A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

She stepped up to him and grabbed his hand, her eyes boring into him, and slapped him hard in an outburst of fury.

Dumbfounded, he seized the hand that hit him and twisted it without letting go.

“Now calm down. What are you…”

“Let go of me! Do you hear me?”

“I’m not letting go until you calm down and say you’re sorry.”

“Never!”

She tried to straighten up. His iron grip kept her doubled over.

“Watch out, Yochi. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into by assaulting a judge in a courtroom. I can press an alarm and have the police here in no time. You’ll be locked up in solitary before you know it. It will be a week before you can open your lying mouth to anyone….”

“You’ll have me locked up?” He laughed wildly. “It’s you they’ll lock up. Who hit who?”

“It doesn’t matter. No one will believe a word you say.”

“Then I might as well give them a reason to lock me up. Here’s for the slap you gave me.”

He yanked her up to give her a symbolic slap of his own. But he was too careful not to hurt her. It gave her a chance, with a savage litheness he had never seen in her, to snatch his bifocals and make off with them.

“Be careful!” he cried. “You know they’re my only pair.”

“Then stand still and don’t move until the police come.”

“You bully! Who do you think you are? This is your last warning before I ruin you. Give me back my glasses. They’re my only pair.”

“I’ll give them back if you promise to stand still.”

“What for? You swung at me.”

“You deserved it. You’re a liar and a coward. There’s nothing I hate more.”

“Be careful with my glasses. You’re bending them. I don’t have another pair. If anything happens to them, you’re ruined for good. I’ll smash your computer, and you’ll be fired from your job.”

“You can smash what you like. You’re going to jail anyway.”

“Hagit, I want my glasses!”

“Stand still and calm down.”

“Bully! Give me my glasses!”

He lunged at her. She backed away, light on her feet and wild, gripping the bifocals with both hands.

Once (he had been told by her sister), after a fight with the father she loved, she had broken all his work tools.

“If you don’t give me back my glasses this minute, I’m going to go to your office and destroy your files.”

“You can destroy all you want. There are copies of everything.”

“Aren’t you ashamed to be dragging us down to this level?”

“I’m so mad at your lies that I don’t care if I never see you again.”

He lunged again, his vision blurred, and grabbed her hair. She screamed, struggling to free herself, bent his glasses into a shapeless mass, and smashed them against the witness stand. He bent to retrieve them while she fled to her chambers through the little door and locked it.

15.

WITH THE REMAINS of his bifocals jammed hopelessly into his pocket, he hurried out of the courthouse and locked the gate behind him. Although he was angry enough to keep her locked up for a while, he was afraid she might hit the alarm button and make a scene. And so, returning the key to the guard, he asked him to open the gate for the judge, who still had work to do, in half an hour. The Russian took the key with a sigh of relief. He would be sure, he said, to get to the gate on time. “But you’ve got blood on your face, Mister,” he said. He brought Rivlin a small mirror in which the Orientalist saw a long, thin scratch on his forehead. As in his childhood fights with his sister, his first instinct was to run back and retaliate. Yet he no longer had the key, and the Russian was too curious about his cut. Forswearing immediate revenge, he walked to his car and drove carefully, through the quiet and blurry Sabbath streets, to his office at the university, the best place he could think of to abscond to. Barred even from reading his mail without his glasses, he took his old key, opened the new department head’s office, and sank irately into the large, comfortable armchair purchased during his tenure.

Yet after a while, his worry for the trapped judge got the better of him. Phoning her chambers and getting no answer, he tried her at home. Her “hello,” quiet and friendly as if nothing had happened, told him that — as usual — she had recovered surprisingly quickly. He hung up at once, knowing that a prolonged silence was his best weapon against someone for whom conversation was life itself.

She knew it was him, of course. Soon the stubborn ring of the telephone inside his closed office reached him from the other end of the corridor. Confident, however, that it would never occur to her that he had taken refuge in his old room, he relaxed and settled back in the armchair. The photographs of Akri’s adorable grandchildren bothered him less without his glasses.

He sat silently for a few minutes. His naked eyes felt huge. It was the first time he could remember being unable to read or write. The freedom this gave him was both liberating and humiliating. Going over to the large window, he studied the reflection of his cut. Although superficial, it was a good one that would take time to heal. A powerful sense of lust, aroused by the unexpected wildness of the woman who had attacked him, vied with his ignominy and thirst for revenge. Oh yes, he thought. The punishment of silence will work best if I abscond for a while.

Before deciding which of his friends was most suitable for a Saturday morning visit, he phoned his old mentor to get some feedback on his latest scholarly thoughts. The sound of his voice was a cause for joy in Jerusalem. “Where have you been?” Hannah complained. “You only come to see us when Carlo is sick. As soon as he’s well, we don’t exist for you.”

“Carlo is well?” Rivlin teased. “I don’t believe it. There must be some mistake.”

“Shhh!” Tedeschi chortled, joining in. “I’m not exactly well, but who has time to be sick when the Orientalists have latched onto my old Turks again? Ever since Stephen Jones and his gang at Oxford started spreading their new theory that all the faults of the Arabs can be blamed on Ottoman rule, the whole world has been beating a path to my door. I’m the latest academic sensation. My old book, the one you were examined on, has been rediscovered, and since nobody has the patience to read it, everybody wants me to tell them what’s in it. Believe me, Yochi, it’s your luck up there in Haifa that you haven’t been taken over yet by the new historians who are out to prove that every venal idiot and corrupt ruler in the Arab world was a victim of imperialism. I swear, they should be called the ancient historians, not the new ones. Why stop with the Ottomans? Why not blame it on the Byzantines or the Romans? Listening to them makes me sorrier than ever that you’ve let the Terror in Algeria hold up that book of yours. Stop being so obsessed by it. If you could come to Jerusalem tomorrow, I’d take you — for your sake, not mine — to hear a paper I’m giving at a political-science conference. You’d see I’ve become a new historian myself. In fact, you’d understand that your Algerians aren’t killing each other off, God forbid, because they’re nasty-tempered, but because the Turks oppressed them three hundred years ago. So why get worked up over it, my friend?… Ha! They’re good for a laugh, these brand-new Orientalists. How I adore Stephen Jones, that imbecile of an Englishman at St. Antony’s with his high table. High twaddle! O men of lovely Oxford! Stick your pipes up your arses and tell us more….”

Rivlin burst into merry laughter. The old man hadn’t sounded so youthfully wicked in ages.

“What time are you giving your paper?”