Molkho fell silent in frustration and turned his attention to the men, who were hanging on the little Russian’s words, which Mr. Shimoni summarized for his guests in German, with a running commentary of his own. Slighted to find his presence treated as a mere technicality, Molkho demanded a translation into Hebrew, and so received a summary of the summary. At first, apparently, one of the Soviets had asked Miss Zand to sign an anti-Israel declaration, which she was perfectly willing to do, but at the last minute he changed his mind. Then someone else began to question her about her absorption center in Israel—especially about immigrants from Ethiopia, who seemed to arouse great interest—only to go on to something else. And so she had been passed from official to official, each of whom, she reported, had been friendly and eager to help, indeed even proud of her, yet unable to do a thing. “What did I tell you!” said Mr. Shimoni, jumping up and walking about. “They can’t make unroutine decisions. They’re paralyzed by their own bureaucracy!” Smiling in agreement, his two guests added something in German.
And yet, though Molkho tried hard to follow the conversation, even to participate in it, he soon found himself excluded and had to content himself with staring at his Russian, who sat glumly gripping her second glass of Scotch, a twice-failed émigrée. Finally, tired and feeling the need to take some action, he put down his cup of tea and rose to go. “But why so soon?” asked Mr. Shimoni, who seemed sorry to see them leave. “We’ve imposed on you quite enough,” insisted Molkho, adding something about the unseasonably warm weather while beckoning to Miss Zand and nodding good-bye to old Mrs. Shimoni and her guests. By the open door of the elevator, to which he clung as if refusing to part with them, Mr. Shimoni asked Molkho about his day. “I went to the Vienna Woods,” Molkho told him. “In fact, I enjoyed it, though I never got to see the zoo.” “What a pity,” said Mr. Shimoni. “Will the two of you be staying in Vienna or are you going straight back to Israel?” “No, we’re not,” replied Molkho, annoyed to be permanently coupled with the little Russian. “If I’ve come this far to get her into Russia, I’ll look for another way—one that’s less bureaucratic.”
16
AT THE CRACK OF DAWN, Molkho left his room with his suitcase and rapped nervously on the little Russian’s door. She was fully dressed, packed, and ready. Why, I just had to put my foot down like a man and she’s my slave! he congratulated himself, seizing the steamer trunk by its handle and dragging it to the elevator. If only someone had told me about this damn thing, I could have put some wheels on it, he thought. Two is all it would have needed.
Now, however, there was no time even for one. In fact, he was in such a hurry that he skipped breakfast, though it was included in the price of the room, and paid the bill without question, asking only that the desk clerk order a taxi with a roof rack. In the train station, an immense, bustling place still chill with the vapors of dawn, he had a moment’s panic that his little Russian might vanish again; but when he warned her not to, her eyes filled with tears, and indeed, she clung to him anxiously, tagging after him as he looked for their train while glancing back now and then as instructed to make sure that their porter was following.
They found their train, car, and compartment and managed to hoist the trunk onto the overhead rack, where it miraculously fitted right in. But of course, it’s an old railroad trunk! thought Molkho in amazement just as an elderly conductor passing down the aisle insisted that they take it back down again. Unable to convince him that it wasn’t a public menace, Molkho tried pushing it under a seat, attempted to put it on top of one, and finally dragged it to the baggage car behind the locomotive, where it was given a yellow tag, for which he paid a schilling and was handed a receipt.
He hurried worriedly back to his compartment, but the little Russian was sitting dutifully where he had left her, her face bathed in morning light. Has she gotten prettier or have I just gotten used to her? he wondered, gazing out the window at the arriving passengers. Distant music reached him from the train or station, and he shut his eyes, tired but pleased despite his sleepless night. You can’t say I haven’t tried, he said mentally to his mother-in-law, for whose sake he was doing all this. The air breaks hissed underneath him, and the train glided out of the station. But, throwing an arm across his face, he refused to watch or even glance at his companion, whose eyes, he felt sure, were on him. There’s time for that, he told himself, the ever-louder rattle of the wheels and car joints lullabying him to sleep, even as he sensed her slipping out of the compartment. Let her roam, he thought with a smile. This is one place she can’t run away from.
