8
A FEW DAYS LATER some men came to install the bars and Molkho left work early to be on hand when they arrived. In the middle of all their hammering and drilling, he suddenly spied Uri, tall, pale, and bony, standing in the doorway with his black cowboy hat in one hand. “I thought I’d come see where you lived,” said his counselor matter-of-factly, stepping inside. “It’s an awfully nice area. Is anyone else here?” “Just some workers,” replied Molkho, offering him a drink. His counselor declined. “No thank you, I’m fasting today,” he said, entering the living room and glancing at the books on the shelves. “They’re putting up some bars,” explained Molkho. “Bars?” asked the visitor, vaguely interested. “I told you I had a burglary,” Molkho reminded him, bringing him to the bedroom to see where the thief had broken in. “What a view!” marveled Uri, saying hello to the two workers, who were drilling holes in the wall by the window. “And the air is so fresh up here. Does that wadi down below have a name?” “I wouldn’t know,” Molkho said, feeling proud of the splendid green ravine. “But it must,” said his counselor. “Not necessarily,” reasoned Molkho. “This neighborhood isn’t very old. It was only developed in the last twenty years or so.”
His counselor said nothing and looked curiously around him, his glance falling on Volume I of Anna Karenina, which lay on the bed that the workers had moved from the window. “Are you reading that?” he asked. “Yes,” Molkho said. “For the first time?” asked his counselor warmly, picking up the book and leafing through it caressingly with his long, thin fingers. “Yes,” Molkho confessed. “I never got around to it before. Back in school, if you remember, all they ever gave us to read was a bunch of boring Hebrew authors.” His counselor looked at him curiously. “Do you like it?” “Yes,” replied Molkho, “as a matter of fact, I do. Sometimes it’s a bit on the dull side, but it’s really quite moving, all that business about Anna leaving her husband and child for love. I wonder how it ends. I don’t suppose very happily.” “No,” said his counselor gently. “In the end she kills herself.” “She does?” cried Molkho distraughtly. Uri nodded. “She does?” he repeated. And seeing that the visitor was not about to change Anna’s fate just for him, he added, “I wish you hadn’t told me that. But why? Does Vronsky leave her?” “Oh no,” said Uri. “He stays with her, but she loses all sense of freedom. Since her husband won’t divorce her, her affair remains a scandal, only now she’s no longer at liberty to break it off. And being an unusually independent woman, she feels trapped.”
Molkho nodded, even though he didn’t quite follow. The drilling started deafeningly up again. “When did you read it?” he shouted over the noise. “Oh, years ago,” smiled Uri, “but I never forget a book.” Carefully he laid the open volume down on the bed. “And how’s Ya’ara?” shouted Molkho, reddening. “She’s fine,” said his counselor. “What did she have to say about my visit?” asked Molkho. “What did she think of me?” “She thought a great deal of you,” replied Uri. “She said you hadn’t changed at all, that you’re exactly the same.” “I am?” laughed Molkho, feeling injured all over again. “But how can that be?” “She meant the kind of person you were,” explained Uri. “That you were just as she remembered you—quiet, patient, and a bit depressed.” “Depressed?” Molkho gave a start. “How?” But his counselor simply stood looking at the room. “Is this where your wife died?” he asked. “Yes, right here,” said Molkho mournfully. “In this bed?” “Oh no,” Molkho explained. “She had a special hospital bed with a water mattress to prevent bed sores.” And while his counselor played absentmindedly with his hat, he proceeded to describe how the room had been arranged and what other apparatuses had been in it. “There was a rabbi in Jerusalem who had the same thing,” said Uri when Molkho was finished. “But he recovered.” “But that’s impossible!” exclaimed Molkho resentfully. “It couldn’t have been the same thing! Everyone makes the same mistake. They think one cancer is just like another, but there are hundreds of different varieties. Believe me,” he said, his head bobbing up and down excitedly, “that’s one thing I know something about.”
