The Liberated Bride (12 page)

E
XCUSE 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 . . .

T
HEIR 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.

T
HERE 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.

“C
AN 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. . . .”