A. Yehoshua - The Liberated Bride

“When did Ofer come crying to you?”

“When he split with Galya. That last autumn.”

“Last autumn?”

“Yes. After they separated. He used to come here at night and lurk in the street or in the garden. He was hoping for even just a glimpse of her. I swear to God, it was hard for me too. It was hard for us all. But I didn’t want him hanging around. I didn’t want to have to listen to all his stories and accusations that I had no business knowing about. And that night he stepped out of line with me. I was standing at the bus stop, waiting to go back to my village. All of a sudden he drives up on his motorcycle and shines the light on me and shouts without taking off his helmet, ‘Get on, Fu’ad, I’m taking you to Abu-Ghosh. Don’t tell me you’re afraid to ride.’ You can be sure I wasn’t. I have a brother with a bike twice as big. But I didn’t want to talk to him, and so I said, ‘Yes, I am, Ofer. I’ll take the bus. I’m too old for your motorcycle.’ He took off his helmet, and I could see that his eyes were on fire. And then, Professor, I swear, listen to this and tell me if I wasn’t right, I said to him — I remember every word because I was upset—’You, Ofer,’ I said, ‘as much as I respect you and your parents, please don’t ask me anything. If you’re a man, then be a man with me too, and not just on your motorcycle. You’re not getting anything out of me. Nothing. Because you’ll leave this hotel, and you won’t come back, and God will help you, inshallah, to forget your troubles. But I’m staying right here. And that’s why I don’t want to hear a single bad word about the family. Not about Mr. Hendel, and not about the missus, and not about their children, and not about anyone. Because I want to be honored and treated well, no matter who tells me to do what. That’s why, my friend, I’m asking you to keep your problems to yourself, just as I do mine.’ Il-mazbut * he was very hurt, and embarrassed to be crying in front of an Arab, and he put his helmet back on and drove off without a word. My heart was aching for him, but what could I do? You tell me, Professor. Nothing. That was the last time I saw him. I felt so bad I even wrote a poem when I got home.”

“A poem?”

“ Ya’ani, ishi makameh z’ghireh .” †

“What kind of rhymes?”

“ Makameh, b’ti’raf shu ya’ani makameh …. ‡I was always good at rhymes, even as a boy in school. Even now whole lines of them sometimes come to me, one after another. Little poems, when the heart has too much sorrow or happiness. And that night, I thought — I swear — about you, Professor… so I sat down and wrote an energy. Is that the right word? Marthiyya. ”

“Elegy.”

“Elegy? Isn’t that what you say at a funeral?”

“That’s a eulogy.”

“I didn’t know there were so many words. Well, I wrote an elegy for your Ofer.”

“What happened to it?”

“Search me.”

25.

THREE LITTLE CUPS of Turkish coffee later, Rivlin felt he had enough adrenaline to walk, not only across the city to the Tedeschis’, but all the way home to his wife in Haifa. Turning down Fu’ad’s offer to order a taxi, he made him promise to look for his five-year-old “Elegy for a Young Man Whose Marriage Fell Apart.”

“Even if I can’t find it,” the Arab assured him, “I can always write another.”

The Orientalist’s second, underground absconding having reminded him of the first, he thought, as he stepped out into the streets of Jerusalem in the wee hours of his autonomous night out in the Palestinian Authority. Now, though, he was his own master and had no need of an Arab chauffeur. In the languorous light of the hazed orb of the moon, he strode down Korei ha-Dorot Street and headed for Hebron Road, glancing at the pine trees surrounding the sad, silent house of Agnon. Although, without his glasses, the stars did not seem as bright, making the street signs difficult to read, he navigated adeptly in his native town. His adrenaline, pumped even higher by Fu’ad’s story about Ofer, kept him moving at a rapid clip, as if the faster he put the hotel behind him, the less piercing the thought of his son’s despair would be. What else was there left to ask about? And whom? A stubborn scholar on a solo reconnaissance mission, he would find no one who, even if prepared to humor him, knew more now.

He was almost running as he swung into the broad, flat avenue of Hebron Road, the silhouette of downtown Jerusalem far ahead of him. Had he bitten off more distance than he could chew? But he had all night to keep on walking before the city awoke to a morning shift of Palestinian workers who, slipping past the checkpoints around Bethlehem, might abscond with him again.

He crossed from Hebron Road to Bethlehem Road, passed the railroad tracks, entered the dark side streets of the German colony until, unerringly, he came to the one that led to the Rose Garden in posh Talbiya, cut across a flowering traffic circle, made a left on Jabotinsky Street, and then, before coming to the President’s house, turned and went right into Molcho, straight to the darkened building of his hyper-hypochondriac mentor. Despite the many years that had passed since he was a doctoral student awaiting the return of his seminar papers, he still felt nervous each time he climbed the steps of the old staircase.

It was a quarter to four. He let the automatic staircase light go out and peered at the crack beneath the Tedeschis’ front door. Although not a sign of wakefulness shone through it, he did find there a note explaining where the key was hidden.

It was only natural, he supposed, that a woman who had spent all day in the headily anxious atmosphere of an emergency room should have forgotten that he had broken his glasses and could not read small print. Moreover, afraid that her note might fall into the hands of a passing burglar, she had composed it in Arabic, no doubt of a highly ornate nature. He had no choice, therefore, but to stick it in his shirt pocket and go back down the stairs. Perhaps a Palestinian worker hoping to get a jump on the new day might be found to read, if not the words of Hannah’s note, at least the letters.

But Gaza Road was deserted. Nor was there anyone on the street named for the poet Solomon Ibn-Gabirol, at the top of which stood the modest stone house in which the first prime minister had had his office.

Rivlin soon came to the old school in which he had attended the first twelve grades. He peered through its high fence at its large, dark garden. A little footbridge, remembered from childhood, crossed a channel of water so narrow that it seemed more symbolic than real. What were the chances of finding, in the middle of the night, in this peaceful, middle-class neighborhood, someone to read an Arabic note written by a woman who, like himself, was quite possibly on the verge of going mad? Nevertheless, taking a route he had followed many times in those years, he headed up Keren Kayemet Street and along King George Street, hoping quite absurdly to come across the help he was looking for in the dowdy old downtown of the city, near the gray house he was raised in.

And find him Rivlin did, sitting on the curb by the Histadrut building, a young, sad, early rising Palestinian worker patiently waiting for a day’s work. A permanent vagabond among Jews, he was no longer surprised by anything about them, not even by an elderly Orientalist now handing him, before the break of dawn, four lines by the renowned translatoress of Ignorance — the first Arabic poem of her life.

Al-musanan al-manshud mowjud fi juz’ al-nahla,

Muthahab wa-latif ca’amal al-nowm fi ’l kalbaka.

Wa-nashadak lahfuka laysa b’al-ruh ash-shaytaniya wa-laysa b’al-hawa al-ilahi,