The thought of the large package of newspapers being returned to her only made the widow more depressed.
“No,” she said. “Please don’t. There’s no need. You can donate it all to the library.”
“His brain went squish!” the bare-bottomed child shouted happily, scrambling underfoot. He stuck out his little hand to touch the package, which was wrapped in brown paper tied with rough twine.
His grandfather grabbed at him to silence him. Leaping onto the bed, the boy vanished with his naked brother among the blankets.
The Orientalist lifted the package, careful not to inquire whether the bloodied pages had been removed or were inside. Before leaving, he yielded to temptation and asked to see a photograph of the deceased. The young widow hurried to bring him several, each of which revealed someone else.
17.
AS THE SCANTILY attired widow was about to walk her visitor to his car, if only to flee the apartment, her mother-in-law — short and hatted, like her husband, though her hat was a bright bonnet — appeared with a large pot of Sabbath stew to shore up the crumbling dikes of the Day of Rest. Promising to stay in touch, Rivlin thanked them all again and returned to his car. He debated opening the package, decided not to, and thrust it into the baggage compartment, which he had rearranged to make room for Yo’el’s suitcase, even though he knew the latter would be small.
Again he had time on his hands. Better yet, no guilt was attached to it. And so before driving back into town to find a restaurant that was open in the desolation of the Jerusalem Sabbath noon, he made a U-turn onto a winding street from which he could compare the desert view from the city’s north with that from the south. Not only, however, was the blue patch of the Dead Sea missing here too, the noble yellow vista of the Judean wilderness was bleak and dreary, perhaps because of a large Bedouin settlement whose shacks and black tents defended the hillsides against the city’s ravenous encroachment.
Nevertheless, a path descending between two buildings lured him down it with the promise of detecting a sliver of the inland sea that in his Jerusalem childhood had fired his imagination as the city’s answer to the Mediterranean — that far destination of summer vacations. But bleakness still curtained the gray horizon. Looking back up at the third-floor window of the little apartment, he tried to imagine what the dead scholar had seen as he sat at the desk squeezed into his bedroom: not a tiresome old crone like the one Rivlin saw sitting on her terrace in Haifa, but the play of wind and light on the desert, and Arabs, unwilling citizens of the Israeli-ruled city, strolling among the shacks and tents in which burned their hearth and cooking fires. Surely this was a better perspective from which to study the Arab soul and understand, as Ephraim Akri had put it, what mattered to it and what didn’t. Again he felt tempted to inspect the package in the baggage compartment. As it was unlikely that Yo’el would be in any hurry to take his wife to a hotel, many days would go by before he could sit down in his study to determine whether Suissa’s material might indeed provide a spark of inspiration.
He had tried not to grumble about his expulsion from his workroom and to be as patient as possible with their fragile and likable guest. This was not merely to calm his wife’s nagging anxieties about her hospitality. It was also to justify, if only to himself, the new and clandestine freedoms that he was taking.
18.
THIS TIME, THERE being no suitable pretext for another call, it took creativity and courage to avoid the twin embarrassments of being a nuisance to the Hendels and in defiance of his wife. And who could promise him that Galya would even be there? There was no guarantee, on this bleak, sleepy afternoon, of finding his ex-daughter-in-law in the hotel whose threshold he was crossing.
His last visit, with its heated conversation beneath the gazebo by the swimming pool, had made him a familiar figure to the clerk at the reception desk, who regarded him, a guest needing no directions, with approval. But although he knew the way to the Hendels’ quarters, he feared that his unexpected reappearance might be taken as a bizarre or even unbalanced regression, rather than as the sober determination to clear up an ancient mystery. Therefore, he headed for the crowded dining room, in which he lingered despite the unlikelihood of his son’s ex-wife turning up there. Taking a tray, he joined the line by the food counter, whose steamy dishes made him feel slightly queasy. If nothing else, he would enjoy a good meal whose tastes brought back better days. The talk around him informed him that, this time too, he was surrounded by a group of Christian pilgrims.
Well, then, I’ll be a pilgrim myself, Rivlin thought, placing his loaded tray on a table occupied by two outsize Americans, tall, hefty men despite their elderly appearance. They welcomed the Israeli diner and sought to strike up a conversation, which Rivlin joined by proudly informing them, Christian Zionists, that he was not only a Jewish professor but the scion of an ancient Jerusalem family. Inquiring about their itinerary, he pointed out its advantages and shortcomings and responded to their praises of the hotel by mentioning that his son had been wed to the owner’s daughter, albeit not for long. This led the two pilgrims, in the charitable spirit of their journey, to consider his visit and partaking of a meal with them as an act of religious benevolence.
A young Arab waiter came to clear the table. Uncertain of the new pilgrim’s identity, he discreetly sought to establish it and — unauthorized to issue a free meal ticket — went to fetch the maître d’. This turned out to be the old Arab who had recognized Rivlin at the bereavement and encouraged him to write in the condolence book. “What’s the problem?” he scolded. “Professor Rivlin is one of the family. He can eat all he wants on the house.” “You mean I was one of the family,” Rivlin corrected with a laugh while the waiter blushed with embarrassment. But this merely evoked a dismissive wave of the hand. Families were to be entered, not exited.
“You did the right thing by coming here for a rest, Professor,” the maître d’, whose name was Fu’ad, observed. “This is the best season.”
Rivlin had to explain that he had not come to rest or even to eat. He had returned because his wife and sister-in-law were lunching in the city with an aunt. The heart had its reasons. And as though it were an afterthought, he murmured:
“Is Galya by any chance here?”
“You didn’t finish talking to her the last time, did you?”
The man’s powers of observation surprised him.
Fu’ad sighed proudly. “If I didn’t notice such things, who would? She was the one of Mr. and Mrs. Hendel’s children whom I spent the most time with. He and his wife, the poor woman, used to go once a week for a night out in Tel Aviv and leave Galya with me. If she was upset, I’d take her home to Abu-Ghosh to play with my nephews. After a while she’d calm down. Believe me, no one knows her as I do. She’s a smart young lady, but moody and stubborn. Sometimes, I would take her out for an ice cream or a falafel when I had free time at the hotel. She liked that. It always cheered her up. Now she’s taking Mr. Hendel’s death hard, maybe even harder than the missus. Harder than her sister, that’s for sure. She seemed so sad after that conversation with you last week. What made you leave in such a hurry?”
“I had to be at the airport. I have to be there again today.”
“You Jews are always at the airport. Always coming and going. You can’t sit still. It will make you sick in the end.”