8.
FINIS. EVEN INTELLECTUALLY, the life had gone out of his lust. He stepped into the shower, thoroughly soaping his face and private parts. Unsure the smell was gone, he embraced his wife when their naked bodies collided outside the bathroom, menacingly offering her his forehead to smell. She burst into laughter and hugged him back, her marvelous breasts pressed against him. They would make love in the morning, she promised, kissing the proffered brow. It was a promise, he knew, backed by nothing. Who knew what the morning would bring? Things could go wrong even in their dreams.
And in fact the approach of her beloved sister, though still oceans away, roused Hagit from bed at dawn to vacuum the house, scrub and scour the windows and mirrors, refill the dishwasher repeatedly with dishes that had already been washed, and stoke the washing machine with clean towels and sheets. As a crowning touch, she made a bed fit for a princess, with starched, scented sheets, light, fluffy blankets, and brand-new eiderdown pillows — all in unspoken competition with the crisp and fragrant luxuriance that, carefully arranged by her sister, always awaited her on her visits to America.
Rivlin, whose wife was usually happy to let him and the cleaning woman manage the house, while she relaxed amid her dresses and fruit pits after a hard day in court, listened to her instructions without protest. He knew how much her sister’s rare visits meant to Hagit. Like an old drill sergeant ordered about by a new officer, he helped hang another round of laundry while moving his belongings from his study. Although his sister-in-law would only be staying with them for ten days, this meant emptying all three drawers of his desk, clearing his books from a shelf, and transferring his computer to his small office at the university. He was actually fond of Hagit’s sister and wouldn’t have wanted her to be blamed for impeding his work, which had gone slowly since the move to the duplex.
The morning passed quickly. Soon the judge would don her black robe and join her colleagues waiting in the wings of the courtroom for the crier to announce them. Yet by working efficiently, he and Hagit had managed to accomplish more in two hours than the cleaning woman did in a day. The floors were spotless. The windows and mirrors gleamed. The guest room, its couch opened into a sumptuous bed, looked airy and inviting. Flowers, cakes, and other good things would arrive with the judge, bought on her way home from court. She would not accompany her husband to the airport. The trial was a long and secretive one, held behind closed doors, and there was no chance of an early recess.
9.
THE UPSHOT WAS that he had to start the second car for her — the little old model she wasn’t used to driving — and once again explain the dashboard, the meaning of whose clocks and gauges she kept forgetting. Fortunately, Hagit was a relaxed but careful driver, which was the only reason she ever arrived anywhere in one piece. Nor was she in any hurry to depart now, even though she was late. First she had two requests of him. One was direct: as soon as her sister passed through customs, she wanted to be informed. The other was more complicated. Could he please, before leaving for the university, launder the curtain in his study? Only now had she noticed how filthy it was.
“What do you mean, filthy?”
“Filthy,” she said gently, “really filthy. You, my dear, never notice such things.”
“Suppose I don’t. This is where I draw the line. I’m not laundering any curtains. The room is for your sister, not for some dowager queen.”
“Dowager queen?” The expression struck her as oddly belligerent. What did queens have to do with her sister? It was his study. When he moved back into it in ten days’ time, he’d appreciate a clean curtain too.
He didn’t answer. This was always the best tactic to keep her from trying to change his mind. He wished she’d leave already. If you had made love to me yesterday, he whispered to himself, I might have laundered that curtain for you now. His silence was met with a hostile look. Parting from him, even for short periods, was always unwelcome to Hagit. Now, this morning of all times, a long court session was preventing her from going with him to the airport, which was one of her favorite places.
“What are you waiting for? You have to be in court.”
“The court won’t convict you for my lateness,” she said with a smile, sure of her ability to disarm him with a deft remark. He said nothing. Changing the subject, she asked what he had thought of the Arab wedding.
“It was all right.”
“It was more than all right.” His brusqueness annoyed her. “It was marvelous. I had a wonderful time. You didn’t seem to be suffering either. You must really think very little of the Arabs if their weddings don’t make you envious.”
He flared at that. “What are you talking about? What does envy have to do with it? Do you think I’m against people getting married?” It was a matter of memory, not envy. It pained him to be reminded. Of all that ruin and loss. Of what had been done to his son without justification. Why couldn’t she understand that?
She let him talk. Late for a trial that couldn’t start without her, she switched off the motor and said, not for the first time, “It’s time you put all that behind you. It’s been five years. How long can you go on feeling loss? Ofer was no innocent himself.” Why brood when there was nothing to be done about it? She sometimes thought he was projecting onto their son feelings that had to do with other things.
“What things?”
“Your own self.”
His own self? What did she mean by that?
“Not now,” she said, restarting the motor. “We’ll talk about it some other time. Just be nice to my sister. You know how sensitive she is.”
“I’m always nice to her.”
“Then be nicer than always.”
The little car drove off. He knew it would brake immediately, however, for her to beckon to him and ask anxiously, as if she had never done it before, “Do you love me?”
A wave of love passed over him in spite of himself. Loath to send her off to the waiting courtroom with a clean conscience, he stared at the ground, weighing the question carefully before answering with a barely perceptible nod.
“How much?” she demanded, as though buying a kilo of fruit.
“A lot,” he admitted honestly. Softly he added:
“More than you deserve.”
The cross-examination wasn’t over. “Why?”
He didn’t know whether she was being coy or asking the most important question of her life.
“Tell me! Why do you love me so much?”
This was already too much. He laughed, thumped the roof of the little car, and exclaimed:
“Move! Enough already!”
10.
THE DAY PROMISED to be a long one. There were still eight hours left before his sister-in-law’s plane landed. He returned to his study to get rid of more papers and decided to clear another shelf. Then he scrutinized the white net curtain on the window. Although it did not look dirty, he was prepared to wash it for his wife, who had a long, hard session on the bench ahead of her. He unhooked it, carried it carefully to the bathroom, like a bride across the threshold, and soaked it in lukewarm, soapy water. It took many rinsings for the water to run clear. Because it occurred to him that, in her eagerness to make her sister feel at home, Hagit might launder the clean curtain again while he drove to the airport, he left a note that he had cleaned it and would expect a commensurate reward. Then he erased the last sentence. His son might come home from the army unexpectedly and read it.