Every day, several times a day, I had to stop myself from going to the Narrow Passage, to go by the spring again and sneak into the citadel, to try to meet Jean earlier than the date we had agreed upon: next Monday.
I wondered if I would be level-headed enough not to tell him everything I now knew about his life—the fact that he would yet become a key figure in the kingdom, the year of his death, the number of children he would have, even the year of his wife’s death. I tried to find any possible scrap of information about her, too, but I hardly found a thing.
Whenever Halimi was around, I unglued myself from the Ibelin dynasty and pivoted to my work on the French book. Though I told him that I was doing some kind of research, I had a feeling that he wasstarting to track my movements more closely. Instead of coming up with lies to explain myself, I preferred to simply hide my new obsession. So, when he was around, I read the French manuscript, writing comments to myself on the printed text and occasionally looking up expressions and concepts with which I was unfamiliar.
“It’s really beautiful,” I told Halimi one day with a sigh of satisfaction, as I completed another chapter. He looked up affably from his computer. “I wish I could write something like this.”
“Mom, come watch Robinod with me,” Lily called from the couch. I rolled my eyes and sighed but surrendered. This past week, I was impatient with her and scolded her a lot—when she whined, when she made a fuss over nothing, when she lost things. One afternoon, Halimi was out getting groceries, and I took advantage of the opportunity to read a bit more about the findings in the latest excavation at the fortress in Arsuf. Lily repeatedly demanded my attention, and I shouted at her so loudly that she ran into the bedroom and only agreed to talk to me after I got down on my knees and begged for her forgiveness. Now, I tried to keep my cool and went as far as showing interest inRobin Hood, even though I knew it by heart.
I sat beside her on the couch and was calmed by her smell, which always reminded me of burnt sugar, a little like cotton candy. I took her onto my lap and watched the animated movie with renewed curiosity, examining Disney’s interpretation of the style of dress and architecture of the Middle Ages with a critical eye. We both heard Halimi parking the car outside and ran to help him with the bags, racing each other for who would get to him first.
“What are you thinking about?” Halimi asked when he found me staring, again, instead of putting away the vegetables.
“I’m thinking how brilliant it was to move to Atlit. I did not expect to be so happy here,” I told him, a little emotional.
It was true—when we decided to move, I just wanted to get away from Tel Aviv and the old apartment, fromFree to Beand everyoneconnected to the magazine, the cafés and boulevards, and the possibility of running into someone who knew about us and had heard all the gossip. I thought that in the best-case scenario, I might be at peace in Atlit, if gloomy for the rest of my life.
I looked at Halimi—tall and brown and relaxed—with that faint glimmer in his eyes, clearly pleased with my words. He came to kiss me on the head, and again I thought, with some surprise, how much I loved him.
Was it unnatural that I could fall in love with someone else, yearn for him and miss him, and at the same time love my husband with all my heart—the forgetful and chatty and generous and fatherly man that he was?
Lily had gotten over the strep throat, but I still had not taken her to my parents. The intensive week and a half that Halimi and I spent together, worrying over our daughter and taking caring of her, after months of parallel existence, had its impact. As she started to get better and the tension dissipated a little, we resumed doing things together—cooking, watching movies, smoking out the kitchen window—little things that in retrospect I realized we had not done for months.
There were still land mines that we avoided very carefully: I did not dare, for instance, ask him if he had spoken with Nina since that evening, because I was afraid to hear the answer. The immense fire raging in my soul was dwindling, but one must be wary of the hot spots still smoldering here and there. One thing still stuck with me, and once, after I smoked a too-strong joint and felt calm and secure enough to raise the subject, I asked, “That night when you said that Nina probably wanted me to figure it out, what did you mean?” I did not look up at him and continued playingCandy Crushon my phone. Just uttering her name made my heart race.You are addicted to drama—I heard my sister’s cruel words from a month ago in my head.
Halimi did not respond. I looked at him, trying not to appear accusatory. I really did want to understand. “I’m not trying to rub salt in thewound,” I added, just as he took a breath to answer. “I want us to be able to talk about this like friends.”
Evidently I succeeded in transmitting a sufficiently congenial expression, because Halimi set his cigarette down in the ashtray, sat beside me, and said, “I think she’s a bit obsessed with you. She’s always curious about you, asks me about things you post on social media. She always wants to know how thingsreallyare between us.” He smiled to himself. “She is unable to believe that I love you as much as I say and that I have no intention of ever leaving you, as long as you want me.”
It took me a moment to take in everything he had said—it had never occurred to me that Nina might be as obsessive about me as I had been about her, and I felt compelled to go over all my posts from the last few months and check if I had unintentionally given away things that I wouldn’t want her to know. I also considered this new, darker interpretation of everything that she had shared online, possibly with the specific design of getting to me. The idea that they had talked about me and our relationship stirred up conflicting feelings—I was tremendously relieved to hear his declaration of love and tried to imagine how he had sounded when he said it and how she must have felt, but I was also disgusted that he might have used our relationship for some kind of leverage in the dynamic between them.
Only after much consideration did I catch that Halimi had used the present tense.
I drove jubilantly to Le Destroit.
“I’m going to yoga,” I told Halimi. I really did sign up for a yoga class in some local, boutique yoga place and had even managed to go once in the week that had passed. It was nice. Halimi, reading the brief for a new Israeli movie, nodded at the computer. “Get salt,” he said. “We’re almost out.”
“It’s a long class,” I said, taking my bag. Inside it was the printoutof a Renault engine illustration, along with complicated explanations in French that I hadn’t bothered to read myself. “Three hours, maybe more.”
Halimi looked up.
“Whatever’s good for you, babe,” he said.
“But I’ll get the salt, Limush,” I added. I came over and kissed him on the head.
When I got out of the car, I fingered the coin around my neck. Then, I took out Lily’s coin again—I was very careful not to remind her of its existence—and I looked at it with great concentration. It was warm in the sun, almost too hot, and the birds around chirped as if they had all gone crazy.
There was nobody around when I approached the carob tree. I expected the earth would be entirely dry, but to my surprise, the book-sized puddle was still there. How had it not evaporated over the past week? I did not linger over it long. I accepted the presence of the puddle with the kind of philosophical wholeness that I had adopted in recent weeks. At its edge were some limp flowers, probably from the bouquet that I had left there last week.
I pulled out my pink razor but did not dare to slice my wrist as Jean had. I made a tiny cut in my index finger, waited for the drop, and said aloud, “I drip the holy liquid of life in order to pass through the waters between the worlds and meet Jean d’Ibelin, Count of Arsur.” I took the silver necklace from around my neck and wound it around my wrist, then I gripped the Ibelin coin between my thumb and bleeding finger and dipped both fingers into the puddle.
One, two, three, I counted, then surrendered to the phosphorescent explosion.
I lay on the ground, not opening my eyes, clutching the thing that was wound around my hand. I trembled for a while, still recovering. Gradually, I caught my breath. I opened my eyes a slit and was met with thevision of the expansive green carob canopy above me. Dazzling sunlight played between its leaves. I emerged from the tree canopy and sat in silence, looking at the horizon, letting the delicate colors wash away all fear and worry.
Then, I went back under the tree. I did not know if guards were patrolling, and I did not want to overuse the “Lady of the Spring” trick. I wore gray linen clothes—a tunic and harem pants—which I had worn for the mushroom trip with Halimi. It was a little colder in the past, and I was sorry I hadn’t brought a shawl or something. I had made no effort to look like someone who could blend in because I had assumed I would wear the clothes Jean would bring.
But where was he? At least half an hour had passed since I arrived, and there was no sign of him.
