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.