He headed for some rocks and climbed atop one, suddenly towering above her. She laughed, finding it comic, and then climbed on a rock of her own, the smoke from her cigarette drifting fragrantly past him. “Watch out, it’s slippery,” he called, though there was really no danger. Now she rose above him, her gray hair loose about her neck as she stood staring landward. A thin, emblematic moon clung to the tower of the university. She took a last greedy puff of her cigarette and threw it into the sea. Molkho sighed softly. “I suppose he’s trying to phone us now,” he mused. “No, he’s not,” she replied. “His Talmud class never lets out before eleven.” “Well,” Molkho said, “it’s his problem anyway, because this whole crazy business was his idea.”
She threw him a quick smile. For an ambiguous moment a light flared on the horizon, like the blue flame of a burner that someone had forgotten to turn off. Then it went out. “He told me to keep talking to you,” smiled Molkho slyly, “because you’re such a quiet type.” Shocked, she jumped off her rock. “He told you that?” she asked in a hurt voice. “Yes,” he said uncontritely, “he did. I’m not very good at small talk either,” he added more gently. “My wife did most of the talking; generally I just answered her.” Ya’ara jumped back on her rock and then leapt to another, a bitter smile on her suddenly hard face. “I don’t know why he said that,” she said. “You don’t have to talk to me at all. I really don’t know what made him say that. As far as I’m concerned, you needn’t talk at all.” He laid a soothing hand on her shoulder. “Forget it,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told you that. Let’s go home.”
BACK IN THE APARTMENT, still gritty with sand, she went right to the television. Slowly she sank into her chair, riveted to the end of some thriller. Molkho went to the kitchen, prepared two bowls of ice cream, and handed her one of them, which she polished off at once. There was a splotch of tar on the blonde down of her shin and the tan she had acquired during the day had softened the lines of her face. The late-night movie over, a passage from the Bible was being read in a preachery voice. He rose, took the empty bowls to the kitchen, from which he heard the concluding news bulletin, and returned with some napkins and a plate of fruit. “Don’t you get Jordan?” she asked, staring at a blank screenful of snow while reaching out for an apple. “Good lord,” he laughed, switching off the set, “you are an addict!” She nodded happily. “Doesn’t anyone in that community of yours have a TV?” he asked. “Oh no,” she said. “The rabbi wouldn’t stand for it.” “What’s his name?” asked Molkho. “Reb Yudl,” said Ya’ara. “Reb Yudl?” The name tickled his funny bone. “Reb Yudl?” She seemed amused by it too. “I’d like to meet the man,” said Molkho, sitting beside her.
It’s now or never, he thought. If we’re going to make love, what are we waiting for? He could always make a final decision later, he told himself, feeling a sweet tingle of anxiety. This was it. Tomorrow his son would return from his hike, complicating everything. And if she turned out to be a screamer or a sobber, better late at night in an empty apartment. He tried staring at her telepathically. A cricket chirped in the ravine. Then there was quiet. One by one, she was plucking grapes from the plate and popping them into her mouth, not looking sleepy at all.
“Well, what shall we do tomorrow?” he asked her wearily. “We’ve just about seen Haifa. That is, there’s some kind of museum here somewhere, but I don’t even know where it is. How about a day trip to the Galilee? I was up there a few months ago, and it was lovely. We can even visit Yodfat. You haven’t been there for ages, and I’m sure you’d like to see it.”
The idea appealed to her. The one problem was that she would have liked Uri to come too. Couldn’t they put it off until Tuesday? “Absolutely not,” replied Molkho indignantly. On Tuesday he had to be at work. Even taking two days off had been difficult, because half the office was away on vacation and he still owed a great deal of back leave. Through the open door of his bedroom, he could see the dark, velvety night beyond the new bars on the window. The telephone rang. It was not his counselor but the parents of a classmate of Gabi’s, frantically calling to ask about their son. Was he by any chance with Gabi? “Gabi’s not here,” Molkho told them. “He went off on a hike two days ago.” “What kind of a hike?” they asked. But Molkho couldn’t remember. Had Gabi even bothered to tell him? “I think it’s the Scouts,” he said uncertainly. But they had called every boy in the class, the worried parents said, and no one had mentioned any hike. “How can that be?” asked Molkho. “I know for a fact that there is one!”
He had barely hung up when the phone rang again. It was his counselor, wide awake and eager to know what had been played at the concert. “Bach,” said Molkho, not recalling the names of the pieces. “I mean, not the real Bach. The other one, his son.” “Philip Emanuel!” exclaimed his counselor, disappointed not to be there to share his musical knowledge with them. “We didn’t stay until the end,” Molkho told him. “Ya’ara had a migraine and we left after the intermission.” Encouraged by the sympathetic silence at the other end of the line, which was presumably more for his misspent evening than for Ya’ara’s headache, he began complaining good-humoredly about her smoking, her uncommunicativeness, and her lack of interest in music, while she sat passively by his side as though someone else were being talked about. “We’re going to Yodfat tomorrow,” he told Uri. “Whose idea was that?” marveled his counselor, approving of the initiative while regretting he couldn’t take part in it. “It’s been years since we’ve been there. I suppose I’ve been afraid to go back, but I’m glad Ya’ara is going.” Ya’ara herself was moodily leafing through the newspaper, half-listening to the conversation. She would rather he hung up, Molkho felt; however, placing the receiver gendy on the table with a nod in her direction, he went off to brush his teeth in the bathroom.
The first day with her, though something of a standoff, had at least not been too strained, he reflected, the white foam of the toothpaste bubbling on his lips. Damn that boy’s parents, though, for making him worry about the hike, which was beginning to seem like something he had imagined! He decided to shave the five o’clock shadow from his chin, which he dabbed with a spicy scent that his wife had liked. But, when he returned to the living room, Ya’ara wasn’t there and the door of her bedroom was shut. And without so much as saying good night! he grieved, going off to bed himself. Why, you’d think I was running a hotel here!
Still, it seemed unfair to use the air conditioner while abandoning her to the humidity, and so he undressed and stood cooling off by the window, staring at the forbidding bars. How could they have made anything so ugly, he wondered, calculating what it would cost to replace them. Switching on the bed lamp, he took out a road map and studied it; then, putting on fresh pajamas, he went to her room, knocked softly on the door, and entered. “Can I bring you anything?” he asked. “I see you’re having trouble sleeping.” “I haven’t been trying to sleep,” she snapped with unaccustomed sharpness, her head on the pillow and the newspaper still in her hand. The radio was on and she was smoking, her gray hair loose around her shoulders. “Does Reb Yudl allow you to smoke in bed?” he joked, joining her surprised burst of laughter. He liked her flannel nightgown, despite its wintry look, perhaps because it made her look more solid. “It’s all right. I hardly sleep at home either,” she said, grinding out her cigarette in a little ashtray she had found. Yellow grains of sand gleamed on the white socks folded neatly in her shoes. Would she wear them again tomorrow? “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he said, taking a step toward the bed. “Did you ever think of adopting?” Yes, they did, she replied. In fact, they had even filed an application several years ago and been rejected. “But why?” Molkho asked. Apparently, explained Ya’ara, because Uri’s instability and her own lack of a diploma hadn’t made a good impression. “What a pity,” Molkho said. “Here, let me turn out the overhead light so that you needn’t get up to do it later.” He flicked the switch, leaving her in brown shadow. “Don’t let me sleep late tomorrow,” he said. “Wake me when you get up. And no more vanishing acts!”