The group of children by the car had disappeared. While the café owner set the bare table and brought a plate of pita bread and a small bowl of olives, Molkho queried him about the village. Had any new roads been paved lately? Not that he knew of. How about a park or public garden? He knew nothing about them either. Meanwhile, several men, looking freshly awakened from sleep, approached Molkho in a friendly manner. “Are you the fellow who’s waiting for Ben-Ya’ish? He left a message saying he’ll be here soon. What did you come to check out—the accounts? There’s nothing wrong with them! He’ll explain everything. We’re all behind him.” “I heard your wife died,” said one of the men, reaching out to shake Molkho’s hand, “I’m very sorry to hear about it.” Before he knew it, he was shaking hands with them all, startled by their knowledge, as if the wind had carried the news. He was about to ask them about the road and park, too, when the steaming bowl of stew arrived, full of dark, smooth, slightly rubbery chunks of meat swimming in a bright brown gravy and giving off a funky odor like his father’s sweat, and shaking from hunger, he pitched in before it got cold. The meat, when speared with a fork, was of various spongy consistencies, apparently because it came from different organs, and had a strange sweetness that caused him a brief moment of anxiety before he attacked it in earnest, dipping his bread in the gravy between bites. “This mountain air gives a man an appetite,” he apologized to the café owner, who sat there watching him eat. “Where’s this meat from?” he asked. “It’s all kinds of organs,” answered the man. “Don’t you like it?” “Yes, I do,” Molkho said, “it’s delicious. I was just wondering if you took it from a cow.” “I took it from a cow?” The Indian seemed alarmed, though in the end he caught on. “Oh, you mean beef!” “Yes,” said Molkho, chewing away, his face lit by the sun, which had come back out of the clouds. All around him was silence, as if the whole village were hiding, except for the café owner sitting nearby, who rose now and then to bring a cold drink or more bread, which Molkho dipped ravenously in the gravy. “It’s this mountain air,” he said again with a smile, and this time the man smiled back and said, “Yes, the one thing we’ve got here is air.” Then he cleared the table and made Molkho some coffee to wash down the gamy-tasting stew. “Should I list everything you ate?” he asked when Molkho rose to pay, tearing a page out of a notebook. “No,” Molkho said. “Just the date and what it cost.”
It was 2 P.M. and the sun was beating down as if in anticipation of summer, the rainy morning a thing of the past. Passing a pay phone, he thought of calling home or maybe his mother, but then changed his mind. So what if I don’t? I’ve got a right to disappear if I want to, he told himself while walking to his car, which stood baking in the sun. If I don’t keep it covered, it will fade and lose its value, he thought. Yet, catching sight of the complicated dashboard, his hand resting on the fresh-smelling seat, he was conscious of getting less pleasure from it than from new cars in the past. He took off his jacket and sweater, loosened his tie, settled himself behind the wheel, and opened the window, through which the wind came whooshing down from the mountains, whistling straight toward him as though somewhere in the distance a giant fan were aimed at him. Well, that’s that, he thought, that little swindler can look for me, now. But suddenly, as the wind shrieked high overhead, his eagerness to take off faltered, perhaps because the stew was weighing him down. Should he move the car into the shade and rest a bit? But he had lost all sense of direction and wasn’t sure which way the sun was heading. In the end, locking the gear shift and flicking the hidden switch disconnecting the ignition, he stepped out of the car and started back toward the girl’s house to tell her father he was leaving.
Once more he followed the muddy path among fields stippled with yellow flowers whose name he didn’t know. Far-off, the mountains were turning purple. A rusty silence still hung over the village. The natives are taking their siesta, thought Molkho. The field with the fire was empty now, though thin wisps of grayish smoke still spiraled up from it and hot ashes writhed like ribbons of quicksilver on the moist, coppery ground. He noticed to one side a trail running off into a deep, jungly ravine, which lay between high, sawtoothed cliffs looking like ancient cadavers that had died clinging to the hillside. Fierce colors flashed there, green, blue, and claret, cut by the bold brown slash of the path. That’s it, then! thought Molkho. It’s a place that’s hiked in; I must have been here with the Scouts. He stood gazing into it, listening to the wind gather strength, and musing that were he to die in there, no one would discover his traces. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he told himself out loud. “At least I’d rest in peace then.”
