It was evening when he awoke and found the three of them eating again in the kitchen. “Why didn’t you wait?” he scolded them. “It’s Sabbath eve!” Even when they explained to him that their grandmother had called to say she wasn’t coming, because she had guests of her own, her Russian friend and the friend’s daughter, Molkho was not mollified. “So what? That doesn’t mean we needn’t have a Sabbath dinner! What’s the matter with you?” Brooking no objections, he made them stop eating, move their plates to the large table in the dining room, and light the Sabbath candles.
After dinner some friends he had long been out of touch with phoned to invite him over, which pleased him greatly, because he had felt abandoned by their social circle since his wife’s death. He had known, of course, that she was more popular than he, for he was considered a dull conversationalist. Still, he had kept telling himself, you would think they’d feel an obligation—toward her, if not toward me.
He dressed his best for the occasion, arrived at his hosts’ home to find several couples already there, some of whom he knew, and was seated next to an overweight, heavily bejeweled woman, a divorcée who had come all the way from Tel Aviv and stared at him with liquid, bovine eyes he did not like. Though at first the situation amused him, he soon lapsed into indignant silence. The woman, it seemed, knew a great deal about him and asked him many well-informed questions, to which his answers were short and laconic. Did he ever get to Tel Aviv? she inquired at last. Hardly ever anymore, he replied; the gas simply cost too much. “You could take a bus,” she said, blushing. “Yes, I know,” answered Molkho. “I took one from the Galilee for three hours today, and I hope I never take another.” The guests sitting close to him snickered, and he felt sure that his hostess was offended. Suddenly he feared they might give up on him.
Though he rose early the next morning, it was already very hot. He put on old clothes, did a wash in the machine, and went down to wash his car and hoe his little garden plot. At ten, he called his mother-in-law, but her room did not answer and the information desk did not know where she was, so he sat down to itemize his Galilee expenses, which seemed far too small, no matter how long the list grew. He then hung the wash on the line, cleaned the storeroom, throwing out some old cans of dry paint, and was about to shower when, loath to take off his work clothes so soon, he went about energetically looking for something else to do. Finding nothing, he said to his younger son, “Come on, let’s take a walk in the ravine. That’s something we haven’t done in ages.” The boy, however, was too lazy to move, so that Molkho, though reluctant to go by himself, changed his shoes and headed down the familiar path. At first, he had to traverse an obstacle course of building debris, old cement sacks, rusting boilers, and even an intact washing machine, all indisputable evidence of his neighbors’ economic progress; but the farther down he walked, the more nature reasserted itself with rank lushness, and a deep silence descended on the path, which wound in and out among bushes. The sea below him vanished from sight, as did the houses above, leaving him as alone as if he were in the heart of a jungle. Conscious of his quickened heartbeat, he stopped and considered turning back, knowing that the climb up would be even harder; but the last few days had given him new strength and he kept on going to the bottom, where the winter rain had unfurled such a carpet of curly grass that he could have lain down and rolled in it were it not for all the detritus, which included the bleached bones of a large animal. The sea was back in sight now, and deciding not to retrace his steps but rather to ascend the opposite slope, where the vegetation was thinner, and from there to telephone his children to pick him up in the car, he set out in that direction, passing three merrily picnicking women drinking tea. He exchanged a few friendly words with them and started up the path, which was less overgrown but very steep, heading toward a row of houses crowning the hill. The sun was beating down now, and the unfamiliar ascent was fatiguing, especially as it ended at a barbed-wire fence surrounding the backyard of the first house. By the time he managed to get through it, he had tom his pants, cut his leg, and come to regret the whole adventure. Dirty and thirsty, he came out on a little street that did not seem to have a pay phone, only a synagogue, from which some men were just emerging. He would be better off, he decided, going to his mother-in-law’s nearby old-age home, slipping unnoticed up to her room, and tidying up there.
