And that, Your Honor, would have been the end of it, with nothing gone amiss, had I not said to myself, “As long as I’m here, I may as well have a look at the actual foundations before studying the plans for them.” And so I followed the corridor as far as a metal door. Although I assumed it was locked, I tried the handle. It yielded slightly, as if bolted from within. From the ceiling came the gurgle of running water and a clatter of pots and pans, which told me I was where I wanted to be, right beneath the dining room and kitchen. I found a light switch and continued down the corridor until I came to a dark, cold space on my left, in which stood an old boiler that looked like a predatory fossil. The bones of its victims were scattered around it: an old baby carriage, a green tricycle, and a crib with some dusty toys lying on an oilcloth-covered mattress.
Well, my dear Your Honor, I stood there and thought that I should go get a stronger lightbulb and come back to take measurements. But as I was about to go upstairs, I said to myself: Just a minute. If everything is open apart from that metal door, what was the Arab making such a fuss about? And I took the key ring and went to the door, which was old except for the lock. It was a standard lock, like the ones I had seen in the hotel’s rooms back in the days when I was courting my wife in them. Even though I now had the building plans, I was still annoyed at Fu’ad, who had always been so friendly and courteous. That’s why I took the yellow master key and turned it in the lock. The door opened. I didn’t enter the room, which was lit by a hidden lamp. I stood there flabbergasted for all of five seconds, whispered “Excuse me” to my father-in-law, and left.
The Court may ask how much anyone can see and understand in five seconds. My answer is, worlds, especially if you’re familiar with the cast — the other member of which was a woman unaware of my presence. She lay sleeping, or daydreaming, in a fetal position, her face to the wall and her long, naked buttocks, which I never would have imagined could be so pure and virginal, exposed.
That was all. On the face of it, it wasn’t much. I couldn’t tell from the surprised look of my father-in-law, who was reading a newspaper with a cozy intimacy I didn’t associate with him, whether I had intruded before or after. And perhaps it was neither. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. All I wanted to do, Ima, was to tell my wife, my life’s companion, the soul of my soul, how shocked I was.
PART V. The Judgment Seat
THE EVENINGS SPENT on either side of the border must have left you hungry if, after a sleepless night full of surprises, you head not for bed but for the kitchen, where you remove the cellophane from the containers that have been impatiently waiting for you on the marble counter and permanently renounce, in the crystalline light of a brightening morning, a Ramadan fast half-jestingly and half-wishfully partaken of. Your resentment of the housekeeper, who so flagrantly ignored your instructions just to clean and not to cook, has dissipated your resistance even to the leftovers cramming the refrigerator, though in truth you prefer the fresh dishes that have spent the night anticipating the return of the mysteriously vanished master of the house.
And yet, what effect can the master’s orders have if the mistress of the house is so intimidated by her own housekeeper that she turns to jelly in her presence? And since you forgot to tell her that the judge would be gone for several days, the housekeeper quite naturally decided to spend her leisure time preparing the judge’s favorite dishes. Still, you can’t be averse to them yourself, if you now sit eating them while perusing her note, which says:
Aluminum foil
Oil
Bread crumbs
Detergent
Flour
Garlic.
Beside it lies another note from her, informing you that the new owners of your old apartment have a package for you that was mistakenly delivered to your old address.
As if to spare you the pain of it, an invitation to her son’s wedding has been left in a less conspicuous, though still respectable, place behind the glass door of a bookcase. You slip the gilt-edged card back into its envelope as quickly as you can and let it fall on the shelf beneath the books in the hope that it will be forgotten there, for your envy does not skip even the marriage of the thin, dark boy who, when brought to your house by his mother, sat bashfully in a corner of the living room playing with Ofer’s old toys or appeared timidly at the door of your study to ask for a pencil and paper.
To sleep or not to sleep…
At two o’clock there’s a meeting of the appointments committee, at three you have office hours, and at four you give your introductory survey course, for which you still haven’t prepared. Yet having turned day into night in an Arab village, why not do the same in a Jewish duplex, even if later that will mean turning another night into day, without a wife in your bed to solace your sleeplessness?
Turn out the bedroom light, then, brush your teeth, and disconnect the phone. Under a light blanket, to the sounds of the awakening street, you think with bemused longing of a brown-robed, plain-sandaled nun in a village church, unflinching before the stare of a solitary Jew thrust at midnight into the crowd of her admirers. As soft slumber weaves its threads around you, you join a chorus of four droning, white-haired men behind an ornamented altar.
Awakening before noon, you listen to the messages left while you slept and hear the voice of an attaché in a distant Asiatic embassy struggling to inform you that the judge’s return has been delayed by a day. This time, too, the new possibilities waiting to take advantage of your solitude send a shiver of excitement down your spine.
2.
EVEN THOUGH THE professor was not sufficiently prepared, the class he taught was absorbing. Perhaps his hyper-wakefulness had made his usually tightly structured lecture, held in a large hall, more spontaneous. More tolerant than usual of the many questions and criticisms of his students, Jews and Arabs alike, he responded with an equanimity that led to a lively discussion. Despite its subject, the treatment of minorities in Egypt during the Second World War, he was forced, contrary to his habit, to run five minutes past the bell.
Outside the large windows of the lecture hall, the light was gray. An overcast sky held the promise of a rare summer rain. His class over, Rivlin felt his high spirits flag before the tedious prospect of a loveless, unsmiling apartment. So when he was approached by two female Arab students, he did not immediately refer them to his office hours, but instead steered them gently back into the empty lecture room and asked solicitously what they wanted. They were both, it turned out, from Mansura and had attended the “seminar” in Samaher’s bedroom, with its story of the Algerians who beat the French at their own game of absurdity. Having concluded that an acquaintance with a senior, if slightly eccentric, professor met on a pleasure jaunt to an Arab village deserved to be cultivated, they took the liberty of informing him that his “research assistant,” far from resting on her laurels after his departure, had translated yet another story that same night.