He turned and headed on toward the girl’s house, passing it, however, and continuing on to Ben-Ya’ish’s hut, where he knocked on the door and received no response. Through an open shutter he caught a glimpse of the interior: an unmade bed, a television, a video, a set of speakers, and a pile of dirty dishes on the table, which indicated that the occupant had left not long ago. Circling the dwelling through tall, thorny weeds, he glanced up the hillside and made out an old wooden outhouse that looked like an upended coffin. It still had a door, though, he saw as he approached it, clearing his way through the dense undergrowth. The ceiling was low, no higher than a man’s head, and more weeds sprouted from the cesspit. Shutting the door behind him, the wind moaning dully through the dry wooden planks as though through a stifling hand, he unzipped his pants and tried relieving himself, but the trickle that came out only increased his sense of debility. Why, a person might think I was in love with that little dark girl, he thought, that I meant to wait right here for her to grow up! Walking back down the hill, he knocked on the door of her house.
The Indian opened it. “Ben-Ya’ish isn’t here yet,” said Molkho with a show of calm. “It looks like I’ve wasted my time, and so I’ll be heading back. Just please tell him that I was here and that I’m sore as hell,” he continued, not feeling sore in the least. “If he wants to tell me his side of the story—if he has any story to tell—he can try looking for me, because I’m through looking for him.”
The Indian listened earnestly, at his back the shadowy room full of books. “But what’s the rush?” he demurred. “He’ll come. He has to. You can rest here while you wait.” “What for?” asked Molkho. “I’ve waited long enough.” “But you have to have patience,” said the Indian. “Why don’t you come in. I’ll give you a bed to lie down in.” “Your wife isn’t home yet?” asked Molkho. “My wife? She doesn’t come home until five.” And when Molkho said nothing, he set about persuading him again. “Why don’t you come in? He’ll feel bad if he knows you didn’t wait.”
Molkho felt himself waver, wondering where the girl was. Hopelessly he looked around the room full of books and at the kitchen table with its unwashed lunch dishes, hearing the wind whistle behind him. “I don’t want to impose,” he said. “But it’s no imposition at all,” said the Indian. “I’ll be keeping you from your work,” explained Molkho, still in the doorway. “You won’t be keeping me from anything,” insisted the Indian. “Perhaps I could lie down in another room,” suggested Molkho; it could even be the girl’s. “Right here in the living room will be fine,” said the Indian. “I was just arranging some books I brought home.” But seeing that Molkho was unyielding, he said, “All right, come on in. I’ll find you someplace else.” Entering the girl’s room, he emerged a minute later with her, still in her leotard and big glasses, her books and homework in her arms. “Come this way. You’ll have all the quiet you want,” he cajoled, pointing to the girl’s bedroom, though Molkho was disappointed to see that it did not look like a schoolgirl’s room at all and was full of heavy old furniture, even a fourposter bed.
The Indian laid a gentle hand on his arm, as one might do to a tired old man. “But I don’t want to impose on your daughter either,” murmured Molkho weakly, already sinking into the soft bed. Dismissing the objection out of hand, the Indian brought a pillow and a blanket, lowered the blinds, and declared,
“Now you wait for him here. He’ll feel bad if you don’t,” as if making clear that what mattered most was not the accounts or even the pains taken by Molkho, but rather the tender feelings of the young council manager. “But it’s totally inconsiderate of him,” said Molkho, smiling wryly from the bed, on which he sat with an air of noblesse oblige, though in fact it surprised him how happy and peaceful he felt. “He had an appointment with me!” “Why don’t you take your shoes off,” said the Indian.
