AFTER THE FUNERAL WAS OVER and he had cried a bit, the mourners filed by to shake his hand. He could tell that they wished him to remember their presence, and trying not to sound too doleful, he promised them all that he would. In the last twenty-four hours he had even perfected a sad nod that was at the same time not so grief-stricken or hopeless as to suggest only Death, for as drained of vitality as he felt, he needed to demonstrate that he was someone still worthy of love. The crowd kept filing by, mostly couples, yet sometimes a lone man or even woman who managed to convey her singleness, such as the legal adviser of his office, a senior official who, three years ago, had lost her husband, whose funeral he had attended with some of his friends, even though he was not on close terms with her. In those days he had already begun to practice going to funerals, and indeed, he now remembered that her husband was buried not far from his wife’s fresh grave. In recent months he had even thought of her as of a definite postmortem possibility.
IT RAINED all during the week of mourning, and the weather turned so cold that everyone began to wonder if an early winter hadn’t already set in. The heater was turned on in Molkho’s living room, where he sat on the couch with his three children, across from their grandmother, who occupied the large armchair facing them. Molkho’s daughter took off her shoes and wrapped her feet in a blanket, and it was warm and cozy sitting there together, watching the rain fall and greeting the constant flow of visitors, with whom they talked about the weather, and the deceased, and the funeral, and who had been there and what they had said, and the distinguished rabbi and his elegy, which was short but to the point, so that he wasn’t at all as tiresome as he might have been. They sat like that all morning, lay down to rest after lunch, rose at four o’clock, sat again until supper, and then sat some more into the night. At first, Molkho had thought of excusing his younger son and sending him back to school, of which he had already missed enough in recent months, but the boy insisted on joining them and sat there alertly as though feeling much better now that his mother was dead, curiously regarding the old people who came to visit his grandmother, odd octogenarians whom Molkho had never seen before and who now filled his living room, carrying on long conversations in German, of which he understood not a word, though he made a point of smiling whenever they did. Acquaintances and relations came from all over, and Molkho rose immediately to greet them, kissing even those he hardly knew, even those who hadn’t meant to kiss him. Dressed in a soft black turtleneck sweater, unshaven as was the custom, he was perfectly ready to kiss anyone; in fact, all the kissing on sight rather pleased him, and even though most lips did little more than graze his cheek, sometimes a woman from work hugged him tightly, tickling his forehead with her hair and pressing her breasts (or so he assumed them to be) against him. Yet there were some he was wary of touching, such as the young teachers his wife had supervised, the attractive, manicured woman accompanying the fat old lady who came to see his mother-in-law, or the legal adviser from the office, who paid a condolence call with the head of his department and several other colleagues, in whose company she seemed so ill at ease that she even refused to take off her coat, despite the heat in the apartment.
Later at night, at about ten o’clock, after the college student had accompanied his grandmother to her old-age home and returned to his dorm and the two younger children had settled down to watch the late show on television, Molkho would retire to the bedroom—which, in perfect order, still looked like a little hospital waiting for its next patient. True, the large bed was now a bare metal frame, its mattress, for which they had been charged a daily rate, having been returned on the first day; yet everything else, whether borrowed, rented, or bought, was still in place: the intravenous drip, the bath basin, the wheelchair, the oxygen mask, the hypodermics, the drugs, the books she had read, the books she had planned to read, the music she had listened to over and over, his bed lying next to hers. He undressed and got ready for bed while wondering what to keep and what to sell, especially of the drugs, one of which—an expensive medicine called Talwin, which he had bought in bulk months ago, fearing the drugstores might run out, but which was hardly used in the end, because it was contraindicated by something else—lay in stacked boxes on a shelf. Could he find a buyer for it, he wondered, and if so, how? Once in bed, he left the night-light on as he had done for his wife, making a mental note to replace the bulb with a weaker one. He still slept very lightly, rising four or five times in the middle of the night to wander about the apartment or to sit in the living room listening to music with the earphones on, thinking of all kinds of things, such as the big newspaper deliverer who had ridden by that morning as though he were part of her death. Suddenly, as if the man’s clothing, his headlight, his newspaper pouch, his bicycle wheels, were the last tidings from Molkho’s dead wife, he longed to see him again. He missed her lying beside him, even sick and unconscious, missed even her water mattress, as if it were part of her too. Did she still exist somewhere, was someone else taking care of her now? Soon, however, wrung dry as a sponge by fatigue, he went slowly back to bed, glancing on his way at the pile of unpaid bills on his desk. And he would have to register her death with various government offices too. Although he hoped that having to deal with such practical matters would help put him back on his feet, he still felt too weary to tackle them.
ON THE SEVENTH DAY, at the crack of dawn, they went to visit the grave. The rain had stopped, but it was still rather cold. The likable rabbi had set the occasion for 6 A.M., because he had a prior engagement in Tel Aviv the same morning, and though he had offered to find them a substitute, they declined. “It’s all right,” they told him. “We’ll get up at five,” which was indeed far better than risking an unknown who might decide to ask all kinds of questions and deliver all kinds of sermons. Yet there were barely the ten men needed for a prayer group and they had trouble finding the grave, though as soon as the rabbi appeared he led them straight to it. By seven they were back home again, alone for the first time in months. The college student went off to his classes, the soldier returned to her base, and the high school boy, after a moment’s hesitation, was persuaded to go back to school too, leaving Molkho by himself to shave off his beard in the empty house he had been confined to for a whole week, waiting for the movers to pick up the large hospital bed.
At eight-thirty the morning help arrived. Molkho did not know the woman well, especially because whenever he had called from the office, it had always been his wife who had answered the phone. Now she had come to return the key and be paid; she was, after all, a practical nurse, not a housekeeper, and she had already found a new job elsewhere. “Where?” asked Molkho, feeling a twinge of envy. “Not far from here,” she replied. “Just a few blocks away.” He looked at her, a short, dark-haired, presumably divorced woman of about thirty, reasonably efficient though never overly dedicated to her job—but his wife had given her exact instructions and she had carried them out well enough. Perhaps, he suggested after a moment’s thought, afraid of being saddled with the housework just when he had been finally set free, she might remain a while until he got organized. She had the key, she knew where things were; why not stay on to cook and do some light cleaning? Perhaps she could even work at both places, since he didn’t need her every day. “Sit down,” he said, feeling her dark eyes on him. Could she possibly suspect him of some ulterior motive? She looked at him uncertainly and then said a few feeling words about his wife, whose body she knew as well as he did and whose death-smell still clung to her too, so that for a moment he almost believed that she might be a bridge to something whose nature was unclear to him. Except that again she repeated, “I’m a practical nurse, not a housekeeper.” “Of course, you are,” he said. “It’s just that meanwhile the boy should be given a hot lunch and the house needs cleaning now and then. I can do a lot myself, but I’m not organized yet.” The woman thought it over and agreed. “But only for the time being,” she insisted.