Chapter 20
When I came in, Halimi would not look at me. He stood by the window, smoking, drinking a whiskey. “Haven’t you had enough for one evening?” I asked drily when I saw the empty bottle, which had been nearly full when I left the house.
He gritted his teeth.
“Was that enough for you?” he asked, finally looking at me, his eyes cold and venomous.
“Aww, are you feeling a little fragile?” I shot back in a high voice that sounded annoying even to me.
“Idit,” Halimi said with meticulous enunciation. “This is not about my feelings. There’s a little girl here. You can’t just storm off and disappear. I called the police.”
I snorted derisively.
“So, when you fuck your colleague and disappear night after night, that’s fine for the little girl?
” I asked, my voice twisting with sarcasm.
“That little girl loves you and misses you, and I’m the one who has to lie to her and tell her that you’re running late at work every night.
” I could feel the back of my throat. I clenched my fists hard to try to stop the tears from coming.
Halimi took one drag on his cigarette and then crushed it into the ashtray.
“I’m going to bed,” he said.
Halimi retreated to the bedroom, and I rolled a cigarette and smoked it with trembling hands, sniffling by the window.
I took a sip of what was left in the whiskey glass and shuddered.
Then, I emptied the ashtray and put the whiskey glass in the sink.
I brushed my teeth and hoped with all my heart that Halimi was already asleep. I could not handle hearing his voice.
When I crept into the bedroom, I could tell that he wasn’t asleep yet, even though he was lying on his back with his eyes closed. I went over to the closet and, with some effort, took a duvet cover from the top shelf.
“So, am I allowed to ask where you were?” asked Halimi. Still cold, but no longer the ice fields of Antarctica. I stayed standing by the closet, with the duvet cover in my arms. I decided on the less circuitous route.
“I went to Ronen’s, if you remember him.”
“You went to who?” Halimi sat up straight. Typical of Halimi not to remember the names of my exes. I could list the names of the girls I knew who had had any kind of relationship with Halimi.
“Ronen,” I said with fatigue. “The guy I was with before you. Pretzel Crumbs.” That was our code name for Ronen, the few times we had referred to him—mainly in our first couple of months together, when faint hints of his pale presence still appeared among my belongings (“What are you doing with this god-awful toothpaste?” “Oh, Pretzel Crumbs left it at my place once.”)
“Ew, you went to fuck that worm?”
“Yes,” I said wearily.
“And did you get what you wanted?” Halimi asked and turned his back to me.
“It was just the right amount of repulsive,” I said and left the room.
In the morning, Lily woke me up, jumping and excited and full of questions as to why I was sleeping in the living room.
I told her that Dad snored too loud and that anyway, I wanted some air, which, I demonstrated to her, flowed more freely in the living room.
Lily accepted this explanation without further questions.
A little later, Halimi came home with a bag of fresh rolls, cottage cheese, and milk.
He didn’t look at me and acted normal with Lily—alternately laughing and scolding her.
He made her breakfast while I showered, and by the time I finished, they were ready to go, her to daycare and him to the magazine.
Lily wrapped her little arms around my neck and planted two kisses on each cheek, and Halimi left the house without uttering a word to me, as if I weren’t even there.
When I heard the door slam, I burst into tears. So, that was that—the love between us, the conversations, the explosive laughter, the gut-wrenching sex, the librarian who had tamed the libertine, the lounging around with Lily, the trips and reminiscing, our private lexicon—it was all gone.
I parked the car at the foot of Le Destroit, concerned that if the car stayed too long on the edge of the coastal road, someone would call and have it towed. I hoped that the trucks carrying building materials that parked there all the time wouldn’t completely cover it with dust.
I got out of the car, dressed in my medieval lady’s attire. I took my big green cotton bag, nice and inconspicuous, I hoped, and at the bottom of it, I buried a bright purple toiletry bag, a large plastic bottle full of cold water, my glasses case, spare contact lenses, and a few other essentials.
