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WINTER
MOLKHO’S WIFE DIED in early autumn, toward the end of September, and at the beginning of January he left for Paris. They had been together in that city three times, each time reconfirming their special love for it. Now, the fourth time, he arrived by himself. His wife’s cousin, who was ten years her junior, and her husband, a non-Jewish doctor, hugged him hard at the airport and bundled him off to their home, where they so insisted he stay with them that he abandoned his original plan of putting up at his old hotel. As if feeling guilty for merely sending him a telegram instead of coming to the funeral, they showered him with warmth. On the first night they did not go out at all. Once more Molkho told the story of his wife’s death, describing the days before and after it, enjoying sharing all its details with his two eager listeners. The doctor asked professional questions and Molkho did his best to answer them, though he did not know many of the medical terms in French or how to pronounce the names of the drugs. It was late when they turned in. His hosts lived in four small rooms, one of which belonged to their eight-year-old daughter and year-old son, and though at first they had planned to put him up in it, the mess there was so great that over his loud protests they gave him their own room and spent the night in the living room. After sleeping for a year in a single bed, it was hard to get used to the width of a double one.
It was still dark out when, crawling into bed with him and babbling in French, the baby woke Molkho in the morning. Though the little fellow seemed not at all disturbed to find a stranger in his parents’ place, his mother soon appeared in a flimsy nightgown and gathered him up with an apologetic smile. Molkho, however, saw no need to apologize. After months of waking up to silence, he was greatly pleased by the morning bustle of the French family. They all left the apartment together, and after driving the girl to school and the baby to his nursery, the doctor and his wife dropped Molkho off in the Latin Quarter, where beneath a gray sky he walked the long boulevards past places he already knew and loved. As soon as the department stores opened he began to go from floor to floor, checking prices and looking for gifts.
That evening the three of them had dinner at a little neighborhood restaurant, during which the doctor and his wife questioned Molkho about Israel and its prospects. “Are you trying to commit national suicide?” the doctor kept asking with an anger of obscure origin, forcing Molkho, who explained things as best he could, onto the defensive. “I really don’t know much about politics,” Molkho confessed at last.
The next day was windy; the temperature dropped sharply and the weather forecasts on the radio had a menacing tone. Molkho joined a small bus tour to Versailles, listening to the guide’s pedantic descriptions while slowly traipsing with the other sightseers from one coldly ornate room to another. Rigidly symmetrical, the elaborate gardens of Louis XIV could be glimpsed through the windows.
Once back in Paris, he huddled in a café to warm up, waiting for his wife’s cousin, who worked as a technician in a research institute. Lively discussions of the weather went on at the surrounding tables. When the cousin arrived, they drove to pick up her daughter from school and then her son from his nursery. The children took a liking to Molkho, who was playfully physical with them. Clearly, though it did not spend much time together, the family was a boisterous one that lived in great disorder, even filth. Beneath his bed Molkho discovered some underpants and socks of ancient vintage, while, half-crawling on all fours and half-tottering on two, the baby took his food everywhere, smearing and dropping it in secret places. And yet Molkho felt at home, and his hosts did their best to feed him well and keep him in good spirits. Indeed, he ate a great deal, the cold weather doing wonders for his appetite.
On the third night of his visit they had planned to go to a small theater, but the doctor came home late from the hospital and they ended up watching television instead. Much of the news program was devoted to the weather. The announcers showed maps and diagrams, even satellite photographs, and predicted snow for the next day. Afterward, his wife’s cousin decided to call Molkho’s mother-in-law in Israel. She spoke to her in German, and at first, the old woman kept confusedly talking the same language when Molkho got on the phone. He inquired about his children, told her about Paris and the snow, and asked about the weather in Israel. His mother-in-law, however, had trouble following his questions and answered him a bit crossly, her voice slow and groping, as if his trip abroad had caused a sudden deterioration in her condition. Then he and his hosts discussed the next day, and Molkho suggested they all go to the opera; he had never been to one, he said, and had heard it was all the rage. Though the doctor and his wife, who felt bad about the missed night of theater, seemed to welcome the idea, Molkho noticed a hesitation in their voices. Opera tickets, apparently, were very expensive, and for tomorrow only the best seats would be left. Well, then, he insisted, let them be his guests! Hadn’t they saved him the cost of a hotel?
The next morning it was a few degrees colder and the city was cloaked in a chill white mist, though the promised snowstorm had not yet arrived. For three hours he stood in front of the box office, kept there only by the stubborn enthusiasm of those on line with him, some of them tourists like himself. Apparently that night’s production, which was of Mozart’s Magic Flute, was supposed to be especially good. When he finally reached the window, he saw that the prices were indeed outrageous, but he did not have the heart to walk away. The first snowflakes had begun falling outside. It was getting still colder. He thought of buying the children their presents, but the blow to his pocket was so great that he resolved to go straight back to the apartment to recuperate.
That evening they ate early and prepared the children for bed. The doctor arrived at the last minute, straight from a difficult operation, and barely had time to change his clothes. At seven the babysitter, a gorgeous teenager, arrived. It was snowing heavily, and in a gay and animated mood they decided to take the metro instead of their car.
THE OPERA WAS VERY LONG, lasting for some three hours. Parts of it were tiresome and difficult to follow, but there were others so superb and moving that he felt as if long-dead cells within him were thawing out and coming back to life. Whenever Papagano and Papagana appeared, a fresh, burgeoning breeze seemed to blow from onstage. The doctor, however, was too exhausted to sit through it; as early as the first act he began to doze, while eventually, seated between the two of them, he fell into a deep sleep, his head alternately falling on his wife’s and Molkho’s shoulders. Smiling, gently whispering, “How can you waste all that money,” they tried in vain to wake him.
It was almost midnight when they left the opera house. Unexpectedly, the sky was clear and the city was covered with a thick, white blanket of glistening snow, the public statues, the iron banisters, and the gargoyles of the houses all artfully draped with festive white bunting. Molkho had never seen Paris in the snow; suddenly he felt an inexplicable fear, worried by the thought that the flight he was scheduled to leave on in two days’ time might be canceled. From all around them came the merry shouts of surprised Parisians unable to find a cab. The metro was as crowded as during rush hour, but the snow had put everyone in a good mood. Arriving home, they found the children wide awake and excited, and after briefly debating whether it was possible to take the baby-sitter home, they decided to put her up in the children’s room for the night. A great commotion of blankets and linens ensued, and it was 2 A.M. before they were all in bed. Molkho could not fall asleep. Initially aroused by the nearby presence of the beautiful French girl, he soon found himself obsessed by the music of the opera. As on the night of his wife’s death, he turned from side to side, unable to get the themes, already confused with others, out of his head, the music of Mozart now fused with that of Mahler, so that, hearing the throbbing horns, he rose from his broad bed and tormentedly lit the small lamp. His anguish must have been felt by his wife’s cousin, who, appearing by his side with a sleeping pill and a glass of water, offered them to him with a tenderness that, he felt, he had been deprived of for many long years.
He slept late the next morning and awoke to find the house empty and an indecipherable note in French on the table. Last night’s snow shone through the window with a purplish gray gleam. He had no key to the apartment and so took his time about leaving, knowing he could not return until evening, walking aimlessly about the rooms and then leafing through magazines and picture albums until he found an old photograph of his mother-in-law, standing in a strange European city with a small baby in her arms who did not at all look like his wife. Perhaps it was his wife’s cousin, perhaps someone else. He kept on poking through closets and inspected the medicine cabinet, surprised by the paucity of its contents, which included only a few bottles of cough syrup and some agent against hemorrhoids.
Finally, he put on his coat and made up his mind to go out. His first stop was a travel agency whose address he had, where he confirmed his flight to West Berlin. The agency was on the second floor of a large office building, next door to a ticket office for shows and tours that was filled with sightseers from all over the world, especially from India and the Far East. After confirming his flight he asked what the weather was like in Berlin, but no one was able to tell him, and so he went back outside and walked about the city, among drifts of snow that grew slushier as the clearing blue sky grew brighter. In the side streets behind the opera house, he sternly eyed some women in large fur coats whom he took to be prostitutes intent on his business, but none of them made a move in his direction. All at once he felt anxious about Berlin. Should he perhaps call the trip off and fly straight back to Israel? His left arm, he thought, was beginning to hurt, and more depressing yet were the huge throngs of shoppers who burst out of the department stores at noontime, congesting the streets. The air was warming, filling the gutters with rivulets of melted snow. He bought a few presents and sat down to wait for his wife’s cousin in a little café opposite the nursery. For some reason, she was late, and so he decided on his own to pick up the tot, who went with him quite willingly with no questions asked, standing on the street in his winter clothes like a little red bear until his mother came running, all out of breath and wearing a most becoming shawl. She gave Molkho a grateful kiss, and noting for the first time that she looked like his wife, he felt a twinge in his heart.
When the doctor came home, they ate a delicious hot dinner while Molkho told them about his flight to Berlin, to which, he said, his office in Israel was sending him, and about his return flight via Paris, where he would only be changing planes at the airport. They seemed genuinely sorry that he would be leaving. “We’ve gotten used to you. The children are wild about you. Couldn’t you stop over for a few days on your way back?” “I’ve put you out enough as it is,” he replied, thanking them with emotion.
It was not without sorrow that he said good-bye in the morning to the comfortable bed that he had spent the last five nights in. His wife’s cousin, who had grown attached to him during the visit and found their parting difficult, insisted on taking him to the airport. She drove slowly, carelessly, in the heavy traffic, talking about his wife and about her own problems and worries. At the airport, instead of simply dropping him off at his terminal, she parked in the underground lot and came with him. At first, they had trouble finding the check-in counter. No one at the information desk had heard of the line he was flying. The two of them ran from one wing of the building to the other until at last, in the charter-flights section, they found a small counter with the airline’s name and a piece of colored cardboard on which was handwritten Voles Opera. His wife’s cousin was first amused, then angered, and finally shocked. “Why, how could they have stuck you on a flight like this? It’s meant for opera-goers! Did you sign up for an opera too?” Caught red-handed, he turned pale under questioning. It must have come with the ticket, he stammered, pretending to know nothing about it. But when he checked his suitcase and received a boarding pass made to look like a sheet of music with a violin drawn on it, she regarded him with sudden suspicion. Overcome with guilt, he went to the cafeteria and bought a large bar of chocolate for her children.
THE PLANE WAS A SMALL FIFTY-SEATER that belonged to an airline he had never heard of before. Its passengers were mostly middle-aged Indians, Japanese, and Koreans, with a smattering of Italians and South Americans. Some of them, having apparently flown together to Paris, were already acquainted, and a number passed the time on the flight studying musical scores. It was an oddity, Molkho thought, that such a plane and flight should exist at all. Soon after takeoff they climbed above the clouds into a deep blue sky and the stewardesses served peanuts and wine. After about half an hour, as they were descending again into a cloud bank, stormy music that everyone identified at once was broadcast over the sound system. “Wagner!” several passengers cried out, immediately beginning to argue among themselves about what opera it came from. In the front seat a flushed and tipsy passenger rose to his feet and began ardently singing the words to the music while everyone broke into laughter and applause. The plane was pitching slightly, immersed in a milky fog that pinkened now and then while droplets of water streamed down the windows. As if his wife’s death had only now become final, Molkho was stricken by a frightening feeling of freedom. If the plane should crash, he thought as it battled the wind and the strains of Wagner grew fainter, no one would even know what had happened to him; he should never have kept this part of his trip a secret. But at last they emerged from the clouds and stopped jouncing, flying over a flat brown terrain checked with fields, villages, and a surprising number of graveyards. Although the ground looked damp, there were no traces of snow on it. It’s insane to be traveling so far to meet when we live two kilometers apart, he thought—but somehow, beginning like this in a distant and neutral place seemed the right thing to do. Soon they landed in a small airport and were immediately driven in a quiet bus to a downtown terminal. Hearing Hebrew, he spun around instinctively, but it only turned out to be a rather noisy Israeli family burdened with many suitcases and trunks. Were they emigres? he wondered, glancing at them idly while chatting with two women standing next to him by the conveyor belt that would be bringing their luggage. They were Romanians from Bucharest, they told him, opera singers themselves, who had come for the opera in Berlin. Could it be as good as all that? marveled Molkho.
