Don't Ask Me If I Love (33 page)

Then he handed Joy her glass and a red rose.

“And that's for you, lady.”

“Thanks.” Joy said, smiling.

“Let's have a gulp then,” I said, “I'm thirsty.”

“Well,” my father said, “to you.”

“To your happiness,” my mother said with glistening eyes.

We drank.

My father put his glass down and walked around the table. He looked at Joy.

“I believe I have the right to kiss the bride,” he said.

She bowed slightly, emptied her glass and put it down on the table.

“My pleasure.”

I watched the scene curiously.

“And now,” my father said, pulling back and breathing a bit heavily, “all I want is a bite of the cake.”

“This sure is your day,” I said drily.

“Then I can go back to my work and misery.”

“They can't possibly go together.”

“Be quiet,” Joy said, picking up the huge piece of cake my mother offered her. “I'll have to educate him,” she told my father.

WE STAYED in my room for two weeks, until we found a flat. It was a lot pleasanter than I had expected. Joy seemed to get along with my parents extremely well. It took me some time, but I finally realized that they simply liked her. Late in the evening after our arrival I found my father sitting alone in his study and I walked in and closed the door behind me.

“Tell me truly,” I said, “are you very much against this marriage?”

He put down his papers. “Not at all,” he said. “Why should we be?”

He said I was too young, but that was not really important. Neither he nor my mother minded the religious difference. That didn't matter at all.

“I just hope Joy doesn't have any difficulties because of it,” he said. “She shouldn't have to feel like a stranger if she settles in this country.

“For that reason,” he went on, “it may be easier for her if she converted. This is the only country in which it is more convenient to be Jewish than not.”

I shook my head slowly.

“I don't want her to convert.”

“That's up to you.”

For the first few days, Joy spent most of her time with my mother talking about the different possibilities for a young woman in Israel and learning to cook. On Friday we had gefilte fish for supper which she had cooked herself, under my mother's supervision. I told her that if this behavior continued I would divorce her within the month but my mother told me to shut up. My father insisted he liked the meal.

I spent a few days looking at houses with brokers until I found a three-room flat for a rent of five hundred pounds a month. It was in a pleasant area near Rehavia, and Joy and I decided to take it. We didn't care too much where we lived. It wasn't going to be permanent.

The apartment was furnished so we didn't transfer many things there. Neither of us had a lot of belongings, anyway. We rented it for a minimum of two months and paid the money in advance.

I didn't think we would stay there longer.

The evening before we moved I sat in my room by myself and tried to decide what to do next. My marriage came as a surprise, quick and unforeseen, and I had liked it that way. I thought it would put my mind at rest and enable me to devote my time and effort to the work I wanted to do.

I received the galleys of my book a few days after we arrived in Israel. There was still no indication from my publisher of how they thought it might sell, but I assumed that it would not be an absolute flop. Meanwhile, I intended to take my exams in economics. I thought that maybe I would be able to use that too.

After that there seemed to be a few possibilities. I could try to write another book or work the first one into a movie script. I could go to the States later in the year, and find out how to get started making a movie, or I could try to ask my father for money to produce a film. I gave the galleys to my parents and they both read them.

I was pleased that my father liked the book. He said he believed it showed real promise. Of course, it was not entirely to his taste, but that needn't bother me, he said.

My mother said that she thought the book was good and that she liked it, and I knew that neither statement was true.

I knew she wanted me to do work that would benefit other people and my country. She did not consider literature or show business within this category.

Joy had decided to take an intensive, two-month course in Hebrew. She said she hoped that by the time the course was over we would both have a clearer idea of our plans for the future.

A few days after we moved to our flat my parents threw a party for us to celebrate our marriage. They invited only a few dozen people because we did not want it to be a noisy event. The guests were mostly old friends of the family and relatives. They were all gathered in the living room where Joy and I, smartly dressed, stood by the door and received their good wishes and gifts. The only guests I personally had invited were Gad, Udi, and the straw-haired lieutenant. Joy invited one girl who had worked with her in the bookshop in Tel Aviv, and Muhammed.

“What a beautiful woman,” my father's eighty-two-year-old mother shouted at me, pulling me down to her wheelchair, pointing at Joy with a shaking hand. She was an ancient-looking thing, nearly deaf and blind. She lived in Tel Aviv with my father's younger brother who was a surgeon. We seldom saw her and I regretted it every time we did.

“Yes, Grandma,” I said into the old woman's ear.

“The main thing is,” she shouted, “that she is a good Jewish girl.”

“Yes, Grandma,” I said soothingly.

“What?” she shouted.

“Yes, Grandma,” I said and went to meet Udi who had just come in.

“I'm glad you could come,” I said, meaning it.

“Hi,” he said, “congratulations.” He pushed a long thin parcel into my hands.

“Thanks.”

“Mother couldn't come,” he said. “She sends her regards.”

“Thank you.”

Joy came over to us. I introduced her to Udi and noticed their mutual curiosity as they looked a each other.

“I am very happy to meet you,” Joy said. “Can I bring you a drink.”

Udi blushed slightly. “Please,” he said.

She picked up two drinks at the bar and walked back to him I watched them as they stood in a corner, talking.

“She is lovely,” one of my aunts said, coming up behind me

“Yes,” I said. “Excuse me.”

I walked up the stairs and went into my room. I sat on the bed and wiped my head with the sleeve of my suit. Then I opened the long parcel that Udi had given me.

It was an old Arabic sword coated with silver. I had seen it many times before, sitting in Ram's room. It used to hang on the wall above his bed between two smaller bayonets. Ram had bought it in the old market in Acre, when he was fourteen. He had hung it on the wall instead of a picture. He had no interest in paintings.

