Free The Liberated Bride by A. B. Yehoshua Page A

by your younger daughter, the memory of you over the years still shines with your light and generosity. We feel a keen and vivid sorrow at your death.
The Rivlin Family, Haifa.
21.
    H E REGRETTED THE words as soon as he had written them. Yet so great was the appreciation with which the old Arab waiter read them that he was embarrassed to cross them out, and merely turned a few pages of the book to keep them from being the first thing to strike the next person’s eye. New callers kept arriving, increasing the noise in the room. The conversation, veering from the subject of Mr. Hendel’s death, now touched on the family’s plans for the future. His wife, Rivlin thought, had been right. As always. What had made him insist on coming? A brief letter would have been enough. In half an hour the telephone would ring at his sister’s and his wife would be on the line, wanting to know why he still hadn’t arrived from a visit that he never should have made. He went back to the widow, who sat up like a wind-up doll at his approach. More than words she appeared to need physical contact that could be placed as a warm compress over her dislocated self. Next he said good-bye to Tehila, who seemed upset, even aggrieved, by his departure.
    â€œI’m terribly sorry,” he said. “It’s by pure chance that I came to Jerusalem, and I have a sister-in-law to pick up at the airport. I’ll wait outside a little longer. If Galya doesn’t come, please be sure to tell her I was here.”
    â€œBut of course she’ll come.”
    He went back down to the lobby. A gray light from the desert deepened the somberness of the late Jerusalem day. Springtime clouds, not
yet fled before the rainless summer, made intricately changing patterns in the sky. The air was astir with something. Scanning the guests in the lobby for a familiar face and noticing that each was seated before an identical piece of cake, he realized that they were a group of Christian pilgrims from America, Mormons or Evangelicals, of the kind Mr. Hendel had specialized in. Feeling excluded, he retreated farther—not, however, out to the street, but rather back to the garden, with its red gravel path leading to the flowering gazebo. He stood gazing at the entrance to the hotel. Should his ex-daughter-in-law arrive, he would have a chance to scrutinize her from afar before deciding whether to approach her or—relinquishing her forever—slip quietly away.
    It was four-thirty. Although there was still plenty of time before the plane landed, he was beginning to feel guilty toward his wife. She had been more farsighted than he had been. What was he to the Hendels, or the Hendels to him, anymore? Nothing tangible in memory could compensate for the ignominy of what had happened or assuage the longing that had reopened like an old wound. It was time to depart the magic of Jerusalem and set out. The dead man wasn’t worth the gesture he had made. Rivlin remembered the bitter taste left by their last conversation, five years ago, when—telephoning without Hagit or Ofer’s knowledge—he had made a fool of himself trying to find out why the marriage had so shockingly broken up. “Even if I accept it,” he had said to Hendel imploringly, “I’ll have no peace until I understand the real reason. And I don’t think Ofer understands it either. You’re the person Galya trusts most. I think you should find out the truth from her and share it with me.”
    Mr. Hendel had flatly refused. He and his family, he said, were just as pained by the sudden rift, which no one could possibly feel happy about. But if it had to happen, it was better happening sooner than later. Better, too, quickly, rather than nerve-rackingly bit by bit. He had faith in his children and would never want to know more than they wished him to. Besides, anything his daughter might tell him would be treated with strictest confidence. And