In the morning he awoke in a triumphant yet anxious mood. The next move was up to him, and not only she but her whole family would expect him to make it; the smallest gesture on his part would have all kinds of meanings read into it. It had happened too quickly, before he was ready, before he had even heard again from the matchmaker who had phoned him two weeks ago. It was unimaginable that he should already be permanently linked with this woman. Why, his children, to say nothing of his mother-in-law, would be sure she’d been there all along, that he had simply waited for his wife to die to bring her out of the woodwork! The whole next day, even while hanging out the wash and hoeing the little garden that he kept behind the house, he thought of nothing else. In the afternoon the college student came for lunch, and he and his sister decided to make a feast for all their friends. At first, Molkho hovered over them to make sure they didn’t cook too much, not wanting to eat leftovers again all week long; but in the end, laughing merrily, they threw him out of the kitchen, and he went for a walk in the neighborhood, thinking of his wife while glancing up at the sky in which a new storm was brewing. What, deep in earth, was still left of her? Her body must have rotted completely by now, its vanished outlines surviving only in his own frail mind and memory. He tried imagining its weight, lifted and carried by him so many times, now lighter than the flight of dust. And then a strong wind blew up, and he returned home to a kitchen frill of steaming pots and bowls heaped high with food to say, “Take it easy, kids, don’t overdo it,” but they were all in a fabulous mood, and soon friends came, and everyone let down his hair, and he saw how quickly they had forgotten her. That’s how they’ll forget me too, he thought quietly. The party lasted all afternoon. More and more youngsters kept coming, and in the evening they all decided to go to the movies, where a new comedy was playing, and he felt like going too and said jokingly, “Maybe you’ll take me along,” but he saw at once how upset they were, as if certain he would spoil all the fun. Why, they don’t even feel sorry for me, he marveled, and indeed, they saw no reason to. “Never mind,” he said out loud, “it doesn’t matter. Go without me. I’m too tired anyway.”
HE KNEW THE NEXT MOVE with the legal adviser was his, yet he kept putting it off. What move can I make. It’s too early. Why can’t she wait. For two days he deliberately avoided her at the office, keeping to his room, but that Tuesday afternoon, as luck would have it, he met her in the street, practically running right into her. For a moment he hardly recognized her, for she was wearing a short, broad-shouldered fur coat of a yellowish, leopard color and her face glowed ruddily from the cold. “I’m so glad to see you,” he said warmly, his hand lightly grazing the soft fur. “I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to thank you for a lovely evening. I enjoyed it so much. And what a darling your daughter is!” “Everyone liked you too,” she said—which set him off on a blue streak, especially about her daughter, as if it were the girl he were thinking of marrying, after which he asked if she was really going to Germany. “Of course,” she replied, thus leading him to inquire, as though seeking his good offices, about her brother-in-law the travel agent and where he worked. She gave him the information at once, writing down the address and several telephone numbers while standing in the street. “You’ll find him useful,” she confided. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to help.” Though Molkho would have been happy to end the conversation right there, he could feel her impatience, her expectation of something more. Three years had passed since her husband’s death, and she wasn’t getting any younger. He glanced at her small, almost miniature face, her darting, Tatar eyes, and her body, the sharp angles of which stirred his anxious compassion. Just then, though, an acquaintance of hers happened by, and Molkho was given a chance to excuse himself.
That evening he ached all over and his eyes began to smart. Soon he noticed shooting pains in his back, and when the television news was over, he climbed into bed and took his temperature, surprised to see it was high. Along with a small flash of pleasure, this produced a shiver of fear, for he had not run a fever in years, whereas now, as though he were a small boy again, he suddenly had one. Although he waited for the symptoms of a cold to appear, there were none; the trouble, he reasoned, must be something else, as yet unidentified, as if a last squall of the tropical storm that had raged in this room were now brewing inside him. The next morning his son was alarmed to find him in bed with the lights off, unshaven and listless. Aspirin had not brought down the fever. “What’s wrong?” asked the boy, who never had had to worry about his father before. “Just a little temperature,” Molkho reassured him. “It’s nothing. Go to school.” He tried phoning his mother-in-law, but she was out. And though he was sure the fever would pass during the day, it did not; on the contrary, it knocked him out totally, dropping each time for an hour or two only to return as though bubbling up from some mysterious source deep within him. Still, capped by a pleasurable stupor, he felt it was under control. For hours on end, he lay fetally beneath the blankets in a darkness real or delusory, rising only to go to the bathroom, and though his urine seemed to have turned a greenish color, this, too, may have been only imagined. He was too weak to make lunch, yet when his son, who had meanwhile come home from school, wanted to call the doctor, Molkho refused. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just bring me some tea and crackers and make something for yourself. And don’t forget to do the dishes.” From under the blankets he watched the boy move about, enjoying a bed’s-eye view of the house, his glance sweeping over the floors and the bottoms of doors and furniture.
After the boy had eaten he went off to do his homework, the radio playing softly in his room, from which he emerged now and then to look in on his father and ask how he was feeling. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” said Molkho. “Just don’t come too close—I don’t want you to catch it,” though he had no idea what precisely there was to be caught.
When evening came, he asked the boy to call his grandmother and tell her that he was sick. “What did she say?” he asked him when he came back from the phone. “Nothing,” said his son. “She hopes you’ll feel better.” In the middle of the night he awoke as if on fire; his temperature was nearly one hundred and four and he felt as dry as a desert, though still not unpleasantly so. Now it’s me who’s dying, he told himself with a smile, contemplating, as he put on the earphones to listen to music, a brief expiration followed by a more lasting resurrection.
It was late when he awoke the next morning. The house was empty, the high school boy’s room neat and orderly. At noon the concerned college student arrived, and Molkho, speaking feebly from under the blankets, dictated a shopping list. Perhaps, suggested the student before going out with it, he should ask his grandmother to come. “What for?” Molkho asked. “She’ll just catch it from me.” But the student called her anyway, talking in hushed tones on the telephone. “What did she say?” “That you should call a doctor.” “And what else?” “Nothing.” But Molkho did not want a doctor; deep down he wanted his mother-in-law to come sit by his side, as she had sat by the side of his wife. However, no one came at all, and the telephone was silent all day; his temperature stayed as high as if an internal combustion engine were working away inside him. The old woman, he told himself, must be angry.