6
BECAUSE SUDDENLY THERE WAS NO ONE to criticize him anymore, it had stopped all at once, though he woke up in the morning and went to bed at night still expecting it: “Just look at yourself! How can you eat like that? Stand straight! Don’t twist your hair! The idea, stop being ridiculous!” Her voice lived on in him, and he listened all the time, so that—“You must shower at least once a day!”—if he sometimes forgot to, or was so tired at night that he skipped it, he felt guilty and positively unwashed. The days came at him out of nowhere, one after another, blanketing him in a spongy morass through which he had to burrow his way to freedom. As if sated by his trip to Europe, he hardly listened to music any more, nor were there any concerts, for the Philharmonic was on a foreign tour. He passed the days by reading Anna Karenina, starting this time with Volume I, the old library copy giving him the odd feeling that he would be tested on it. As for Volume II, it arrived in the mail two days after his return in a brown office envelope bearing the motto “Pay Your Taxes on Time.” Though in it was a thank-you note expressing the hope that his flight had been a pleasant one, its sender was not to be seen in the office, neither in the cafeteria nor on the stairs; she must have been avoiding him while reporting on her conference in Berlin, not to mention itemizing her expenses, which no doubt included the opera tickets. What had she told her family about him? A dud. The sooner forgotten, the better. He even tried killing me there. Killing you? Yes, killing me. The thought of it made Molkho smile. I’d better be more careful, he told himself. True, I’m in no hurry. I’m only fifty-two, but I’d better do a little research and find out what my type is. And I’d better take off a few pounds too. He even resumed his evening walk, remembering how he had forced himself to go out each night for a slow, short turn around the block during the last months of his wife’s illness.
Like most intellectuals, she had never cared for Nature, which had bored her. Now he again walked by himself, sometimes still flicked by the damp, raw tail of winter, whose fog drifting in from the sea shrouded the mountain and sprayed him with drops of fragrant rain. He roamed the streets of different neighborhoods, sometimes stopping in front of a window lit by the ghostly glare of a television and listening to the laughing voices of the women within, or else sitting down on the bench of a deserted bus stop beside its illuminated ad, stared at by German shepherds selling dog food, huge boxes of detergent, or the faces and bodies of shapely women, against which he would occasionally lean his head, feeling their chill incorporeity. Mainly, though, he kept an eye on the new cars, pausing to peer at their interiors and dashboards while trying to guess what each knob and button was for. His own car, when he came home to it, seemed gray and tired-looking; and though his trip to Europe had eaten into his savings, the high school boy was a prodigal spender, and the German reparations had stopped coming, he was still determined to buy a new one, especially as the market was jittery and there were rumors of fresh automobile taxes. He had to act fast, he admonished himself, choosing a Citroen. “It’s a more feminine car than my old one,” he told the salesman with a grin, finally signing the order form after circling the floor model for several hours. The salesman took offense. “What do you mean ‘feminine’? Just because it’s French?” “Feminine and French,” insisted Molkho. “Just look at those curves, how she bellies down below, the flare of that rear of hers...”
7
GETTING RID OF HIS OLD CAR, however, was far from easy. There were no buyers at the price he was asking; mechanical problems kept turning up that he had no idea existed; and in the end he began to fear that he would not be able to sell it. Finally, after bringing it back a few times to the garage for repairs and bodywork, he lowered the price and found a buyer at once, only to discover that his new car had not arrived from France yet. Forced to travel by bus, he began coming late to work, so that, though he still had special status as a widower, he was summoned one day to the office of the director, an affable man who had both been to the funeral and paid a condolence call on Molkho at home. He shook Molkho’s hand, asked how he was, and inquired about his children and mother-in-law. “Is that old lady still alive? How is she getting along? And how are your kids coping? You have to let them let it all out!” He seemed relieved to hear that Molkho had riot five children but only three and that the youngest was a junior in high school. Well, then, it wasn’t so bad; he himself had an aunt who spent a whole year of her life attending to practical arrangements after her husband passed away. Though at first Molkho thought that the purpose of the summons was to fix him up with the director’s aunt, this roundabout opening was simply a way of popping a different question—namely, was he prepared to resume a full work load, since the director had a special job for him? The deadline for the state comptroller’s report was rapidly approaching, and it was imperative to check the books of certain small northern townships that were being run by inexperienced officials, several of whom were suspected of fraud. Most suspicious was a village called Zeru’a, the council manager of which, a young semistudent, had recently filed an annual statement of such irregular character that it was impossible to know which he was—hopelessly naive or cunningly corrupt. Both he and the village treasurer would have to appear before the comptroller, but perhaps Molkho should pay them a visit first and spot any malfeasances before they could be covered up. Naturally, the office would pay his expenses, and the work was sure to be interesting. How about it? Did he feel up to it, or was he still too busy with personal matters in consequence of his wife’s death?
