Molkho retraced his steps to the parking lot, from where he started up the path after Ya’ara. Beneath the overcast sky the air was hot and dry. Scraggly pine forests covered the hillsides, some of which were dotted with white houses, the same new settlements advertised by the road signs. Somewhere off in the distance a machine buzzed stubbornly, its faint rasp set against the silence. A young woman emerged from a house with a baby in a blue backpack, glanced at Molkho slipping past her, and started down the path. When he reached the top of it, by the uppermost houses, Ya’ara was still not in sight. He paused for a moment, debating which way to turn in the rocky terrain, which seemed to grow wilder in the stillness. There was a rustle in the bushes. He headed toward it, crossing a stony field full of weeds, and soon spied her standing beneath a window. A rusty hoe and some crates of rotting potatoes stood against the wall of a house that was apparently empty. Mysterious-looking in her dark sunglasses, she took several crates, piled them on top of each other, and climbed up to look through the window.
“This was my window,” she told him, taking off her glasses to peer inside. “I lay in bed beneath it for four months.” “Was it winter?” he asked, rather oddly. She didn’t turn to look at him. “Yes, it was winter,” she answered, as if the question were perfectly natural. “And autumn. And once, for three months, summer. And there was another time too, right before we left. It was every year and every season,” she said, standing on tiptoe to get a glimpse of the house she had felt happy and loved in, despite her great anguish, because she still had had hope. “But why not go inside?” he suggested. She threw him a grateful look, stepped down from the crates, circled the house to a locked door, and groped for a rusty key above the lintel. With a squeak it turned in the lock. Pushing the door open with her little belly, she stepped unhesitatingly inside. Molkho remained in the doorway, peering curiously into the house, which looked surprisingly tidy, with its plain furniture, straw mats, and shelves full of books and clay figurines. Who last had lived here? he wondered. Had they had children? Ya’ara stood looking around her, tall against the low ceiling. She looks best in this gray light, he thought as she led him to her old room, though I’ll never know her if I don’t make love to her. If she would only cry now, it would melt me so fast that sex would be no problem. Yet, though he waited patiently, she did not. Eagerly she prowled about the room, handling things, forgetting she was not in her own house, even opening an old closet as if hoping to find her dead babies there.
There was a crackle of dry grass. Someone was coming up the path. It was the curly little bookkeeper, determined to speak to her after all. Oblivious of Molkho’s presence, he began plaintively inquiring about Uri, while Ya’ara fended him off with polite but evasive replies. Now and then she tried asking him about himself, but each time he returned to Molkho’s counselor. Why had he never come to visit? How could he have forgotten them? He had to come, he had to, if only to explain himself! Ya’ara nodded, bending down to the little man, apparently a bachelor, who was perhaps once in love with her too. “We’ll come again,” she promised, looking her most majestic, so that Molkho, half in shadow in the corner, felt comforted too.
IF YOU’D LIKE TO HAVE LUNCH in a really unusual restaurant, let me take you to that little town called Zeru’a that I was telling you about,” said Molkho as the car silently took the curves back down to the main road. “It’s a bit far but well worth it.” He stopped to check the road map, then took the next turnoff, made a right onto the Acre-Safed highway, and turned left soon after at Rama, heading north on the climb toward Peki’in. They drove slowly up the winding mountain road, recalling the hikes taken by their youth group, a new feeling of intimacy between them. Had she ever thought of going back to Yodfat by herself? he asked. “No, I could never live without a man,” she answered, her frankness startling him again. “And certainly not there.”
It was nearly two o’clock when they reached Zeru’a, which was as quiet as a ghost town. He drove past the shopping center and along the dirt road that led to the Indians’ house, telling her whimsically about the dark-skinned girl he had all but fallen in love with. Yes, she said earnestly, you can fall in love even with a child. Wait here, he told her, parking near the house and going to knock on the door. But it was locked and the windows were shuttered, the only sign of life being the cow, which stood sadly chewing her cud in her shed, her face crawling with flies. He went to ask at the house of some neighbors, who recognized him at once. The Indians, they said, had gone to visit some cousins down south; in fact, they were thinking of moving there. “Did they have a boy or a girl?” he asked. “Another girl,” they said. “And how is the father?” asked Molkho. “Oh, he’s fine now,” they told him, causing him to feel a sudden pang. “He’s all better.”
They drove back to the shopping center, which was abandoned for the afternoon siesta. The little restaurant was open, however, its tall, dark owner sitting shadelike in a corner. He, too, remembered Molkho and rose to shake his hand warmly, as did the handful of customers; he had made, it seemed, quite an impression. They shook Ya’ara’s hand too, though blind, Molkho sensed, to her old beauty and disappointed she wasn’t younger. Moreover, the Indian was all out of organ stew. “If only I had known,” he lamented upon hearing how far Molkho had come for it. If they didn’t mind waiting a few hours, he would be glad to whip up a new batch, but to Molkho’s chagrin, they made do instead with dry steaks and soggy french fries, though the friendly crowd that formed around the table was compensation of sorts. Soon Ben-Ya’ish himself arrived, smiling, unshaven, and heavier than Molkho remembered him. “Whatever happened to that report of yours?” he asked, shaking hands with a conspiratorial grin. “It’s on the state comptroller’s desk,” Molkho told him. “We tried putting things in the best light, but it’s up to him now.” Satisfied that he had come just to show off his new girlfriend, a much-appreciated gesture despite their doubts about her, the locals grew even friendlier. When he rose to ask for the bill, the Indian owner flashed him a dark smile. “Don’t worry about it—it’s on the house!” called out voices. “The pleasure was ours!” They were offended when Molkho, loath to be suspected of venality, insisted on paying. “You’re insulting us,” they told him, pointing out that in any case, the Indian having suddenly vanished, there was no one to pay.
On their way back to Haifa, Molkho felt that he and Ya’ara had been together for weeks. She, too, seemed more relaxed, and once out of the mountains, after stopping to buy a watermelon at a roadside stand, she shut her eyes and fell asleep. Just then, though, the engine began to knock, and glancing sideways at her tired face, Molkho felt depressed by the thought of coming home and having to explain her to the high school boy, who, hungry and dirty, would no doubt be back from his hike.
She awoke at the outskirts of Haifa, lit her last cigarette, and asked him to stop for a new pack, reading the movie ads on a signboard while he entered a grocery. Though his anxiety grew worse as they neared home, he was relieved to discover that the boy wasn’t there yet. Ya’ara rushed inside uninhibitedly, beating him to the bathroom, as if she were no longer a guest but a roommate. Had she perhaps really decided to move in with him? Before he knew it, she had gone to the kitchen, taken out the big cutting knife, split the melon in half, sliced each half lengthwise, and put the pieces away in the refrigerator. The miracle is happening, thought Molkho, watching her move freely around the apartment, turn on the television, take out some cake, and put water up to boil. “How’s your head?” he asked. “Oh, it’s fine,” she laughed.