The Liberated Bride

PART II. Jephthah’s Daughter

AND YET IF there had been advance signs, as Galya claimed, how had he and Hagit failed to notice them? Had they been so subtly concealed? Or had Ofer and Galya, too, not wanted to see them?

And what made a sign a sign? His meeting with Galya in the hotel garden had been so hurried and emotional that he had had no chance to ask. The time she had refused to wake up, for example: was that a sign? Now, thinking about it, he was inclined to believe it was.

A few weeks before the separation, Rivlin took part in a day’s conference at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Bored by the lectures, all rehashes of familiar material, he’d decided to skip the concluding session and visit his son and daughter-in-law. Galya answered the telephone. “We’d love to see you,” she told him. “Let’s have an early supper.” “Make it a light one,” he cautioned, not because he wasn’t hungry but because he didn’t wish to inconvenience her.

Yet when he arrived, Galya was in the bedroom, asleep or pretending to be. A glum-looking Ofer gave him an absent-minded hug. The kitchen was full of dirty dishes, the living room was untidy, and there was no sign on the table of even the lightest supper. “I’m really not hungry,” he reassured his son, who seemed upset by something. “I just wanted to say hello. A glass of tea will be fine. Although maybe,” he added quietly, “we should wait for Galya to wake up. After all, she knew I was coming.”

But Galya did not wake up. They sat in the living room over tea and cake, listening to the sounds that came intermittently from the bedroom. Ofer made no attempt to investigate them and responded curtly to his father’s attempts at conversation, as if keeping him at arm’s length. “It’s certainly an odd time of day to sleep,” Rivlin remarked after a while, with a smile, albeit in an injured tone. “Isn’t she afraid of being kept up at night?” “Would you like me to wake her for you?” Ofer asked. “For me?” Rivlin said. “What for? I’ll be heading home in a minute.”

Was this a sign?

He arrived back in Haifa and was told by Hagit that right after he’d left Jerusalem Galya had telephoned to apologize for her ill-mannered slumber. Ofer got on the phone, too.

“How did they sound to you?” he asked anxiously.

“The usual. Nice and friendly.”

“Are you sure?” he persisted. “Are you sure?”

OR PERHAPS THIS was a sign.

At the opera in Tel Aviv, during the intermission, they suddenly noticed, a few rows ahead of them, their daughter-in-law sitting with her father. Her long hair, usually done up in a bun, fell glamorously over her shoulders. He and Hagit had hurried over, uncertain whether to be delighted or worried by this unexpected encounter. Where, they asked, was Ofer? Hagit gave Galya a kiss. Rivlin, self-conscious in her father’s presence, made do with a comment about her hair. Galya blushed awkwardly. Her father came to her defense. It was his idea to let it down, he said.

They returned to their seats. As the lights slowly dimmed, Rivlin saw his daughter-in-law throw him a fearful glance, as if feeling guilty for the husband left at home. Her hands quickly gathered her hair into a bun.

Was this what she meant by a sign?

OF ONE SIGN, at any rate, he had no doubt.

Some three weeks before the separation, Galya spent a weekend with her parents in the Galilee. There was a small hotel there that her father was thinking of acquiring. Having been to see their in-laws in Haifa only once since the wedding, the Hendels suggested dropping by on their way back to Jerusalem. That morning, however, a few hours before they were due, Galya telephoned to say they would not be coming. She offered no explanation and no apology.

Which was why, on the terrible Saturday when Ofer broke the news of the divorce, Rivlin had remarked cuttingly, “Maybe you just found out, but her parents knew long ago.” Ofer denied it. “They didn’t know a thing,” he insisted. “They were in shock just like you. Her mother burst into tears right in front of me.”

A sign? Or a coincidence?

AND PERHAPS SHE meant subtler signs, like the Friday night a month before the separation.

The young couple had slept over at their home. In the middle of the night, on his way to the bathroom, Rivlin spied the glimmer of a white nightgown in the living room. Although the intimate circumstances made him shy of approaching her, he felt Galya’s eyes on him. “How long have you been awake?” he asked. “I never fell asleep,” she answered brusquely. He took a step toward her. “Is anything wrong?” As though he were to blame for her insomnia, she shrugged like a stubborn child and looked at him accusingly. “Why don’t you wake Ofer?” he asked. She shrugged again. “Would you like me to sit up with you?” he inquired gently. “You needn’t bother,” she said. “It’s no bother,” Rivlin replied. He sat down across the room from her, at first silent and then feebly trying to make conversation. Her head drooped. Her eyes shut, and her breathing grew deeper. Slowly she drifted back to her lost sleep. Yet when he suggested she go back to bed, she refused. All she wanted was a blanket, she said.

Was that a sign of things to come? But how?

HE REMEMBERED, TOO, a strange dream of Ofer’s. It was Galya who told it to them, as if to warn them of something.

In his dream Ofer was in an inner room of the hotel, sitting by the bed of Galya’s father, who lay pale and indisposed. No one else in the family was there. Not knowing how to call for help, he roamed the hotel. There were no guests. The staff had vanished, too. The rooms were empty. Some were missing their tables and beds. Fixtures were ripped from the bathrooms.

He returned to the inner room, in which the sick man had risen from his bed and was sitting in an armchair. Deciding to bring him a glass of water, he went to the bathroom to see if the sink had a faucet. It did, but only one. As he wasn’t sure whether it was for hot water or cold, he abandoned the idea and picked up an old electric shaver from the marble counter. He blew away the hairs that adhered to it, went to the sick man, and started shaving him.

It must have been a dream with signs, Rivlin thought. Why else would he remember it so many years later?

1.

THAT SATURDAY MORNING they were back in the Galilee. Hagit’s sister, who had yet to see her favorite nephew in uniform, let alone with his officer’s bars, had gently but firmly turned down several weekend invitations in order to visit Tsakhi at his army base. Not that the Rivlins needed a special reason to make the trip. Even their car, to judge by the alacrity with which it took the twisting road to the large intelligence base on Mount Canaan, was eager to see their youngest son.

They were not the first parents to park outside the base, whose green gate had a double entrance in keeping with its top-secret nature. A few early birds had arrived before them and were already feeding their fledglings snacks, soft drinks, and even hamburgers.

“The army has gone soft,” Rivlin observed disdainfully. “If anyone like us had turned up at the gate of an army base in my soldiering days, they would have been mowed down at once.”

Half-hidden behind the gate, surrounded by ferns in a thick stand of oak trees, was a small shack whose pastoral innocence camouflaged the real entrance to the underground base. Carved into a mountain, the installation was covered by tall antennas and giant satellite dishes that ran in a silver forest to a nearby second hilltop. Rivlin, amused by the thought of an elevator inside a mountain, had once asked his son whether there was one. But Tsakhi had only smiled, refusing to disclose even so innocent a fact. Nor had he reacted when Rivlin accused the army of being “hysterically hush-hush.” Without bothering to defend either it or himself, he had merely dipped his head in sorrow at being unable to satisfy his father’s curiosity.

“Sometimes,” the judge liked to remark, in a doting tone very different from her clipped severity on the bench, “I think I gave birth to a saint.”

“What’s so saintly about him?” Rivlin would protest, while hoping that his son’s beatification might reflect creditably on him, too. “What good does it do to be a saint nowadays? Let’s just hope that nothing spoils him.”

Despite having been on duty all night, the young officer who emerged from the mountain in crisp, spotless fatigues did not look spoiled at all. Beaming in the dewy morning light, he hurried — oblivious to the glances of other soldiers, some of them under his command — to give his notoriously fragile aunt a gentle hug.

“So he’s not a saint,” the judge had conceded. “But he does have a sense of boundaries. He knows right from wrong, and he doesn’t care what others think of him, unlike you and Ofer. You needn’t worry about him. Compliments don’t go to his head. Nothing will spoil him or throw him off stride.”

As if to prove her right, the saint, approached by a blond, baby-faced sergeant hoping to take advantage of the family reunion by asking his commanding officer for a favor, cut him off sharply and sent him on his way.

2.

“AS LONG AS I’m here, why don’t we take a little walk and see the spring flowers. What do you say?”

The son to whom Rivlin extended this invitation was being fawned upon by a fond mother and aunt, who no doubt saw in him the reincarnation of an old photograph of their father mounted on a horse in a Russian cavalry uniform.

“But why take a walk?” objected Hagit, who had already placed a large bag of cherries on the grass. “Ofra has come especially to see Tsakhi. If you’re restless, go yourself.”

The young officer glanced ingenuously from one parent to the other, wondering how to satisfy two such contradictory desires at once. Rivlin, who wanted to be alone with his son in order to get his appraisal, or even approval, of the conversation in the hotel garden in Jerusalem, was forced to yield. Making his way among picnicking parents spreading checked tablecloths and coaxing blue flames from gas burners, he wandered off on his own.

Deprived of a conversation partner, he soon found himself on the mountainside, slowly but steadily climbing a path. For a while his rapid pace seemed about to carry him to the summit — where perhaps, he mused, amid the silent chatter of the antennas, satellite dishes, and smart sensors, he might find inspiration for his unfinished book. But the summit was farther away than it looked, and he soon came to a high military fence in a field of flowering bindweed and squirrel grass. Fearing mines, he picked a spot beneath an old oak tree and sat down quietly in the fresh grass, the last of the morning dew glinting on his shoes. Far beneath him, the entrance to the base looked like the opening of an anthill. His affectionate glance made out his son. Seated between his aunt and his mother, the young officer was probably being fed a banana.

Despite Hagit and Ofra’s twice-weekly international phone calls, the two never tired of retrieving from oblivion, with an intimacy born of the bedroom shared by them as children, all that had fallen since their last meeting into the stormy crevices of time. They never had looked like sisters, and they resembled each other even less after so many years of being apart. Tall, thin, and stooped, Ofra, the eternal product of the left-wing youth movement in which she had met her husband, dressed with a mousy simplicity. Plump, merry, vivacious, opinionated, and pampered Hagit, on the other hand, wore fancy clothes, liked expensive makeup and perfumes, and smoked with the flair of a juvenile delinquent. Perhaps she was still trying to compensate her father for his disappointment in having a second daughter.

Early that morning, at a dawn hour rarely suitable for love, Rivlin had overcome her defenses. “I hope you’ve noticed how nice I’ve been to your sister,” he had begun, following up on this advertisement for himself by quickly stripping off his pajamas and diving beneath the blankets. Forced to admit his model behavior, Hagit, thinking she heard a noise from her sister’s room, tried fending him off with hugs and kisses. But Rivlin would not take no for an answer. “If you use your sister as an alibi, I’ll end up hating her,” he said. “But can’t you hear that she’s up?” Hagit whispered. “You’ve gone deaf from thinking too much.” Throwing off the blanket, he ran naked to the door of his expropriated study and put his ear to it to demonstrate that she was imagining things.

Whether despite or because of this, their lovemaking was especially delicious. He rose from it contented, while his wife resumed from beneath the blanket her investigation of his frowned-upon condolence call. In her years as a district attorney, before being appointed to the bench, she had acquired a reputation as a shrewd cross-examiner, and he now answered her questions warily without denying that he might have, between expressions of sympathy for the bereaved, alluded to the painful mystery of Ofer and Galya’s separation.

Hagit put on her glasses to study the defendant she had made love to.

“That’s all there was?”

“More or less.”

“What else was there?”

“That’s all.”

“I hope you realize even that was too much.”

“What was?”

“Mentioning Ofer to her. Wanting to know and understand everything. Come to my courtroom some day and you’ll see the terrible things people do because they don’t stop to think.”

He made no reply.

“Let it go,” she urged him gently. “Let it go. It only causes you grief. It’s time you separated from her, too.”

“Me?” Rivlin laughed and reddened. “I’ll never see her again.”

“I mean psychologically. That’s why I was against your going to the hotel and wallowing in your old misery and begging for explanations. It’s demeaning. For me, too. And most of all, for Ofer. It’s over with. Let her be. She has a new husband.”

“Yes,” he murmured, delivering a counterstroke. “I think she’s pregnant.”

“Pregnant?”

“Unless she’s just put on weight. She’s lost her good looks, by the way.”

“But what makes you think she’s pregnant?”

“It just struck me… when we were saying good-bye….”

“What struck you?”

“Nothing. You know what I mean. Forget it. She’s really broken up over her father. I felt it when I said good-bye….”

“Felt what?”

“Just for a second. It was like the old days. I hugged her… just to comfort her… and I thought I felt… this heaviness….”

“A heaviness?”

“Forget it. It’s only an image. Don’t pounce on every word.”

“But what made you hug her in the first place?”

“I just felt like it. It wasn’t really a hug. I was feeling sorry for her. Why are you so hard on her?”

“It’s you, not me, who’s been angry with her all these years.”

“That’s so. I was. I still am. But she suddenly seemed so sad to me. She’s too young to lose a father. What did I do wrong?”

She threw off the blanket, rose from bed naked, and put on a bathrobe. Going over to him, she took him in her arms and kissed him so hotly that he trembled.

“I just can’t….” He choked. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Ofer has been in limbo for five years, without a woman in his life. That’s the reality. Why shouldn’t I try to understand what happened… to make some sense of it….”

She rested her hands on his shoulders and shook him lightly, the bounty of her breasts showing through her robe.

“I know how it hurts you.” Her loving tone had a reprimand in it. “I’m on your side. That’s why I’m asking you to put it behind you. All your worry and anxiety just make it worse for Ofer, even if you’re far away and think he doesn’t know. If you don’t free yourself of that woman and stop trying to understand more than she does, he’ll never be free, either. Not of her and not of you.”

“But he has to know.”

“Know what?”

“That her father died.”

“Why? Why does it concern him?”

“He can’t not write a condolence note.”

“Why not?”

“Because the first thing she asked was whether he knew. She expects to hear from him.”

“Let her expect. Sooner or later he’ll hear about it and do what he wants. Whatever that is, it will be right for him. It’s his affair, not yours. Do you hear me? It’s none of your business!”

“But how can I not tell him I went to the hotel?”

“Just don’t. Why should you? To make him want what’s lost forever?”

3.

SOMETHING RUSTLED IN the bushes. Rivlin reached for a stone in case it was a snake. An animal, mole or rabbit, peeked worriedly from underneath some branches and took a step toward the Orientalist as if meaning to ask something, before changing its mind and darting off.

A soldier emerged from the hidden entrance of the base with a message for Tsakhi. The young officer rose, embraced his aunt, kissed his mother, and glanced at the mountainside in search of his father. Rivlin waved. Although the gesture meant, “Don’t worry, son, get back to work and we’ll see you soon,” Tsakhi came running toward him.

“You didn’t have to run all this way to say good-bye,” Rivlin scolded him warmly. “You’ll be home on leave in a few days. War won’t break out before then.”

“I suppose not.” The young officer blushed. “Well, I’ll be seeing you,” he said, touching his father’s arm lightly.

Although the housekeeper had risen from a sickbed to prepare a large lunch for them, Hagit preferred as usual to eat out. Her one concession to the pot roast waiting at home was to choose a dairy restaurant with a fancy menu. Rivlin, undeterred by the elaborate descriptions, ordered at once and hurried off to the rest room. He knew his sister-in-law needed time to deliberate, turn the pages, and make inquiries of the waitress. Although she and her husband were inveterate travelers and diners out, she still harbored the pristine illusion that every restaurant had its culinary apotheosis if only one knew what to ask for.

Finally the decisions were made. Even the waitress seemed satisfied. A first round of wine was poured, and the judge lit a slim cigarette and persuaded her nonsmoking sister to join her. Far removed from the depressing memory of their mother’s cooking, they were happiest together in restaurants. Now, after summarizing the virtues of the gallant young officer, they proceeded to the wedding that was the formal, if not the sufficient, cause of Ofra’s coming to Israel. Hagit wished to plan her sister’s outfit and appearance.

“But why don’t you come with us?” Ofra sought to persuade them. “Yo’el says his family sent you two invitations that weren’t confirmed.”

“Yo’el is mistaken,” Rivlin said, regarding the dish put before him with disappointment. It looked small and insipid, and he stole a glance at his wife’s plate to gauge her appetite and the prospects of sharing her meal. “We confirmed that we weren’t coming.”

