A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

He slid the bolt into place. Leaving on the light, he took off his shirt and shoes and lay down on the cool cotton sheets spread in his honor. Unable to read the yellowed newspaper that lay on the table, he stared patiently at the overhead vents as if hoping to ascertain whether the air he was breathing was real or imaginary. The deep silence around him was broken only by the gurgle of the hotel’s water system.

Despite his concern that his abandoned and anxious wife might swallow her pride and find a pretext to phone his old mentor, with whom he was supposed to be staying, he had refused to send her a reassuring signal. And in any case, an expert on the criminal mind like her could easily have guessed that his erratic behavior since Hendel’s death was likely to lead him for a third obsessive time to where stubborn love had chained their son.

He pulled off his pants and slipped on the pajamas he had brought, leaving them unbuttoned. All I need is a few hours of sleep to get my strength back, he thought, and I’ll be off. Convinced he could fall asleep with the light on, he lay with his back to the door and his face to the wall, on which hung two old still lifes of sunflowers and a faded photograph of a young man — no, a woman — standing in shorts by the gazebo. Even his unaided eyes could see that the pointy features, cropped head, long, bony legs, and slight stoop belonged to a much younger Tehila. Beside her stood an elderly man in a dark suit and tie. The avuncular arm he had put around her conveyed that he was a friend or relation — perhaps even the accountant, who had hung the photo to look at himself while he tinkered with the books.

After a while, unable to fall asleep with the lamp on, Rivlin switched it off. He was now, together with the desk and the files on the walls, in near total darkness. Only a vague radiance shone through the vents, from which came a light, monotonous buzz. Though at first he found this bothersome, it soon made him shut his eyes and ground down his wakefulness.

His sleep was a private affair. And yet a foreign presence weighed on it. Whirled in its depths, he fought to separate the distress of the young widow appealing for protection from the fevered appeal of the bold Circe, who could not have been easily categorized even by his wife, the judge.

The first prime minister’s famous four hours of sleep were granted him, too. At three in the morning he awoke. Opening his eyes, he struggled to reconstruct the spatial dimensions of the room, which had vanished somewhere inside him. A tremor, like that of a slight earthquake, appeared to bend the walls toward him, making it hard to breathe. But it wasn’t lack of air he suffered from. It was surplus of desire. Being slapped by a wife who broke his glasses had made him, so it seemed, fair game for every young woman.

Rolling out of bed, he turned on the light and groped his blurry way to the photograph of the tall young lady — who, after her father’s death, had built up his thriving business still more by means of small but well-calculated come-ons. Indeed, she might very well have come on to him too, had not Fu’ad appeared in the nick of time with the pillow. Yet what, apart from a low-grade fever, could he have got from it? If she, too, was unable to help him discover the secret by which he was driven, he could only be bound by her even more to this place, which was rapidly becoming dangerous.

Yes, he had gone too far this time. If Hagit were to need him, his absence-within-an-absence would badly rupture the trust he had always put before everything. And so although it was still long before dawn, he put on his pants, unbolted the door, retraced his way along the corridor past the primeval silhouette of the discarded boiler, and hurried up the concrete stairs, hoping find the door to the kitchen unlocked.

It was. He strode past rows of pots, griddles, ladles, and frying pans and emerged in the lobby, where he looked for a place to check out, even though he had never checked in.

At the reception desk was a night clerk reading an Arabic thriller. This being a land in which Arabs were accustomed to confessing to Jews all they knew, he had no difficulty in extracting Fu’ad’s whereabouts. The maître d’ was lying in his underwear on a cot in a small bedroom, half asleep and half awake, his black suit and white shirt on a hanger. Rivlin’s noiseless appearance brought him to his feet at once.

“Well, Professor,” he said, surveying his visitor blearily, “I see that all of us were wrong — I for suggesting it, Tehila for agreeing, and you for accepting. It’s not so simple to fall asleep surrounded by income-tax files. Once I slept down there myself and dreamed, don’t ask me why, of an earthquake. I just hope you didn’t run away because you thought there was no air. There’s enough air down there for an entire family. The bad smell doesn’t come from the plumbing or the old boiler, but from all those files. First it was Mr. Hendel who wouldn’t throw them out, now it’s Tehila. They want to keep the proof that they never cheated on their country….”

“Never mind, Fu’ad, I’ve slept enough,” Rivlin said to the maître d’, who had meanwhile risen and donned a pair of gym shorts.

“If you say so.” Fu’ad sighed. “An hour slept is an hour gained. Now tell me how you want your coffee— arabi willa franji? ” *

“Leysh ma n’ruhesh ma’a l-arabi?” †

“ Heyk lazim y’kun. ” ‡

He bent over a little cabinet and took out an electric hot plate, a sooty beaker, and a long spoon. Filling the beaker with water and coffee, he sat waiting patiently for it to boil.

The profound sadness of a last good-bye had the Orientalist in its grip. He sat on the edge of Fu’ad’s cot, rubbing his eyes hard in the hope of restoring clarity to a world gone hazy. Uncertainly he asked:

“Shu lakan? Bitfakirni majnun?” §

Fu’ad was startled. “ Kif majnun, ya Brofesor? ” ∥

“Because of the way I keep coming back in order to understand what happened to my son’s marriage…”

The old maître d’, his sturdy body looking young in its undershirt and gym shorts, did not answer. He fingered his silver mustache, broodingly watching the coffee slowly boil. As if remembering something, he asked:

“ Inteh b’tush’ur halak ahsan, ya Brofesor?” #

“ Aa. Ahsan…. ” **

“God be praised. You Jews worry too much about your health. A person can get sick just from that.”

Rivlin did not even smile. He watched the Arab search for cups at the bottom of the cabinet.

“How is it possible that even you don’t know what happened?” he protested.

“How? That’s simple.”

“But you can find out whatever you want to about this hotel, Fu’ad.”

“Perhaps I can, Professor.” The Arab spoke hotly. “But I don’t want to. Someone like myself, who isn’t Jewish and has a master key to every room, has to be careful — very careful — not to step out of bounds. He has to make sure — really sure — that he doesn’t see or hear what he shouldn’t. Why do you think, Professor, that I’m still here, after starting out as a simple worker twenty years ago, when Galya was still a baby? How would I have worked my way to the top — because today I’m part of the management — if I hadn’t stayed out of the family’s problems? I even said as much to the late departed. And that’s why I didn’t argue with Tehila tonight. They respect me for that. ‘Please,’ I’ve said to them, ‘don’t say anything bad about one another in front of me. I don’t want to know about your quarrels. I have to take orders from all of you, and I can’t afford to lose my honor with any of you. U’heyk, ya Brofesor, kult kaman li’ibnak laman balash yibki kuddami…. ” *