Head down, he passed quickly through the big glass entrance and crossed the spic-and-span lobby, whose occupants, dressed in their Sabbath best, looked approvingly at the figure in tom work clothes, no doubt a repairman come to fix something. Taking the slow, solid elevator up to the ninth floor, he walked down the dim hallway and knocked on his mother-in-law’s door. Though there was no answer, the door opened when he tried the handle. Surprisingly, the room was in a state of great disorder: an open suitcase lay on the floor with a dress half-thrown over it, and pillows and pillowcases had been hung out to air on the railing of the little terrace. He was still bewilderedly taking it in when the sheets rustled on his mother-in-law’s bed and up sat a stranger in pajamas, a plump, sturdy woman of about thirty-five with big bright eyes.
Molkho saw at once by her resemblance to her mother that she was the daughter of the little old Russian, the young lady who was unhappy in Israel and wished to return to the Soviet Union. At first, roused from her beauty sleep by an unexpected intruder, she seemed terrified, even hysterical; yet before many seconds had gone by, he began to suspect that she was in fact drunk. And on a summery day like this, he marveled, startled by the strong scent of alcohol. She knew almost no Hebrew, let alone English or French, and the few words she uttered between giggles sounded odd indeed.
Through the open window the sky seemed very blue. He tried explaining who he was while the plump woman tried telling him where his mother-in-law had gone to, laughing over each Hebrew word as if it were a particularly funny joke. Finally, despairing of communicating, she led him out on the terrace and pointed at the lawn below, where, near the rosebush-ringed swimming pool, sat his wife’s mother and her Russian friend, sunbathing on flowery blankets. Molkho nodded, weighed going to the bathroom for a drink of water, ruled against it, and strode quickly back out to the elevator. Yet he did not ride it all the way down but got out on the fifth floor, where the usual solemn silence prevailed in the medical ward, though because of the heat the doors of the sickrooms were open, revealing grave oldsters who sat leafing through magazines beside their moribund friends. Molkho thrilled to the sight of the familiar equipment, the white intravenous bottles, the wheelchairs, and the gray tanks of oxygen, and was about to sit down to rest when a nurse blocked his way. Rolling up his ripped pants, he showed her the cut on his leg. “I’m Mrs. Starkman’s son-in-law,” he explained, “and I thought you might give me first aid.” At once he was ushered into a sunny little office, where, after he washed, the cut was disinfected, treated with a yellow, pollenlike powder, and bandaged with gauze. It must be a welcome change for the nurses to deal with something nonterminal, he thought, eagerly examining the apparatus around him and happily concluding that, allowing for his modest budget, the care received by his wife had been quite state-of-the-art.
He descended to the lobby with his bandaged leg. As usual, he reflected, summer had come all at once, bursting through every window. Head high, he made straight for the lawn, where he found his mother-in-law, drugged by the sun, in a state of brazen nirvana, fast asleep in a house frock that bared her veiny old legs, while her Russian friend sat silently guarding her, a bit fearful of the unaccustomedly strong sun, her white hair tinged with a few last strands of gold. Recognizing him at once, she rose and executed her odd little bow, then introduced herself in a pleasant voice as Stasya, and chatted in a Hebrew that wasn’t bad at all. Molkho, for his part, speaking in a whisper so as not to wake his mother-in-law, whose profound slumber seemed slightly worrisome to him too, explained why he was there and even displayed his new bandage. He had just asked the Russian woman why her daughter didn’t like Israel when hi
s mother-in-law, hearing his voice, awoke and opened her faded gray, sun-softened eyes with surprise and a hint of annoyance. Yet, though Molkho began telling her at once of his adventures, rolling up his pants to show the bandage again, she did not appear to listen. Even when he switched the subject to her grandchildren, she seemed too weak from the sun to respond, barely able to keep her eyes from shutting. Why, in a minute she’ll melt away right in front of me! he thought. It grieved him to see her so springlike and peaceful on this blue Saturday afternoon, as if she had already forgotten all about her daughter’s death.
