The Bridesman

By Savyon Liebrecht

From one of the most important voices in contemporary Hebrew literature, the gripping story of a reunion between two family members that brings back a long-forgotten past and reveals secrets that will change their lives forever.

Micha, an Israeli expat in Los Angeles working as a ghostwriter, receives an unexpected invitation. Adella, married to his beloved uncle, has bought him a ticket to Israel and booked a boutique hotel, so that he can return home and meet with her.

Years before, Micha was the bridesman at Adella’s wedding. He remembers her as a rebellious young woman, and orphan and an outsider, who was mocked by his close-knit family of Persian Jews. Micha is stunned by the Adella of today–poised, confident, with nothing of the uneasy woman he remembers from the past. When finally Adella reveals the true story of her life, powerful memories resurface in Micha, although nothing can prepare him for the surprise she has in store for him…

The Bridesman presents a beguiling cast of characters, whose stories are interwoven into a gripping and moving tale about family, place, and the unceasing power of the past to reshape our lives and identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781609459888

Savyon Liebrecht

Savyon Liebrecht was born in Munich in 1948, to Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Israel soon afterwards. She studied philosophy and literature at Tel Aviv University and began her writing career in 1986. She has received several awards for her work, including the Alterman Prize and the Amelia Rosselli Prize, and has been named Israel’s Playwright of the Year twice. Her books have been translated into nine languages. She lives in Tel Aviv.

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Europa Editions

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2020 by Savyon Liebrecht

Published by arrangement with the Cohen Shiloh Literary Agency

First publication 2023 by Europa Editions

Translation by Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann

Original Title: HaShoshbin

Translation copyright © 2023 by Savyon Liebrecht

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Art direction by Emanuele Ragnisco

instagram.com/emanueleragnisco

Cover image: Douglas Volk, After the Reception, oil on canvas, 1887

Cover design by Ginevra Rapisardi

ISBN 9781609459888

Savyon Liebrecht

THE BRIDESMAN

Translated from the Hebrew

by Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann

THE BRIDESMAN

PART ONE

ADELLA

Twenty-four years after I left Israel, Adella invited me to cross the ocean. Did she do it just so I could write her life story?

By then I was already a seasoned ghostwriter, intimately familiar with the secret games of deception people are so extraordinarily adept at playing with their memories. And yet, in all the books I wrote—especially for those clients who had reached a grand old age, some of them famous—the details of the tale were dependent upon what they told me, and if they chose to create a new life story for themselves, there was no way I could distinguish between fact and fabrication.

But I knew Adella from childhood, and this was the first time that I could straddle the gap between the facts as I knew them and the way they were perceived by others. Things I saw in her with my own eyes as a boy were revealed to me now as I looked back, and I was astonished: sparks that were hidden within her then, how they were able to extinguish themselves and die, and how, like a dormant volcano reawakening, they could erupt and demolish their surroundings.

I was nine when I met her for the first time, on a Saturday evening in the winter that would be recorded as the rainiest of the decade. She sat on the green velvet armchair in my grandfather’s spacious living room, folded deep into its recesses as though seeking shelter from the many pairs of prying eyes boring into her, and from the men and women—my aunts and uncles—who approached and studied her face and body, standing in front of her and shamelessly scrutinizing the girl from the top of her drenched head, to her eyes, scarily magnified behind the thick lenses of her glasses, down to the soles of her feet, which dangled in the air, shifting their gaze back to the hair plastered to her scalp as though doused by a bucket of water, to the drops of rain that she hadn’t managed to wipe away with the handkerchief she held so that they slid from her glasses along her neck, wetting her shirt. And then the adults went back to their chairs, scowling as if they had no idea whether or not she was suitable, most of them summarily dismissing her as they reinserted themselves into the flowing conversation in Hebrew, peppered with Farsi words and expressions, about gossip and business affairs.

I didn’t know then that she had made up her mind to marry my uncle even before she laid eyes on him. That if she didn’t, she would be forced by her aunts to marry the old man, his mouth crowded with teeth, who seemed to be perpetually grinning and was always lying in wait for her outside the boarding school.

