Five Seasons

Part IV SUMMER

BUT THAT FIRST SUMMER gave birth to a supersummer, so brutally torrid that even the nights were blistering. It started halfway through July; a firm but invisible hand blocked the sea with a wall of grimy white haze, turning the temperately hot Mediterranean coast into a brutal miasma. No matter how early you rose in the morning, a scorching wind was already blowing. The thermometer zoomed upward and stuck there. The weather was often the lead item on the news, the forecasters being called upon to explain the inexplicable in half-menacing, half-apologetic tones. Worse yet, the travel tax was suddenly doubled, forcing mass cancellations by those planning to seek relief abroad. Despairingly people flocked to the beaches, among them Molkho, who hadn’t been to the seashore for years and was only halfway through a diet meant to enhance his romantic prospects. For days on end, he ate nothing but blotchy, seedless watermelons, staring angrily every morning at the stubborn scales that registered his weight loss with agonizing slowness. The thought of all the good food that he was missing or sometimes reluctantly left on his plate enveloped him in a thin web of gloom. He was still not used to the shy promptings of sex that, having first stirred faintly in the spring, now accompanied him with gingerly steps like a stray but thoroughbred cat that had adopted him, its stiff, velvety tail sometimes brushing his thighs.

It’s high time, he thought, making his way among the bodies scattered in the sand and scrutinizing some that he hardly would have glanced at until recently. Rarely did they interest him, for nearly all seemed badly flawed and limp with the humidity, though now and then he caught a glimpse of some almost painfully attractive feature. Best of all, he liked the young mothers, who had a harried-looking glow, so different from the better-groomed singles, with their hard-bitten lust to be tanned. Stepping into the water, which toward evening resembled a salty, tepid bath, he thought, if only I could make a collage—a leg from here, a head from there, a shoulder or smile from somewhere else—I might construct someone lovable. Wading through the breaking surf, which pounded so hard at this time of year that he swallowed whole mouthfuls of it, he pushed on into deeper, calmer water, where he swam beside lone figures like himself, mostly brawny old women with helmetlike bathing caps, sometimes peeing silently while staring innocently up at a sun that seemed never to set but simply to dissipate in a white curtain of haze, after which he swam slowly back, letting the breakers cast him ashore like a corpse. Resurrected and still dripping water, he strolled through the crowd feeling like a sandwich board: See for Yourself! This Is My Body! Untouched by Death! Find Me a Woman! Often he ran into people he knew—colleagues from work, former neighbors, friends of his wife’s, doctors and staff from the hospital—and stood over them, patting his chest and chatting about the crazy weather, this second, superhot summer begotten by the first. Whether smiling or serious, they lay looking up at him as though conscious that it was not the weather but his uncontrollable lust that had brought him down to the beach, and then inquired about his children and mother-in-law, shaking their heads upon hearing how well the old woman was doing, as if amazed that her daughter’s death hadn’t done her in too. Sometimes, to cheer him, they would tell him the latest news about who else was dying of cancer, which was often no news at all, since he had already seen the victim in the hospital, slipping with a frightened look through the doors of the oncology ward, so that he stood there inattentively glancing at the mountains, from which the gray smoke of forest fires had been rising all summer long, aware of their trying to guess whether he had gotten over his wife’s death—since which, incredibly enough, less than a year had gone by. At last, feeling them weary of him, he unobtrusively went off to dry himself and dress, returning home to a cruelly long and too brightly lit evening of Volume I of Anna Karenina, which he would have put down long ago, were it not for the pleas of his daughter, now discharged from the army and vacationing in Europe. “Don’t give up, Dad. It’s a really good book. Why don’t you try to finish it?”

And then, in the first week of August, the supersummer begat a superbaby of its own, the whitest and most devilish of them all: the air rolled over and died, the sun approached meltdown, and a livid sky shut out the world while hordes of newly arrived black Jews from Ethiopia staged protest marches on the roads that sent the mercury shooting even higher. You’re lucky to be out of this hellhole, Molkho whispered through parched lips to his dead wife upon rising each morning. There was talk of mysterious sunspots, yet Europe was deluged by rain, and most likely the culprit was a stubborn high-pressure front that refused to budge from the Turkish-Iranian frontier. Shown on television, it resembled a shapeless, odorless, irregularly formed amoeba, and for a moment, thinking that it might be connected to her too, that it was perhaps her last signal from galactic space before streaking to her final annihilation, Molkho was gripped by the transcendent fear that this strange, abstract blob was all that was left of his wife.

HE SAT UP in the middle of the night, unable to sleep comfortably. In the neighboring houses lights were on too, for the heat kept everyone awake. He stepped out on the terrace and gazed up at the yellow halo around the moon, musing—no longer fearfully, but with a deep sorrow—on how his wife was pared down to a last, nameless cell that still fought to preserve its identity. The thought that it, too, would soon be snuffed out in some vast, dark emptiness made him shiver. I must fall in love, he told himself before climbing back into bed, because otherwise this longing will destroy me.

In the morning he spoke as usual to his mother, who complained bitterly about the heat, which was even worse in Jerusalem. Suppose, she asked suddenly, that she came to stay with him for a while and spent some time on the beach? Horrified, he tried to talk her out of it. “The humidity here is ghastly,” he explained. “You’ll never fall asleep at night. At least in Jerusalem there’s a breeze. Why don’t you buy yourself an air conditioner? I’ll even come and pick it out for you.” But his mother did not want an air conditioner. She wanted to stay with him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

And so, that Friday, he pulled her, damp and sweating, out of the taxi that brought her to his house, helped her hang her dresses in the college student’s old room, and sat silently across from her on the terrace facing the sea. In the evening, playing host to two old women, he muttered the blessing over the Sabbath wine and ate the meat loaf brought by his mother, who talked nonstop, taking advantage of his mother-in-law’s patience, behind whose expression of eager interest lay concealed a thin mockery like his wife’s. At last, sapped by the humidity, his mother trundled off to bed, from where he heard her snoring lightly.

On Sunday, after work, he took the little beach chair and went with her to the seashore, making sure to find an isolated spot where no one was likely to see her. Depositing her there, a large, heavy, funny-looking woman with bared fat legs, he went for a swim and a walk, heading first up the beach and then down, until finally, toward sunset, when the shore was nearly deserted, he ventured to sit beside her in the wet sand, absentmindedly digging a trench by her chair while letting her ramble on about her financial worries and his father and her childhood in Jerusalem and her neighbors and her friends and their children and their grandchildren and everyone who asked about him, happy to hear that his praises were being sung in his hometown, where ghostly figures from his past kept running into her, old friends and not-even-friends from school and the army, all eager to know how he was faring. And it was there, by the sea, a molten sun grazing the horizon, that Molkho first heard about his old youth-movement counselor, Uri, who together with his wife, Ya’ara, seemed to take an avid interest in him.

BUT WE’VE BEEN THINKING and talking of you ever since last summer!” said his old counselor to him, lightly resting a hand on his shoulder. “Since last summer?” Molkho asked, touched to be so unexpectedly thought of after so many years, even if it did seem rather odd. “But why since last summer? My wife was still alive then.” “Yes, I know,” said his old counselor, “but all of Jerusalem already knew that it was terminal.” “It did?” asked Molkho with a shiver of excitement. “Yes,” replied his counselor. “There are always people who make it their business to spread bad news; even if they don’t know who it’s about, it makes them feel better. There were all sorts of rumors about you, and your mother talked a lot too; she had to tell everyone all the medical details, even when she didn’t understand them. You have no idea how well informed we were, especially about how you took the whole long, hard death on yourself. So that when we heard that it was over, I said to Ya’ara, ‘Who knows, perhaps this is the very man God has in mind for us. What actually do we remember about him, though? Was he really once in love with you?’”

They were standing on the long stone steps of the Jerusalem Theater on a broiling Saturday afternoon, hugging the thin line of shade by the closed box offices. A fiery silence reigned all around. Not a soul was to be seen in the empty white plaza. The shutters of the aristocratic old houses of the neighborhood were all shut. Further up the hill they could see the stone wall of the Presidential Mansion, and further down, where the street slanted steeply, the mysterious building of the old Turkish leper colony in its dusty copse of trees. As soon as he had stepped out of his car in the parking lot, Molkho had spied his former counselor’s tall, thin figure walking back and forth in the shade along the top step, a wide-brimmed black hat clutched in one hand, looking down like a lone actor waiting impatiently onstage for his supporting cast. Solemnly Molkho had ascended the steps and greeted him with a timorous smile, heartened by the confidence radiating from the strong, bony frame in the black pants and sweaty white shirt of an Orthodox Jew, his dusty, broad-brimmed hat rather reassuringly resembling a cowboy’s, for Molkho had been afraid of this reunion after nearly thirty years and was relieved to find he still liked the man. The old-fashioned garb; the heavy, slightly graying beard; even the ritual fringes of the undershirt sticking untidily out from the shirt—to Molkho these seemed but the latest disguise of this eternal Kierkegaardian-Buberian truth-seeker who had come to them in those days from some left-wing kibbutz and was now (as he had informed his ex-youth-grouper the week before on the telephone) an observant Jew. Molkho had remembered him well, had in fact always admired him, though he himself had never been a “Schechterite,” as his counselor’s group of sensitive, if sometimes strange, friends were called, after the Haifa Bible teacher who was their guru. Indeed, it had never occurred to him to join them, having no interest in their way of life, which involved drifting from one kibbutz to another, only to be expelled from each in the end for what was considered their elitist factionalism, not to mention their mysticism and talent for attracting the prettiest girls while disdaining socialist goals, preferring to search their navels for the Meaning of Life while composing odd hymns and prayers. Ultimately they had founded a kibbutz of their own called Yodfat in the Lower Galilee, where some settled down but most eventually left, scattering in all directions, though a few, like Uri Adler, who had been one of their leaders, continued their religious quest.

Thus, Molkho was not totally surprised by the strange telephone call he had received, the purpose of which he had guessed at once. Why, he thought, warmly shaking the hand held out to greet him, it’s kind but only natural that someone should want to cook me up a woman in this bake-house of a summer. And yet he blushed with embarrassment, as though it were undignified to have agreed so readily to such a rendezvous. “How did you hear about me?” he asked. “From whom?” “But we’ve been thinking and talking about you ever since last summer!” answered his old counselor, heartily returning his handshake.

