A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

As if to prove her right, the saint, approached by a blond, baby-faced sergeant hoping to take advantage of the family reunion by asking his commanding officer for a favor, cut him off sharply and sent him on his way.

2.

“AS LONG AS I’m here, why don’t we take a little walk and see the spring flowers. What do you say?”

The son to whom Rivlin extended this invitation was being fawned upon by a fond mother and aunt, who no doubt saw in him the reincarnation of an old photograph of their father mounted on a horse in a Russian cavalry uniform.

“But why take a walk?” objected Hagit, who had already placed a large bag of cherries on the grass. “Ofra has come especially to see Tsakhi. If you’re restless, go yourself.”

The young officer glanced ingenuously from one parent to the other, wondering how to satisfy two such contradictory desires at once. Rivlin, who wanted to be alone with his son in order to get his appraisal, or even approval, of the conversation in the hotel garden in Jerusalem, was forced to yield. Making his way among picnicking parents spreading checked tablecloths and coaxing blue flames from gas burners, he wandered off on his own.

Deprived of a conversation partner, he soon found himself on the mountainside, slowly but steadily climbing a path. For a while his rapid pace seemed about to carry him to the summit — where perhaps, he mused, amid the silent chatter of the antennas, satellite dishes, and smart sensors, he might find inspiration for his unfinished book. But the summit was farther away than it looked, and he soon came to a high military fence in a field of flowering bindweed and squirrel grass. Fearing mines, he picked a spot beneath an old oak tree and sat down quietly in the fresh grass, the last of the morning dew glinting on his shoes. Far beneath him, the entrance to the base looked like the opening of an anthill. His affectionate glance made out his son. Seated between his aunt and his mother, the young officer was probably being fed a banana.

Despite Hagit and Ofra’s twice-weekly international phone calls, the two never tired of retrieving from oblivion, with an intimacy born of the bedroom shared by them as children, all that had fallen since their last meeting into the stormy crevices of time. They never had looked like sisters, and they resembled each other even less after so many years of being apart. Tall, thin, and stooped, Ofra, the eternal product of the left-wing youth movement in which she had met her husband, dressed with a mousy simplicity. Plump, merry, vivacious, opinionated, and pampered Hagit, on the other hand, wore fancy clothes, liked expensive makeup and perfumes, and smoked with the flair of a juvenile delinquent. Perhaps she was still trying to compensate her father for his disappointment in having a second daughter.

Early that morning, at a dawn hour rarely suitable for love, Rivlin had overcome her defenses. “I hope you’ve noticed how nice I’ve been to your sister,” he had begun, following up on this advertisement for himself by quickly stripping off his pajamas and diving beneath the blankets. Forced to admit his model behavior, Hagit, thinking she heard a noise from her sister’s room, tried fending him off with hugs and kisses. But Rivlin would not take no for an answer. “If you use your sister as an alibi, I’ll end up hating her,” he said. “But can’t you hear that she’s up?” Hagit whispered. “You’ve gone deaf from thinking too much.” Throwing off the blanket, he ran naked to the door of his expropriated study and put his ear to it to demonstrate that she was imagining things.

Whether despite or because of this, their lovemaking was especially delicious. He rose from it contented, while his wife resumed from beneath the blanket her investigation of his frowned-upon condolence call. In her years as a district attorney, before being appointed to the bench, she had acquired a reputation as a shrewd cross-examiner, and he now answered her questions warily without denying that he might have, between expressions of sympathy for the bereaved, alluded to the painful mystery of Ofer and Galya’s separation.

Hagit put on her glasses to study the defendant she had made love to.

“That’s all there was?”

“More or less.”

“What else was there?”

“That’s all.”

“I hope you realize even that was too much.”

“What was?”

“Mentioning Ofer to her. Wanting to know and understand everything. Come to my courtroom some day and you’ll see the terrible things people do because they don’t stop to think.”

He made no reply.

“Let it go,” she urged him gently. “Let it go. It only causes you grief. It’s time you separated from her, too.”

“Me?” Rivlin laughed and reddened. “I’ll never see her again.”

“I mean psychologically. That’s why I was against your going to the hotel and wallowing in your old misery and begging for explanations. It’s demeaning. For me, too. And most of all, for Ofer. It’s over with. Let her be. She has a new husband.”

“Yes,” he murmured, delivering a counterstroke. “I think she’s pregnant.”

“Pregnant?”

“Unless she’s just put on weight. She’s lost her good looks, by the way.”

“But what makes you think she’s pregnant?”

“It just struck me… when we were saying good-bye….”

“What struck you?”

“Nothing. You know what I mean. Forget it. She’s really broken up over her father. I felt it when I said good-bye….”

“Felt what?”

“Just for a second. It was like the old days. I hugged her… just to comfort her… and I thought I felt… this heaviness….”

“A heaviness?”

“Forget it. It’s only an image. Don’t pounce on every word.”

“But what made you hug her in the first place?”

“I just felt like it. It wasn’t really a hug. I was feeling sorry for her. Why are you so hard on her?”

“It’s you, not me, who’s been angry with her all these years.”

“That’s so. I was. I still am. But she suddenly seemed so sad to me. She’s too young to lose a father. What did I do wrong?”

She threw off the blanket, rose from bed naked, and put on a bathrobe. Going over to him, she took him in her arms and kissed him so hotly that he trembled.

“I just can’t….” He choked. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Ofer has been in limbo for five years, without a woman in his life. That’s the reality. Why shouldn’t I try to understand what happened… to make some sense of it….”

She rested her hands on his shoulders and shook him lightly, the bounty of her breasts showing through her robe.

“I know how it hurts you.” Her loving tone had a reprimand in it. “I’m on your side. That’s why I’m asking you to put it behind you. All your worry and anxiety just make it worse for Ofer, even if you’re far away and think he doesn’t know. If you don’t free yourself of that woman and stop trying to understand more than she does, he’ll never be free, either. Not of her and not of you.”

“But he has to know.”

“Know what?”

“That her father died.”

“Why? Why does it concern him?”

“He can’t not write a condolence note.”

“Why not?”

“Because the first thing she asked was whether he knew. She expects to hear from him.”

“Let her expect. Sooner or later he’ll hear about it and do what he wants. Whatever that is, it will be right for him. It’s his affair, not yours. Do you hear me? It’s none of your business!”

“But how can I not tell him I went to the hotel?”

“Just don’t. Why should you? To make him want what’s lost forever?”

3.

SOMETHING RUSTLED IN the bushes. Rivlin reached for a stone in case it was a snake. An animal, mole or rabbit, peeked worriedly from underneath some branches and took a step toward the Orientalist as if meaning to ask something, before changing its mind and darting off.