He lay trying to still the feeling of perpetual motion inside him. Does it have some goal, he wondered, or will it just keep going round and round? Something told him the little Russian was awake: her smooth breathing had stopped and her wholesomely warm body was stiff with tension. Yes, she was awake, there was no doubt of it; he knew the signs well enough even in the dark. During the last weeks of his wife’s illness, he had known before she did when she was about to open her eyes. Suppose the little Russian were to touch him now, he wondered, his back still fetally curved to her. What would he do? Their three days together had not encouraged him to think that she was attracted to him. Again he quietly rubbed his cold feet, which were keeping him awake. Though the civil thing to do was to turn and make some gesture, if only to whisper good night, he didn’t want to excite her, for she had a long day ahead of her and would need all the sleep she could get. Suddenly he realized that it was raining outside. Was that what had awoken her? Then she would soon fall asleep again, for it was just a soft, windless patter. And yet she kept tossing and turning. There was a sigh, followed by a tug and release of the blanket. Perhaps she, too, would sleep better cuddled up to him, he thought, worrying whether it wasn’t his duty to help her in any way he could. He opened his eyelids a crack to peek at the dark steamer trunk on which he had put his bifocals. All at once the little Russian sighed again and sat up, as if trying to see beyond his curved back.
She can touch me, he thought. I won’t stop her. After all, she knows I’m not sleeping, because I just got into bed. She knows I’m listening to the rain just like she is. She can touch me all she wants. And just then she did, her warm little hand making him ache queerly. I won’t stop her, he thought. She can go ahead. Or does she think I’m asleep? He lay with his eyes shut tight, no longer a live fetus rocked by motion but a dead one in the grip of a fateful womb. The warm, plump hand stole up his neck and stroked the back of his head as it might a sick child. Suddenly she slipped out of bed. I’ll let her come to me, he thought. But she did not. She went to the bathroom, turned on the light, and shut herself silently up there.
He listened for the gurgle of water, but there was no sound at all, just the ceaseless dripping of the rain—no paper being torn, no bottle being opened, no comb or nightgown or pill, as if she were a hunted little animal afraid to give itself away. Long minutes passed, and he realized that she was waiting too, waiting for him to fall asleep. Then I will, he thought, curling up even tighter and feeling his feet grow warm, so that sleep finally seemed possible. I’m drifting with the current, drifting, drifting, drifting, he thought, wondering whether to coax his little rabbit back under the blankets before sleep enveloped him completely. But where was she? As consciousness faded, so did his sense of direction. Was she nearby or gone for good? But no, she couldn’t be. Not even the dead were ever gone for good.
AT NINE the next morning, carrying two large handbags that were packed with the little Russian’s clothes, the two of them stood in a dim underground passage leading to East Berlin, Molkho with his bifocals on in case he should have to read or sign some document. Woozy from his night of insufficient if determined sleep, he tried gauging the halting flow of border crossers ahead of him—most of them subdued West Germans—like a boatsman nearing rapids, careful not to crowd the little Russian, who had been so taciturn all morning that even her few words of Hebrew seemed forgotten. Not that he minded her silence. On the contrary, it was so welcome that he all but forgave the ugly woolen suit she was wearing again, her rigidly retouched curls, and her overdone makeup. Was he really about to part with her or was this just one more illusion? In either case, he thought, no one can say I haven’t done my best. He was sorry he hadn’t brought his camera, for a visit to the East was worth recording. Though he had heard reassuring reports about the day trip behind the Iron Curtain (in fact, had the legal adviser not slipped and gone to sleep on him, he might have taken it with her), it was only natural to feel a tingle of fear as he stood facing the metallic gray doors of Communism and the khaki-clad policeman guarding them. You would think, he reflected, that if we in the free world are willing to risk it, the least they could do is paint the entrance something cheerier.
Having demonstrated her independence of him by allowing a German woman with some shopping baskets to push ahead in line and stand between them, the plump little Russian stood aloofly waiting her turn, holding the laissez-passer that he had returned to her that morning after breakfast. If they arrest her, he thought, I can always pretend not to know her. But no one was arrested or even questioned. The two of them were given their visas and directed to some stairs at the far end of the passageway, from which they emerged into a quite ordinary street no different from the one they had left: the same cobblestones, the same people, the same strips of grass and flowers, the same stubborn drizzle that failed to distinguish between East and West. He opened the new umbrella he had bought, and she teetered sulkily beneath it on her high heels as far as the first corner, where they paused to ask someone directions to the Anti-Fascist War Memorial. Though the man knew no English or Russian, he understood them well enough to guide them to a wide boulevard, along which he briefly accompanied them until satisfied they were headed the right way.
Sharing the umbrella, they came to a large, somber edifice covered with scaffolding and sheets of gray plastic and stood staring up at it disappointedly until another passerby took them in hand and pointed across the boulevard, where several tourist buses stood parked before a square, neoclassical structure with a colonnaded facade. Crossing over, they soon found themselves surrounded by tourists speaking a babble of languages, among which the little Russian, her face lighting up, made out her own musical tongue. Eagerly she looked for the source of it, for the first time almost believing that Molkho’s wild scheme might yet work.
The group progressed slowly into a large, dim interior, in which, flanked by two East German honor guards standing at attention with bayoneted rifles, an eternal flame burned in a glass chamber. No one spoke. All eyes, including Molkho’s, were on the bluish tongues of fire that burst from a sooty opening in the floor, spellbound by their primitive magic. Slowly he shuffled forward with his companion, who, however, was staring not at the flames but at the German soldiers, as though to catch their attention. She stopped to read a Russian inscription on the floor and then, refusing to move on with the crowd, stood reading it again, sighing with such anguish that he instinctively edged away, as if she had some communicable disease.
All at once she uttered something out loud that drew curious stares in her direction. Molkho kept heading for the exit, where he stopped and waited for her to join him. But she did not. Instead, approaching a middle-aged couple, she began speaking to them like old friends, reaching into her handbag for her papers while they stared at her with puzzled sympathy, as if searching within themselves for the code to her distress signal. Yes, she can take care of herself, Molkho observed with sudden admiration, struck by how her poorly cut clothes seemed perfectly in place here, as if everyone else had employed the same tailor. Still, he was worried that her rapid-fire Russian might get him into trouble. Before I know it, they’ll repatriate me too, he thought, backing off to the safety of a dark niche in a wall.