MOLKHO LET OUT A LITTLE LAUGH and blushed again, feeling an odd happiness. It was still too much to absorb. Had he really once been in love with her? he asked himself candidly, trying his best to remember. Thirty-four years had gone by, and even then Ya’ara and he hadn’t been in one class for long; that is, she had been a grade ahead of him until their junior year, which she was forced to repeat—a tall, blonde, quietly attractive, academically unsuccessful girl who drifted back to her old classmates during recess. Had he really been in love with her? The fact of the matter was that he was constantly falling in love in those days, each time with a vague and secretive passion that he strove to inflame, in order to break free from his dominating mother, whose only child he was.

Clearly, though, he couldn’t leave it at that. “Did she ever finish high school?” he asked his old counselor, whose every gesture, smile, intonation, and burst of enthusiasm seemed to erase the lapsed years, despite Molkho’s suspicion that the love in question was purely imaginary. “Was I actually in love with her?” he wondered aloud again, afraid of the deterrent effect of too staunch a denial, so that, standing there in the torrid sun with the Sabbath peace all around them, he was quite prepared to fall in love retroactively if only it would prove helpful. “It’s been so long,” he laughed. “Maybe I was a bit, but she was older than I was.” “Just by a year,” his counselor hurried to correct him. “In fact, not even. She’s August and you’re May. It’s only a few months’ difference, and after all, you were in the same class, you sat next to each other, you even once wrote her a love letter. That was the year I was your counselor—or have you forgotten that too?”

“Of course not,” protested Molkho. “How could I forget you? You were the best thing to happen to us, even if there was all kinds of gossip about you.” “Yes,” said his counselor, as though recalling it with relish, “and not all of it was pure gossip, let me tell you. But you yourself were never really one of us. Ideas didn’t interest you—not just ours, but anyone’s. I can still remember you sitting quietly through our meetings like a well-brought-up little boy.” “Yes, I’ve never been an intellectual,” confessed Molkho, trying to make the best of it. “I was always too realistic.” “And in the end you dropped out of the movement without even trying life on a kibbutz, didn’t you?” asked his counselor. “Yes,” admitted Molkho, marveling how this ancient transgression could still be held against him. “And what did you do in the army?” inquired Uri. “I was a medic,” Molkho said. “That’s where I met my wife.”

They walked back and forth in the fringe of shade by the box office, Molkho first speaking about himself, amazed that Uri already knew so much about him, and then listening to the story of his old counselor’s life with Ya’ara, over which hung the misfortune of a childless marriage. “That’s been our great tragedy,” said Uri, “though it took us a long time to accept it.” There had been, he told Molkho, a long series of painful miscarriages, terminated pregnancies, and endless treatments, during which they had gone from place to place in search of better luck: from the kibbutz in the Galilee to a farming village, and then to the city, and then to South America (where Uri worked as an agricultural adviser, saving money for more visits to the doctors), and then to the Far East for a fling at meditation and Oriental healing. Finally, ten years ago, they had returned to Israel with the realization that they had gotten nowhere.

It was his despair of having children that made Molkho’s old counselor turn to Judaism and become a disciple of an Orthodox rabbi. At first, he thought of this, too, as merely a stage; yet gradually he came to see that the process was a long one, and indeed, there was still no end to it in sight, because the wisdom he was seeking could not be found in books but only through contact with those who lived it. True, he refused to be labeled “a penitent Jew,” a fundamentalist expression he abhorred; in the last elections he had actually voted for a left-wing candidate. But the fact remained that if he was to make any spiritual progress at all he had to be accepted by the rabbi and his followers, which was far from easy, since an outsider like himself was always under suspicion. They were difficult people, and for several years they had been urging him to remarry and have children, a childless man being religiously incomplete. At first, he hadn’t wanted to hear of it; yet the longer he spent with them, the more he saw the inner logic of the demand, spiritually if not psychologically. He felt torn in two, because his love for his wife, whom it wasn’t simple to live with under such circumstances, was as great as ever; but the years were going by, he wasn’t getting any younger, and his craving for children, which was only aggravated by his situation, kept growing. In fact, he had even been offered a match, and Ya’ara was ready to divorce him. “It’s my fate to be childless,” she had told him, “but you can still have a family. Just don’t imagine that I can go on living with you and watching you suffer.” He had been agonizing about it for a year now, for how could a professionless woman of over fifty (her life having passed in travel and trying to become pregnant, so that to this day she was only an assistant in a kindergarten) get along on her own, especially as he himself earned precious little from his job as a public-school teacher, most of his time being devoted to study? Naturally, the rabbi’s followers were willing to find a match for her too; but she had no desire to join their community, while he refused even to consider a divorce before her future was taken care of. Yet whom could they find for her when they were socially so out of touch? The only old friends they ever saw were those they ran into by chance, from one of whom they had heard about Molkho. They had actually looked him up in an old photograph from the movement, a chubby, friendly-looking boy. “But what do we remember about him?” Molkho’s old counselor had asked his wife. “Was he really in love with you?”

Molkho walked beside him in the shrinking line of shade, listening in a turmoil. “So you want me to marry your wife?” he asked at last, looking at his old counselor, who stood staring palely into space. “Yes,” replied Uri, returning an anxious glance. “It would be a way of keeping it in the family. After all, we were once all so close.”

THAT EVENING, when it was already dark and the sky was strewn with clear summer stars above a city flapping in the hot desert wind like a woman awakened from her afternoon nap and crossly dragging her bedclothes, Molkho stood waiting for his counselor by the entrance to the Edison Cinema on the corner of Isaiah and Rabbi Isaac of Prague streets, along which ran the unofficial border between observant and nonobservant Jerusalem, watching some moviegoers decide whether to buy tickets for the first show. Although he hadn’t been in this spot for years, everything was as he remembered it from his childhood, which had passed unhappily a few blocks away. The large white building, a teenage haunt of his, was unchanged too; nostalgically he surveyed its three marble steps and long vitrines, with their pictures of movie stars, while recalling the many hours he had spent in its front rows, the cheapest seats available, his eyes tearing from the flickering screen and the sad fate of Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind, with whom he had fallen so madly in love that he had spent weeks imagining how, despite his tender age, he might become her beau.

The last undecideds outside the theater made up their minds at last and vanished into its darkened hall while the old ticket-taker locked the glass doors, switched off the lights in the lobby, and retired to a comfortable corner. His counselor’s lateness, by now considerable, was beginning to annoy Molkho. Was he waiting in the wrong place? Could he have been such a flop that morning that the whole thing had been called off? And I still have to drive all the way back to Haifa, he grumbled to himself, striding moodily down the dark street that led to the Orthodox North Side, which lay spread out before him in a great puddle of light. He should at least have thought of taking down their address, since they hadn’t any telephone. But, just then, up the street swung a nearly empty, brightly lit bus, inside of which he made out his old counselor, dressed the same except for the black hat, which now rested on his head, though tilted back with a jaunty defiance. Angry at having been kept waiting, he remained standing on the dark street, but his counselor, stepping quickly off the bus at the stop opposite the theater and spotting Molkho at once, was already striding toward him apologetically; the rabbi’s weekly sermon, he explained, had run on past the end of the Sabbath and there had been a long wait for the bus. “I was afraid we had gotten our signals crossed,” confessed Molkho, the words scarcely out of his mouth before he regretted sounding overeager. Uri made no reply. His breezy manner of the morning gone, he regarded Molkho with a worried look. Both felt the awkwardness of the situation. “I should have gone straight to your house,” Molkho said. “You never would have found it,” said his counselor. “You may have grown up in this city, but in the neighborhood I live in, even a native could get lost.”

They walked to Molkho’s car, which seemed to arouse his counselor’s interest. “It’s considered quite feminine,” Molkho chuckled, pointing out its special features. “A feminine car?” marveled Uri. “Do cars have sexes, then?” “Only if you want them to,” answered Molkho, pleased with his witty rejoinder. “It’s amazing,” declared his counselor, removing his hat and settling into the front seat, “how refined the anatomy of human pleasure has become.” At the first corner, they turned left toward a neighborhood where Molkho’s grandfather had lived years ago, in whose empty streets the desert heat of the day seemed transmuted into a sad solitude. “I was born near here,” Molkho said, stopping for four black-coated Talmudists to cross the street with unreasonable slowness. “I wouldn’t recognize the house, though. I haven’t been here for ages and everything’s changed.” “I suppose it would be,” said his counselor, guiding them through a maze of streets that were full of dead ends and no-entrances. “The ultra-Orthodox have taken over here too,” he added, telling Molkho to bear right at a traffic light onto a northbound highway and then right again toward a project that seemed to grow vaster the further into it they drove, so that Molkho, who had lost his bearings completely, felt as if they had left dark Jerusalem behind them and were now in another city lit by thousands of bulbs like a gigantic power plant. “This is Kiryat Mattersdorf,” explained his counselor while piloting him through a large, full parking lot to an empty space in a far corner that seemed reserved just for them.

They struck out down a dark alley past some tanks of cooking gas and emerged in a square where children were running back and forth among young mothers pushing baby carriages. On one corner several men in white shirts were engrossed in lively conversation. Uri walked quickly, his head slightly bowed, looking up now and then to greet some passing acquaintance, while Molkho trailed behind him, vaguely troubled by the strange surroundings. Suddenly he stopped, reaching out to touch his counselor’s shoulder. “You’d better know now,” he whispered, “that I’m not a believer at all. Far from it.” But his counselor was undaunted. “Nothing is far from it,” he answered sharply, the hint of a rebuke in his voice. “It’s enough to say you don’t believe. Neither do I. Come, let’s cut through here.” They passed a row of garbage pails and climbed a few steps to a building, inside of which some tots and pregnant women were waiting for two elevators. “What, you have elevators?” asked Molkho in surprise. “And why not?” smiled Uri, weaving his way through the crowd of toddlers with a respectful glance at his neighbors, who all wished him a good new week. The elevators seemed to be stopping at every floor, where more crowds of children were no doubt waiting, and indeed, when one finally arrived, a horde of merry youngsters burst out of it. Though scratched and battered, it was large enough for a department store and everyone fitted easily into it. In no time, pressed by eager little hands, every button was lit, and they were stopping at floor after floor, on each of which more children got on and off under the eyes of the good-naturedly chiding adults, and Molkho, slightly alarmed by so much teeming life, glimpsed men and women lounging outside their apartments.

They got out on a top floor and walked down a long hallway, at the end of which Molkho’s counselor knocked rhythmically on a door, opening it himself when there was no answer. The apartment was dark and warm, the only light coming from a crescent moon, which shone unhindered through a window. Apparently as surprised by this state of affairs as Molkho, Uri dropped his hat on the living room table and hurried to a back room, through the doorway of which Molkho made out the lower half of a woman’s body covered by a thin blanket. Still adjusting his eyes to the darkness, he heard a whisper, no doubt a plea to get up, followed by a soft, sleepy murmur, and reminded of the times he had fought to arouse his deathward-slumbering wife, he felt a dreamy rush of desire. He shut his eyes to hear better, taking a small, weary step in their direction; but at once he caught himself and stood looking around the room, from the shadows of which now emerged some straw chairs with embroidered pillows and several hangings on the walls. On the large table were a folded tablecloth, a set of tall pewter candlesticks, a bottle of wine, an open book, and an ivory comb, each object an erotic gleam in the darkness, as though destined, like herself, for his possession.

