“Wait for him?” whispered Molkho, almost amused by the infinite impudence of the man. “You want me to wait some more?” he asked, staring at her half-menacingly and half-comically while the light behind her went on dying, flattening the children in the playground near the shopping center into black paper cutouts. The music teacher, however, did not seem to see the irony of it. “Yes,” she said, matching him stare for stare, “that’s what he told me to tell you. He’ll feel terrible if you leave now.” Once again Ben-Ya’ish’s feelings were being flaunted as though they were those of an innocent child who must be prevented from suffering at all costs! “First of all,” said Molkho sharply, with the smile of a man who has seen everything, “first of all, I want a telephone. A real one on which I can talk. After that, I’ll tell you my decision.” Apparently the music teacher had had just such a contingency in mind, because jingling in her hands were the keys not only to the office but to Ben-Ya’ish’s house, which was now offered to him as a sanctuary. And so together they walked back to the school, by which children were still playing soccer; there she unlocked the front gate and the office, switched on the light, and hurried off with the excuse that she had left something cooking at home, flinging the keys on the desk of the disorderly room like a title deed.
His first call was to his younger son, whom he informed that he might not be coming home that night, grateful that his children were already grown up and no longer dependent on him. Then he phoned his mother in Jerusalem to say hello, and was asked where he was calling from and why he sounded so distant. “I’m in the Galilee,” he said. “The Galilee? What are you doing there?” “I’m here on business,” he told her. “But it’s already night,” she remonstrated. “So what?” he asked. “So be careful.” “All right, I’ll be careful,” promised Molkho, wondering whom to call next. Perhaps his cousin in Paris, to whom he had not spoken or even written a thank-you note since he got back? It was a tempting thought, but fearful the call might be traced to him, he refrained. He glanced again at his files, which seemed suddenly quite pointless, locked the office door behind him, and wandered down the dark corridor, wondering whether compositions were still hung on the walls as they were when he was a boy and even entering several classrooms, turning on the light in each; but there were no compositions, just pictures of flowers and animals. Which class was the girl in? Unless she had skipped a grade, he guessed, she must be a fifth-grader, and finding her classroom, he spent a long while there and even sat in one of the seats. In general, the school surprised him by being so clean and orderly that he considered praising it in his report as the single bright spot in the village. Even the bathrooms were well kept, and he was especially impressed by the little child-size toilets. Now there’s creative thinking, he mused, sitting on one of them and trying to imagine how a child would feel on it.
At last he locked the front gate of the school and put the keys in his pocket. Many eyes, he felt, were on him in the darkness, wondering about the long-suffering but persistent ministry whose loyal representative he was. He walked back to the shopping center, which was now crowded with people and brightly lit by neon lights. In the café, which was doing a brisk business, small children ran back and forth between the tables. People looked at him warmly now, their former reserve gone, as if by virtue of the keys he was no longer the outside inspector but a local, if still temporary, resident, and he sat down at a table, nodding to people he knew, while the dark-skinned café owner, as unshaven and unkempt as ever (did he ever wash his hands? Molkho wondered), hovered silently behind him like a shade. If he wants to serve me more cannibal stew, thought Molkho, I’m afraid I don’t have an appetite. In fact, his hike to the waterfall and his evening walk had so satisfied him that he didn’t feel like eating anything, not for all the receipts in the world, and all he asked for was a cup of tea, unsweetened, please. Meanwhile, a small crowd had gathered approvingly around him, praising his patience in waiting for Ben-Ya’ish, who was sure to arrive and set everything to rights, since he had only their good in mind. Why, if Molkho hadn’t stayed, Ben-Ya’ish would have been disappointed—they all would have been!