I sat at the adults’ table next to my mother. My brother Rafi was serving in the army, my sister Yarden was busy studying for her matriculation exams, and neither of them was willing to come with us. Usually the children were sent into the next room to watch television and weren’t allowed to sit with the adults until it was time to serve the savory pastries and the cakes. These were preceded by a hearty meal that always included rice and sometimes fish or fried zucchini. At the end of the table stood the traditional hamin, which had simmered overnight, and in our family was made with turkey necks and red beans, which almost no one sampled, and was the mainstay of my grandfather’s and my uncle’s meals for the rest of the week. But my status was different from that of the other children ever since my father had left for Los Angeles and my mother had stopped smiling. Suddenly I was the recipient of caresses and compassionate looks from my uncles and aunts. Esther, my mother’s sister, would gather me into her fragrant bosom every time we met, and my grandfather would secretly cram double the usual allowance into my pocket.

And so I sat with the grownups on that wintry evening, slightly hidden behind the bulk of Uncle Yosef, and observed Adella, whose name I had yet to learn, fascinated by the way she kept wiping the lenses of her owlish glasses, putting them back on and casting sideways glances at the people in the room. I tugged at my mother’s sleeve and asked, tilting my chin toward the guest, Who’s that? and she shushed me with a Not now.

My mother had four brothers and three sisters, and they would all come to my grandfather’s house every week—all of them except for the third brother, Mordechai, the Jerusalemite, who had stopped being religiously observant. This time, in honor of the special event, he came too, and didn’t spare my aunts his well-known opinion of them: You are a bunch of two-faced domineering females. At least my wife went to school and now she’s a teacher, but you—not one of you is educated or works outside the home, even though you are no less talented than the men in the family.

These gatherings took place every Saturday evening, after Shabbat. The velvet tablecloth embroidered with peacock feathers stitched by my grandmother was spread over the large dining-room table. My saintly grandmother, who died the death of a righteous person on the holy Jewish day of Yom Kippur, and had an uncanny talent for finding the rare black pomegranates said to cure disease when the family lived by the market in Tehran. At the head of the table sat Uncle Yosef, the eldest son, who owned a clothing store. For as long as I can remember I had always tried to dodge Uncle Yosef. Even when his hand was outstretched in an apparent desire to bestow a fond pat, if the pudgy fingers managed to snare my nose, he would pinch it so hard that it would smart for long moments, red and tingling.

His brother Menashe, who owned a bakery, always sat beside him as if awaiting his orders, as he had done ever since they were children.

The fourth brother, Moshe, was the only bachelor in the family, the handsomest of the brothers and the favorite of the children. He never raised his voice to us and never made any demands. He would cradle the babies in his arms and coo at them until they smiled, and when they grew up and he didn’t know what to say to them he would hide his trembling hands under the table and grin broadly, beaming his love to them in that way.

My mother’s three sisters were scattered around the table, two of them next to their husbands and one sitting on her own—Vika, Esther, and Lily—in their birth order. It was as if my late grandmother was also with us at the table, for every so often the siblings would absent-mindedly brush their fingers across one of the embroidered feathers, to conjure a memory of their mother’s presence.

Suddenly my Aunt Vika, my mother’s eldest sister, stood up, and with a barely perceptible jerk of her head, which didn’t bode well, indicated the adjacent room. My other two aunts jumped to their feet and followed her, while my mother dawdled deliberately until they had disappeared into the room, and only then, as though making up her own mind to go and not because she had been told to do so, did she join them, pulling me along behind her.

Sometimes my mother and her sisters would have the most wonderful times together, embracing one another for no apparent reason, weeping real tears over each other’s heartache, laughing till they were gasping, telling stories about how the family had arrived from Iran thirty-five years before, in 1950, and how the synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem collapsed owing to an unusually violent storm. And sometimes an unyielding silence reigned, as if they were enemies from birth, and even the fact that they sat together in the women’s section at the synagogue to mark the new moon and the new month and recited the Ya’aleh Ve’yavo prayer, beseeching God to treat them with compassion and loving-kindness, was of no avail.

The moment that the door to my grandfather’s bedroom closed, I could feel the agitation. Vika began inundating the terrified Lily with questions, and as she considered her responses her practiced hands smoothed out the bedspread and plumped up the pillows.

And there, in words vague and straightforward, elusive and direct, the provenance of the young guest became clear to me, that she was one of the students at the boarding school where my cousin Rina, Lily’s daughter, was a teacher.

Once a week, when Rina worked the nightshift, her mother would bring her special dishes that didn’t upset her delicate stomach, and in that way she had become familiar with the boarding school and the girls who lived there.

You said that she’s one of us. Vika fired her opening shot.

One of us, of course.

She doesn’t know that for us wearing a purple skirt the first time you meet someone is bad luck?

That’s not a Persian custom, it’s our family custom—there’s a difference. Not to mention, how should she know? She grew up without a mother from age ten.

