Chapter 24
The intercom buzzed frantically, and Libby went to check what was going on with the delivery guy for the Thai food we’d ordered. It was Halimi. Libby furiously replaced the handset of the intercom and went back to the window.
“What do you want, asshole?!” she shouted.
“Libby!” I heard him shout from below. “Enough with the drama! Where’s Idit?”
“You don’t deserve to kiss her feet!” Libby shouted. I pulled myself from the couch and stood behind her. “Libby,” I said quietly, “calm down.”
“I will not calm down!” Libby flared. “This jerk is coming to harass you at my house?!”
“Idit!” Halimi shouted.
“Repugnant playboy scum!” Libby shouted at him from the window.
I started to laugh. Libby looked at me, wide-eyed.
“Dita, are you okay?” she asked in disbelief.
I did not reply. This shouting at the building was so stupid. Libby raised her hands in the air and shook her head in despair.
“Idit! I’m not leaving until you come down here and talk to me!” Halimi shouted. A few heads were already looking curiously from the nearby windows. I stopped laughing and silently put my shoes on. Libby sat on the couch. I took the elevator down with Libby’s fleece blanket wrapped around me.
It was noon. Halimi was unshaven, and he asked if he could hug me. I said no. He asked if I wanted to see pictures from the trip with the daycare, and I nodded. When I saw Lily with the other kids, the tears began to flow.
“Ditush,” said Halimi. “My Diti,” he added.
I did not even try to speak.
“I decided to leave Free to Be,” said Halimi and put an arm around my shoulder after all. “Ditush, my love, I am so, so sorry.” His voice trembled. I looked at him in surprise.
“What? You decided to leave?” I finally spoke. “Where did that come from? And how do you plan to make a living?”
“I can’t ask her to leave,” said Halimi, his voice still trembling a little. “And if we keep on working together, it will just be the same vicious cycle again and again.”
I sniffled.
“And as for money, it’ll be fine,” Halimi went on. “I’ve had enough with the makeup and skincare tips as it is.”
I looked at him. He looked at me.
“I know I acted like total shit, Ditush,” Halimi continued.
“But you and Lily … you are the most important part of my life. The rest is just distraction. The only thing that I care about is that you’re happy.
And I have another idea …” he began. But now I was really crying, and when he pulled me to him, I did not resist.
“Please, Ditush,” he said after a few moments. “Please, come home. I promise you—on my mother’s life—that we’ll start a new life. We can leave Tel Aviv if you want. We’ll establish the new state of Rozhevsky-Halimistan. Please. Last chance.”
I kept crying, but I knew that now there was also some relief in it. I had no longer expected him to try to win me back, and I certainly had not expected him to give up his coveted job for a chance to mend our relationship.
He waited downstairs while I packed up my minimal belongings. Libby was so enraged, she could hardly speak. “You are making a terrible mistake” was all she said when I thanked her for her concern. She shook me off when I hugged her.
“My lady!” A voice cried in my ear. “Lady édith!” I strained to open my eyelids, which felt as though they’d been stuck together with glue. There was a pungent vinegar smell, and I moved my head to get away from it. This action tripped a switch in my brain, and I opened my eyes.
Leaning over me were Jean, Father Jerome, and a shape that took me a few moments to realize was a nun. She was holding a bowl up close to my nose, and I almost vomited from the smell. I straightened up, dodging the bowl.
“What happened?” I asked. The three stared at me in puzzlement. I realized I had asked in Hebrew and tried again in French.
“You fainted, my lady,” said Father Jerome. I looked around. I was in a small, windowless room, on a straw mattress. The nun served me a goblet of wine and some bread.
“You must regain your strength, my lady,” said the nun. I took the bread gratefully. How much wine do these people drink, and at every chance? I thought wearily and took a tiny sip out of politeness. I also gnawed on the bread, which did indeed restore my strength.
“I don’t know why I fainted,” I said to Jean, who was still sitting on his heels before me, his brow furrowed with worry. This was almost correct. I remembered golden and crimson letters, outlined in blue … again I saw black spots before my eyes and quickly closed them.
“We have to take you somewhere where you can rest and recover as quickly as possible,” said Jean. Someone came to summon Father Jerome, and he asked our forgiveness and stepped out. The nun told Jean to call her if he needed further help with me, and then she left too.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered with eyes closed. I kept seeing my spring before my eyes, as if it were calling to me to return.