“But why not? Wouldn’t you like to be with us? Yo’el needs your help to get through the evening with his horrid family.”

“How horrid can anyone be at a wedding?” Rivlin chuckled. He had heard more than one juicy story about the crudity of his brother-in-law’s clan.

“Horrid enough. They’ll ask nosy questions about why people our age have to go traveling to the ends of the earth, or what happens if Yo’el gets sick somewhere….”

“But they have every right to be worried,” he warmly rebuked the girlish frequent flyer.

Rivlin’s sister-in-law, however, refused to equate his and Hagit’s genuine concern with the spiteful criticisms of Yo’el’s envious family. “We need you there to defend us,” she insisted.

Hagit wavered. “After all, we don’t really know them… and we didn’t invite them to Ofer’s wedding….”

“Who remembers Ofer’s wedding?” Rivlin’s sister-in-law exclaimed aggravatedly, heedless of the feelings of the two people in the world she felt closest to. “All that matters is that they invited you and want you to come. It will be a big, outdoor affair at a new caterer’s. We’ll spend the evening together. There’s so little time on this visit to be with you.”

Rivlin cast a warning glance at Hagit, who was already asking about this new caterer.

“It’s called Nature’s Corner. It’s in a woods on the banks of a stream.”

Hagit was weakening. “For my part…”

But Rivlin, having foreseen the danger, had already taken preemptive action. He and Hagit, he announced, had tickets that evening for the theater, for a new play, on a biblical theme, that had opened to rave reviews.

“You can change them to another night,” Ofra pleaded. “We’ll come with you. Yo’el loves mythological subjects. We need you at the wedding. You don’t have to buy a gift. Ours will be from you too.”

“It’s not a matter of a gift. The last thing I need is more weddings.”

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind going,” Hagit told her sister. “But weddings make this man of mine so depressed that he’s a menace to the bride and groom. The only weddings he can put up with, more or less, are Arab ones….”

“More less than more,” Rivlin said. “I felt depressed even at that Arab wedding in the middle of nowhere two days ago. I can’t help it. I was programmed that way by a cruel mother. Never to forget. Never to let go. Never to give in. Always to fight on. And after talking to Galya and meeting her new husband, the need to know what happened to Ofer’s marriage is eating away at me like a cancer…. Why go to a wedding in Nature’s Corner just to be miserable?”

“I hope you’re not about to cry,” Hagit said, with a smile.

“Suppose I am?”

“Well, don’t. Do it some other time.”

“Not even a little?”

“Not even. I warned you against going to that bereavement.”

“But how could I not have gone?” He appealed hotly to his sister-in-law. “How could I have overlooked his death? It’s simple courtesy for an ex-in-law to express his sympathy in such circumstances.”

But the judge was not inclined to be judged.

“A condolence note would have done nicely. You should have seen,” she told her sister, “the touching letter he sent not long ago to the widow of an academic rival who died unexpectedly.”

She cut a large slice from her quiche and placed it, without asking, on her husband’s empty plate.

It failed to placate him. His confession of fatal illness in the hotel garden now filled him not with guilt but with compassion — for himself and for the young woman in black who had sat, shocked, across from him.

“Hagit wants nothing to do with them. She’s too… I don’t know what. Proud, or secretly angry. She doesn’t even want to tell Ofer that Hendel died.”

“You don’t?” The visitor turned to her sister timidly, reluctant to interfere in a family squabble that had broken out when they were having such a good time.

Hagit didn’t answer. Pushing away her plate, she lit a cigarette and signaled the waitress to bring the dessert list.

Rivlin persisted. “You be the judge. Should we tell Ofer or not?”

“But what difference does it make?” Hagit asked, glaring to let him know that no matter how great the intimacy between her and her sister, no one in the world could or should settle their disputes for them. Angrily he snatched the proffered menu while informing his sister-in-law, who was regarding them with mild anxiety:

“Nature’s Corner will do without us. Weddings get me down so that I could wreck not only a corner of nature, but the whole works. If it isn’t too late, we’ll come after the theater to rescue you.”

4.

A COUPLE THEIR own age, an overdressed woman and a man with a goatee, entered the restaurant and recognized Ofra with cries of joy. “Look who’s here! Are you back in Israel?”

Ofra squirmed, as if reluctant to admit that she knew them. However, once they had demonstrated a knowledge of her name and Yo’el’s, and given proof that all four of them had recently been together at an Aztec ruin in Mexico, she abandoned the pretense.

“Just for a wedding. Yo’el is coming in a few days.”

Eager to reestablish a tie forged by a chance meeting far away, the couple asked to be introduced to the Rivlins.

“We were on this wonderful Geographic Society tour,” they explained, “when who did we run into on a godforsaken hacienda in Mexico but Ofra and Yo’el?”

They held out their hands in a show of friendship, hungry, so it seemed, for new relationships at home as well as abroad. Or so Rivlin construed their insistence on giving their names and occupations and asking for his and Hagit’s.

Near Eastern studies made no impression. But a judge was something else.

“A justice of the peace?” they asked avidly.

Hagit chose to reply to the question with an indifferent exhalation of smoke.

“A district judge,” Rivlin answered for her.

“You don’t say! We’re thinking of suing a Jerusalem hospital for price-gouging. Maybe your wife could tell us what our chances are.”

Hagit’s continued silence was a sign that her inner radar was blipping strongly.

Rivlin, with an embarrassed smile, tried thinking of how to cut the conversation short without offending anyone. Although he sensed the shudder that ran through his sister-in-law, who seemed to know what was coming next, he couldn’t resist inquiring what the court case was about.

“You’ve probably guessed,” the man with the goatee said intimately to Ofra. “It was your husband who placed the call to Israel for us. Perhaps he even remembers and would like to testify on our behalf.”

“But what’s it all about?” Rivlin asked, deliberately ignoring his wife’s restraining hand.

There was no longer any stopping the couple from telling their story, which they related while standing between two tables and forcing the waiters to detour around them. The husband was an accountant, the wife a teacher of music. With a mixture of cynical amusement and dense innocence, they told how, two days before they set out on a grand tour of Central America for which they had registered with friends and made a hefty down payment, the music teacher’s octogenarian father had died in an old-age home. Because the week of bereavement would have caused them to miss their dream trip, they decided to postpone the funeral by freezing the deceased — a nonbeliever who would have raised no religious objections — in the hospital morgue. Nor was the reason they gave — namely, the need to give relatives abroad sufficient time to get organized — entirely imaginary, since the deceased’s son, the music teacher’s brother, had pressing business in Chicago and preferred a later date. “Enjoy your trip,” he’d told them. He was sure their dead father would not have wanted to spoil their plans. He would have all the time in the world to spend in the ground; meanwhile, the worms could dine on someone else.

Rivlin glanced at his wife. She had been served her dessert, a chocolate parfait topped with maraschino cherries, and was staring over it at the standing couple. The obvious repugnance they aroused in her having failed to head them off, she now confronted them directly, head up, eyes riveted to them, mouth slightly open in concentration.

At the hospital the couple had had good luck. The morgue pathologist, a slightly alcoholic Russian, agreed to accommodate the deceased in his freezer with no time limit or questions asked. He had an available drawer and was willing to charge a fair price.

“How much?” Rivlin asked curiously.

“Less than a hundred shekels a day, VAT included.”

“Not bad.”

And so the orphaned music teacher and her husband set out on their tour with their friends. Between one Mayan temple and the next, they planned the fine funeral they would have. Unfortunately, several days after their departure from Israel an inquisitive hospital official, an observant Jew, dropped in on the morgue and discovered that one of its occupants was overextending his stay. A fuss was made, the Russian pathologist was reprimanded, and a search began for the next of kin. When these were discovered in Central America, they were encouraged to return at once — by a steep price hike.

“How much?” asked the professor, suddenly brimming with high spirits.

“Five hundred shekels a day, without VAT.”

“That’s pretty stiff.”

“Disgraceful. Criminal. Unjustifiable,” complained the man with the goatee. “Pure vengeance. And when we got home and demanded the original price, that little religious bastard, with all his talk about the dignity of the dead, wouldn’t let us bury my wife’s father until we forked up the extra cash.”

“How was the funeral?”

“Grand! My brother-in-law came with his whole family. Lots of cousins and friends were there, too. We told them the whole story. After all, we’re enlightened, rational people. Well, what do you think?” the man asked the judge, whose spoon was suspended in midair. “If you tried the case, would we stand a chance?”

“A very good one,” Hagit pronounced.

“You don’t say!” The two were thrilled.

“Of going to jail.”

“To jail?” They were dumbfounded. “But why?”

“For excessive enlightenment.”

They crimsoned and laughed.

“We’re onto you!”

Hagit did not take her eyes off them.

“You’re so enlightened that you’re a public danger.”

No one spoke.

As usual, Rivlin found himself full of admiration for his wife. Yet when he turned amusedly to Ofra, he was surprised to see a frightened look on her face. Anyone capable of freezing his own father-in-law, she no doubt thought, might do even worse things in the middle of a restaurant on a peaceful Sabbath in the Galilee.

“Well,” the man said, a sly smile above his goatee, “it’s a good thing there are courts of appeals.”

“For sure,” the judge agreed. “They’d not only acquit you, they’d declare you national heroes.”

She lifted a cherry from her parfait with two careful fingers. The situation was now decidedly awkward. With a brisk farewell, the couple retreated to a table. Rivlin was about to swear at them when the judge, extricating her spoon from the chocolate parfait, silenced him by passing him her dish.

“Have some, it’s very good,” she urged him gently. Yet when he handed it back to her after two spoonfuls, she waved it off, her appetite gone, and stared at it as if it were the corpse of the music teacher’s father.

“But why make me eat it?” Rivlin protested.

“Because you’re paying for it. It’s a shame to leave it. Cheer up and have another spoonful, my love. It’s not like you to be so squeamish.”

5.

LATE THAT SATURDAY night, after many long conversations, endless rounds of tea and snacks, numerous phone calls to near and distant cousins, and a visit from a friend who dropped by “for a minute” and didn’t leave, Ofra went downstairs to shower and Rivlin summoned his wife to the bedroom, shut the door, and declared:

“Before you and your sister become any more symbiotic, I want to know what your plans are and where I fit into them.”

“Fit in?” wondered the tired woman stretched out on her bed. “How do you mean?”

“You heard me. What are your plans, and where do I fit in?”

But there were no new plans, Hagit said, only old ones. On Tuesday they had a concert. On Thursday the two sisters were going to the movies. And on Saturday they were all driving to Jerusalem to visit their aunt in her geriatric institution, whence they would proceed to the airport to pick up Yo’el.

“And apart from that? What more do I have to do for your sister?”

“What do you have to do? Nothing. Be patient and kind.”

“That’s what I have been.”

“Until this afternoon. You were snappish and sarcastic with her when we returned from the Galilee.”

“How can you say that?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“I don’t like a whole day to go by without a chance to talk to you in private.”

“To talk about what?”

“There’s always something.”

“But why didn’t you use the time to nap this afternoon? We made sure the house was quiet.”

“I tried. I can’t fall asleep without you.”

“Read something. A story. A novel.”

“I can’t. Life is too turbulent.”

“Life is too turbulent? That trip to Jerusalem did you in.”

“It wasn’t the trip. It was your reaction to it. Your hostility.”

“I hardly said a word. There was nothing to upset you.”

“It just wasn’t like you, a strange notion like hiding Hendel’s death from Ofer.”

“I wish you’d stop poking around in dead ashes.”

“If they’re dead, what do you care?”

“It takes one live spark to start a new fire.”

“What kind of fire?”

“It’s been five years. The divorce is final. Galya is remarried. You knew she was pregnant when you hugged her.”

“I never hugged her. I put my hand on her shoulder. And I never said she was definitely pregnant….”

“It doesn’t matter. If she’s not, she will be. What do you want? For Ofer to be burned all over again?”

“For him to catch on. To understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand. Some things just have to be accepted. Even your Algeria, which you’ve spent years studying and writing about, keeps surprising both itself and you to the point of writer’s block. Why can’t a young woman surprise herself and break up her marriage?”

He said nothing. The bathroom door opened below. Their guest had finished her shower. Hagit listened alertly, seeking to determine whether her sister might need an extra towel or anything else.

“So what about tomorrow?”

“What about it?”

“Do you need me in the morning, or do I have a free day?”

“Of course you do. I’d just be grateful if you dropped Ofra off at Pesi’s boutique in the mall on your way to the university, so that she can try on some clothes. It opens at nine-thirty. I’ll be late for court if I take her myself.”

“I was thinking of leaving earlier.”

“When is your class?”

“At noon.”

“Then you’re in no hurry. She has to find something nice for the wedding. All that traveling has made her neglect herself. Yo’el has forgotten how to dress, too.”

“All right.”

“She’ll try on a few things and then show me what she likes.”

“All right.”

“There’s a little café next to the boutique. You can have something to drink and read the paper there.”

“Are you trying to tell me I’m supposed to bring her back here?”

“Of course. How else would she get back?”

“What do you mean, how else? By bus.”

“Two buses.”

“So two buses.”

“With all those clothes from the boutique.”

“How heavy can they be?”

“Ofra isn’t taking any buses. I can’t ask her to do that.”

“She’s traveled all over the world, she’s crossed whole continents — and she can’t take a bus in her own country?”

“All over the world she has Yo’el. He looks after her. Here I’m responsible.”

“For what?”

“Her pleasure and well-being.”

“But what’s wrong with a bus? Just because I’ve arranged your life for the past thirty years to keep you away from public transportation, do you think having to take a bus is a tragedy?”

“It’s not a tragedy. But no sister of mine who is here on a short visit will be made to get on and off buses with packages. If you can’t wait half an hour, then don’t. I’ll adjourn the trial, take a taxi, and bring her home myself.”

“I surrender. I’ll bring baby home. But only on the condition that she doesn’t have to decide what clothes to buy. You’ll help her make up her mind. Because if she has to do it by herself, I really will miss my class.”

“You’re an optimist. If she had to make up her own mind, you’d miss the rest of your life. But don’t panic. She doesn’t want to. She’ll pick out a few things, and we’ll decide here. You’ll help, too. Why shouldn’t your opinion count?”

“Forget my opinion,” Rivlin said, with a modest grin. “Let her blame you, not me, for making her buy what she doesn’t want or not letting her buy what she does want.”

“She won’t blame you if you don’t pressure her, my dear. She’s not your wife. Just be helpful.”

“By the way, I tried phoning Ofer an hour ago. There was no answer. I left him a message on his voice mail.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing special. Nothing.”

6.

3.4.98

Galya,

Yesterday my father left a message on my voice mail that your father died unexpectedly a few days ago. He said he was at the bereavement and that you asked him whether I knew and how I had reacted. He also said he was telling me against the better judgment of my mother, who thought it pointless to involve me.

Of course, she was right. We haven’t exchanged a word since we broke up, and it’s best that way. Not that your father’s death isn’t a serious matter, but it, too, should have been spared me.

That’s why I debated whether to break the vow of silence that both of us have kept honorably until now. But since I realize how terrible all this must be for your mother, I thought I would (should?) let her know that, despite our divorce and my estrangement from your family, I understand what she’s going through and wish to express my sympathy.

She’s a woman I always liked. (And who liked me, if I’m not mistaken.)

I won’t say anything about your father. He’s gone now. Quite apart from the horrible things he did, it’s frightening to hear about such a sudden death. At least (or so I understand) he didn’t suffer. And so if you, too, Galya, need a word of sympathy (or however you call it) from me, here it is.

Although only on the condition that you don’t write back.

Ofer

7.

EXCUSE ME. Are you new here?

There used to be another salesgirl…

Pesi, of course! Pesi.

This is my wife’s sister. She spoke to Pesi about her.

They agreed she could try on a few things, take home what she liked, and return what she didn’t want this evening. My wife can’t come now because she’s at a trial… I mean, she’s the judge… and so we thought we’d do with my sister-in-law what we do with her: pick out a few things and decide in a relaxed way at home.

No, this is my sister-in-law from abroad. But my wife buys here all the time. Practically all her new clothes come from here. I’m sure you’d recognize her.

You do? That’s odd. I suppose I’m the only man who ever walks in here.

