Читать онлайн "Five Seasons" - Иегошуа Авраам Б. - RuLit

A shadow flitted across the wall. He turned to look. It was the little Russian’s mother, who had apparently spent the night in her friend’s room and now had come to see how she was. Startled, he half-waited for her droll bow, but she simply stood there, a golden butterball, her shy, exotic wonder all but gone. Though he quickly began to tell her about his trip, she already knew all about it, for her daughter had phoned from the Soviet Union that afternoon; indeed, there were several details that she now filled Molkho in on. “But why was the bed moved?” she asked. “Because I wanted it to be,” he answered crossly, determined to show her who was boss. Still, he told himself, I needn’t wait to the bitter end. There are people who are being paid for it, and I’ve already been through it. Twice in one year is too much even for me.

AT 3:30 A.M., not looking at all like a man just returned from abroad, he paid and tipped the driver and stepped lightly onto the sidewalk, exhausted yet floating on air. For a moment he lingered in the doorway of his house. Though his daughter had promised to leave the key in the electric box, he doubted whether she had remembered. It’s been nearly a year, he thought sadly. One I was sure would be full of women, freedom, adventure—and in the end nothing came of it. Why, I didn’t even make love; it’s as though I were left back a grade too. And it all comes from being so passive, from expecting others to find someone for me. Lovingly, he tried thinking of his wife, but for the first time he felt that his thoughts grasped at nothing, that each time he cast their hook into the water it bobbed up light as a feather. Am I really free, then? he wondered. And if I am, what good is it? Somewhere there must be other, realer women, but for that a man has to be in love. Otherwise it’s pointless, he fretted. A man has to be in love.