Chapter 17 #2
It pleased me how irritated he’d gotten, even though I did not for a moment accept this nonsense about pain and jealousy. He had always been amused by my stories, and it had always ended in sex.
“Apart from that, I don’t get it.” His voice was still cold. “Do you make all the rules? It’s all well and good until I do something you don’t like?” His voice grew shrill. I was filled with an unbearable disgust.
“I would never do anything behind your back,” I spat back.
“Certainly not something so involved. And I would never, ever continue to do something that might cause you pain,” I went on with relative self-control.
“And if those one-off nothings hurt you, you should have said something and not acted like it was the sexiest thing in the world,” I concluded, drank the whiskey he had poured me in one gulp, got up, and left the house.
“Sure, darlinka, I’d be happy to!” said my mother. She was trying to hide her surprise at my suggestion that I bring Lily over to their place for a few days while Halimi was in Portugal.
“I’ve wanted to take her for a long time,” she added.
That was true; in the first two years of Lily’s life, almost every time we visited, my mother suggested that I leave Lily with them, but back then, I felt that she was still too little and needed me.
Lily was good with them: She was patient with the Russian that they sometimes spoke to her and even occasionally responded with certain words.
She was crazy about my mom’s collection of rabbits in every shape and size, from porcelain to horsehair, and my father played hide and seek with superhuman patience and dedication.
But in the last year, we saw my parents very rarely—life had become so busy that we spent time with them primarily over the holidays for a few intense hours, sometimes in the company of other relatives.
At our last Passover seder, we slept over at their place on two mattresses in the living room, with Lily on one of the couches.
In the morning, she snuck into their double bed, and later I heard her and my mother making breakfast in the kitchen.
Suddenly, my heart was a little broken for my parents with grandchildren who lived so far away, in Berlin and Atlit.
“We can meet in the middle,” said my father, who joined the call from the phone in their bedroom. “So you won’t have to drive so far.”
“That’s so nice of you, Dad.” I was touched.
“What a sweetheart,” said Halimi when I told him of the arrangement.
“I love your dad.” He was meant to fly out to Europe the following week, and both of us were in a particularly good mood.
When he carefully suggested that he might extend his stay a little and spend a few days with his brother, Yaakov, who lives in France, I made the necessary display of slight heavy-heartedness but was happy for him and encouraged it.
“Dad, I’m going on a trip!” Lily stood facing Halimi.
She was wearing her sparkly Viking outfit again, including a plastic helmet with horns that was a little too big on her.
They had just gotten home from visiting the neighbor and her grandson.
“And you’re going on a trip too. Only Mom isn’t,” she added and turned toward me, fixing the helmet so she could see me.
“I’ll go for walks near the house, Lilushkin,” I said, laughing.
Finally, Jean and I were sitting together under the carob tree again.
It was like a homecoming. He held a blade of grass between his teeth and sharpened his knife.
He sat beside me, the two of us with our bare legs outstretched, leaning against the trunk of the tree.
Hugh, whom Jean had decided to bring along following the unpleasant encounter with de Brienne, stood outside the tree’s canopy. We spoke quietly.
“So, why did he come?” I finally dared to ask.
“Maybe it was a mistake on my part to bring you into the fortress,” Jean said with a degree of discomfort, and at first I did not understand the connection.
“I wanted people to see you, so that if you come to Arsur with me, there will be people who already know of your existence. But I did not expect all the gossip and rumors. If I had left the fortress with you alone, in front of all those people, it would have been the end of my reputation as a decent man.” Jean cast a worried glance at the place where Hugh stood, stiff as a Buckingham Palace guard.
“And we had to run into the loathsome de Brienne of all people, that stupid, slippery imbecile,” Jean muttered sullenly.
“Why do you hate him?” I asked. I had never seen Jean in such a bad mood.
“That fool is one of those responsible for the sad state of our kingdom at present.” He stopped himself, looked up at me, and smiled. “But I fear such matters will bore you, my lady.”
“Fear not,” I said. “I actually find it very interesting.”
Jean looked at me for a few more seconds, clearly pleased. Sunlight flickered in his eyes, and I concentrated on them as if hypnotized. Jean laughed and looked away. His gaze caught on Hugh, who still stood as if he had been turned into a pillar of salt.
“Indeed, the kingdom has been in a state of uncertainty for some years now,” Jean began in the tone of his storytelling, leaning his head against the trunk and gazing up at the top.
At once I saw him telling bedtime stories to one of his children.
“In part due to my family’s incessant wars with the ridiculous and illegal demands of the emperor’s men, as well as the fact that the agreement that the emperor signed ten years ago with the Egyptian sultan is about to expire.
“Egypt and Damascus are locked in dispute, so this is a good respite for our kingdom to gather strength and refresh ourselves and use their rivalry to strengthen our hold on the land. But all of us are up to our necks, drowning in internal conflicts … The Genoese are loyal to the barons of the country but despise the Venetians, with whom the Knights Hospitaller and the Temple are allied, and who are also our allies, but quarrel more and more amongst themselves. The kingdom’s military cannot exist without the ships and the trade lines of the Italian communes, but they have interests of their own; the orders of knights are the heart of the army, but in their hoarding of resources, they are becoming an entity unto themselves and no longer a tool in the hands of the kingdom,” Jean sighed sadly.
“Our bishops and priests do their best, but how can they serve properly when they are bombarded by contradictory instructions coming from Rome?” He looked at me.
In retrospect, I thought maybe he was checking to see if his words shocked me, but in that moment, I was just listening, trying to follow.
I nodded. “We, too, the noblemen of the land, have neglected our duties. Our wealth has dwindled on account of all the wars against the emperor’s men, but that is no excuse.
If we don’t think of the future of our kingdom, who will? ”
I nodded with empathy. Jean laughed for some reason and then grew serious again.
“Emperor Frederick could have been a wonderful king,” he went on, looking back at the treetops.
“If only he really governed here himself. But that will never happen. In three years, his son Conrad will come of age and reign in Jerusalem. And if he should marry a daughter of the land and produce offspring, then the Holy Kingdom of Jerusalem will shine like a pearl in the crown of Christendom, as it deserves.”
I couldn’t help but smile, and Jean smiled with me. He poured wine for us both.
“You wanted to tell me why you hate de Brienne so much,” I said when his silence grew long.
“Indeed, my lady.” He sipped from the wine and continued.
“Thibaut arrived last September with a large corps and good intentions. He lingered in Acre longer than he might have—if mostly because he wanted to properly understand the complexity of the kingdom’s arrayed forces.
At the start of winter, we began to move south, with the aim of strengthening the fortifications of Jaffa and Ashkelon.
“When we camped in Jaffa, two of the barons who came with Thibaut made a fortuitous assault on a caravan of Saracens and returned with a haul of looted treasure. De Brienne was deeply jealous. He pressured some other foreign barons to embark on a hasty and irresponsible attack, fattening their inflated heads with promises of treasure and glory. Bar and Burgundy, Thibaut’s longtime rivals, joined forces with Gautier.
“My brother and I tried to dissuade them from the foolish adventure, and Thibaut refused to join his knights in the attack, but de Brienne and his group did not listen. They left Jaffa, where we were camped, in the dead of night, and we went with them so as to try to prevent a crushing defeat. But we failed—many of our best men were killed, and even more were captured, and we were forced to return north in disgrace.” He paused and then added in a raspy voice, “The Saracens were full of fighting zeal and gathered their forces, and a month later we lost Jerusalem.” He turned his face away.