His brown valise arrived, and he took a taxi to his hotel, whose address was clipped to a page of his passport. Considering the early evening hour, the streets of the city appeared civilized and tame. Never, he calculated, looking up at the reddish sky, which glowed as though stoked from afar, had he been so far north. The thought that his wife was born and spent the first six years of her life in this city made him smile. He should have asked his mother-in-law for their old address, but that would only have made her inquire about the reason for his trip, and what could he possibly have told her? The taxi was now jolting over cobblestones, threading its way through narrow streets that clearly belonged to some old neighborhood. At last, it stopped in front of a small hotel that appeared to have only a few rooms.
The lobby, though small, was clean and uncluttered, its walls paneled with reddish wood and decorated with pictures and prints of the Nibelungs, ancient nautical maps, and glass cabinets with old swords and daggers. And yet, though it had a style of its own, Molkho suddenly found himself missing Paris, his wife’s cousin, the baby, the snow, the crowded streets. Would he have to make love to the legal adviser in one of these German rooms, he wondered, putting down his valise and reaching for his passport, or would they be content to develop their relationship through a few hugs and kisses? And yet how ludicrous for people of their age and experience to neck like teenagers! The catch was that he didn’t feel at all sexy. Not even Paris had awakened that side of him. Why, how could he even kiss her when he had no clear notion of her body yet? Not that the lines in her face were a problem—they were light and not deeply etched—but how did he know where they led when her waistline was unbeatable and the shape of her legs still a riddle? If only it were summer, he thought, there wouldn’t be so many question marks. He would have known where he stood and what he was capable of, and he would not have had to put her through all this or to fear that, if disappointed, she might take her revenge in the office. Meanwhile, the female receptionist, whose English was exceedingly primitive, had given him some forms to fill out, after which she handed him a large copper key attached to a leather holder in the shape of a dove that had the number 6 on it. “Seeks,” she said to him, and he repeated it easily after her. When he inquired about the legal adviser, however, asking if he and she were the only Israelis registered, he was astonished to be told that he was the only guest in the hotel so far. And, indeed, all the other keys were hanging in front of their cubbyholes, eleven little doves minding their nests. The thought that she planned on sharing a room with him alarmed him. It can’t be, he told himself, asking the receptionist to check again—and indeed, this time she found the legal adviser’s name, booked for another room. Taking his key with relief, he started for the elevator, as conscious of the adventure getting under way as if watching himself in a movie. He was glad, at least, that she was no longer young, because he couldn’t count on an erection; no, if they could think of this simply as a first step, like warming up a motor, it would be a good beginning. Could he have imagined several months ago that he would soon be so free and so far north? On the walls of the small but modern elevator were more old maritime maps and another little dagger in an elegant case. Berlin must be a safe place, mused Molkho, if the management needn’t worry that some drunk might grab a weapon and start using it.
His room, like the lobby, was small but clean, smelling of soap and starch. It had neither a television nor a telephone, and only two stations could be gotten on the radio, one with Germans singing and one with Germans talking. He went to the bathroom, not having relieved himself since Paris, but surprisingly, all he produced was a thin dribble, as if all the coffee, tea, and wine that had gone into him that morning, on the ground and in the air, had vanished somewhere in his bloodstream; then he opened his valise and hung all his shirts and jackets in the narrow closet. The last item was a book, Volume II of Anna Karenina. It was a novel he had never read, and seeing how Jane Austen had him stymied, his daughter had given it to him with a warm recommendation. “At least try it,” she said—but now he saw she had given him the wrong volume. He took a long shower, put on fresh underwear, and lay down on the bed with his head on the pillow, beneath which he felt something hard. It was another book, the New Testament, and he opened it, feeling that room service expected no less of him. It was in English, and the simple, homey story of Jesus and his disciples in Jerusalem made Molkho think of the Jerusalem he had known long ago, before the 1948 war, a summery city full of tension and fear, yet also of great promise and activity, with its Jewish Agency officials in dark suits, the very embodiments of Integrity and Justice, standing by the chiseled stone walls of the Terra Sancta Building and planning the Jewish State. He turned the pages, now and then stopping to read the unfamiliar tales: they may not always have been likable or logical, he thought, all those people who ran after Jesus, but they knew enough to ditch the Jews in time and cover their tracks by vanishing among the Gentiles. Shutting the book, he went downstairs, where the receptionist now was an older man with a mustache like Hitler’s, only white. The legal adviser, he told Molkho, had called just a minute ago to say she was delayed because her conference wasn’t over yet. She would be there no later than four.
HER LATENESS ANNOYED HIM, as if it was her way of saying that, unlike him, her sybaritic companion, she was here for a practical purpose. Though the hotel’s rates, which he now inquired about at the desk, were not high, he was sure she would find some way of putting them on her expense account. Not that he could do anything about it, but he had gone over enough bills at the office handed in by junketing officials to know all the tricks. In any case, he would not wait to lunch with her, as he would no doubt have to treat her to dinner and might as well have his main meal now alone; that way, they could order less later, and anyway, she was no doubt being fed at the conference. He drank coffee and ate an order of french fries with two frankfurters while jotting down some things to talk to her about in the days ahead, for he felt rather intimidated by her intelligence. Then he strolled down a long, narrow street, making sure not to lose his way while peering into clothing stores and groceries.
It was three-thirty when he returned to the hotel. This time the receptionist was a man his own age who told him in excellent English that madame had called fifteen minutes ago and was on her way to the hotel. He decided to wait for her in the lobby, by a column next to the elevator that was festooned with old maps and swords, from where he saw her rush in anxiously, followed by a cab driver carrying two suitcases. His first reaction—for he had expected her to be dressed differently—was surprise at seeing her in her familiar clothes, over which she wore her short leopard-skin coat. The receptionist, to whom she spoke in fluent German, seemed to know her well; perhaps she brings all her lovers here, thought Molkho, deciding she was definitely a complicated woman whom three years of widowhood had not simplified. With whom, he wondered, had she left her daughter? Though the receptionist was pointing in Molkho’s direction, the legal adviser was still too busy filling out forms to look up; finally, just as someone in an apron appeared from a side door, bowed, and took her luggage, she finished the last of them and glanced around. For a moment he thought of getting even by hiding behind the column; but she knew he was there, and so, with a dancerlike grace, he stepped forward, putting on his best, warmest smile and gently embracing her in the gloomy light of the short winter afternoon. The soft fur of her coat made him think of a cold dog.
She was heavily made up and had on a new perfume. “I just couldn’t get away from the conference,” she apologized. “I was elected to chair a committee and had no choice.” For the last two hours she had been on pins and needles; twice she had called the hotel to leave a message. Yes, he had received it, Molkho reassured her, but anyhow, it didn’t matter; the main thing now was for her to rest and be ready for the evening. “Rest?” she protested. Her luggage was already in her room, and she was all set to go out; perhaps she would come back to change before the opera, but she would take the tickets with her just in case. “You mean you’ll go as you are?” he asked in astonishment. “Of course,” she replied, “why not?” The opera in Berlin wasn’t formal. People came for the music, not to show off; he would see as much for himself.
There was an easy matter-of-factness about her. One could certainly learn to like her, thought Molkho, one could even learn to live with her wrinkles. “Who is your daughter staying with?” he asked. But the girl, it seemed, was independent and had preferred to stay by herself. “She even does her own cooking,” said her mother, “and it’s not the first time I’ve left her alone like this either, although she does have an uncle two blocks away.” Even if she did, replied Molkho, he was impressed by such maturity.
Once they were out in the street, she began telling him about Berlin, in which she had been before. Tomorrow, of course, they would tour the city; she already had it all planned. She was looking forward to it herself, having been cooped up at the conference for three whole days, and indeed, Molkho saw, she was window-shopping avidly, stopping every few steps to look at some new display. Once again, he felt a pang: his wife’s last dresses had been made at home by a seamstress and he hadn’t looked with a woman at a shop window for over a year. And this particular woman, with her waistline that was too low and her body that seemed rather hastily thrown together, was not even as attractive as his wife. Still, did she not have her redeeming features—a certain intellectual animation, indeed an almost feverish intensity? And she was certainly high up on the bureaucratic ladder, he thought, listening to her tell him about the conference. Was her car paid for by the office or was she not as senior as all that? He made a mental note to ask her, inquiring in the meantime about the Berlin Wall. “Would you like to see it?” she asked, stopping to look at him. “Come, I’ll show it to you now.” And turning to the right, she led him into a broad, empty thoroughfare.
A frigid wind lashed at them, laced with driving rain. “It’s damn cold,” said Molkho. “We’re almost there,” she assured him, though the wall was nowhere in sight. On the contrary, though they had entered a rather desolate area, in front of them, like a purplish gash on the horizon, were nothing but factory chimneys. And yet when he suggested asking directions, she told him she knew the way. “It can’t be far,” she said, “the wall rims everywhere,” and they plodded on block after block, the rain whipping them crosswise, Molkho, loath to be thought finicky about getting wet, saying nothing more. At last, however, she stopped to ask two passersby, who pointed in the opposite direction, and after challenging them briefly, she confessed, “I’m afraid I lost my way.” Suddenly he pitied her. After all, she had meant well, had wanted to make him a gift of the wall. And so, gripping her lightly by the elbow, he said, “Never mind,” and put his arm around her, the sidewalk being quite slippery. At once, as if she had been waiting for that, she leaned her weight against him. What an old squirrel she is, he thought, amused by his own image, for he had hardly seen a squirrel in his life. Thus, he told himself, steering her by the shoulder, the grand betrayal begins.
And perhaps his wife wasn’t born here after all, but rather in East Berlin, though of course it was a single city then. The rain was falling harder now, sleety and sharp, and they took shelter from it in a clothing store, where he could finally release the legal adviser from his grip. It was a large, nearly empty establishment, on whose listless young salesgirls their entrance made no visible impression. Aimlessly they walked past rows of pants and jackets and shelves of sweaters and knitwear, all equally sexless, until they reached a large straw basket full of hats and began to rummage through it. He watched her try on hat after hat, each pert toss of her head in the mirror a drop of refreshment on his parched heart. One, a red woolen one, was particularly becoming. “Why not buy it?” he urged, helping her translate the price from marks into shekels while thinking so hard of his wife and her lost breasts that the tears came to his eyes, for here, snugly out of the rain with him before stepping out to the opera, another woman was by his side. Though he would gladly have bought her the hat himself, especially as it was cheap, he feared this being taken for a promise he would not be able to keep. We’ll see, he thought; if all goes well, I’ll buy her something tomorrow—and anyhow, I’m treating for dinner. Meanwhile, having moved on from the hat basket, she was now browsing in the pants department. Something was pressing on Molkho’s bladder. “Just a minute, I’ll be right back,” he said, remembering how he had gone to the bathroom that night in her house. Now she was sure to think he had some disease! Well, let her, he thought; it will cool her off a bit. But if he ever really were sick, who would take care of him?
While the store was modern enough, the bathroom appeared to date from a different era: its large copper faucets were tarnished with verdigris, its toilet seats were high, narrow, and stern, its rough bars of gray soap smelled of antiseptic, and an icy draft blew through it. Urinating quickly, he returned to find the legal adviser trying on a pair of sleek black pants. Now he had a better view of her waistline and rear, which were indeed low and flabby-looking—unless it was just the cut of the pants, a new style from India. At last, without making a purchase, she promised the salesgirl she would return, though no one particularly seemed to care whether she did or not.
They walked on through the gathering dusk. It was time to eat, and after considering a few spots, they picked a modest restaurant, where they sat in a cozy corner apart from everyone, as if in a bubble all their own. He was glad their first date was not taking place in Haifa, where someone was sure to have recognized them. She ordered quickly, and her choices, he noticed, were not particularly expensive. Though she was eager to tell him about the conference, he preferred to turn the talk to her late husband, refusing to change the subject, despite the reluctance with which she answered his questions. “Very suddenly,” she said when asked how he had died. He never complained of a thing. One minute he was washing dishes in the kitchen and the next he was dead on the floor. “At first we thought it was just some pot that had fallen.” “Did he like puttering in the kitchen?” Molkho asked. “No,” she said, “not especially. He just happened to be there when it happened. And his death left a terrible vacuum.” For a whole year afterward, she hardly slept a wink, so shocked had she been. Perhaps he, who had had so much time to prepare himself, found that difficult to imagine. Yes, he had been ready for Death, admitted Molkho, struck by how, though she was doing most of the talking, her plate was empty before his. Though her table manners were impeccable, she ate much faster than he did.
