“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.