After lunch that day he tried to nap, but within ten minutes he awoke and took a bath. Then he called his mother-in-law to arrange to pick her up for dinner, noticing a hesitancy in her voice. “No,” he replied when she inquired if he had a cold. “What makes you think I do?” “You just sound like it,” she said. “Well, I don’t,” he repeated, asking, “Why not?” when she wondered aloud whether he should come for her on such a rainy night. In the end, she broke down and confessed that she had forgotten to bake her strudel. “Don’t even think of it,” said Molkho, insisting that she come, especially since his daughter would be there too. He set a time and arrived early as usual to watch the Arab help arrange the chapel, read the menu in the dimly lit dining room, and look at the old folks, scrubbed clean for the Sabbath and glad it was storming outside, lounging with their German magazines. Once again he thought of ways to visit the fifth floor, where the terminal cases lay dying.
The down elevator arrived, and his mother-in-law stepped out of it, bundled up in a large, old fur coat. “You really didn’t have to come for me on a night like this,” she said, which made him answer in protest, “but when would we see you if I didn’t?” She smiled at him. The secrets they had shared during the illness belonged to them both, and they were aware of an unspoken bond between them, although sometimes he still had to dispel her suspicion that he was only being nice for his wife’s sake. The old people in the lobby rose to greet her, saying something in German (perhaps to dissuade her from venturing out into the rain), but his umbrella was already open and his arm was gripping hers. “Why don’t I carry your cane for you,” he suggested. “There’s no need to,” she replied—and there wasn’t, because it remained hooked on her arm while he led her between puddles to the car. “How was the concert?” she asked as they drove off. “Wonderful,” he said, feeling a hot flush. “Haydn’s Creation was magnificent, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was perfect too.” “Who went with you,” she asked, “the boy?” “No,” he answered, “no one.” The old folks who told on him, so it seemed, had mistaken the young man sitting next to him for his son. “Won’t you go to any concerts at all this season?” he asked. “Most likely not,” she replied.
For dinner, he served a new dish he had made from a package of frozen food, couscous with vegetables and gravy, which seemed a great success until he noticed that no one wanted a second portion. His mother-in-law asked him for the recipe, listening to his explanation with a rather pitying look and chiding his daughter for not helping him. As soon as the television news was over, she rose to go. “Stay a while,” said Molkho. “I’m going out soon, and I’ll drop you on my way. I was invited by the legal adviser at the office,” he went on, curious to test her reaction, which turned out to be one of perfect calm. “She’s a widow,” he added, letting her see that he was keeping nothing back, but she simply sat unperturbedly down again. For the second time that evening he shaved and changed clothes, taking his time because he did not wish to be early. In the car his mother-in-law gently pointed out that he had some soap behind his ear, and he wiped it away. The rain had stopped, and he let her off in front of the home without waiting to see if her little friend was there to bow to her.
It was already late. He drove to the West Carmel, losing his way but finally finding the house. As he climbed the poorly lit stairs he felt a pressure on his bladder and realized he had neglected to relieve himself. For a moment he considered using the backyard, but afraid he might be mistaken from a window for a pervert, he quickly dismissed the idea. Outside the slightly peeling door of the legal adviser’s apartment, he paused in a vain attempt to hear voices, and then rang the bell, whose sound was followed by a laugh and a woman’s quick footsteps. Her hair looked more rumpled than it did at work and her heels were not as high; indeed, he thought, there was something childlike about the way she stood in the doorway, staring at him with her crinkly, oriental eyes as if trying to make out who he was. Behind her, at the end of a hallway, was a living room clouded by cigarette smoke in which stood several men. Two women, he saw when he entered it, were there too; yet it was the men, of whom there were five, whose warm camaraderie set the tone. In one corner of the smallish room, which was furnished in a modem, minimalist style, a fireplace burned with an exquisitely pure orange flame.
His hostess introduced him to her guests, all but one of whom were members of her family: her father, a straight-backed, sturdy-looking man; her younger brother, whose small, narrow eyes were like hers; the two brothers of her late husband; and an elderly lawyer from abroad whose relation to the others was unclear. They were all friendly, cultured Haifaites of Central European origin, balding and a bit on the thin side, lawyers and travel agents—in short, people whom Molkho’s own wife might have dismissed as superficial and beneath her. Though at first it made him nervous to be so unexpectedly put to the test of the family’s approval, they did their best to set him at ease, and the legal adviser, far from clinging to him, soon left him to his own devices. With perfect naturalness she led him to a seat by the fireplace beside the two women, who professed surprise that he had come coatless in such cold weather, and brought him a whiskey and a tray of hors d’oeuvres, from which he chose some vividly candied fruit peels.
The conversation rambled intimately. Though he had prepared a few subjects to talk about, especially several of a legal nature, he saw at once that he needn’t make the effort, for everyone appeared harmoniously acquainted and he, it seemed, was passed back and forth among them in a discreet and unaffected fashion. Afraid of being suspected of some organic problem if he went to the toilet too soon, he sat with his legs together to ease the pressure on his bladder while one by one the men came up to him, introducing themselves once again and steering the talk to safe topics that all could agree on without seeming overly bland. One of the brother-in-laws’ wives, who had met Mrs. Molkho in a teachers’ course, spoke about her warmly and sincerely, moving him with her appreciation of the devotion he had shown in nursing his wife at home while comparing it with other cases, in Haifa and elsewhere, some of which he knew about too. Then one of the brother-in-laws mentioned seeing Molkho at the last concert and asked him what he thought of it. The man himself, so it seemed, was highly critical of the performance, especially of the soloists, who, he claimed, were often flat and left out whole bars of the score. Molkho was shocked; he had no idea that whole bars could be skipped in a concert—and in such a well-known work! Who would have thought that there was fraud even here, he reflected resentfully. Meanwhile, the conversation was getting heated. The names of orchestras, conductors, choirs, soloists, were bandied about, one after another, making him realize with amazement how highly musical and well traveled the legal adviser’s family was. They spoke of hotels and restaurants all over Europe, but especially of operas and concerts; it seemed that there wasn’t an opera house they hadn’t been in, even behind the Iron Curtain. And, to his surprise, they apparently considered him their equal, because they spared him none of the details and fell respectfully quiet when, after listening attentively, he expressed an opinion of his own. Until twenty years ago, he confessed, he had never been abroad at all. “I’m a fifth-generation Sephardi in this country,” he told them, “and Europe is another world to us.” The five generations impressed them. “In that case,” joked someone to the laughter of them all, “your family has served its time here and is free to live where it wants!” The legal adviser, Molkho noticed, let her family do the talking while she served the food and drinks, after which she sank down on an embroidered leather hassock, where she sat like a well-trained dog. And yet whatever she said met with general approval, so that Molkho, struck by her keen intelligence, wondered again what she saw in him. Was it simply his good looks, his curly hair and fair eyes, or perhaps, too, his being a concertgoer whom her family could talk music with? Already nettled by her outranking him, he felt a pang of envy when, half just to him and half to them all, she mentioned being sent next month to a legal conference in Germany. No one, he asserted aggrievedly, had ever sent him abroad at the taxpayers’ expense! “Nor us, and it’s her third such trip too. How she gets them to foot the bill is beyond us,” chimed in everyone fondly. When, they asked Molkho, had he last been in Germany himself? “Never,” he answered, although his wife was born in Berlin and spent her childhood there. She and her mother had managed to leave just in time, after her father, a pediatrician, had taken his own life, and she had refused on principle to go back. He and she had been in Europe several times, especially in Paris, where she had a favorite cousin, but never in Germany.