Afterward, they discussed the office and politics, for which she, like his wife, had a passion. His opinions, when she pressed him for them, made her look slightly incredulous, and he could see that his mind worked too slowly and banally for her, disappointing her with its simplicity. I’d better sharpen my brain, he told himself; it’s time I thought about something besides medicines, hospital beds, orthopedic mattresses, therapeutic baths, changing linens, and playing doctor. And yet they talked for a long while until, despite her repeated assurances that he looked perfectly respectable and that no one dressed for the opera anymore, because all that mattered was the music, they hurried back to the hotel for him to change. He went to his room, turned on the light, turned it off again as though someone were watching him, and quickly began to undress. Deciding to change underpants, too, he paused to examine his penis by the reddish glow of the streetlight streaming through the thin lace curtains. “So, old man,” he whispered, morosely observing how small and scrotal it looked, like a tired gray mouse. He hurriedly put on a tie and descended to the lobby, where, freshly made up but still wearing the same dress, she was waiting; he felt annoyed that she didn’t attach the same value to clothing that he did.
It had gotten colder, and the drops of icy sleet jabbed at them like little javelins. “The snow’s following me from Paris,” he said, and she answered impishly, “I wish it would catch you already. I love it.” In the taxi she took out the German program of the opera from her handbag. “It looks like a modern piece,” she informed him. “I hope we’ll like it.” “Modern?” he asked, feeling vaguely anxious. “Yes. Experimental. My brother-in-law says he’s heard it’s good. Let’s hope we’ll think so too. Tomorrow we’ll see something more classical.” “You’ll have to explain everything to me,” he warned her, looking out at the widening streets, “because I don’t know a word of German. I’m at your mercy.” “I know,” she replied, smiling gaily while slipping a warm hand into his that sent a shiver down his spine.
His first thought upon reaching the opera house and stepping out of the cab beneath the large marquee was that they had stumbled on some college demonstration. Though he had expected to see the passengers he had flown with from Paris that morning, none were visible in the crowd, which seemed composed for the most part of young Berliners, a throng of whom surrounded them at once, asking for extra tickets. So many youngsters were unheard of at the orchestral performances in Haifa, whose elderly concertgoers seemed rejuvenated now in Berlin, quiet and well-mannered in their steel-rimmed glasses and clipped beards, so that the occasional oldster, like the tall woman leaning on her walking stick in the midst of a circle of reverently listening youths, stood out in contrast. The legal adviser, Molkho now realized, had been right, for most of those present had on jeans, army jackets, and windbreakers.
IT WAS AN OPERA from the 1930s. The overture struck up, muted but urgent, and the curtain rose on a bare canyon of a stage. Slowly, by means of a hidden effect, long strips of yellow fabric swirled across it like a sandstorm, and groups of performers, all dressed in identical black—some of them, to Molkho’s surprise, quite old—entered from the wings, dancing, singing, and even shouting, while old-fashioned street and shop signs descended from the cavernous ceiling on radiant wires. Molkho found it rather exciting, and indeed, it was very different from the opera he had seen in Paris: serious, even somber, yet electrifying the young audience, which seemed mesmerized. He did his best to concentrate, trying to banish the last twenty-four hours from his mind, yet unable to do so: the morning in Paris, the slow drive to the airport, the search for the unknown airline, his wife’s cousin’s annoyance at the sign saying Voles Opera. His eyes moved back and forth across the stage, from whose pit came music that was softly melodic and wildly discordant by turns. Had the high school boy, he wondered, remembered to shut the gas cock at night? Now the protagonists were left onstage by themselves, two men and three women who soon became involved in a tortuous operatic argument, quarreling passionately, almost murderously, and then making up again before somersaulting down a kind of manhole in the middle of the stage and popping up unexpectedly somewhere else. Gently Molkho covered his mouth with one hand, smelling his breath and reproaching himself for not brushing his teeth in the hotel, suddenly recalling that endless night a year ago when, riddled with tubes after major surgery, his wife amusedly told him that she could no longer distinguish the orifices of her body or tell what entered or exited from which, and he had listened attentively, eagerly trying to imagine the feeling, convinced that he was on the verge of a new insight, carefully probing her with questions until she fell silent and said no more. Dully he now strove to follow the performance, whose cacophonous score was giving him a headache, though the legal adviser, sitting bright-eyed beside him, seemed quite taken by it. Beneath her blouse he made out the outline of her breasts; what, he wondered, were they really like? Would he have to fondle them later that night or would a goodnight kiss be enough, leaving the next uncertain installment for tomorrow? Again he regretted having failed to brush his teeth. Feeling her eyes on him, he smiled at her dolefully. “Tell me if you understand anything,” he whispered. “It’s symbolic,” she told him. “It’s really very symbolic.” “Yes, I can see that myself,” he replied, “but of what?” Yet, though she tried explaining, he doubted she understood more than he did, and besides, they were already being shushed by the German audience, which was, it appeared, very sensitive. Considering the price of the ticket, it was odd there was no program in English. Not that it matters, he thought, shutting his eyes defensively against the violent music, which barreled on as if squeezing the life out of him, though what I need, he told himself, is some life squeezed into me, only not too quickly, for the weird clangor, he felt, shutting his eyes still tighter, was wringing him dry. He managed to drowse a bit, there being no intermission, but not for long, because suddenly the legal adviser poked him sharply and he awoke to find a floodlit stage growing still brighter and a gorgeously costumed cast breaking into an unexpectedly melodious ensemble that made him, sitting in the overflow crowd, decide it was a splendid opera after all and that, even if he didn’t understand it, that was no reason not to like it, so that he joined in wholeheartedly when the applause broke out, even rising for the standing ovation as if to make up for his catnap. “It’s true that a lot of it was over my head,” he said with a smile to the legal adviser, who, her narrow eyes appraising him, seemed baffled by his enthusiasm, “but something did get through to me in the end. I’m not sure what, but I’m certainly glad we came.”
It took a while to find the checkroom where his coat was, because they kept getting lost in the rapidly emptying corridors. Outside they discovered that the driving sleet had gotten worse. Though it was not especially late, barely half past ten, the streets were already deserted, the young audience having vanished as though into thin air, leaving only a ragged line of older people standing at the top of the steps, at whose bottom an even older footman in a black uniform and a smartly brimmed cap, a red armband on his sleeve, was trying to flag down cabs with an ancient and ineffective whistle. Feeling his companion pressing against him, Molkho allowed himself a gentle response. Did she really have the secret hots for him? But, unless he had disappointed her by falling asleep or by being such an uninspired conversationalist, the opera must have exhausted her too, for she seemed pensive and uncommunicative. Taxis were scarce and the wait was a long one. “Perhaps we should walk,” she suggested. “The hotel isn’t far, and I’m sure I can find it.” For a minute he wavered. But his faith in her sense of direction had been shaken, and the little spears of icy rain kept jabbing down. “No,” he answered, “I think we should wait for a cab,” and so they joined the long queue, which was slowly inching along.
Indeed, the flow of taxis increased, and soon they were next in line. Just then, two more cabs pulled up and the two old ladies in front of them started down the slippery steps. Though they had not exchanged a word, Molkho was sure they were together and prepared to follow them down; the legal adviser, however, held back. Sure enough, the two women climbed into a single cab and the car behind it honked softly. “Quick, it’s our turn,” he exclaimed, breaking free of his companion’s grip and darting down the rainy stairs to catch the taxi. Hurriedly, as if searching for his missing arm or afraid he wouldn’t wait, she started after him, her fur coat flapping around her. “Watch out,” he warned, seeing her stumble and then, losing her balance, pitch forward and tumble down the broad steps, stopping after three or four of them because, agile squirrel that she was, she caught herself and sat up, her face twisted in pain, one shoe on the ground behind her. Frightened, he ran back toward her, reaching her ahead of the Germans who came to the rescue too, even though he paused on his way to pick up her shoe, which looked more worn from use than scuffed. He held her arm, bending over her while she tried first telling him in Hebrew, and then the Germans in German, that she was all right. Above her ankle, where her stocking was torn, were a few drops of blood, which stirred him sadly as with an old passion. Kneeling beside her on the cold stairs, he tried helping her on with her shoe. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said crimsonly, snatching the shoe from him and getting to her feet. Then, holding it in one hand, she hobbled down the stairs and disappeared through the open door of the taxi to the relief of the bystanders, who appeared to be genuinely concerned.
Inside the taxicab, cursing under her breath, she bent down to feel her ankle. Her face looked gray and old. Although eager to remind her that he had warned her, Molkho said nothing, remembering how his wife had always hated such I-told-you-so’s. The taxi was still standing there, its driver awaiting instructions. Slowly the legal adviser got a grip on herself. “We have to give him the address,” said Molkho and she did.
He insisted, of course, on helping her up to her room. “Lie down, let’s have a look at you,” he said as she pulled off her stocking, catching a glimpse when he removed the two suitcases from her bed of an unlikely pair of red panties and an old-fashioned girdle that resembled those worn by his mother. At last, he could get a good look at her foot in the light. The bruise above her ankle, for which she let him make a compress from a washcloth, was superficial and no longer bleeding, but the ankle itself was swollen and painful, though when he tried to turn it gently, they both agreed it wasn’t broken.
SHE SMILED AT HIM and he smiled back, feeling fully awake now, his tiredness forgotten. Now she’ll see what I’m made of, thought Molkho. As she hopped to the bathroom on one small foot, he rose to have a look around the room, which was slightly larger than his own but, except for the double bed, furnished in the same Spartan style. His glance fell on familiar items in her open suitcases, such as the pink slippers she had worn that evening in her home. How strange to see them here in Berlin! He laid them neatly on the floor, took out several other things she was likely to need, put them on the table, and hung her cold, wet fur coat in the closet. He heard the toilet being flushed in the bathroom, and when she returned to the room, still hobbling but freshly combed and made up, he hurried to help her lie down, examined her foot again, and asked if she had medical insurance. Of course she did, she replied, though she had no intention of calling a doctor. “It’s nothing,” she smiled with a grimace. The puffy redness around the ankle looked edematous; he knew the symptoms, had become an expert on them during the past year. Lightly touching her foot, he searched for the point where the natural irregularity of the bone yielded to the actual swelling. He should make her a splint or ligature, something at least for the night, though it wasn’t the swelling that bothered her but the pain. Could he look to see if she had any pills? she asked, still badly flustered, especially as her back hurt now too. He poked through her toilet kit and found nothing but a few crumbly aspirins. “Here, let’s have a look,” he said, thinking how odd it was to be turning a strange woman over on her stomach. “I’ve become half a doctor this past year.” There was a faint blue contusion on her back, but when he pressed it gingerly, they agreed it was no cause for concern.
The opera seemed far away now, a forgotten figment of the imagination. Giving her two aspirins—just one would do no good—he suggested finding a drugstore and buying an athletic bandage to bind her foot for the night. “That’s hardly necessary,” she said, so clearly pleased by his solicitude that he had to warn himself not to overdo it, afraid to be trapped in a relationship that might not be at all what he wanted. At first, he proposed taking her key to let himself back in with, but she preferred to leave the door unlocked. Downstairs the hotel was quiet. The ten other keys were in their cubbyholes, a mute sign that they were still alone in the hotel.