But Molkho left them on, remaining seated on the bed until the man had left and shut the door behind him. She wouldn’t have liked this one bit, he reflected, thinking of his wife, who was always careful to observe the proprieties, of which imposing on strangers was not one. Taking a volume of a children’s encyclopedia from the girl’s desk, he placed it on the blanket, lay down with his shoes on it, and shut his eyes, abandoning himself to the wind that shrieked and stopped, shrieked and stopped, like some infernal machine. It’s a rockaby-baby wind, he thought happily, dozing off, only to awake with a start ten minutes later to discover that he had been in a deep sleep. The only sound in the house was the purr of the refrigerator through the kitchen wall. He rose, went to the window, raised the blinds, and stood looking out at the mountains and the cowshed, inhaling the clean country air. What am I doing here? he wondered. You’d think I had no house or children of my own. But his tiredness welled irresistibly inside him, like a firm but gentle hand that wrestled him down, and taking off his shoes, he plumped the pillow and lay deliciously down again on the honey-sweet bed. Just look where you’ve landed me this time, he whispered mournfully to his wife, falling asleep in an instant.
Several times he sought to rouse himself, yet each time he only plunged deeper into sleep, wetting the pillow slightly with his drool, so that when he awoke at last, the room was dark. Water was dripping somewhere in the house, and the reddish tongues of the sunset licked at the slats of the blinds. It was six o’clock; he had been sleeping for over three hours. Aghast, he sat up, yet at once sank exhaustedly back onto the pillow. Then, more slowly, he sat up again, put on his shoes, folded the blanket, returned the book to the desk, donned his jacket, smoothed his hair, and cautiously opened the door.
There, crouched at his feet and mopping the floor with a rag, was a young and very pregnant woman of Middle Eastern appearance—the mother who worked in the shoe factory. Molkho reddened. She looked up at him suspiciously, almost hostilely, as if his sleep were an act of impertinence. Behind her, in the kitchen, the Indian was cooking in an apron, while the girl knelt on the living room rug doing homework with ink-stained fingers, her glasses tinted a smoky color as if by virtue of the effort she was making. All three of them had apparently been doing their best to let him sleep. But before he could apologize for his thoughtlessly long nap or blame it on the mountain air, the Indian announced dolefully, “He still isn’t back from Tel Aviv, he wasn’t on the last bus, and we don’t know where he is. Maybe he got the date wrong.” “More likely he’s just scared of me,” said Molkho, standing there grumpily unkempt, as if his sleep had been a particularly strenuous form of exercise. “And I don’t blame him either.” The girl’s mouth dropped and suddenly it struck him that these people were scared of him too. “If you could just wait a little longer,” said the Indian. “He may have caught a ride with someone.” Molkho smiled at him sardonically. “Only the Messiah is worth waiting that long for. But it’s not your fault, and I see your wife’s tired,” he said, “so I won’t disturb you anymore.” In fact, the woman, who was standing in a corner, seemed less tired than alarmed; despite her youth, she looked rather worn and remote from her husband and daughter. “I’ll be off, then,” said Molkho. “It’s dark out already, and I’m running in a new car and can’t drive fast.” “All right, I’ll walk you to it,” said the Indian, wiping his hands on his apron.
The girl jumped up from the rug like a dog following its master and the three of them stepped outside. There was a sharp, dawnlike chill in the air, so that Molkho, setting out for his car with his two escorts following him, imagined for a moment that the dying evening light would soon begin to grow brighter. The cow mooed sadly in its shed, and he remembered hearing the same sound in his sleep. It was a perfect spring evening, free of all dross of day. Refreshed and rested, he arrived in the shopping center, which was now full of life; in fact, such a crowd was gathered around his car, in its midst many children, that it almost seemed as if the whole village had been waiting for him to awake from his prodigious slumber, which had produced in them an uneasy, though by no means unhopeful, expectancy. “What, you’re going?” they asked, pressing around him. “Of course,” he smiled. “But he’s coming! We’ll find him! If you’ve already gone to the trouble...” Yet Molkho just went on smiling at the crowd, which did all it could to detain him, afraid of what he might say about the council manager, whom it wanted so badly to protect. “It’s not as bad as all that,” he promised. “I’ll put off writing the report a little longer. Tell him to call me for an appointment in the morning.” And stepping into his car, he unlocked the gear shift, reconnected the ignition, fastened the seat belt, started the engine, and sat there letting it warm up, the beam of the headlights sweeping over the mass of children, among them the strange, tall girl. Can I really be in love with her? wondered Molkho.