For sure. If you’d like me to leave a check as a deposit, there’s no problem. Pesi knows us.

This way, Ofra. Everything in this section is on sale, isn’t it? You see, I’m an expert on this place.

She’ll tell you what she’s looking for.

Israeli. Of course.

But it has to be suitable for other occasions, too. Not just weddings.

Look at this, Ofra. It’s gorgeous. What do you think? It’s certainly dignified enough.

Do you have a skirt that goes with this?

Two weeks ago you had a tunic, with a three-quarter-length sleeve — light brown velvet, with a strip of green embroidery. My wife tried it on. It was a bit tight on her, but it might fit her sister. She’s much thinner.

I wouldn’t call it summery. More demi saison, as the French say….

Something along these lines. Not this, though. The fabric was richer. With a strip of green embroidery. Maybe it’s been sold. It was lovely. But my wife said it was too tight. Ofra, how about this ensemble?

For goodness’ sake! What are you afraid of? You can’t keep dressing as though you were in the youth movement all your life.

It’s not fancy at all. It’s cute. Try it on. Listen to me. What are you afraid of?

I’m in no hurry. Don’t worry about me. As long as we’re here, let’s take a little longer and pick out some nice things that we can think about afterward.

You’ll find a bigger dressing room to your right, Ofra.

In the time I’ve spent dodging women in this store, I could have written at least two more articles. But it’s been worth it. We’ve bought some nice things here. There’s something about the design, the way you cut things, that suits Hagit’s figure. It hides what needs to be hidden. I must say that your prices are high. But as long as she listens to me, what we buy doesn’t end up forgotten in the closet.

Go on, try it on. You can’t tell a thing just by looking.

Of course. I’ll wait out here.

Me?

She lives abroad. Her husband works for UNESCO. He’s an adviser on Third World economies. They spend more time on airplanes than you do in your bedroom.

I suppose you could call them émigrés, even though they’d never admit it. They’ve been globe-trotting for thirty years. But they’ll make sure to be buried here.

Of course. Where else, in Africa?

So you do remember my wife.

Exactly.

Yes. She’s very nice.

A district judge. There are six of them in Haifa. She’s one.

In the past few years we’ve bought nearly all her clothes here. When I retire from teaching, I can open a rival boutique of my own. But only with clothes made by your designer.

No. She’s a few years older than my wife.

Because she’s so thin and girlish. She never had children to make her go to seed. And she has a husband who looks after her. He’s not in Israel now, which is why I’ve been drafted in his place. It takes two shrewd sisters to have found such devoted caretakers.

Let’s have a look, Ofra. It’s not bad.

Turn the other way.

She’s right. The hem needs to be shortened.

Too see-through? I don’t see anything. Believe me, Ofra, I have a good eye. It looks fine on you. It’s classic. It just needs to be shortened and taken in at the back. You don’t want to look like you’re on your way to Yom Kippur services.

I sometimes drive my wife crazy too. But I have to. Everyone needs somebody to keep an eye on them. She could buy some catastrophe that would go straight into her closet and never come out. It’s my job to veto that. It’s the husband who suffers most when his wife buys the wrong clothes….

What did you say your name was?

If you could pin up the hem for us, Na’ama, we’ll take it home. My wife will convince her.

There’s no obligation, Ofra. You heard what Na’ama said.

You like this one? But it’s so dreary! You’ll be the only person dressed in mourning at the wedding. It will make you stand out, which is just what you don’t want.

Trust me.

Yo’el is a wonderful man, but he’s no judge of clothes. Just look at how he dresses himself.

Never mind. Forget I said it.

All right. Try it on, if you must.

They’re close even for sisters. She and her husband come for short visits every two or three years. We give them the royal treatment.

I teach at the university.

In the Near Eastern Studies Department.

Of course. Mostly Arabs. But also Turks and Iranians and various other madmen.

We Jews still suffer from the delusion that we’re not part of the Middle East. We think we’ve stumbled into it by accident.

Rivlin. Professor Yochanan Rivlin.

Really?

In what department?

That’s a good one to be in if you’re looking for a husband.

Ours is a good one if you’re looking for a wife. An Arab one.

Let’s have a look. I don’t like the combination. The other was much nicer. It’s not bad in front, but we also have backs. And from the back you look like a receptionist in a mortician’s office. In fact, this color makes you look like a receptionist with jaundice.

Not if you ask me. But I’m only the driver. If you feel you must, we’ll take it home for consultation. Meanwhile do yourself a favor and try on this little item. It won’t cost you anything.

What do you mean, too loud?

It’s cheery, not loud.

This flower?

Can’t it be removed?

But she can if she wants to, can’t she?

You see? It’s a lovely dress. You’ll come alive in it. Try it on for my sake.

Don’t worry about me. I have time. My class isn’t until noon. But we do have to get a move on. You should try on a few more things. Don’t forget, the wedding is next week. And whatever you choose will need alterations…

8.

THEIR GUEST RETURNED home in a dither with three shopping bags full of dresses, skirts, pants, and blouses. Pesi, arriving on the scene at the last moment, added a few items for the judge. “Your sister,” she told Ofra, “is my best and favorite customer. Her husband is fun, too, even if his taste is a bit conservative.”

Ofra thanked him profusely for his efforts. Her gaunt face was ruddy from the morning’s adventure, which had been more exhausting than a transoceanic flight, not only because of the colorful array of clothing set before her, a Spartan woman accustomed to her wardrobe of what her husband liked to call her “uniforms,” but also because of her officious brother-in-law, who kept trying, rather insensitively, to talk her into buying what he liked. The freedom with which he told the salesgirl what alterations to make left her feeling that her body, so fragile and delicate, was a plaything in his hands.

Rivlin, too, felt he had gone too far. Had his wife known how he would behave, she might have preferred sending her sister in two buses. And yet he was satisfied. Even Ofra needed a face-lift now and then. It would keep her from drying up too fast.

9.

THERE WERE TWO messages on the voice mail. One was from Professor Tedeschi in person. In a despondent tone, he informed the Rivlins that the doctors had again despaired of diagnosing his condition and were sending him home to let it make up its own mind. The second message was from Ephraim Akri. With an insistence not typical of his pliant Oriental nature, he requested his colleague to stop by the departmental office on his way to class.

The secretaries in the office were waiting for him. Clearing out the students who were hanging around, they shut the door and ushered him with secretive glee into an inner room. There he was presented with two nameless term papers and asked to confirm that the comments in the margins were his own.

They were in his handwriting. Obviously, he had read the papers thoroughly and thought little of them. Yet, idiotically, the secretaries informed him, they had then been photocopied and submitted for another course with his marginal notes still on them.

“I just wanted to make sure,” one of the two said triumphantly. “I knew the comments were yours.”

“From their handwriting or their brilliance?” Rivlin asked, with a smile. He glanced at the gloomy Akri, whose pessimistic view of the Arab conception of freedom was in no way lessened by so primitive a deception.

“Can you identify the student who wrote these papers?” Akri asked. Rivlin shrugged.

“Whoever it was could have copied them from someone else,” said the older of the two secretaries, who took pride in seeing through students in general and Arab students in particular. “They just might have done a better job.”

“I’ve been told that in the English department,” the younger secretary volunteered, “they’ve got papers that were written in Beirut and Damascus, even Baghdad. There’s a market all over the Middle East, especially for Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare?”

“He’s the safest bet.” The younger secretary had studied English literature herself for two years. “Every day someone publishes a new book about him. There’s no way to tell what’s original and what isn’t.”

“Then how do they know these aren’t?”

“They’re too good. And their bibliographies list Arabic books that aren’t available in Israel. There are hard-up instructors and even professors in Arab countries willing to sell term papers on Hamlet, Othello, or Romeo and Juliet to the highest bidder.”

“Not to mention The Merchant of Venice,” Akri put in. “Dr. Dagut once told me that he was given a term paper on Shylock by an Arab student that was full of anti-Semitic remarks.”

“I hope he didn’t flunk him because of it.”

“God forbid. The liberals in the English department love anti-Semitic remarks. These just seemed suspicious because they were so extreme….”

Rivlin sank slowly into the armchair in which, as department chairman, he had frequently napped. The battle of the boutique had been tiring, though by no means unpleasant. He leafed through the two term papers, trying to guess their author by their style and subject. He thought of Samaher.

“Well, what do you think?” Akri asked.

“I’d turn it over to the disciplinary committee. They’ll find out who sold what to whom.”

“That could get nasty. It will make the student newspaper, and the Arab students will raise a rumpus.”

“Let them.”

“I wouldn’t want to impugn their honor.”

“You?”

“Me above all. There’s a difference between historical generalizations and personal accusations. The rules call for expulsion in a case like this. It will end badly.”

Akri glanced at the two secretaries. His sudden solicitude for the misconceivers of freedom did not seem to please them. “Whatever we do, we mustn’t be hasty,” he declared heatedly. “Before we make our staff happy by besmirching our own department, let’s try to work this thing out. Why step on toes if you don’t have to?”

“By doing what?”

“Something stupid.”

“You sound like a politician.”

“There’s nothing wrong with politics if it can prevent conflict.”

The new department head adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses and politely signaled the two secretaries to leave him alone with his colleague.

10.

“CAN YOU GUESS who wrote these two papers?”

“You say they were written by the same person?”

“Yes. They’re in the same style.”

Rivlin leafed through them. How, he wondered aloud, could he possibly know? He had graded so many papers in his life.

“But these were written recently,” Akri said.

“How can you tell?”

“Your handwriting dates from the last two years.”

“What do you mean?”

“I compared it with your writing from previous years in some old files. It’s changed. Your letters used to be larger, more upright and decisive. Lately they’ve become… well, a bit scrawled- and scrunched-looking. The lines are crooked, as though something were pressing on them.”

“If ever they make you a cabinet minister, Ephraim, I’d suggest the ministry of police.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“Since when have you become graphologist?”

“We all agreed that the marginal comments were yours. I wanted to know when they were from.”

“But why all this sleuthing around? It’s a waste of time. Get the two students to talk.”

But the Oriental Akri was so sensitive to the feelings of his Arab students that he was concerned even for the cheats among them. He didn’t want to make use of informers. This was a Jewish method, far worse than discrimination or neglect, that had left a festering sore in Arab society. He preferred to solve the case by himself.

Out of the corner of his eye Rivlin noticed, beside the two photographs on top of the computer, a new picture of an infant in a crib. Did Akri have another grandson? Until officially informed of this, he decided bitterly, he would ignore the newcomer and assume him to be an earlier version of Grandson One or Two.

He rose awkwardly from his chair. “I have a class,” he said. But the department head continued to detain him.

“We have to determine whether, when she gave those papers to someone else, she knew what would be done with them.”

“How do you know it was a she?”

“Because she uses the feminine case for herself.”

Rivlin pictured a young woman in a wedding gown, pulling a black horse away from a gate. “Sometimes I don’t know what to make of you, Ephraim,” he said, with a patronizing smile. “On the one hand, you speak about Arabs with the most awful despair. And on the other, you coddle them like a social worker.”

“It’s all connected,” the department head replied, flattered to be considered a paradox. “It’s our human and scholarly responsibility. The better we understand the Arabs, the better we can defend ourselves against them. We have to distinguish the crucial from the trivial, what’s important to them from what isn’t. That’s the only way we’ll ever know what to expect from them. We have to honor their feelings and realize what hurts them in order to guard against betrayal and lies. It’s a question of patting their backs with one hand while squeezing their balls with the other. Without romantic or egotistical illusions. Because it’s the purest egotism on the part of their so-called friends — I’m talking about our own bleeding-heart colleagues — to treat the Arabs as our clones who share our values and hopes. It exasperates me how the same types who are always accusing our Jewish society of decadence and fanaticism expect the Arabs to think just like them. If you don’t like your own self, at least don’t impose its norms on others.”

“Do you know who wrote those papers?” Rivlin asked, interrupting. “It was our bride, Samaher. The one whose wedding you made us go to.”

“I thought as much.” Akri was not surprised. “I was waiting to hear it from you. Something about them reminded me of a paper she wrote for me as an undergraduate.”

“That was the only time she wrote anything. She hasn’t done a thing since entering the M.A. program. I’ve given her three extensions, and the only requirement she’s met is getting married.”

“That’s not an unimportant one,” Akri said seriously. “Nothing terrible has happened. Now that we’ve caught her red-handed, we’ll make her fulfill her other requirements.”

“Well, then, I wash my hands of her. She’s all yours.”

“They’re all mine,” the new department head replied, confirming his position of authority. “But let’s be discreet about it. And first of all, that means getting our secretaries to keep their mouths shut….”

11.

ON TUESDAY EVENING, at seven-thirty, half an hour before he and Hagit were due to leave for a concert at the Israel Philharmonic, Rivlin’s sister phoned and asked to speak to Hagit about a strange dream she had had that day. Ever since attending a course in forensic psychology a few years previously, Hagit had liked interpreting dreams.

“Not now, Raya,” Rivlin told her. “We have a concert, and Hagit isn’t dressed yet. And Ofra hasn’t decided what to wear, either….”

“All I need with her is five minutes. Otherwise, I’ll forget the dream.”

“It can’t be that important if it’s so forgettable.”

“Two minutes…”

“Sorry. I know how long your two-minute conversations can last. I’m tired of arriving at concerts after all the parking spaces have been taken.”

“Two minutes, I promise,” his sister pleaded. “She doesn’t have to interpret it. Let me just tell it to her so that she can think about it during the concert.”

“Hagit dreams her own dreams during concerts. I’d be a rich man if I received a refund for every concert she’s fallen asleep at.”

“Just a few words.”

“You can tell your dream to me. I’ll pass it on to her.”

“My dreams crumble when I tell them to you.”

“Just the gist of it. I’m already dressed. For a small fee, I’ll even be your analyst. Who can understand your childhood neuroses better than I?”

But his sister did not want to tell him her dream or have him for her analyst. As children they had fought frequently, just like their parents. Only after his marriage was their relationship put on a more even keel. And since Hagit’s feelings of guilt toward her childlessly globe-trotting sister had room in them for Rivlin’s sister too, she had let herself become Raya’s confidante, the sole person capable of shaking golden coins from the pockets of her dreams. Now, overhearing the conversation, she picked up the receiver.

“I’m warning you,” Rivlin whispered, removing the covers from their king-size bed and folding back the blanket for a quick plunge after the concert.

“Don’t be so mean. Give me a minute with her. We’ve never come late for a concert yet….”

And so Rivlin’s sister, a divorcée of many years who never talked about her ex-husband, told Hagit of a short, powerful dream about him. In it she was holding a baby, a little toddler, while imploring her former partner in English, “Please, don’t hurt the child.” He merely laughed, climbed into his big car, and drove off while leaving her standing in the street. Still clutching the little boy, she hurried off to the house of her ex-husband’s old friends to look for some baby food. Yet all they gave her was half a glass of milk, and she ran desperately back out to the street, boarded an empty bus, and sat the hungry baby beside her.

That was the whole dream. As he had feared, Raya now wanted it interpreted on the spot.

“Your brother is having a fit,” the half-naked judge told her. “Offhand, though, I’d say that the baby is you.”

“Me?”

“Well, parts of you.”

“Parts…?” The idea both delighted and alarmed her. “What parts?”

“Let’s talk about it in the morning.”

12.

THE CONCERT WAS sold out. The only seats available were onstage. Rivlin, feeling sorry for his pale-faced sister-in-law, who was still agonizing over her dress for the wedding, gallantly surrendered his place beside Hagit and went to sit behind the orchestra.

The program was structured around several unknown young soloists making their debuts and consisted of a number of shorter works and several excerpts from longer ones — an approach that Rivlin found annoying. Apart from being opposed on principal to violating the aesthetic integrity of a musical composition, he feared that the Philharmonic’s renowned Indian conductor might try to fit so many young talents into the evening that it would become unduly long. These fears were dispelled by a quick glance at the program notes, which listed the length of each piece; after totaling them up and adding time for applause and intermissions, he concluded that the concert would end on schedule. Leaning back in his seat, he cast a benevolent glance at the overflow audience on the stage, which was young and unpretentiously dressed. Several rows ahead of him sat a man with a ponytail. For a moment he thought it might be his ex-daughter-in-law’s husband. Come to think of it, though, the ponytail was as gray as the coat of a mouse.