Once again there was a new clerk at the reception desk, this time a young student, who looked up from his heavy book to give Molkho directions in excellent English, as if helping guests find drugstores in the middle of the night were routine, even drawing a map of how to get to one that was only five minutes away. Molkho took several of the hotel’s cards from a box on the counter, stuck one in each pocket in case he got lost, and, quite proud of himself for venturing out in this city behind the Iron Curtain guided by only a slip of paper, strode jauntily into the narrow streets, whose shroud of desolate fog was pierced by the lights of bars and restaurants. Before long he arrived at the drugstore, which was visible from a distance; large and well lit, it was located in what seemed to be an old church or fortress or, at any rate, an artfully renovated old building, though the giant containers of brightly colored liquids on its shelves and the large straw hampers filled with tubes and boxes gave it more the appearance of a supermarket, over which presided the druggist, a stout, jovial man in a black cravat who seemed greatly to amuse his young assistants. Indeed, every sentence he uttered aroused peals of laughter, the cause of which, Molkho concluded, could not possibly be the man’s wit but simply his buffoonish manner. Slowly Molkho walked down the aisles, enjoying the special night mood of the place, examining the rows of medicines while looking for an athletic bandage. Poking about a bit in the hampers, where he noticed several over-the-counter drugs that in Israel were sold only by prescription, he suddenly came across the most familiar of them all lying innocently in its blue-and-white box. Talwin! Lovingly he turned it in his hand, feeling all the excitement of a chance meeting with an old friend whom he had never expected to see again. He consulted the price, figuring it in shekels, and was so angered by the enormousness of the Israeli markup that he went on calculating its precise, scandalous percentage all the way to the checkout counter, only to discover upon arrival that the elderly druggist, who bore a striking resemblance to Doctor Doolittle, didn’t understand a word of English, which not only failed to prevent him from making jokes that were translated for Molkho by an assistant but inspired him, to the merriment of all, to mimic the translation too. At last, producing several athletic bandages, he laid them on the counter, and Molkho bought the next to the cheapest, having already decided that he would not let the legal adviser reimburse him. As he started to pay, the druggist inquired with a wink about the box of Talwin, which was still firmly gripped in Molkho’s hand. “Ask him if it’s good for pain,” Molkho requested of the English-speaking assistant. The druggist regarded him with his merry blue eyes. Jawohl, he declared, it was wunderbar. “Then I’ll take it,” declared Molkho, already plotting his revenge on the drugstore in Haifa that had overcharged him.
THERE WASN’T A SOUND in the hotel. Most of the lamps were turned off and the shades of the lit ones cast reddish brown patches in the corners of the lobby. Molkho took the elevator up to the room, knocked lightly, and gently opened the door. Still fully clothed, the legal adviser lay in misery on her bed, the night’s music having fled and left her with a sprained ankle, at which she stared in despair. Tearing its wrapper, Molkho took out the athletic bandage and vigorously bound her foot, which now looked like a fat little fish, informed by her cry that her threshold of pain was nothing like his wife’s, which had reached truly supreme heights toward the end. Indeed, what did she know about suffering? Her husband had dropped dead on the floor like a pot cover, her whole family pampered her, and intellectuals like herself had no powers of endurance anyway. Now she was gazing at him contemplatively, her close-cropped hair on the pillow, looking just like her daughter that night in her room. The aspirins, it seemed, hadn’t helped. He had suspected as much when he saw them, small, old, and crumbly; it was amazing how people didn’t realize that no drug was immortal. She was terribly sorry, said the legal adviser; she was afraid their whole trip would be ruined now. “I told you to watch out,” replied Molkho, unable to restrain himself. “I had a feeling you were going to slip,” he added, realizing too late that she might be blaming him for just that, for letting go of her in a hurry at the wrong time. Yet, how long was he expected to hold onto a woman he hardly knew—and one three whole civil service ranks ahead of him, not to mention car expenses, a subject that still bore looking into?
Still, he felt for her. The best thing, he told her, was to get a good night’s sleep and wake up feeling better in the morning. Gently he took a few things from her suitcases and stood there wondering whether to help her undress, only to decide it might embarrass her; and so, too much attention being as bad as too little, he left her room. It was 12:15 and as the elevator didn’t seem to be working, he descended the narrow, padded stairs. Clearly, there were still no other guests. What, apart from its low rates and cleanliness, had made her choose this place? Had she already stayed here with someone before him? Strangely, as if all the events of the day had never happened, he didn’t feel at all tired. Not ready for sleep, he sat in the armchair reading about Jesus in Jerusalem until suddenly it struck him that it was Friday night and he hadn’t even thought of his children. “How could I have forgotten them,” he reproached himself, trying to go back to his book. Yet, when he tried picturing Jerusalem, all he could think of was his mother sitting grumpily in their big, old house.
Finally he undressed, put on his pajamas, got into bed, and turned off the night-light. It was after one. Just as he was dozing off, however, he heard someone hobble down the hallway. He rose and went to the door, through which the legal adviser asked in her brisk manner if he had anything stronger than the aspirin, which wasn’t doing any good. “I’ll be right there,” said Molkho. Dressing quickly, he took the box of Talwin and went upstairs.
Her fully lit room looked a mess, its window wide open as though she were about to throw herself out of it, though she was in fact limping anxiously about in a flowery nightgown and light bathrobe while the radio played soft German songs. Her back pains, she told Molkho, were gone, but her foot was in agony. He nodded sympathetically, amazed how frightened she was of pain, showed her the box of Talwin, opened it, and pulled out a chain of little pills. Over the past year, he explained, telling her about his wife’s experience, he had become an expert anesthesiologist.
The legal adviser listened eagerly to Molkho’s stories of his wife, who had suddenly turned into a role model. But why, she wanted to know, had he brought all those pills with him to Europe in the first place? He hadn’t, he explained; he had bought them just now at the drugstore, over-the-counter and cut-rate. She took a blue pill from him, swallowed it obediently, and suggested taking another. “Absolutely not,” he declared, slipping the box back into his pocket while feebly stifling an astonished yawn at the sight of her breasts bobbing up and down beneath her nightgown. “They’re very strong,” he said. “One is enough.” Regretfully she watched the box vanish. “Maybe you should leave them with me,” she said. “If one doesn’t work, I’ll take another during the night.” “One is enough,” he repeated, “you’ll see.” Yet, not wanting her to think he didn’t trust her, he left her the box anyway. Reassured, she hobbled back to bed, where he helped cover her with a blanket and was rewarded at last with a smile. “Now you’ll sleep well,” he promised, wondering whether he shouldn’t crawl in beside her, though he was more used to having the patient prone beneath him. The main thing was for her to rest her foot—the thought of which made him lift the blanket and decide to undo the bandage for another, last look. The ankle was good and swollen now. Expertly he rewound the elastic, feeling the flabby warmth of her flesh around the bruise, in which the blood had jelled like rubies, reminding him again of a fat, white, blind, stranded little fish. “I’m afraid I’ve ruined this trip of yours,” she said for the second time. There was something touching about the no-longer-fresh bloom of hopelessness on her face. “You haven’t ruined anything,” he answered quietly. “Tomorrow you’ll feel better. Just let me take care of you.” Overcome by fatigue at last, she fell back against the pillow, and he felt a faint stirring in his loins, as if the gray mouse had turned over in its sleep. He closed the window, drawing the blinds. “To let you sleep late in the morning,” he explained, offering to lock the door after him to keep the chambermaid out. “Never mind,” she said resignedly from her pillow, “you can leave it unlocked. No one’s about to burgle or rape me here.” Once again he considered sedating her with his body warmth, but her eyes were already shut, and so he switched off the light and descended to his room.
HE AWOKE AT 6:30 A.M. Outside the window the darkness and silence seemed total, infinite, as if the night were just reaching its peak. The thought of the woman in bed a floor above him and of the bond he had formed with her last night, as though she now were part of him, made him feel an inner glow. Soon, however, he fell back asleep. Upon awakening a second time, he rose, washed, dressed, and even made the bed, after which he gazed at the rooftops and strips of gray sky that ran between them, and then on the toilet, read about the crucifixion of Jesus. He descended to the lobby, hoping that the legal adviser was feeling better and might be already downstairs. But she was nowhere to be seen. The student on night duty was gone, his place taken by a plump girl of about eighteen who was feather-dusting the old swords. Reddening at the sight of him, she murmured, “Good morning,” in German. Through a narrow, half-open door behind the counter, next to the cubbyholes of keys, he caught a glimpse of a kitchen, dinette, and hallway in which a schoolbag was lying on a chair. It was, it seemed, a family hotel—but where was the family?
Breakfast was already waiting in the dining room: several varieties of sliced bread, little baskets of sausages and cheeses, and a hot plate with a canister of coffee and a bowl of hard-boiled eggs. He regarded the food with satisfaction and went up to the legal adviser’s room. At first, he knocked lightly, gently trying the doorknob only when there was no response. True to her word, she hadn’t locked the door. A thin shaft of light accompanied him into the darkened room and fell on her bed, where she lay soundly sleeping like a baby. Possessed by an old feeling of well-being, he went downstairs again.
The plump girl was still dusting the swords. “Madame is asleep,” he informed her when she glanced at him curiously; then, seeing she failed to understand, he pointed to the ceiling, laid a cheek on two folded hands, and went off to have breakfast in the dining room, making sure to take no more than his share, which he piled high on his plate. He poured himself a cup of coffee and began to eat, thinking as he chewed of his wife, who had refused to visit Germany, and of what she might have thought of the odd circumstances that had brought him here. Not that he hadn’t respected her principles, of which her death had freed him, but the fact of the matter was that, had she not been so principled, so critical, so brutally judgmental that he never knew what would annoy her next, she could have enjoyed being here with him. Well, she had had her say, and now he was recuperating from her with a big breakfast in Berlin, of all the places in the world.
He finished eating, even appropriating a slice of bread and a wedge of yellow cheese from the legal adviser’s share of the food, and wrote her a note that said, “Good morning, I hope you’re feeling better and slept well. I didn’t want to wake you, so I ate and went out for a walk. I should be back by nine.” Then he went upstairs, slipped the note beneath her door, descended to his room, donned his coat, and continued on down to the lobby, where he handed his key to the girl with the feather duster, took two more of the hotel’s cards, stuck one in each pocket, and sallied forth. To his amazement, the snow from Paris had arrived silently during the night, thinly blanketing the city. The sidewalks, the fire hydrants, and the house-fronts were all daubed a streaky white, amid which he carefully made his way, heading in a hitherto unexplored direction, along a path already trodden by early risers that soon led him through a maze of little side streets. Thinking of the opera, he recalled how the bare proscenium had suddenly filled with performers, and he imagined faint music playing again while he—only an extra, of course, but an indispensable one nonetheless—took the stage himself, watched by an audience beneath the distant, white trees. He strode on energetically, climbing a little rise until he came to an old church with a golden rooster on its belfry and pausing there for a while, breathing in the frozen air and straining to hear the far-off drums, which were followed by a short flourish of trumpets. Then, as the violins struck up, he walked back down again, surrounded now by schoolchildren who, as though at an agreed-upon signal, had burst from all the houses at once with their bags. Crossing streets and sidewalks, he maneuvered past housewives with their shopping baskets and waited at frozen red lights with men on their way to work while the soft, light, now-familiar snow squished underfoot and the music played stubbornly on. “Just keep going, just keep going,” an invisible director was telling him, and indeed, in the distance, where a golden light had begun to glow in the east, the audience was watching him, transfixed by the new opera in which he was taking part.
It was only when he found himself back on the street of the hotel and heard the church bells strike nine that the dreamlike vision vanished. The girl with the feather duster was no longer in the lobby and had been replaced by an old lady in a black woolen shawl, who sat behind the counter knitting. He smiled at her. “Sechs,” he said in German, taking the key and adding an English comment about the snow. The old lady, however, did not know English. The legal adviser’s breakfast was still untouched.
He hurried upstairs and knocked on the door of her room. Again there was no answer. Silently he opened the door, once more admitting a narrow shaft of pink light that lapped at the foot of the bed. His note was still on the floor and for a moment he experienced a delicious feeling of apprehension. Could she have overdosed on the pills, or did she always sleep late on vacations? Boldly he tiptoed into the room. She was sleeping too soundly to hear him, her face, from which the makeup had rubbed off, pale but peaceful. Standing above her and gazing down on the dry white roots of her dyed hair, he felt an urge to lift the blanket and see if the athletic bandage was still in place. Yet, fearful she might wake and think she had caught him in an obscene act, he turned soundlessly and fled. Descending the staircase thoughtfully, he returned to his room, changed into warmer, more comfortable clothes, and stepped back outside.