She was in the buffet when he awoke, chatting with a Russian soldier. Pretending not to recognize her, he ordered a container of coffee, returned with it to his seat, and reached into his briefcase for Anna Karenina, which he was determined to finish once and for all. So far, so good, he thought, checking to see how many pages were left. It’s still eight hours to Berlin. Five pages an hour is all that it will take.
17
WORDS WERE UNNECESSARY, the visiting card of the little hotel being all the taxi driver needed. But he could not drive up to it, for a large trench barring the street forced them to unload their luggage a block away despite the cold, rainy night. “Wait here, I’ll be right back,” said Molkho softly, leaping carefully over the trench with a suitcase in each hand and heading for the hotel, the little lobby of which, he was happy to see, was as neatly crammed with bric-a-brac as ever. Standing in a dignified black suit behind the small bar, where he was arranging bottles and glasses, the owner recognized Molkho at once, and Molkho shook his hand warmly, pleased to be remembered after so many months, if only because of his sleeper and a borrowed thermometer. In any event, here he was again with two suitcases, a trunk up the street that he needed some help with, and a new companion who would no doubt sleep well too. At once, someone dashed off to fetch the trunk and the little Russian, while someone else opened the register to look for Molkho’s name and room number. Alas, neither was there—the reason being, Molkho explained, that he hadn’t made a reservation, having just arrived unexpectedly from Vienna. Anxiously the register was consulted again before it was triumphantly announced that there was a room available and that if the guests would hurry up to it and change, they might still be in time for the opera.
But there remained a small hitch. “I don’t want one room; I want two rooms,” declared Molkho with a worried look at his little Russian, who had just arrived with her trunk and collapsed into a chair, her eyelids drooping with fatigue, oblivious of the swords and old maritime maps hanging over her. “Two roomps?” echoed the Germans sadly. “Two roomps again?” Doubtfully they rechecked the register, but there were no two roomps, only van roomps, and that, too, by a stroke of luck. “Only van roomps?” asked Molkho softly with a despairing glance at the little dining room that was already set for breakfast. He crossed the lobby, which seemed to have grown even tinier, and peered through the open door of the kitchen behind the reception desk. Everything looked dearly familiar. By the elevator the trunk and suitcases were impatiently waiting. “Can’t you find another room?” he pleaded with the proprietor. “But how?” asked the German with an ironic look at his puritanical guest who traveled around the world two-roompsing different women. “All right,” sighed Molkho, giving in and handing them his passport, for it was getting dark outside and the little Russian was exhausted. “We’ll start with van roomps and see.”
The grandfather of the family was summoned from the kitchen to celebrate the capitulation. He, too, recognized the newcomer at once and even made some German joke that led to peals of laughter. I certainly made an impression, thought Molkho, taking the elevator with his Russian to the second floor, where they were given a room next to the legal adviser’s—in fact, so like it, apart from the picture on the wall, that Molkho was flooded with warm memories. Soon they were joined by the suitcases and the trunk (which Prussian ingenuity fitted into a closet that would have defeated the Austrians) and were left to unpack, th
e little Russian laying her coat and jacket on the bed that she would have to share with him. How, he wondered, should he tell her? “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” he announced, hoping she might realize by herself. Then, her Hebrew vocabulary having reached the vanishing point as it always did when she was tired, he repeated, “I will be back soon.”
18
HE BYPASSED THE ELEVATOR and bounded down the narrow, familiar stairs two at a time, though once in the lobby he couldn’t say what the rush had been. Perhaps he simply wished to chat with the proprietor, who was already pouring a drink for his first customer, a dark, quiet Indian in evening dress. Were there any other reasonably priced hotels in the vicinity? Molkho asked, still looking for a way to find two roomps. Not that he knew of, frowned the German. That is, there was an establishment a few blocks away, but it didn’t cater to the best clientele and wasn’t clean; indeed, he couldn’t recommend it at all for a foreign woman. “I see,” nodded Molkho, eyeing the chairs in the lobby, from which perhaps a makeshift bed might be rigged.