At first, Molkho balked; psychologically he did not yet feel ready for the task, especially as the responsibility was great; yet the more the director pressed him with bureaucratic geniality, the more he began to reconsider. After all, why not? The office had gone out of its way, in recent years, to be nice to him. In fact, his wife had been shocked to hear that upon discovery of her illness he had gone at once to ask his boss for special consideration. Was he already, she had wanted to know, feeling as desperate as that? So that now, seeing the file waiting for him on the director’s desk, or rather several files banded together, he took them and left. Passing the legal adviser’s door, he decided to stop in and say hello. She was sitting behind her desk in her large, sunny office with a pair of glasses perched on her nose, talking on the phone; yet she smiled at him and he smiled back, waited for her to hang up, and said, “I was just passing by and thought of you. How was your trip back? How’s your ankle?” Holding a pencil, she rose amusedly to greet him, her squirrel eyes squinting in the sunlight looking slantier than ever. Her hair, too, Molkho saw, had been cropped even shorter and more girlishly. They stood there for a while chatting like old acquaintances, paring down their shared adventure into little particles of nothing. His heart aching for his lost wife and his own empty solitude, Molkho clutched the files to his chest.
8
CURIOUS AND APPREHENSIVE, he took the files home with him. At once, he saw they were a mess. Though the documentation of government budgets and loans, adding up to millions of shekels, seemed in order, the village’s records of how the money had been disbursed were pitifully inadequate. Most of them were handwritten and had pinned to them a small number of unacceptable receipts scribbled on loose notebook paper and signed with illegible scrawls. Despite his initial reaction that it was a clear case for the police, he tried going over the material, even attempting to telephone the council manager in Zeru’a the next morning. But it was impossible to get through; either there was no answer or for long periods the phone rang busy. Finally, it was picked up by a boy who said something incomprehensible in a gruff accent. “Let me talk to Ben-Ya’ish,” Molkho said, but he was left waiting for a long time on the line, over which he heard the voices of playing children and something that sounded like a schoolbell. Then there was silence, and after waiting in vain for the boy to return, he hung up.
An hour later he called again; once more the line was busy. At two o’clock, before quitting work, he tried a last time; now the phone was answe
red by a girl who spoke clearly. “Tell me,” Molkho asked her, “is the phone you’re speaking from in a school?” “Yes,” she said. “Then let me talk with the principal or one of the teachers,” he requested. “They’ve all gone home,” said the girl, “but the janitor’s here.” “Then give me the janitor,” said Molkho. But the janitor was hard of hearing and apparently none too bright. “No Ben-Ya’ish,” was all he kept saying, eager to hang up. “Then let me talk to the girl again,” said Molkho, loath to give up after having gotten this far, but the janitor had no idea whom he meant.
The next morning he phoned again and got through to a secretary, who was apparently also a teacher. “Ya’ir Ben-Ya’ish isn’t here today,” she said in a pleasantly husky voice. “He’s in Tel Aviv.” Molkho explained who he was and that it was urgent, and the woman promised to tell the council manager, who would be sure to call back the next day. “What about the treasurer?” asked Molkho. The treasurer, however, was indisposed and had no home telephone.
The next day there was no call from the village, so Molkho phoned again. Once more it took forever to get the secretary, who, though sounding more suspicious, promised that Mr. Ben-Ya’ish would be in the next morning and would return the call. Outside the window a warm spring shower fell briefly, evoking a pungent smell of blossoms from the gray streets. The director’s office called to see what progress Molkho had made. “Then drive up there yourself,” he was told when he mumbled an inconclusive answer. “What, in my own car?” he asked, thinking of his new Citroen. “Yes, don’t worry,” was the answer. “We’ll cover all your expenses.”
9
THAT EVENING he consulted a map to see exactly where Zeru’a was and discovered that it was way up in the Galilee, surrounded by Arab villages. In the morning he rose to find the streets wet, as if a heavy but silent rain had fallen all night. The northbound roads were packed with huge army trucks bringing tanks, prefabs, and other equipment back from Lebanon, where the Israeli pullout was in full swing. Once again, Molkho thought of his wife. She had been bitterly opposed to the Lebanese war and now it was ending.
On the highway to Acre the traffic was backed up. A prefab had fallen from a truck and blocked the road, and soon after there was an accident; by an overturned car, surrounded by police, a large, disheveled woman sat screaming on a stretcher. When Molkho slowed down to get a look at her, the policemen waved him on. “Step on it, step on it,” they shouted angrily at the passing vehicles, “this isn’t a sideshow here.” And so he drove on, not turning on the radio, so as to listen to the motor, which was still being broken in, and even passing up a female hitchhiker so as not to overload the car in the hills ahead. The light drizzle stopped, a fierce sun emerged cocksurely from behind the tattered clouds, and the asphalt was suddenly dry.
At Karmiel he stopped, took off his jacket, and entered a diner for a second breakfast. Through the window of the restaurant a chain of limestone hills formed an unbroken wall leading north. He could see the same mountains from his own house in Haifa, yet only as an abstract blue line; now, however, they loomed solidly and massively before him. When he rose to pay, he made sure to ask for a receipt. Fancy me an investigator with an expense account.
