Fingering the clothes, he went from floor to floor and even bought a sweater for his daughter, a double-barreled canteen for his younger son, and, for his mother-in-law, a collapsible cane with four jointed sections that made him think of Mozart’s magic flute. In the furniture department he opened closets, slid drawers back and forth in their grooves, and passed through a huge area divided up into living rooms, going from one to another and sitting with his legs crossed in sofas and easy chairs while pretending to be a welcome guest in each. And yet, thinking of the woman asleep in her hotel room, his pleasure was mingled with guilt, as it had been in those not so distant days in Haifa when he had sometimes done shopping while his wife lay in her large bed, the prow of which breasted the waves of a different existential sea.
Through the windows of the store he could see that the sun was back out and that the snowstorm was over. The morning was getting on. Most likely the legal adviser was up by now and wondering where he was. He hurried back, proud of his perfect sense of direction in the little streets of the pleasant neighborhood, entering the hotel on a carpet of fresh white snow played on by squealing children. Though the lobby was as silent as ever, breakfast was gone from the table. Had they finally given up on her or had she actually come down to eat? He sechsed the old lady at the reception desk, was given his key, and went first to his room, which had been tidied up, took off his hat and coat, and shoved the gifts into a suitcase before bounding upstairs. Apprehensively he entered her room. She was still lying motionless, though it was already after eleven. The Germans, so it seemed, had let her sleep. At once he cheered up again, feeling as if all that snowy morning he had been burrowing toward this strange woman down some hidden tunnel. And yet the guilt and the fear were still there. Suppose something had really happened to her? The room was dark, pungent with the sour smell of sleep. He decided to wake her, no matter what.
“Get up,” he said, “get up. Those pills really knocked you out. It’s almost lunchtime and you haven’t eaten yet. I’m worried about you.” She opened her eyes, and he helped her sit up weakly in bed. “There, you had me worried!” he said. “I told you not to take a second pill, it was really unnecessary.” She sat listening dreamily, her eyelids poised to shut again, the dry skin of her face deeply creased, an aging woman he had slipped a powder to. “The first was unnecessary also,” she said at last, perfectly distinctly. He smiled anxiously. “Maybe it was,” he confessed, “I didn’t know you were so sensitive.” In the ensuing silence he thought he was losing her again, but suddenly she exclaimed, “Just to these,” and said no more. And in fact, he now recalled with a glow that his wife, too, though she was used to all kinds of medicines, had slept a great deal when first put on the Talwin in late spring. Every new drug had been an adventure then, her reactions to which they had vigilantly lived through together. Sometimes, curious to know how she felt, he had even been tempted to try it himself, deterred only by his reluctance to gamble with his health, on which the entire family depended, for if at first he had sought to be sick together with her, gradually he had had to relent and let her illness serve for the two of them. Now, observing the legal adviser’s stupor, he remembered his wife’s reaction to the Talwin, the “philosophy pill,” as they had called it, for it had caused her mind to feel separated from her body, and her thoughts to be uncommonly clear. The long conversations they had had then were carried on as if from opposite ends of the earth, and yet, though even her quickest responses seemed to travel across far continents, they were unfailingly sharp on arrival. The memory of it made him miss her. Where are you now? he wondered. Are you really gone forever? And when would he join her there?
He let out a laugh. So did the legal adviser. Her eyes were shut again as though with the pleasure of her involuntary slumber, over which he presided worriedly. I’ll bet the old squirrel doesn’t do this often, he thought; it isn’t every day that a high-strung career woman like her gets such a good night’s sleep. Her breathing grew slow and regular, as if, glued to the rumpled sheets, she once more wished to drift off, but he refused to let her and was even about to turn her over in bed when suddenly he remembered her foot. “How’s your ankle?” he asked. She didn’t answer, still drugged by the potion in her veins, and so he pushed aside the blanket and groped for her bandaged foot, which seemed to have shrunk to a child’s size during the night. He lifted it and expertly undid the elastic like a crack surgeon treating a minor infection. “It’s much better,” he announced happily, as if discovering that it presented a different and less worrisome case than that of its owner. The legal adviser said nothing; no doubt he could have her other foot, too, if only he would let her sleep. Swiftly he replaced the bandage, talking out loud to himself as he had done in his wife’s final months. “This can’t go on. You have to eat. You’ve already missed breakfast, but I’ll go get you something, at least some coffee and rolls.” And indeed, off he went to ask the old lady at the reception desk, in a combination of sign language and English contrived to sound like German, for a canister of coffee, after which he dashed out into the street to buy some rolls and pastries, bringing it all back up on a tray, only to find the patient fast asleep again. He drew the curtain, pulled up the blinds, even opened the window to let in a blast of cold air, determined to make her wake up.