A light was switched on in the bedroom, casting new shadows on the walls, and there was a brief laugh; then, shutting the door behind him, Molkho’s counselor returned to the living room, beaming brightly, if still a bit uncomfortably. Quickly he turned on a light there too, which fell on some more furniture stacked in a little hallway, and cleared an armchair of some books. “Sit down,” he urged Molkho. “Ya’ara went to sleep early because she decided we weren’t coming. It’s all my fault for being late. Please sit down.” He moved some books from a second chair too, hurrying to make order, but Molkho remained awkwardly standing, trying to stay calm while gazing out the window at the lights dotting the hillside across from him. You’d think this were my idea! he thought indignantly, hearing the sound of running water and of something that sounded like the beating of wings. You’d think I were some salesman who had come knocking on their door! Just then, though, the bedroom door opened and Ya’ara stepped out. Tense with expectation, he cast a soft, weary glance at her, his heart missing a beat, only to realize at once that he had confused her with someone else or, rather, combined in his memory two different people who now immediately split up again. Of course, he thought astonishedly, that’s who she was! Why, I really was in love with her; I may even have written her that love letter, he told himself, feeling a pang at the sight of the gray, though still lavish, hair gathered at the nape of her neck in an old-fashioned braid.

She was tall and long-legged, though her body, while still lissome, bulged slightly at the belly beneath a terry-cloth robe, as if all her failed pregnancies were gathered there in the form of a question mark. He shook her hand and glanced at her makeupless face, which, whether from sleep or excitement, was flushed like his own. Her skin was dry but smooth, except for the crow’s-feet by her small, pearly eyes, their strange, greenish beige color highlighted by her gray hair. “Why, you haven’t changed one bit,” she said in a husky drawl. “I’d have recognized you anywhere, I swear!” “I haven’t?” he asked self-consciously, feeling almost slighted. “But how can that be?” It was as if they wanted to keep him a boy forever, to deny that he had grown up. “Ya’ara has a wonderful memory for faces,” explained her husband, pulling up a chair for her as if she, too, were a guest. Slowly she sank into it, while Molkho sat down with an understanding nod, his covertly male glance running quickly down to her bare, snow-white feet, their small, perfect toenails as clear as if made of cut glass. He caught his breath, overwhelmed by the heat and her presence, which seemed to promise untold pleasures that he was not at all sure he could cope with. In any case, he promised himself, I’ll go to bed with her at least once.

Her husband stood beside her, affably listening to him explain his mistake. “To tell you the truth, it just now dawned on me that I was under a wrong impression. You see, I partly confused you with someone else from our class,” he stammered, mentioning a name that neither of them knew. “I pictured you differently, but it’s all come back to me now.” He made his confession gladly, though feeling parched and fatigued, and she flashed him a crimson smile, reaching into the pocket of her robe for a crumpled yellow pack, from which she blindly took a cigarette, stuck it in her mouth, lit it with a lighter in her hand, and inhaled deeply, only then remembering to offer the pack to Molkho. On it was a picture of some gaunt black horsemen who seemed to have ridden out of the pages of history. “And we really did share a desk for several months!” he added excitedly.

His counselor offered to make him some coffee to perk him up for the drive back to Haifa. “Are you sure you won’t sleep over?” he asked. “Yes,” replied Molkho, “I have to be at the office at eight.” While Uri went to the kitchen, Ya’ara asked Molkho about his work. He did his best to explain it, trying to be precise without too much dull detail, though mentioning by way of illustration his recent trips to the Galilee. “Do you travel a lot?” she asked, sucking greedily on her cigarette. “No,” he replied, feeling her bright sympathy. “During my wife’s illness I hardly went anywhere.” Through the walls of the apartment came various noises mingled with the voices of children, wide awake despite the late hour. Evidently Saturday nights were a time when the building came alive.

“We heard you had a hard year,” said his counselor’s wife huskily, her small eyes taking his measure. “Just one?” he scoffed, feeling the right to sound resentful, his own eyes resting briefly on her bulging belly before returning to her feet. “There were seven of them, all awful! It wasn’t so much the physical part; that was never the worst of it. It was the constant fear, starting with the first operation. It never left us for a moment.”

He glanced out the open window, seeking to catch a whiff of the Jerusalem air of his childhood, conscious of having betrayed his dead wife with this woman he hardly knew. Her husband brought Turkish coffee and a plate of cookies on a tray, and she rose to bring Molkho a little table to put it on. “No cookies for me, thank you,” he said, “I happen to be on a diet.” “You, on a diet! What ever for?” she asked with a laugh. “But just look at me!” he exclaimed, gladdened by this sign of her approval, though with such vehemence that his counselor, seated in a rocking chair, changed the subject to the guest’s children, especially his younger son, who appeared to be something of a problem, because the boy was doing so badly in school that there was again talk of leaving him back. “Did you ever think of sending him to a boarding school,” inquired Uri, “or aren’t there any good ones in your area? Say what you will about the Orthodox, their boarding schools are first-rate.”

The conversation now shifted to Orthodox Jews, whom Molkho was careful not to criticize, unlike his wife, who grew apoplectic at the mere mention of them. But his caution, he soon saw, was unnecessary, for Uri, rocking wildly, gave vent to such violently anti-Orthodox opinions himself that for a moment his long beard seemed no more than the badge of a bohemian kibbutznik. Ya’ara sat puffing attentively on her cigarette, the smoke swirling in little clouds out the window and into the vast night; she had, Molkho noticed sadly, several varicose veins in her legs. They must be real night owls, he thought, for they did not seem to be tired at all, and remembering the long drive ahead of him, he took advantage of the first lull to rise from his seat. “Do you ever get to Haifa?” he asked offhandedly, as if hardly expecting to see them again. “Rarely,” said his counselor, rising too, “but now we will. Perhaps Ya’ara will come visit you,” he added, putting an arm around his wife. She rose lazily from her chair, causing Molkho a moment’s worry that she might be too tall for him; but the firmness of her handshake banished all his fears, for they had already, so it seemed, decided in his favor and nothing he could say or do could make them change their minds. They were strong, self-willed people, joined by the powerful bond that only childless couples have, world travelers for whom all things were possible. Now, at this midnight hour, he felt glad to be in their hands.

“Do you own this apartment or lease it?” he asked on his way to the front door, looking with interest at the walls. The question surprised them. Neither, they replied; they simply paid a monthly rental, which was not very high. “And you don’t own a home anywhere?” Molkho asked. No, they said; they had never saved the money to buy one. He took her hand again, feeling it soft and smooth in his palm. “Well, then, I hope we’ll meet again,” he declared, tensing at the sight of her dead gray hair. “Perhaps on my next visit to Jerusalem.”

Her husband walked him to the elevator, in which children were still riding up and down, no doubt to make up for the forced inactivity of the long summer Sabbath. “You live in a busy building,” Molkho said, trying to pat the head of a little boy, who jumped back so fearfully that his companions burst out laughing.

Despite the late hour, the street was full of cars and pedestrians. “The passersby regarded him curiously, but his counselor merely nodded to them without offering to introduce him, so that Molkho thought, I suppose I’ve disappointed him after all. Yet when he unlocked the car door, something kept him rooted to the spot. “It’s damn queer, what you’re doing,” he said, swallowing hard. “My wife has been dead for ten months, and I still can’t get over it, can’t connect with anyone. It’s like having a phantom limb. For years I suffered in silence, and now I have to be careful. Why, two months ago I fell in love with a little girl in some village in the Galilee, just a black little Indian! It was the strangest thing.”

His counselor listened with bowed head. “Let her think about it,” Molkho added blackly. “You do that too, and then we might give it a try, only slowly. Don’t be so sure that I’m the right man for you. After all, what would you have done if my wife were still alive?” His counselor didn’t answer. Eyes shut and only half-listening, he seemed loath to talk, perhaps because three black-hatted youths were eavesdropping from their perch on a nearby fence. “Drive carefully,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.” Slowly Molkho backed out of the parking lot, the lights of the project in his rearview mirror like hundreds of questioning eyes.

FEELING HIS TIREDNESS lurking inside him he drove slowly, heading north along the coast, happy to see from the cars on the road and the campfires on the beach that he was not alone in the night. On the outskirts of Haifa he decided to park and walk by the sea for a breath of the humid night air. He wanted to cry, to conjure up his old high school love and relive it. Even if I never marry her, he thought. Even if she’s mine just long enough to start the sap running again.

It was after one when he came home. To his surprise, he found the living room light on. No doubt the high school boy, who was sleeping at a friend’s house, had returned for something and forgotten to turn it off. Drawers were open too, the television had been moved, and a strap was torn on one of the blinds. What on earth had gotten into the boy? Perhaps boarding school was not such a bad idea. But Molkho was too tired to pursue the thought and went to bed without showering, crawling naked between the sheets as though loath to wash off Ya’ara’s touch. Not until he was already lying in the dark did he notice the ugly white patch on the wall where a picture had been. Suddenly realizing that he had been burgled, he jumped out of bed and ran turning on the lights from room to room. The expensive tape recorder with the stereo earphones was gone. As was the electric kettle. And the alarm clock. All the closets and cabinets had been rifled too, though it was hard to tell what had been taken. Apparently the thief had started to make off with the television also, changing his mind at the last moment. Stunned, Molkho slipped on his pants and went to call the police, noticing on his way that other paintings were missing from the walls. “Call back in the morning,” the desk sergeant told him, “and meanwhile, don’t touch a thing.” “But I’ve already touched everything,” he groaned in despair. He went out to the terrace and stared down into the ravine, where a campfire was glowing. Was the burglar still down there in the bushes? Was he looking back up at him right now? Turning out the lights, he stood there for a long while in the darkness.

Early in the morning a neighbor rang the doorbell. Draped over his arm was Molkho’s wife’s big fur coat, slightly torn and wet with dew; he had found it hanging on the fence and was sure it must have fallen by mistake. Molkho was thunderstruck. “What, they even took this old coat?” he asked aggrievedly, handling it with care, he explained, so as not to leave false fingerprints for the police, who were due to arrive any minute. “Fingerprints?” snorted the neighbor. “Before you know it, they’ll be accusing me!” Molkho, however, did not hear him, for he was already hurrying into the ravine, vainly searching for additional belongings.