Does she observe Shabbat? Vika ignored the answer.

Of course she does.

So how did she get here today from Givat Ada without leaving before Shabbat was over? She flew through the air?

Who said she came from Givat Ada? She spent Shabbat at the house of her friend from the boarding school. She lives in the neighborhood on Hahistadrut Street, it’s a ten-minute walk from here.

Vika was silent. It seemed that she had received an answer to each of her questions.

You said she’s eighteen. She seemed to have run out of questions.

She’s eighteen, of course.

She looks older.

Because of the glasses. Rina has been teaching her since ninth grade. She’s eighteen. Stop looking for things. And besides, Ima came to me in a dream.

What about family; does she have any? Vika ignored the last comment about their mother. In a dream.

Her father took off when she was a baby, and her mother, who remained bound to him without a divorce, died when the girl was ten.

And what about the aunts?

All of a sudden they want to marry her off to someone, but when she was ten, no one wanted her. They packed her off to a boarding school.

Because of the foot?

Because they have no heart.

On a certain level, each of them knew deep down—even I understood it as a boy—that the girl being an orphan worked in the family’s favor; no one would object that an eighteen-year-old girl was being married to a disabled thirty-eight-year-old, and no one would be asking any questions about him. Alone in the world, except for her aunts who couldn’t care less about her welfare, she would be glad to have a family and a roof over her head, and since the world hadn’t exactly showered her with affection, she would be grateful for any small kindness.

What does she do at the boarding school?

What do you think they do at a boarding school?

Go on, tell us, and then maybe we’ll be as clever as you are. Vika imitated the mocking tone used by the men in the family as she repeated the sentence that they routinely used to belittle the women.

Cowed as she was, it seemed that she had reached the end of her rope, and first and foremost Lily shocked herself with her sudden shriek.

What do you want from me? the screech that issued from Lily’s throat was like no sound her sisters had ever heard her make before. In the entire boarding school she’s the only Persian girl. She does her homework and gets good grades, knows how to sew and to knit and to cook. And even Ima said in the dream that a poor orphan will be a good wife for Moshe. What do you want from my life, interrogating me as if I had brought a murderer into the house?

Lily’s screams and the repeated references to their mother who had appeared in a dream seemed to dampen Vika’s fighting spirit. All she said was, And you didn’t notice that she limps and she’s probably legally blind? Not bothering to wait for a reply, arranging her features to convey that she had won this battle, she opened the door, strode defiantly over to where the men were gathered, pulled out a chair and joined them. One by one her sisters returned to the table, where they closed ranks and spoke in voices high-pitched and low. My mother made space for me beside her and pulled me close, and I sat pressed against her thigh, inhaling the scent of the shampoo that she kept in a small bottle in the medicine cabinet. So that’s how it was. This young girl, who was alone in the world and from the age of ten had grown up in an orphanage like Oliver Twist, was intended, despite her aunts, and with the help of my grandmother who came in a dream, to be

Reviews for The Bridesman

[berthirsch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interrogator for the Israeli Security Service struggles with guilt when his questioning crosses the line and a prisoner ends up dead. Counseled by his supervisor, a caring religious wise man he is told to rest and spend time with his wife and young son. His family life is unsatisfying and doomed to fail. Having once taken a class in creative writing he is chosen for an undercover operation involving an attractive middle aged Israeli novelist and her sick dying friend, a Palestinian poet.Limassol is a fast moving read with well crafted characters and believable action. It captures the tension and conflict of the main character as he struggles with inner guilt and unfulfilled desires. For readers who may have recently watched the Netflix series, Fauda, this is somewhat reminiscent.

[thebookjunky · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The annual longlist of the Dublin Impac awards provides a rich source of titles from around the world that I would otherwise never hear of. That is how I came across this book which has since made it on to the short list. It is the tale of an Israeli secret service man who specializes in interrogation. He is just a guy, doing his job, protecting the good guys from the bad guys. And that's his justification for his willful blindness to the cruelties he helps perpetuate. But his marriage and interior life are crumbling, and we watch it happen in slow motion as he desperately tries to maintain his professional rigor in another assignment. We simultaneously want him to succeed because we can identify with his personal travails, but we also want him to fail because his objectives seem abhorrent. Israel and Cyprus are exotic settings to a Canadian. Good read. 3 1/2 ***.

