“I thought as much.” Akri was not surprised. “I was waiting to hear it from you. Something about them reminded me of a paper she wrote for me as an undergraduate.”
“That was the only time she wrote anything. She hasn’t done a thing since entering the M.A. program. I’ve given her three extensions, and the only requirement she’s met is getting married.”
“That’s not an unimportant one,” Akri said seriously. “Nothing terrible has happened. Now that we’ve caught her red-handed, we’ll make her fulfill her other requirements.”
“Well, then, I wash my hands of her. She’s all yours.”
“They’re all mine,” the new department head replied, confirming his position of authority. “But let’s be discreet about it. And first of all, that means getting our secretaries to keep their mouths shut….”
11.
ON TUESDAY EVENING, at seven-thirty, half an hour before he and Hagit were due to leave for a concert at the Israel Philharmonic, Rivlin’s sister phoned and asked to speak to Hagit about a strange dream she had had that day. Ever since attending a course in forensic psychology a few years previously, Hagit had liked interpreting dreams.
“Not now, Raya,” Rivlin told her. “We have a concert, and Hagit isn’t dressed yet. And Ofra hasn’t decided what to wear, either….”
“All I need with her is five minutes. Otherwise, I’ll forget the dream.”
“It can’t be that important if it’s so forgettable.”
“Two minutes…”
“Sorry. I know how long your two-minute conversations can last. I’m tired of arriving at concerts after all the parking spaces have been taken.”
“Two minutes, I promise,” his sister pleaded. “She doesn’t have to interpret it. Let me just tell it to her so that she can think about it during the concert.”
“Hagit dreams her own dreams during concerts. I’d be a rich man if I received a refund for every concert she’s fallen asleep at.”
“Just a few words.”
“You can tell your dream to me. I’ll pass it on to her.”
“My dreams crumble when I tell them to you.”
“Just the gist of it. I’m already dressed. For a small fee, I’ll even be your analyst. Who can understand your childhood neuroses better than I?”
But his sister did not want to tell him her dream or have him for her analyst. As children they had fought frequently, just like their parents. Only after his marriage was their relationship put on a more even keel. And since Hagit’s feelings of guilt toward her childlessly globe-trotting sister had room in them for Rivlin’s sister too, she had let herself become Raya’s confidante, the sole person capable of shaking golden coins from the pockets of her dreams. Now, overhearing the conversation, she picked up the receiver.
“I’m warning you,” Rivlin whispered, removing the covers from their king-size bed and folding back the blanket for a quick plunge after the concert.
“Don’t be so mean. Give me a minute with her. We’ve never come late for a concert yet….”
And so Rivlin’s sister, a divorcée of many years who never talked about her ex-husband, told Hagit of a short, powerful dream about him. In it she was holding a baby, a little toddler, while imploring her former partner in English, “Please, don’t hurt the child.” He merely laughed, climbed into his big car, and drove off while leaving her standing in the street. Still clutching the little boy, she hurried off to the house of her ex-husband’s old friends to look for some baby food. Yet all they gave her was half a glass of milk, and she ran desperately back out to the street, boarded an empty bus, and sat the hungry baby beside her.
That was the whole dream. As he had feared, Raya now wanted it interpreted on the spot.
“Your brother is having a fit,” the half-naked judge told her. “Offhand, though, I’d say that the baby is you.”
“Me?”
“Well, parts of you.”
“Parts…?” The idea both delighted and alarmed her. “What parts?”
“Let’s talk about it in the morning.”
12.
THE CONCERT WAS sold out. The only seats available were onstage. Rivlin, feeling sorry for his pale-faced sister-in-law, who was still agonizing over her dress for the wedding, gallantly surrendered his place beside Hagit and went to sit behind the orchestra.
The program was structured around several unknown young soloists making their debuts and consisted of a number of shorter works and several excerpts from longer ones — an approach that Rivlin found annoying. Apart from being opposed on principal to violating the aesthetic integrity of a musical composition, he feared that the Philharmonic’s renowned Indian conductor might try to fit so many young talents into the evening that it would become unduly long. These fears were dispelled by a quick glance at the program notes, which listed the length of each piece; after totaling them up and adding time for applause and intermissions, he concluded that the concert would end on schedule. Leaning back in his seat, he cast a benevolent glance at the overflow audience on the stage, which was young and unpretentiously dressed. Several rows ahead of him sat a man with a ponytail. For a moment he thought it might be his ex-daughter-in-law’s husband. Come to think of it, though, the ponytail was as gray as the coat of a mouse.
He gazed down at the auditorium, looking for the wife who must already be missing him. Would she notice him and wave back? Or feel comfortable enough beside her sister to doze off? Lately she was suffering from fatigue, no doubt from the stress of a long closed-door trial that she was barred from talking about. At concerts, plays, and even movies she was soon so entangled in the cobwebs of sleep that were it not for her husband, who made sure to wake her at critical junctures, and especially before the end, she would not have known what she had sat through.
The opening soloist was a Russian immigrant, a tall, blond adolescent with a self-effacing manner, who played the first movement of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. Rivlin, though fancying himself a lover of music, did not pretend to judge the caliber of the performance. Still, he had a melancholy tendency to doubt the staying power of young prodigies. “Time alone will show what will become of them,” he liked to grumble as they took their bows. “Maybe someone knows what happened to last year’s prodigies. Where are they now?”
Deep down he knew that his cynicism was caused by his worry for his stranded son. The night before, they had talked briefly with Ofer on the phone, after which Rivlin had insisted on going over every word of the conversation with Hagit. Resigned to Ofer’s telling his mother that he knew of Hendel’s death, he was surprised when it went unmentioned. Now, as a long orchestral prelude coaxed the violin from its silence, he wondered whether this was a sign of indifference to his ex-wife or of a secret pact with the father fighting to rescue him, even at the price of more pain, from the tyranny of an old wound.
The sentimental music of the Russian composer — who, the program notes said, was almost driven to suicide each time the critics panned his work — made its sure, swift way toward the final cadenza. From his vantage point behind the orchestra, Rivlin could see the back and shoulders of the young violinist, quivering with feeling. As his anxiety for his son, an exile mourning his marriage in a distant place, mounted in tandem with the trumpets, flutes, horns, and strings, he sought out the reassuring presence of his wife. Yet the passionate movements of the dark-skinned conductor, his baton pointed from time to time straight at Rivlin, as if he too were expected to contribute a few bars, hid Hagit from sight.