He gazed down at the auditorium, looking for the wife who must already be missing him. Would she notice him and wave back? Or feel comfortable enough beside her sister to doze off? Lately she was suffering from fatigue, no doubt from the stress of a long closed-door trial that she was barred from talking about. At concerts, plays, and even movies she was soon so entangled in the cobwebs of sleep that were it not for her husband, who made sure to wake her at critical junctures, and especially before the end, she would not have known what she had sat through.

The opening soloist was a Russian immigrant, a tall, blond adolescent with a self-effacing manner, who played the first movement of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. Rivlin, though fancying himself a lover of music, did not pretend to judge the caliber of the performance. Still, he had a melancholy tendency to doubt the staying power of young prodigies. “Time alone will show what will become of them,” he liked to grumble as they took their bows. “Maybe someone knows what happened to last year’s prodigies. Where are they now?”

Deep down he knew that his cynicism was caused by his worry for his stranded son. The night before, they had talked briefly with Ofer on the phone, after which Rivlin had insisted on going over every word of the conversation with Hagit. Resigned to Ofer’s telling his mother that he knew of Hendel’s death, he was surprised when it went unmentioned. Now, as a long orchestral prelude coaxed the violin from its silence, he wondered whether this was a sign of indifference to his ex-wife or of a secret pact with the father fighting to rescue him, even at the price of more pain, from the tyranny of an old wound.

The sentimental music of the Russian composer — who, the program notes said, was almost driven to suicide each time the critics panned his work — made its sure, swift way toward the final cadenza. From his vantage point behind the orchestra, Rivlin could see the back and shoulders of the young violinist, quivering with feeling. As his anxiety for his son, an exile mourning his marriage in a distant place, mounted in tandem with the trumpets, flutes, horns, and strings, he sought out the reassuring presence of his wife. Yet the passionate movements of the dark-skinned conductor, his baton pointed from time to time straight at Rivlin, as if he too were expected to contribute a few bars, hid Hagit from sight.

The orchestra fell silent. Having run out of both patience and emotion, the Russian violinist attacked the cadenza with a coldly calculated technique, as if wishing to have done with it as quickly as possible. Now that the musicians seated next to him were idle, Rivlin studied them for a clue to what they thought of the young soloist. Yet he could not tell whether they were even listening. The members of the wind section, busy cleaning their instruments, were whispering and smiling to each other with an old rapport. No doubt they had heard and would hear this concerto dozens of times, and this performance did not appear to have been one of the more impressive. From time to time they glanced at the conductor, whose limp, motionless stance, head down and hands at his sides, cleared the way for the yearning husband to search once more for his wife — only to look away in confusion upon discovering that he was staring at the wrong woman.

“You have to respect his bounds. You have no right to trespass, not even in your thoughts.”

“Not even in my thoughts? What’s wrong with you? How can anyone control such painful thoughts?”

“You can if you want to. And if you can’t, at least keep them to yourself. Be careful. Ofer isn’t you. You don’t own him. You have no right to interfere in what happened between them. It can’t do any good.”

“But time is passing…. ”

“Don’t exaggerate. It’s only four years.”

“Five! Five! What makes you say four?”

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll find someone. A woman who suits him better. Stop conjuring up old ghosts. Let him breathe.”

Several months after Ofer’s sudden divorce, their son had stored his possessions in their apartment and gone to Paris to study hotel and restaurant design, a field he had become interested in after his marriage. That was more than four years ago. He had worked as an apprentice, without pay, for various architects, most of them Jews, while auditing classes at a cooking academy in order to “get the feel,” as he put it, of the relationship between a kitchen and its diners. Meanwhile, he supported himself by working as a night security guard at the Jewish Agency in the 17th arrondissement — a situation shortened by his parents, in response to casual inquiries, to “Ofer works for the Jewish Agency in Paris.”

The conductor lifted his baton and spurred the orchestra, as if it were a pack of hunting dogs, to race to the end of the movement. Rivlin did not join in the applause. Aloof, he watched the flustered soloist take his curtain call and vanish into the wings. Near the exit, by the kettledrum, were some empty seats. Rivlin decided to move to one of these, so as to improve his view of both the soloists and his wife.

The two sisters were chatting happily. Hagit, noticing his new location, seemed pleased that he would be visible for the rest of the concert. She waved, then signaled him with a smile to comb his hair.

The Tchaikovsky interpreter was followed by a parade of young female performers, most of them daughters of Philharmonic musicians. The first was a pianist with eyeglasses. Her long silver dress trailed past him across the floor while he read about her, her studies, and her accomplishments in the program, which announced that she was to play Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Alas, now all he could see, from his vantage point by the bald kettledrummer, were two bare shoulders and a white back with silver ribbons. What, he wondered, was the musical significance of such décolletage? Was there a connection between the low-necked dress and the rhapsody? Were this pianist and the tender young soloists who followed her — bare of shoulder, flowing of hair, alluring of bosom, slyly slit at the leg — offering their carnal bodies in compensation for possible lapses in their renditions, for notes misplayed or omitted, or was this their consolation prize to a sense of sight forced to play second fiddle to the sense of hearing? And what, then, of the performers with pimples and bad complexions? Of what use were they to an audience promised visual as well as audial pleasures?

As the father of two sons, he had been deprived, once the wife of the elder one left him, of paternal access to young maidenhood. Now, as a steady procession of it passed before him, nubile, fluid, and flushed with excitement, a violin, clarinet, oboe, cello, or flute in its bravely vestal hands, he could not listen to the second concerto of Karl Maria Von Weber or to Ravel’s Les Tsiganes or Chausson’s Poeme, without an old sorrow welling up in him. Borne on the alternating waves of the music, his fictional confession in the hotel garden throbbed in him like a real disease.

This time the applause found him ready to join in, and he exchanged smiles with the bald kettledrummer, who had crossed his sticks in the symphonic gesture of approval for a job well done. Yet as he sought to leave the hall at the concert’s end, the Orientalist’s way was blocked by the ushers, who had shut the doors to prevent the early-to-bed-and-to-rise Haifaites from rushing for the exits.

There was a surprise finale. Never since he and Hagit had taken out their Philharmonic subscription could Rivlin remember such a thing. At the special request of the conductor, a musician rose and asked the audience to remain seated. As much as he loved the local musical scene, the Indian maestro had not forgotten his native land — which, poor, vast, and suffering, had young talents, too, who deserved a hearing. With a sharp wave of the baton, an Indian lad was thrust upon the stage. A fat, bespectacled ten-year-old in a baggy black suit, he stepped forward with a little violin that reminded Rivlin of the instrument once bought for him by his mother, who had dreamed of raising another Yehudi Menuhin.

The solemn boy, looking more like a despondent dwarf than a child prodigy, paid no attention to the applauding audience. Like a well-trained baby elephant, he took his place beside the smiling maestro, who patted him lovingly, as if reminded of his own self fifty years earlier. Leaving the orchestra to its own devices, the big Indian put the little one through his paces, leading him gently and attentively down the enchanted paths of Mendelssohn’s First Violin Concerto — paths that would take him assuredly Westward if only he remained a true son of the East.

13.

YO’EL, UNLIKE HIS WIFE, chose to arrive on a Saturday, thus giving the judge the pleasure of an airport reunion. Invoking recent precedent, the Rivlins decided to detour first to Jerusalem, where Hagit and Ofra’s old aunt was impatiently awaiting a visit from her nieces — especially from the fragile émigré, whose Third World peregrinations she had faithfully followed from the inner sanctum of her little room in a geriatric institution. And as long as they would be in the capital anyway, Hagit said, why not recoup the chance, lost the week before, to succor that dubious invalid Professor Tedeschi, now home from the hospital? The judge was never averse to the lavish praise that the illustrious polymath was sure to bestow on her.

Since family meetings in Jerusalem had a way of unfolding with an inner rhythm of their own that made their outcome difficult to foresee — especially when they involved two sisters eager to reminisce about their dead parents with an old aunt who was hard to stop once she got started — it was decided to put the sick call first, which would make it possible to cut short the visit to the aunt with the imperative of setting out for the airport. And so, on a crisp, sky blue Saturday morning, the three travelers were admitted to the Tedeschis’ apartment by the translator of Jahaliya poetry, who shook a stern head at them as if to say: “Although you may find us at home and not in the hospital, don’t delude yourselves for a moment that our afflictions have passed, much less that they are — the thought of it! — imaginary. On the contrary, the doctors’ refusal to face the facts only makes matters worse.” Introduced to Ofra, she gave her a bitter smile, satisfied with this new addition to the anxious circle of her husband’s well-wishers, before leading them into the old living room into which, thirty-two years previously, a young instructor had brought his girlfriend, then in the army, for the approval of his academic mentor, the sound of whose slippers was now heard as he came padding from an inner room.

The flame red color of Tierra del Fuego that Rivlin had noted in Tedeschi’s cheeks had faded to the ruddy suntan of an Alpine skier, and the hospital pajamas had been replaced by a pair of old corduroy pants. Only the pajama top, flecked with medicinal stains, was unchanged. Tedeschi’s skinny arms, proudly bearing the yellow marks of the infusion needles, protruded from the sleeves. He entered the room slowly, ignoring his old student and making straight for Hagit, who kissed him warmly on both cheeks and handed him a bouquet of flowers. Bowing slightly to Ofra, he asked Hagit, with ironic pathos:

“To what do I owe the privilege of Your Honor’s coming all this way just to see me?”

“Not just,” Rivlin corrected him. “Also.”

“Come, come, Carlo,” Hagit said, with a smile. “Don’t you think you’re worth a trip to Jerusalem?”

The old polymath shrugged genuinely skeptical shoulders and sank into a large armchair that had slightly deformed itself to accommodate his shape. The translatoress, on guard lest her husband stray from the subject of his medical condition, thus collaborating with the enemy, who made light of it, kept an irritable eye on him.

“He looks much better than he did last week,” Rivlin told her. Sarcastically he added, “He must be in training for the conference at the Dayan Center later this month.”

The Jerusalem scholar, while regarding Rivlin’s two women with approval, dismissed the conference with a disdainful wave and began to cough with gusto, the phlegm rattling so loudly in his chest that Ofra winced in her corner. He winked, still without looking at Rivlin, and declared:

“Who cares about that conference in Tel Aviv? Unless, that is, you’ll be presenting something new there that I owe it to myself to listen to….”

“I’m afraid,” the visitor from Haifa replied glumly, “that I have nothing new to present.”

“Those Tel Avivans just want to make a splash. I’ve informed them that I’ll have to feel better than I do now before I give them the benefit of my latest insights.”

The old professor modestly shut his eyes.

“Then you’re considering giving a paper?” Rivlin, out of sorts, glared at Hagit, who had insisted on this visit. You see? his expression seemed to say. Why bother when it’s all just a big act?

“What paper?” Hannah Tedeschi protested, rallying to the side of the man’s illness. “Carlo is fooling himself if he thinks he’ll be back on his feet in two weeks. The only conference he’ll attend will be about the results of his tests.”

“Rubbish,” Tedeschi murmured, glancing from the wife fifteen years his junior to his ex-student, the pitiable professor from Haifa. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t tell me your book is still bogged down. Can’t you throw the conference some juicy little bone, something heartwarming about the Algerian psychosis?”

“I have no bones to spare,” Rivlin replied, with a hostile air. “You know me. I don’t need to go to conferences just to remind the world of my existence. If I have nothing to say, I say nothing.”

Tedeschi shut his eyes again and nodded in vague confirmation.

“But you’ve been working on that material for years!” exclaimed their hostess, distressed not for the conference in Tel Aviv, but for her husband’s jubilee volume. “Don’t tell me you can’t get a single article out of it!”

“One can always toss something off, Hannah. But you, of all people, who work so hard and have only three or four poems to show for it at the end of the year, should understand the difficulty of producing something solid that will withstand the test of time. I can’t write about the fifties and sixties in Algeria, which were a period of vision and hope, without taking into account the insane terror going on now. A scholar with some integrity doesn’t just closet himself with old documents and materials. He reads the newspapers and connects the past to the present. It’s his job to show that today’s developments have their roots in yesterday’s.”

“It’s hopeless,” Hagit said with a smile, recrossing her legs for the benefit of the old polymath, who, though wheezing a bit, was listening raptly. “I’m married to a man who is convinced that everything has a logical reason. He can’t fall asleep at night until he finds it.”

“Tea or coffee?” asked a chagrined Hannah Tedeschi.

The two sisters chose tea. The unkempt house and the state of its upholstery suggested that the milk in the fridge might not be fresh. The professor from Haifa, knowing the Tedeschis better than the women did, asked for brandy, hoping it might disinfect any dirty glass given him.

Tedeschi wagged a half-threatening, half-approving finger. “He’s right,” he said of Rivlin, as though to justify having considered him his successor. “We must never write about the past as if the present didn’t exist. On the contrary, we have to look for the hidden symptoms of impending disorder even before it breaks out. Historical research is like prostate cancer: we need a blood test to detect the antibodies that signal the malignancy still contained in one little gland, before it invades the entire body. We must measure both kinds of cholesterol, the good and the bad, to determine the secret relationship that blocks the blood vessels and leads to a sudden heart attack. There are subtle signs that show up in newly coined speech, in imaginative combinations that occur only to poets and novelists. And at the same time, we must not be taken in by mere decadence, by the whiners and complainers who speak only for themselves.”

Rivlin’s head began to droop. He was familiar with the latest theories about the tendency of art and literature to signal social transformations. Yet all the studies concocted from such ideas, unless made solid by government protocols, political declarations, and legal and institutional decisions, were too frothy to merit a response.

“Yochi has no time for novels,” Hagit announced. “He says life is too turbulent.”

She was enjoying her visit with the hypochondriac so much that, forgetting to refuse the grayish slab of cake placed before her, she bit politely into it and even praised it. But yet the translatoress, well aware of her shortcomings in the kitchen, shrugged off the hypocritical compliment, while turning impatiently to the recalcitrant Rivlin.

“Surely you could write something about a poem or two.”

“Only if translated by you,” Rivlin warmly answered the tense, severe woman, whose blue eyes, magnified by thick spectacles, were the same as those of the mischievous student he had attended classes with back in the sixties. Knowing it would give her pleasure, he again recited Al-Hajaj’s grand soliloquy, this time in Arabic.

“But what,” he lamented, “would the know-it-alls say if I used a wonderful poem written fifteen hundred years ago to explain the murders of terrorists today?”

“Then choose a modern poem. Something hot off the press.” Tedeschi sounded as if he were running a fast-food stand. “Listen, Rivlin. We have something authentically new for you. Hannah, tell him about that friend of yours… the poor fellow who was killed….”

14.

ONCE AGAIN, THE Tedeschis — needing, so it seemed, the constant presence of real death — had a surprise corpse for him. This time it was an unknown young scholar from the Arabic Department in Jerusalem, who, stimulated by a literary, sociological, and ethnographic interest, had undertaken a study of popular literature in North Africa. The translatoress, no mean student of Arabic literature herself, had helped her friend unravel the subtle historical allusions hidden in the intricacies of contemporary Arab writing. And he, an observant Jew intimately familiar with religious sources, had repaid her with many an elegant rabbinic phrase that came in handy in her renditions of Jahaliya poetry. So productive had their collaboration over the past year been that they had even toyed with the idea of putting out a joint anthology of Arabic verse in Hebrew translation, he doing the moderns and she the ancients. And then he was killed.

“How?” Rivlin asked.

“In that bus bombing near Pisgat Ze’ev.”

“That’s the first university teacher killed by a terrorist that I’ve heard of.”

“He wasn’t just a teacher,” Tedeschi protested angrily. “He was a first-rate scholar who burned the midnight oil to understand the Arab mind. Not that that stopped them from snuffing him out one fine day.”

“Those aren’t the same Arabs,” Rivlin protested.

“Yes, they are, yes, they are!” bitterly declared Hannah Tedeschi, who generally avoided political arguments. “Don’t be naive, Yochanan. Anyone who has burrowed through ancient Arabic poetry as much as I have knows it’s all one world.”

“How can you let her say such a thing?” Rivlin scolded his old professor.