Uri looked at him expressionlessly, preferring not to argue. Slowly he passed out of the bedroom and through the living room toward the still open front door, in which, dressed only in a bathing suit, red-skinned and caked with salt, appeared the high school boy, just returned from the beach. “This is Gabi, my younger son,” Molkho introduced him to the visitor, who shook his hand heartily. “Just imagine, Uri was once my counselor in a youth movement!” “Why, he’s a big fellow already. He must be nearly army age!” said Molkho’s counselor with satisfaction. “You know,” he added once the boy, who did not seem thrilled by the meeting, had gone off to his room, “when I see such big children, I actually feel jealous. Where at my age will I find the patience to stand rocking cradles in the middle of the night?”
The workers announced that they were finished and asked Molkho to come look. His heart sank when he did, for the window facing the ravine was now barred by an ugly silver grid that was blackened by solder at the edges and seemed to disfigure the whole house. Angry without knowing at whom, he paid the two men, and they left.
His counselor had now reached the kitchen in his slow tour of the house and was so impressed with its neatness that Molkho had to tell him all about the cleaning woman, who came three times a week. Barely listening, however, Uri simply nodded. “Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?” Molkho asked. “No,” said Uri, “I already told you I’m fasting today.” “But why?” asked Molkho. “For my sins,” replied his counselor with a wry laugh at Molkho, who followed him hypnotically to the door. They shook hands in silence. “Well, what do you think?” asked the visitor. “We may as well try,” whispered Molkho anxiously. “What’s there to lose?”
9
THE SUN WAS STILL ABLAZE in the west that Friday evening when Omri, the college student, arriving for dinner with his grandmother, saw the new bars and let out a howl of protest. The old woman, too, though refraining from comment, was clearly displeased with the change. “You could at least have left room for a few flowerpots,” exclaimed the student angrily. “It would have looked less like a jail window then!” Molkho hurried to admit his mistake: “You’re right, I didn’t think. I had no one to ask. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter—I’ll have it changed, I promise they’ll replace it, I don’t care what it costs, I’m not even going to paint it.” So ardent were his apologies that it took all of them together to calm him down.
Later, when he and Omri stood on the terrace watching the sun dissolve in the evening heat, he told him about Ya’ara—the whole story (“Her husband wants to give her to me; he was once a counselor of mine”) now seeming distinctly odd to him. Yet, the more his son listened, the more his initial skepticism gave way to sympathy, his face softening especially when told that the woman was several months his father’s senior. “What’s there to lose?” Molkho almost pleaded, with which his son agreed. “Maybe she’ll come tomorrow night and stay for a few days. Gabi is going off on some hike in the morning, which is just as well, because he may not like the idea. Do you think I should tell him tonight or wait until he gets back?” “But why shouldn’t he like the idea?” asked the college student. “If you’d like, I’ll talk to him now.” “No, you’ll just spoil his hike for him,” said Molkho, unconvinced. “We’d better wait. Let me be the one to tell him.”
Though he considered asking his mother-in-law’s opinion when he brought her back to the home after dinner, he was reluctant to involve her. Because of the heat she was wearing a light, almost transparent white blouse that made him feel he could see right through her body, which struck him as being the color of green soap. “I’m off to Jerusalem again tomorrow,” he told her as she slowly opened the door of the car. “I’m glad you’re seeing so much of your mother,” she replied sympathetically. “I know how lonely she must be.” “It’s not just to see her,” he said cautiously. “That is, it’s her too, but mainly I’m going to meet
some old school friends who have gotten religion.” Were they friends of her daughter’s too? the old woman wanted to know. “No,” Molkho said. “I hadn’t seen them for years and then suddenly they turned up.” “Has religion gotten you also?” she asked. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if she was being cunning or simply slipping up in her Hebrew, which had gotten worse in the past year, her German accent becoming more pronounced. “No,” he told her, “not at all,” though sitting there worriedly by the open car door, she did not seem reassured. “Maybe they think they can influence you because of your wife’s death?” she asked. “But they don’t,” he replied, irritably regretting having told her. “It has nothing to do with religion. It’s something else entirely.” He could feel his pulse quicken. “What kind of something else?” he was sure she would ask, but she simply sat there while the passing headlights of a car threw her face into bright relief. Suddenly, though he felt guilty for thinking it, he wished she would die. She’ll just get in my way, even if she never says a word, he thought bitterly, waiting for her to disappear through the large glass door of the home.
