Maybe it’s because he never had a daughter that he always took such a paternal interest in you. But if he thinks your father’s death is an opportunity to get at the truth I’ve been hiding, I’ll repeat my first promise:
The truth will not out. Mum’s the word.
“If my requests still matter to you,” you write. Well, my misfortune is that everything about you still matters. That’s why I’ll keep silent.
And even though over the past five years I’ve once or twice allowed myself to wonder, “Maybe, Ofer, it was just a fantasy after all,” I’ve repressed that doubt each time, always returning to the belief that the rift between us was tragic rather than dramatic — an inevitable fate. That’s why, over the years, I’ve rephrased the confused emotion of it into precisely stated testimony like that I saw given in court, when as a child, I would visit my mother at work.
Your Honor
Dear Ima,
The day was Tuesday, 15 July, 1993. It was 10 A.M. I was at work in the office of Harari, Architects & Urban Planners, 26 Hillel Street, Jerusalem (hereafter “the office”). Quite casually, I happened to mention a plan proposed by Yehuda Hendel (hereafter “my father-in-law”), the owner of a hotel at 34 Hagiv’ah Street, Talpiyot (hereafter “the hotel”), to expand its kitchen and dining room and — this was the exciting part — to have me, a beginning architect, draw up the plans. A colleague in the office advised me not to start working on the project before looking at the old building plans, which needed to be taken into account. At once, Your Honor, I telephoned my father-in-law to ask for them. But he was not (at 10:15) in the hotel, and my sister-in-law (hereafter “Tehila”), his right-hand woman, had gone somewhere, too, without saying when she would be back. I could, of course, have waited for one of them to return, there being nothing urgent about it. But in my childish enthusiasm, and my fear that my father-in-law might withdraw his generous proposal and — quite sensibly — turn to someone more experienced, I hurried to phone the Arab maître d’ (hereafter “Fu’ad”), to ask him for the key to the basement so that I might look for the plans. However, Your Honor (and this is my first circumstantial evidence), Fu’ad tried to put me off, even though our relationship — in part because Professor Rivlin (hereafter “my father”) liked to chat with him in Arabic — was a good one. He said he didn’t have the key and didn’t know where it was. Since by now my desire to surprise my father-in-law with a plan — and my fear of being preempted — had made me impatient to proceed, I phoned my mother-in-law (hereafter “Naomi”) and asked for her assistance. I knew, of course, Your Honor, that this woman (a good-natured but passive and somewhat empty-headed type) was far removed from the practical affairs of the hotel, even though she had lived in it for twenty years. Still, the affection she had shown me as a member of her family encouraged me to think she would talk to Fu’ad. And in fact, she turned out to be familiar with the basement — in which, before air conditioners were installed in all the rooms, the hotel’s central heating system had been located. Although she hadn’t been down there for years, she knew there was a storage room and an “archive” that Tehila sometimes used. And so, Your Honor, childishly eager and well intentioned, I left the office and hurried to see Naomi.
Does the Court wish to know what the weather was like on that fateful day? What can that have to do with my testimony? And yet, since I wish to establish my credibility with the Court, I will withhold no information. In short, it was an extremely hot, dry day, thirty-eight degrees Celsius in the shade. In the neighborhood of Talpiyot, which borders on the desert, the glare of the Jerusalem sun was blinding. Even on my motor scooter, speeding to the hotel, I felt not a breath of fresh air. Fu’ad, who must have seen me coming, slipped away before I arrived. At first I thought of going straight to the archives (the existence of which, incidentally, I had never heard of until that day). But even though, Your Honor, a year of marriage to my wife had made me one of the family, I didn’t wish to step out-of-bounds. And so I hurried to the third floor, where I found Naomi, lounging in a light bathrobe over her second or third breakfast delivered from the hotel kitchen.
Is it possible — the Court may wish to leave the question open — that this passive, dreamy woman had a vague suspicion that the archives in the basement involved more than just the past? Was this why she encouraged her curious son-in-law to investigate them?
Needless to say, none of this, O wisest mother, has any relevance to the accuracy of my testimony, which is obliged to stick to the facts. Still, I wonder to this day whether the pain and disappointment that my divorce caused this amiable woman led her to guess that she, too, had played a role in it.
She gave me a glass of fresh orange juice and hurriedly dressed before going downstairs to ask Fu’ad for the key — which, Your Honor, I might have eventually managed to find on my own, though not without difficulty.
We found Fu’ad outside in the hot sun, decorating the gazebo with flowers from his village. He was so annoyed that I had enlisted the owner’s wife on my behalf that he barely looked at me. “I swear, Mrs. Hendel,” he said (I’m quoting from memory), “what’s the rush? Mr. Hendel and Tehila will be back soon and will show Ofer everything.”
Naomi, an easygoing woman, was upset by the refusal of an old employee to obey her. She felt she was not being taken seriously. “All I’m asking of you, Fu’ad,” she told him in an injured tone, “is a key.” But the well-bred and soft-spoken maître d’ answered her brusquely. “I’m telling you, Mrs. Hendel,” he said, “there is no key.” But she wouldn’t yield. It flattered her that I had come to ask for her help, and she wanted to prove herself worthy of it. “Fu’ad,” she said, “what are you talking about? You always have the keys with you. Come on, take them out.”
Looking back on it now, Ima, I can see that this tactful, middle-aged man, who never lost his composure, was on the verge of a breakdown. He fumbled in his pocket as though looking for something that wasn’t there, then changed his mind and took out a large ring of keys. Before he could claim that the basement key wasn’t on it, my mother-in-law reached for it in an unusually aggressive manner. Red as a beet, he let her have it, flinging it into her hand. “You Jews,” he blurted (once again, I’m quoting from memory), “want to swallow everything in one gulp, and then you wonder why it sticks in your crow.” (Yes, that I remember: he said “crow,” not “craw.”)
The large, heavy key ring, Your Honor, was then handed to me. I had no idea which key was the right one. Mrs. Hendel, exhausted from the heat, smiled triumphantly and retired to her room. I went to the basement. The door, it turned out, was unlocked.
I descended some stairs and came to a long corridor in which an old bicycle was leaning against a wall. Next to it were a bucket of dry whitewash and a torn tire. Farther on was a closet, padlocked with an old yellow lock inscribed with the number 999. I found a small key on the ring with the same number and opened the lock at once. The closet was full of files, arranged by subject. There were thank-you letters from guests, correspondences with the municipality, and the old building plans of the hotel, which was originally (did you know this, Galya?) designed to be a school building.