And she did, wearily and unwillingly. He helped her out of bed, amazed at how light she was, hurrying to check the sheets as soon as she shut the bathroom door behind her. Sure enough, they were sticky and slightly damp. Deftly he shook them out, reversed them, and spread them again on the mattress; so proficient a sheet-changer had he become that he could even do it while his wife lay in bed. Then he tidied up as best he could with one ear cocked toward the bathroom, afraid that the silence there might spell a new and dangerous relapse. At last, though, she emerged, washed and even wearing makeup, causing him to marvel at the quiet intimacy that had sprung up between them, as though they were an old married couple. Perhaps, it occurred to him as he served her from the tray, her hibernation was simply a way of getting attention. She ate and drank, laughing at being so weak that she could scarcely swallow her food, while he poured himself a cup of coffee and ate another roll. “Where have you been all morning?” she asked, regarding him for the first time as if he were more than just a bedside shade. “Oh, around,” he replied. He had even run into the Berlin Wall not far from the hotel and been disappointed. “But that isn’t the place for it,” she explained. “Go to the Brandenburg Gate. It’s much more impressive there. It cuts right through the heart of the city.” He told her about the storm, too, of which she had been unaware. “Berlin’s white all over,” he said. “The snow’s caught up with me from Paris, though the Germans seem to be taking it more calmly than the French.” Maybe I should bring her a bowl of it, he thought when she expressed regret at missing it. Yet, as funny as that seemed, he only answered, “You should rest up for the opera tonight. There’s no need to overdo it.” He watched her lie flushed on the pillow, hypnotized by the to-and-fro movement of her earrings—something his wife had never worn—while she looked quizzically back at him, trying dutifully to listen and pecking at her roll like a child who has no appetite, evidently unused to such loving care, even from her doting family.
He wondered whether to take her temperature. Could her sleepiness be a symptom of some deeper disorder? Outside the window the snow was flying grayly again, and the rumble of the radiator broke the silence like an airplane. The daylight grew faint, turned to a milky grime by the storm, and he sat in the armchair feeling logy himself, trying to get her to talk about something, her childhood, for instance, or even her reasons for choosing this hotel. Had she been here with someone, perhaps her late husband, on a previous opera tour? She was not up to answering, though; her replies were short and drowsy, as if a new attack of sleep were imminent, and so he switched the subject to himself, or rather to his wife, who, though bom in this city, had never wanted to return to it. The legal adviser, however, seemed to know all about it, for she dozed off in the middle of a sentence. She must have been a pharmaceutical virgin if two little pills could do this to her, Molkho thought, carefully removing the tray with its half-eaten roll and nearly full cup of coffee from her limp hands, which made her sit up with a start and then slump to a prone position in the bed. “I suppose it’s partly my fault,” he whispered, hoping for a little sympathy. At first, lying mutely on the pillow, she didn’t react, yet all at once she smiled bitterly. “Just partly?” she asked, which was more than enough to alarm him. “I never thought,” he stammered, “that you would be affected like this. Why, they weren’t even prescription pills. I bought them over the counter. My wife...” But sleep had carried her off again, and her breath came in slow, heavy waves. How, he asked himself worriedly, could he fly back to Israel tomorrow if she didn’t break the habit by then? He had no choice but to stay by her side and wait for her to sleep off the poison in her system. Meanwhile, not even the snowstorm seemed able to rouse her.