A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

“You’re not wrong. He doesn’t.”

“And it’s up to you whether it stays that way. I mean, whether you go on keeping the promise you made me…”

“If it’s up to me,” he said eagerly, his answer cutting through the dense air, “the promise will be kept. I swear to you, Galya, he’ll never hear from me what he wants to know. But how about you? Can I count on you to keep, if not the condition, then at least the hope behind that promise… I mean… that you’ll come back to me one day?”

Her face shone. A married woman about to give birth, she made no attempt to disabuse him. It was as if every sign of living love that he gave her was part of the cleansing she had come for.

Ofer sat in his father’s revolving armchair, into which he had thrown himself with stiff distraction, his back to the computer and his hungry eyes feasting on his pregnant ex-wife. Galya, for lack of a chair, sat on the convertible couch, her hands supporting the burden of her large belly.

It was nearly evening. A thin, melancholy dusk descended on the voices of the children playing in the street. No lights had been switched on in the Orientalist’s study, in which a folded blanket and sheets were set by the books on the shelves. The pale twilight suited their encounter.

“I know,” Galya continued, “that you’re angry at your father, just as I am. He’s gone beyond all bounds since my father’s death. Still, now that I accept your ‘fantasy’ as fact, shouldn’t the two of us forgive him?”

He looked with amazement at the woman he still loved like an old dog faithful to its master. Though he might try remembering her as she was now, swollen and ugly with another man’s child, to tide himself over the sad, lonely days ahead, he knew she only had to touch him with a finger for all his feelings to flame up again.

“So my ‘fantasy’ is now a fact?” He regarded her with sarcastic wonder. “Are you sure of that, Gali?”

She quailed. Was it possible that, after what she had done, risking anger and uproar by running off to Haifa to see him, he was brutally about to turn the tables by admitting he had imagined it all? But this was the way he had always argued, deliberately playing the devil’s advocate. Reassured by this knowledge, she rebuked him with a smile, kicked off her shoes, loosened her sweater, put a pillow behind her back for support, tucked her legs beneath her, wrapped her arms around herself, and sat on the couch like a great ball.

“Yes, Ofer,” she said, her voice soft but firm, “I’m sure.” Her belly swayed in a supplicating movement, as if comforting the infant about to emerge into a world of human sorrow. “Absolutely sure…”

She was sure enough to tell him what she knew. It went back to the beginnings of the hotel. That whole first year, in the chaos of getting started, when her parents were occupied with the staff and the guests every moment and her older sister, too, was totally involved in the work, a young Arab from Abu-Ghosh — whether to please his employers or because he felt sorry for a little girl who wandered all day around the many floors and rooms of her new home — took her quietly under his wing. In his spare time he went with her for walks in the neighborhood and bought her the falafel that she loved, and he sometimes asked permission to take her home to play with his nephews. She still remembered her games with them, though not what they themselves looked like.

As she grew older and went to school and made friends, who were thrilled to know someone with her own hotel — to which they invited themselves to play hide-and-seek in the garden and tag in the hallways or to ride up and down in the new elevator and bang on the big pots in the kitchen — she remained buoyed by the knowledge that there was someone who, in his quiet and chivalrous way, always knew where to draw the line with them. And thus the years passed, and even as she learned to accept that the hotel could never be a real home, he remained a dual figure of intimacy and strangeness, a family member whose degree of kinship no one knew. Although she was never sure what he was thinking, she felt certain that he would always be there for her, if only fleetingly and from afar.

The more the hotel grew, the higher the Arab climbed the ladder of advancement and the more indispensable he became. He was a gardener, waiter, bellboy, and custodian all in one, a maintenance man who doubled as a tourist guide. Sometimes, coming home late at night, she found him in a tuxedo and bow tie at the reception desk; other times, in the middle of the day, she spied him through her window in nothing but his gym shorts, unloading fresh produce — fruit, vegetables, eggs, and poultry — from a truck. Once he brought her a week-old lamb, which was her pet until it went to the slaughterer.

No one ever met his wife or knew her name. She was said to be childless, a sickly older woman with whom he remained because she stood to inherit a large orchard of olives and figs. His real home was the hotel. He served it loyally and in a spirit of harmony and was often consulted by Galya’s father, who treated him more like a partner than an employee.

And then one day, while Galya was doing her military service, Fu’ad suddenly resigned. There had been no argument with Mr. Hendel, no demands, no reason given at all. He had simply announced one afternoon that he was leaving, and the next day he had a new job at a rival establishment nearby. Although everyone, especially Mrs. Hendel, was greatly upset by this and called for an explanation from Galya’s father, he himself, though failing to provide one, did not seem overly perturbed. And yet slowly it dawned on him that the Arab who had mysteriously abandoned the kingdom he had penetrated so deeply was dangerous.

At that period of her life, Galya had been living away from the hotel and had taken little interest in the incident. Only now, after leaving again and for good, had Fu’ad revealed to her what had happened the first time. Hendel, he told her, had lured him back with an offer that hinted at taking him into the business.

Even now, knowing what she did about her father, Galya told Ofer she could not but feel deeply for him. She still loved and even identified with the tall, lanky man who arrived one winter evening in Abu-Ghosh dressed not with his usual elegance, but disguised in jeans and an old jacket and hat. There, in a little coffeehouse in the square in front of the village church of St. Joseph, he coaxed Fu’ad into coming back. Convinced that the Arab had quit after uncovering his secret, he chose to confess all to him, the intimate stranger to whom alone the truth could be told.

Hendel, according to Fu’ad, displayed no feeling of guilt about what he revealed. He seemed less contrite than annoyed at the weakness, having nothing to do with sex, that had got him into his predicament. He had simply, he said, wanted to be nice to the daughter who had helped put the hotel on its feet. Though young, she considered herself his second-in-command and refused to share her ambition with anyone else. She did not want other men or love affairs in her life, which was dedicated to her work. This was why it was his duty, she told him, to make her less lonely, with an adult form of the love he had shown her as a child.

And so, Hendel told Fu’ad, he gave in, thinking it was just for one time, and became Tehila’s prisoner.

Fu’ad sat in the square of St. Joseph’s, listening silently to this confused and unbelievable account by a man he had once greatly respected. At first, determined to put more distance between them, he refused to reconsider his decision. Yet his former employer now made him a proposal so bold that it took his breath away; namely, to return to work, for double his old pay, as maître d’, future partner, and guardian of the secret which he was entrusted to make unknowable by both protecting and keeping in check what he alone knew.