The burglary was so on his mind all day long that he forgot about his visit to Jerusalem. The police did not show up until the afternoon, when they lackadaisically wrote everything down. “Do you think it was just a chance hit or an inside job by someone after your paintings?” they asked, pointing out to Molkho the bedroom window through which the thief had entered and proceeding to lose all interest in the case as soon as they were told that the paintings’ value was purely sentimental. Then he waited for the insurance agent, who came that evening, examined the apartment at length, haggled over the worth of each stolen item, and insisted that bars be put on the guilty window.

No less worried than the agent, the neighbors suggested that he install an alarm. The next morning, he went downtown to look for one, but he soon gave up the idea, for the thought of having to tiptoe to the bathroom at night for fear of setting it off seemed thoroughly absurd. Bars were the best solution—though by no means a simple one, he realized, discovering the great price differences among them. Nor was there anyone to consult, since his sons made light of the whole business and he did not wish to worry his mother-in-law. His wife had always made such decisions herself, and this was the first one left up to him. Yet, while he was tempted to put it off until his daughter’s return from abroad, he was fearful of another burglary.

IT STAYED HOT, and Molkho waited to hear from Jerusalem, jumping up whenever the telephone rang, though relieved each time it proved to be someone else. On Tuesday night, however, Uri called at last, sounding muffled over the wires, which crackled with other voices. “I’ve been burgled,” Molkho informed him at once. “It happened the same night I saw you.” His counselor was unimpressed. When did Molkho plan to be in Jerusalem again? he asked. “I don’t know,” Molkho answered. “I really haven’t made any plans. I thought you might want to come to Haifa.” “Fine,” replied Uri at once. “When would be the best time for you—morning, afternoon, or evening?” And when Molkho, taken aback, had trouble deciding, he added, “What time do you get home from work? Or do you take a nap then?” “As a matter of fact, I do,” admitted Molkho, straining to hear the voice on the phone, which seemed tired and tentative, “But I don’t mind missing it.” “How about four or five o’clock, then?” asked his counselor. “That’s perfect,” replied Molkho. “I’ll pick you up at the bus station. Just call me before you leave.” But when, his counselor wanted to know, was the last bus back to Jerusalem? “I couldn’t tell you,” Molkho said. “I’ll have to check. I never go to Jerusalem by bus, but I’ll find out.”

There was silence at the other end of the line. Was his counselor offended? “But why not sleep over here?” he offered weakly. “There’s plenty of room.” “No, that isn’t possible,” replied Uri. “Although maybe Ya’ara would like to spend a few days with you by herself.” “That’s an excellent idea,” responded Molkho. “Really, it is!” But his counselor chose to backtrack, asking Molkho whether he couldn’t perhaps come to Jerusalem after all. “Well, I suppose I could,” conceded Molkho. “Maybe this Saturday.” “Saturday?” The voice on the phone sounded more doubtful than ever. “On Saturday someone’s liable to throw a rock at your car; let’s make it Saturday night.” “What, Saturday night again?” objected Molkho. “What’s the point of spending another Saturday night at your place?” Once more there was silence while the interference on the line grew worse. “You’re right,” admitted his counselor, his voice fading in the distance. “That won’t get us anywhere. You know what? Let me think about it. I’m a bit tired now. I’ll be in touch.”

The torrid weather continued, and Molkho, picturing Ya’ara’s bare feet sticking out of her old housedress and her gray hair done up in its adolescent braid, felt the need to see her again. But his counselor did not call back. By Friday morning he was so impatient that he decided to drive to Jerusalem, and so, phoning his mother-in-law, he canceled her standing invitation to the Friday night meal. “Are you planning to visit your mother again?” she asked. “Yes,” he answered tersely. “Isn’t she feeling well?” asked his mother-in-law. “She’s feeling fine,” he told her, anxious to forestall further questioning—and indeed, there was none. After lunch, he packed a small suitcase and set out. Less than halfway there, however, he stopped the car and turned around. I need more patience, he thought, heading back to Haifa. I’ll just scare them off this way. I’d better give them more time.

A FEW DAYS LATER some men came to install the bars and Molkho left work early to be on hand when they arrived. In the middle of all their hammering and drilling, he suddenly spied Uri, tall, pale, and bony, standing in the doorway with his black cowboy hat in one hand. “I thought I’d come see where you lived,” said his counselor matter-of-factly, stepping inside. “It’s an awfully nice area. Is anyone else here?” “Just some workers,” replied Molkho, offering him a drink. His counselor declined. “No thank you, I’m fasting today,” he said, entering the living room and glancing at the books on the shelves. “They’re putting up some bars,” explained Molkho. “Bars?” asked the visitor, vaguely interested. “I told you I had a burglary,” Molkho reminded him, bringing him to the bedroom to see where the thief had broken in. “What a view!” marveled Uri, saying hello to the two workers, who were drilling holes in the wall by the window. “And the air is so fresh up here. Does that wadi down below have a name?” “I wouldn’t know,” Molkho said, feeling proud of the splendid green ravine. “But it must,” said his counselor. “Not necessarily,” reasoned Molkho. “This neighborhood isn’t very old. It was only developed in the last twenty years or so.”

His counselor said nothing and looked curiously around him, his glance falling on Volume I of Anna Karenina, which lay on the bed that the workers had moved from the window. “Are you reading that?” he asked. “Yes,” Molkho said. “For the first time?” asked his counselor warmly, picking up the book and leafing through it caressingly with his long, thin fingers. “Yes,” Molkho confessed. “I never got around to it before. Back in school, if you remember, all they ever gave us to read was a bunch of boring Hebrew authors.” His counselor looked at him curiously. “Do you like it?” “Yes,” replied Molkho, “as a matter of fact, I do. Sometimes it’s a bit on the dull side, but it’s really quite moving, all that business about Anna leaving her husband and child for love. I wonder how it ends. I don’t suppose very happily.” “No,” said his counselor gently. “In the end she kills herself.” “She does?” cried Molkho distraughtly. Uri nodded. “She does?” he repeated. And seeing that the visitor was not about to change Anna’s fate just for him, he added, “I wish you hadn’t told me that. But why? Does Vronsky leave her?” “Oh no,” said Uri. “He stays with her, but she loses all sense of freedom. Since her husband won’t divorce her, her affair remains a scandal, only now she’s no longer at liberty to break it off. And being an unusually independent woman, she feels trapped.”

Molkho nodded, even though he didn’t quite follow. The drilling started deafeningly up again. “When did you read it?” he shouted over the noise. “Oh, years ago,” smiled Uri, “but I never forget a book.” Carefully he laid the open volume down on the bed. “And how’s Ya’ara?” shouted Molkho, reddening. “She’s fine,” said his counselor. “What did she have to say about my visit?” asked Molkho. “What did she think of me?” “She thought a great deal of you,” replied Uri. “She said you hadn’t changed at all, that you’re exactly the same.” “I am?” laughed Molkho, feeling injured all over again. “But how can that be?” “She meant the kind of person you were,” explained Uri. “That you were just as she remembered you—quiet, patient, and a bit depressed.” “Depressed?” Molkho gave a start. “How?” But his counselor simply stood looking at the room. “Is this where your wife died?” he asked. “Yes, right here,” said Molkho mournfully. “In this bed?” “Oh no,” Molkho explained. “She had a special hospital bed with a water mattress to prevent bed sores.” And while his counselor played absentmindedly with his hat, he proceeded to describe how the room had been arranged and what other apparatuses had been in it. “There was a rabbi in Jerusalem who had the same thing,” said Uri when Molkho was finished. “But he recovered.” “But that’s impossible!” exclaimed Molkho resentfully. “It couldn’t have been the same thing! Everyone makes the same mistake. They think one cancer is just like another, but there are hundreds of different varieties. Believe me,” he said, his head bobbing up and down excitedly, “that’s one thing I know something about.”

Uri looked at him expressionlessly, preferring not to argue. Slowly he passed out of the bedroom and through the living room toward the still open front door, in which, dressed only in a bathing suit, red-skinned and caked with salt, appeared the high school boy, just returned from the beach. “This is Gabi, my younger son,” Molkho introduced him to the visitor, who shook his hand heartily. “Just imagine, Uri was once my counselor in a youth movement!” “Why, he’s a big fellow already. He must be nearly army age!” said Molkho’s counselor with satisfaction. “You know,” he added once the boy, who did not seem thrilled by the meeting, had gone off to his room, “when I see such big children, I actually feel jealous. Where at my age will I find the patience to stand rocking cradles in the middle of the night?”

The workers announced that they were finished and asked Molkho to come look. His heart sank when he did, for the window facing the ravine was now barred by an ugly silver grid that was blackened by solder at the edges and seemed to disfigure the whole house. Angry without knowing at whom, he paid the two men, and they left.

His counselor had now reached the kitchen in his slow tour of the house and was so impressed with its neatness that Molkho had to tell him all about the cleaning woman, who came three times a week. Barely listening, however, Uri simply nodded. “Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?” Molkho asked. “No,” said Uri, “I already told you I’m fasting today.” “But why?” asked Molkho. “For my sins,” replied his counselor with a wry laugh at Molkho, who followed him hypnotically to the door. They shook hands in silence. “Well, what do you think?” asked the visitor. “We may as well try,” whispered Molkho anxiously. “What’s there to lose?”

THE SUN WAS STILL ABLAZE in the west that Friday evening when Omri, the college student, arriving for dinner with his grandmother, saw the new bars and let out a howl of protest. The old woman, too, though refraining from comment, was clearly displeased with the change. “You could at least have left room for a few flowerpots,” exclaimed the student angrily. “It would have looked less like a jail window then!” Molkho hurried to admit his mistake: “You’re right, I didn’t think. I had no one to ask. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter—I’ll have it changed, I promise they’ll replace it, I don’t care what it costs, I’m not even going to paint it.” So ardent were his apologies that it took all of them together to calm him down.

Later, when he and Omri stood on the terrace watching the sun dissolve in the evening heat, he told him about Ya’ara—the whole story (“Her husband wants to give her to me; he was once a counselor of mine”) now seeming distinctly odd to him. Yet, the more his son listened, the more his initial skepticism gave way to sympathy, his face softening especially when told that the woman was several months his father’s senior. “What’s there to lose?” Molkho almost pleaded, with which his son agreed. “Maybe she’ll come tomorrow night and stay for a few days. Gabi is going off on some hike in the morning, which is just as well, because he may not like the idea. Do you think I should tell him tonight or wait until he gets back?” “But why shouldn’t he like the idea?” asked the college student. “If you’d like, I’ll talk to him now.” “No, you’ll just spoil his hike for him,” said Molkho, unconvinced. “We’d better wait. Let me be the one to tell him.”