The street was full of life now. Workers armed with hoses of hot air were melting the snow with German thoroughness, and vans were unloading large trays of fresh rolls and pastries. He walked around the block for fifteen minutes, fretting over his strange love affair. Could she, he wondered suspiciously, have gone and taken a second pill without asking him? He hurried back to the hotel and opened her unlocked door. Nothing had changed. Quite clearly the drug had knocked her out. He examined the box of Talwin, cursing himself for leaving it in her room. Sure now that she had taken a second pill, he called her name. She stirred slightly, and leaning down, he called again, doing his best not to sound worried. Slowly she gave signs of hearing, struggling to open her eyes and momentarily even succeeding, “What is it?” she asked. “It’s past nine,” he said. “That’s some sleep you had! I just want to know how you are.” Her eyelids drooped again, as if to give her time to think behind them; there was something poignant, almost adorable, in the effort of her once quick legal mind to extract an answer from the depths of her sleep. “I’m fine,” she said slowly and weakly at last, turning over to go back to sleep again, but he was determined not to let her. “Does your foot hurt?” he asked. The silence before she shook her head was so long that it was not at all clear whether she remembered having a foot at all. “Do you want to sleep some more?” he persisted anxiously. “Then go ahead,” he finally added as if giving her permission, despairing of an answer to this too, glancing about the room on his way out to look for something else to do. He was already at the door when the thought occurred to him that perhaps she didn’t recognize him. Could she be brain-damaged? He went back and shook her lightly, his hand on her frail shoulder. “Do you know who I am?” he asked. This time, when her oval eyes opened, he was relieved to see a gleam of understanding in them. “Of course,” she said, not especially enthusiastically—or at least so it seemed to him, and indeed, he was perhaps fatiguing her with his worry and should go away and leave her alone. “Then sleep all you want,” he counseled. “I won’t bother you anymore.” And quickly, his duty done, he walked toward the door. It was, he reflected, a Saturday morning, and perhaps she was used to sleeping late then.
He found a small sign that said “Please Do Not Disturb” in several languages, including Arabic, hung it on the outside door handle, and went back downstairs, feeling he had earned the right to go off and see Berlin on his own, especially as she already knew the city and he didn’t. For a moment he considered eating her breakfast, which was going to waste in the dining room, yet how would it look if he did? And so he stepped outside and into a nearby café, where he ordered a second breakfast of coffee and a small frankfurter to help brace himself against the cold. Their main meal, he assumed, would again be in the evening, when she would have her strength and appetite back. The question of the Talwin, however, still bothered him: he would have to find the drugstore and count the number of pills in a box to know how many she had taken.
Outside the day was in full swing and on the steamy sidewalks the shopkeepers were busily sweeping away the snow and polishing the brass handles of their doors. The entire area seemed to be undergoing renovation, for beside slummy old grocery and junk stores there were other, quite fashionable shops, all kinds of boutiques and art galleries. He soon reached the drugstore, but the funny old man with the cravat wasn’t there. In his place stood two slender, stern-looking pharmacists defending their locked cabinets of drugs, the open straw hampers, apparently a private promotional device of the night shift, having vanished too, so that, after a brief debate with himself, Molkho decided to forgo the Talwin and walk on, treading adventurously on the snow past the high wall of the old fortress, though perhaps it had been a factory or school. The street ran downhill now, curving left, then right, and soon grew quieter and less crowded. The snow beneath his feet was thicker too. Passing an apparently abandoned building and stopping by a concrete wall between two houses, he noticed a rusty skein of barbed wire protruding from the snow. Dimly he had a sense of déjà vu: there was no way of passing the barrier or seeing what lay beyond it, and so he tried to outflank it to his left, only to encounter it again, slightly taller than a man and scribbled over with graffiti. Only now did he realize that it was the Berlin Wall itself, which he had never imagined being so low and so gray. He stepped back, looking for a vantage point from which to see the other side. A few deserted houses were visible there, and something that looked like a frozen pond. Suddenly, with a surge of pleasure, he knew what he was reminded of: it was of that other divided city, the Jerusalem of his youth. At first, half-afraid of some Communist body snatcher, he walked parallel to the wall at a distance. But the cold grew harsher, snowflakes swirled around him, and afraid of slipping, he followed it more closely, making his way slowly alongside it. Once in all his childhood it had snowed in Jerusalem; his mother had been so afraid of his catching pneumonia that she refused to let him out of the house and—it still made him laugh to think of it—sent his father up to the roof with a wash basin to bring him down some snow to play with. If only she could see him now!
Nevertheless, not wanting to take any chances with the storm, which was getting fiercer, he turned and walked back to the hotel, deciding when he reached it, however, not to go inside just yet. Let her sleep a while longer, he thought. In fact, it was beginning to seem likely that she might sleep for another day or two and force him to extend his stay. It was lucky his children were grown and could get along without him, he told himself, passing the hotel entrance and disappearing down some more side streets, which soon emptied into a large square. Yes, it was an oversight not to have asked his mother-in-law for the name of her old street, which he pictured being like one of these. Why, right here might be where his wife had played as a child, unless it was further on, in what was now a no-man’s-land between East and West. He could hardly believe that just four months after her death he was touring the city she had refused to come back to. But the storm was still gathering strength, and he resolved to return to the hotel for his fur cap, which he had had the good sense to pack.
In the lobby he wondered why the old lady at the reception desk had changed clothes; then, coming closer, he saw that a different and even older old lady, who smiled at him blankly, had replaced her. “Sechs,” he said in what he felt sure was a much-improved accent while raising six fingers, and she gave him the key at once, responding in German to an English remark about the snow, so that they stood talking for several minutes in perfect agreement until he nodded one last time and went up to his room, where he found a swarthy young chambermaid changing the soap in the bathroom. Excusing himself, he rummaged through his suitcase until he found the hat. The windows of the room were frosted over. For a minute he debated going upstairs to lock the legal adviser’s door against the chambermaid, but in the end he thought better of it. His fur hat on his head, he descended the stairs again, nodded to the old woman, returned the key, and strode gaily out into the snowstorm, whose soft, giant flakes now whirled round and round in the viridescent light of a sun reflected back from the battered old sidewalk.
A church bell rang in the white fog, which seemed to issue from some vast darkness and through which, brushing by him as bulky as bears, pedestrians made their way. He paused by the window of a small, empty barbershop in which an old, white-smocked barber sat reading a newspaper in a big, multilevered leather chair, the tools of his trade set out gleaming before him—razors, scissors, old clippers, a stack of spotlessly laundered white towels—as though in a cozy little operating room. A fireplace was burning in one corner, beside which stood a potted plant. On the walls hung pictures of clean-cut, smooth-shaven men, and there was something so confidence-inspiring about the whole place that Molkho nearly stepped inside for a haircut. In the end, however, he continued on his way, once again regretting the lack of his mother-in-law’s old address, since tracking down his wife’s childhood could have given this aimless morning a profound purpose of its own. Should he step into a post office and call her long distance? But he knew that by the time she understood him and remembered how to spell the German name, the call would have cost him a fortune, and so, rejecting the idea, he entered a large department store full of shoppers seeking shelter from the storm.
Fingering the clothes, he went from floor to floor and even bought a sweater for his daughter, a double-barreled canteen for his younger son, and, for his mother-in-law, a collapsible cane with four jointed sections that made him think of Mozart’s magic flute. In the furniture department he opened closets, slid drawers back and forth in their grooves, and passed through a huge area divided up into living rooms, going from one to another and sitting with his legs crossed in sofas and easy chairs while pretending to be a welcome guest in each. And yet, thinking of the woman asleep in her hotel room, his pleasure was mingled with guilt, as it had been in those not so distant days in Haifa when he had sometimes done shopping while his wife lay in her large bed, the prow of which breasted the waves of a different existential sea.
Through the windows of the store he could see that the sun was back out and that the snowstorm was over. The morning was getting on. Most likely the legal adviser was up by now and wondering where he was. He hurried back, proud of his perfect sense of direction in the little streets of the pleasant neighborhood, entering the hotel on a carpet of fresh white snow played on by squealing children. Though the lobby was as silent as ever, breakfast was gone from the table. Had they finally given up on her or had she actually come down to eat? He sechsed the old lady at the reception desk, was given his key, and went first to his room, which had been tidied up, took off his hat and coat, and shoved the gifts into a suitcase before bounding upstairs. Apprehensively he entered her room. She was still lying motionless, though it was already after eleven. The Germans, so it seemed, had let her sleep. At once he cheered up again, feeling as if all that snowy morning he had been burrowing toward this strange woman down some hidden tunnel. And yet the guilt and the fear were still there. Suppose something had really happened to her? The room was dark, pungent with the sour smell of sleep. He decided to wake her, no matter what.
“Get up,” he said, “get up. Those pills really knocked you out. It’s almost lunchtime and you haven’t eaten yet. I’m worried about you.” She opened her eyes, and he helped her sit up weakly in bed. “There, you had me worried!” he said. “I told you not to take a second pill, it was really unnecessary.” She sat listening dreamily, her eyelids poised to shut again, the dry skin of her face deeply creased, an aging woman he had slipped a powder to. “The first was unnecessary also,” she said at last, perfectly distinctly. He smiled anxiously. “Maybe it was,” he confessed, “I didn’t know you were so sensitive.” In the ensuing silence he thought he was losing her again, but suddenly she exclaimed, “Just to these,” and said no more. And in fact, he now recalled with a glow that his wife, too, though she was used to all kinds of medicines, had slept a great deal when first put on the Talwin in late spring. Every new drug had been an adventure then, her reactions to which they had vigilantly lived through together. Sometimes, curious to know how she felt, he had even been tempted to try it himself, deterred only by his reluctance to gamble with his health, on which the entire family depended, for if at first he had sought to be sick together with her, gradually he had had to relent and let her illness serve for the two of them. Now, observing the legal adviser’s stupor, he remembered his wife’s reaction to the Talwin, the “philosophy pill,” as they had called it, for it had caused her mind to feel separated from her body, and her thoughts to be uncommonly clear. The long conversations they had had then were carried on as if from opposite ends of the earth, and yet, though even her quickest responses seemed to travel across far continents, they were unfailingly sharp on arrival. The memory of it made him miss her. Where are you now? he wondered. Are you really gone forever? And when would he join her there?
He let out a laugh. So did the legal adviser. Her eyes were shut again as though with the pleasure of her involuntary slumber, over which he presided worriedly. I’ll bet the old squirrel doesn’t do this often, he thought; it isn’t every day that a high-strung career woman like her gets such a good night’s sleep. Her breathing grew slow and regular, as if, glued to the rumpled sheets, she once more wished to drift off, but he refused to let her and was even about to turn her over in bed when suddenly he remembered her foot. “How’s your ankle?” he asked. She didn’t answer, still drugged by the potion in her veins, and so he pushed aside the blanket and groped for her bandaged foot, which seemed to have shrunk to a child’s size during the night. He lifted it and expertly undid the elastic like a crack surgeon treating a minor infection. “It’s much better,” he announced happily, as if discovering that it presented a different and less worrisome case than that of its owner. The legal adviser said nothing; no doubt he could have her other foot, too, if only he would let her sleep. Swiftly he replaced the bandage, talking out loud to himself as he had done in his wife’s final months. “This can’t go on. You have to eat. You’ve already missed breakfast, but I’ll go get you something, at least some coffee and rolls.” And indeed, off he went to ask the old lady at the reception desk, in a combination of sign language and English contrived to sound like German, for a canister of coffee, after which he dashed out into the street to buy some rolls and pastries, bringing it all back up on a tray, only to find the patient fast asleep again. He drew the curtain, pulled up the blinds, even opened the window to let in a blast of cold air, determined to make her wake up.
