The Liberated Bride (48 page)

A
UTUMN ARRIVED AT
full blast, bringing wind and rain and the promise of a real winter. Yet there were also days of warm sun and sweet light, with fleecy white clouds hanging quietly in the sky. Although her blinds were opened less often now, the ghost, dressed in two heavy sweaters that Rivlin recognized from the previous winter, continued to sit on her terrace. She no longer played solitaire. Seated at the little red table with a pad of stationery, she seemed to be—as far as he could make out from across the street—filling page after page with writing.

The semester began. The Oriental department head returned from the Occident, buoyed by his audiences of decent Christians and wealthy Jews politely worried about the future. He thanked Rivlin for filling in for him, and especially for preventing the rector and the dean from making off with the half-time teaching slot.

Relieved of the duty of substituting for his successor, Rivlin no longer had an excuse to put off typing his wildly scrawled and illegible notes, the product of his days without glasses, into his computer, to prepare them for submission to the critical eye of the brilliant young Dr. Miller, the keys to whose academic career he held. He knew
that Miller was attuned to the latest winds blowing from German and American universities and that his approach to scholarship, and to Orientalism in particular, was revisionist. (Indeed, the young doctor had even announced at a departmental meeting that he refused to be called any longer by the intellectually pretentious and discredited title of “Orientalist”; he preferred the more modest description of “Middle Eastern social ethnographer.”) For this reason, Rivlin, wishing to present his draft in a softer, more ambivalent light, took care to insert in more places than necessary a number of self-critical qualifications and to replace exclamation points with question marks. He then ran his remarks off on the printer, put them in Miller's mailbox with a jocular note, and postponed the next meeting of the secret appointments committee until the following week.

He thought sorrowfully of his eldest son and of their harsh exchange in the parking lot of the hotel. I won't defend myself against his accusations, he told himself. On the contrary, I'll admit openly that I should never have slept in the basement with all those superannuated tax files. Still, he doesn't have to be angry with me just because I did something foolish. If he'd told me the reason for his separation, I'd never have had to sink to such depths.

Self-pity vied with self-blame. He envied the old ghost on the terrace her outburst of writing.

His thoughts weren't only of Ofer, his face twisted with rage. He also thought of his Circe, deftly making a bed for him with snow white sheets. Had it been the brackish light of the basement or her low-grade fever that had made her skin look so translucent and virginal? It was curious. You could count on someone like her not to take a night's fling seriously or to expect anything from you afterward, her only loyalty being to the hotel. And yet what pleasure could there be in making love to such a bony, unattractive woman, who, for all her haughtiness, wanted protection, too? And how did you make love at all to a woman so much taller than yourself? Did you expand or did she contract?

And then there was Fu'ad. What had he been up to, turning up like that with a pillow? Had he come to warn him against an involvement that an ex-in-law should have known better than to risk, or was he protecting the proprietress? And in either case, why hadn't the discreet
maître d' stuck to his philosophy of playing it safe and putting his own interests first?

And on the other hand, if this were really Fu'ad's credo, why write an elegy for Ofer? Why mention it? Simply to demonstrate his friendship for an Orientalist who had told him in polished Arabic that he was dying? Or was it a signal not to give up in his pursuit of a secret that he, Fu'ad, was unable to discuss?

On a whim, Rivlin called the hotel. Without identifying himself, he asked to speak to Fu'ad, who had to be summoned from the garden.

“
Anna ba'awek aleyk?
”
^*

“
La, abadan, ya ahi.
”
^†

“What's new? How's Galya?”

“God be praised. She's giving birth soon.”

“And the elegy?
Al-marthiyya?
Did you find it?”

“I've stopped looking for it, Professor. So should you. What's gone is gone. Why lose sleep over it? If you want a new elegy, it's no problem. I can even write you a love poem. Lately, the rhymes just keep coming. I even wrote a little poem in Hebrew.”

“Good for you.”