13
THE NEXT MORNING, he asked to see the director. At ten o’clock he was summoned, laying his report on the desk with a solemnity that took his easygoing boss by surprise. “I was there twice and even stayed over one night,” Molkho told him. “I had a look around and checked things out as best I could. I don’t claim to have it figured out down to the bottom line, but I did see quite a lot, and my impression is that there may be a lot of confusion up there, but there’s no corruption. There’s a road being built and a park being planted, and while the village council doesn’t own a tractor, I did see a steamroller. I helped them put their accounts in order and insisted that they itemize everything and attach receipts. If they do, I think we can pass the file on to the state comptroller’s office. Maybe there are still dark secrets to unearth; that’s their job. But I think we’ve done what we could. Of course, it’s up to you.”
The director leafed through the file, asked a few questions, and thanked Molkho profusely, as if he had done something heroic, after which he inquired about the health of his children and his mother-in-law, whom he remembered well. And that was the end of it. Or, at least, so Molkho thought until later that day he was again called to the director’s office, where, to his alarm, he found the legal adviser sitting in a sleeveless knit dress, her high-heeled shoes crossed, turning the Xeroxed pages of the file. She looked pale, and he suddenly feared that she was about to exact her pound of flesh for his failure to go to bed with her. Why, oh why, couldn’t he at least have kissed those lily-white arms, which certainly deserved some consideration? Greeting him with a faint smile, she made no attempt to conceal the coolness with which she had already written him off. She had been invited, explained the director, to ask Molkho a few questions, which he proceeded to answer as best he could. Yes, work on the road had begun; he had seen it himself. And the park, too; the trees and bushes had already been planted. Not that he knew what they needed a park for with all that natural magnificence around them, but of course, it was their prerogative to have one. As for the tractor, yes, it was in his report—that is, it was not exactly a tractor: it was a secondhand steamroller, but it did exist and a copy of its registration was included. And though there was no denying that Ben-Ya’ish was a rather muddled young man who had taken administrative liberties with unemployment checks, this was not the first such case come across by their office, which had always looked the other way in the past. After all, times were hard up there.
The legal adviser stared at him intently, her freckles pale in the afternoon sunlight. Did she still roam the world for opera? wondered Molkho, who had himself given music short shrift in recent months. Looking down at the desk, he phrased his defense of Ben-Ya’ish carefully while the director sat listening in silence. “So you think everything is just fine up there?” the legal adviser interrupted mockingly, as though he were a clearly hopeless case. “You found no problems? No irregularities?” I didn’t say that, answered Molkho patiently. “I was there twice and even stayed over one night, but I can’t say I went into it thoroughly.” “That’s obvious,” she laughed snidely, continuing to leaf through the file. But the director, though noncommittal, seemed to be on Molkho’s side; with a kind look in his direction he picked up the original file and began to thumb through it too. All at once Molkho’s fears vanished. Casually, as though the rest no longer mattered, he rose and crossed the large room to the open window, from where he watched the two of them studying the file. For a moment he just stood there. Then, feeling the need to make some overture to her, or perhaps to them both, he declared, “Why, it’s really summer!” Startled by the sound of his voice, he pointed out the window by way of illustration. “It’s always the same,” he explained. “Spring is over before you even know it.”
