A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

She passed a large iron door, checked that its handle was locked, and continued down the corridor until they came to a space in which pipes running down from the kitchen gurgled with water. An old black boiler in the middle of it brought to mind a petrified primeval beast. Strewn around it, like the bones of its prey, were a twisted baby carriage, a green tricycle, and a crib with some little toy animals on its dusty, oilcloth-covered mattress.

Overcome with sudden grief for the grandchild that had never been born, Rivlin felt as though he were mourning his own death.

“When is your sister giving birth?”

The question took Tehila by surprise.

“In early winter, I think.”

“Do they know the sex of the child?”

She wrinkled her brow, her little eyes naughty.

“That’s a good question. I think it’s either a boy or a girl. The truth is that I don’t remember what Galya told me. But why should you care?”

The old despair clutched at his heart again. His vision blurred without his glasses, he watched the bony woman, whose sallow skin looked almost sickly, choose the right key for a windowless room jammed between the foundations of the building. In it was a large desk, two metal bookcases filled with file holders, and a narrow, unmade bed. Tehila halted in the doorway. She wasn’t sure, she said, that the room, in which she hadn’t set foot since her father’s death, was suitable even for a night. It hadn’t been used since their accountant, a cousin from Tel Aviv who had come every month to do their books, died seven years ago.

“Where does this place get its air from?”

She pointed to the ceiling. His naked eye made out two small, dark vents covered with rusty netting.

“You’re sure it’s real air?”

She laughed.

“Do you think we would have asphyxiated a wonderful accountant who saved us so much money? Relax. It is a bit strange down here, but it’s clean and it’s safe and I always liked it, even as a child. In summertime I came down here to get away from the heat and the sun; it was always cool at night here. And in winter it was so warm that I could take off my clothes and be totally cut off from the world, with no one to bother me or even to think of me. I tell you, if it weren’t for all the germs in my bed, I’d send you upstairs to sleep in that and happily spend the night here myself.”

She bent down and pulled a wooden linen chest from under the bed. Carefully choosing some white sheets, she sniffed their scent of laundry soap; then, whipping them in the dark air like the wings of two snow-white swans, she let them fall on the bed with a sharp crack, one after another, and made the bed as deftly as an experienced chambermaid. No, Rivlin thought again. This is not a woman who needs protection. This is a woman who gives it.

“Look here,” she said. “This place may not be up to your usual standards, and my father would be upset to know I’d put you here, but you’ll enjoy the bed. You’re getting two honest-to-God starched and ironed cotton sheets such as we don’t use anymore, because it costs too much money. Nothing feels better than a smooth, cool cotton sheet. Come and see for yourself.”

Rivlin could not move. His absconding was getting out of hand. Despite her illness, he feared, the Circe of this cave was up to no good.

“It’s strange how two sisters can be so different,” he said in a subdued voice. “My wife and her sister are like that, too.”

She threw him a suspicious look.

“I remember your wife very well. She has a style of her own. Your sister-in-law I saw only once, at the wedding. But you’re right. Galya and I are complete opposites. My father quite thoughtlessly gave me not only his height, which is more than any woman needs, but his eyes and a metabolism that doesn’t leave an ounce of fat on me. Galya’s eyes are my mother’s, and so is her tendency to put on weight. Do you want the blue blanket or the green one?”

“It makes no difference.”

“Come over here and make up your mind.”

His face felt on fire. He didn’t move.

There was a knock so soft that the door opened before anyone could hear it or say “Come in.” The maître d’, minus his bow tie, stood in the doorway holding a big pillow in a flowery pillowcase. He did not look at the proprietress, who seem displeased by his sudden appearance.

“ T’zakart, ya Brofesor, inno el-m’hadeh hon sarlha yabseh, * so I brought another.”

Rivlin let out a relieved laugh and laid a hand on the Arab’s shoulder.

“Thanks. It was kind of you to think of me.”

“ Leysh la, iza ana kunt ili akna’tak t’nam hon e-leileh? Min hazna likbir inno hawajja Hendel ma irfish inno na’umnak hon, li’inno kan y’kul daiman inno mamnu’ nist’hir hatta iza fi deif binam bi’balash. ” *

Tehila burst into their exchange. “What’s that about Mr. Hendel? What did you say, Fu’ad? Why are you sticking Arabic into every sentence tonight?”

The Arab took the rebuke in stride.

“Why shouldn’t I? When you were little I taught you many Arabic words, and you were very sweet when you used them. Why not learn them again and be sweet once more?”

“Give me a break, Fu’ad,” Tehila said impatiently. “Just tell me what you were saying about my father.”

“I said it’s a lucky thing that the late departed doesn’t know where we’re putting our honored guest.”

“But whose idea was it?”

“And who agreed to it?”

“Just give me a break. What’s with all this Arabic? You forget I’m walking around with a fever.”

“How can I have forgotten your fever when I’ve come to escort you to bed because of it? Just do me a favor and stop off at the reception desk on your way. There’s a problem with some rooms on the second floor. Your evangelicals have run out of religion and sung their last hymn, and now they’re quarreling over the rooms like little children. It takes your brains to solve this one. And you needn’t worry about our extra pilgrim, because we’ve already put him in your wing and locked him up so that he won’t bother you. He’s a very old man, but a lively one and a great believer in the Resurrection.”

Rivlin could feel the tall woman’s agitation. Angrily she yanked the pillow from Fu’ad and stood hugging it instead of placing it on the bed. Her yellow, predatory bird’s eyes strayed back and forth between the two gray-haired men, as if trying to decide whose good graces she sought. Equally aroused and alarmed by her unwillingness to leave him, Rivlin turned for help to the maître d’, who stood there, resplendent, in his black suit. A thin smile tickled his silver mustache. With the fatherly air of a family servant taking his old master’s orphaned daughter in hand, he gripped her arm, put his hand on her waist, and said, “I think, Tehila, that if you’re running a fever, you should let our guest go to sleep. There’s no need to leave him the key, because the door has a bolt.”

He slipped the key ring from the door, opened the side pocket of his employer’s dress, and slipped the keys into it as if he were in charge of a little girl. Appeased, she brushed Rivlin’s cheek with her warm lips, the naughty gleam back in her little amber eyes.

“If you haven’t caught anything from me yet, you won’t now, and if you have, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “You can pass it on to your clever wife. What should I tell Galya? That you were here looking for her again? Or nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all,” was his unhesitating answer.

24.

ABSCONDING TO THE hotel’s basement was his deepest and most dangerous absence yet. Though committed in his native city and among Jews, it was entirely self-willed, an absence within an absence, for he had already absconded to Jerusalem itself, to ease the fear of his love.