A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

You’ll find a bigger dressing room to your right, Ofra.

In the time I’ve spent dodging women in this store, I could have written at least two more articles. But it’s been worth it. We’ve bought some nice things here. There’s something about the design, the way you cut things, that suits Hagit’s figure. It hides what needs to be hidden. I must say that your prices are high. But as long as she listens to me, what we buy doesn’t end up forgotten in the closet.

Go on, try it on. You can’t tell a thing just by looking.

Of course. I’ll wait out here.

Me?

She lives abroad. Her husband works for UNESCO. He’s an adviser on Third World economies. They spend more time on airplanes than you do in your bedroom.

I suppose you could call them émigrés, even though they’d never admit it. They’ve been globe-trotting for thirty years. But they’ll make sure to be buried here.

Of course. Where else, in Africa?

So you do remember my wife.

Exactly.

Yes. She’s very nice.

A district judge. There are six of them in Haifa. She’s one.

In the past few years we’ve bought nearly all her clothes here. When I retire from teaching, I can open a rival boutique of my own. But only with clothes made by your designer.

No. She’s a few years older than my wife.

Because she’s so thin and girlish. She never had children to make her go to seed. And she has a husband who looks after her. He’s not in Israel now, which is why I’ve been drafted in his place. It takes two shrewd sisters to have found such devoted caretakers.

Let’s have a look, Ofra. It’s not bad.

Turn the other way.

She’s right. The hem needs to be shortened.

Too see-through? I don’t see anything. Believe me, Ofra, I have a good eye. It looks fine on you. It’s classic. It just needs to be shortened and taken in at the back. You don’t want to look like you’re on your way to Yom Kippur services.

I sometimes drive my wife crazy too. But I have to. Everyone needs somebody to keep an eye on them. She could buy some catastrophe that would go straight into her closet and never come out. It’s my job to veto that. It’s the husband who suffers most when his wife buys the wrong clothes….

What did you say your name was?

If you could pin up the hem for us, Na’ama, we’ll take it home. My wife will convince her.

There’s no obligation, Ofra. You heard what Na’ama said.

You like this one? But it’s so dreary! You’ll be the only person dressed in mourning at the wedding. It will make you stand out, which is just what you don’t want.

Trust me.

Yo’el is a wonderful man, but he’s no judge of clothes. Just look at how he dresses himself.

Never mind. Forget I said it.

All right. Try it on, if you must.

They’re close even for sisters. She and her husband come for short visits every two or three years. We give them the royal treatment.

I teach at the university.

In the Near Eastern Studies Department.

Of course. Mostly Arabs. But also Turks and Iranians and various other madmen.

We Jews still suffer from the delusion that we’re not part of the Middle East. We think we’ve stumbled into it by accident.

Rivlin. Professor Yochanan Rivlin.

Really?

In what department?

That’s a good one to be in if you’re looking for a husband.

Ours is a good one if you’re looking for a wife. An Arab one.

Let’s have a look. I don’t like the combination. The other was much nicer. It’s not bad in front, but we also have backs. And from the back you look like a receptionist in a mortician’s office. In fact, this color makes you look like a receptionist with jaundice.

Not if you ask me. But I’m only the driver. If you feel you must, we’ll take it home for consultation. Meanwhile do yourself a favor and try on this little item. It won’t cost you anything.

What do you mean, too loud?

It’s cheery, not loud.

This flower?

Can’t it be removed?

But she can if she wants to, can’t she?

You see? It’s a lovely dress. You’ll come alive in it. Try it on for my sake.

Don’t worry about me. I have time. My class isn’t until noon. But we do have to get a move on. You should try on a few more things. Don’t forget, the wedding is next week. And whatever you choose will need alterations…

8.

THEIR GUEST RETURNED home in a dither with three shopping bags full of dresses, skirts, pants, and blouses. Pesi, arriving on the scene at the last moment, added a few items for the judge. “Your sister,” she told Ofra, “is my best and favorite customer. Her husband is fun, too, even if his taste is a bit conservative.”

Ofra thanked him profusely for his efforts. Her gaunt face was ruddy from the morning’s adventure, which had been more exhausting than a transoceanic flight, not only because of the colorful array of clothing set before her, a Spartan woman accustomed to her wardrobe of what her husband liked to call her “uniforms,” but also because of her officious brother-in-law, who kept trying, rather insensitively, to talk her into buying what he liked. The freedom with which he told the salesgirl what alterations to make left her feeling that her body, so fragile and delicate, was a plaything in his hands.

Rivlin, too, felt he had gone too far. Had his wife known how he would behave, she might have preferred sending her sister in two buses. And yet he was satisfied. Even Ofra needed a face-lift now and then. It would keep her from drying up too fast.

9.

THERE WERE TWO messages on the voice mail. One was from Professor Tedeschi in person. In a despondent tone, he informed the Rivlins that the doctors had again despaired of diagnosing his condition and were sending him home to let it make up its own mind. The second message was from Ephraim Akri. With an insistence not typical of his pliant Oriental nature, he requested his colleague to stop by the departmental office on his way to class.

The secretaries in the office were waiting for him. Clearing out the students who were hanging around, they shut the door and ushered him with secretive glee into an inner room. There he was presented with two nameless term papers and asked to confirm that the comments in the margins were his own.

They were in his handwriting. Obviously, he had read the papers thoroughly and thought little of them. Yet, idiotically, the secretaries informed him, they had then been photocopied and submitted for another course with his marginal notes still on them.

“I just wanted to make sure,” one of the two said triumphantly. “I knew the comments were yours.”

“From their handwriting or their brilliance?” Rivlin asked, with a smile. He glanced at the gloomy Akri, whose pessimistic view of the Arab conception of freedom was in no way lessened by so primitive a deception.

“Can you identify the student who wrote these papers?” Akri asked. Rivlin shrugged.

“Whoever it was could have copied them from someone else,” said the older of the two secretaries, who took pride in seeing through students in general and Arab students in particular. “They just might have done a better job.”

“I’ve been told that in the English department,” the younger secretary volunteered, “they’ve got papers that were written in Beirut and Damascus, even Baghdad. There’s a market all over the Middle East, especially for Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare?”

“He’s the safest bet.” The younger secretary had studied English literature herself for two years. “Every day someone publishes a new book about him. There’s no way to tell what’s original and what isn’t.”

“Then how do they know these aren’t?”