“I don't know what it is, but since Mr. Hendel passed on I've been full of feeling. I can be in the middle of work, running the dining room or the cleaning staff, and suddenly I want to write. It's a pity it's all lost in the end, like that elegy. No one in our village appreciates a good poem. I wish I knew someone who could give me some constructive criticism. Back in the fifties we had a poet of our own, a fellow named Ibn Smih. Then he got into trouble with the law, and they took him away. . . .”

T
HAT WEEK
, a movie called
Passage of Memory
was playing at the Japanese Museum. Two young lawyers, stopping their debate in Hagit's chambers long enough to discuss it, had recommended it. Whereas
famous stars and good reviews could not persuade Rivlin to go to a European or American movie unless he first got a detailed synopsis from his wife, he was more tolerant of films from more exotic places. Lately, he had particularly enjoyed several Iranian ones made under the regime of the ayatollahs. “Even if the plot doesn't hold up,” he explained to Hagit, “there are still new faces, landscapes, and foods . . . who knows, perhaps even new and better ways of making love.”

Love was something he had slacked off at. Ten days had passed since he and Hagit had last made it, which meant it was time for action. Since in recent months the judge had been an elusive partner, prematurely tired at night and prematurely quick to rise in the morning, he had decided to consider other times of the day—such as before the Japanese movie, which was still three hours off. Hagit, however, was far from eager to undress or to miss the five o'clock news. It took many tender endearments, plus switching on the heater in the bedroom, to get her to take off her pants and blouse. Aroused by her half-naked body, Rivlin proceeded slowly, wary of making a false step or overshooting the intricate target zone of her desire.

And yet it went badly. Their kisses and caresses, even in places that had never failed them before, were stale and counterfeit. The room was too hot, and the tingle of passion soon turned to a thin, unpleasant trickle of sweat. Hagit, impatiently fretting and complaining, asked to be excused and even urged him to finish without her, which was something she generally hated. Though unhappy about it, he went ahead and made love to her motionless body for the sake of his peace of mind during the movie. Yet something about the way she shut her eyes, as though to protect herself, upset him at the wrong moment, and he came with a paltry dribble.

“It's all right,” she said comfortingly, after he had rolled off her. “Don't worry about it. Next time . . .”

He didn't answer.

The Japanese Museum would have had a comfortable theater had the rows not lacked a middle aisle, thus forcing too many people to stand up for those taking or leaving their seats. The movie, though of recent vintage, was in black and white, presumably to convey its somber mood, while the English subtitles were difficult to read
quickly—a serious problem in a film that had more talking than action. The film (so a flyer handed out to the audience explained) was about the passage from life to death and took place in a Japanese purgatory, where the newly deceased were interviewed. To gain admission to the next world, they had to forget everything about their lives except for one happy memory, which they were allowed to keep for all eternity.

It was storming outside. The drumming of rain on the roof gave Rivlin a cozy feeling as he watched the arrival of the interviewers. A likable group of young men and women who resembled social workers or vocational testers, they had their quarters in a small, drab office that reminded him of the former quarters of the income-tax bureau in an old building near Haifa port. Unlike other Japanese movies he had seen, in which the actors expressed simple, everyday emotions with a frequently jarring agitation, in this one they talked calmly and quietly. They, too, it appeared, were dead, stranded between worlds because they had been unable to choose their happiest memory. Their punishment was to have to help others choose.

After a long opening scene in which the interviewers chatted over coffee and cake, the first newly dead person arrived. Rivlin found the interview difficult to follow. His eyelids drooped, and his head fell to one side. After a while he roused himself and glanced at his wife. Hagit took her eyes off the screen, at which she had been staring with stupefaction, and smiled. “What do you think?” he whispered. “It's one of these intellectual art movies,” she said reassuringly. “Let's give it a chance.” He heard a thin whistling coming from his left. He turned to look at the attractive woman sitting next to him, whose large, bald husband was the source of the sound. She hurried to wake him, and he sat up, rubbed his eyes, gave Rivlin an apologetic look, and resumed staring grimly at the screen.