He was given directions to reach the main road and drove off. After a few kilometers he stopped to wipe the front windshield. Back in the driver’s seat, with the ceiling light switched off, he suddenly imagined his wife sitting next to him in her seat belt, leaning against the headrest as she had done last spring, when the vertebrae in her neck were already rotted by her illness and he had to drive with great care to keep from jarring her. It can’t go on like this, he told himself, not daring to glance at her, laying his head hopelessly on the steering wheel. It’s not my fault. This loneliness will be the death of me.
10
THE TRIP HOME took less time than he thought, because he knew the way and drove quickly on the empty roads without stopping. Within forty minutes he was on the Safed-Acre highway with the lights of Haifa Bay twinkling in the distance, speeding by the Karmiel turnoff without giving a lift to the lone soldier who tried desperately to flag him down, for he had not yet bought seat covers and was afraid the man’s rifle might poke a hole in the upholstery. For a change, he arrived home to find his youngest son doing homework rather than sprawled in a stupor before the television. The boy, so it seemed, was getting used to spending long hours at home by himself. Better yet, not a single new can had been opened in the kitchen and the leftovers had been eaten from the pots. He’s beginning to shape up, Molkho thought; he even talked freely to his father about school and friends, and later got out of bed because he had forgotten to give him the message that his grandmother had called. “What about?” asked Molkho anxiously. About whether Molkho knew anyone in the immigration department of the Jewish Agency, his son told him. “The immigration department?” repeated Molkho in a puzzled voice. “What on earth does she want with them?”
He walked about the dark, quiet house, patiently carrying his wakefulness around with him. The stew he had eaten for lunch was a distant memory now, but the delicious afternoon nap tingled on in the cells of his body, which felt as if rubbed down with liniment. Going to bed was out of the question. He drew up a list of the day’s expenses to present to the office in the morning and then began leafing through the family albums, looking at pictures of his children when they were little, at his wedding pictures, at pictures of himself as a young man, at pictures of his parents and cousins, and finally, with a sense of incredulity, at himself as a baby lying on a white sheet. It was 1 A.M. when he got into bed, and even then, he lay for a long while without shutting his eyes before falling asleep.
Upon arriving in the office the next morning, he was told by his secretary that the council manager of Zeru’a had called and wished to speak to him. Swearing under his breath, he called back and once again heard children singing
to the strains of an accordion at the other end of the line, over which the quickly summoned music teacher informed him that Mr. Ben-Ya’ish had arrived half an hour after his departure and had been very sorry to miss him. “I’m very sorry too,” said Molkho quietly. “He wants to explain everything,” said the music teacher. “Then he can do it right here in my office,” answered Molkho dryly. “No, he can’t,” said the music teacher. “He wants to show you what the money has been spent on. You have to see it yourself.” “Where is he?” asked Molkho after a moment’s hesitation. “Let me speak to him.” The council manager, however, was not available just then, though the music teacher promised that he would be there whenever Molkho wished to come, and would even send a car for him. “He’ll send a car for me?” “Yes, that’s a promise!” “In that case,” said Molkho over the phone, calculating the profit he could make by still claiming car expenses, “call me again tomorrow.”
He hung up and put the file aside. Later that morning he was buzzed by the director’s office. Had he gone to the village? What was the story there? He phrased his answer carefully. The case indeed looked suspicious, just as they had thought: the council manager, a young student of questionable experience, had apparently diverted funds earmarked for public projects to the inhabitants of the village, using the money to buy them food and clothing at wholesale prices. There was no indication that he had bothered collecting taxes either. But the fellow himself hadn’t been there, and perhaps he deserved a chance to clear himself.
Several days went by without a call from the village. That weekend, daylight saving time began, and the days seemed suddenly endless. One evening, just as Molkho had decided to hand the file over to the legal department, the music teacher called him at home. She was sorry for the late hour, but could he tell her what his answer was? “You know what?” said Molkho. “If he wants me up there so badly, let him send that car for me.” And so it was decided that on Thursday, between 10 and 11 A.M., the car would pick him up at home. He had already hung up and was wandering distractedly about the house, excited by the thought of revisiting the village, when he realized that he had forgotten to ask if there would be a ride back to Haifa too.
Five Seasons Page 19