Though he considered asking his mother-in-law’s opinion when he brought her back to the home after dinner, he was reluctant to involve her. Because of the heat she was wearing a light, almost transparent white blouse that made him feel he could see right through her body, which struck him as being the color of green soap. “I’m off to Jerusalem again tomorrow,” he told her as she slowly opened the door of the car. “I’m glad you’re seeing so much of your mother,” she replied sympathetically. “I know how lonely she must be.” “It’s not just to see her,” he said cautiously. “That is, it’s her too, but mainly I’m going to meet some old school friends who have gotten religion.” Were they friends of her daughter’s too? the old woman wanted to know. “No,” Molkho said. “I hadn’t seen them for years and then suddenly they turned up.” “Has religion gotten you also?” she asked. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if she was being cunning or simply slipping up in her Hebrew, which had gotten worse in the past year, her German accent becoming more pronounced. “No,” he told her, “not at all,” though sitting there worriedly by the open car door, she did not seem reassured. “Maybe they think they can influence you because of your wife’s death?” she asked. “But they don’t,” he replied, irritably regretting having told her. “It has nothing to do with religion. It’s something else entirely.” He could feel his pulse quicken. “What kind of something else?” he was sure she would ask, but she simply sat there while the passing headlights of a car threw her face into bright relief. Suddenly, though he felt guilty for thinking it, he wished she would die. She’ll just get in my way, even if she never says a word, he thought bitterly, waiting for her to disappear through the large glass door of the home.

There was no chance to talk the next morning to the high school boy, who awoke as usual at the last minute, collected his things frantically, and vanished with the brief announcement that he would be back Monday night. Not that it matters, thought Molkho; in fact, by then Ya’ara will most likely be gone. Though at first he thought of giving her the college student’s room, which had the best view of the ravine, its walls looked so naked that he decided on his daughter’s room instead. Removing some of her clothes from the closet and chest of drawers, he found an old pair of fossilized-looking slippers that had belonged to his wife and, after sniffing them lightly, tossed them in the garbage pail. Then he stripped the sheets from the bed, put them in the washing machine, and opened all the windows to air out the house before leaving for Jerusalem.

He set out in midmorning, happy that his vulnerable window was protected by heavy bars, and drove straight to his mother’s, where lunch was waiting for him. First, though, he went to wash, taking a cold shower because the boiler was out of order, so that he yowled and beat his chest and rushed into the arms of a dry towel, feeling like a new man. Peering into the medicine cabinet, he found an appealingly scented old bottle of his mother’s perfume and dabbed himself with it. Now was the time to break the news to her.

She listened in heavy silence, neither for nor against, though clearly disapproving of Ya’ara’s lack of economic independence. “If you expect it to work,” she declared at last, “you’ll have to become a little bit religious yourself, at least enough to suit her.” “But they don’t care about that at all,” he replied scornfully. “Why, she doesn’t even believe in God. It’s just something she goes along with!” And yet all at once he felt certain that nothing would come of it and that his counselor would never give her up. But I’ll go to bed with her anyway, he promised himself, because after all, I did love her once. “I need to rest,” he told his mother. “I have a long night ahead of me.” Yet, once in his old room, he couldn’t fall asleep.

Toward evening the Jerusalem skies clouded over unseasonably. Checking the calendar, he was astounded to see how late the Sabbath ended. It’s no wonder the religious are up in arms about daylight saving time, he thought as he drove at nine-thirty to the project, which seemed dark and quiet, as if the Day of Rest were being held prisoner. The elevator, too, was nearly empty, its only other passenger a small boy with blond earlocks who stood peeling off the chrome paint of the buttons with his fingernails. Getting off at the wrong floor, Molkho wandered down a long, dark corridor in search of the stairs, passing curious tenants until he nervously arrived at the right apartment.

His counselor opened the door. “So you’re here,” he smiled glumly, a saturnine flush in his cheeks. “You really are going through with it!” “I am?” gulped Molkho guiltily. “How is that?” His counselor laid a light hand on him. “I was afraid you’d get cold feet. But come in, come on in.”

Yet, when he entered, there was only darkness and an open suitcase on the bed where Ya’ara had lain the last time. The apartment was chilly, perhaps because the windows and shutters had been closed against the sun all day long, and smelled as if the Sabbath, trapped between its walls for over twenty-four hours, had begun to go bad. “I’ll get her,” declared Uri, reaching for his hat and explaining that Ya’ara had gone to visit a sick friend in the next building. “No, don’t go yet,” requested Molkho, blocking the way. “I have to tell you that I still don’t know what to make of all this, that I feel like I’m in a strange dream. Not that I’m against arranged matches. If they were good enough for the Middle Ages, they’re good enough for me. But I’m asking you again, why me? Why not someone else?”

“It happened by pure chance,” whispered his counselor to Molkho, who replied, feeling weak as if with stage fright, “Where do you get the strength for all this? I feel that I’m completely in your hands, that this whole thing is humanly incredible, that it will be a miracle if it works. I’ve already told my mother and elder son and was amazed it didn’t shock them, because I’m still in shock myself. Are you sure you’ve thought it through?” His counselor was listening with his eyes shut, as if to a musical theme. “You say I once loved her, but what difference does that make now? And there’s something else I don’t get either: does your divorcing her just depend on me?”

“No,” said his counselor, opening his eyes, “it depends on me too.” He smiled faintly and patted Molkho’s back. “And on her,” Molkho pointed out logically. “She’s already agreed,” smiled his counselor again. “But what does she know about me?” asked Molkho in alarm. “I’m not so easy to get along with. In fact, I was even accused by someone of causing my wife’s death.” “Forget it,” said Uri unconcernedly. “Don’t listen to what other people say. Listen to yourself. Your life is your own now.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late,” Molkho said. “I’d like to get an early start.” “I’ll go get her,” said his counselor. “I really don’t know what can be keeping her.”

Molkho walked about the small apartment, in which he now took an almost proprietary interest, even entering the little bedroom to inspect the open suitcase. In it were some dresses and a pair of slippers, the thought of whose arrival in his Haifa home made him tingle expectantly. Packed away, too, was a large, mysterious package of absorbent cotton and a small jar of red pills bearing the label of a local pharmacy. Was she still bleeding from her miscarriages? Would she be penetrable or blocked by debris? Was he meant to heal her or put her out of her misery? For he did want to heal her, he thought.

Through the bedroom window, the only one open in the house, a mild scent of pine trees was borne on the cool breeze that drifted in from the Jerusalem night. Staring at the carelessly made bed, he suddenly felt that everything about it—the pillows, the blankets, even the scattered books—reeked of endless fornication. For a moment he froze; yet hearing the rumble of the elevator in the hallway, he hurried back to the living room just as the front door opened. She was alone, dressed in a checked jumper that stressed her little belly, loafers with white bobbysocks folded schoolgirlishly over them, and a tight kerchief that she removed and tossed on the table while shaking out her gray hair. “I see Uri found you,” he said, still not sure how he felt about her. Should he offer to shake hands? Not that it matters, he thought—yet he gave her his hand and she took it in her own as if not quite knowing what to do with it. “I was paying a sick call, but I’m already packed,” she explained, stepping into the bathroom to collect her toilet articles as her husband entered the apartment. “All right,” said Molkho’s counselor, “let’s go. We don’t want to take all night. Are you sure you have everything?” he asked, shutting the suitcase and carrying it outside. “Yes,” said Ya’ara after a moment’s thought. “What about toothpaste?” he asked. “She’s not going to the wilderness,” put in Molkho, who had been listening nervously. “But your book, you forgot your book,” exclaimed Uri, and she returned to the little bedroom and slipped it into her bag before putting her kerchief back on. They turned off the lights. “Wait a minute,” said Molkho’s counselor, opening the windows to let in the cool air while Molkho, dazzled by the great clusters of lights on the hillsides, remarked, “I don’t know a single one of all those new neighborhoods. I couldn’t even tell you which are Jewish and which are Arab.” Neither Uri nor Ya’ara responded. As though suddenly gripped by a powerful emotion, their attention seemed focused elsewhere.

They slipped through the building in their religious garb, which looked half like a disguise and half like an exotic costume. Opening the baggage compartment of his car, Molkho laid the suitcase in it while his counselor, who had decided to drive with them to the city limits, sat in the front seat with his wife behind him. With a sinking feeling, Molkho glanced at her in the mirror, her kerchiefed face small, lined, and gray, framed by the dusky night. It’s what I get for not looking harder, he thought bitterly, for expecting others to do it for me. Slowly he backed out of the parking lot and drove to the outskirts of town, stopping by a yellow filling station at the point where the road began its long plunge to the coast. “Do you need gas?” asked his counselor, getting slowly out of the car as if loath to part with them. “No, I have plenty,” said Molkho impatiently. “And where should Ya’ara sit?” inquired Uri, “in the front or in the back?” “In the front,” answered Molkho. “It’s more comfortable and safer, because of the seat belt.” His counselor opened the front door for her, and the two men helped belt her in. “Are you all right?” asked Uri nervously. She nodded with a dutiful smile. “Just a minute,” declared Molkho, noticing how cramped she was, “let’s give you some more legroom.” He bent toward her to pull her seat handle while his counselor pushed her back, the smell of her sweat making her seem very real. “How about taking a soldier?” asked Uri as several hitchhikers in uniform began crowding around the car. “I’d rather not,” said Molkho. “You never give lifts to soldiers?” Ya’ara asked. “Yes, I do, but not now,” he answered crossly. “Maybe later, when we reach the coast.”

Uri seemed satisfied, suggesting only that they clean the windshield, which was smeared with dust and dead bugs. “Otherwise you won’t see a thing,” he told Molkho, who got out of the car, wiped the front window, got back in again, refastened his seat belt, and drove off into the night. His last glimpse of his tall counselor was in the rearview mirror, standing in the cold yellow light by the air pump. Has he really signed her away to me? he wondered, his heart going out to the man.