Tedeschi waved him off. “Let her say what she wants. She loved that young man. And rightly so, because he belonged to that scholarly nobility that, far outside the limelight, does the dirty work that clears the way for the rest of us, correcting old errors and pointing out new directions.”

“It was horrible,” their hostess told the two sisters. “He was carrying a briefcase full of rare Arabic newspapers and magazines, and they were all spattered with blood. I cried when his wife showed them to me — I, who have gone through hell with Carlo and never shed a tear. What a loss to the world of scholarship. And to think of what those sons of bitches in the department made him go through to get a lecturer’s rank!”

“What was he doing on a bus? Didn’t he own a car?”

“What car? He gave his all to his work and barely made a living. If it hadn’t been for Carlo, who managed to arrange a small fellowship for him last year, he would have been on welfare. You should have seen his apartment.”

“What did you say his name was?”

“Yosef Suissa.”

“An Orthodox Jew?”

“One of the decent ones.”

“The field has recently been flooded by such types.”

“Flooded?”

“Enriched.” Rivlin corrected himself while signaling his wife that the visit was over. Hagit, however, paid no attention and even agreed to a second cup of tea, as an antidote to the ghastly cake.

“So what do you say?” their hostess demanded. She looked so weary and distracted at this hour of the morning that Rivlin wondered whether Tedeschi’s first wife wasn’t making a comeback in her.

“About what?”

“About having a look at Suissa’s material. You never know. Perhaps you’ll find a spark of inspiration for your book.”

“In old poems and stories? No thanks. They’re not my line.”

“No, but they’re not far from it,” Tedeschi said. “You can spice your work up with them. Believe me, it’s not a bad recipe….” He winked again at the two sisters. “Not bad at all. At Cambridge, when I illustrated the Turks’ casual attitude toward state corruption with examples from popular nineteenth-century theater, it went down rather well.”

“But you’re asking me to look at things written in a local dialect that I would have a hard time translating.”

“Do as some of your colleagues do and find an Arab student to help you,” their hostess suggested. “Carlo always has a few talented young Arabs doing the drudgery.”

“What makes you think they’ll understand Algerian dialect?”

“They will if you give them a reason to — say, a research assistant-ship. They’ll use far-flung family connections to find out what they don’t know. Take a look at Suissa’s material. It’s a shame to let it go to waste.”

“But why not find someone in his own department?” Rivlin asked, trying to get out of it. “There must be someone who wants to carry on his work and publish. I’d just be muscling in.”

Hannah Tedeschi was relentless. “No one gives a damn about popular culture. They think it’s beneath them. They’d rather write about that blind Egyptian who won the Nobel Prize.”

“I thought he was deaf.”

“Deaf, blind, who cares? They don’t have Suissa’s feel for everyday life.”

“That’s enough talking,” Tedeschi told his wife. “Call Mrs. Suissa and tell her that Yochanan is on his way over now to take everything. She’s so swamped by all the papers her husband left behind that she’s liable to torch them in desperation.”

“But it’s Saturday….”

“Don’t worry about it. His wife is no longer a Sabbath observer. The religious one in the family was him. Look here, Yochanan. Listen to your moribund old professor. Do it. You know I’m your loyal friend, whatever our mutual reservations and recriminations. Take my advice. Don’t miss the chance to see what Suissa had. It has nothing to do with my jubilee volume. I couldn’t care less about that. It’s only making me sicker. Phone her, Hannah. As long as you’re already in Jerusalem, you might as well benefit from it….”

Rivlin felt a wave of the same affection that had moved him in the distant days of his doctoral studies, when he had sat for hours in this room under the strict but patient tutelage of the dedicated teacher who had pinned great hopes on him. Back then the smells from the kitchen came from the cooking of Tedeschi’s first wife, cooking that alone was sufficient evidence that she was losing her mind. He cast a questioning glance at Hagit and Ofra.

Hagit threw up her hands in cheerful surrender. “What do you have to lose?” she asked. Even his sister-in-law, who always minded her own business, nodded ever so slightly in agreement.

15.

SINCE MORNING SHE had been waiting under the carob tree at the geriatric home, a hundred meters from her old apartment in the neighborhood of Bet ha-Kerem. She had left the apartment twenty-five years ago to wander from one mental institution to another, either physically ill or else punishing herself with a Pirandellian, profoundly phantasmagorical madness that, alternately under and out of control, withstood the many assaults of electric shock and drugs. Her older sister, having attended her in her disturbance with anxious devotion, died and left two daughters to carry on. The elder of these took pains to keep in touch with her aunt writing from the remote lands she traveled in, while the younger and jollier one made sure, despite her own numerous obligations, to phone regularly and visit once a month. Deferring with a smile to the old woman’s many delusions — old and new alike — she kept reminding her of what no one else dared tell her, namely, that all things are permitted the insane except the abdication of love. And if their sick aunt truly loved her two nieces, she would bestow on them the gift of memory, telling them all they had known and forgotten, or had never known at all, about the dead.

Indeed, in recent years their aunt had begun to mine from her melancholy glittering diamonds forged in the darkness of time. With a renewed curiosity about the past, she had plunged to astonishing depths to retrieve these bright, hard nuggets. A first harbinger of this change was the sweetly ironic tone in which she took to speaking to Rivlin, the faithful driver who accompanied her niece to their meetings and sat in the shade of the trees by the front gate, reading a newspaper and fending off the mental patients seeking to approach him, until the time came to retrieve his wife, gently but determinedly, from the sick woman’s clutches. In the early years of her institutionalization, these appearances of his had so stricken her with fear that he had had to be instantly ejected. Slowly, however, her attitude yielded to a quiet resignation, which was in turn transformed, at first behind his back and eventually to his face, into a coquettish coyness. Hagit, encouraged, kept her aunt informed of all Rivlin’s activities, as though by dangling the bait of him before the old woman’s reawakening sense of humor she might lure the silken butterfly of sanity from its grim cocoon.

Gradually, their aunt emerged from her fortress of self-imposed oblivion with a great desire to know. So reinvigorated was her interest in the numerous details, large and small, of the lives of friends and relatives that Rivlin wondered whether — listening, making connections, cross-referencing, and double-checking — she didn’t know better than he did what went on in his wife’s courtroom or what the young officer was up to in the depths of his mountain. And so, having driven the two sisters to their midday rendezvous and spied from afar their aunt’s white tresses beneath the large carob tree — where, leaning on her cane, she had been standing in anticipation for over an hour beside a table transported for the occasion from the dining room and set for four — he yielded to his wife’s entreaties to donate a few minutes of his time to the soothing effect of allowing her aunt a few jibes at his expense.

And in fact, no sooner had Ofra embraced her aunt and Hagit gaily presented her with a bar of chocolate than the observant old lady began teasing Rivlin for his impatience to be gone.

“You can’t wait to get away from me, can you?”

He joined his palms together, Indian-style, to signify having come in peace.

“I’d be superfluous today. You have a special guest. I wouldn’t want to rob you of your time with her.”

She smiled wanly in agreement. Like a powerful computer scanning his file for recent entries, she asked in her deep, rehumanized voice:

“How was the wedding of your Arab student Semadar?”

“Samaher….”

“Of course. Samaher. Was it as difficult for you as usual?”

He flushed awkwardly and cast a reproachful glance at his wife for having revealed his secret, as a gambit to enhance her aunt’s mood.

“Not quite….”

“He doesn’t envy Arabs as much,” Hagit explained.

“Not yet,” Rivlin added lamely.

16.

IT WASN’T EASY to find the address in Pisgat Ze’ev. The Jerusalem chapter of Rivlin’s life had ended with the 1967 war, before the appetite of the victors had pushed back the bounds of the city in one compulsive new neighborhood after another. Although the buildings of the development in Jerusalem’s far north were new, the streets meandered unclearly, and the house numbers owed more to poetic license than prosaic logic. For a moment, he was tempted to abandon the whole wild-goose chase, telephone a Hebrew University colleague, and settle for a whiff of what was cooking in the academic kitchens of Jerusalem. But since he had time to spare, the two sisters’ aunt having insisted they stay for lunch, he decided to obey his old teacher and take a look at Yosef Suissa’s files. Perhaps something of the man’s brilliance had rubbed off on them.

At least this time he wasn’t paying a condolence call. The first days of the Suissa family’s bereavement were long over with. He had never even met the deceased — who, however, or at least so he hoped, must have known about him. Polite small talk or patient listening to how the dead man had breathed his last would be unnecessary. He would introduce himself and wait by the door for Suissa’s research to be delivered, with a sigh of relief, to his capable hands — which, sorting through it to detect its interrupted purpose, might manage to breathe some life into it.

He stood on the third-floor landing, the same wilderness of Judea that he had gazed at from the hotel in Talpiyot visible through a dusty window in the corridor. This time, however, the Dead Sea did not glint in the distance. Not trusting Tedeschi’s assurance that the widow was no longer a Sabbath observer, he refrained from ringing the bell and rapped lightly on the door, at a point beside the dead man’s name.

The decision proved to be a wise one. The door was opened by the deceased’s father, a short, somber, religious Jew with a hat and a scraggly mourner’s beard that appeared to have grown on top of a previous one. A prayer book lying on the dining-room table testified to his having recently returned from the synagogue, perhaps in the hope of saving the threatened sanctity of the Sabbath, which Rivlin could hear being thrashed in a washing machine. To help get over his discomfort, the Orientalist introduced himself with his academic title, apologized for intruding, and added a few words of commiseration for the death of the lately departed. Nodding morosely, Suissa senior opened the door of a bedroom, from which sprang a small, wildly laughing, bare-bottomed orphan, the imprint of a potty on his behind. Without further ado the child threw himself on the visitor, who was not sure whether he was being physically attacked or appealed to for protection and love. On the orphan’s heels came the young widow. Barefoot, unkempt, and dressed in shorts, a naked infant in her arms, she proclaimed by her appearance that her husband’s tragic death had released her, not only from the bonds of religion, but from those of civilization itself. It was as if, Rivlin thought, the savage soul of the terrorist had taken possession of the wife of his victim.

Little wonder that the bereaved father, his hat still on his head, had made a beeline back from synagogue to ward off the evil spirit let loose in the house.

“I’m Professor Rivlin.” He leaned compassionately forward toward the widow, one hand patting the naked infant clinging to her neck. “I believe Dr. Hannah Tedeschi told you about me.”

“Yes. I’ve prepared a package for you. But come to the bedroom and have a look. Perhaps there’s still more there.”

The visitor’s face burned as hotly as if he were being shanghaied to the Land of Fire. He followed the woman, trailed after by her father-in-law, with the bare-bottomed child running ahead. Tossing the infant onto the blankets of a large bed, in which he began to crawl and entangle himself, she led Rivlin to a modest desk, wedged between the bed and a closet, that was piled high with papers, folders, and books. One had the impression of a work in progress interrupted not months but mere minutes ago. A screen and a keyboard stood alone, without their computer. The latter, the widow told Rivlin, had been taken by an Arab research assistant who hoped to salvage what was on it. Her large, pretty eyes rested anxiously on him, as if inquiring whether she had done the right thing by letting a junior member of the department — and an Arab, yet — make off with the computer.

“They’ll build their careers on his blood,” Suissa senior muttered, with a hatred that made Rivlin shiver, as though he too were a vulture feeding off the dead man’s corpse.

“So what? What do you care? Let them.” The widow’s scolding tone made it clear that her father-in-law was getting on her nerves.

“How old was your son?” Rivlin asked the man sorrowfully.

“Thirty-three. The age at which they crucified the Christian. Except that my son, may he rest in peace, was a good man….”

It was odd to hear a Jew just back from synagogue comparing his son to Jesus.

The visitor wished to avoid misunderstanding.

“I have to tell you that I’m in a different academic field. I deal with Arab history, not literature or poetry. I have no idea whether any of this material, which Professor Tedeschi and his wife wanted me to look at, is related to my work. I’ll take it home for a week or two. If anything interests me, I’ll have it photocopied. You’ll get it all back….”

The thought of the large package of newspapers being returned to her only made the widow more depressed.

“No,” she said. “Please don’t. There’s no need. You can donate it all to the library.”

“His brain went squish!” the bare-bottomed child shouted happily, scrambling underfoot. He stuck out his little hand to touch the package, which was wrapped in brown paper tied with rough twine.

His grandfather grabbed at him to silence him. Leaping onto the bed, the boy vanished with his naked brother among the blankets.

The Orientalist lifted the package, careful not to inquire whether the bloodied pages had been removed or were inside. Before leaving, he yielded to temptation and asked to see a photograph of the deceased. The young widow hurried to bring him several, each of which revealed someone else.

17.

AS THE SCANTILY attired widow was about to walk her visitor to his car, if only to flee the apartment, her mother-in-law — short and hatted, like her husband, though her hat was a bright bonnet — appeared with a large pot of Sabbath stew to shore up the crumbling dikes of the Day of Rest. Promising to stay in touch, Rivlin thanked them all again and returned to his car. He debated opening the package, decided not to, and thrust it into the baggage compartment, which he had rearranged to make room for Yo’el’s suitcase, even though he knew the latter would be small.

Again he had time on his hands. Better yet, no guilt was attached to it. And so before driving back into town to find a restaurant that was open in the desolation of the Jerusalem Sabbath noon, he made a U-turn onto a winding street from which he could compare the desert view from the city’s north with that from the south. Not only, however, was the blue patch of the Dead Sea missing here too, the noble yellow vista of the Judean wilderness was bleak and dreary, perhaps because of a large Bedouin settlement whose shacks and black tents defended the hillsides against the city’s ravenous encroachment.

Nevertheless, a path descending between two buildings lured him down it with the promise of detecting a sliver of the inland sea that in his Jerusalem childhood had fired his imagination as the city’s answer to the Mediterranean — that far destination of summer vacations. But bleakness still curtained the gray horizon. Looking back up at the third-floor window of the little apartment, he tried to imagine what the dead scholar had seen as he sat at the desk squeezed into his bedroom: not a tiresome old crone like the one Rivlin saw sitting on her terrace in Haifa, but the play of wind and light on the desert, and Arabs, unwilling citizens of the Israeli-ruled city, strolling among the shacks and tents in which burned their hearth and cooking fires. Surely this was a better perspective from which to study the Arab soul and understand, as Ephraim Akri had put it, what mattered to it and what didn’t. Again he felt tempted to inspect the package in the baggage compartment. As it was unlikely that Yo’el would be in any hurry to take his wife to a hotel, many days would go by before he could sit down in his study to determine whether Suissa’s material might indeed provide a spark of inspiration.

He had tried not to grumble about his expulsion from his workroom and to be as patient as possible with their fragile and likable guest. This was not merely to calm his wife’s nagging anxieties about her hospitality. It was also to justify, if only to himself, the new and clandestine freedoms that he was taking.

18.

THIS TIME, THERE being no suitable pretext for another call, it took creativity and courage to avoid the twin embarrassments of being a nuisance to the Hendels and in defiance of his wife. And who could promise him that Galya would even be there? There was no guarantee, on this bleak, sleepy afternoon, of finding his ex-daughter-in-law in the hotel whose threshold he was crossing.

His last visit, with its heated conversation beneath the gazebo by the swimming pool, had made him a familiar figure to the clerk at the reception desk, who regarded him, a guest needing no directions, with approval. But although he knew the way to the Hendels’ quarters, he feared that his unexpected reappearance might be taken as a bizarre or even unbalanced regression, rather than as the sober determination to clear up an ancient mystery. Therefore, he headed for the crowded dining room, in which he lingered despite the unlikelihood of his son’s ex-wife turning up there. Taking a tray, he joined the line by the food counter, whose steamy dishes made him feel slightly queasy. If nothing else, he would enjoy a good meal whose tastes brought back better days. The talk around him informed him that, this time too, he was surrounded by a group of Christian pilgrims.

Well, then, I’ll be a pilgrim myself, Rivlin thought, placing his loaded tray on a table occupied by two outsize Americans, tall, hefty men despite their elderly appearance. They welcomed the Israeli diner and sought to strike up a conversation, which Rivlin joined by proudly informing them, Christian Zionists, that he was not only a Jewish professor but the scion of an ancient Jerusalem family. Inquiring about their itinerary, he pointed out its advantages and shortcomings and responded to their praises of the hotel by mentioning that his son had been wed to the owner’s daughter, albeit not for long. This led the two pilgrims, in the charitable spirit of their journey, to consider his visit and partaking of a meal with them as an act of religious benevolence.

