While the store was modern enough, the bathroom appeared to date from a different era: its large copper faucets were tarnished with verdigris, its toilet seats were high, narrow, and stern, its rough bars of gray soap smelled of antiseptic, and an icy draft blew through it. Urinating quickly, he returned to find the legal adviser trying on a pair of sleek black pants. Now he had a better view of her waistline and rear, which were indeed low and flabby-looking—unless it was just the cut of the pants, a new style from India. At last, without making a purchase, she promised the salesgirl she would return, though no one particularly seemed to care whether she did or not.
They walked on through the gathering dusk. It was time to eat, and after considering a few spots, they picked a modest restaurant, where they sat in a cozy corner apart from everyone, as if in a bubble all their own. He was glad their first date was not taking place in Haifa, where someone was sure to have recognized them. She ordered quickly, and her choices, he noticed, were not particularly expensive. Though she was eager to tell him about the conference, he preferred to turn the talk to her late husband, refusing to change the subject, despite the reluctance with which she answered his questions. “Very suddenly,” she said when asked how he had died. He never complained of a thing. One minute he was washing dishes in the kitchen and the next he was dead on the floor. “At first we thought it was just some pot that had fallen.” “Did he like puttering in the kitchen?” Molkho asked. “No,” she said, “not especially. He just happened to be there when it happened. And his death left a terrible vacuum.” For a whole year afterward, she hardly slept a wink, so shocked had she been. Perhaps he, who had had so much time to prepare himself, found that difficult to imagine. Yes, he had been ready for Death, admitted Molkho, struck by how, though she was doing most of the talking, her plate was empty before his. Though her table manners were impeccable, she ate much faster than he did.
Afterward, they discussed the office and politics, for which she, like his wife, had a passion. His opinions, when she pressed him for them, made her look slightly incredulous, and he could see that his mind worked too slowly and banally for her, disappointing her with its simplicity. I’d better sharpen my brain, he told himself; it’s time I thought about something besides medicines, hospital beds, orthopedic mattresses, therapeutic baths, changing linens, and playing doctor. And yet they talked for a long while until, despite her repeated assurances that he looked perfectly respectable and that no one dressed for the opera anymore, because all that mattered was the music, they hurried back to the hotel for him to change. He went to his room, turned on the light, turned it off again as though someone were watching him, and quickly began to undress. Deciding to change underpants, too, he paused to examine his penis by the reddish glow of the streetlight streaming through the thin lace curtains. “So, old man,” he whispered, morosely observing how small and scrotal it looked, like a tired gray mouse. He hurriedly put on a tie and descended to the lobby, where, freshly made up but still wearing the same dress, she was waiting; he felt annoyed that she didn’t attach the same value to clothing that he did.
It had gotten colder, and the drops of icy sleet jabbed at them like little javelins. “The snow’s following me from Paris,” he said, and she answered impishly, “I wish it would catch you already. I love it.” In the taxi she took out the German program of the opera from her handbag. “It looks like a modern piece,” she informed him. “I hope we’ll like it.” “Modern?” he asked, feeling vaguely anxious. “Yes. Experimental. My brother-in-law says he’s heard it’s good. Let’s hope we’ll think so too. Tomorrow we’ll see something more classical.” “You’ll have to explain everything to me,” he warned her, looking out at the widening streets, “because I don’t know a word of German. I’m at your mercy.” “I know,” she replied, smiling gaily while slipping a warm hand into his that sent a shiver down his spine.
His first thought upon reaching the opera house and stepping out of the cab beneath the large marquee was that they had stumbled on some college demonstration. Though he had expected to see the passengers he had flown with from Paris that morning, none were visible in the crowd, which seemed composed for the most part of young Berliners, a throng of whom surrounded them at once, asking for extra tickets. So many youngsters were unheard of at the orchestral performances in Haifa, whose elderly concertgoers seemed rejuvenated now in Berlin, quiet and well-mannered in their steel-rimmed glasses and clipped beards, so that the occasional oldster, like the tall woman leaning on her walking stick in the midst of a circle of reverently listening youths, stood out in contrast. The legal adviser, Molkho now realized, had been right, for most of those present had on jeans, army jackets, and windbreakers.
IT WAS AN OPERA from the 1930s. The overture struck up, muted but urgent, and the curtain rose on a bare canyon of a stage. Slowly, by means of a hidden effect, long strips of yellow fabric swirled across it like a sandstorm, and groups of performers, all dressed in identical black—some of them, to Molkho’s surprise, quite old—entered from the wings, dancing, singing, and even shouting, while old-fashioned street and shop signs descended from the cavernous ceiling on radiant wires. Molkho found it rather exciting, and indeed, it was very different from the opera he had seen in Paris: serious, even somber, yet electrifying the young audience, which seemed mesmerized. He did his best to concentrate, trying to banish the last twenty-four hours from his mind, yet unable to do so: the morning in Paris, the slow drive to the airport, the search for the unknown airline, his wife’s cousin’s annoyance at the sign saying Voles Opera. His eyes moved back and forth across the stage, from whose pit came music that was softly melodic and wildly discordant by turns. Had the high school boy, he wondered, remembered to shut the gas cock at night? Now the protagonists were left onstage by themselves, two men and three women who soon became involved in a tortuous operatic argument, quarreling passionately, almost murderously, and then making up again before somersaulting down a kind of manhole in the middle of the stage and popping up unexpectedly somewhere else. Gently Molkho covered his mouth with one hand, smelling his breath and reproaching himself for not brushing his teeth in the hotel, suddenly recalling that endless night a year ago when, riddled with tubes after major surgery, his wife amusedly told him that she could no longer distinguish the orifices of her body or tell what entered or exited from which, and he had listened attentively, eagerly trying to imagine the feeling, convinced that he was on the verge of a new insight, carefully probing her with questions until she fell silent and said no more. Dully he now strove to follow the performance, whose cacophonous score was giving him a headache, though the legal adviser, sitting bright-eyed beside him, seemed quite taken by it. Beneath her blouse he made out the outline of her breasts; what, he wondered, were they really like? Would he have to fondle them later that night or would a goodnight kiss be enough, leaving the next uncertain installment for tomorrow? Again he regretted having failed to brush his teeth. Feeling her eyes on him, he smiled at her dolefully. “Tell me if you understand anything,” he whispered. “It’s symbolic,” she told him. “It’s really very symbolic.” “Yes, I can see that myself,” he replied, “but of what?” Yet, though she tried explaining, he doubted she understood more than he did, and besides, they were already being shushed by the German audience, which was, it appeared, very sensitive. Considering the price of the ticket, it was odd there was no program in English. Not that it matters, he thought, shutting his eyes defensively against the violent music, which barreled on as if squeezing the life out of him, though what I need, he told himself, is some life squeezed into me, only not too quickly, for the weird clangor, he felt, shutting his eyes still tighter, was wringing him dry. He managed to drowse a bit, there being no intermission, but not for long, because suddenly the legal adviser poked him sharply and he awoke to find a floodlit stage growing still brighter and a gorgeously costumed cast breaking into an unexpectedly melodious ensemble that made him, sitting in the overflow crowd, decide it was a splendid opera after all and that, even if he didn’t understand it, that was no reason not to like it, so that he joined in wholeheartedly when the applause broke out, even rising for the standing ovation as if to make up for his catnap. “It’s true that a lot of it was over my head,” he said with a smile to the legal adviser, who, her narrow eyes appraising him, seemed baffled by his enthusiasm, “but something did get through to me in the end. I’m not sure what, but I’m certainly glad we came.”