The large glass door of the hotel swung open. Rivlin’s heart beat faster as he saw a tall, thin figure appear in the rectangle of light, from which it looked out at the dark garden before vanishing. All at once, the little lanterns along the garden paths lit up. A young maintenance worker came out to remove the table umbrellas before it could storm some more. Although he did not wish to call attention to himself, Rivlin could not resist asking if Fu’ad was around. No, the maintenance worker said. He had taken a few days off for some festival.
“A festival?” Rivlin asked. “In Abu-Ghosh?”
No, not in Abu-Ghosh. If it were in Abu-Ghosh, the maintenance worker would be going to it too.
8.
AT THE TEDESCHIS’, whose little street ran down from the president’s house in a small but perfect question mark, he soon confirmed how well he knew his old mentor. The doyen of Orientalists had indeed decided to dispense with the trip to Ramallah on so stormy a winter night.
“At least you didn’t run to the emergency room,” Rivlin joked, slapping his old doctoral adviser warmly on the back. In response, Tedeschi demonstrated his resolve by putting on his bathrobe and exchanging his shoes for a pair of slippers. “Eyri fik,”* he said, laughing gaily at the juicy Arabic curse. His old red sweater, showing through his open bathrobe, gave him a puckish look. “Eymta bakun hatyar hasab fikrak hatta t’sadkini fi amradi?”† he complained.
Hagit, who could sometimes guess what simple Arabic sentences meant, was up in arms. “What is this? We were so looking forward to spending the evening with you. What’s Ramallah after Tierra del Fuego? It’s just a suburb of Jerusalem.”
“And crossing the border, Your Honor, once in each direction, is nothing to you?”
“Don’t worry,” Rivlin said. “We have an Arab-Israeli driver who cuts through borders like a knife through butter.”
“That makes it sound even more frightening.”
“But why?” Hagit asked petulantly. “What kind of Orientalist are you, Carlo? Don’t you ever feel a professional need to meet real, live Arabs?”
“Reality is what I write on,” Tedeschi said affably, pointing to his computer, on whose screen saver little comic-book figures were cavorting. “Real-life Arabs, let alone real-life Jews, make me too dizzy to think straight.”
“Leave him alone,” the translatoress of Ignorance said morosely. “He’s embarrassed to tell you that he’s been up these past few nights with chest pains.”
“That’s because he gets no fresh air,” Hagit said doggedly. “I’m telling you, Carlo, I won’t take no for an answer. Come on! Don’t be afraid. Do you remember that trip we took together to Turkey twenty years ago, and what a good time we had? Come! It’s not like you to be such a party pooper. Let’s have a good time with the Arabs like the one we had with the Turks. When will we get another chance? It’s a poetry and music festival. No politics and no speeches. There’s sure to be good food. And there’ll be a Lebanese singer, some sort of nun, who got Yochi so excited last summer that he had all kinds of new ideas…”
“New ideas?” The Jerusalem polymath perked up. “What ideas?”
Hagit, however, stuck to the subject.
“Never mind, Carlo. Not now. Don’t be such a professor. Come with us. We’ll have a good time. I promise to look after you. I’ll stay by your side, fair enough?”
Her eyes shone. Her cheeks were ruddy from the heated apartment. Rivlin, smitten anew by her, marveled at the youthfulness of this woman of over fifty, whose short sheepskin coat left her shapely legs uncovered. Tedeschi, flustered, rose and hugged her.
“But really, my dear, what do you need me for? I’ll just begin to cough and spoil the evening. Where will you find me an emergency room in Ramallah?”
“Then at least let your wife go.” The judge gave up on the stubborn old man. “Let her come with us.”
“Hannah?” Tedeschi chuckled at the thought and winked at his wife, who was sitting quietly by the lamp. “I don’t believe she’s at all eager to go to Ramallah tonight. She’s a bit under the weather herself…”
Once again the Haifa Orientalist felt his heart go out to the lovely student of former days, made old and worn before her time by an eccentric husband, so that she now stood in an old bathrobe, her hair that needed dyeing straggling onto her shoulders, ready for bed before the night had begun. He felt driven to join his wife’s attack on his old mentor, who was already by his computer, running his fingers absent-mindedly over the keyboard.
“Listen, Carlo. She’s coming with us. Why shouldn’t she? If you don’t want to live yourself, then don’t — but at least let live. Stop being such a killjoy. You can’t keep her chained to your depressions.”
“My depressions?” Tedeschi was startled by the unexpected salvo. “When do you remember me being depressed?”
“So it’s not your depressions. It’s your hypochondria. Or just your gloom.” He could hear himself speaking with Hagit’s voice. “Let there be some enjoyment in life. Give Hannah her freedom. Don’t you think she deserves a rest from you?”
The Jerusalem polymath did not reply. Half fearfully and half ironically, he pulled out a crumpled white handkerchief from his bathrobe pocket, waved it like a flag of surrender with an absurdly dramatic gesture, and made a bow.
The translatoress struggled to make up her mind. She was still torn between wanting, even longing, to get out of the house, and worry for her husband — who, having dismissed the comic-book figures with a tap of his finger, was already seated at his computer — when there was a quiet knock on the door. It was the sable-skinned messenger of many devices, come with a stocking cap on his head to transport his Jews to the festival.
9.
IN THE COLD, dark minibus, Rivlin made out at once the coal black eyes of a small boy, who was sitting beside a woman in an old fur-collared winter coat. It was the same coat that had hung for years in their own closet because Hagit had not wanted to part with it. Amused and alarmed, he glanced at his wife to see if she recognized it on the shoulders of Rashid’s sister. But the judge was busy talking to the translatoress — who, distraught over her sudden separation from her husband, had barely managed to clamber into the vehicle, where she now sat squeezed in the middle row, next to Rivlin.
He waited for the minibus to start moving before introducing Ra’uda to the two women. Though she was married to a West Bank Palestinian, he explained, she was still an Israeli of sorts and could even quote the poetry of Bialik. Rashid’s sister responded with a despairing laugh while Rivlin turned around to pat her son’s head. The boy did not flinch and even took off his cap and offered his head, like a pet dog.
Only then did Rivlin notice, huddled in the back on a jump seat that had been folded on the trip to Jenin, a pale young woman in a thick woolen shawl. Next to her, larger and darker than his brother, sat Rasheed. He was holding the horn-rimmed glasses meant to convince the Israeli border guards that he was his uncle’s natural son.