A young Arab waiter came to clear the table. Uncertain of the new pilgrim’s identity, he discreetly sought to establish it and — unauthorized to issue a free meal ticket — went to fetch the maître d’. This turned out to be the old Arab who had recognized Rivlin at the bereavement and encouraged him to write in the condolence book. “What’s the problem?” he scolded. “Professor Rivlin is one of the family. He can eat all he wants on the house.” “You mean I was one of the family,” Rivlin corrected with a laugh while the waiter blushed with embarrassment. But this merely evoked a dismissive wave of the hand. Families were to be entered, not exited.

“You did the right thing by coming here for a rest, Professor,” the maître d’, whose name was Fu’ad, observed. “This is the best season.”

Rivlin had to explain that he had not come to rest or even to eat. He had returned because his wife and sister-in-law were lunching in the city with an aunt. The heart had its reasons. And as though it were an afterthought, he murmured:

“Is Galya by any chance here?”

“You didn’t finish talking to her the last time, did you?”

The man’s powers of observation surprised him.

Fu’ad sighed proudly. “If I didn’t notice such things, who would? She was the one of Mr. and Mrs. Hendel’s children whom I spent the most time with. He and his wife, the poor woman, used to go once a week for a night out in Tel Aviv and leave Galya with me. If she was upset, I’d take her home to Abu-Ghosh to play with my nephews. After a while she’d calm down. Believe me, no one knows her as I do. She’s a smart young lady, but moody and stubborn. Sometimes, I would take her out for an ice cream or a falafel when I had free time at the hotel. She liked that. It always cheered her up. Now she’s taking Mr. Hendel’s death hard, maybe even harder than the missus. Harder than her sister, that’s for sure. She seemed so sad after that conversation with you last week. What made you leave in such a hurry?”

“I had to be at the airport. I have to be there again today.”

“You Jews are always at the airport. Always coming and going. You can’t sit still. It will make you sick in the end.”

“To tell the truth, I already am sick,” the guest said with a smile, looking through the window at a lovely white cloud sailing by. The thought of the illness born here ten days ago made him feel a sweet pang. Stricken, he bowed his head and whispered to the man in the dark suit and black bow tie:

“I’m quite ill.”

The maître d’ looked at the Orientalist suspiciously.

“Ill, Professor? But that can’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Is that what you told Galya last week?”

“Among other things.”

“Mish ma’ool, ya eyni.”^*

“Leysh la? Ma’ool jiddan.”^†

“Ma t’zalnish al-fadi. Kulna minhibak k’tir hon.”^‡

“Shu ni’mal, hada min Allah.”^§

“Shu Allah? Ma lak uma l’Allah? Ma tistahbilnish.”^∥

The two elderly pilgrims, surprised by the change of language in mid-conversation, sat up like two pinkish, blue-eyed elephants given a secret command and took their prudent leave.

“Where is Galya?”

“Perhaps with her mother.”

“And husband?”

“Of course.”

“Could you bring her here? Bas hi. B’sif.”^*

“Ala rasi.”^†

19.

IT WASN’T JUST from crying, Rivlin decided cheerfully upon seeing his ex-daughter-in-law, still dressed in black, emerge hesitantly from a side door. She really had lost her looks, and the short haircut she had got since their last meeting only emphasized this. He rose to greet her from the dark corner of a little lounge set off from the dining room. It was here that Hendel, seated before a full-length mirror in which he watched the smoke spiral up from the cigars that his wife couldn’t stand, had come when he’d wanted to indulge. Any man, friend, foe, neighbor, or stranger had the right to appear at a bereavement and offer his consolation to the mourners. Yet her ex-father-in-law’s insistence on a second meeting perplexed the young woman who, regarding him with a mixture of pity and fear, now slipped into the chair by his side.

“I’ve received a letter from Ofer,” she said at once, using the son to shield her from the prying father.

He shivered with joy.

“A short one. And a nasty one. He was very hard on me. That’s no way to comfort anyone. But it doesn’t matter. I took it for what it was.”

“You see?”

“See what?”

“Despite all the time that’s gone by, he hasn’t given up.”

“But on what?”

“On wanting to know. To understand. Like me.”

She shook her cropped head angrily. “You’re wrong. His letter had nothing to do with that. I’ve already told you that he understands all he needs to.”

He felt his confidence shaken by her firmness. He reached out a fatherly hand that fell short of touching her. In the mirror he saw Fu’ad moving slowly across the empty dining room. The maître d’ cast a glance at their dark corner and disappeared.

“Listen carefully, Galya. If I thought for a moment that he understood why you left him, or had come to terms with it, I’d never have stooped to come here again.”

“But why is it stooping?” she protested hotly. “You mustn’t say such things, Yochanan. I was very touched by your last visit. I’m touched by this one, too. We’re all grateful. If only there were some way I could help…. But you mustn’t try to make me feel guilty or take your anger out on me. I have enough problems.”

A desert wind riffled the curtain. Rivlin took the plunge.

“I’ve already told you…”

“What?”

“That I haven’t much time left.”

“How do you mean?”

“I told you.”

“But what’s wrong with you?”

“The details don’t matter. I don’t like to discuss them. I’m not asking for pity, only for justice.”

“But what does this have to do with justice?”

He bowed his head and said nothing, feeling a stirring in her.

“You’re torturing yourself for no reason. What does it matter? People get together and break up all the time. I left your son because we couldn’t go on the way we were. Because it would have been wrong to. Ask him. Why should I tell you what he won’t?”

“He would like to. He can’t.”

She made no reply.

In the mirror behind her Rivlin saw her ponytailed husband peer into the dining room.

“Fine. I won’t bother you again. Just do me one last favor. Answer his letter.”

“But he told me not to,” she said with a triumphant gleam. “Those were his last words.”

“Never mind.” His anger turned against his son. “Write him. It doesn’t matter what. Just give him a sign. If he swallowed his pride enough to send you a condolence note, he must want an answer even if he denies it. Give him one. Anything. A few words. It makes no difference what they are. Do it for my sake. You owe me that much.”

“Owe you?” He felt her waver.

“Morally. We treated you like a daughter from the minute you set foot in our home. We couldn’t have loved you more. Whatever you wanted, whatever you asked for, even hinted at, was yours. We never said a word when you broke up the marriage. We just gritted our teeth, Hagit and I. We tried being high-minded about it.”

She nodded slowly in confirmation. The word “high-minded” swept him along.

“Even if you think you owe us nothing, do it for your father’s sake. Don’t leave me in the dark. I won’t come again, I promise. This is the last time. Not even Hagit knows I’m here. She would be furious if she saw me pleading with you like this. Promise you’ll write to Ofer. Even if he doesn’t want you to. Just this once.”

“But what should I say?” she whispered despairingly, like a student bewildered by a teacher’s demands.

“Anything. Make him realize he understands.” She weighed his words carefully before making a movement with her head. He couldn’t tell if she was nodding it or shaking it. Her eyes were damp with what looked like old tears. Again, something told him that she was pregnant.

The tall husband passed again across the mirror. The two blue-eyed, evangelical elephants reentered the dining room and wandered slowly through it, lifting the tablecloths as though looking for something they had lost.

20.

“YOU DIDN’T BELIEVE me. Well, now you’ve seen for yourself. She gets more lucid from day to day. She even remembered the names of places in South America that Yo’el told her about three years ago. It’s not just her memory, either. She can explain things, see connections. And she’s so funny! She has a sense of humor she never had before. Did you hear what she said about Yochi? It’s too bad, Yochi, that you weren’t there. Where were you all that time? You would have enjoyed her. Imagine: she not only thought of asking about your work, she even remembered it had to do with Algeria. At first she said Morocco and then she caught herself. When I told her you were stuck she asked me to tell you she understood. She has real empathy. I’m sorry you didn’t stay. Where on earth did you disappear to? To think that for years the psychiatrists sent her from one institution to another without holding out any hope! It’s no wonder I bristle whenever one of them gets on the witness stand and spouts some diagnosis.”

“Don’t generalize.”

“You’re right. One mustn’t. But I’ve seen enough to be skeptical about the experts. I can understand wanting to make a science of mental disorder. But do it modestly, with a sense of proportion. After all, they’re not pathologists analyzing DNA in a lab. How can they label every hoodlum psychotic or schizophrenic or posttraumatic?”

“Give us the bottom line,” Rivlin said, accelerating as they came out of the last turn of the descent from Jerusalem. “What are you saying, Hagit? That your aunt was making believe? That all the time we ran after her from asylum to asylum we were really going from theater to theater?”

“She wasn’t making believe. I’m not saying that. Her torment was real. She didn’t believe she deserved the love that our mother and all of us gave her, and that drove her to extremes of anxiety. It never occurred to her that we needed her love, too. Did we ever tell you, Ofra, how we first realized she was getting better?”

Ofra nodded. Although she had heard the story many times, she was always ready to hear it again.

The road to the airport was lightly traveled on Saturday afternoons. The anticipation of seeing Yo’el made the trip a pleasant one. Hagit was still too full of the lunch with her aunt and the family anecdotes to probe where her husband had been. It was just as well, Rivlin thought. Although he could have padded his account of the time he had spent with the Suissas, he preferred not to. His failure at the hotel only made him feel more guilty.

“Actually,” he said, interrupting his wife’s entertaining but familiar account of her aunt’s recovery, “Hagit owes her aunt a great deal.”

“How is that?” Hagit asked.

“Didn’t she once shock some sense into you as a child by telling you how awful you were?”

Like a healthy person recalling past illnesses, the judge liked to be reminded of a time when she hadn’t been nice. Now, she looked lovingly at the husband who — if only to tease her — remembered her childhood so well.

“When was that?” Ofra asked, glowing in the backseat at the thought of Yo’el’s arrival.

“Don’t you remember how our parents used to send me to her in Jerusalem during summer vacations? I spent weeks there. Once she told me I wasn’t nice to be with. It made a big impression.”

“How old were you?”

“About twelve. I worshiped her then. Every word of hers was holy. It had a great effect.”

“It’s too bad it didn’t last,” joked her husband.

“But it did. Really. You could have used an aunt like that, someone to hold up a mirror to you. Yochi’s mother”—Hagit turned around to her sister—“kept him tied to her apron strings, summer vacations included. He wasn’t insurable, and she never gave him a chance to grow up.”

A jumbo jet passed overhead, in one line with the road. For a second they seemed to keep up with it.

“Maybe that’s Yo’el’s plane,” Ofra said.

“Perfect timing!”

But Yo’el’s plane had landed a quarter of an hour early, and since he had only hand luggage, he was out of the terminal and perched on a low wall by a fountain, looking suntanned and refreshed, when they arrived. Reading a Hebrew paper, his toes sticking out of his biblical sandals, he did not look as if he had been away for three years.

21.

HER HUSBAND’S LARGE hands alone, in Ofra’s opinion, could handle her fragile body without breaking it. Although they had been separated for only ten days, she and Yo’el clung to each other tightly, as if also embracing the children never born to them. It was a while before Yo’el turned to Hagit and gathered her, too, in his arms, after which he clapped Rivlin on the back and asked what was new in Algeria.

A spring dusk was descending when they reached Haifa. Gazing from their terrace at some trees bordered by two streets that ran down toward the sea, the distant gleam of which was invisible in the twilight, Yo’el — having been taken on a tour of the duplex by his now knowledgeable guide of a wife — acknowledged that the loss of their old wadi was not so grievous. Then, over bowls of grapes and cherries, the forgotten taste of which quickened the senses of the Israeli émigré, Rivlin decided that the time had come to relate the story of their moving.

“It’s pure theory until you have to do it. You know, we lived in our old place for nearly thirty years. We thought we had some control, or at least some idea, about what went into it. A total illusion! Even the mover, who came to give us an estimate, turned out to be a wild optimist.

“The day before we packed was a Saturday in spring, just like now. We were sitting on our terrace overlooking the wadi, saying good-bye to our view of the sea. The apartment was still in one piece behind us. The pictures were still on the walls, the wineglasses were in the cupboard, the cheeses and the soft drinks and the containers of food were in the refrigerator, the books were on the shelves next to the photo albums — just the way it is now. Except, that is, for the sacks and the folded cartons, which were waiting in a corner for the packers to arrive the next day. Suddenly I had a mild attack of panic. ‘Hagit,’ I said. ‘How can we be sitting here sitting here so calmly? Before the storm strikes, don’t you think we should at least sort through what we’re taking?’ But in the immortal words of Oblomov in the Russian novel, ‘If there’s work to be done, let someone else do it.’ We went on sitting on the terrace.

“Early the next morning, we’re drinking our coffee and reading the newspaper while listening to the birds in the wadi, not at all like two people whose lives are about to be turned upside down, when in walk two packers. They looked like two little ants, a dark woman of about thirty-five, a chain-smoker as thin as a match, and her scrawny twelve-year-old son, a boy with a black skullcap on a black head of hair. ‘How will just the two of you manage?’ I asked. ‘Don’t worry about us,’ the woman says. ‘Just tell us where to start.’

“Well, they attacked the house like two locusts. A pair of zombies couldn’t have gone around with less plan or method, stuffing everything into sacks the way they did. The boy flew everywhere without a sound. He was like some blind, wingless grub, grabbing one thing after another and filling sack after sack. Imagine, I’m shaving in the bathroom when he walks in after me and scoops up whatever he can, the toothbrushes, the shaving cream, my bifocals, everything. I barely managed to retrieve my glasses from his sack. We spent the first two weeks after moving trying to figure out into which of dozens of sacks and crates our lives had been thrown by those maniacs and sprinkled with the mother ant’s cigarette ashes.

“But I’m getting ahead of myself. The next morning six Arab moving men show up with a big truck and a little Jewish driver. Our new apartment was so close by that I was sure we’d be done by the afternoon. Well, by the time the first truckload pulled out it already was the afternoon, and the apartment was as full as ever. And when evening came and a second big truckload left, we still hadn’t made a dent in anything, I started to cringe every time I saw a moving man. Something, humanly, had gone wrong. I mean, naked we come into this world and naked we leave — what were we doing with so many things? Were they all to prove our existence or simply to maintain it?

“The movers, every one of whom we now knew by name, address, and individual moving style, were getting restless. Halfway between the two apartments, the Jewish driver, who had been declaring all day that he had never been given such a job in his life — four flights of stairs from the wadi to the street, and four more from the street to the duplex, and with ‘all those goddamn books’—threatened to quit on us. And when the new owner turned up with three workers with hammers, who began knocking down the walls for his renovation while we were still moving out, I began to feel my whole life was a mistake. Luckily, Hagit took command at that point and calmed the mutiny with a smile and a pay raise. The extra money did wonders. By midnight the old apartment was empty, and the last truckload had arrived with that big bookcase over there. The only problem was that it didn’t fit into the stairway and had to be hoisted onto the terrace with ropes and pulleys.

“It was now two A.M. I was standing on the terrace with the head mover, who was having a fine time giving orders how to maneuver a bookcase that no one could see in the darkness. You could only hear it lifting off the ground, gaining altitude, and banging into things as it rose. I was too happy we were finished to give a damn. I felt so grateful to the movers for not abandoning us in the middle that I said to them in Arabic, ‘You’re fantastic! We could conquer the world between us. Let’s draft you all into the Israeli army and march on Iraq.’”

“Iraq?”

“Iraq.”

“Why Iraq?”

“Why not? Search me. I was punch-drunk by then. That must have been when I began losing my faculties. Since then I’ve lost a little more of them every month trying to get this place into shape.”

“What did they say?”

“Who?”

“The Arab movers.”

“What should they have said? They were so glad to be done that they would have taken on Iran too….”

22.

AS DARKNESS DESCENDED, Yo’el fell merrily asleep in the middle of a sentence, and Hagit went hurriedly off to make a second bed in the study — which, Rivlin announced, hoping thus to prevent the long-dreaded judicial inquiry into his free hours in Jerusalem, he was donating to his in-laws for the remainder of their stay. Not that he could work in his office at the university, where the students, secretaries, and teachers gave him no peace. But in any case, he intended to spend the next few days in the library with the journals and newspapers he had brought from Jerusalem, even though they were unlikely to be of great value.