SHE CERTAINLY DOES what she’s told, he marveled as she sat there in her seat belt, wide awake and content to watch the night go by outside the window. Perhaps they would make a happy couple after all. Meanwhile, he had to be on his best behavior and, above all, to avoid awkward silences. On his way to Jerusalem he had already thought of a few things to talk about apart from his wife and her illness, which he would leave for the next day, when Ya’ara would be better able to concentrate. The best thing was to get her to tell him about herself: thirty-two years had passed since their schooldays, so that at a rate of no more than four minutes per year they could reach Haifa without his having to make small talk or carry on intellectually like her husband—although just to be on the safe side, he had a tape of The Magic Flute playing softly in the deck, its volume ready to be turned up the moment the conversation faltered. Indeed, Ya’ara was no more talkative than he was, being evidently used to letting Uri hold the stage, so that already by the first sharp downhill turns he had to start drawing her out. Who, he cautiously asked her, a bit uncomfortable for her sake, was the match that Uri was thinking of? The woman, she replied, was a young widow, the mother of a small child, whose husband, a follower of the rabbi, was killed a year ago in a car accident. “Have you ever met her?” he asked, intrigued. “No,” she said. “Neither has Uri. He doesn’t see the point of it before there’s an arrangement for me.” Molkho winced. It might simplify matters, he thought wryly, if he would take the young widow for himself and leave his friends’ marriage intact.

But young widows attracted him less than this woman beside him, who made him feel so full of life. She had removed her kerchief again, making her face look broader, and now sat with her legs crossed comfortably, smoking her first cigarette after having found the ashtray by herself, her pearllike eyes darting from the dashboard to the gear shift with an impressive if somewhat frightening intensity. In the darkness broken by the flicker of headlights her face had softened above the slim shoulders that belied the bulge below. Even when someone like her fell ill, the prognosis was bound to be good. And perhaps he could get her to dye her hair, use makeup, and dress more smartly. And to learn to drive so that she might find a better job. Again he stole a glance at her, afraid to look away for too long from the serpentine curves; one hand resting on the open window and a cigarette glowing in her mouth, she was calmly observing the thinly wooded hills by the roadside. They can’t have been waiting just for me, he told himself, the odd thought crossing his mind that this mightn’t be the first time, that perhaps they had tried it before. Was I really in love with her? he struggled to recall. Or was it just an adolescent crush; after all, who hadn’t had one on her back then, such a strikingly well-developed girl?

He kept turning the conversation back to her husband, as if regretting having abandoned him at the gas station. Clearly, she adored the man: hadn’t she, his faithful fellow wanderer, always followed him blindly wherever he went? They were out of the mountains now, and Molkho wondered whether to take the old road by the airport, which was shorter but slower, or to go by the coast. In the end, he chose the inland route, switching on the radio to drown out her adulation, though when he made some comment on the news bulletin, he saw that she either hadn’t been listening or didn’t know who the foreign minister was—a fact, however, that he found rather pleasing, indeed even titillating. As she was lighting up a fresh cigarette by the entrance to the airport, he turned the radio off and delicately broached the subject of her childlessness. “You know,” he said, a catch in his voice, “my wife had a miscarriage too. We wanted a fourth child, but after a few weeks she lost it. Maybe that was the first sign of her illness, though we couldn’t have guessed it at the time.” Ya’ara bowed a sorrowful head. She herself, she told Molkho, had had seven miscarriages, all the same. “The same as what?” he asked. “I mean, what month did it happen in?” “The fifth or sixth,” she answered quietly. “The sixth?” he exclaimed with an involuntary grimace. “How awful!” She smiled appreciatively but said nothing. “You must have suffered terribly,” he went on. “Why, it can be dangerous then!” She listened to him uncertainly, the yellow light from the terminals falling on her face, while he thought of soft, dead fetuses. On the cabinet of the nature room in high school had stood a jar of formaldehyde in which was preserved an upside-down embryo, its arms and legs folded. The girls had been scared of it, and the boys had joked and even given it a pet name; but Molkho sometimes looked at it sympathetically, trying to make out its tiny limbs in the cloudy solution. Now, however, he had better curb his desire to know more about her medical history. It wouldn’t do to show his fascination with the details of her pregnancies, of the long months spent bedridden in all the cheap rooms they had rented in their travels. Had his counselor taken good care of her? Had he been able to change the sheets without hurting her, or was he too busy searching for the Meaning of Life? And her poor, bleeding uterus—did she still have it or had it been removed? He felt sure it had not been and wanted nothing more than to kneel with his head pressed against it. If I don’t scare her off, he thought, she’ll let me do that too.

And indeed, sitting there contentedly in the steamy coastal humidity while staring at the moon rising over the mountains and shimmering on the distant white foam of the sea, she did not seem scared in the least. It’s good she’s so relaxed, he thought, too weary to remember the names of the old classmates about whom he had planned to reminisce with her. It was past midnight when he drove through the empty streets of Haifa, giddy with the promise of happiness. She’s a real option, he told himself, carrying her suitcase, which he rather wished were heavier, up the stairs. And she wouldn’t die on him either, that was for sure. He wished it were earlier so that the neighbors might see her. They would be relieved to hear that the first woman he brought home wasn’t young, because widowers who took up with young women were disapproved of. Afterward, he might start reducing the age. Meanwhile, here he was with the autumn and mild winter and summery spring behind him, already halfway through this cruelly hot summer that had begotten two hotter summers than itself.

He switched on the hallway light and opened the front door for her, again noticing her girlish loafers with their white bobbysocks. He could fall in love with her easily, he thought, turning on lights everywhere and showing her the apartment like a moonlighting real estate agent; it was simply a matter of getting to know her. “It’s nice here,” she said, looking cheerily around her. “Yes, we tried to make it that way,” he replied with a smile that thanked her while reminding her of the woman who preceded her. Dead tired, he brought in her suitcase. “This is my daughter Enat’s room,” he said. “She’s in Europe now.” “By herself?” asked Ya’ara. “Yes,” Molkho said, “she’s very independent.” They returned to the living room, where Ya’ara sat in the armchair and took another cigarette from her pack, wide awake and every inch a night bird. “Would you like something to eat or drink?” he asked none too eagerly, already missing his lost privacy. “If you’re having a bite, I’ll join you,” she replied. He led her to the kitchen, took out bread, cheese, and cake, and put some water up to boil. At least she isn’t spoiled, he thought, amazedly watching her eat everything he put before her, even a piece of old cheese. Although I wish she had a better-paying job.

HE RATHER LIKED her lazy way of doing things: of eating, for instance, or making her bed, which he had purposely left bare with the folded sheets on top of it to let her see that they were fresh. By now her religious facade had peeled away completely, leaving only the girlish Young Pioneer who had turned gray overnight. Tired though he was, he was soon giving her an account of his wife’s illness, to which she listened so intently that he felt he was telling about it for the first time.

Just then the telephone rang. “Don’t worry, it’s Uri,” she told him, once again making him wonder whether she hadn’t done this before. “Hello,” he said when he picked up the receiver. “Yes, we had a good trip and now we’re sitting and talking. My only complaint,” he joked, feeling a need to sound critical, “is that she doesn’t stop smoking. Would you like to talk with her? She’s right here.”

She picked up the phone, speaking into it in a whisper while Molkho went tactfully to his room, from where he watched her question-mark figure through the doorway. Perhaps I’ll keep her, he thought. But she must dye her hair. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t, or use a bit of makeup for my sake.

IF YOU NEED ANYTHING, just ask,” he told her, wanting to turn in. “Feel at home. If you’d like to read in bed, there are plenty of books. I even have Volume I of Anna Karenina, which I finished yesterday. You can take it back to Jerusalem with you. Good night,” he added, retiring to his room, where he decided that it would be unfair to use the air conditioner while she had to sleep without it. He undressed and got into bed, but though it was nearly 2 A.M., he couldn’t fall asleep. Eight months had gone by since the death of his wife and now another woman was in the house at last—not in the same room, to be sure, but at least in the same apartment. That’s certainly progress, he told himself, rising to switch on the air conditioner, its familiar purr lulling him into a dim slumber in which he dreamed that his son the high school boy had turned into a girl. Good for him, he thought in the dream, as if the boy’s problems were solved.

At four, unable to keep warm beneath the thin blanket, he rose and switched off the air conditioner. Suddenly, remembering Ya’ara in the next room, he felt a glow like that which he had felt as a child when his mother once surprised him with a new puppy and he awoke in the middle of the night to find it on the kitchen porch wagging its tail in the dark, as if it had been waiting just for him, little Molkho. Now, wanting to see her no less badly, he slipped into his pants, leaving on his pajama tops, and stepped into the darkened living room, from which he saw a crack of light beneath her door. Was she still reading, or had she fallen asleep with the light on? He froze, menaced by her wakefulness. Was the light meant for him? He turned around. I mustn’t be so aggressive, he thought, crawling back into bed, his head feeling infinitely heavier than his body. That’s never been my strong suit.

IT WAS AFTER SEVEN when he awoke again, amazed at how he had slept, for he usually rose by six. Certain she must be up, he dressed, made his bed, washed and shaved quickly, and came out to say good morning. She was gone, her bed made too, though less neatly than his, her suitcase on the floor with all her clothes still in it. Nor, when he went downstairs to look for her, was she anywhere to be seen. Glad to be alone, he sliced bread, set the table for breakfast, and, feeling ravenous, sat down to eat, making little piles of the crumbs while reading the morning paper until he heard a light knock on the door and rose to open it. She was wearing the same faded jumper, her pearly eyes squinting in the morning light, which ruddily tinted her cheeks and streaked her gray hair with gold. “I was worried about you,” he said. “When did you get up? I was afraid you might have run away.” But she had merely risen at dawn and gone out for a walk, even starting down the tempting ravine. In fact, she had proceeded quite a distance, though not to the very bottom, and had lost her way coming back, which was why her shoes were caked with dirt. He poured her coffee and served her breakfast, of which she obediently ate every bit. Yet, when he cleared the table, she made no move to wash or dry the dishes. Chin in hand, she remained seated at the table, thoughtfully smoking while watching him at the sink, after which she asked for a glass of water, took two aspirins from her pocket, and swallowed them. “Do you have a headache?” he asked. “No,” she said, “it’s just in case.”

Since they were ready to go out now, he proposed that she clean her shoes, even producing a brush and polish and spreading a newspaper on the terrace. Standing beside her while prying open the can of polish that she had fumbled with unsuccessfully, he saw there was hardly an inch difference between them—which was still enough, however, to annoy him. She took off her shoes and stood in her white socks, her legs downy in the morning light, and removing his too, he suggested that she apply the polish while he wield the brush. She had hardly begun, however, when the telephone rang. “You get it; it may be for you,” he said, wanting the unknown caller to hear a woman’s voice. Dutifully she went and picked up the receiver, clutching it with both hands as if afraid of dropping it, her question-mark figure turned to him in profile. It was Uri again, and while Molkho waited for her to finish, he impatiently polished his shoes, put them back on, and then polished hers while trying to guess their age. She’ll have to dye her hair and take the fuzz off her legs and buy new shoes and use makeup, he grumbled to himself. And if she says it’s a matter of principle, she can choose between her principles and me. He put away the rags and brush, and brought her shoes to her, the two of them now the same height, waiting to see if his counselor wished to speak to him. But soon she hung up. “He sends regards,” she said, putting on her shoes with a grateful look.

