his study could shake her repose. Not until he told her about the message he had left for Ofer did she turn on him.

“You knew I’d be home soon. Why couldn’t you have waited to ask me what I thought?”

Refusing to be put on the defensive, he threw his arms around her and passionately pressed his lips to hers. “Be careful,” he pleaded in a whisper. “She can hear us from upstairs. Have pity on her. And on me. What does it matter what message I left him? This isn’t in our hands. And neither of us can stop it. Why shouldn’t Ofer come? The truth will free him.”

She slipped gently, as though not to hurt him, from his pacifying arms. “The truth doesn’t always free. Sometimes it entangles. I wish you’d think more of Ofer and less of yourself.”

Stung by her rebuke, he hugged her even harder. A squeeze of her hand told him that Galya was standing at the top of the stairs. There was no telling how much she had heard.

Hagit hadn’t seen her since the divorce. Now, pale and big with child, she was gripping the railing as if warding off an attack of vertigo. It was no time to be critical. Hagit invited her downstairs, gave her a quick hug and kiss, and suggested she sit with her swollen feet on the low table. Galya asked for some coffee, which Rivlin went to prepare, leaving the judge to cross-examine her about the course and medical history of her pregnancy. She compared it to her own two pregnancies and asked warmly about the Hendels. How was Galya’s mother holding up? She would never forget her great love for Galya’s father. Although her courtroom experience had taught her never to trust appearances, this had seemed real. Of course, the most loving couples could be problems for their children… just look at Ofer. Or at Galya’s sister. Was she still unmarried?

Rivlin, having discovered that the milk was sour, came back from the kitchen to propose tea.

“But why tea?” Hagit protested. “We need fresh milk, for tomorrow too. You should run down and get some. And while you’re at it, pick up a cake, because something tells me we’ll have more guests from Jerusalem….”

Galya, the judge had discovered with her usual knack for ferreting out the truth, had not informed her family or even her husband of her trip. She had set out for Haifa without telling them.

For a moment, no one spoke. Hagit gave Rivlin, standing by the door with a shopping basket, a reproachful look. Uncharacteristically fumbling for words, she probed for the hidden logic of her ex-daughter-in-law’s actions.

“But how could you, Galya? Not that it’s any of our business… but still… and now of all times… are you aware of what you’ve done? How could you just go and disappear in your condition? Suppose you should… of course, you’re not alone… we’re here with you… but you’re not registered at any hospital… and your husband must be frantic with worry…”

“Don’t worry about Bo’az,” Galya reassured them. “He’s not the frantic type. He’s calm and collected and takes things as they come, sometimes a bit too much. He’s not like Ofer, who’ll run to the end of the world to find something to worry about. I suppose I’ve gone to the opposite extreme…” She laughed strangely. “Maybe I’ll need a third husband to find the golden mean.”

But Hagit had no patience for jokes. “Please,” she told her stunned husband, “the grocery is closing soon. And don’t forget we have a concert tonight.”

“Why not skip it?” Rivlin suggested.

“What for? If you don’t feel like going for milk, I’ll do it.”

He went for milk, making an agitated reckoning of how many of the bounds breached since Hendel’s death he was responsible for. Afraid Hagit might talk Galya into returning to Jerusalem, he hurried back with his purchases and was relieved to find his ex-daughter-in-law where he had left her, her feet on the coffee table.

“Ofer phoned,” Hagit informed him, her annoyance replaced by a new tone of complicity. “Your message confused him, but I set him straight. He’s coming tomorrow. Galya talked to him, too. He didn’t stay on the phone for long, as if he were afraid to spoil things.”

“What did I tell you!” Rivlin crowed to the bulky young woman, who seemed to have taken refuge behind the baby in her stomach.

“You and I will pick him up at the airport tomorrow afternoon,” Hagit said. “Unless you have more important things to do.”

“What could be more important?” he protested.

Yet as afternoon turned into evening, a brooding silence settled over the duplex. Only when Galya agreed to notify the hotel of her whereabouts did Hagit relax and go to dress for the concert. Rivlin, resigned to going, paced moodily while she changed before the mirror. What else, he asked, had she discovered while he was buying milk?

“Nothing. I didn’t ask, and I don’t want to know.”

“Not even now? I still can’t get you to budge, can I?”

“Why should I budge when I’m where I should be?”

21.

THE PHILHARMONIC CONCERT WAS an all-Haydn one. Although he didn’t question the greatness of the classical composer, Rivlin feared a whole evening with him might be dull. But after leafing through the program notes, from which he learned that the four works to be performed took no more than an hour and a half, he felt reassured. Even if she went into labor, Galya could hold out until they returned. And the opening piece, the B Major cello concerto, gave him unexpected pleasure. Its soloist, a guest performer from abroad with an enormous mane of hair, played without glancing at his instrument, as if it were part of his body. His hands flowed in and out of the strings of their own accord, his mane tossing as he kept practiced eyes on the audience as if to forge a connection or even a friendship with it.

During the intermission, perhaps to avoid an argument, Hagit and Rivlin did not discuss their guest. Instead, they reminisced about the birth of Ofer, lovingly recalling every detail of the thirty-three-year-old memory.

The concert ended with the Clock Symphony. Haydn, Rivlin had to admit, had not subjected him to a dull moment. Yet finding the duplex in darkness upon their return, he felt a current of anxiety. Had someone spirited their miraculous visitor back to Jerusalem?

He opened the door to his study carefully. The orange reminder to be of good cheer twirled over the screen saver of his computer and lit the face of the sleeper on the couch with a tender light. She lay as peacefully beneath the mound of her pregnancy as if she were where she had always wanted to be.

He and Hagit exchanged smiles, like the parents of a naughty child, and shut the door softly. They undressed in silence, getting into bed and turning out the light without the TV news. Although for a moment he thought his wife wanted to make love, he didn’t dare put it to the test. He gave her a last hug, stroked the face he had kissed, and turned to the wall.

In the middle of the night, the telephone rang and stopped before he could answer it. Curling up again beneath the quilt, he realized that his sleep had fled and would have to be hunted down in the apartment. He went first to the bathroom and then, cautiously, to his study. Although the lights were still off, a voice was speaking as though to itself. Going downstairs to the guest room, he gently picked up the receiver of the telephone. Now there were two voices, Galya’s plaintive, her husband’s quiet and restrained. He hung up and sank into a chair, his wakefulness growing. Let it. Keeping watch over his ex-daughter-in-law’s last hours of pregnancy seemed the right thing to do.