Gradually, their aunt emerged from her fortress of self-imposed oblivion with a great desire to know. So reinvigorated was her interest in the numerous details, large and small, of the lives of friends and relatives that Rivlin wondered whether — listening, making connections, cross-referencing, and double-checking — she didn’t know better than he did what went on in his wife’s courtroom or what the young officer was up to in the depths of his mountain. And so, having driven the two sisters to their midday rendezvous and spied from afar their aunt’s white tresses beneath the large carob tree — where, leaning on her cane, she had been standing in anticipation for over an hour beside a table transported for the occasion from the dining room and set for four — he yielded to his wife’s entreaties to donate a few minutes of his time to the soothing effect of allowing her aunt a few jibes at his expense.
And in fact, no sooner had Ofra embraced her aunt and Hagit gaily presented her with a bar of chocolate than the observant old lady began teasing Rivlin for his impatience to be gone.
“You can’t wait to get away from me, can you?”
He joined his palms together, Indian-style, to signify having come in peace.
“I’d be superfluous today. You have a special guest. I wouldn’t want to rob you of your time with her.”
She smiled wanly in agreement. Like a powerful computer scanning his file for recent entries, she asked in her deep, rehumanized voice:
“How was the wedding of your Arab student Semadar?”
“Samaher….”
“Of course. Samaher. Was it as difficult for you as usual?”
He flushed awkwardly and cast a reproachful glance at his wife for having revealed his secret, as a gambit to enhance her aunt’s mood.
“Not quite….”
“He doesn’t envy Arabs as much,” Hagit explained.
“Not yet,” Rivlin added lamely.
16.
IT WASN’T EASY to find the address in Pisgat Ze’ev. The Jerusalem chapter of Rivlin’s life had ended with the 1967 war, before the appetite of the victors had pushed back the bounds of the city in one compulsive new neighborhood after another. Although the buildings of the development in Jerusalem’s far north were new, the streets meandered unclearly, and the house numbers owed more to poetic license than prosaic logic. For a moment, he was tempted to abandon the whole wild-goose chase, telephone a Hebrew University colleague, and settle for a whiff of what was cooking in the academic kitchens of Jerusalem. But since he had time to spare, the two sisters’ aunt having insisted they stay for lunch, he decided to obey his old teacher and take a look at Yosef Suissa’s files. Perhaps something of the man’s brilliance had rubbed off on them.
At least this time he wasn’t paying a condolence call. The first days of the Suissa family’s bereavement were long over with. He had never even met the deceased — who, however, or at least so he hoped, must have known about him. Polite small talk or patient listening to how the dead man had breathed his last would be unnecessary. He would introduce himself and wait by the door for Suissa’s research to be delivered, with a sigh of relief, to his capable hands — which, sorting through it to detect its interrupted purpose, might manage to breathe some life into it.
He stood on the third-floor landing, the same wilderness of Judea that he had gazed at from the hotel in Talpiyot visible through a dusty window in the corridor. This time, however, the Dead Sea did not glint in the distance. Not trusting Tedeschi’s assurance that the widow was no longer a Sabbath observer, he refrained from ringing the bell and rapped lightly on the door, at a point beside the dead man’s name.
The decision proved to be a wise one. The door was opened by the deceased’s father, a short, somber, religious Jew with a hat and a scraggly mourner’s beard that appeared to have grown on top of a previous one. A prayer book lying on the dining-room table testified to his having recently returned from the synagogue, perhaps in the hope of saving the threatened sanctity of the Sabbath, which Rivlin could hear being thrashed in a washing machine. To help get over his discomfort, the Orientalist introduced himself with his academic title, apologized for intruding, and added a few words of commiseration for the death of the lately departed. Nodding morosely, Suissa senior opened the door of a bedroom, from which sprang a small, wildly laughing, bare-bottomed orphan, the imprint of a potty on his behind. Without further ado the child threw himself on the visitor, who was not sure whether he was being physically attacked or appealed to for protection and love. On the orphan’s heels came the young widow. Barefoot, unkempt, and dressed in shorts, a naked infant in her arms, she proclaimed by her appearance that her husband’s tragic death had released her, not only from the bonds of religion, but from those of civilization itself. It was as if, Rivlin thought, the savage soul of the terrorist had taken possession of the wife of his victim.
Little wonder that the bereaved father, his hat still on his head, had made a beeline back from synagogue to ward off the evil spirit let loose in the house.
“I’m Professor Rivlin.” He leaned compassionately forward toward the widow, one hand patting the naked infant clinging to her neck. “I believe Dr. Hannah Tedeschi told you about me.”
“Yes. I’ve prepared a package for you. But come to the bedroom and have a look. Perhaps there’s still more there.”
The visitor’s face burned as hotly as if he were being shanghaied to the Land of Fire. He followed the woman, trailed after by her father-in-law, with the bare-bottomed child running ahead. Tossing the infant onto the blankets of a large bed, in which he began to crawl and entangle himself, she led Rivlin to a modest desk, wedged between the bed and a closet, that was piled high with papers, folders, and books. One had the impression of a work in progress interrupted not months but mere minutes ago. A screen and a keyboard stood alone, without their computer. The latter, the widow told Rivlin, had been taken by an Arab research assistant who hoped to salvage what was on it. Her large, pretty eyes rested anxiously on him, as if inquiring whether she had done the right thing by letting a junior member of the department — and an Arab, yet — make off with the computer.
“They’ll build their careers on his blood,” Suissa senior muttered, with a hatred that made Rivlin shiver, as though he too were a vulture feeding off the dead man’s corpse.
“So what? What do you care? Let them.” The widow’s scolding tone made it clear that her father-in-law was getting on her nerves.
“How old was your son?” Rivlin asked the man sorrowfully.
“Thirty-three. The age at which they crucified the Christian. Except that my son, may he rest in peace, was a good man….”
It was odd to hear a Jew just back from synagogue comparing his son to Jesus.
The visitor wished to avoid misunderstanding.
“I have to tell you that I’m in a different academic field. I deal with Arab history, not literature or poetry. I have no idea whether any of this material, which Professor Tedeschi and his wife wanted me to look at, is related to my work. I’ll take it home for a week or two. If anything interests me, I’ll have it photocopied. You’ll get it all back….”