I’LL NEVER DO ANYTHING like this again, thought Molkho crossly, though he was glad that her husband kept calling. At least he hasn’t just dumped her on me, he told himself; I can always return her with a clean conscience. He had already planned the day, and now he told her about it. In the morning they would do some shopping, visit the mountaintop campus of the university, and lunch at an outdoor restaurant; in the afternoon, after resting up, they would go to the beach; and in the evening, if she liked, there was a concert in unusual surroundings, the subterranean Knights Hall in old Acre, which hosted chamber-music groups all summer long. “Chamber music?” she asked doubtfully. He brought her an old program, which she thumbed through unenthusiastically; yet the tickets were expensive and he was determined to use them, especially as they were unlikely to be sellable at the performance. His wife had had a passion for such concerts, which often struck him as monotonous, indeed as one of the punishments of Culture, although sometimes, near the end of them, either because his liberation was near or because the music had finally penetrated, he felt a euphoric serenity.

“Tomorrow, though, we can go see a movie,” he added intimately. “I’d like that,” she smiled. “And perhaps,” he suggested, “we’ll go to the beach again.” She nodded her gray head. “The beach sounds nice. I haven’t been to it for ages.” “Did you bring a bathing suit?” he asked rhetorically, being thoroughly acquainted with the contents of her suitcase. “No,” she said. “But why not?” he asked. “Are you afraid that one of your religious friends from Jerusalem will see you?” “Maybe next time,” she blushed, as if baffled or overwhelmed by all his questions. If there is a next time, he almost said out loud. But he didn’t. After all, he thought, I really loved her once, and after a day or two I may remember why.

Though he had hoped she would change into another, livelier dress, she clearly did not share his taste and wore her jumper to the nearby shopping center, where they entered a small optometrist’s shop, the owners of which Molkho knew from the Philharmonic series. Facing her in a seat that looked like a barber’s chair, he tried on frames of glasses to see which went best with his new bifocals, which he had gotten because his once-perfect distance vision now called for correction too. The optometrist regarded Ya’ara curiously, appraising her odd combination of jumper, bobbysocks, gray hair, and wedding ring while gallantly asking for her opinion, as if it alone had any value. Lighting up a cigarette, she fumbled for words and seemed relieved when they all agreed on a pair of gold frames, on which Molkho put a deposit.

They made their way along the busy street. She had, Molkho noticed, a hapless way of falling behind that might once have appealed to him but simply annoyed him now. Abruptly he entered a building and climbed to a second-floor apartment that had been converted into a boutique, in the soft light of which local matrons in bright bathing suits circulated among curtained shelves. Only when they were approached by a salesgirl and Molkho gestured toward Ya’ara, however, did she realize what he had in mind. “I can’t!” she pleaded, turning crimson and stiffening. “But I’ll pay for it,” he whispered. “It’s so we can go to the beach.” Yet still she balked, taking a feeble step backward, so that in the soft light, surrounded by partially dressed ladies, he was struck again by her old beauty. He tried to persuade her while the salesgirl stood by politely smiling, even giving her hand a squeeze, though quickly letting go of it.

THEN AT LEAST A DRESS, he thought. If she would only buy one of those summery dresses in the show windows, something stylish and fresh-looking, because her faded old jumper, on which there was already a light stain of sweat, was making him more and more unhappy. She was unhealthily attached to it, which made him fear she might wear it to the concert that evening too. Not wanting to upset her even more, though, he decided to walk with her to Panorama Road for a scenic view of the harbor and bay, but arriving there, they found the visibility poor. A heavy mist lay over the bay, while to the north, the mountains of the Galilee lay shrouded in a grayish haze, the only clear landmark being the golden dome of the Bahai Temple down the mountainside. “In autumn,” he assured her disappointedly, “you can see for miles around. The houses in Acre look like toy blocks, and the mountains seem close enough to touch.” He suggested having coffee in an elegant café inside a big new department store, through which he led her past racks of dresses, pants, and shirts, stopping now and then to check fabrics and prices in the hope of arousing her interest. “The ‘in’ look today is the wide look,” he said, sounding more mystified than informed. “Anything goes—and usually with anything else!” Yet lagging behind again, she did not even glance at the clothes, perhaps afraid of being forced to buy something, so that they were both relieved to reach the men’s department, where she gladly looked with him at the new collarless shirts, one of which appealed to him especially. “What do you think?” he asked her, holding it up in front of him just as a young salesman approached and urged him to try it on for size. “Tell your husband not to mind the missing collar,” Molkho heard him say beyond the dressing curtail as he buttoned up the shirt. “He’ll get used to it. It’s the new look.” “But what do I want with the new look,” Ya’ara replied, her answer pleasing him greatly, “when his old look suited me fine?”

In the café he tried discussing politics, but the subject failed to interest her. Nor, when asked about her husband’s views, did she seem to think it interested him. “What does, then?” inquired Molkho. She looked at him in bewilderment, unused to having to explain the man who was always there by her side to explain himself. “He’s looking for the Meaning,” she murmured, drawing on her cigarette. “For the Purpose of it all. Not just to live with as much pleasure and as little pain as possible.” “What Purpose is that?” inquired Molkho. “But that’s what he’s looking for!” she answered. “Yes, I know,” he said a bit sarcastically. “He told us that in the movement thirty years ago—but what has he found since then?” “It’s not like discovering some Big Idea,” she tried to explain. “It’s something you have to live.” “But isn’t life itself the Purpose?” he asked. “To get through it as best you can before Death comes for you?” “But Death doesn’t mean a thing to him!” she retorted admiringly. “He doesn’t believe in it!” “Oh, he doesn’t!” Molkho grinned at her painfully. “Do you think Death cares whether he believes in it or not?” Frightened by his vehemence, she tried changing the subject. “But I want to know!” he insisted, just getting more worked up. “What does he believe in?” “Don’t ask me, ask him,” she answered softly. “And you? How about you?” he queried. “I’d rather not think about Death,” she said. “I feel more like you do about it. Even when I had all those miscarriages, I never thought of them as deaths, just as failures, because how can you die if you haven’t been born?”

Once again he was reminded of her old directness, of the naive honesty she had answered all their teachers with. So it wasn’t just her looks that made me love her, he mused, trying to remember more. Left back a grade, she had sat there not caring about her studies, wanting only to get through the year. She hadn’t even pretended to care. And though all her friends were seniors, she made a strong impression on the junior class she was banished to. “Sitting here with you,” Molkho told her, “I feel that I’m back in high school again, only this time without homework or exams and with spending money in my pocket.” She flashed him an intimate smile. How can we keep the feeling of closeness? he wondered just as he spotted the two little Russians, mother and daughter, heading for the exit of the café, followed by an old woman with a cane who stopped to pay the cashier. For a moment, sure he had been noticed, he caught his breath; then, turning to Ya’ara, he whispered, “Look over there, that woman in the white peasant blouse—she’s my mother-in-law. Just wait until you get to know her. She’s eighty-two and clear as a bell. Would you believe how she looks? And she does everything! She doesn’t even need that cane; it’s just something she carries around with her. It’s incredible how lucid she is.”

Ya’ara looked curiously at the old woman, who was counting her change over the counter. Satisfied it was correct, she scooped it up and made her way slowly toward the exit, listing slightly like a ship. “Was your wife like her?” asked Ya’ara. “I never used to think so,” said Molkho. “Recently, though, perhaps because I’m forgetting, I’ve begun to see a resemblance.”

HE CHANGED PLANS and took her to the Bahai Temple, where they joined a group of Dutch tourists in a manicured garden full of flowering bushes, led down a paved path by their guide to the golden dome of the sanctuary. “It reminds me so of Europe,” marveled Molkho. “I’ve been living in Haifa for thirty years—twice a day I drive right past this place, and yet I’ve never been here before. It’s something I’ve always meant to do.”

By the door of the golden-domed structure, they were asked to take off their shoes, after which they entered a small room with thick Persian carpets on the floor, Persian and English inscriptions on the walls, and several decorative lamps and objets d’art behind a lace curtain. Molkho assumed they would next be taken to view the interior of the sanctuary itself, but presently they were told that their visit was over and that no one, not even Bahais, ever saw the dome from within. “But what’s in it?” he asked disappointedly. “Nothing,” replied the guide. “Nothing?” Laughing with disbelief, he put on his shoes and took a free brochure about the Bahais and their faith.

From there, they drove downtown for lunch in an Arab restaurant, where Ya’ara hungrily fell upon the bread even before the appetizers arrived, her voraciousness once again amazing him. Is that where I’ll first kiss her? he wondered, looking at her smooth forehead, or will I find someplace better? She ate quickly, enjoying the meal, while he told her about his mother and her tedious complaints over the telephone each morning. Her own mother, she said, had died a few years ago, and the two of them had never been close. But the heat and noise in the crowded restaurant made it difficult to talk, and eventually they lapsed into silence, waiting for their Turkish coffee. Why, she’s even duller than I am, he thought, suddenly recalling how in public school, not wanting to hurt the feelings of a fat girl with pigtails who had been foisted on him as a girlfriend, he had put up with her for a whole year while eagerly waiting for the summer vacation to free him.

A muggy hour later, on the stairs to his apartment, they encountered his elderly downstairs neighbor, who, dressed in an undershirt, stopped to inspect the new woman while asking some question about the hallway light. Upstairs in the apartment the telephone was ringing, and feeling Ya’ara stiffen, Molkho handed her the key and said, “Go see who it is. Maybe it’s for you again.” She ran up the stairs while his neighbor, never taking his eyes off her, kept on about the light. “Do we have a new tenant, then?” he asked slyly. Molkho patted his shoulder. “I really couldn’t tell you,” he said.

He found her gripping the telephone, her belly bulging softly as if the last of her dead babies were still trapped there. She was talking to her husband, whose concern for her seemed boundless. Or perhaps he was coaching her from the sidelines in ways unclear to Molkho, who slowly lowered the blinds of the sun-baked apartment, plunging it into darkness. Maybe he wants to know if we’ve made love yet, he thought. Anything is possible with them. He opened the refrigerator, took out a pitcher of cold water, poured himself a glass, drank it, poured her one too, and set it on the table in front of her. Is that really his plan for us? he wondered. And here I am, playing the tourist guide! Though if that’s what’s expected of me, what better time than now?

