Suddenly—it was no doubt the fault of the cup of tea he’d just drunk—the pressure on his bladder grew worse, yet he still did not wish to be the first to use the bathroom. There was a momentary silence in the room, though by no means a disapproving one. They could understand his late wife’s feelings; they themselves, however, looked at it differently, and in any case, he was now free to travel there himself. It was well worth it if he loved music. Paris was Paris, of course, but for music there was no place like Germany. And there were special opera flights now too, with the price of the tickets included in the airfare; in fact, it was the rage all over Europe, where opera was back in fashion. “You say there are flights like that all over Europe?” Molkho asked. “Of course.” “From Paris too?” From Paris too—but why did he ask? Because, he told them, suddenly inspired, he had been thinking of going there next month. “When next month?” asked the legal adviser’s family with great interest. He wasn’t sure yet, he said. Perhaps he would wait a little longer, because Europe in the winter rather scared him. But why should it scare him? they asked. It was at its best then! Who was his travel agent? He mentioned an agency that, of course, they all knew of, adding with a knowing smile, because he expected them to pooh-pooh it, “I hope you don’t think too poorly of it.” They smiled back sympathetically. “It’s not fair to ask us,” they said, “because we can’t be objective.” “But I’d like to know anyway,” he persisted. “Well,” they smiled, “it’s not such a bad agency; it’s just a very simple one, a bit unsophisticated. A man like you, of your age, deserves something more cosmopolitan.” Of course, he thought, listening good-naturedly, they were out for his business; they were simply waiting for a hint—but he was not about to drop one. From across the room the legal adviser flashed him a smile. “You have a nice place here,” he said appreciatively, rising from his chair with an air of freedom, because he had to go to the bathroom at once. Yet attracted to the fireplace, he approached it instead and exclaimed, “What a lovely fire. And it draws so well—there’s no smell of smoke at all!” The guests exchanged embarrassed glances while the legal adviser explained that the fire wasn’t real but electric. “Electric?” he marveled, grinning foolishly at his ignorance. “It certainly had me fooled!” Red-faced, he asked her in a whisper for the toilet. She rose from her hassock to show him, and he slipped away at once, cursing himself for not having gone at home.
Molkho shut the bathroom door behind him, quietly slid home the bolt, and inspected the little room, which, compared to the rest of the house, had a rather neglected look, a strict and nonaesthetic functionality: the paint was peeling above the toilet and in a web in one corner hung a large spider, which he felt he should kill. His own bathroom, which boasted a shelf with some books, an illustrated calendar received each year from the bank, and a large poster of three monkeys wearing clothing, was much livelier. Sighing with relief, he carefully aimed a silent jet of urine at the side of the toilet bowl and waited for the last concluding dribble while straining to hear the voices in the living room. Yet when he tried flushing as quietly as he could, the water burst from the tank with a roar. Quickly he switched off the light and went to the separate washroom, which was equally Spartan but clean. He soaped his hands thoroughly, musing about Death and whether some part of the legal adviser’s late husband was not still grappling with it on these walls, and then peeked at the medicine cabinet, hoping for some insight into her condition. It was, however, poorly stocked: a few tubes of makeup, some old aspirins, a box of Band-Aids, the usual antacid preparation, and a paper bag from the drugstore with some little red pills that he could have sworn he had seen before. Slowly he inspected himself—his Levantine curls, his handsome eyes—in the mirror. If he was not just a guest in this house, if he was really an official suitor, he had the right to take his time.
The conversation in the living room was still flowing naturally, no advantage having been taken of his absence to discuss him behind his back. Slowly he walked back up the hallway, peering into a darkened bedroom whose faded wallpaper needed to be changed. Outside the window were the dotted lights of houses and a dark ravine. Did it merge with his own somewhere? A pair of kicked-off pink slippers lay by a bed. There was an awkward lull in the living room: so they were following his progress after all. Yet he did not rejoin them but rather glanced into a lit room to his right in which, on a junior-sized bed, lay a girl of about thirteen who looked like her mother, having the same straight, smooth hair and slanted eyes. She was reading a book, and suddenly, Molkho felt a great pity for her. Why, she’s an orphan too, he told himself, thinking of his own children and stepping with unforeseen boldness into the room. There was a hush behind him in the living room. He introduced himself to the girl—who, her head on a pillow, might have been either sick or just resting—and struck up a friendly conversation, sitting on the edge of her bed and looking around while asking her about herself and the book, reassured at being able to make out through the window the tall building of his mother-in-law’s old-age home on the opposite flank of the mountain. The girl struck him as bright but rather sad, and returning to the living room with his eyes cast somberly down, he felt a new warmth directed toward him and even made out tears in the eyes of her grandfather. Indeed, the whole family spoke of her lovingly, after which he told them a bit about his own children. And so the evening passed pleasantly until it was time to go home and he left in the company of a brother-in-law and his wife. Still chatting, the two walked him to his car, surprised all over again that he wasn’t wearing a coat. “It must be my Asiatic blood,” he said, watching them in the mirror as they turned around and walked back to the legal adviser’s apartment, no doubt to take part in the postmortem.
THE WIND HAD DIED DOWN and the sky was clearing. Dark, fallen leaves lay in the street. He felt pleased with himself, even joyful, at having passed the test, whatever it was for. Most of all, he was proud of his initiative with the girl. That’s what really won their hearts, he told himself. How odd it was that barely two and a half months after his wife’s death he was already on the matrimonial circuit! He did not go straight back to his apartment but rather drove past the sleeping old-age home, from which he strove to make out the legal adviser’s house, but the night proved too dark and at last he gave up and went home. It was after midnight. Suddenly parched, as if by his own inner excitement, he opened the refrigerator to look for a drink, settling in the end on a big dish of strawberry ice cream. Then, remembering how as a boy in Jerusalem he had never been allowed to eat ice cream in winter, he went to bed.