Meanwhile, shaking drops of rain from his battered jacket, the tall student arrived with his books for the night shift and smiled a friendly hello. Whatever you say about her, thought Molkho of the legal adviser, she knew how to pick a place with the human touch. “Are the old prices still in effect?” he asked the student, who was organizing himself at the desk. They were indeed. And would his room be available the following night too? It most certainly would be. And how about the night after that? The night after that was a problem. “Well, then,” declared Molkho, his anxiety abating, “hold it for tomorrow anyway.”
Through the open door of the kitchen, he could see the family getting ready for dinner. The grandfather clock on the wall struck eight, and more courtly Indians began descending from above, some with white, sacerdotal turbans. Off to the opera, they filed past the desk to hand their keys to the student, who deftly hung each dove-shaped holder over its cubbyhole until there were eleven little pendulums in a row, all swinging slowly to a stop, so that Molkho, who held the twelfth in his hand and didn’t feel at all tired after napping on the train, had an urge to hand it in too, go dine on wurst and fries in his working-class restaurant, and take in an opera himself, perhaps even his lost Don Giovanni. But, instead, he climbed slowly back up the stairs, passed his old number Seeks, now inhabited by turbaned Sikhs, and knocked lightly on the little Russian’s door.
There was no answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. If she’s fallen asleep, so much the better, he thought—but just then he heard a barefoot patter and she came to the door, a little woman barely taller than a child. “We have a problem,” he smiled glumly. “This is the only room there is, which means I’ll have to sleep in it too.” Far from sounding despairing, however, the gusty sigh he sat down with seemed to say that this was but a minor setback in a boldly conceived plan that not only had brought them safely in a matter of hours from Vienna to Berlin but had deposited them unerringly on the doorstep of a hotel that actually had a free room, though unfortunately only one. No, he thought as she gaped at him with her big and slightly bleary eyes, I have nothing against those baby blues at all, but they definitely do not turn me on. Still, concerned for her faith in the honorable intentions of the middle-aged widower she was entrusted to, he began to pace up and down, trying to overlook the clothing she had flung all over the room. Suppose she had some organic deformity that a night with her would reveal? After all, there must be some reason she was single, some hidden flaw that might not come to light in airports and department stores but only in more intimate circumstances. Could she be missing a breast? He would have liked to stroke her curly head paternally, but unsure if the gesture would meet with her approval, he tried thinking more practically, for time was passing and they still had to eat and get to sleep if they were to rise refreshed in the morning, when they would try to find a hole in the Iron Curtain big enough for her to slip through.
He began unpacking his things, for which as usual there were not enough hangers. (The reason hotel hangers were always in short supply, his wife had once explained to him, was the management’s fear that desperate guests might hang themselves on them, a theory perhaps less farfetched than it seemed.) Opening the closet, he removed the steamer trunk, which left no space for anything else, carried it as gently as a baby’s casket to the side of the bed, and made of it a table for his suitcase, from which he took out his toilet articles and the clothes for Paris that he wished to keep from getting creased. Had the double bed had two mattresses, he could have laid one on the floor, but he was not about to sleep on the bare rug, nor for that matter in a chair. With a smile at the barefoot Russian, who stood mesmerized by his flurry of activity, he entered the bathroom and locked the door behind him. The sink was full of soaking laundry, pairs of underpants and bras whose suds aroused in him a flicker of hope. Should he take them out and hang them up? In the end he used the faucet in the bathtub, where he washed and brushed his teeth before placing his toothbrush beside hers in its cup on a basis of perfect equality. Silently he peed into the toilet bowl, surprised at how clearheaded he felt. Should he phone his mother-in-law that he was back in Berlin or keep it as a surprise.
19
IF YOU’D LIKE TO CHANGE into fresh clothes, I’ll wait for you in the lobby,” said Molkho, translating each word into sign language. Still aghast at having her porter for a bedmate, the little Russian sat slumped on the messy bed with her plump legs spread outward and stared at him in a trance. “We’ll have a bite to eat,” said Molkho, “and then I’ll show you around and perhaps even take you to the wall. Just dress warmly, because the autumn nights here are freezing, though that’s something I needn’t tell a Russian.”
