He debated whether to phone home again in the hope of finding Hagit or simply to tell her about it back in Haifa. By now, though, he was in Talpiyot, scouting the familiar surroundings. The pine wood, in which he had often played as a child, were the same, yet changed, as were the garden and the yard. He hadn’t thought he would be so moved by them. All that had been rendered impossible by the divorce, it appeared, was still preserved in the sweetness of memory, sealed against being opened by a golden film of anticipated pain. How terribly easy it was for him to relive the unforgettable night of the wedding, so private and so public at once, just as was the garden with its catered events and the hidden home in which Galya, Ofer’s bride, had grown up. It was this combination that so appealed to Rivlin — who, together with Hagit, was warmly treated as family whenever he was sighted by the staff on the garden’s paths. Already during their first meeting, when the marriage was a foregone conclusion, Galya’s father had generously offered them the freedom of the grounds. Indeed, he told them, he had decided to expropriate the hotel from its customers not only for the wedding ceremony, but for three whole days of festivities. Moreover, by writing off the costs as a business expense, he would shift the groom’s parents’ share of the costs onto the income-tax authorities.
At first Rivlin tried turning down this unexpected perk. Mr. Hendel, however, stood firm. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find other things for you to pay for. I promise I won’t lose on the transaction.” Rivlin and Hagit, he said, had an open invitation to stay at the hotel at his expense whenever there was a room available. A phone call to the desk clerk was all that was necessary, and there would be no social obligations attached.
Hagit was for resisting temptation. “We can afford to pay for our own hotel room,” she told him. Yet in the end she, too, gave in to their future in-laws’ entreaties, and on their next visit to Jerusalem, which was to see the young couple’s new apartment, a month before the wedding, they had spent the night at the hotel in a modest but tasteful room whose window looked out majestically on the desert and on the great salt sea in its folds. Needless to say, they stayed at the hotel again during the three hectic days of the celebration, when they were given a suite facing the Old City.
And yet in the course of the brief year between the wedding and the divorce, Hagit had managed, however politely and apologetically, to keep Galya’s parents and their enticements at arm’s length. In the end Rivlin feared being taken by them for a snobbish intellectual. And so, arranging to appear at a meeting of the Jerusalem Orientalists’ society, he used the opportunity, much to Hagit’s chagrin, to spend the night in his in-laws’ hotel. There he had been showered with attention sufficient for both himself and his missing wife.
18.
THE MANY DEATH notices by the entrance and at the reception desk with its old lithographs of Palestinian landscapes, and arrows pointing the way to the mourners’ quarters, spelled out the demise of the family’s privacy. Rivlin was reminded of the first question he had asked Galya’s father on being introduced to him. How, he had wanted to know, could a family live a normal life in the middle of a hotel? In reply he received an exact description of Mr. Hendel’s formula for separating the two spheres. As it was unnecessarily wasteful, in the proprietor’s opinion, to keep them totally apart, and since he had at his disposal attractive rooms, a kitchen that had to stay operational, and a staff of chefs, waiters, and chambermaids without always enough to do, he had decided long ago to lodge his family in the hotel. However, he had made it clear from the start to his three children — especially to the youngest, the spoiled little girl who was to be Ofer’s future bride — that their right to a life of luxury, with serviced rooms and daily meals chosen from a first-class menu, depended on their self-restraint, it being incumbent upon them to conceal the existence of their private lives from the guests, who needed to maintain the illusion that is cherished by each guest, even if paying for a single night alone: that the establishment is as exclusively devoted to his comfort as if he were its sole owner.
It was, thus, astonishing to see this inviolable rule rudely shattered by the death of the man who had decreed but could no longer defend it. Plastered over the entrance, the lobby, and the door to the dining room were sorrowfully worded death notices in English and in Hebrew, as if all at once the family had decided to tear down the curtain hiding it and permit — no, compel — the guests to share its unexpected grief.
It was 3:20 P.M. His sister-in-law’s flight would not land before seven. Rivlin had time to spare. Resisting the printed invitations to the bereavement, he decided to wait until four and let the mourners enjoy their afternoon nap.
He wouldn’t have minded a nap himself. The day was turning out to be longer and more tiring than he had anticipated. He went over to an armchair in the lobby and swiveled it around to face the garden — the same garden full of flowers, lit by a pure Jerusalem noonday sky, that he remembered from his anxious childhood. Had it been this rich with color the last time he saw it, or had it been enlarged and transformed over the past five years with new flowerbeds and shrubs? His eyes followed a path that led to the lawn. On that lawn, close to midnight, the bride, her veil and bridal train discarded, had enticed him to dance with her. Thrilled, he had moved cautiously but freely to the music. He had not danced since his student days, he explained to Galya’s family, because his wife, afraid, perhaps, that she might blur her judicial boundaries, would not go along with it. This made Galya turn to Hagit and demand that she join them. Most of the wedding guests had gone home. Only close family and friends remained, and Hagit yielded and danced, first with him and the bride and then with their two sons. Though shy and hesitant, she was graceful. He had felt a deep surge of happiness. It was as if his son’s marriage, more than any book or article he had written or could write, were his life’s great achievement.
Now, although he had made up his mind to pay his respects, he lingered in the armchair, to give Hagit time to return home, unpack the treats she had bought, and set the table. It wasn’t that he needed to ask permission for something he knew would seem pointless to her, but simply that he wished to be aboveboard. The last twenty-four hours had been full of good deeds: first his attendance at the Arab wedding, then his visit to his old professor, and now this condolence call on a family to which he no longer belonged.
He sat regarding the flowers and the light on the lawn, his fond memories of the wedding mixed with thoughts of the failure that had followed and the death that had just taken place. Actually, a great deal had changed in the last five years. Evidently, the hotel had done well. The little knoll that had been part of the desert beyond the hotel grounds was now annexed to the garden, and the old dance floor, with its grapevine-trellised gazebo that had served as the wedding canopy, had been replaced by a new swimming pool and a small amphitheater. Even five years ago the term “family hotel” had struck him as overly modest. Now it seemed more like a boast: that amid so much luxury an intimate touch could still be preserved.
Rivlin let himself be drawn into the garden, as if he were in search of the vanished gazebo. In fact, it had not vanished at all. Rather, it had been thoughtfully moved to higher ground, its ancient foliage of grape leaves replaced by bright bougainvillea. Beneath it they had stood that night, all six of them: the groom, the bride, and two sets of parents. He walked warily toward it. New spotlights were hidden in the bushes. He shut his eyes and remembered the long-ago twilight in which he, the father of the groom, had felt like a newlywed himself. And why not? There, by his son’s side, he had pledged anew his troth to his wife and forged a new blood-tie to a young bride he hardly knew. Now he strode to the spot on which Ofer had stood and where he had reached out instinctively, midway through the ceremony, for his mother’s hand. Humiliation and anger mingled with the sweetness of the memory.