[baswood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a choice by my book club in fact it was a choice by our newest member who attended for the first time last meeting. She said that she had read it in another book club and she was the only person who liked it. That was a good enough recommendation for us. The novel first published in 2010 turned out to be a goodie. Limassol in Cyprus is where the climax to the story takes place but most of the action is in Tel Aviv; Israel.The story is told in the first person by a man who is never named but I will refer to him as Habibi. He is going through a work and family crisis; at work he is under incredible pressure to achieve results and at home he is becoming estranged from his wife and son, because he is always "at the office" or being called back into work to deal with a crisis. In the course of his work he meets the beautiful Daphna and finds himself falling in love with her. A typical story you might think, but this one features the Israeli/Palestine conflict and our hero Habibi is a Mossad interrogator and things are not going well for him. He has recently murdered an arab under interrogation who could have provided clues to a suicide bomber and he has taken his frustrations out on another interrogee and has been suspended from all further interrogations. His meetings with Daphna have been set up so that he can gain her confidence in order to get to her friend Hani, who has information on a leading terrorist. Yishai Sarid's novel enables us to see the world through Habibi's eyes. He believes fervently in what he is doing, seeing himself as a saviour of Jewish lives, he does not particularly enjoy the work he has to do in the torture rooms, but is proud of the results he can achieve, he sees himself as a professional. It is to Sarid's credit as a writer that we feel some sympathy for Habibi as well of course for his victims, Sarid makes them all victims of war. A theme of the book is that for many Israeli's the conflict goes on in the background it is as though their lives remain in parallel to those involved in the struggle or who are victims of violence. Habibi is evidently going off the rails, his newly awakened feelings for Daphna are in total opposition to the work he has to do and when he finally meets Hani who is terminally ill with cancer he reaches an empathy with the enemy that he never thought possible. This novel was/is a best seller and I can understand why. the story has all the elements of a tightly controlled espionage yarn and builds to an exciting clmax. However what makes this novel stand out is Sarid's unemotional view (through the eyes of Habibi) of this awful conflict, bringing home the point that there are no winners and for those involved survival is the best they can hope for. His characters are fully developed and he manages to convey plausibly the human issues that trouble them. It is always difficult to pull off a satisfactory ending to a novel like this and Sarid perhaps by telling us too much fluffs it a little, but a very good novel and a four star read.

[5eva5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm not entirely sure why this is described as a thriller, because, although it deals with a member of the Mossad, it's more about the main character's feelings and perspective than about the action he is involved in. As such, it's a fantastic portrait of the mind of someone who performs quite terrible, but in a way lifesaving, acts for a living. Our main character is an interrogator who, by some very violent means, extracts information from his prisoners. However, one part of his job is to infiltrate the enemy's camp and the ability to close off his true persona (integral to his task being successful) is leaking over into his real life and he ends up alienating his own family. The clincher being that he is convinced that it is necessary to do so, and when he starts to form bonds with the people he is infiltrating, that's when the true psychological collision takes place.

[lkernagh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This wasn't quite what I was expecting, although I am not 100% sure what I was expecting to find between the pages of this book. The story revolves around the thoughts, feelings and viewpoints of an unnamed Israeli secret service agent. One of the agency's expert interrogators, he is considered a connoisseur at making people talk. His dedication to his work has put a huge strain on his family. When an interrogation goes wrong and the suspect dies, our main character is assigned to go undercover posing as an aspiring writer to befriend Daphna, and Israeli writer and her ailing friend Hani, a Palestinian poet. The target is Hani's son, a wanted terrorist leader. This undercover role, so different from his known field of interrogation draws the agent into an introspective examination of right and wrong while trying to keep on track of his assigned mission. A mission that reaches a climax in Limossal, on the island of Cyprus.I am conflicted over what I think of this book. I think Sarid's attempt to get inside the head of the agent is an interesting approach and succeeded, in my opinion, if he wanted to accomplish the portrayal of an individual in conflict with himself. I had some difficulty with the rather extreme behavior/emotion swings of the character and the storytelling which appeared at times to border on the schizophrenic. The story has a strong noir, cold war spy feel to it. It was difficult to connect to the main character because of his remoteness. While we get the feeling that he cares for his wife and son, the son is referred to as 'the child', even during dinner conversation with his wife. Oh, and I am pretty sure that I missed something while reading this story because my understanding of the story does not mirror that of the description on the inside cover for one crucial element. Maybe something was lost in the translation or I skimmed over it and didn't make the connection while reading.Overall, a different espionage story, and a bit of a sleeper, with a focus on the Israeli - Palestinian conflict.