Outside, the rain beat down harder. Although the movie had been showing for barely ten minutes, to Rivlin it felt like a year. How much more of this could he take? The Japanese purgatory, though profoundly symbolic, did not speak to him. He scanned the audience of middle-class intellectuals and culture lovers, many of them known to him from concerts at the Philharmonic. Most seemed determined to
rise to the movie's challenge, while only a few showed signs of dropping out. He glanced back at Hagit. Although she was still managing to sit straight, her eyes were closed. Now and then, as if fighting off the sleep engulfing her, her head bobbed in agreement with the sound track, in little Japanese bows. He nudged her. She didn't wake. He had to whisper her name to make her open her eyes and flash him another warm smile.

“Already asleep?” he scolded.

“No. Just for a second. What's happening? Are you following it?”

“God knows. It's awfully complicated. But you can relax. No one is going to get killed because they're all dead already.”

She laid an affectionate hand on his knee and gave it a squeeze. “Let's see what happens,” she encouraged him. “Lean back. My lawyers said it was a good movie.”

A crew-cut, ornery-looking old man now appeared on the screen and told an interviewer about his native village. He remembered the wind and the grass. Rivlin felt cheered. The first happy memory was on its way.

But it wasn't so simple. The ornery man couldn't decide which memory was his happiest. And the next time Rivlin awoke, it was only a quarter of an hour later. The attractive woman was asleep now, too, leaning on him lightly. He tried moving away from her. But this only made her lean more, and in the end he had to push her gently back toward her husband. She awoke annoyed, and he turned back to his own wife, who was now sleeping so soundly that her bowing had stopped.

The rain had died down. A deadly quiet prevailed in the little theater. The camera panned on the industrial area of a large city, where a dead Japanese woman was stonily describing the accident that had killed her.

This continued for an hour and a half before the lights came on for intermission. Rivlin, his head full of Japanese memories, awoke with a start. Hagit greeted him brightly, while his attractive neighbor gave him a dirty look, as if he had done something indecent to her during their joint sleep. Her husband rose and stretched himself groggily.

“Let's get out of here,” Rivlin said.

“Maybe the second half will be better.”

“It won't be.”

“I hate leaving in the middle. There's nothing terrible about falling asleep from time to time. The movie is made of separate episodes.”

But he found falling asleep at movies and concerts embarrassing, and exhausting to fight against. He rose and made their whole row rise with them. People stood by the buffet, sipping coffee and cold drinks while discussing whether to remain for the film's second half. Those who had stayed awake explained what it was about to those who hadn't and coached them for the remainder. Rivlin, tired of happy Japanese memories, took Hagit by the arm and steered her toward the exit.

A storm-buffeted moon staggered through the sky between tattered clouds. He brushed wet leaves from the windshield of their car and said, pierced by sorrow,

“I would have been through with that interview in a minute. I could have said right away what my happiest memory was and gladly forgotten everything else.”

She bowed her head. “Yes. I know.”

“You know what?”

“The memory you would have taken with you.”

“Which?”

“Ofer's wedding. The garden of the hotel.”

“You're right,” he said, a bit annoyed to have his thoughts read so easily. “Ofer's wedding. Despite, or maybe—who knows?—because of all that's happened since then.”

He started the car as his wife climbed into it, then backed carefully out of the narrow parking space.

“And I,” Hagit mused, “would have ended up stranded between worlds. I have too many happy memories to choose just one. Especially of things that happened before I met you.”

S
EVERAL DAYS AFTER
giving his preface to Dr. Miller, Rivlin found it returned to his mailbox, without an accompanying note. What did
Miller think he was doing? Was he being provocative or just stupid? Rivlin couldn't believe that the young lecturer was so unafraid of him.

At first he was inclined to say nothing until they saw each other at the next departmental meeting. That night, however, he slept poorly. In the morning, unable to restrain himself, he called to straighten the matter out.

“I was wondering if you'd read it . . .”