The judge, stretched out fully dressed on their bed after a delightful day, agreed at once to his proposal. However, not only did she appear to take it quite for granted, but it did nothing to prevent her from wanting to know what he had done in Jerusalem. By way of reply, Rivlin invented a long stroll taken by him on the promenade south of the Old City. Since the two of them had once walked there together, he would not be asked for an account of it.

But Hagit was not through with him. “Is that all you did?”

For good measure he decided to throw in a visit to the Agnon House in Talpiyot, if only to demonstrate that he didn’t need her agreement to go there.

“The Agnon House? It wasn’t nice of you to go by yourself.”

“But you never wanted to come.”

“Only because I didn’t want to run into Galya or her parents.”

“What would have happened if you did?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t want to see her.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t care. She’s ancient history.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“Of course I can.” Hagit yawned. “What’s the Agnon House like?”

“I don’t know. It was closed,” he said, realizing in the nick of time that he would have to describe a place he had never been in.

“So what did you do then?”

“Then I rejoined you and Ofra.”

23.

IN HIS ROOM in the university tower, facing the bald top of Mount Hermon in the distance, he tore open, with a slight trepidation, the wrapping paper containing the scholarly remains of the Jerusalem prodigy. The old, moth-eaten pages, many from the house organs of North African trade unions, were mimeographed or printed on rough paper. How could he tell the old stains from new ones made by blood or spattered brain? Since, like the blots in a Rorschach test, the dim yellow marks could tell him only about himself, he decided to ignore them and concentrate on the printed words.

The Tedeschis had been right. The amount of fiction and poetry in old North African newspapers and publications from the 1950s and ’60s was amazing. It left the impression that the Arabs of the Maghreb had cared less for their struggle for independence than for their own private lives — their personal loves, friendships, and griefs, and the villages and landscapes they inhabited. Many of these compositions, marked in red by the murdered scholar, had been singled out by him for analysis.

But an analysis pointing to what?

A spark of inspiration, Rivlin concluded after leafing through the old pages, which left his fingers smelling of an unfamiliar spice, would not be found here. He was too much a believer in the tried-and-tested approaches to history to have much faith in the potential of such writings. Still, it might be possible, as Tedeschi had suggested, to use the odd poem or story to illustrate popular attitudes discussed in his book. Yet this called for precise translation, and the marked passages, though written in standard literary Arabic, had, as he had anticipated, expressions in local dialect that would give his critics a field day if he misconstrued them. Of course, he could always consult Ephraim Akri, who was a better philologist than intellectual historian. Yet a full professor had to be careful about exposing his academic weaknesses to a junior colleague eager for promotion.

So intense was his concentration as he labored to decipher, without noticeable success, the murdered Arabist’s motives for singling out certain passages, the strange smell of whose paper was now on his face as well, that he failed to hear the light knock on his door. As though in a dream, a nervously smiling woman in her middle forties, well groomed and perfumed, slipped into the seat across from him and began to inquire, in typical Arab fashion, about him and his family without bothering to introduce herself or explain why she had come.

He pushed away the newspapers and cast a friendly glance at the woman, whose attractive features caused an old memory to flicker pleasantly. Sure from his smile that he had recognized her, she was now telling him how hard it was to find his room. It wasn’t clear whether she was complaining or expressing her wonder at the size of the university. Still groping for her name, he suddenly remembered her standing guard outside a clean, fragrant bathroom and exclaimed happily, “Why, it’s…”

“Afifa.” Her modest smile bared two rows of marvelously white and flawless teeth.

Judging by his response, the name pleased him greatly. His interest in her feminine ripeness, which spoke more to an aging heart like his own than did the flaunted sexuality of the young students who flitted down the university’s hallways, was indeed growing. Was it possible, he wondered with amused alarm, that this middle-aged Arab woman had taken seriously his casual suggestion that she return to her studies?

“How is the newlywed?” Rivlin asked. “We haven’t seen her since the wedding.”

“That’s why I’ve come….” Afifa’s face fell. “Samaher isn’t well again.”

“Not well?” He snickered incredulously, rocking back and forth in his chair. “Don’t believe her. She’s just afraid to show her face. There’s a small criminal case awaiting her.”

“A what case?”

“Criminal. Jina’i.”

“I know what that means.” She was insulted by the idea that she needed the word translated. “But what has she done criminal? She’s an honest girl, Samaher. Ever since she was a baby….”

“Why don’t you ask her? She can tell you all about how she gave old term papers of hers to friends who copied them and handed them in as their own.”

“Copied them?” Samaher’s mother apparently knew all about it. “She just let those bums read them, to see how it’s done. Why blame her? She has a good heart. She’s too kind. That’s always been her problem. We could never even slaughter a chicken or a sheep without her crying and calling us names….”

“Shu ma l’ha issa? Shu m’dayi’ha?”^*

“Pardon?”

“Shu indha il’an?”^†

“She has that sickness of hers again,” Afifa answered, declining to speak to Rivlin in Arabic. “She wants me to ask you for another postponement for that composition she owes you.”

Who, Rivlin wondered, did the woman think he was — a grade-school teacher on Parents’ Day? Yet, loath to offend her, he asked gently again in Arabic:

“Shu maradha?”^‡

The attractive woman crimsoned as brightly as if she had been to Tierra del Fuego herself. A tear, dabbed at in vain with a little handkerchief held in her hand, dropped from her large, almond-shaped eyes. The handkerchief was torn by a wail, a primitive bleat of pain that burst from her throat and sent a seductive shudder through his loins.

When had a woman last cried like this in front of him? Only on television. Hagit was too accustomed to the sobs of her defendants to indulge in such a thing herself, while his sister cried only over the telephone — hardly the place for the cleansing, eye-dilating tears he was looking at now. As if reluctant to let go of them, Afifa went on dabbing at them with her little handkerchief even when he carefully nudged toward her a box of tissues.

But at least now she gave in and switched to her own language. In a colorful village patois, she described Samaher’s depressions, which had grown so bad a year ago that her daughter had had to be hospitalized for a while in Safed and put on powerful drugs, which affected her concentration and ability to write. Ashamed to tell her professor about it, his M.A. student had blamed her grandmother, who loved her dearly and would do anything for her.

Rivlin thought of, but did not mention, his wife’s opinion of psychiatrists. Why undermine the Arabs’ faith in the Jews’ ability to cure them? It surprised him that he had not noticed anything amiss in Samaher, who, her usual chatty self, had sat in the second row of his seminar class. Even in her “Hamas period,” as she referred to the year when she’d come to his classes in a long dress and white shawl, she had retained her vivaciousness. Was his knowledge of his students that superficial? Or had he become so detached from reality himself that the aberrations of others seemed normal?

“But what is it that you want?” he asked, reverting to Hebrew before their intimacy could grow too great.

“Iza b’ti’dar, Elbrofesor Rivlin, aazilhha shwoy elwaza’if.”^*

“Another postponement? I’ve already given her too many….”

“Then ahsan shi tilghi’ha bilmara.”^†

“But I can’t just forget about it!” He rocked again in his chair, amused by the impudence of it.

“Because she’ll never finish it. She’ll lose a whole year’s credit. And she’s pregnant and has to stay home because the doctor says school is bad for her depressions. Why can’t you? What difference would it make? Give her an exam instead of a paper, anything to help her get the degree. Maskini, ishtaghlat ketir lisanawat adidi.”^‡

“It’s out of the question. Shu fi hon, su’?”^§

“But why a marketplace?” The affront made her flush. “Why can’t you give her an exam instead of a paper? Isn’t it the same?”

“Not at all.”

“But you can make it the same. Samaher says so. Professor Rivlin is the best and most important teacher, she says. Everyone listens to him.”

“Ha!”

“Everyone does. They all say so. You’re the one who has the power. The head of everything. That’s what she told us from her first day as a student. He’s the man, she said. The one worth studying for. The most interesting and important. Much more important than that dark, nasty man who was at the wedding. She’s always talking about you. At first her father was afraid for her. He thought she’d gone and fallen in love with some young teacher. ‘But he isn’t that at all,’ she told us. ‘He’s an elderly, dignified man. He could be a grandfather.’”

Rivlin smiled a melancholy smile.

“Listen,” he said. “It’s no use. This is a university. I’m not the one who makes the rules. You can’t change a paper to an exam. If it’s too much for her, she can put the M.A. off. She already has a B.A. That’s enough for the time being. She can continue later. We’ll help her.”

“How? Once you drop out, you’re out.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What about me? The secretaries at the wedding said I’d have to start all over again.”

“If you really wanted to go back to school, we could make a special arrangement.”

“You see? You can do it if you want to.”

He grinned.

“Well? What do you say?”

“I’m sorry. First she needs to shake off her depression. Let her have some children. Then we’ll see. Trust in Allah.”

He didn’t know what in the world had made him say that. And yet why not? Allah was a handy word.

The little room fell silent. The woman, refusing to accept defeat, remained in her seat. Her glance drifted past him to the hills of the Galilee, returning to regard him with a quiet hostility that only increased her beauty.

“It’s no tragedy,” he said soothingly. “Unless you’re interested in an academic career, there’s no great difference in Near Eastern studies between a B.A. and an M.A. Samaher can get a government job with just the B.A.”

Her mother placed a soft white hand despairingly on the table.

“You’re making fun of us, Professor. Samaher, a government job? You think she needs to work? The degree is for her honor. For ours, too. We promised the groom’s parents. They didn’t like her depressions. They only agreed to the marriage because we explained how educated she was to be getting her M.A.”

He shut his eyes for a moment, wishing she would cry some more.

“I’ll tell you what.”

Afifa regarded him.

“Tell Samaher to come see me. I’ll give her a new subject. An easier one.”

But she just kept at him.

“Samaher can’t come to the university now. Her husband won’t let her leave the village. Hayif ti’malu-lo doshe.”^*

“Ay doshe?”^†

“Ma ba’aref. Huwa bahaf min el-habl.”^‡

This time the bleat was stifled. Rivlin reached out cautiously and gave the moist, pudgy hand on his desk a friendly pat.

“I’ll give Samaher something in place of a paper. Something from the newspapers you see on this desk. She’ll read some passages and summarize them. Nothing complicated. Just a few stories and poems. She can do it at home. She won’t need a library. Maybe it will even help get her out of her depression.”

“I’ll take them with me now.”

“Easy does it! In the first place, they’re too heavy for you. And second, I have to photocopy them. They’re rare material and not mine. Why don’t you send Samaher’s husband to make copies?”

“Forget about her husband. He has no time. I’ll send someone else. The cousin who drove you to the wedding.”

“Rashid.”

“Rashid.” She was surprised Rivlin remembered the name. “Rashid is best. He’ll take care of everything. Stories and poems are just the thing for her.”

24.

THAT MONDAY THE young officer was supposed get leave so that he could see his newly arrived uncle. At the last minute, however, he yielded his turn to a friend, a romantic soul with an urgent need to talk a girlfriend out of leaving him. Not knowing when he might get another pass, Tsakhi asked his parents to bring Yo’el and Ofra to the base that evening.

And so once again they drove the winding roads of the Galilee. While the two sisters sat in back recollecting childhood trips, Rivlin patiently questioned his brother-in-law about developments in the Third World. Although these were enough to drive anyone to despair, he thought a knowledge of them might help him to understand his own tortured Algeria.

Early for their rendezvous on Mt. Canaan, they stopped for a bite at the same restaurant in which they had met the two corpse freezers. But Yo’el did not seem upset when told the story, perhaps because his travels in impoverished lands had inured him to the fate of corpses.

It was getting dark when they reached the double gate of the intelligence base and parked in its improvised picnic grounds, now ominously deserted. Rivlin opened two director’s chairs for the women and took the émigré, who had never lost his love of the Israeli landscape, along the fragrant goat path running up the mountain. A full moon risen in the east bathed the mountains in a generous light that enabled them to keep an eye on their wives below, sitting near the gate. Confident that they would spy Tsakhi when he appeared, they walked on in the brightening night.

A large lizard scurried across their path.

“Watch out nothing bites you,” Rivlin warned his lanky brother-in-law, who was still wearing his biblical sandals.

“After all the times I’ve been bitten in Africa and Asia, what do you think the Middle East can do to me?”

Rivlin felt a wave of warmth for the man.

“I’m afraid you don’t take us very seriously.”

“I do. But you’re all terribly spoiled. You think all the tears in the world belong to you. As if there weren’t a big, suffering universe all around you.”

The Orientalist lowered himself onto the same large rock that he had sat on ten days before and cast a glance at the two sisters below, who were looking lonely and abandoned. He was about to shout something encouraging down to them when his wife, catching sight of him and Yo’el, waved first.

The silence around them was profound. Little animals, satisfied that the invaders meant no harm, resumed their hidden munching. Yo’el looked around and breathed deeply, taking in the approach of the Israeli night. It occurred to Rivlin that he and Hagit hadn’t made love in a week, nor could they possibly do so until their two guests departed. It was remarkable how, as the years went by, his desire for his wife grew stronger, as if their psychological intimacy only increased their physical passion.

Yo’el sat chewing on the stem of a plant. Now was the time, Rivlin decided, to talk about the facts of married life. If the two sisters were at all alike in their makeup, some pointers might be gained from it.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he said, broaching the topic. “It’s a small thing… you needn’t answer if you don’t want to…”

“Answer what?”

“Just don’t get annoyed.”

“But what is it?” The longer Rivlin’s prologue, the more bewildered Yo’el became.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you… just don’t get annoyed… it’s an odd question, I know… but do you and Ofra… ever shower or bathe together… I mean would she agree… because Hagit, you see…”

“But what makes you ask?” Yo’el gave him a puzzled smile. “I’ve never tried. How could I? You know Ofra. Half an hour in the shower is her minimum. My maximum is five minutes.”

An armed soldier emerged from the hidden entrance to the base.

“That must be Tsakhi,” Rivlin said, cutting the conversation short even though he knew it wasn’t his son. And indeed, back in the parking lot, they saw it was the blond, baby-faced sergeant. He had been sent to inform the visitors that something had come up to prevent the young officer from leaving his post. There was no point in waiting.

“But what happened?” Rivlin asked, disappointed.

“There’s a problem with some instrument.”

“What instrument?”

The sergeant gave him a forbearing smile.

“Tell him to come for just a few minutes,” Rivlin tried cajoling the messenger. “Just to say hello. His uncle has come especially to see him. He’s leaving the country in a few days.”

“He knows that,” the sergeant replied calmly. “Don’t think he doesn’t feel bad that…”

Rivlin interrupted him brusquely. “Go tell him anyway.”

“Forget it,” Hagit said. “If he can’t come, he can’t come. Take his word for it.”

The sergeant nodded in approval at her common sense.

25.

AT THE UNIVERSITY the next day, in the narrow hallway of the twenty-third floor, he found the messenger from Samaher. Sturdily built, sable-skinned, Rashid was eagerly awaiting his mission. Rivlin placed a pile of North African journals and newspapers in his arms and sent him to the library to photocopy the excerpts marked by the murdered Jerusalemite, plus some additional passages checked by himself.

Three hours later the Arab returned, with two thick binders of photocopies, red for the poems and green for the stories. Each entry had been indexed by author, with the date and place of publication in red ink. The originals, too, had been reorganized and were now arranged chronologically. Explanatory flags in Hebrew and Arabic, written in a clear, curling hand, were attached to them.

“About these stains, Professor…” Rashid pointed to the yellow flecks on the newspapers. “I didn’t make them….”

“Of course not.”

Rivlin revealed the awful truth.

Rashid cursed the suicide bomber roundly. “That’s life,” he said.

Rivlin was taking a liking to the young man. “Tell me,” he asked him confidentially, “what really is the matter with Samaher?”

“Ya’ani, she has moods. It’s her nerves. She’s feeling low. But she’ll get over it. She’s strong. And smart as a whip. Believe me, I tell everyone: Just wait, in a few years you’ll see Samaher in the Knesset.”

“The Knesset?”

“Yes. Someone like her belongs there.”

“Because she’s so depressed?”