And she did, wearily and unwillingly. He helped her out of bed, amazed at how light she was, hurrying to check the sheets as soon as she shut the bathroom door behind her. Sure enough, they were sticky and slightly damp. Deftly he shook them out, reversed them, and spread them again on the mattress; so proficient a sheet-changer had he become that he could even do it while his wife lay in bed. Then he tidied up as best he could with one ear cocked toward the bathroom, afraid that the silence there might spell a new and dangerous relapse. At last, though, she emerged, washed and even wearing makeup, causing him to marvel at the quiet intimacy that had sprung up between them, as though they were an old married couple. Perhaps, it occurred to him as he served her from the tray, her hibernation was simply a way of getting attention. She ate and drank, laughing at being so weak that she could scarcely swallow her food, while he poured himself a cup of coffee and ate another roll. “Where have you been all morning?” she asked, regarding him for the first time as if he were more than just a bedside shade. “Oh, around,” he replied. He had even run into the Berlin Wall not far from the hotel and been disappointed. “But that isn’t the place for it,” she explained. “Go to the Brandenburg Gate. It’s much more impressive there. It cuts right through the heart of the city.” He told her about the storm, too, of which she had been unaware. “Berlin’s white all over,” he said. “The snow’s caught up with me from Paris, though the Germans seem to be taking it more calmly than the French.” Maybe I should bring her a bowl of it, he thought when she expressed regret at missing it. Yet, as funny as that seemed, he only answered, “You should rest up for the opera tonight. There’s no need to overdo it.” He watched her lie flushed on the pillow, hypnotized by the to-and-fro movement of her earrings—something his wife had never worn—while she looked quizzically back at him, trying dutifully to listen and pecking at her roll like a child who has no appetite, evidently unused to such loving care, even from her doting family.
He wondered whether to take her temperature. Could her sleepiness be a symptom of some deeper disorder? Outside the window the snow was flying grayly again, and the rumble of the radiator broke the silence like an airplane. The daylight grew faint, turned to a milky grime by the storm, and he sat in the armchair feeling logy himself, trying to get her to talk about something, her childhood, for instance, or even her reasons for choosing this hotel. Had she been here with someone, perhaps her late husband, on a previous opera tour? She was not up to answering, though; her replies were short and drowsy, as if a new attack of sleep were imminent, and so he switched the subject to himself, or rather to his wife, who, though bom in this city, had never wanted to return to it. The legal adviser, however, seemed to know all about it, for she dozed off in the middle of a sentence. She must have been a pharmaceutical virgin if two little pills could do this to her, Molkho thought, carefully removing the tray with its half-eaten roll and nearly full cup of coffee from her limp hands, which made her sit up with a start and then slump to a prone position in the bed. “I suppose it’s partly my fault,” he whispered, hoping for a little sympathy. At first, lying mutely on the pillow, she didn’t react, yet all at once she smiled bitterly. “Just partly?” she asked, which was more than enough to alarm him. “I never thought,” he stammered, “that you would be affected like this. Why, they weren’t even prescription pills. I bought them over the counter. My wife...” But sleep had carried her off again, and her breath came in slow, heavy waves. How, he asked himself worriedly, could he fly back to Israel tomorrow if she didn’t break the habit by then? He had no choice but to stay by her side and wait for her to sleep off the poison in her system. Meanwhile, not even the snowstorm seemed able to rouse her.
He stretched out in the armchair and watched the snowflakes, which, caught in an updraft, seemed to blow skyward from the earth; they did not look to him like crystals of frozen vapor but like the tom whites of an egg or some scrambled, primeval matter. Well, then, he told himself, I’ll just sit here like I used to do in Haifa. In fact, it was even quieter here because of the storm windows. He thought of that final month, in which so much time had sometimes elapsed without talking that at last his wife would beg, “Say something, anything, tell me what’s new in the world.” “Nothing is new,” he would answer. “All I care about is you, nothing else interests me”—which happened to be true enough. Now he was sitting by another bed, trusting once more in his patience to compensate for the intellectual superiority of its occupant, yet harassed by a feeling of fatigue. Groping for a pick-me-up, he noticed a copy of the Bible here too. This one—perhaps because the bed was a double one—had the Old Testament in it as well, but unfortunately only in German. He tried mouthing the first line of Genesis, but then shut the volume and put it down.
He could feel his tiredness flowing through him. Should he take off his shoes and lie down beside her? After all, his coming and going all morning had exhausted him too. And yet he stayed where he was. In the first place, it might frighten her; and in the second, even if it didn’t, as soon as she realized he only wanted to sleep, she would suspect him of being a pervert. The best tactic was to get some shut-eye in the chair while she slept. Was she someone he could marry? And if so, where would they live—in his house or hers? Perhaps they would have to sell both apartments and buy a single larger one with room for all their children. He was beginning to doze off himself now, lulled by the rhythm of his breath, but suddenly, still curled beneath her blanket, she woke him by saying quietly, “You really needn’t sit here all day. Why don’t you have a look at the city? You’re flying home tomorrow, and who knows when you’ll be back. There’s an expressionist museum not far from here with some important early twentieth-century paintings. Go out and enjoy yourself. I’ll feel better soon, I promise.”
He sensed a note of rejection in her voice. “All right,” he said, getting up, “I’ll take another walk.” He collected the coffee cups and unfinished roll and asked if there was anything else she wanted, a thermometer perhaps. “No thanks,” she replied, leaving him to exit quietly with the tray, though he could just as well have left it behind. As he waited for the elevator he heard her patter across the floor and turn the key in her lock, and felt sure, cut to the quick, that their brief affair was over.
He finished the roll in the elevator and laid the tray on the reception desk, behind which sat a schoolgirl doing homework. She took his key with thin fingers and hung it up. The door of the apartment was wide open now, and inside the family was eating its lunch from steaming bowls of crockery; indeed, every one of the receptionists of the last twenty-four hours was gathered around the table, at the head of which sat the paterfamilias, a hefty man of about Molkho’s age dressed in overalls. Seeing the guest, he came out to greet him, asking in broken English whether everything was all right and even half-inviting him to join them. Politely, with words of praise for the hotel, especially for its old swords and daggers, Molkho declined. He would have liked to say something about the woman upstairs, who was no doubt causing concern, at least to assure them that she was being cared for, but in the end he made do with inquiring about a thermometer, which he would perhaps have need of later. At first, he failed to get his meaning across; he did not give up, however, but continued popping an imaginary thermometer in and out of his mouth until the worried German understood and promised to bring him one after lunch.
AGAIN HE STEPPED OUTSIDE, where he now saw that the storm had died down to reveal a strip of blue, Israeli-looking sky amid the clouds overhead. The snow-carpeted street hummed with people. Workers in caps and overalls and elegant women in high leather boots strolled on the crispy surface, against which a golden sun dashed its rays. Church bells rang. The restaurants and cafés were crowded. Should he eat something now or keep walking to build up an appetite? In the end, he chose to grab a bite, since who knew if he would find another place as cheap as the one near the hotel. Joining the throng inside, he squeezed in at a table beside some jolly young workers and ordered sausages, potatoes, and beer, all reasonably priced. Then, full and slightly groggy from the ice-cold lager, he asked directions to the expressionist museum; yet arriving at the gloomy old building and spying the long line in front of it, he thought, Who needs all those morbid German paintings; I’m getting enough culture as it is. And turning left, he continued downhill on the street that led to the wall, which, he now realized, mysteriously attracted him. Soon he reached it and struck out alongside it, noticing the delicate white, vinelike pattern traced on it by the newly fallen snow. Yes, there was something about it that he liked. It serves them right, he thought, though it did not particularly seem to bother the Germans at all. On the contrary, because of the wall the busy city had a chain of peaceful nooks right in its center.
He kept walking until he reached a broad boulevard that appeared to lead onward to some central spot, and indeed, surrounded by lawns and gardens, he soon found himself at the Reichstag Building, where he joined a trickle of tourists climbing the stairs of an observatory with a view of the eastern half of the city and the Brandenburg Gate, which, ringed by wide, shopperless streets, looked dreary and deserted. Even the snow seemed heavier and deeper there. Two sentries with fur coats and submachine guns trundled back and forth like baby bears. It was freezing, but the storm (now that it’s found me, thought Molkho with a smile) seemed to be over. Starting back for the hotel, he made his way down busy streets and came to a large building whose familiar look puzzled him until he realized that it was the opera house seen from behind. On the clean white steps—newly washed by the melted snow—that the legal adviser had tumbled down, fair-haired youngsters sat, eagerly taking in the brightening afternoon sun.
He carefully climbed the steps, trying to see just where and why she had fallen and what had stopped her when she did. It was only a matter of luck, he concluded, that the accident hadn’t been worse. Inside the building he scanned pictures of the somber performance they had seen, studying the faces of the singers, who looked different close up, and glancing at the advance billings for Don Giovanni, which they were to see that night. The sets, costumes, and performers seemed quite splendid and promising, and for a long time he stood gazing at a photograph of someone done up as a statue, advancing from the depths of the stage with his arm out to seize the frightened Don Giovanni.
By the box office were stacks of colored fliers, with which Molkho stuffed his pockets, even though they were in German, intending to present them to his Sleeping Beauty. Tonight, he thought happily, we’ll see something calming and human for a change; indeed, he felt as though the Mozart opera were meant especially for him, as if it were the final act of the Drama of Death, whose uncomplaining hero he had been for months.
He stepped outside, where the clearing weather had grown remarkably, audaciously warmer. Tonight he would make sure to hold her tightly on the stairs. Should he walk back to the hotel? Afraid of losing his way, though, he hailed a taxi, taking one of the cards from his pocket and thrusting it at the driver. A warm glow of homecoming came over him as they pulled into the street. If only she hadn’t locked her door. Could she really be angry at him? But what had he done to her? At most he had helped her to a good sleep; brain damage was out of the question. Getting out of the taxi by the little barbershop, he noticed the proprietor and his wife sitting idly in their white smocks and stopped to check the price list in the window. Then, convinced he would be in good hands, he stepped inside.
A little bell tinkled softly, and the old couple hurried courteously toward him; the fact that a foreigner had chosen to patronize their shop, and one from Israel, as it turned out, seemed to make them inordinately proud. Not that they weren’t probably Nazis like the rest of them, thought Molkho, but what difference does it make? Now they’re just two doddering old people who may as well wait on me before they die. And they did, hand and foot, first tying a large white bib around his neck and then leading him to a big sink in a dark corner, at which, he realized with alarm, the old woman meant to wash his hair. There was no choice, however, but to present her with his head, lowering it into the sink, where her expert fingers massaged and tickled it, working steamy water and shampoo into his scalp. She repeated the treatment a second time, dried him with a towel, wrang it out, and led him wrapped in it to a large chair, where the barber was waiting with his scissors and instruments. It was all done quite slowly and methodically, with frequent pauses for whispered consultations, and the barber’s tools, though old, looked shiny and reliable. Between them, the old couple clipped and cut and swept and combed and powdered and clipped some more, and though Molkho tried lamely to warn them that he didn’t want his hair too short, the stubborn Prussian had his own ideas and gave him a military crew cut that met with the definite approval of another old Berliner who dropped in just then to pay a friendly visit.
IT WAS ALREADY LATE. The haircut had taken longer than he had expected, and he was sure that the legal adviser was up by now and perhaps already out of the hotel. At the reception desk he was handed his key and a black leather case like the one he had kept his compass in as a schoolboy; in it was a thermometer, gleaming in its bed of red velvet. Though he was so impatient to use it that he bounded up the stairs without waiting for the elevator, once standing outside her door he had an attack of cold feet. Nevertheless, he knocked lightly, and then, when there was no answer, more insistently, calling out in a voice that was tinged with desperation. “It’s me, it’s just me.” The jilted lover, he thought ironically, but at last he heard her footsteps and she opened the door, still sleepy and disheveled but awake. Cautiously he followed her into the dimly lit, overheated room, eyeing it, as he used to eye his wife’s sickroom, to see what was new in his absence. And indeed, as if afraid that the light might keep her up, she had lowered the blinds he had raised. Why, she’s on a real jag! he told himself in astonishment, her existence having as though split in two, one half of it, such as her slip, her scuffed pink sandals, and her toothbrush sticking out from a glass on the bathroom shelf, remaining familiar and even intimate, while the other was now a mystery, such as the odd smell he detected, which made him think of exotic mosses growing deep in a subterranean cave.
