He carefully climbed the steps, trying to see just where and why she had fallen and what had stopped her when she did. It was only a matter of luck, he concluded, that the accident hadn’t been worse. Inside the building he scanned pictures of the somber performance they had seen, studying the faces of the singers, who looked different close up, and glancing at the advance billings for Don Giovanni, which they were to see that night. The sets, costumes, and performers seemed quite splendid and promising, and for a long time he stood gazing at a photograph of someone done up as a statue, advancing from the depths of the stage with his arm out to seize the frightened Don Giovanni.
By the box office were stacks of colored fliers, with which Molkho stuffed his pockets, even though they were in German, intending to present them to his Sleeping Beauty. Tonight, he thought happily, we’ll see something calming and human for a change; indeed, he felt as though the Mozart opera were meant especially for him, as if it were the final act of the Drama of Death, whose uncomplaining hero he had been for months.
He stepped outside, where the clearing weather had grown remarkably, audaciously warmer. Tonight he would make sure to hold her tightly on the stairs. Should he walk back to the hotel? Afraid of losing his way, though, he hailed a taxi, taking one of the cards from his pocket and thrusting it at the driver. A warm glow of homecoming came over him as they pulled into the street. If only she hadn’t locked her door. Could she really be angry at him? But what had he done to her? At most he had helped her to a good sleep; brain damage was out of the question. Getting out of the taxi by the little barbershop, he noticed the proprietor and his wife sitting idly in their white smocks and stopped to check the price list in the window. Then, convinced he would be in good hands, he stepped inside.
A little bell tinkled softly, and the old couple hurried courteously toward him; the fact that a foreigner had chosen to patronize their shop, and one from Israel, as it turned out, seemed to make them inordinately proud. Not that they weren’t probably Nazis like the rest of them, thought Molkho, but what difference does it make? Now they’re just two doddering old people who may as well wait on me before they die. And they did, hand and foot, first tying a large white bib around his neck and then leading him to a big sink in a dark corner, at which, he realized with alarm, the old woman meant to wash his hair. There was no choice, however, but to present her with his head, lowering it into the sink, where her expert fingers massaged and tickled it, working steamy water and shampoo into his scalp. She repeated the treatment a second time, dried him with a towel, wrang it out, and led him wrapped in it to a large chair, where the barber was waiting with his scissors and instruments. It was all done quite slowly and methodically, with frequent pauses for whispered consultations, and the barber’s tools, though old, looked shiny and reliable. Between them, the old couple clipped and cut and swept and combed and powdered and clipped some more, and though Molkho tried lamely to warn them that he didn’t want his hair too short, the stubborn Prussian had his own ideas and gave him a military crew cut that met with the definite approval of another old Berliner who dropped in just then to pay a friendly visit.
IT WAS ALREADY LATE. The haircut had taken longer than he had expected, and he was sure that the legal adviser was up by now and perhaps already out of the hotel. At the reception desk he was handed his key and a black leather case like the one he had kept his compass in as a schoolboy; in it was a thermometer, gleaming in its bed of red velvet. Though he was so impatient to use it that he bounded up the stairs without waiting for the elevator, once standing outside her door he had an attack of cold feet. Nevertheless, he knocked lightly, and then, when there was no answer, more insistently, calling out in a voice that was tinged with desperation. “It’s me, it’s just me.” The jilted lover, he thought ironically, but at last he heard her footsteps and she opened the door, still sleepy and disheveled but awake. Cautiously he followed her into the dimly lit, overheated room, eyeing it, as he used to eye his wife’s sickroom, to see what was new in his absence. And indeed, as if afraid that the light might keep her up, she had lowered the blinds he had raised. Why, she’s on a real jag! he told himself in astonishment, her existence having as though split in two, one half of it, such as her slip, her scuffed pink sandals, and her toothbrush sticking out from a glass on the bathroom shelf, remaining familiar and even intimate, while the other was now a mystery, such as the odd smell he detected, which made him think of exotic mosses growing deep in a subterranean cave.
Feeling a new wave of worried compassion for this temperamental, loose-boundaried woman now flopping limply back onto the sheets, and determined to get close to her, he sat down on her warm, rumpled bed and began talking intimately in the slightly scolding, humorous tone he had sometimes employed with his wife when nothing else seemed to work. “Now look here. This has got to stop. You’re just using the pills as an excuse. It’s not them anymore, because I know all about them, and they can’t put anyone to sleep like this. Maybe you’re exhausted from your conference, but you can’t just go on like this without eating or drinking. I’m good and worried about you.” He laid a familiar hand on her arm and then moved it up to her head, gently palpating medical areas. “Maybe it’s too hot for you in here. Or else you’re coming down with something. Here, I brought you a thermometer. We’ll start by taking your temperature.” “My temperature?” she wondered. “Yes, why not?” he replied. “Do it for my sake.” But when he reached out to switch on the bed lamp, she begged him not to. “Please don’t turn on the light yet,” she said, opening her eyes to a snakelike slit, through whose faint flutter of an aperture he felt her studying him. He complied, keeping a fatherly hand on her while taking out the thermometer, which he then went to the bathroom to wash, not knowing what German germs might be on it. Peering anxiously in the mirror at his new crew cut, which made him look like a Wehrmacht officer at the siege of Stalingrad, he soaped, rinsed, and wiped the long pipette and carefully handed it to her, gently helping to slip it under her tongue. Surprisingly, she offered no resistance, and he timed three minutes on his watch, pacing up and down while entertaining her with an account of his morning, telling her about the wall, which seemed so peaceful, about the melting snow and slowly clearing skies, about coming across the opera house, and about the fliers he had brought so she could read up on that night’s performance. She lay in wizened silence, her mouth slightly twisted in protest, the elastic bandage from her foot rebelliously tossed on the chair. “Well, at least you don’t have any fever,” he declared, having put on his glasses and swiveled around to hold the thermometer up to the reddish, crepuscular light that filtered through the slats of the blinds. “And that means there’s no reason to sleep so much. Why, you’ll be up all night now!” But this, too, elicited no response, though an inner smile of sorts shone through the slit of her eyes.
Baffled, he scratched his head and persisted. “Look here. At least let me bring you something to eat. You’ll need your strength back for tonight. Do you want me to be blamed for not taking proper care of you?” Yet still she refused to budge, stubbornly clinging to her bed, though he felt sure she was wide awake now, probing him with her flickering laser beam, so that suddenly he felt a wave of panic in the dark room gloomy with twilight. “Come on!” he said, his voice cracking. “Get up! I’ll wait for you downstairs and we’ll go out. You’ll see—the snow and the cold will wake you and we’ll have a bowl of hot soup somewhere.” Though not a muscle stirred, he felt her make an effort to talk. And suddenly she did. “Did you get a haircut?” she asked. He grinned at her. “Yes, I did,” he answered, standing up and patting his head. “Down below on the street. They really dipped me, but it will grow back.” She ignored this, however, sitting up and turning on the light. “Don’t be angry with me,” she said quietly, “but I’m not going to the opera tonight. I don’t feel up to it. I’d better rest and keep off my foot. The last thing I need is to trip and fall again. You needn’t feel bad for me. I’ve seen enough operas in my life. Why, they even took us to one at the conference. Why don’t you go by yourself? It’s awkward, I know, but you’ll enjoy it. Don Giovanni is too good to miss.”