A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

“At eight in the evening. Why? Is there any chance of your coming?”

“I would come just to hear you. I really do miss the two of you. But eight o’clock is too late for me. I’ve broken my glasses and can’t drive at night.”

“But why go back to Haifa at night?” Hannah Tedeschi asked, thrilled by his unexpected declaration of longing. “You can sleep at our place. It will give us a chance to chat. If you’d like, I’ll even let you look at a few new translations. And don’t worry, Carlo’s nightly coughing fits have stopped….”

16.

HE ABSCONDED UNTIL three o’clock. Then, returning in a sullen mood to the duplex, he found the kitchen clean, the dishes washed, and the pots of food cold on the stove. He couldn’t tell if Hagit had eaten lunch or was waiting for him. Making it clear that he wasn’t ready to end the hostilities, he stepped briskly into the bedroom, grabbed a blanket and a pillow without stopping to see whether she was sleeping or merely resting in their bed, and went to lock himself up in his study. Placing the remains of his broken glasses by the computer, where they resembled a surrealistic totem meant to ward off a premature reconciliation, he pulled out the convertible couch, took off his pants and shoes, and glanced instinctively across the street looking for the old woman, who had recently lost weight.

The expected knock was not long in coming. It was followed by an invitation, in a clear but severe voice, to come out and “talk it all over.” He didn’t answer. Hands behind his head, he lay staring at the ceiling.

“Please. Don’t sulk like a child.” The door handle rattled. “Open the door and let’s talk like two grown-ups. Believe me, I’m just as mad as you are. But I promise to control myself and explain calmly why you deserved what happened this morning. Come on out and listen. Don’t be such a coward…”

He turned to the wall and pulled the pillow over his ears, feeling how, despite his determination to keep silent, one more well-aimed sentence might draw his answering fire. Yet her voice reached him anyway.

“I’m sorry about the glasses, but not about hitting you. Not at all. Come on out and I’ll explain.”

He shut his eyes tight.

“Don’t play the martyr just because your glasses are bent a little. You’ll have them straightened tomorrow. Meanwhile, you can find an old pair. Open the door and I’ll help you to look for them….”

He grinned, carefully gauging the scratch on his forehead. For sure! She, who always had to ask him where everything was, was going to find his old glasses. He burrowed deeper into his silence, surprised to feel it growing stronger.

“I really am sorry about the glasses, even though it’s no tragedy, neither for you nor for the Middle East, if you don’t write anything for a day. But believe me, you had that slap coming. It was a moral act. And if you open the door now, you’ll get another one…”

As though bitten by a snake, he leaped to his feet with fists clenched, only to restrain himself at the last moment. He was pleased to note how, in spite of everything, his love and desire for this woman were unabated.

Still, if he was to avoid the new quarrel that a response would provoke, which could only lead to their making up before he wanted to, he had to fortify his defenses. And so, switching on his computer, he made it play music so loud that it not only drowned out the woman behind the door but brought the ghost across the street scurrying to her terrace, from which, gray and unkempt, she turned uncertain eyes for the first time in his direction.

He drew the white lace curtain to shut her out. It was the same curtain that, laundered for his sister-in-law’s visit, had made him think of a bridal gown. He turned down the music and stretched out on the bed again, shutting the eyes that were excused from intellectual effort. A thought was running through his head.

It’s true, went the thought, that my love for this woman has only grown greater with the years. Each day it’s more unconditional than the day before. But if I don’t sometimes put my foot down, how is our melancholy son, our flesh-and-blood image who has followed in our footsteps and learned from our love and gone beyond it, ever going to hate the woman who wrecked his marriage, or at least get over her instead of just missing her more and more?…

He switched off the music, covered himself with the blanket, and made himself rest for a while before emerging, careful to avoid any trap. None had been set. Hagit had stepped out, leaving him a note that she had gone to the hairdresser’s and that he absolutely must wait for her to return, since there was an important new development they had to talk about.

Her lacerated husband, however, who was finding the world not only blurry but increasingly remote, did not want to listen to one more reprimand or scolding, no matter how subtle or sweetened by a request for forgiveness. Putting on his sneakers, he scrawled in large, baleful letters:

“I’ve gone out for a couple of hours. Our plans for the movies tonight are off. I don’t want to talk to you when I come back. Saying you’re sorry won’t help. I’ve just begun to fight.”

He was soon strolling along the beach in a southerly direction. A golden halo enveloped the ancient crusaders’ castle at Atlit on its spit of land sticking into the sea. Peace talks were out of the question after a single skirmish. A resolute campaign of silence was called for. Having been punished for his lies and concealments with a slap and the breaking of his glasses, he was now entitled — no, obliged — to stalk the truth that haunted him and stood in the way of his son. Just let anyone try to stop him. They might as well try to stop a ghost. This much freedom his fight with his wife had gained for him.

He came to a halt, his helpless eyes scanning the fuzzy sea. It was not only a father’s right to investigate his offspring’s suffering, it was his duty, he thought, turning back northward toward the lights on the Carmel. Youngsters, wet from the sea, walked on the sand. You’ll see, Rivlin whispered to his beloved. I have the strength and the patience to search on in the dark. There will be no surrender.

He came home in high spirits to find her barefoot on the couch, conversing with her sister beyond the sea. Smiling at him brightly, she signaled him to wait so that they might discuss the new development. But however clear it was that in the long run his love for her would compel him to submit to her judicial logic, this was all the more reason to abscond a while longer while their war of silence went on.

He went to his study and locked the door. From behind it came first anger, then supplication. He knew he was scandalously jeopardizing something old and precious — and since his heart would never stop loving or desiring her, he chose to imagine that the revolving chair by his desk was a wheelchair and that, right arm rigid, leg limp, paralyzed torso twisted to one side, he was, like the former Supreme Court justice who loved her, too, the victim of a stroke.

Yet at midnight, on his way to the bathroom, discovering her wide-awake in her alcove by the library, in which she was working on her dissent without looking up at him, he realized that she, too, was now at war. He shivered. Yet it was too late to retreat. Without a word he returned to his study and crawled into bed, this time without locking the door.

17.

IN THE MORNING, he carefully laid the broken pieces of his bifocals on the optician’s counter while inventing a story about their flying off his face and being run over by a car as he sprinted to cross a street against the light.

“By a minimum of two cars, I would say,” the old optician remarked skeptically. Without asking permission, he swept the remnants of the tall tale into the trash. Testing Rivlin’s eyes before ordering new lenses, he discovered that the Orientalist’s vision, both near and far, had deteriorated.