Several kilometers out of Karmiel, after consulting his map, he left the highway and headed north on a narrow old road that began an abrupt climb into the mountains. He drove slowly on the steep curves, sticking to second gear and keeping an eye on the RPMs, which appeared on a special indicator; but the road seemed endless, pressing on past forests and tangled gullies along the narrow, rutted asphalt, on which the only traffic was an occasional army vehicle or Arab tractor that forced Molkho, afraid for his new car, onto the shoulder before continuing his steady ascent to dizzying heights. Halfway to his destination he stopped at the top of a rise to rest the engine, which was air-cooled and had no heat gauge. This car is too sophisticated for me, he thought, although perhaps he would appreciate it more on the easier drive to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, he parked it beneath a big pine tree and went to relieve himself in the bushes, examining his penis, which here, in the clear, pure air, amid the murmur of leaves and the flowers and rocks of the Galilee, resembled a dark little animal, rather comic in the loyal arching of its spume onto the thick carpet of dry pine needles that absorbed it without a sound or trace. She was the first and only woman I ever slept with, he thought. It would be easier if there had been others, but I was too faithful. He shook the last drops, which looked rather greenish to him, into the air, regretting not having urinated on one of the stones, against whose light background the color would have stood out. Zipping his fly, he turned to face the wind, reminded of the country near Jerusalem: the same light asphalt dating back to British times, the same black curbstones, the same pine and cypress trees—just fresher and moister, not powdered with desert aridity like the Judean Hills. A sharp feeling of déjà vu told him he had been here before, yes, on this very hilltop, where he had perhaps stopped to rest or even spend the night, for he had been here on foot, on a Scout or army hike many years ago, brought to see one of the scenic ravines of the Galilee, and the memory flowed sharply through him, the adventure of a sheltered boy from Jerusalem whose parents never ventured beyond Tel Aviv. Once he could depend on his wife, who was better at it than he was, to remember times and places, but now he was on his own.
But when, soon after, he reached the village, which was little more than an overgrown farming cooperative of the type established for new immigrants in the 1950s, the feeling of familiarity faded quickly, yielding to a dreary sense of desolation. It was a place in which nothing seemed to have changed in thirty years: the same peeling little houses on the same concrete columns, with here or there a new story or wing; the same little orchards on the same rocky, rust-colored earth; the same chicken runs and sheds, with the same untended fields between them dotted by the same scraggly trees; the same narrow approach road passing through an antiterrorist perimeter fence and suddenly, for no apparent reason, turning into a broad thoroughfare that led to a center boasting several shops and a deserted bus stop. Molkho stopped by a tall electric pole to which was nailed a bulletin board plastered with posters from the last elections, one of them bearing the repeated picture of a smiling, stubbly young man. A heavy silence hung over the place, as if it were abandoned, though somewhere in the distance the chug of a tractor was drowned out by the clunk of a water pump.
A woman leading a fat sheep on a rope showed him the way to the school, and Molkho, taking out his files and locking the car, headed toward it into the wind, noticing the snowy peak of Mount Hermon between two houses, so big and near that his heart leapt. Crossing a playground and passing a water fountain, where again he had the sensation of someplace revisited, he climbed a short flight of stairs to the school, hearing schoolchildren singing old Passover songs with the same gruff accent as the boy’s on the phone. A passing teacher pointed out the council manager’s office at the end of a hallway. The room itself, however, was empty and dark; its blinds were lowered, an obsolete map of the country hung on a wall beside photographs of long-dead presidents and prime ministers, an accordion case leaned against a chairless desk, and several baskets of vegetables stood by a table on which lay an electric heating fork. There was no file cabinet or evidence of an office in sight, and Molkho felt instantly depressed. What am I doing here? he asked himself.
Just then the bell rang, and the children rushed out of their classes with a war whoop. Footsteps approached; no doubt word of his arrival had spread, and perhaps the children had been let out early because of it. But it was only the overweight and out-of-breath secretary, who, it seemed, was also the music teacher, for a bright red accordion was strapped like a baby sling to her chest. Standing on ceremony, he introduced himself with glum formality. “So you came after all,” she said. “But Ben-Ya’ish isn’t here yet. He must be on his way.” “Didn’t you tell him I was coming?” asked Molkho. “Of course,” said the secretary, “and he suggested that meanwhile you go over th
e books with the treasurer.” “Then the treasurer is feeling better?” asked Molkho. “More or less,” said the secretary. “I’ll find someone to take you to his home.” She hurried back out of the room, the accordion still strapped to her chest, and returned a minute later with a dark-skinned girl, who—such, later on, was Molkho’s first memory of her—stood in the unlit hallway surrounded by a crowd of children. She was so thin and straight, as though delicately carved out of ebony, with such painfully large steel-rimmed glasses that at first he mistook her for a boy, even though she was wearing a black leotard. “Take this man to your father,” the secretary told her. She stared seriously up at him with her dark, exotic eyes and turned at once to guide him with the pack of children on her heels.
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