“I’m told Galya made quite a scene.” She gave him a mischievous look as he stood there, blocking her way. “Listen, I’m sorry it’s so late, but she asked me to get her bag.”
“But what’s happening? Has she given birth?”
“There’s still time, I suppose,” Tehila said, with the nonchalance of an old maid who knows nothing about such matters. “The nurse in the delivery room says she’s still not dilated. Bo’az wants to take her back to Jerusalem. We came in the hotel’s tourist van, and there’s plenty of room for her to lie down. It will be better for everyone.”
“But where is she now?”
“Not far from here, at Carmel Hospital. It’s nice and clean and she can give birth with a view of the sea. But we have a room reserved for her at Hadassah on Mount Scopus. She’ll have to make do with a desert view there, but at least it’s the one she grew up with.”
“Who told you she was at Carmel?”
“Ofer. It was his decision to call us, because I think Galya would have been perfectly happy giving birth first and telling us later. But he didn’t want the responsibility, so he left us a message, and we came running. Just imagine, we even brought my mother!”
“How is Ofer?”
“He’s his usual excited, discombobulated self. And very sad-looking. Just see what you’ve done, Professor. Instead of liberating him as you planned, you and your Arabs have only complicated things. Now he has not only her but her baby to be attached to. Believe me, I still don’t get why she had to make him come all the way from Paris. A nice letter would have been simpler and cheaper. But never mind. It’s her right. It’s even her right to buy him an expensive ticket and charge it to the hotel. As long as you’re happy…”
“Me?” Rivlin mumbled. “Happy? I haven’t the vaguest idea what it’s all about.”
She smiled brightly, satisfied with herself as always. “By the way,” she added familiarly, “if your wife is awake, I’d love to say hello to her.”
“She isn’t,” he said, horrified by the thought. He had to get rid of Tehila. “Wait here and I’ll bring you the bag,” he told her.
Yet no sooner had he left his post at the door than she was in the house. Nor did she wait for him in the living room, but instead followed him upstairs, as if he were showing her to a room in a hotel. He had to wheel and turn back when, respecting no bounds, she stopped by the open door of his bedroom to look at his wife — who, curled fetally in a tangle of sheets and blankets, was sleeping peacefully. Shutting the door angrily, he pulled her after him to his study, where she inspected the bookshelves, desk, and couch before reaching down wearily to take her sister’s bag and return with it to the bottom floor.
He didn’t invite her to sit. She asked for a glass of water, drank half of it, and left, clearly loath to depart.
What was he to make of it all? Although he felt calmer knowing that Galya’s family was with her, he was still in the dark.
There was nothing to do but wait for Ofer. No longer in the mood to work at his computer, he sank onto the couch facing the TV and watched, with drowsy disinterest and the sound turned off, an old black-and-white thriller.
At four-thirty there was still no sign of Ofer. Had Galya stayed in Haifa to give birth? Or had they all gone back to Jerusalem together? It was a bad business either way. He went to the bedroom, determined to ask Hagit to absolve him of his pledge not to make phone calls. Although sound asleep, she so logically confuted the case he tried to make that he crawled into bed and dozed off beside her.
HE HAD HARDLY — or so it seemed to him — plunged to the depths of sleep when he was dredged up from them again. His wife and son, both fully dressed, were standing by the bed.
“Go back to sleep,” Hagit said. “Everything is fine. Ofer just wanted to say good-bye. He’s promised to return this summer, perhaps for good. I’ll take him to the airport. Don’t worry.”
Rivlin roused himself. This was no way to say good-bye.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did she give birth?”
“No,” Hagit answered. “She still has time. They took her back to Jerusalem. Now say good-bye to your son and go to sleep. We don’t want to be late.”
But he wasn’t about to miss the ride to the airport. “You can’t leave me here by myself,” he implored them. “Take me with you. I promise not to be a backseat driver.”
They couldn’t say no. Unwashed and unshaven, in a polo shirt and old jacket, he heaved himself like an empty sack into the rear seat. Ofer, his eyes shut and his head thrown back at an odd angle, sat next to Hagit, who gripped the wheel tensely. The traffic, although heavy despite the early hour, moved at a good clip. Rivlin, dead to the world, did not wake up until they arrived at the airport.
After Ofer had checked in, they went for coffee at a small, noisy corner counter.
Father and son, both groggy from their brief but deep sleep, regarded each other with wonder and suspicion, like two lawyers faced with summing up a case that had been thought to be interminable. Rivlin gulped some coffee, not knowing whether his son was as sad as he looked or merely tired and pensive.
“And so in the end,” he said, a note of resignation in his voice, “you’re leaving us without a clue to what happened or why anyone had to be forgiven.”
“That’s right,” Ofer replied. He gave his father a faint smile, the first in recent memory. “Although you did your best to wreak havoc, you’ll have to go on guessing, because you’ll never know or understand more than you do now.”
Hagit shifted her glance from one to the other, afraid of a last-minute row.
“But why?” Rivlin asked with bitter fatigue, refusing to accept defeat. “Why can’t we know? Is it only because you still believe she’ll come back to you?”
Ofer said nothing, avoiding his mother’s pitying eyes.
Rivlin threw caution to the winds. “You’ll be worse off than ever,” he declared.
The judge squeezed her husband’s thigh like an iron vise.
“No, I won’t,” Ofer answered serenely. He looked, Rivlin thought, less sad than lonely.
“Why not?”
“Because even if I’m still tied to her in my thoughts, and maybe in my feelings, I’m morally a free man. And that, Abba, is all you should care about.”
He swallowed the rest of his coffee, got to his feet, hugged and kissed his father, and disappeared through the departures gate.
25.
IT WAS SPRING. The winter having been a real one, with rain, snow, storms, and floods, all Israel felt that it had earned the vernal scents and colors and was entitled to enjoy them before dun summer took over.
The spring semester had started. On his way to the university for the first meeting of his seminar on the Algerian revolution, Rivlin noticed a new traffic sign. The municipality, although not answering his letter regarding the corner of Moriah and Ha-Sport Streets, had acknowledged it nonetheless — not by accepting his suggestion to narrow the sidewalk, but by banning U-turns completely. And so, the professor thought self-mockingly, I only made things worse here, too. So much for citizens’ initiatives! Yet on second thought, he had to admit that the new arrangement made better sense. Any U-turn at a busy traffic light like this was dangerous and pointless.
Before his seminar, he went to the departmental office for a list of its students. Knowing their names in advance helped him encourage them to be active. In the office, a new young secretary informed him that a middle-aged woman had been waiting for him all morning. They’d told her that he had no office hours today, but she had insisted on remaining.
He walked to the end of the corridor with a sense of foreboding. There, as he had guessed, was Afifa. Stripped of her jewelry, she wore a simple shawl draped over her head and shoulders that accented her femininity even more.