“Any news from Thibaut?” I asked and opened my eyes.
“Not yet,” said Jean. “And maybe that is for the best. Today’s sailing is probably already full, and anyway, it is better you not take another journey in your current state.” Jean sat down on the floor and leaned his back against the wall.
“Perhaps we will go back to the inn?” I asked.
“Certainly, we will return to the inn,” said Jean. “But I think it’s better if you do not go on foot.”
“What options do I have?” I wondered. The walk to the cathedral had been pleasant, but I was not up to the march all the way back on foot just now.
“I can go to the house of Rohard,” said Jean, looking troubled, “and take one of our horses for you. The house is very close, and I will not be gone long.”
“Okay,” I said weakly. Jean took my hand and kissed it.
“I am sorry, my dear lady,” he said. “I will return as fast as possible.” I gripped his hand with my other hand, put it to my mouth, and kissed it wholeheartedly. He nodded with a tired smile and left.
Lily was thrilled to see me when she got back from daycare, which raised my sad spirits somewhat.
The long conversation with Halimi, which began the moment we got home and went on until Lily joined us, made it clear to me that he was totally serious, and that he had, in fact, already submitted his resignation.
I was encouraged by this. If he had done this before he even knew if I would agree to get back together with him, he must still feel obligated to repair the damage he had caused.
When Lily got home, there was a kind of normalcy that I had not felt in the house for weeks now.
She was in a euphoric state, which made me think that maybe she had sensed that something was off these past few weeks after all (“These little ones, they notice every tiny change”).
She spoke fast and loud, jumped on me and Halimi, and when she noticed him hugging me as I chopped vegetables for dinner, she leaped from her chair where she sat before the television and joined in the hug.
That evening, Halimi brought up the idea of us moving to Atlit for the first time.
“I really want a fresh start,” he said. “And I think that it’s the perfect place for it.
For Lily too. A big house with a yard, the sea close by.
” As soon as he felt secure that I was back home, the playful twinkle returned to Halimi’s eyes.
It made me smile while putting me on alert at the same time. I didn’t want him to feel too secure.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have to think about it.”
A move to Atlit? To be that far away from Tel Aviv?
There was something very appealing about the idea, but also kind of frightening.
To leave the city and live in a more rural place, like a respectable, bourgeois couple?
Would it last? Or would I find myself a forsaken housewife, waiting in vain for her husband to return?
I knew that in terms of my work, there was no real difference if I were in Tel Aviv, in Atlit, or in British Columbia, but it was hard to believe that Halimi could find work that wouldn’t require him to commute to the city every day.
“Let’s first see how things turn out in terms of your work,” I said. Halimi nodded, and we drank tea and kept talking, smoking out the window that looked over a construction site that had developed at a rapid pace.
Evidently, I had fallen asleep on the straw mattress while looking at the ceiling reinforced with wooden beams. I awoke to the sounds of people talking, which got nearer to the door of the room where I lay. A familiar man’s voice and an unfamiliar woman’s voice.
Jean opened the door and shot me a glance that I was unable to decipher.
Behind him appeared a beautiful, well-appointed woman in a green silk dress hemmed in gold, and her head covered not with the white cloth coverings that I had grown accustomed to seeing on most of the thirteenth-century women but in a turban of light blue silk.
She had huge, honey-colored, catlike eyes, and she entered the room looking relaxed.
She was pregnant, and her small, protruding belly was flattered by the medieval fashions.
“Cousin édith,” said Jean, “meet the Lady Alice, my wife.”
I swallowed and sat up straight.
“There’s no need to get up,” said Lady Alice with a noble hand gesture. “My husband told me that you felt unwell, and I scolded him for leaving you in”—she scanned the room with disgust—“in this cold, dark place, instead of bringing you to the family home, as he ought.”
“I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Alice,” I said in a weak voice and hoped that I had said everything correctly.
“As am I, my dear,” said Alice. “I also scolded Master Jean for putting you up in that musty inn instead of bringing you to us. But your cousin has his mysterious considerations, and I do not presume to get to the bottom of his mind.” She said this in a tone that seemed to pronounce that in fact she did presume to get to the bottom of his mind but kept her opinions to herself.