A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

For the first time in his life, Fu’ad could do something for a Jew other than serve him. At last, he thought, I can help the Jews without having to defeat them.

“Without having to defeat them?” Ofer asked in astonishment. “What does that mean?”

Galya spread her arms helplessly to acknowledge that she didn’t know. She shut her eyes with a grimace, as if the child inside her, too, were demanding to be told. In a frail voice, she asked her ex-husband to change places with her. She had felt what might be a first labor pain and needed better support than a pillow.

“God knows,” she said, easing her way into the Orientalist’s revolving chair. The computer at her back, switched off by Ofer, no longer radiated good cheer. “I didn’t ask him because I was afraid if I did he would never get to the point — which was, you’ll be surprised to hear…”—she paused to look at Ofer, hunched on the couch like a big rabbit preparing to jump—“… you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, Ofer, you. You’re the hero of his story, just as he is of mine.”

A week after that winter night in Abu-Ghosh, Fu’ad returned to work at the hotel — as maître d’ with a huge pay raise, though not yet as a partner. If Hendel’s main worry was to keep the secret from his wife, Fu’ad’s was now to keep it from Galya, the effect on whom, he feared, would be disastrous. And so when he was introduced one day to her fiancé, he was greatly relieved. Now, at least, there was someone to take her away from the danger zone.

He met the groom’s parents too, the professor and the judge. As did everyone at the hotel, he considered this new family connection a source of pride and threw himself into the preparations for the wedding. And yet it quickly became apparent that, far from intending to carry the bride off to his own world, the new husband was being drawn into hers. He was already dreaming of a role in the hotel, where he sought to involve himself in the management.

The Arab’s worries, far from decreasing, were now made worse. On top of everything, he had to keep Ofer’s curiosity and enthusiasm within bounds. And so that morning, when Ofer insisted on descending to the forbidden basement, he did everything to stop him. Yet unable to defy Mrs. Hendel, he had no choice but to toss her the ring of keys, while thinking resentfully, “Before I’ve even been made a partner, I already have a partner of my own.” Could he at least count on him to be discreet?

But Ofer’s indiscretion was soon apparent. Before long he had risked his marriage by choosing honesty over love.

“It was the honesty of love that made me do it,” Ofer murmured passionately. He suddenly regretted burning the letter he had written to Galya in Paris.

Fu’ad now faced a dilemma. Should he protect Galya’s marriage by telling her the truth, or protect her family and his hoped-for partnership? He chose the latter, not realizing that this was the greatest fantasy of all. Hendel, saying nothing, quietly hiked his pay again without telling Tehila.

“And so they gave you the boot,” Galya concluded, with an odd flourish. “You were driven from the hotel, from the family, from my life, and from my love. And two years later I found another husband, a very different one from you, who takes things as they come…”

“But how do you take things as they come?” Ofer pleaded in the darkness. “Explain that to me…”

“You just do. What shocked and outraged you wouldn’t have mattered to Bo’az, because he accepts all that’s twisted and perverse in life. He respects the privacy of others to a fault, even if they’re close to him — even if it’s his own wife. He’s never intrusive or clumsy. Even when we make love, he’s a world apart. If he had found out or guessed what you did — and perhaps he did — he would have kept it to himself. That’s why Fu’ad, although he’s not keen on him, is happy not to have to keep an eye on him or treat him as an obstacle.”

“I wouldn’t have been one either.” It was extremely painful to him to think of her making love to someone else.

“Perhaps not. I suppose that’s why he had such fond memories of you, even of the way you cried one night in the street. He even wrote a poem about it.”

“A poem? About me?” Ofer got up and went tensely to the window. “What did it say?”

“I don’t know. He never showed it to me. Anyway, it was in Arabic. He wouldn’t let your father see it either.”

And then, one day, Galya’s father died. Although the whole staff feared for its future, Fu’ad’s turmoil was especially great. While he had now taken over the dead man’s responsibilities to the point of all but running the hotel, he was no longer guardian of the secret — and with it he had lost, not only his pay raise, but also all hope of becoming a partner.

“You tell it well,” Ofer said softly.

“And then, in the middle of the bereavement, your father turned up. For five years, we hadn’t seen him. We all felt he had come more to interrogate us than to console us. Even Fu’ad, who treated him like a new father figure and even made him write something in the condolence book, saw through him.”

“Yes. My father told us about that book. Do you remember what he wrote there?”

“More or less. It was addressed to my father. Something like, ‘Despite the separation imposed on us, the memory of you still shines with light and generosity. We feel a keen and vivid sorrow at your death.’”

“He really wrote that? Light and generosity? How strange…”

“Why?” Galya protested. “Despite all that happened, you can’t deny, Ofer, that it was that which attracted you to him, too. But my father wasn’t Fu’ad’s problem any more. Your father was. And at the same time, Fu’ad liked him. You see, your father sensed right away that he was the weak point in the protective wall around me. At first Fu’ad watched from a distance while your father questioned me twice. You tell me: What good would it have done to tell him about your crazy fantasy and what I thought of it? Would he have felt any better? Would it have helped him to make you less stuck? Believe me, I knew about that too and felt bad for you. I still do. But I wouldn’t let him corner me, not even when he absurdly tried playing on my feelings for you. I did agree to answer your letter, so as not to frustrate him completely. I even answered your second one, though both were as nasty as they were anguished.

“Your father wouldn’t give up. He came to the hotel a third time, when I wasn’t there. And now he began a relationship with Tili, who makes friends easily, especially with older men. It was she, by the way, who sent him to sleep in the basement. To this day I have no idea what she knows or suspects about us, because I don’t know whether she noticed you that day. Perhaps my father managed to hide it from her too. I was afraid to ask. It was easier, after talking to Fu’ad, to get up and run away.”

“But what made him confess in the end? Was it my father?”

“No.” Galya felt a new fountain of emotion welling up in her. “It wasn’t your father, although it did have to do with him. Your father could have kept haunting the hotel forever and Fu’ad still wouldn’t have talked. All the Arab-speaking professors and Orientalists in the world couldn’t have wormed that secret out of him, because even though he lost his pay raise when my father died, he hoped his keeping silent would be chalked up to his credit. No, Ofer, what made him tell the truth was another Arab, one he met through your father. That’s when he cracked… I mean, opened up….”

“Another Arab?”

“Rashid or Rasheed. Have you heard of him?”

“No.”

“Neither had I. But he made a big impression on Fu’ad. He’s some kind of driver or guide your father employed. The haunt of the haunt, you might say. It was because of him that Fu’ad decided to discard what he called ‘my veneer of being nice.’”