I walked over to the carob tree. The little puddle the size of a book was still there.
I carefully dipped a finger into the puddle and at once felt a kind of tingling.
I took out my razor, made a small cut in my finger, declared my intentions aloud, and held the Ibelin coin between my thumb and bleeding forefinger. I held my cloth bag tightly.
Relax. Stop thinking so much. Breathe. Let go.
I dipped my hand in. One, two, three.
The phosphorescent explosion in my head happened in slow motion as I was immersed in water.
I was both the ever-burbling spring and also the tree from its top to its roots, and the earth to its unfathomable depths, and the sky and the sun and the moon and the stars.
I relaxed, thought of nothing, breathed deep, and let go.
I was borne on a huge wave, as big as a wall, and thrown to the ground.
Twang, twang, went the tender strumming of the delicate strings.
Twang, twang, twang. I blinked toward the broad canopy of the tree.
I heard hoofbeats or galloping, but belonging to a creature smaller than a horse, and as soon as I managed to sit upright, Brunette pounced on me, barking and licking.
“My lady, you’re here!” I heard Jean’s voice.
He was sitting with his back against the tree, his lute resting at his side, and with one light step, he reached me and held my hand.
The passage became more and more pleasant each time, but the awesome mystery had not diminished.
I was indeed here, in the cooler air of 1240, in the shade of a carob tree with a fuller canopy than in my own time, and around us was quiet but for the twittering of birds and hum of insects.
“I did not see how … I did not hear you …” he mumbled in disbelief. I saw that he was very happy to see me, and I threw my arms around him at once without a word. The scarves fell from my hair.
Jean looked good, his amber eyes shining and his burgundy cotton robe fastened with a bright silver brooch.
On his head was the hunting hat from last time, with a small, decorative white feather pinned to it.
When I threw my arms around his neck, he leaned in to kiss me.
My lips sunk into his soft beard with ravenous passion—afterward, I thought that maybe this had something to do with the stark difference from Halimi’s always clean-shaven face.
We kissed, gasping and with friction that produced sparks, and Brunette jumped around and barked happily.
But my Crusader nobleman, as I had already noted more than once, was a calculated and considerate person, master of his urges.
He broke away from me, albeit with some difficulty, and glanced back, past the canopy.
“One of the guards might come at any moment,” he said, still a little wild-eyed. “Better to not begin our rendezvous with a disaster.”
We both cleared our throats, giggled, and looked more intently at each other. Finally, he shook his head and said in a tone of urgency, “This is great luck, or mercy, that you turned up here now. I nearly despaired. Unfortunately, I cannot stay with you as long as I wish this time.”
“Why not?” I asked with evident disappointment.
“I must ride to Acre … in fact, I should have departed yesterday, but I could not break my promise to meet you. When you delayed today, I thought to leave you a letter, but I did not know where to hide it.”
“But must you leave at once?” I asked, trying to control my reaction.
“Not at once,” Jean smiled. “Thibaut is still getting organized. I can sit with you for a while longer.”
“And I thought that we would be able to spend more time together than usual,” I said in a soft voice, trying very hard not to sound like a spoiled child. “I am on my own for the next four days, free to do as I please.”
“What do you mean?” Jean asked in surprise. He patted the sheet of fabric beside the tree, and both of us sat down on it, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. “Maybe I should put the head scarf on first?” I asked bashfully. “Just in case one of the guards should come.”
Jean reached out and stroked my hair and then wrapped my head with the cotton strip and the two cloths with his gentle, skilled hands.
While he was doing this, I told him that my husband had traveled to another country and that my daughter was with my parents in Jerusalem.
Jean hummed in response and went on carefully arranging the complicated head covering.
When I was ready, he produced his ceramic hookah and, with a wink, took out the lighter I had given him previously.
To my amazement, he had clearly succeeded in putting it back together, and it even worked.
He lit the coal. The lighter’s flame was smaller than before.
“Don’t use it carelessly,” I warned. “I think it’s about to run out.