From that, they passed to other things. What did Molkho think about the situation in Lebanon? And what did he believe would happen now that the army was withdrawing? He should know that just because they lived near the border and had suffered from PLO attacks was no reason to blame them for the frightful war. They felt for the soldiers who were killed in it, yet there was no denying it had given them three years of peace, without a single shot or shell fired at them. What would happen now? Would they have to go back to living in shelters? They talked on and on, about the present prime minister and the former prime minister and the prime ministers before him and who was better and what was good and bad about each and life in general, and even asked Molkho about himself. Why, these people are folks just like me! he thought. When the television news came on, they all fell silent, watching the pullout from Lebanon with its loaded trucks and tank carriers. Just then a flame-faced boy came running up to him: Ben-Ya’ish had phoned! He was already in Acre and hoped that Molkho would wait.
The report was received with satisfaction, and when the news was over the cafe dimmed its lights and the customers rose and drifted out. “There’s a movie now. Why don’t you come?” they said to Molkho, who decided to join them, wondering whether he could put in for overtime. He was led to a part of the village he hadn’t been in before and shown into the local cinema, apparently a renovated chicken run, which was soon packed with more people than he would have guessed lived in the place, many of them young couples. The natives are stirring, he thought, looking up at the high corrugated-tin ceiling on its wooden rafters and down at the seats, which seemed to be ordinary house chairs spread in a semicircle on the dirt floor, which still smelled of chicken manure. A large sheet hung at one end of the hall and a projector occupied a table in the middle, while in a far corner mint tea and sunflower seeds were being served to the audience, which stood around joking and laughing at the children who were caught sneaking in. The Indian girl’s mother was there too, seated with a peaceful look on her face, wet wisps of freshly washed hair sticking out from under a black kerchief, her large belly protruding and her eyes already glued to the makeshift screen. Molkho sat near her and waved a friendly hello, which she returned with a smile after a brief hesitation. All in all, he now felt welcomed by the villagers, who seemed content with him as well as curious.
The lights had gone out and the reel was being wound when he felt a hand on his arm. It was the music teacher. “I’ve got good news,” she said. “Ben-Ya’ish just called from Karmiel. He’s halfway here!” By now, Molkho had the feeling that Ben-Ya’ish was less an actual person than a collective identity passed from one villager to another, but making no comment, he stretched out in his chair, sipping slowly from his mint tea. The movie, which was in Turkish or Greek, was amateurishly made and promised from the outset to be a rather erotic, if not out-and-out pornographic, film about high-society sex in a luxury hotel on some Mediterranean coast The female lead was a dark-haired, buxom woman, not pretty but vivacious and bold, even oddly maternal, to whom the audience responded with a buzz of whispers and a cracking of sunflower seeds while Molkho scooped up some dirt from the floor and let it trickle through his fingers until only a few crumbs were left, raising them to his nose and inhaling the aroma of chicken dung flavored with poultry feed. Meanwhile, the actors on the screen having dramatically stripped and begun making love, the audience fell quiet, its every breath audible, its eyes narrowed as though with somnolence—Molkho’s, too, though he was also beginning to feel hungry. Idly he sat watching the passionate embraces, wondering whether they were real or shammed, his head lolling heavily; but suddenly, as if a rusty old motor inside him had suddenly turned over, he felt his member grow stiff, and he frowned deeply, sickened and titillated at once.
The lights were kept dimmed when it was time for the reel to be changed, leaving people to whisper uns
een in the dark. Someone knelt in front of Molkho. It was a young woman who said, “Ben-Ya’ish called again! He caught a ride to Kiryat Shmonah.” “Kiryat Shmonah?” echoed Molkho mirthfully, for the council manager, it seemed, had overshot his mark and now had to travel back the other way. “Yes, but he’ll try to get back here tonight. You may as well stay.” As if by now he had anywhere to go!