Feeling a new wave of worried compassion for this temperamental, loose-boundaried woman now flopping limply back onto the sheets, and determined to get close to her, he sat down on her warm, rumpled bed and began talking intimately in the slightly scolding, humorous tone he had sometimes employed with his wife when nothing else seemed to work. “Now look here. This has got to stop. You’re just using the pills as an excuse. It’s not them anymore, because I know all about them, and they can’t put anyone to sleep like this. Maybe you’re exhausted from your conference, but you can’t just go on like this without eating or drinking. I’m good and worried about you.” He laid a familiar hand on her arm and then moved it up to her head, gently palpating medical areas. “Maybe it’s too hot for you in here. Or else you’re coming down with something. Here, I brought you a thermometer. We’ll start by taking your temperature.” “My temperature?” she wondered. “Yes, why not?” he replied. “Do it for my sake.” But when he reached out to switch on the bed lamp, she begged him not to. “Please don’t turn on the light yet,” she said, opening her eyes to a snakelike slit, through whose faint flutter of an aperture he felt her studying him. He complied, keeping a fatherly hand on her while taking out the thermometer, which he then went to the bathroom to wash, not knowing what German germs might be on it. Peering anxiously in the mirror at his new crew cut, which made him look like a Wehrmacht officer at the siege of Stalingrad, he soaped, rinsed, and wiped the long pipette and carefully handed it to her, gently helping to slip it under her tongue. Surprisingly, she offered no resistance, and he timed three minutes on his watch, pacing up and down while entertaining her with an account of his morning, telling her about the wall, which seemed so peaceful, about the melting snow and slowly clearing skies, about coming across the opera house, and about the fliers he had brought so she could read up on that night’s performance. She lay in wizened silence, her mouth slightly twisted in protest, the elastic bandage from her foot rebelliously tossed on the chair. “Well, at least you don’t have any fever,” he declared, having put on his glasses and swiveled around to hold the thermometer up to the reddish, crepuscular light that filtered through the slats of the blinds. “And that means there’s no reason to sleep so much. Why, you’ll be up all night now!” But this, too, elicited no response, though an inner smile of sorts shone through the slit of her eyes.
Baffled, he scratched his head and persisted. “Look here. At least let me bring you something to eat. You’ll need your strength back for tonight. Do you want me to be blamed for not taking proper care of you?” Yet still she refused to budge, stubbornly clinging to her bed, though he felt sure she was wide awake now, probing him with her flickering laser beam, so that suddenly he felt a wave of panic in the dark room gloomy with twilight. “Come on!” he said, his voice cracking. “Get up! I’ll wait for you downstairs and we’ll go out. You’ll see—the snow and the cold will wake you and we’ll have a bowl of hot soup somewhere.” Though not a muscle stirred, he felt her make an effort to talk. And suddenly she did. “Did you get a haircut?” she asked. He grinned at her. “Yes, I did,” he answered, standing up and patting his head. “Down below on the street. They really dipped me, but it will grow back.” She ignored this, however, sitting up and turning on the light. “Don’t be angry with me,” she said quietly, “but I’m not going to the opera tonight. I don’t feel up to it. I’d better rest and keep off my foot. The last thing I need is to trip and fall again. You needn’t feel bad for me. I’ve seen enough operas in my life. Why, they even took us to one at the conference. Why don’t you go by yourself? It’s awkward, I know, but you’ll enjoy it. Don Giovanni is too good to miss.”
Though he did his best to seem disappointed, he felt a surge of relief. Indeed, with an almost hysterical adamance she insisted that he go without her, even asking for her purse and handing him his ticket like a mother sending her son to the movies, assuring him, as she lay propped up by the pillow with her eyes wide open now, that he needn’t worry and that she would soon get out of bed and have a meal sent up. It was her first day of real rest in ages; God knew how long her fatigue had been building up! She would, she promised, wait up for him and meanwhile read a book or listen to music on the radio. “Good, I’ll try it,” she said when told about Volume II of Anna Karenina that his daughter had given him by mistake. “The second half is fine because I read the book long ago and still remember a bit.” And so, having gone through the motions of protesting, he went downstairs to fetch the book, which she hurriedly took from him at the door as if anxious to be rid of him. It was all he could do to persuade her to bring him her ticket too, since perhaps he could manage to sell it.
TOWARD EVENING the hotel came festively alive. Previously concealed light bulbs helped brighten the little lobby, so that the swords gleamed in their glass cases and the blue seas reddened on the old nautical maps. The desk was now staffed by the grandfather of the family, a genial, immaculately dressed man who sat reading a newspaper while now and then helping his grandchildren in the apartment with their homework. In one corner stood several valises, sure proof of fresh guests. Self-conscious of his new crew cut, Molkho checked his key and stepped out into the street, which, too, was lit by numerous lamps whose warm, bubbly glow created a holiday feeling. People were doing their last-minute shopping and crowding into the bars, and the night, with its clear skies above and last patches of snow on the sidewalk, had a special magic. Entering his little working-class restaurant, which was nearly empty at this hour, Molkho ordered the usual, substituting coffee for beer. But afterward, looking for a taxi while glancing up at the still-reddish sky, he cursed his loneliness under his breath. How could you have left me all alone like this? he asked, picturing his wife back in Haifa, making supper for their daughter while he wandered, a stranger in a strange land.
The crowd in front of the opera house was unexpectedly small. Indeed, it was clear from the outset that he stood no chance of selling his extra ticket, for even before he began climbing the steps, tickets were being offered to him. The audience was different too: instead of the intense-looking young people of the night before, he was now surrounded by the most bourgeois of audiences. Over the posters by the entrance, large red stickers announcing some change in the program had been affixed diagonally. Could the performance have been canceled? Sure enough, inquiring of a couple standing there, he was told that the man who was to play Don Giovanni was sick and that, to his astonishment, the opera tonight would be Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. How could they go and change operas just like that? And who was this Gluck, whom he had never even heard of? The thought that he was to be deprived of Don Giovanni after all he had been through was thoroughly unacceptable. “Who ever heard of changing operas?” he asked the couple loudly. “Why, I came a long way to see Don Giovanni/” “You did? Where from?” “From Israel.” “From Israel? Just to see an opera?” “Yes,” he said, telling them about the special Voles Opera while they listened in amazement. “Why isn’t there an understudy?” he asked. “I can’t believe no one else can sing the part!” But the sympathetic couple merely shrugged and went inside, not knowing the answer themselves, leaving Molkho debating whether he shouldn’t perhaps go to the movies or a nightclub instead. In the end, however, the ticket being paid for, he decided to see Orpheus and Eurydice and let himself be swept by the crowd into the familiar lobby, which now seemed to him dreary and plain. And there was nowhere even to lodge a complaint, for every single office was locked! That’s the sort of people they are, he thought bitterly, going off to relieve himself in the men’s room, whose four huge white walls seemed one big urinal. Just look where I’ve landed, he told himself, choking on his loneliness, as if his wife’s death were a spring whose action had flung him to the far ends of the earth.
He was one of the first to take his seat, which was in the center of a front row. The audience kept drifting in, but the hall was still far from full. He felt indescribably weary, and the people around him looked gray and listless too. A row in front of him sat a couple that drew his attention, especially the man, who sat with his head hunched between his shoulders: tall and fortyish, he had a pocked red face whose sad, suspicious eyes darted nervously and a shabby black suit over which was thrown a dirty white scarf. The seat on Molkho’s right, on the other hand, was occupied by a well-dressed, elderly German holding a large, fancy program that was partly in English. Yet though Molkho asked to borrow it, he was feeling too tired and dispirited to make head or tails of it, even of the cast, which listed a female alto in the role of Orpheus. Bewildered, he asked his neighbor if it wasn’t a misprint, to which the man replied in broken English that he hadn’t the slightest idea, since he came from a small provincial town where they didn’t have opera at all.
The orchestra began tuning up, and as if he were accompanying it, the man in the next row grew suddenly tense and emitted a series of small grunts that made his wife look worriedly about. Slowly the huge overhead lights were dimmed, the conductor strode forward, and the overture struck up, quick and forceful, while the pockmarked man swayed back and forth in time to it. Evidently he knew the score well, in fact, by heart, for he paused slightly before each transition, as if anticipating a new theme, so that Molkho wondered if he was perhaps an unemployed musician, possibly even a down-and-out conductor. Even when the music reached a crescendo, with new instruments joining in all the time, the man did not look up; head down, he kept listening intensely, conducting with his hands, springing up with the horns and kettledrums, and swaying rhythmically again with the strings in preparation for the next bars, which he telegraphed with his body as if convinced that the orchestra was following him, only suddenly to freeze and cast such a haughty glance around him that the audience began to whisper. His wife alone remained perfectly quiet, her hand resting soothingly on his knee as though to keep him under control.
All at once the music stopped. The curtain rose, revealing a minimal, almost symbolic set that Molkho stared at resentfully. It seemed ugly to him, and as the music resumed again, dusky and constrained, he grieved inwardly for his lost Don Giovanni. The stage was apparently meant to represent a large hall, or perhaps something else, a street, city, or even world, through which a coffin was being carried by a singing entourage. Soon it was laid down, however, and a woman leaped out of it and fled like the wind. Next Orpheus appeared; he was indeed a heavyset young woman with a small harp in one hand, at which Molkho stared with profound hostility. The whole opera seemed to him a punishment. No, it isn’t a misprint after all, he whispered to the fat German sitting next to him, who nodded back smilingly. Their tones clear and pure, the voices of the singers rose and clashed; what little action there was took place almost in slow motion to an excruciatingly slow poetic aria. Though he would have liked to doze off, Molkho felt it was out of the question. Ahead of him the man in black began to tremble, shaking his head so violently that his neighbors, roused from their theatrical spell, began to stare at him with mirth and revulsion, or even, like the middle-aged woman sitting next to him, with open horror. Yet the man seemed quite used to all this, which he dealt with by growing perfectly still for a while and glancing innocently around him. Before long, however, the music got the better of him again, and clenching his fists, he ordered the obedient orchestra to play on. The elderly German on Molkho’s right seemed transfixed by the spectacle too, yet apparently not unpleasurably, for he stared at the man with a good-natured smile. Meanwhile, onstage, Orpheus was searching for Eurydice in her thick alto voice, which clashed with the other singers in long, complicated arpeggios that seemed inscrutably modern and harmonically elementary at once, making Molkho borrow the program again to see when the piece had been written. Unable to find the information anywhere, he felt more indignant than ever.
Act I was drawing to a close: Orpheus was told he could set forth for Hades, while the orchestra, faultlessly led by the man in the next row, broke into a strong, sweeping melody. The applause that broke out as the curtain fell was prolonged and patient, though not particularly loud, causing the man in black to bow his head modestly. He did not seem to notice the irate looks of his neighbors, who rose in protest as soon as the lights came on; rather, his head still bowed, he busily blew his nose while conversing quietly with his wife. Something about the couple, especially the deep serenity of the woman, made Molkho like them both. Was the man mentally ill? Or perhaps a concentration camp survivor who now haunted operas? But no, he looked too young for that.
Molkho went to the buffet, where he ate a piece of chocolate cake and drank a small glass of juice. From somewhere came the sound of voices speaking Hebrew, and he spun around to look for them, yet already they had vanished into thin air. Could it have been simply his homesick imagination? Tomorrow night he would be back in Haifa with his children; the countdown had already begun. On his way back to his seat, he met the couple from the lobby, who inquired how he was enjoying the performance. “It’s not bad, not bad at all,” he replied, wanting to ask them if they knew when Gluck lived. Quite a few people, he noticed, had changed places to get away from the man in black. Not his elderly neighbor, though, who collapsed heavily into his seat; bored though he was, he appeared to be highly pleased with the culture it took to spend the evening at an opera rather than a brothel.
The lights dimmed slowly, casting a bluish white pallor over the audience. The music began again, and the man in the next row braced himself and clenched his fists. He signaled to the wind section, cautioned the violins, grunted, and swayed; but this time, determined to stop him, his wife scolded him savagely until hushed by a chorus of furious hisses from around her. The man winced like a stricken animal, and Molkho, feeling a deep sorrow, cast a sympathetic glance in his direction just as Orpheus and Eurydice began their slow ascent from Hades. Molkho knew that Orpheus musn’t look back as he led Eurydice after him, but he also knew, anxiously waiting for it to happen, that Orpheus would forget. And so he did, in Act III: with a loud cry, Eurydice disappeared down an opening while Orpheus, or rather the fat woman playing him, burst into a lovely, truly moving aria. The audience adored it, breaking into stormy applause, and the man in black, still waving his fists, threw his head back uncontrollably and stared slack-jawed into space as if swallowing the music, tears running down his cheeks. A green spotlight lit the stage, a little Greek temple, columns and all, descended from the ceiling, and Molkho knew with an inner pang that the man was crying for him too. Even the German on his right was sitting on the edge of his seat.