Part IV
SUMMER
1
BUT THAT FIRST SUMMER gave birth to a supersummer, so brutally torrid that even the nights were blistering. It started halfway through July; a firm but invisible hand blocked the sea with a wall of grimy white haze, turning the temperately hot Mediterranean coast into a brutal miasma. No matter how early you rose in the morning, a scorching wind was already blowing. The thermometer zoomed upward and stuck there. The weather was often the lead item on the news, the forecasters being called upon to explain the inexplicable in half-menacing, half-apologetic tones. Worse yet, the travel tax was suddenly doubled, forcing mass cancellations by those planning to seek relief abroad. Despairingly people flocked to the beaches, among them Molkho, who hadn’t been to the seashore for years and was only halfway through a diet meant to enhance his romantic prospects. For days on end, he ate nothing but blotchy, seedless watermelons, staring angrily every morning at the stubborn scales that registered his weight loss with agonizing slowness. The thought of all the good food that he was missing or sometimes reluctantly left on his plate enveloped him in a thin web of gloom. He was still not used to the shy promptings of sex that, having first stirred faintly in the spring, now accompanied him with gingerly steps like a stray but thoroughbred cat that had adopted him, its stiff, velvety tail sometimes brushing his thighs.
It’s high time, he thought, making his way among the bodies scattered in the sand and scrutinizing some that he hardly would have glanced at until recently. Rarely did they interest him, for nearly all seemed badly flawed and limp with the humidity, though now and then he caught a glimpse of some almost painfully attractive feature. Best of all, he liked the young mothers, who had a harried-looking glow, so different from the better-groomed singles, with their hard-bitten lust to be tanned. Stepping into the water, which toward evening resembled a salty, tepid bath, he thought, if only I could make a collage—a leg from here, a head from there, a shoulder or smile from somewhere else—I might construct someone lovable. Wading through the breaking surf, which pounded so hard at this time of year that he swallowed whole mouthfuls of it, he pushed on into deeper, calmer water, where he swam beside lone figures like himself, mostly brawny old women with helmetlike bathing caps, sometimes peeing silently while staring innocently up at a sun that seemed never to set but simply to dissipate in a white curtain of haze, after which he swam slowly back, letting the breakers cast him ashore like a corpse. Resurrected and still dripping water, he strolled through the crowd feeling like a sandwich board: See for Yourself! This Is My Body! Untouched by Death! Find Me a Woman! Often he ran into people he knew—colleagues from work, former neighbors, friends of his wife’s, doctors and staff from the hospital—and stood over them, patting his chest and chatting about the crazy weather, this second, superhot summer begotten by the first. Whether smiling or serious, they lay looking up at him as though conscious that it was not the weather but his uncontrollable lust that had brought him down to the beach, and then inquired about his children and mother-in-law, shaking their heads upon hearing how well the old woman was doing, as if amazed that her daughter’s death hadn’t done her in too. Sometimes, to cheer him, they would tell him the latest news about who else was dying of cancer, which was often no news at all, since he had already seen the victim in the hospital, slipping with a frightened look through the doors of the oncology ward, so that he stood there inattentively glancing at the mountains, from which the gray smoke of forest fires had been rising all summer long, aware of their trying to guess whether he had gotten over his wife’s death—since which, incredibly enough, less than a year had gone by. At last, feeling them weary of him, he uno
btrusively went off to dry himself and dress, returning home to a cruelly long and too brightly lit evening of Volume I of Anna Karenina, which he would have put down long ago, were it not for the pleas of his daughter, now discharged from the army and vacationing in Europe. “Don’t give up, Dad. It’s a really good book. Why don’t you try to finish it?”
And then, in the first week of August, the supersummer begat a superbaby of its own, the whitest and most devilish of them all: the air rolled over and died, the sun approached meltdown, and a livid sky shut out the world while hordes of newly arrived black Jews from Ethiopia staged protest marches on the roads that sent the mercury shooting even higher. You’re lucky to be out of this hellhole, Molkho whispered through parched lips to his dead wife upon rising each morning. There was talk of mysterious sunspots, yet Europe was deluged by rain, and most likely the culprit was a stubborn high-pressure front that refused to budge from the Turkish-Iranian frontier. Shown on television, it resembled a shapeless, odorless, irregularly formed amoeba, and for a moment, thinking that it might be connected to her too, that it was perhaps her last signal from galactic space before streaking to her final annihilation, Molkho was gripped by the transcendent fear that this strange, abstract blob was all that was left of his wife.
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