The movie ended at eleven. Heavily the audience rose and stretched itself, yawning disappointedly. Molkho exited behind the Indian’s pregnant wife, who waddled on her short, crooked legs like a big duck; she was, he noticed when she smiled at him, slightly cross-eyed, like her daughter. The moon was just rising in the starry sky, and it was very cold. Briefcase in hand he walked silently by her side, adjusting himself to her slow pace. The audience began to disperse, and she, too, chose a path and struck out on it, quickening her tiny steps as if pursuing the stomach that preceded her. It takes guts to go to the movies when you’re so close to giving birth, Molkho thought. Not that there was any reason for concern, for even if she were to deliver right here and now, in the middle of the path, there were still lights in many houses and the village showed no signs of going to bed. On the contrary, the later the hour, the livelier things seemed: shadowy figures could be seen carrying work tools, a tractor chugged somewhere nearby, and there was an overall sense of definite, if rather vague, activity.
The lights were on in the Indian’s house too. He was waiting up and did not seem surprised to see Molkho appear with his wife, as if it had been clear to him all along that the visitor was fated to sleep there. Did he want to eat anything? asked the man, who was wearing pants and pajama tops, in a low but wakeful tone of voice. Molkho, though, did not want to bother his host—who, surrounded by his piles of books, appeared at this midnight hour to be full of intellectual vigor—and agreed only to drink a glass of wine with him. “Ben-Ya’ish is on his way. Everyone says so,” Molkho whispered, and the Indian nodded, though the whereabouts of the council manager did not seem to concern him unduly. While his wife took out fresh sheets and cleared the living room couch, he went to his daughter’s room, lifted her in her sleep, and carried her out like a folded ebony bird. Molkho tried to help, catching hold of the girl’s leg and feeling a wave of warmth when her large, sleepy eyes, without their glasses now, opened for a moment to regard him. The woman spread the child’s sheets on the couch, and the Indian laid her down and covered her. Then her bed was remade with fresh sheets for Molkho, who was given a towel too. “I’m sorry to be such a nuisance,” he said happily, “but what could I do? This Ben-Ya’ish of yours is playing games with us all.”
The door shut behind him. Shut, too, were the windows and blinds of the room, which still was warm from the girl’s sleep. He put his briefcase on the desk and paused to look at the schoolbooks scattered there, careful not to touch the glasses that lay opened on top of them and stirred his pity in some unclear way. He debated whether to put on the pajamas he had brought or to lie down in his underwear and decided in the end that he needed the pajamas to sleep. Why, he thought, full of wonder at himself, she hated sleeping in other people’s houses and this is the second time this week I’m doing it!
There was a knock on the door. It was the woman, who had come to bring him an extra pillow, her eyes on the floor as if embarrassed to see him in pajamas. “I know I’m inconveniencing you,” whispered Molkho again, “but it’s not my fault. He pulled a fast one on all of us. He’s playing games with me.” Slowly he stretched out on the child’s bed, not feeling at all tired, convinced he would never be able to sleep. In his mind he replayed the scenes of the movie and once more smelled the manure, and then thought of the pregnant woman hurrying on crooked legs down the moonlight-spangled path, of the cow in its shed, and of his sexual desperation, picturing the girl being carried like an ebony bird, the kernel of pure desire hidden in her folded wings. Why here? he began to argue bitterly with his wife. What do you want from me? How can you say that I killed you? But he knew she wouldn’t answer and that the silence surrounding him would never be broken, for the days were gone when there was someone to know whatever was on his mind, even at a distance: as soon as he phoned her from the office, she knew just what he was feeling and thinking. Now he was free to do as he pleased, and so he rose barefoot in the dark, carefully lifted the glasses from the desk, held them up, kissed them, fogging the lenses with his lips, wet them slightly, dried them, folded them, and put them back in their place. I’ve never been so exhausted in my life, he thought, lying down again in preparation for a sleepless night while listening to the crickets and the sound of a tractor.