But reading Rivlin's introduction had been a piece of cake for the theoretical mind of the young lecturer. He just hadn't been sure whether the professor, with whom he had such ideological and methodological differences, really wanted to know his opinion.

“But that's just it,” the Orientalist said, feeling better. “It's precisely those differences that make me want to know what you think.”

Nevertheless, he was careful to set their meeting in Miller's room, a few floors above his own. That way he could get out of it any time he wanted.

Although Miller's standing at the university did not entitle him to his own office, the young lecturer, who was two or three years older than Ofer, had found a little cubbyhole between two rooms near the rector's office—a space originally intended for a coffee machine or a file cabinet—and talked his way into getting it. His sense of his own uniqueness, it seemed, made him prefer a cramped room of his own to a larger one shared with someone else.

It was late on a gray winter day. Miller's narrow window looked out on neither mountains nor sea, but on some houses of a Druze village that appeared engraved in the dust on its glass pane. Rivlin, a tense smile on his face, surveyed the tiny room's overloaded bookshelves with what was meant to be a benevolent glance. Most of the books were recently published American and German studies of political and sociological theory. Not a single Arabic volume was in evidence. Did this man demanding tenure in the Near Eastern Studies department know Arabic at all, or did he rely entirely on translations for his postmodernist opinions? Moving the empty chair away from Miller's desk so as not to have to face him like a student, Rivlin positioned himself diagonally and stretched his legs out in front of him. “To judge by your tone,” he began magnanimously, “I take it that you
have some objections. Well, I'd like to hear them. I'm open to criticism.”

Miller ran a hand through his sandy hair and took off his glasses. To Rivlin's surprise, his light blue eyes were childishly innocent. Although the young lecturer could easily guess that the full professor was on the secret appointments committee, he did not beat around the bush. In no uncertain terms, he rejected the Orientalist's thesis that an academic study dealing with the origins of Algerian national identity could have any relevance to the current bloodshed in Algeria. His tone quiet and considered, he stressed the need to demolish not only the theoretical foundations of his senior colleague's introduction—which, Rivlin now saw, he had not only read but could remember every word of—but the premises of the still unwritten book to follow. Its reification of the concept of national identity, he contended, doomed it to failure on moral and intellectual grounds.

“Reification?” Rivlin forced a smile while concealing his anxiety over a word whose exact meaning he was unsure of.

Yes, Miller said. National identity was not a natural or empirical given, there being no such thing. It was a fictive construct used by the power structure to enslave the population it purportedly described. He found it deplorable that a senior faculty member, writing at the end of the twentieth century, should collaborate in such an anachronistic, long repudiated, and even dangerous point of view, much less base a book on it.

“A fictive construct in what way?” Stiffening, Rivlin did his best to overlook the connotations of the word “collaborate.”

The young postmodernist was happy to explain. In articulate, if rather mechanical and (Rivlin thought) smugly jesuitical language, he demystified the devious concept of national identity, which served to ghettoize the lower classes and deprive them of their rights within the rigid framework of the national state, whether—for there was no difference—this was of an openly totalitarian or an ostensibly democratic nature.

“Come, come,” Rivlin drawled, in what he intended to be a patronizing manner. “No difference between totalitarianism and democracy? Isn't that going a bit far?”

But the sandy-haired jesuit, now sitting in the shadow of a passing cloud, stuck to his guns. National identity was an illegitimate concept even in a country like Israel that still pretended, albeit with increasing difficulty, to be democratic. Rather than let people decide for themselves who they were and how they wished to be defined, it trapped them in a rigid category that had no room for change, development, personal experience, or multiple identities. With the full complicity of the academic community, the ruling classes sought to impose an inflexible model of reality, privileging some and marginalizing others, for the purpose of exerting total control.

Rivlin sighed. “I'd say you were the proof that they haven't succeeded,” he said, wishing he could dampen the young postmodernist's ardor.

