“Samaher, ill? Rivlin objected. “You must be mistaken.”
Rashid stuck to his guns. Samaher had been ill.
“With what?”
He didn’t know the name of the illness. He only knew it was a bad one. This was the reason Samaher had agreed to be married as soon as she had recovered: to make up for lost time.
6.
THEY MADE DO with giving the driver a cold drink, pleased with his oohs and ahs over the duplex. Informed that he intended to rejoin the festivities, which would go on all night, Hagit asked Rashid what the name Samaher meant in Arabic. Rivlin, indignant she hadn’t turned to him, blurted:
“It means a javelin.”
The young Arab begged to differ. Samaher meant a lance, not a javelin. His coal-black eyes glowed as he pointed out the difference. Samaher, he repeated solemnly, was a lance. A samaheri was a lancer. And with that he took his leave.
At last they were alone. The first thing they did was check the voice mail for a message from Ofer, their older son, who had spent the last four years in Paris. None of the three messages were from him. One, quick and bashful with an Arab accent, came from the cleaning woman’s son, whose regular job it was to tell them she wasn’t well, especially when her illness was imaginary. The second voice — clear, good-natured, and always a pleasure to hear — belonged to their younger son, Tsakhi; an officer in the army; he was calling to apologize for unexpectedly having to be on duty over the weekend, which meant that anyone wanting to see him would have to visit his base in the Galilee. The last message was from Hannah Tedeschi. In crisp, firm tones she announced that although she and her husband had returned to Israel a week ago from a long trip to South America, they were not yet installed in their Jerusalem home because before they could unpack, Professor Tedeschi’s notorious asthma, having waited patiently for their vacation to end, had struck more cruelly than ever. If Rivlin wanted to see his old academic patron and doctoral adviser, he had better come to Bikkur Holim Hospital, where the barely conscious professor could be found on the third floor, in Room 8 of Internal Medicine. He needn’t rush, though. This time, he was informed triumphantly by Hannah (an Orientalist herself and a first-rate translator of the poetry of the Jahaliya, the pre-Islamic “Age of Ignorance”), Tedeschi was in for a long hospitalization.
“It’s unbelievable how she loves him to be sick,” Rivlin said.
“Needs, not loves,” his wife corrected him. Often a single word was enough to remind him of how admirably clever she was. “Come, let’s go to bed,” she urged when he wanted to listen to Hannah’s message again, hoping to discern the difference between love and need with his own ears. “The house is a mess. And there’s no cleaning woman tomorrow. You’ll have to pitch in. I’ll need your help to tidy up a bit….”
“A bit?” he repeated resentfully. He knew full well that in the end most of the work would fall on him. Unlike his wife, who had a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and a defendant all waiting for her to appear in court in her best judicial form, he had only the incomplete draft of a book that would be happy to be left for another day.
Hagit knew that her husband liked nothing better than to complain while taking refuge from his recalcitrant research in the chores of a malingering cleaning woman or an inadequate housewife. Careful to show no disrespect for the sacrifice demanded of him by her sister’s visit, she let him go to the kitchen and — grumbling loudly about the food she had bought — switch on the dishwasher despite the late hour. When he finally climbed the stairs to their bedroom, she was sprawled on the bedspread fully clothed, watching the TV news with a bowl of cherries in her lap. Her “presomnial relaxation,” as she called it, took precedence, like her postsomnial relaxation, over putting away the disorder of dresses, skirts, blouses, and shoes that testified to the difficulties of deciding what to wear to an Arab wedding.
“How can you possibly still be hungry?” Rivlin asked, scooping up a few cherries, more to help rid the bowl of them than because he was hungry himself.
“Why not?” She smiled serenely. “All I had to eat all night was ice cream. I never touched the lamb. That’s more than I can say for some people, who ate half of it single-handedly.”
“You’re sure it was only half?” His own smile was glum. He was already feeling nostalgic for the juicy meat heaped unceasingly on his plate by the villagers. It was gone now, devoured without a trace, leaving only the faint strains of Oriental music pulsing inside him. He turned to regard his wife, whose face was pallid with fatigue. As of tomorrow he would have his childless sister-in-law on his hands, ten days’ worth of advanced middle age. Though tired and dejected, he was determined as a matter of principle to assert his conjugal rights. Sitting at the foot of the bed, he lightly stroked the soles of Hagit’s feet, so as to gauge his own desire before making any claims on hers.
7.
HIS DESIRE, HE CONCLUDED, even though the next day’s chores were tediously waiting for him in a long line, would pass muster. He reached out, took the remote control from his wife’s hands, and muted the TV. The pictures remained on the screen.
“Not now,” Hagit said. “You won’t enjoy it either. Don’t force yourself. Let’s wait until morning. You know what happens when I’m not in the mood.”
“You will be,” he promised, as if there were a switch he could press for that, too. Squirming free of him, however, she demurred. He couldn’t tell if her resistance came solely from fatigue or also from something more ancient.
“In the end you’ll leave me all alone.”
“No, I won’t.” The stirring in his loins firmed his resolution. “Don’t worry. I won’t come without you.” He switched off the overhead light, leaving only the reading lamp.
“Then talk to me!” she protested, with an inner anger that made her tense when he embraced her. “Say something! We’re not animals. You know how hard your silences are for me. You never have time for a loving or caring word.”
And again there was no telling whether she was pleading with him to overcome her resistance or — already cradled by an exhaustion stronger than his arms — looking to fend him off. But he would not take no for an answer. Perhaps it was the sobbing grace notes of the music. Or else the lamb had been in heat, or he was haunted by the image of his attractive former student Afifa, now puffing on a narghile with Samaher’s healthy old grandmother. He was not about to back down. As excessive as declarations of love seemed when he, too, wanted only to sink calmly into sleep, he managed to dredge a few sincere ones from his depths.
Hagit listened with eyes shut, a smile playing over her lips. She took words seriously. They counted with her even more in the bedroom than in the courtroom. Spreading heavy arms, she invited him to rise from his crouch by the bed and join her face to face. She kissed his forehead and eyes. Yet her kisses were lukewarm. Though there was a will, the way to her heart was blocked.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, irritated.
“Nothing. I told you. I’m dead tired. Why insist on it? Did someone turn you on at the wedding?”
“How could you say such a thing?”
“I don’t know. Forget it. You smell funny.”
“I do? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t take it personally. Something must have rubbed off on you in the village. Some strange perfume. Did you touch anything? Maybe it was the soap you used. It’s nothing. Just wash your face. It’s not a good smell. Perhaps we should both shower. We’ll feel better if we do. You go first. We’re both sweaty. It’s been a long, sweaty day. We’ll wake up fresh in the morning and have time for everything.”