ON HIS WAY BACK from the opera, he felt the full weight of the long day, which lay in his chest like a sleeping giant that kept pulling him down. And yet he felt stirred, the music, the performers, the orchestra, the audience, all churning wildly inside him. At first, he thought he had entered the wrong hotel, for the lobby was full of people, mostly tall, elegant Scandinavians gathered in a corner where the paterfamilias and his wife stood pouring drinks in full evening dress. Surprised, Molkho made his way through the crowd, took his key off its hook, and hurried up to the legal adviser’s room, determined to do something for their romance, which was still stalled at the starting line, even if it took a little foreplay (though a kiss on her sprained ankle, after removing the bandage, might be enough), after which he could crawl into bed and sleep next to her—a noncommittal move in itself, to be sure, but one sufficient to keep her hopes alive. Yet, no matter how loudly he knocked on her door, almost shouting her name, there was no answer from within.
As he was returning to his room, however, the elevator door opened and a chambermaid handed him a note with the address of a restaurant at which the legal adviser was dining and a request to join her there. Though so tired he could barely stand, he stepped back out into the cold night air, following the chambermaid through the slushy remains of the snow and down deserted little streets beneath a star-strewn sky until they arrived at a huge, crowded, smoke-filled establishment with old green velvet wall-hangings and loud music; there, he wove his way down to a cellar that was twice the size of the upstairs, an immense, poorly lit, barnlike place with big barrels of beer along the walls and endless tables of noisy customers. He noticed her at once, sitting by herself in her short fur coat, squeezed in at a little table covered with a checked cloth on which were an empty half-bottle of wine and a plate of several well-gnawed bones. She was lively and bright-eyed, despite the great crush, puffing on a cigarette and chatting with three men at the next table. There was no doubt about it, he told himself, feeling his spirits flag at once: she had been resurrected. Yet, though he wanted only to get away, she had already spied him and was nodding to him casually, quite indifferent to his attempts to fight his way through the boisterous crowd. At last, he reached her table and stood there wordlessly, feeling tired and bewildered, while she regarded him with wide-open eyes beneath her heavy mascara, not a trace left of her great sleep. There was not even a chair for him to sit on. The three men at the next table bowed to him, appraised him with a glance, said something to or about him in German, and broke out laughing, to which he replied with a feeble grin while a red-vested waiter with a witty, intellectual air deftly emptied the plate and ashtray and produced a small stool, on which he sat Molkho, who huddled there uncomfortably, a head shorter than everyone, the butt of a spate of jokes that seemed part of the general atmosphere. But somehow he did not mind his low perch, which at least made him feel out of harm’s way.
The waiter stood to take his order. “No, thank you,” Molkho said, “nothing for me,” but the legal adviser insisted. “Come now, you have to have something. The beer here is first-rate. I won’t let you pass it up.” “All right,” he said, “just a small glass of beer, but nothing to eat; really, I’m not hungry,” because if he ate anything he would have to pay for her meal too, which had obviously been a large one. “But you must be hungry. Please, eat something,” she repeated—rather oddly, he thought, so that, wondering whether she was concerned for him or merely exhibiting a new truculence, he gave in again, looking for inspiration at the diners around him until his eyes fell on a pungent-looking plate of blood-red sausage, and he asked the waiter for the same. Immediately, though, he regretted it. “But not such a big portion,” he said in Hebrew to the legal adviser. “One sausage is enough; tell him one’s enough,” and signaling to the waiter, he called out, “Eins,” while she stifled an embarrassed smile. Suddenly she seemed her old self again, the self-assured senior official attending international conferences at the public’s expense. No longer were they just two lonely people making contact on neutral territory, and so, seeking to recoup his position, he said, first of all, “Tell me how your ankle is.” The question appeared to surprise her. “It’s fine,” she murmured with a sharp glance at him, sounding rather irritated, perhaps because she sensed that he would have liked to bend down and examine it beneath the table. “I was worried about you,” he continued quietly, though slightly indignantly, realizing that she and the errant foot were again on good terms. “I really was.” “Yes, I know,” she said, her, eyes zeroing in on him, “I could feel it.” There was a sudden distance between them, as though all that had happened that day had happened to someone else.
“So how was Don Giovanni?” she asked, wanting, he felt uneasily, to smoke him out. “It wasn’t,” he replied, managing to stay calm and keep smiling, perhaps because she still sounded tentative, as he told her about the last-minute switch to Orpheus and Eurydice. Had she ever heard of it or of a composer named Gluck? Without waiting for an answer, he handed her a program that he had found on one of the seats after the curtain calls. She took it with an air of bemusement and absently leafed through it while he reached into his pocket for her ticket and explained at great length why he hadn’t sold it, there having been no demand and the box office having been closed, though he was sure she could get a refund through her brother’s travel agency, since it wasn’t her fault that the opera was changed. Yet, far from being interested in a refund, she only seemed annoyed by his advice. “It’s really of no importance,” she murmured rather formally, tearing up the ticket and dumping the pieces in the ashtray. “You still haven’t told me about the opera.” None too exactly, he began to describe it for her, aggrievedly expressing his amazement that Orpheus had been played by a woman. “But why should that bother you?” she asked. Because, he explained, it annoyed him to see a big fat woman with a little harp singing about her love for Eurydice. True, he got used to it after a while, but why bring in a woman in the first place? Was it just someone’s idea of being contemporary and feminist? She looked at him pityingly. “I suppose,” she said, still turning the pages of the program, “that the part was originally written for an alto and that you can’t find men with such high voices anymore.”
The waiter arrived with a stein of beer and a single sausage so grotesquely huge that it made Molkho shudder. “That’s not what I had in mind,” he smiled. “I wanted one of those smaller ones.” “Never mind,” said the legal adviser. “They won’t take it back, so you might as well eat it—it looks quite juicy. This is a famous beer cellar.” Rising to bring him a jar of mustard from the next table while ordering coffee and cake for herself, she deftly arranged his napkin and handed him his knife and fork, seeking perhaps to repay him for all his care. Meanwhile, the men at the next table broke off their loud talk to crack some joke about the steaming knockwurst, their coarse laughter making him regret having ordered it even more, especially as he wasn’t even hungry, just tired and slightly cowed, or perhaps simply sorry that she wasn’t still silently sleeping in her soft hotel bed, with the snow blowing against the window. Why, what a magical time that was, he thought longingly, remembering the feeling of tunneling toward her, though it now seemed rather doubtful whether he had gotten anywhere.
Listlessly, in the orange gloom of the barnlike space, with its walls of dirty green velvet, amid the noise and the raucous music, he began cutting his sausage, eating it with the sleepy self-discipline learned long ago as a child when his mother had always made sure he left his plate clean. The reassuring little stool now felt like an interrogation seat, and her beady eyes, like a squirrel’s catching sight of a nut, bored steadily into him, the target verified and ready to be pounced on. Running a hand through her short, girlish hair, she began to question him about the day, as if to ascertain whether there had really been such a thing or whether they simply had gone from night to night. Who, she asked, suddenly catching him off guard, had changed her sheet? He flushed, playing for time by pretending to think, only to break down and confess: the sheet had been sweaty and damp, and she had been too weak to change it herself. He was sorry if it had been indiscreet of him.
For a moment she said nothing, concentrating on her cigarette; then, as if the time had come to talk frankly, she asked to be told about his wife, about the kind of woman she was. “My wife?” said Molkho, at a loss. “Why my wife?” “But why not?” asked the legal adviser. “I’m terribly curious.” “I would have thought that by now you’d have heard all about her,” he said. “Yes,” she replied, “I have. But now I want to hear it from you.” But he felt this was not the place to discuss his dead wife, this huge bam into which more and more people kept pouring as the movies and theaters let out, apparently because it was known for its capacity, which was, however, fast becoming exhausted.
“She was an intellectual,” said Molkho, seizing on the first word that came to mind while looking at the legal adviser, who returned his gaze steadily. “She was very honest ... I mean, very critical ... of herself too. An intellectual. Nothing was ever good enough for her. She never felt fulfilled or happy. And maybe she never even wanted to be. Although...”
He stopped in midsentence because just then there came a sound of thumping from upstairs, followed by such loud singing that he couldn’t hear himself think. “And I’m not an intellectual at all,” he concluded, though it wasn’t what he’d started out to say. “Yes, I’ve noticed that,” she said gently, regarding him with a newborn affection that only made him feel more certain that the coup de grace was imminent. Despairingly he glanced toward the entrance, through which new customers were still elbowing, checking their coats and plunging into the crowd. Suddenly he missed his wife so badly that it hurt. The legal adviser bent toward him, leaning so far across the table that he felt her hair brush his face, in her eyes a cold, intellectual glitter. “And so,” she whispered, “you killed her little by little—I only realized that today....” For a second he felt his blood curdle; yet at once, as if a soft quilt were thrown over him, he felt a warm, rich happiness in his veins. Slowly his eyes met hers. The thought was not new. “You’re killing me,” his wife used to say to him, although it was odd that the two women should think the same thing when they had never met. Wearily he smiled, feeling his near-naked scalp beneath his crew cut. What else, faced with such a verdict, could he do? He had no wish or way to defend himself and was tired of arguing. Indeed, he had stopped arguing completely during the past year. “You should know,” he said brightly, “that I did my best to take care of her.” “Yes, I do know,” she answered with compassion. “I know everything. I want you to try to understand...”
The waiter deftly slipped two checks, his and hers, under their plates and disappeared. Molkho made up his mind to pay only his; she would get her share back from the office anyhow. “Try to understand,” she persisted, not wanting to hurt him yet intent on pursuing her insight. “I don’t mean that you did it consciously, but I felt today that you were trying to kill me too.” He blinked happily, deliciously drunk; the German beer had gone to his Levantine head, and the juicy sausage, seemingly reconstituted there, was now crawling through his stomach. Feeling slightly seasick, as though he were on board a big, throbbing ship pitching in the waves, he struggled to stay calm and take his time answering. And she, too, was silent now, perhaps shocked by her own words. “To kill you too?” His big brown eyes opened wide. “But why?” “That’s what I’d like to know,” she said. Slowly he drained the last drops of beer from his glass. The men at the next table had suddenly stopped talking, as though aware that something significant was going on between the two foreigners.
But Molkho was tired of arguments and would have gladly postponed this one, too, until they were home, if ever they met there again. It’s a lucky thing we’re not on the same flight tomorrow, he told himself, looking at her eyes, whose feverish glitter repelled him, the gleeful, intellectual glitter of her clever, twist-all mind. “In that case, you must have killed your husband too,” he said with a curt laugh. “Perhaps I did,” she answered candidly, “though not in the same way as you.” He shivered, wanting to put an end to it. The noise level was unbearable and he had been on his feet since six o’clock that morning. “Shall we?” he asked, laying a warm hand on hers, which let itself be held like an old bird.
He followed her quietly to the entrance, glancing over her shoulder at her wristwatch, whose hands said almost midnight, before planting a light kiss on her dry forehead, which had a slightly sweetish taste. Mechanically he apologized for his tiredness and for having to catch a plane in the morning, and she urged him to go to bed, though she herself, she said, was not ready to turn in yet. And so they parted, and he stepped out into the frigid night, thinking of the shabby man at the opera, from whose strange, contorted movements the music had seemed to flow. Still, I enjoyed it, he thought, that’s one opera I’ll never forget, even if I can’t sing a note of it. In the hotel, which he found unaided, all the lights were already out; the bar in the corner was shut, and the only keys still in their cubbyholes were his and hers. “Sechs,” said Molkho with the last of his strength, his hand held out as though to salute the student with the book, who was on the night shift again; then, recalling that the young man spoke English, he asked to be awakened at five. The student wrote it down, though just to be on the safe side, he gave Molkho an alarm clock as well.