“So how was Don Giovanni?” she asked, wanting, he felt uneasily, to smoke him out. “It wasn’t,” he replied, managing to stay calm and keep smiling, perhaps because she still sounded tentative, as he told her about the last-minute switch to Orpheus and Eurydice. Had she ever heard of it or of a composer named Gluck? Without waiting for an answer, he handed her a program that he had found on one of the seats after the curtain calls. She took it with an air of bemusement and absently leafed through it while he reached into his pocket for her ticket and explained at great length why he hadn’t sold it, there having been no demand and the box office having been closed, though he was sure she could get a refund through her brother’s travel agency, since it wasn’t her fault that the opera was changed. Yet, far from being interested in a refund, she only seemed annoyed by his advice. “It’s really of no importance,” she murmured rather formally, tearing up the ticket and dumping the pieces in the ashtray. “You still haven’t told me about the opera.” None too exactly, he began to describe it for her, aggrievedly expressing his amazement that Orpheus had been played by a woman. “But why should that bother you?” she asked. Because, he explained, it annoyed him to see a big fat woman with a little harp singing about her love for Eurydice. True, he got used to it after a while, but why bring in a woman in the first place? Was it just someone’s idea of being contemporary and feminist? She looked at him pityingly. “I suppose,” she said, still turning the pages of the program, “that the part was originally written for an alto and that you can’t find men with such high voices anymore.”
The waiter arrived with a stein of beer and a single sausage so grotesquely huge that it made Molkho shudder. “That’s not what I had in mind,” he smiled. “I wanted one of those smaller ones.” “Never mind,” said the legal adviser. “They won’t take it back, so you might as well eat it—it looks quite juicy. This is a famous beer cellar.” Rising to bring him a jar of mustard from the next table while ordering coffee and cake for herself, she deftly arranged his napkin and handed him his knife and fork, seeking perhaps to repay him for all his care. Meanwhile, the men at the next table broke off their loud talk to crack some joke about the steaming knockwurst, their coarse laughter making him regret having ordered it even more, especially as he wasn’t even hungry, just tired and slightly cowed, or perhaps simply sorry that she wasn’t still silently sleeping in her soft hotel bed, with the snow blowing against the window. Why, what a magical time that was, he thought longingly, remembering the feeling of tunneling toward her, though it now seemed rather doubtful whether he had gotten anywhere.
Listlessly, in the orange gloom of the barnlike space, with its walls of dirty green velvet, amid the noise and the raucous music, he began cutting his sausage, eating it with the sleepy self-discipline learned long ago as a child when his mother had always made sure he left his plate clean. The reassuring little stool now felt like an interrogation seat, and her beady eyes, like a squirrel’s catching sight of a nut, bored steadily into him, the target verified and ready to be pounced on. Running a hand through her short, girlish hair, she began to question him about the day, as if to ascertain whether there had really been such a thing or whether they simply had gone from night to night. Who, she asked, suddenly catching him off guard, had changed her sheet? He flushed, playing for time by pretending to think, only to break down and confess: the sheet had been sweaty and damp, and she had been too weak to change it herself. He was sorry if it had been indiscreet of him.
For a moment she said nothing, concentrating on her cigarette; then, as if the time had come to talk frankly, she asked to be told about his wife, about the kind of woman she was. “My wife?” said Molkho, at a loss. “Why my wife?” “But why not?” asked the legal adviser. “I’m terribly curious.” “I would have thought that by now you’d have heard all about her,” he said. “Yes,” she replied, “I have. But now I want to hear it from you.” But he felt this was not the place to discuss his dead wife, this huge bam into which more and more people kept pouring as the movies and theaters let out, apparently because it was known for its capacity, which was, however, fast becoming exhausted.
“She was an intellectual,” said Molkho, seizing on the first word that came to mind while looking at the legal adviser, who returned his gaze steadily. “She was very honest ... I mean, very critical ... of herself too. An intellectual. Nothing was ever good enough for her. She never felt fulfilled or happy. And maybe she never even wanted to be. Although...”
He stopped in midsentence because just then there came a sound of thumping from upstairs, followed by such loud singing that he couldn’t hear himself think. “And I’m not an intellectual at all,” he concluded, though it wasn’t what he’d started out to say. “Yes, I’ve noticed that,” she said gently, regarding him with a newborn affection that only made him feel more certain that the coup de grace was imminent. Despairingly he glanced toward the entrance, through which new customers were still elbowing, checking their coats and plunging into the crowd. Suddenly he missed his wife so badly that it hurt. The legal adviser bent toward him, leaning so far across the table that he felt her hair brush his face, in her eyes a cold, intellectual glitter. “And so,” she whispered, “you killed her little by little—I only realized that today....” For a second he felt his blood curdle; yet at once, as if a soft quilt were thrown over him, he felt a warm, rich happiness in his veins. Slowly his eyes met hers. The thought was not new. “You’re killing me,” his wife used to say to him, although it was odd that the two women should think the same thing when they had never met. Wearily he smiled, feeling his near-naked scalp beneath his crew cut. What else, faced with such a verdict, could he do? He had no wish or way to defend himself and was tired of arguing. Indeed, he had stopped arguing completely during the past year. “You should know,” he said brightly, “that I did my best to take care of her.” “Yes, I do know,” she answered with compassion. “I know everything. I want you to try to understand...”