He would wait. He had time. Setting the pace, he thought pleasurably, was a male prerogative. Meanwhile, he went for long walks about town, and one day he took off from work, packed a suitcase with his wife’s clothes, and drove to Jerusalem, where he accompanied his mother to the cemetery on the tenth anniversary of his father’s death. Amid the old, crumbling tombstones of the ancient graveyard he stood with her and the other members of the family, aristocratic old Sephardim who shook his hand gently and commiserated with him on the loss of his wife. He had not been in Jerusalem for half a year, and the city he grew up in now seemed to him excessively wintry and religious. He brought his mother home, attended to some business in town, and returned to eat the large lunch she had cooked for him, which consisted of his favorite greasy foods. Then, cozily sleepy, sitting with his shoes off on the old couch in the heart of the city’s dilapidated downtown, he listened to her talk on and on. What, she kept asking him, did he think? “Think about what?” he parried innocently. “About what?” she echoed, sitting there large and multicolored like a big cockatoo and peering at him intently as if for the first time. “About your future.” “I really haven’t thought about it yet,” he answered lamely, stretched out comfortably on the couch. “I feel too drained.” Ever since his wife had taken ill, his mother’s presence in their life had become far less intrusive; the illness frightened her, so that her visits with them grew more subdued and were marked by a reluctance to interfere. “Don’t be in any hurry,” she cautioned him now. “Have a good look around. Just remember, though, that you’re not a young man anymore. Don’t be caught napping.” The house was ill heated and cold. Through the glass door of the terrace he watched the sun shoot apocalyptically out of a black tunnel of clouds. His mother refused to drop the subject. “Maybe you should think of coming back to live in Jerusalem. You have plenty of friends here who can help you find the right woman, the kind that you’re used to. Maybe even someone from your old high school class. There must be some divorcées and widows among them.” He opened his eyes wide, staring fondly at this woman who never failed to surprise him, silently shoveling peanuts into his mouth from a bowl and chewing them vigorously. The thought of marrying someone from his graduating class of thirty-five years ago struck him as being so wildly original that for a moment he pictured the classroom, with its four rows of seats, many occupied by young girls in black dresses. “How am I supposed to find them?” he asked in a feeble attempt at a joke. “If you came back here, you’d find all your old friends. You’re the only one who ever left. Ask for a transfer.” “I can’t,” he whispered exhaustedly. “I can’t leave her.” “Leave whom?” his mother demanded. “Her mother,” he said. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
He went to nap in his old bedroom, yet even wrapped in a large woolen blanket he was unable to keep himself warm. The roar of the city, which was the sound of his childhood, and the cold beneath the high ceiling kept him awake, his thoughts wandering from his children to the legal adviser, and then to his mother-in-law. Lately, the old woman had been hard to reach on the phone; it was as if she no longer needed him, as if she, too, had been set free by Death. And then, too, she was busy with her little friend from Russia who had arrived in Israel with her daughter, having taken them under her wing and made herself not only their counselor but their handyman; just the other day, for example, while stuck in a traffic jam, he had seen her dart out of a hardware store with a long metal pipe in one hand.
At last he fell into a troubled sleep, hearing his mother opening the suitcase he had brought and making bundles of his wife’s clothing for some woman’s charity, while he dreamt he was standing in the yard of his old high school among a pack of Boy Scouts, though his tie was not Scout blue or green but rather bright red, as were the ties of the smaller boys lined up on either side of him. He lay in his old bed listening to the city rhythmically pound and churn, as if he were inside the drum of a big washing machine that kept filling and draining, spinning, stopping, and filling again. From time to time, his mother tiptoed in to see if he was awake and tiptoed out again, annoyed at him for sleeping away his visit with her. Shivering with cold, he watched her through slit eyes until she gave up and returned to her pots in the kitchen, bursting with maternal compassion and impatience to talk with him.
Finally, she came and woke him, unable to keep her latest idea to herself any longer: he should take off his wedding ring; that way, at least, no one would get the wrong idea. “What difference does it make?” he asked, still flat on his back, enjoying her concern for him. “I’ll be dead soon myself.” He could feel her protest ripple through her. “How can you say such a thing! You have children!” “They don’t need me any more,” he answered, getting up to eat the early supper that was lavishly laid out for him on the dining room table. His wife’s clothes were already sorted, folded, and neatly tied with string. A purplish green light glinted off the plates and silverware. He went over to the window to gaze at the sky, which had grown dark and frothy, as though it were being brought to a boil. “Just look at that sky,” he told his mother, who suggested that he spend the night with her and return to Haifa in the morning. Molkho, however, declined. As soon as supper was over, he began gathering his things, hoping to beat the storm, his mood so improved that when she mentioned the wedding ring again, he answered, “Why not?” and tried pulling it off his finger. He did not succeed, however, for the finger had grown thicker, and his mother had to bring a bar of soap and slowly, painfully, work it off. With a glance at its grimy inner curve he stuck it in his wallet. “We’ll see,” he said, bending to kiss her good-bye.