And yet, despite himself, he fell asleep, waking up five hours later with a feeling of amazement at having gotten through the night. As in his distant days of army service, he rose at once and dressed, made the bed, and put on his shoes in a jiffy. Then, returning his things to the briefcase, he opened the window and leapt straight out into the grainy light of the thick mist swaddling the mountain. Soon the sun would be up. Shivering with cold, he stopped to relieve himself by the cowshed before stepping inside to look at the cow, who stood there alertly as if expecting company. Wondering if cows had feelings, he took a friendly step toward her, tapping her bony forehead with his fist and folding her ears in two like cardboard. No, they didn’t, he concluded, stepping back outside with his briefcase. The rim of the sun appeared over the hill, directly above Ben-Ya’ish’s house, the windows of which, he noticed, were open. And indeed, hurrying up to it, he found its bed occupied and woke the sleeper at once.
It was Ben-Ya’ish himself, a young man in heavy flannel pajamas who resembled a student more than a politician and lay beneath a pile of quilts surrounded by electrical appliances. “I’m so terribly sorry,” he said, smiling at Molkho guiltily, already apologizing before he was awake. “Please, please forgive me. We kept getting our signals crossed. Why, I went all the way to Haifa just to see you, and getting back from there wasn’t easy. Why didn’t you sleep here? I told my secretary to give you the keys, and all the account books too. You’ve got me wrong and I’ll prove it. I know, I know, you looked for the road and the park and couldn’t find them, but I’ll show you all the plans. There were just so many out-of-work men who had used up their unemployment checks that I had to dip into the budget to help them, but we’ll balance the books yet; everything will add up in the end. Maybe you can show me the best way to do it, because I’m really not very experienced. I mean, I know the money was budgeted for development, but how can you develop a village that’s starving to death?”
Molkho sat there listening quietly, incapable of anger, resigned to defeat by this sleepy, stubble-cheeked, bright-eyed young man, toward whom he was feeling increasingly sympathetic. In the end, he knew, he would not even be able to scold him, especially not now, when he had just seen the sun rise in its glory on men in need of mercy. And so he waited for him to dress and drink his coffee, and followed him outside into the still chilly but now clear morning, feeling slightly feverish as he was led to a field with some saplings and bushes that had apparently been planted the night before in lieu of a park and, thence, greeted by cheerful good-mornings, to the other end of the village, where some fresh piles of sand and gravel dumped on a path beside an oil drum full of bubbling tar were meant to signify a road. There was even a steamroller, painted green like a picture from an old children’s book. Ben-Ya’ish talked on and on, waving documents and plans. “Just show me the best way to state the facts,” he begged Molkho, “the best way to keep us out of trouble, because more trouble is the last thing we need.” And in the end, that was just what Molkho did.
12
THEY WORKED TOGETHER all morning in the office, besieged on all sides by the sound of children practicing Passover songs for a school assembly. The music teacher, Molkho had to admit, was a force to be reckoned with; the singing, coming from all the classrooms, filled every cranny of the building and inspired him to fill in the missing gaps in the accounts. By eleven, the jo
b was finished and he knew that it was time to leave; but first he asked to see the Indian girl, who was taken out of class for him to remind her to thank her parents. She nodded, darkly solemn behind her big, funny glasses, dressed in her leotard again, and Molkho, who felt sure that hard times were in store for her, was overcome by pity. Damp-eyed, he could not restrain himself from bending down and giving her a kiss. “You’re a fine girl,” he said to her. “I’ll never forget you. Would you like a little brother or a sister?” “Whatever comes,” she murmured by rote, as though the answer were rehearsed. By now, it was nearly twelve, and he was being warned not to miss the last bus, which left early on Friday, if he did not want to be stuck in the village again.
The bus took two-and-a-half tiresome hours and seemed to stop in every town in the Galilee, and though evening was still far away when he arrived in Haifa, there was already a Sabbath quiet in the air. At home he was surprised to find his three children happily eating together in the kitchen, his daughter still in her officer’s uniform and the college student in high spirits because he had done well on an exam that morning. “You got a nice tan up there,” they told him, and he described the village, with all its Indians, for them and even said a few words about the girl. He peered into the pots, emptied food from one to another, ordered the college student to do the dishes, and went to run a bath, shave, and nap, feeling worn out but satisfied, as if after a long but happily ended ordeal.
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