The waiter deftly slipped two checks, his and hers, under their plates and disappeared. Molkho made up his mind to pay only his; she would get her share back from the office anyhow. “Try to understand,” she persisted, not wanting to hurt him yet intent on pursuing her insight. “I don’t mean that you did it consciously, but I felt today that you were trying to kill me too.” He blinked happily, deliciously drunk; the German beer had gone to his Levantine head, and the juicy sausage, seemingly reconstituted there, was now crawling through his stomach. Feeling slightly seasick, as though he were on board a big, throbbing ship pitching in the waves, he struggled to stay calm and take his time answering. And she, too, was silent now, perhaps shocked by her own words. “To kill you too?” His big brown eyes opened wide. “But why?” “That’s what I’d like to know,” she said. Slowly he drained the last drops of beer from his glass. The men at the next table had suddenly stopped talking, as though aware that something significant was going on between the two foreigners.
But Molkho was tired of arguments and would have gladly postponed this one, too, until they were home, if ever they met there again. It’s a lucky thing we’re not on the same flight tomorrow, he told himself, looking at her eyes, whose feverish glitter repelled him, the gleeful, intellectual glitter of her clever, twist-all mind. “In that case, you must have killed your husband too,” he said with a curt laugh. “Perhaps I did,” she answered candidly, “though not in the same way as you.” He shivered, wanting to put an end to it. The noise level was unbearable and he had been on his feet since six o’clock that morning. “Shall we?” he asked, laying a warm hand on hers, which let itself be held like an old bird.
He followed her quietly to the entrance, glancing over her shoulder at her wristwatch, whose hands said almost midnight, before planting a light kiss on her dry forehead, which had a slightly sweetish taste. Mechanically he apologized for his tiredness and for having to catch a plane in the morning, and she urged him to go to bed, though she herself, she said, was not ready to turn in yet. And so they parted, and he stepped out into the frigid night, thinking of the shabby man at the opera, from whose strange, contorted movements the music had seemed to flow. Still, I enjoyed it, he thought, that’s one opera I’ll never forget, even if I can’t sing a note of it. In the hotel, which he found unaided, all the lights were already out; the bar in the corner was shut, and the only keys still in their cubbyholes were his and hers. “Sechs,” said Molkho with the last of his strength, his hand held out as though to salute the student with the book, who was on the night shift again; then, recalling that the young man spoke English, he asked to be awakened at five. The student wrote it down, though just to be on the safe side, he gave Molkho an alarm clock as well.
Part III
SPRING
DURING THE THREE-HOUR WAIT at Orly for his flight to Tel Aviv, Molkho bought some perfume for his mother-in-law and a large bar of chocolate for his mother while trying every half-hour to phone his cousin, whose home didn’t answer. Once in the air, above the Alps, dinner having already been served, he took out a large sheet of paper, wrote “Paris” on one side and “Berlin” on the other, extracted the receipts he had saved from his wallet, and began to calculate his expenses, racking his memory for every cup of coffee, piece of cake, gift, or taxi he had paid for while thinking of his days abroad, which now seemed to have passed with a sort of muddled intensity. Yet though the Berlin figures tallied to the mark, he was unable to account for three hundred and thirty francs spent in Paris. No matter how hard he shut his eyes and tried reliving every moment in the French capital, the missing sum continued to elude him, until finally, somewhere over the Aegean, he gave it up and went for a stroll in the aisles to see if there were any passengers he knew.
In Israel, stepping out of the terminal, he was assailed at once by a hot, dry wind that heralded the onset of spring, and noticed that the rows of oleanders were already in bloom. The winter, he saw, was gone for good, though the harassed-looking Israelis running back and forth seemed not to have realized it yet and might take several weeks to do so. He telephoned his mother to inform her of his arrival and then looked around for a cab, half-hoping that the college student would be there to meet him, although he had expressly told him not to bother. And indeed, the young man did not.
At the taxi stand Molkho was approached by a woman who asked if he wished to share a cab to Haifa, and he agreed. The woman, who had just returned from a shopping spree in London, was in the best of spirits, having managed to slip through customs without paying a cent of duty. Unabashedly she told Molkho about all the money she had saved and about the weakness of the British pound, and all the while, their driver, who had never been abroad at all, listened to her recite the bargain prices in London with resentful amazement, all but ready to set out for there himself. Molkho listened sleepily, glancing now and then at his vivacious fellow passenger surrounded by her bundles and feeling thankful he hadn’t surrendered his single status in Berlin. Halfway to Haifa, after they had heard the 11 P.M. news, he made a few discreet inquiries about her own status, only to find out that she had a husband who was very much alive, a Sephardi from Jerusalem, like him. “There’s no place like Jerusalem,” she exclaimed, telling him how she and her husband missed it. “Don’t you?” she asked. “Not especially,” answered Molkho. And whenever he did, a single visit was enough to cure him.
The taxi let him off by his house. The street was deserted, and he felt as though a hundred years had passed since he had waited in it for his mother-in-law on the night of his wife’s death. The apartment was dark. Oddly, though, the double bed, piled high with blankets, was back in his bedroom, the single one having been pushed aside to make way for it. The high school boy was asleep in his room, and Molkho woke him and kissed him. “Who moved the double bed in from the terrace?” he demanded. “Some friends who slept over,” answered the boy. “And how is grandma?” asked Molkho worriedly. “She’s fine,” his son said, recoiling a bit when caressed. In fact, he had had several meals with her in the old-age home, and last Friday night his brother and sister had joined them. “I missed you,” said Molkho, a lump in his throat, suddenly thinking of the shabby man drunk on the music of the opera. He wanted to talk, to tell about his trip, but the boy was too sleepy and had an early class in the morning.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING Molkho called his mother-in-law to say that he was back. He told her about her niece in Paris, but only briefly because he wished to save the rest for a visit that afternoon, even though she did not seem too keen on it. “Why bother?” she asked. “You must have lots to do, and you’ll see me on Friday anyway; you can tell me everything then.” But Molkho was not to be dissuaded. “I have some gifts for you,” he informed her happily. “Gifts?” she asked, a note of worry in her voice.
He went the next afternoon. It was a warm, bright day. The teacups, sugar, and the crackers were already set out in a corner of her spic-and-span room. As usual, she seemed in good health, although a trifle thinner, and her squint had gotten slightly worse beneath her heavy glasses. Without further ado, he took the gifts from a plastic bag: a white nightgown with a lace collar and the collapsible cane that folded in four like a magic flute. “It’s perfect for you,” he told her, “because you don’t generally need it, so you can take it out of your bag when you do.” She seemed quite bewildered, even slightly distressed, and had no end of trouble opening and shutting it, despite all his efforts to show her how simple it was. Finally she thanked him, laid the cane aside, and promised with a smile to practice. That was the moment for the last present, a bottle of perfume from Orly—the same scent, explained Molkho, that she had liked so much when he brought some from Paris on his last visit there with his wife.