Rashid laughed.

“Because it’s so depressing.”

His handsome eyes, the color of coal, had a hypnotic warmth.

“But really, what’s the matter with her?” This time his tone was sterner. “What’s going on?”

“She’s tired. Exhausted. And her husband is the nervous type. He has no patience for her.”

“She should have married you,” Rivlin blurted unthinkingly. “You seem patient enough.”

“Me?” The blood rushed to Rashid’s face, as if a leak had sprung inside him. He gave a start. “Why not?” he laughed. “Her father would never have agreed, though….”

“Because you’re cousins?”

“Because I’m dark. Too dark for his taste.”

The Orientalist asked the affable young Arab about himself. For two years, Rashid said, he had been a university student too, in the electrical-engineering department of the Haifa Technion. Then he left. Engineering didn’t interest him, nor did he believe he could find work in the field. He had bought a minibus and made good money transporting passengers. Perhaps next year he would audit a few classes.

Rivlin handed him a sheet of paper and dictated the demands he was making of his ailing student.

One: A precise but literary translation of all the poems into Hebrew.

Two: A Hebrew summary of all the stories.

Three: A list of motifs common to both.

That was all. It was pitifully little for an M.A. seminar paper. Yet what else could he do? He was beginning to feel sorry for Samaher. And there was all the more reason for her to hurry, because he was tired and ill himself and no one else in the department would put up with her shenanigans.

“Ill? With what?”

“Never mind. Just don’t tell anyone. Not everything has to be public knowledge. That’s something we Jews need to learn. Life needs its little secrets. Just see to it that Samaher is warned. There’ll be no more postponements or excuses. Let her do what I’ve asked within a few weeks and she’ll get her grade. And please — let’s leave her mother, father, and grandmother out of this.”

26.

18.4.98

Ofer,

It would have been the right thing not to reply. Not only so as not to violate our “honorable silence,” as you call it, but also because a condolence letter with poisoned arrows in it doesn’t deserve a reply. You’ve forced me to violate, not only our silence, but the sacred vow of fidelity made to my husband, since I am concealing this letter from him.

And in the dark night of my sorrow, which knows no consolation, nothing but longing for a beloved man (and only a man), you still won’t give an inch. Again you allude to your unspeakable fantasies.

(To think I once loved you so much.)

Your father, with whom I genuinely sympathize, is still tormented by our failed marriage. He believes that you don’t understand what happened.

You?

You don’t understand?

I’ve conveyed your condolences to my mother. She thanks you. For some reason, she still grieves for you.

Please, don’t answer this letter. Let’s return to our old silence. It may not be so honorable anymore, but it’s just as important.

Galya

27.

RIGHT UP TO the day of the wedding, Ofra, fearful of being left alone with Yo’el’s family, tried persuading her sister and brother-in-law to join them. Yet having had the foresight to purchase two tickets for a biblical play in Tel Aviv that evening, Rivlin was not going to let even an exemption from gift-giving force him to attend a wedding he didn’t have to be at. Hagit’s efforts to sway him, born of sympathy for her sister’s plight, only led him to deliver a harangue. What did Ofra want of him? She spent her life traipsing around the world like a middle-aged princess, with no worries or family duties. It would not be so terrible if for once she had to meet her obligations unassisted. At most, he was prepared to drive her and Yo’el to the wedding. Perhaps even to drive them back, although this was already going too far.

Now, nearing Nature’s Corner, he found himself growing gloomier by the minute as his car followed the lanterns waved in the fading light by the young parking attendants whose job it was, before changing costumes and turning into waiters, to divert him from the highway onto a dirt approach road that looped through fields of crackling stubble. He stepped on the brakes as soon as he reached the parking lot — whence, pounded by music that would grow more savage as the night progressed, a stream of elegantly dressed guests flowed toward a green buckboard propped decoratively on its shaft as though on loan from an old Western, beyond which a bridal gown and bright glasses of wine glimmered through the branches of trees. This was as far as he went. Putting his foot down, he refused even to congratulate or greet the parents of the bride, fearing to encourage the illusion that he might stay. Although his sister-in-law, wearing the dress he had failed to talk her out of, delayed their parting as if still hoping to change his mind, he swung the car determinedly around, wove through a phalanx of arriving vehicles, and sped back to the highway and their biblical drama.

The audience entered slowly, advancing toward a stage in the round, on which they were invited to sit as though part of the performance. To heavy but clear-toned music, twelve young actors and actresses dressed in black took their places, microphones attached to them so that they might speak, or even whisper, the words of the ancient text naturally and from the right inner place.

28.

My heart is sore pained within me,

And the terrors of death are fallen on me.

Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me,

And horror hath overwhelmed me.

And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!

For then would I fly away and be at rest.

Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness.

Selah.

ALTHOUGH RIVLIN HAD no idea how the play would develop or what was in store for them, the somber prologue from the Book of Psalms, cast into the black space of the auditorium, made him sit up. He smiled encouragingly at his wife. She nodded back, secretly pleased to have been rescued from a wedding that, even if it did not arouse her envy, was eminently forgoable.

Two actors began to recite? declaim? read? speak? act? passages from the story of the Creation. In the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens…. The story of Cain and Abel… This is the book of the generations of Adam. The grand biblical language soared with contemporary freshness. Though hardly a sentence or word did not come from Scripture, the female director had taken liberties, rearranging and editing the text for the benefit of the spectators, who sat in the dark with quiet yet skeptical attention, slowly sipping old wine, its taste unfamiliar to many of them, from a new bottle.

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos. And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died.

And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan. And Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters.

Emerging from a far corner, a solemn young actress enumerated the generations while crossing the stage in a long, slow diagonal, her floating gait trancelike. In the middle of her path several young men lay twisted on the floor, tormented by the venerable ages of the endlessly begetting ancients. Slowly, the tedious list of names and numbers, accompanied by a distant peal of bells, took on meaning and drama, perhaps because of the way the young actress enigmatically paused before each repetition of “… and daughters.”

Rivlin sought to catch his wife’s eye, to convey that he liked the performance so far and hoped it would continue to hold his interest. But Hagit’s gaze was riveted to the stage — to which he, too, turned intently back so as not to miss a movement or a word. He admired the director for seeking to breathe life into forgotten and unpoetic biblical texts that were tediously plain: dry laws, harsh commandments, blessings, warnings, curses, lists of clean and unclean animals — all backed by electronic music and made amusingly real by sprightly actors in striking costumes.

Now, as two shaven-headed actors leaned over a large table, discussing between them, with the cackling pedantry of old men, ancient sexual prohibitions both commonsensical and bizarre, a tall, striking actress with golden curls falling to her shoulders took out a small white handkerchef and alternately brandished and tore at it with dancelike, repetitive movements as though it were a flag of protest or surrender. With sorrowful irony she joined the exchange, reciting the mordant laws, intricate and outrageous, meted out by the biblical legislator to the virgin raped by a stranger in a city or a field:

If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones so that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife; so thou shalt put away evil from among you.

If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

“Marvelous!” he whispered to his wife, watching with pleasure as a barefoot actor and actress sat down near them to lament the childlessness of Abraham and Sarah prior to the birth of Isaac.

“Now Sarah and Abraham were old, the plump actress related, and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. She moved contortedly in her envy of the concubine who bore Ishmael to her husband, describing in a deep, sobbing voice not only her own anguish, but that of the bondmaid she tormented:

“And Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thine hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.”

All at once, without knowing how or why, the Orientalist felt a lump in his throat. It was as if the sobbing of the barren Sarah were meant for him, were in him. And while Abraham, the defiant believer, promised Sarah in God’s name that she would have a son before the year was out, the plump actress writhed on the floor, clinging to her despair and renouncing all hope in a tragic, sardonic voice:

“After I am waxed old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”

So powerful and convincing was her renunciation that a wordless sorrow moistened his eyes. He froze, afraid to let his wife see. She, however, aware of his tears, laid a light hand on his knee.

29.

“THAT’S THE END of the first act,” Rivlin said. “Now there’s an intermission.”

He leafed through the program, looking for the name of the actress who played Sarah. Putting his arm around his wife, he declared with satisfaction:

“I was on the verge of tears.”

“Do you know why?”

“It touched me. It hit a nerve. Didn’t you feel that way too?”

“Yes. I did.”

They headed for an opening in the human wall besieging the buffet. Suddenly Rivlin saw his wife stop short and duck.

“What’s the matter?”

“Don’t move,” she whispered.

But it was too late. The burly man ahead of them had caught sight of her and was staring at her in astonishment.

“Don’t I know you?”

Hagit said nothing.

“You’re the judge!”

She was unable to move.

“Don’t you remember me?” He reddened, the bills he was holding to give the counterman trembling slightly in his fingers.

Although she shook her head, the shadow of a smile crossed Hagit’s face. Rivlin sensed that she knew this handsome, well-dressed man.

“Is this your husband?” The man pointed, staring at Rivlin.

Hagit said nothing. The Orientalist nodded.

“I’m Amnon Peretz.” The man whispered his name dramatically, as though it were a dark secret. “You still don’t know who I am?” He grinned. “You gave me twelve years.”

Solemn and pale, Hagit bobbed her head. It wasn’t clear what she was confirming — her memory of the trial or the length of the prison term.

“You’re out?”

“For the past three years. For good behavior.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

She bobbed her head again, regaining her composure. Gently she asked:

“Are you enjoying the play?”

Eager to discuss other things, the man was surprised by the question.

“Very much,” he answered with a smile. “And you?”

“Also,” Rivlin replied, heading for a new opening at the buffet.

Back in the dark auditorium, on whose stage silhouettes were slowly moving, Hagit whispered that the man had been a chronic wife- and child-beater until brought to trial. There was no time for further details, for the Children of Israel, having left Egypt with the battered suitcases of European refugees, were now beginning their trek through the desert.

And the children of Israel removed from Rameses, and encamped in Succoth.

And they departed from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, which is on the edge of the wilderness.

And they removed from Etham, and turned again unto Pi-hahiroth, which is before Baal-sephon; and they encamped before Migdol.

And they departed from before Pi-hahiroth and passed through the midst of the sea into the wilderness, and went three days’ journey in the wilderness of Etham, and encamped in Marah.

And they removed from Marah, and came unto Elim; and in Elim were twelve fountains of water, and threescore and ten palm trees; and they encamped there.

And they removed from Elim, and encamped by the Red Sea.

And they removed from the Red Sea, and encamped in the wilderness of Sin.

And they took their journey out of the wilderness of Sin, and encamped in Dophkah.

And they departed from Dophkah, and encamped in Alush.

And they removed from Alush, and encamped at Rephidim, where was no water for the people to drink.

And they departed from Rephidim, and pitched in the wilderness of Sinai.

And they removed from the desert of Sinai, and pitched in Kibroth-hataavah, which meaneth Appetite’s Grave.

Once again, with slow movements and crystalline words, the actors held the audience in thrall, pulling after them strips of fabric on journeys that crisscrossed to far places and peoples, conquered cities and smoking ruins, while listing, besides the laws of illnesses, abscesses, lesions, leprosies, offerings, and priests, the numbers of men under arms in each of the twelve Israelite tribes. With a mixture of horror and glee, the astounded Orientalist noted how — transfixed by a zealous and restless God who, unable to leave them alone, promised and threatened, pummeled and soothed, resolved and decreed — the Jews never wearied of their wanderings.

And then, the journeys, wars, lesions, deaths, burials, homicides, and cities of refuge having come to an end, a thin actress with black tresses licking at her face like little snakes strode to the middle of the stage. Kneeling, she told the story of Jephthah’s daughter with soft, sinuous gestures.

Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh, and he passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon.

And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,

Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

A muffled drumming accompanied the maiden as she hurried innocently out to greet her victorious father with a dance, never guessing that she was about to fall victim to his inexorable vow. A tense Rivlin hung on every word as she submitted to her fate.

My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity.

And yet by the end of this wrenching tale, the thin maiden with the snakelike tresses had not exactly submitted, for she now told her story again. The drumming grew faster. Her movements, stylized and measured the first time, were now sweepingly defiant.

Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh, and he passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon.

For the second time she came to her cruelly loving father’s words as he rent his clothes: Alas, my daughter! Thou has brought me very low and art my downfall! For I have opened my mouth unto the Lord and cannot go back. The lump was back in Rivlin’s throat. The tears almost shed for the childless Sarah stung his eyes for the senselessly sacrificed maiden.

And yet in her despair, Jephthah’s daughter — having gone with her friends to bewail her virginity upon the mountains before being sacrificed by her father because of the vow he had vowed without stopping to think who might run excitedly to greet him — was not content with telling the story twice. As the drums’ frenzy mounted and the music gathered force, she told the tale of her immolation a third time. The staid, obedient child of the first version was now a proud, wounded tigress, snarling ferociously at her father’s mad vow and the vile deed about to be done her. Her at first sinuous and then sweeping movements turned out to have been but preliminary sketches for the savage paroxysm of her slender body, now lashing out at the world.

And so, when for the third time she uttered her father’s cry as he rent his clothes and blamed not himself but her—Alas, my daughter! Thou hast brought me very low and art my downfall—a shudder convulsed Rivlin’s being. Quickly, he removed his eyeglasses and hid his face.

30.

DESPITE THE PLAY’S length, it was not yet midnight when the Rivlins’ car groped its way along the dirt road strewn with sputtering lanterns in order to bring Ofra and Yo’el back from their corner of nature to the glitter of civilization. Although the parking lot was mostly empty, the savage music still shook the tall eucalypti as if a great multitude were continuing to dance.

Yo’el and Ofra sat off to one side at an empty table. The former youth-movement counselors, eternally young themselves, looked weary, old, and sad. Their clothes damp from the night vapors rising from the stream, they ignored the commotion on the dance floor with its melee of fat aunts capering with small nephews and grandchildren and ecstatic youngsters hoisting on their shoulders not one bridelike figure but three, all in various states of undress.

Loath to let the last gasps of the wedding spoil his high spirits, Rivlin was for making a quick getaway with his exhausted brother-and sister-in-law. Genuinely indignant, however, the bride’s father insisted that the two shirkers at least have some dessert.

It didn’t take much to persuade the laughing judge to agree, especially as the tray handed to her held not one dessert but many, each more scrumptious-looking than the last.

“How was the play?” Yo’el asked. In twenty-four hours he and his wife would be far away.

“Wonderful. It’s a must. If I were you, I’d postpone my flight just to see it.”

But the two émigrés were anxious to leave their muggy native land.

“He actually cried,” Hagit told on him merrily, licking whipped cream from a long golden spoon.

“He did?” Yo’el and Ofra marveled.

“Buckets.” Hagit grinned. “With every word.”

“That isn’t true. I only cried in a few places,” Rivlin asserted with an odd pride, helping himself to a piece of chocolate cake. “The story of Jephthah’s daughter broke me up especially.”

31.

23.4.98

Galya,

You answered me even though I asked you not to. So much for your right to tell me whether or not to answer you. (As for our lost and entirely imaginary “honor,” let’s leave such things for others.)

You should be thankful that I wrote what I did and not worse. If you’re so sure of yourself and of your family, both the living and the dead, why violate your “sacred vow of fidelity” to your husband by hiding my letter? If the “truth” is on your side, you should want him to see it, since it’s the perfect chance to prove to him how truly mad your first husband is and how right you were to leave him. (Just be careful, though. My insanity is a boomerang. Who falls in love with a madman but a madwoman? And you did love me. Terribly.)

Do you want to know what made my father visit you during the bereavement? It had nothing to do with feeling sorry for you or your family. The man is quite simply still tortured by our separation, because he doesn’t understand what happened. He’s a historian who has to understand everything. His own self too, because, despite his position, he’s consumed by doubt about himself and anyone he suspects of being like him.

It’s a good thing my mother, at least, has some faith in me.

If my father is foolish enough to try to make contact with you again, don’t let him. I’ll try to restrain him, too. Sometimes I wonder why I chose to spare my parents by not telling them what happened between us. Was I afraid that they, like you, would be unable to believe me and would end up begging you to forgive me? Or did I keep my promise because of the accursed hope you held out to me?

Enough. Too much. Every word is superfluous. You can go back to mourning the man I never could mourn for.

Ofer