“They can never succeed,” Miller agreed triumphantly. “In the end the whole system will implode.” Ordinary thinking people would rebel against being labeled by the antiquated notions that the professor (sitting now in evening shadow, his head jerked back in dismay) wished to construct his book with. Those at the bottom of the social hierarchy would understand that national identity enslaved rather than enhanced them, by curbing their freedom and mobility and preventing a rich interchange of perspectives across permeable frontiers. And the moral absurdity of it was that the enslavers, the engineers of identity who locked the doors and sealed the borders, kept open these possibilities for themselves. They alone retained access to the rich interfaces of language and culture, traveling widely and associating with different peer groups while the masses, locked within the gates of the state, were chauvinistically regimented. And to what end? But that was obvious . . .

“Not to me,” Rivlin said honestly.

“To make cannon fodder for the next unnecessary war.”

“Whoa there!” he protested. “Begging your pardon! How can a political progressive like you call an anticolonialist struggle against a century of oppression in Algeria unnecessary?”

But the theoretical jesuit was unimpressed by anticolonialist platitudes. Colonialism, he maintained, was not so much a historical or political phenomenon as a ubiquitous condition that co-opted all
elements of society. It was present even in countries that had never had colonies, such as Austria or Sweden, to say nothing of Israel, a colonialist entity from the start. You didn't even have to look at the Occupied Territories to see that. “Take, for instance,” Miller said, with a thin smile, “the hierarchical organization of the university tower we're in, surrounded by a national park that has wiped out every remnant of the Arab villages that once were in it. Think of the internal division of the floors, with the administration at the top and the slowest elevators serving the lower and middle echelons, where the liberal-arts faculties are, while the high-speed elevators zoom up to the appointments committees and the personnel department and financial offices. That's where the real power of this university is. And what sits, disgracefully, on top of everything? A military installation, an army radar station! Of course, we pretend it's not there. Its operators are made to look like students. But let's not kid ourselves. It combs the area and sends its information to an intelligence base in the Galilee in which everything is secretly processed. That's where the legitimacy of the whole oppressive power structure comes from . . .”

The daylight was vanishing. So, Rivlin thought, that's what our blond wunderkind has to say.

The young postmodernist now came back to Rivlin's introduction, picking it apart like a stale roll. “National identity” was bad enough, a thoroughly dated notion. But worse yet was this business of a rainbow. Was national identity some kind of weather condition? What was the point of the whole, perfectly absurd theoretical exercise? It was only there to justify the professor's obsession with artificially linking the past to the present. But what entitled him to assume that the poor devils who murdered villagers at night and slit the throats of babies snatched from their mothers' wombs had any memory of wanting to be French? Had the more original thought never occurred to him that they might be pursuing their own authenticity, acted out by their darkly passionate souls? Surely Professor Rivlin was aware that beneath the tinsel of national identity, with which the military dictatorship in Algeria sought to distract the country, there was something more genuine and primitive. The Arabs were too fluid and unbounded to be subsumed under a single national grid.

“Excuse me,” Rivlin said softly, “but I can hardly see you. Don't you have any light here?”

The little cubbyhole had no ceiling light. There was only the lamp on Miller's desk. But its bulb was burned out, and the administration had not yet bothered to replace it.

Although the Orientalist was free to beat a retreat, he remained sprawled limply in his chair, unable to tear himself away from the young lecturer, whose sandy hair glowed golden in the gloom. Dr. Miller, having finished taking Rivlin apart, now turned to the outdated profession of Orientalism itself, which had proved incapable of absorbing the new theories of multiple narratives. It was time the professor realized that the news coming from Algeria was simply one narrative among many, propagated by the corporate press to uphold the dictatorial regime. . . .

It was getting dark. Perhaps, Miller suggested, they should continue the discussion in the professor's office.

“We can stay here,” Rivlin said. “If you don't mind talking to someone you can't see, neither do I.”

And as a wistful night descended on the world, lighting up the Druze houses on the Carmel one by one, he continued to offer his head to the guillotine, summoning the last of his patience to listen to the new theories whose very language he had despaired of understanding long ago.