I tried to draw the sword from its sheathe but it wouldn't move. There were small stains of rust where the silver coating had come off. I realized it needed oiling.

I studied the walls, trying to find a place where I could hang it. Then I remembered I was not living there any more.

“Where the hell have you been?” Joy asked me, about half an hour later when she found me there.

I put the sword on the bed.

“I've been here,” I said cheerfully. “How is the party going?”

“People are looking for you.” She sat beside me. “It's all right, I guess. I just felt a bit lost with all those curious people staring at me, and you vanishing without warning.”

I took her hand and pressed it to my lips. “I am sorry.”

She smiled at me.

“It doesn't matter.” She looked down. “So this is Udi's present.”

“Yes,” I said, “it used to belong to Ram. Shall we go down?”

“We should, actually. A friend of yours just arrived.”

“What does he look like?”

“Very pale yellow hair, just like …”

“Straw,” I said.

“That's right.”

We went downstairs and joined the guests again. I saw the lieutenant standing at the bar by himself, looking indecisively at the various bottles.

“Leave it,” I said. “That's alcohol.”

“You know,” he said, not turning to me, “I feel a bit guilty about all this. I keep telling myself that if I hadn't intervened …”

“You see,” I said, opening a bottle of Coke, “where your stubbornness leads you.”

“You could have done worse though,” he said, turning to look at Joy. “I'll take one of those too, if you don't mind.”

I opened another Coke for him. Joy disappeared into the hall, and a moment later walked past us, accompanied by Muhammed. The lieutenant raised a yellow eyebrow.

“One of your relatives?”

“No, just a guest.”

“An enemy?”

I nodded.

“Quite good-looking,” he said, starting to drink again.

I left him and wandered around among the guests for a while, shaking hands and picking up an occasional piece of cake. My parents sat among a large group of relatives and discussed the chances for peace talks without much enthusiasm. My father was a pessimist. He didn't believe that anything helpful would come out of it. He had signed a contract with the government a week before, agreeing on a plan to build the aircraft motor factory. That was where his hopes lay.

The only non-relative in the circle of people sitting around him was Gad, who sat listening with interest, and smoking a cigar I had picked up for him earlier. When he met Joy he protested against my hiding her from him when he still would have had a fair chance. Then he drew up a chair and joined the discussion saying that after that disappointment, politics could hardly depress him more. He was constantly backing my father's opinions and I wondered whether he wasn't thinking about his own future. Gad believed that having the right connections was the most important factor in a man's success.

It was after ten when all the guests had finally left and Joy and I stuffed all the gifts we could carry into the back of the car and drove to our flat.

“Well,” I said to her when we lay in bed, “now that that is over I'll start studying.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“My Hebrew course starts in three days,” she said. “We'll have to start speaking Hebrew to each other. Imagine that.”

I grimaced.

“We don't really have to.”

“We will,” she said. “I have to learn this bloody language once and for all.”

“Our financial situation is not bad,” I said. “I don't have to send you to work yet.”

“That's reassuring. By the way, I think I'll get used to your family, eventually. They are not as bad as I feared, as long as we don't see them too much …”

“I guess my mother …”

“I didn't mean your parents,” she said. “Just all those uncles and aunts and cousins.”

“Oh, don't worry. You won't see a lot of them. We only meet at weddings and funerals.” I looked at her, “I noticed your friend Muhammed left early.”

“He probably didn't feel too much at home. He came out to be polite and left for the same reason. He is just very polite.”

“My father chatted with him for a few minutes.”

“So did your mother. They behaved rather decently. I really am beginning to like them.”

I closed my eyes wearily. I wasn't looking forward to studying for my exams the following morning. I thought maybe I'd delay it for one day.

“Udi said we should come to visit,” Joy said vaguely. “He said his mother would like to see us.”

“Really?” I said sleepily. “We should go then.”

Ram's mother took an immediate liking to Joy. It was obvious from the moment they met. She pressed her hand and smiled at her. It was one of the very few times since the death of her son that I had seen her smile. We sat in her small living room for more than two hours and most of the conversation was between the two women. Joy spoke about her reasons for coming to Israel, about her life in the past and about her hopes for the future. Ram's mother listened with open interest and from time to time nodded her approval. I chewed on my chocolate bar and watched them silently.

When we got up to leave, Ram's mother invited us to come for dinner. We agreed on two weeks from Friday.

“I was worried when I heard you had married,” Ram's mother said to me as she accompanied us to the door, “but I didn't have to be. You have done well for yourself.”

Joy bowed slightly and blushed a bit.

“I am glad that is what you think,” I said.

“I certainly do. See you two weeks from Friday, then.”

The next few days I spent at home reading books on economics. Joy went for her courses every morning. In the afternoons she was usually home, reading books about history or theatre, the two subjects she was interested in other than psychology. In the evenings we sometimes went to see a film, or to eat out, but mostly we stayed at home. There wasn't a lot happening in Jerusalem.

“This is no good,” Joy said one afternoon.

I put my copybook down and looked up at her.

“What?”

“I've just been thinking, I have to start doing something. Except for this course, I feel like I'm wasting time. I should get a job, or study. I can't sit at home all afternoon and evening and watch you reading those bloody papers and drinking those bloody Cokes. I get to feeling like a useless ornament.”

“It's only for three more weeks,” I said. “I'll be through with the exams and then …”

“Then what?”

“Well see … maybe we can make a movie.”

She didn't look enthusiastic.

“Do you think that is realistic?” she asked. “And even so, it would take months, probably more than a year until we could actually start with it. What will I do until then?”