There was no chance to talk the next morning to the high school boy, who awoke as usual at the last minute, collected his things frantically, and vanished with the brief announcement that he would be back Monday night. Not that it matters, thought Molkho; in fact, by then Ya’ara will most likely be gone. Though at first he thought of giving her the college student’s room, which had the best view of the ravine, its walls looked so naked that he decided on his daughter’s room instead. Removing some of her clothes from the closet and chest of drawers, he found an old pair of fossilized-looking slippers that had belonged to his wife and, after sniffing them lightly, tossed them in the garbage pail. Then he stripped the sheets from the bed, put them in the washing machine, and opened all the windows to air out the house before leaving for Jerusalem.
He set out in midmorning, happy that his vulnerable window was protected by heavy bars, and drove straight to his mother’s, where lunch was waiting for him. First, though, he went to wash, taking a cold shower because the boiler was out of order, so that he yowled and beat his chest and rushed into the arms of a dry towel, feeling like a new man. Peering into the medicine cabinet, he found an appealingly scented old bottle of his mother’s perfume and dabbed himself with it. Now was the time to break the news to her.
She listened in heavy silence, neither for nor against, though clearly disapproving of Ya’ara’s lack of economic independence. “If you expect it to work,” she declared at last, “you’ll have to become a little bit religious yourself, at least enough to suit her.” “But they don’t care about that at all,” he replied scornfully. “Why, she doesn’t even believe in God. It’s just something she goes along with!” And yet all at once he felt certain that nothing would come of it and that his counselor would never give her up. But I’ll go to bed with her anyway, he promised himself, because after all, I did love her once. “I need to rest,” he told his mother. “I have a long night ahead of me.” Yet, once in his old room, he couldn’t fall asleep.
Toward evening the Jerusalem skies clouded over unseasonably. Checking the calendar, he was astounded to see how late the Sabbath ended. It’s no wonder the religious are up in arms about daylight saving time, he thought as he drove at nine-thirty to the project, which seemed dark and quiet, as if the Day of Rest were being held prisoner. The elevator, too, was nearly empty, its only other passenger a small boy with blond earlocks who stood peeling off the chrome paint of the buttons with his fingernails. Getting off at the wrong floor, Molkho wandered down a long, dark corridor in search of the stairs, passing curious tenants until he nervously arrived at the right apartment.
His counselor opened the door. “So you’re here,” he smiled glumly, a saturnine flush in his cheeks. “You really are going through with it!” “I am?” gulped Molkho guiltily. “How is that?” His counselor laid a light hand on him. “I was afraid you’d get cold feet. But come in, come on in.”
Yet, when he entered, there was only darkness and an open suitcase on the bed where Ya’ara had lain the last time. The apartment was chilly, perhaps because the windows and shutters had been closed against the sun all day long, and smelled as if the Sabbath, trapped between its walls for over twenty-four hours, had begun to go bad. “I’ll get her,” declared Uri, reaching for his hat and explaining that Ya’ara had gone to visit a sick friend in the next building. “No, don’t go yet,” requested Molkho, blocking the way. “I have to tell you that I still don’t know what to make of all this, that I feel like I’m in a strange dream. Not that I’m against arranged matches. If they were good enough for the Middle Ages, they’re good enough for me. But I’m asking you again, why me? Why not someone else?”
“It happened by pure chance,” whispered his counselor to Molkho, who replied, feeling weak as if with stage fright, “Where do you get the strength for all this? I feel that I’m completely in your hands, that this whole thing is humanly incredible, that it will be a miracle if it works. I’ve already told my mother and elder son and was amazed it didn’t shock them, because I’m still in shock myself. Are you sure you’ve thought it through?” His counselor was listening with his eyes shut, as if to a musical theme. “You say I once loved her, but what difference does that make now? And there’s something else I don’t get either: does your divorcing her just depend on me?”