” I regretted the absence of the elegant show of friction with the flint rock and the pile of dry herbs.
Jean took a long inhale from the hookah and handed it to me. Then, he examined the lighter’s small flame.
“Indeed,” he said. “I recall you saying that it is a temporary magic, but you did not tell me the exact duration of the sorcery.”
“It’s not sorcery, it’s technology,” I said and took a hit from the hookah. “But it doesn’t matter, I’ll bring you ten more, if you want. A hundred more,” I said smugly.
Jean smiled at me through eyes preoccupied by passing thoughts.
He took out what looked like stuffed pastries and a few dirt-encrusted carrots with their leafy tops still attached.
“Forgive me, my lady,” he said and began to eat the pastry.
“I did not yet get around to breaking my fast, and I did not want to start without you for fear of devouring it all by myself.” He gestured with his hand to the pastries, and I took one too.
It was stuffed with minced meat and maybe raisins, salty and sweet and delicious.
“Well,” he said, after taking a sip of wine from a clay bottle. “Four days? In that case, perhaps you might like to accompany Thibaut, myself, and our party on our journey to Acre? I can make sure that you return here in time.”
“To Acre with you?” I repeated after him, somewhat confused. “Let me think about that.”
Jean smiled and took a carrot, washed the clods of dirt off in the spring, and bit into it. Brunette came over and sat before Jean expectantly.
“Go find yourself a little bird,” Jean said to her.
Brunette tilted her head and skittered out from under the canopy of the tree.
Only now did I notice that beneath his yellowish tunic and his reddish cloak, Jean wore a chain-mail shirt, with a hood of the same material.
On the ground beside the lute were leather gloves.
I very much wanted to see Acre in its prime, as the cosmopolitan capital of the Crusader kingdom and an important trading post on the Mediterranean—but the thought that I would have to travel far away from the spring alarmed me. My mind was racing. I was not ready to disappear back to my reality.
“Are there sacred springs in Acre or its surroundings?” I asked.
Jean gave me an inquisitive look and answered with a frown, “I do not know for sure.”
“It frightens me to think I will put such distance between me and my passage,” I said honestly and felt the disappointment spreading through me.
“I can understand that, Lady édith. It is wise of you to wish to remain close to the opening to your world,” Jean said softly.
We sat in melancholy silence for some time longer.
“You cannot make the trip four days from now?” I asked, heavy-hearted. “Say you are sick, or you have urgent matters to attend to or something …”
Jean smiled broadly. “For that, I would have to break every oath that I have ever sworn,” he said, in a fatherly tone that I found slightly irritating and that at the same time aroused in me a desire to press my chest against his.
“I must act quickly. One of the Hospitaller knights has just returned bearing sensational news that may tip the scales in our struggle. I must meet him urgently, and if he has good news for me, we will sail to Tripoli.” I nodded as if I understood something of what he was saying.
I suddenly recalled the Renault diagrams. “Say … what about those Renault plans that I brought you? The sketches of the horseless chariot?”
The corners of Jean’s mouth drooped, and the excessive smugness fell away. Now, his eyes wandered in embarrassment, eventually coming back to observe me.
“I presume that they have some power and knowledge that I can only dream of,” he said longingly. “But I can hardly touch those pages, and looking at them demands extraordinary effort from me. As for understanding their meaning—utterly beyond my grasp.”
Maybe I created a tear in the time-space continuum after all, I worried suddenly.
Sketches of a Renault car in 1240—what was I thinking?
I dipped my hand into the spring and let the fast stream envelop it.
I felt better at once. My cell phone doesn’t work here, not even my wristwatch, so the spring knows what it’s doing.
The currents swirling around my fingers produced bubbles that tickled.
Okay, so be it. I dunked my face into the spring too.
At once, I felt the all-embracing knowledge that lay within its eddies and pleased all the senses. I pulled my head out.
“All right,” I said to Jean as I wiped my face on the edge of my scarf. “I will ride with you to Acre.”