He put on his coat, reached for the key, and then left it for her in the door, hoping she didn’t blame him for their predicament, which could have befallen any two travelers. Having seen their guests off to the opera, the friendly Germans were dining in their kitchen, and Molkho put on his bifocals for a better view of them. Time passed. Had the little Russian gotten her signals crossed again? At last, the elevator opened and out she stepped in an old gray raincoat with a funny, matching beret. She had begun to understand him so much better without improving her Hebrew one bit that he was beginning to wonder if language was humanly necessary.
20
THE SAME DRIZZLE that had greeted them at the railroad station was still falling in the reddish haze of the streetlamps. They crossed some boards laid over the trench (the dirt from which, Molkho noticed, pleased to see that the city was built on its own ruins, was full of smashed brick, rotted sacking, rusty iron, and bits of broken glass) and walked to the restaurant. It was practically empty, its low prices unchanged, as were its greasy menus. While waiting for the two beers he ordered, he thought of breaking the ice with a joke about Russian politics making strange bedfellows but was discouraged by her timid look.
After supper he took her to window-shop in the little streets of the quarter, but she seemed so exhausted that he decided she had best go to bed. It was ten o’clock when they returned to the hotel. “If you’re tired, go to sleep,” he said, letting her into the room and going downstairs to telephone his mother-in-law from the lobby, where he asked the student to place a collect call to Israel. The old lady, however, was not in. Smiling at the thought of an eighty-three-year-old woman being out on the town at such an hour, he sat down to wait and try again. The lobby was pleasantly quiet: the Indians were still at the opera, the student was engrossed in his books, and one of his sisters was setting the breakfast tables in the dining room. I just pray we get through the night, Molkho thought, leafing through some German magazines. Not that there’s any reason not to. Whatever happens, if it happens at all, is up to her. He sat there for almost an hour, missing his wife, who would have liked such a civilized place, until the Indians began drifting in, contentedly chock-full of music. What opera had they seen? he wondered, watching them collect their keys and go upstairs. He rose and asked the sleepy st
udent to place another call, but again there was no answer. Now he was beginning to worry. Why, he thought, casting a glance at the swords in their cabinets which seemed smaller than he had remembered them, they’re nothing but overgrown daggers! If I had come here with Ya’ara, everything might have been different. The student spread a mattress for himself in a corner and began to turn out the lights.
It was midnight when Molkho took the trusty elevator up to the second floor and opened the door of the room, relieved to find it dark and pungent with innocent sleep. Breathing softly and moving like a cat, he slipped off his shoes and took out his pajamas while casting a wary look at the woman in bed. Had she kept to her side of it or would she have to be rolled back? Though it was hard to tell in the dark, he saw no signs of trespassing. Just then however, scotching his optimism, her young body tossed restlessly. Hurrying to the bathroom, he shut the door and switched on the light. The little room had been the scene of intense activity and was so full of steam that he had to wipe the mirror to see himself. The laundry from the sink had been draped over the radiator with a frank lack of inhibition, and he fingered a pair of panties to see if they would be dry by the morning. Indeed, they would be. He was already undressed when he recalled that he hadn’t taken his daily shower. Afraid to wake his sleeping companion, he considered skipping it; but loyalty to his dead wife prevailed and he turned on the water, hoping the sound would blend with her dreams. As he was about to put on his pajamas he noticed they were missing several buttons. My God, he thought bitterly, I should never have agreed to van roomps! But it was too late for needle and thread, and so he switched off the bathroom light and groped his way toward the bed, sensing the little Russian’s eyes opening in the darkness. Though his side of the sheet was warm about the ankles, a sure sign that her feet had crossed the border, she had left him plenty of room. Turning his back to her, he curled up in a fetal ball. The night will pass quickly after all, he told himself, relaxing in the restful silence. It’s a good thing the hotel is full of Indians and not Italians or Greeks. Just then, however, he noticed her breathing, a faint suck of air like a whistle, almost a light snore. Though it was not at all loud or rasping, he felt stunned. I’ve been sleeping alone for too long, he thought, but I’ll get used to it right away.
Five Seasons Page 35