“No,” said his counselor, opening his eyes, “it depends on me too.” He smiled faintly and patted Molkho’s back. “And on her,” Molkho pointed out logically. “She’s already agreed,” smiled his counselor again. “But what does she know about me?” asked Molkho in alarm. “I’m not so easy to get along with. In fact, I was even accused by someone of causing my wife’s death.” “Forget it,” said Uri unconcernedly. “Don’t listen to what other people say. Listen to yourself. Your life is your own now.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late,” Molkho said. “I’d like to get an early start.” “I’ll go get her,” said his counselor. “I really don’t know what can be keeping her.”
Molkho walked about the small apartment, in which he now took an almost proprietary interest, even entering the little bedroom to inspect the open suitcase. In it were some dresses and a pair of slippers, the thought of whose arrival in his Haifa home made him tingle expectantly. Packed away, too, was a large, mysterious package of absorbent cotton and a small jar of red pills bearing the label of a local pharmacy. Was she still bleeding from her miscarriages? Would she be penetrable or blocked by debris? Was he meant to heal her or put her out of her misery? For he did want to heal her, he thought.
Through the bedroom window, the only one open in the house, a mild scent of pine trees was borne on the cool breeze that drifted in from the Jerusalem night. Staring at the carelessly made bed, he suddenly felt that everything about it—the pillows, the blankets, even the scattered books—reeked of endless fornication. For a moment he froze; yet hearing the rumble of the elevator in the hallway, he hurried back to the living room just as the front door opened. She was alone, dressed in a checked jumper that stressed her little belly, loafers with white bobbysocks folded schoolgirlishly over them, and a tight kerchief that she removed and tossed on the table while shaking out her gray hair. “I see Uri found you,” he said, still not sure how he felt about her. Should he offer to shake hands? Not that it matters, he thought—yet he gave her his hand and she took it in her own as if not quite knowing what to do with it. “I was paying a sick call, but I’m already packed,” she explained, stepping into the bathroom to collect her toilet articles as her husband entered the apartment. “All right,” said Molkho’s counselor, “let’s go. We don’t want to take all night. Are you sure you have everything?” he asked, shutting the suitcase and carrying it outside. “Yes,” said Ya’ara after a moment’s thought. “What about toothpaste?” he asked. “She’s not going to the wilderness,” put in Molkho, who had been listening nervously. “But your book, you forgot your book,” exclaimed Uri,
and she returned to the little bedroom and slipped it into her bag before putting her kerchief back on. They turned off the lights. “Wait a minute,” said Molkho’s counselor, opening the windows to let in the cool air while Molkho, dazzled by the great clusters of lights on the hillsides, remarked, “I don’t know a single one of all those new neighborhoods. I couldn’t even tell you which are Jewish and which are Arab.” Neither Uri nor Ya’ara responded. As though suddenly gripped by a powerful emotion, their attention seemed focused elsewhere.
They slipped through the building in their religious garb, which looked half like a disguise and half like an exotic costume. Opening the baggage compartment of his car, Molkho laid the suitcase in it while his counselor, who had decided to drive with them to the city limits, sat in the front seat with his wife behind him. With a sinking feeling, Molkho glanced at her in the mirror, her kerchiefed face small, lined, and gray, framed by the dusky night. It’s what I get for not looking harder, he thought bitterly, for expecting others to do it for me. Slowly he backed out of the parking lot and drove to the outskirts of town, stopping by a yellow filling station at the point where the road began its long plunge to the coast. “Do you need gas?” asked his counselor, getting slowly out of the car as if loath to part with them. “No, I have plenty,” said Molkho impatiently. “And where should Ya’ara sit?” inquired Uri, “in the front or in the back?” “In the front,” answered Molkho. “It’s more comfortable and safer, because of the seat belt.” His counselor opened the front door for her, and the two men helped belt her in. “Are you all right?” asked Uri nervously. She nodded with a dutiful smile. “Just a minute,” declared Molkho, noticing how cramped she was, “let’s give you some more legroom.” He bent toward her to pull her seat handle while his counselor pushed her back, the smell of her sweat making her seem very real. “How about taking a soldier?” asked Uri as several hitchhikers in uniform began crowding around the car. “I’d rather not,” said Molkho. “You never give lifts to soldiers?” Ya’ara asked. “Yes, I do, but not now,” he answered crossly. “Maybe later, when we reach the coast.”
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