A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

Back in their car, Hagit laid the unframed painting in the back. “This is a good time to put me to work,” Rivlin told her. “I’m in the mood to go to the courthouse and clean out your drawers. We can’t afford any more missed invitations.”

Yet no prospect seemed more dreadful to Hagit than having to go through her drawers, and her husband’s eagerness only heightened her reluctance.

“Next weekend,” she said, with a smile, as if she were doing him a favor. “Won’t you be in the mood next weekend?”

8.

THAT TUESDAY, midway through his introductory survey course in the large hall whose very air seemed jaundiced by long hours of lectures, the classroom front door opened slowly, and in came Samaher, wearing a black dress embroidered with little flowers and a white scarf wrapped around her head and shoulders.

Well, well, Rivlin thought with a streak of meanness: the pregnancy that never was is over. He watched his “research assistant” take a seat, her sudden appearance causing a stir among the Arab students, not a few of whom were her friends or relations. Had she recovered from her illness or simply run away from her mother?

She waited patiently, after the lecture, for him to finish talking to the last student, then stepped up to inform him, rather ceremoniously, that she had more material for him. Even though the room was empty, she spoke in secretive tones, as if the subject were not amateur North African writing but a dangerous narcotic.

Rivlin regarded the slender figure. Gently but unsparingly, he asked:

“Well, Samaher. Is this the end of your pregnancy?”

She shrugged. “So it seems….” She declined to be more explicit, though her hand trembled as it gripped the edge of the lecture podium.

He felt a wave of pity for this Arab girl who was struggling to get her degree. “The main thing,” he said, patting her shoulder, “is that you’re back on your feet.”

He pictured them, delicate, wriggling beneath her blanket as excitedly as a floating French baby.

“For the time being, Professor.” She sighed glumly, unwilling to rule out future indispositions.

“Why just for the time being?” he asked sharply, reaching to take what she had brought him. “You’ve been sick long enough.”

This time too, however, there was nothing very material about his Arab student’s material. The new story, it turned out, existed only as a fever in her brain. She had read it with such excitement that she hadn’t bothered to summarize it in her notebook, because she had said to herself, Hey, Samaher, this is an important story, really special, just the thing for your professor’s research. Even Dr. Suissa had underlined it heavily, though his pencil marks had grown blurry from so much photocopying.

Of the stalwart bride who wrestled horses only the burning eyes, their sadness deepened by her mysterious illness, now remained.

“Then you understand what I’m looking for?”

“I think so.”

“Tell me.”

She gave a start, as if he were going to examine and grade her right now in the empty lecture hall:

“Maybe… I thought you wanted to find out, Professor… I mean… how it happened that the Algerian people, who suffered so much from the French, began to torture themselves… that is, to kill each other… just like that, for no reason…”

Although he had already realized it back when she was a first-year student, Rivlin had forgotten that she was really quite bright. The lecture hall was empty. It was 6:40 p.m. Soon it would be dark, and the campus would be swallowed by the shadows creeping out of the forests of the Carmel.

“But what’s so special about this particular story?” he demanded, debating whether to listen to it now.

“What’s special is that it’s disguised. I mean, it’s a story written by a woman, maybe even a young one, but signed by a man, the author. You can tell it by the style, the imagination, the feeling. That poor lecturer from Jerusalem knew it, too.”

“Dr. Suissa.”

“Yes, Suissa. I’m telling you, Professor Rivlin, it’s a shame about him, because he was a special person, maybe really a genius — a Jew who grasped us Arabs from the inside, the way we are, without fancy explanations. That’s rare. At first I didn’t understand why he wrote in the margin that the author was a woman in disguise. But when I finished reading the story, I said, Of course! Only a woman could write and feel such things. I can’t stand thinking of the way he died, that Suissa. Believe me, if he were alive I’d go to Jerusalem just to thank him. I’d say, ‘Thank you, Doctor, for understanding the Arab soul so well.’”

The Orientalist felt a twinge of envy. “Well, Samaher,” he snapped, “now you know whom your Palestinians killed.”

She winced at his unexpected outburst. “But what can I do about it, Professor?” she answered stubbornly. “Every man has his fate….”

9.

SAMAHER WANTED TO tell him the story right away, while it was still fresh in her mind. Although he was impatient to get home to Hagit, who was waiting to eat supper with him, Rivlin, standing in the large lecture hall, agreed to listen to a digest of it. Just then, however, two Druze cleaning women entered the room with mops and sloshing buckets of water. He had no choice but to take his excited student and her story to his office.

They were the only ones in the elevator. Early shadows flitted along the corridor that connected the locked offices. Without bothering to ask about her family or the village, or even about Rashid, Rivlin led Samaher silently down the hallway, politely holding doors for her and ushering her into his little room on the twenty-third floor. Seating her across from him, by the window looking out on the Galilee, he thought of her perfume on the night of her wedding and of Ephraim Akri’s warning. At least, he thought, smiling to himself, we’re not in her bedroom this time. As he debated switching on the ceiling light or making do with the last sweet glow of the day that still clung to the sky, his student pulled off her white scarf and with quick, pale fingers gathered the hair that spilled out of it into a long ponytail.

“Are you all right?” he asked with a start.

She nodded. “Then wait for me here,” he said, stepping out into the dark corridor. Leaving the lights off, he used an old key to enter his former room, now the new department head’s. With a glance at Akri’s grandsons, he dialed Hagit.

“Listen,” he said. “I’ll be a bit late. That Samaher has just turned up with something new. She wants to tell me about it now, orally, the way she did in the village. I’ve become like Harun ar-Rashid in One Thousand and One Nights: all I do is listen to stories. Do you think I should tell her to come another time? Why don’t you begin eating and I’ll be there in half an hour, three-quarters at the most. She’s come all the way from her village, and she’s not in such good shape…. What do you think?”

“I hate to eat without you.”

“You could have your hair done while you’re waiting.”

“My hair? What does my hair have to do with it?”

“Don’t you have an appointment at the hairdresser’s tomorrow morning? I thought you might be less pressured if you went now. Weren’t you thinking of trimming it in the back?”

“What on earth for?”

“Then you could work on your dissent.”

This was already too much for her.

“Listen, Yochi. Stop finding things for me to do. Just tell me how much time you intend to spend with her.”

“None at all. Half an hour. Three-quarters at most. She’s slightly mad, just as I thought. That whole pregnancy was her mother’s fantasy or manipulation. Honestly, I feel sorry for her.”