“Uri would like to have a word with you,” Ya’ara said, handing him the telephone and walking away. “Are you having problems?” asked his counselor. He sounded nervous and rushed, and Molkho was surprised by his directness. “If you’d like, I can come for her tomorrow.” “But why?” protested Molkho. “There’s no need. I’ve already told the office that I’m taking two days off. Everything is fine here. We’re still getting acquainted,” he chuckled. But his counselor sounded somber. “Talk to her!” he urged. “Talk to her! She’s used to it and is a good listener. Talk to her!” “It’s all right,” whispered Molkho tensely into the receiver. “You don’t have to worry.”

He went to his room, turned on the air conditioner to dry off his sweaty body, and asked Ya’ara if she might like to nap there. “No, thank you,” she replied, preferring to sit in the easy chair facing the TV. “I never sleep in the afternoon. I’ve spent too much of my life in bed as it is.” He showered and put on fresh clothes instead of a bathrobe, regretting his lost privacy again. A fresh cigarette in her mouth, she was staring at the unlit screen of the television as though waiting for an important message. “Wouldn’t you like to shower too?” he asked. “No, why?” she answered puzzledly, as if, sitting there as fresh as a daisy in her old jumper, showers were not for her. “Then perhaps you’d like to watch TV,” he said. “The educational channel is on now.” She gladly agreed, settling back in her chair with her legs crossed, while he switched on the set and sat down beside her to watch some program about insects in the jungle. The wasted humming of the air conditioner kept making him want to shut his eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to lie down in my room?” he asked, getting to his feet. She shook her head, her eyes glued to the screen, and so he brought a fan and aimed it at her, its current of air playing with her silvery hair. “Do you mind if I go he down, then?” he asked. “I’ve become so dependent on my afternoon nap that I’m a wreck at night if I don’t get it.” “Of course,” she blushed. “Go right ahead. Don’t let me bother you.”

He brought her the newspaper, showed her how to switch off the set, shut the door of his room, undressed, and climbed into the cool bed in his underpants, feeling as though his head weighed a ton. How can I make love to her, he wondered, if I have to talk to her all the time? The television droned on in the living room, but the purr of the air conditioner drowned it out and soon put him to sleep.

He awoke shivering from cold an hour later and went to turn off the machine, hearing the voices of many children in the apartment next door, which suddenly sounded like a schoolroom. Dressing quickly, he stepped into the living room, where striped light fell through the slatted blinds. She was still in the same chair, which his wife had liked to sit in, too, before becoming bedridden, so that for a moment, not yet brought back to reality by the head of gray hair, he thought that’s who it was. The folded newspaper was where he had left it on the table. Was Ya’ara asleep? She didn’t stir or seem to notice him. Stepping closer, however, he saw that she was watching a children’s program that featured a bowlegged green hedgehog that spoke in a funny voice. The room felt like a furnace. “You didn’t sleep?” he asked, laying a hand on her startled shoulder. “There are some really good children’s programs,” he added, not wanting to sound disapproving of the drivel on the screen. “Don’t you have TV at home?” “No,” she said, enthralled by the hedgehog, which was trying out a new stunt. “But sometimes I stop to watch it in the store windows.” The fan had dried her skin a waxen color. “Come, let’s have coffee,” he said, “and then I’ll show you the university.”

She didn’t offer to help this time, either. Only when he switched off the TV and told her the coffee was ready did she rise from her chair in her faded old jumper, which looked like a woman prisoner’s, girlishly stretching her limbs while a wave of warm desire swept over him. First we’ll dye her hair, he thought. There’s no reason not to. And get her to use makeup. And to buy some new clothes. And then maybe I’ll marry her. After all, the neighbors seem to like her, and I really did love her once.

ON THE HIGH CAMPUS of the university the air was as sultry as elsewhere; the spectacular view was swaddled in the same blue haze they had stared at that morning, and the observation tower was closed. Ya’ara was disappointed, for though she had hoped to catch a glimpse of the mountain range near Yodfat, perhaps even of Yodfat itself, where she had spent the happiest years of her life, it was hidden by a great bank of mist. Nearer to them the brutal summer had burned red blotches in the landscape and the vivid green of the Carmel was smeared a streaky gray. “Did you ever finish high school?” asked Molkho, steering her to what he hoped might be a better vantage point. No, Ya’ara answered, she never did. “And you’re not sorry?” he asked softly. No, she said, and neither, for that matter, was Uri. Molkho pointed out a few sights to her, telling her how much better he liked Haifa than Jerusalem. “Even if it is a bit boring here,” he confessed—although if she was bored, she gave no sign of it. What now? he wondered, feeling he had run out of topics. Nothing would seem natural until they had gone to bed.

On their way back to the apartment, they stopped off at a supermarket. “You push and I’ll fill,” he joked, giving her a cart, “but feel free to take what you want.” She took nothing, however, merely blushing each time he inquired whether she liked, ate, or ever had tried this or that item on a shelf. Well, he thought, tossing it into the cart anyway, she’ll have a lifetime with me to get used to it.

Back home he suggested once more that she shower, but again she preferred the television. This time, however, determined to involve her in supper, which he had decided to eat on the terrace facing the sunset, he asked her to slice vegetables for a salad. She did, washing them well and carefully peeling the tomatoes in a special way she had learned in South America. It’s a good thing the children aren’t home, Molkho thought, sitting opposite her on the terrace while looking now and then at the bright arrows of sunlight shooting through the clouds. Though his children did not seem to interest her, he began discussing them anyway. All of them, he told her, worried him: the college student, who had started going out with an older woman; his daughter, who had never had a boyfriend and seemed strangely hardened by her mother’s death; and most of all, the high school boy, who went about in a daze and was likely to be left back in school. But he loved them, felt close to them, and considered himself responsible for their future. Needless to say, everything he owned would be theirs one day. He listed this for her, stating the value of the apartment and all his bank accounts, while she listened without comment, eating heartily and smoking between bites of food or else glancing westward, where the sun had burned a blazing hole in the sky through which purple rays glinted off their plates and glasses. Could she still be on the same pack of cigarettes or had she brought more from Jerusalem?

Finally she rose and went to wash, leaving him again to do the dishes, though he was relieved to note that she returned with a new dress on, a jumper, too, yet brighter and more flowery. Nighttime became her, he thought, smoothing out the wrinkles on her old beauty. “Don’t you ever use makeup?” he asked offhandedly with a look at the long-strapped black handbag slung over her shoulder. “No,” she said. “The thought of smearing all that junk on my face revolts me.” It was late, and they drove hurriedly to the old Crusader fortress in Acre, descending a flight of stairs to the Knights’ Hall, whose thick stone walls were damp with humidity. Though the hall wasn’t full, several people there knew him and came over to say hello and have a look at his new partner. “This is Ya’ara,” he introduced her casually, glad she made a good impression. His old friends the doctor and his wife were there too, apologetic for having been out of touch. “This is Ya’ara,” he said as they scrutinized her, puzzled by the plain old dress, which seemed like a throwback to their teens, though Molkho soon sidetracked their efforts to place her by inquiring about their son, who was a classmate of Gabi’s. “Did he tell you about that hike of theirs?” he asked. The doctor and his wife, though, hadn’t heard of any hike. Their son, they said, had gone to Tel Aviv to spend a few days with a friend.

“I have a feeling we’re in for some dry music tonight,” whispered Molkho to Ya’ara as they settled into their wooden chairs and watched a violinist, a cellist, and a violist mount the stage, proud to be initiating her into a world of values no less stringent than her husband’s. She nodded apprehensively, her body straight as a rod. Why, with a posture like that she’ll be indestructible! he thought. Indeed, the music was harsh and cerebral: no sooner did the violin play a lyric bar than the cello and the viola overcame it, attacking the theme and breaking it down analytically. At first, he could see she was following, her eyes fixed on the musicians, yet soon her attention wandered. He smiled at her mournfully, glancing down at her dusty shoes with their still neatly folded bobbysocks on the sunken old stone floor. Once more he noticed the curly blond down on her legs. How can I kiss a woman with so much fuzz? he wondered gloomily. And her black handbag would have to go too. Her bulge of a belly rose and fell as though an unborn child kept getting up and sitting down there, each time about to walk out on the avant-garde trio that chose to play such highbrow music on so heat-struck a summer night. “How’s your head?” he asked in a whisper. “It hurts,” she confided, impressed by his diagnostic powers. “I’ve had a headache for a while.”

During the intermission he took her out to the garden and led her to a stone bench beneath a leafy tree, where she sat wanly with her head back while he went to fetch some water. She was smoking when he returned. Were her migraines chronic, he inquired, or were they something new? “I’ve had them for several years,” she said. “In that case,” he reassured her, “you have nothing to worry about. Just to be on the safe side, though, you might want to have a brain scan. It’s a perfectly painless procedure.”

The doctor and his wife appeared in the garden, no doubt looking for them, and he clung to the shadow of the tree to avoid detection. The warning bell rang. “You go on in,” Ya’ara said. “I’ll wait out here until it’s over.” Alarmed by her sudden rebellion, he sat down beside her. “Then let’s go home now,” he said. “No,” she protested. “If you like it, I don’t want you to miss it.” “It’s not a question of liking it,” he explained. “I don’t care for it much myself, but sometimes, if you sit it out to the end, you feel something has rubbed off on you.” “Then why deprive yourself?” she said. “My head hurts too much for me to go back, but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t.” “No, never mind,” said Molkho. “I’m sorry I brought you to such a dull concert without asking you. It was my mistake. It was entirely my mistake.” It pleased him to repeat the phrase; he would not abandon her now. They sat in silence beneath the dark tree, waiting for the last of the audience to disappear inside, after which he brought her some more water and waited for her to smoke another cigarette before they left.

They did not go straight home, though. Taking a detour by the port, he drove through the downtown streets with their empty office buildings and peroxided whores outside smoky bars and emerged at the city’s southern end, where he made a right turn toward the beach. “Come,” he said. “Let’s go down to the water and cool off a bit.”

The dark night smoldered in its prison of air, the sea struggling to break free of the enchaining vapors of day. Slowly they walked along the water’s edge, listening to the simple, monotonous boom of the surf. Beyond it, out among the breakers, youths in dark swimsuits rested on boards, waiting for a wave to ride to shore. Shoulder to shoulder Molkho and Ya’ara watched the silent scene, the surfers like a school of gray dolphins on the dim breast of the sea. He glanced at her, still unsure how much taller she was. She smiled and looked seaward, greedily gulping the salt tang of the thick air while automatically groping in her bag for a cigarette, which she lit at once. That’s all her freedom amounts to, he thought: a private little revolt against her lungs that will poison her in the end. “If you hadn’t made such a fuss about that bathing suit this morning, we could have gone for a swim now,” he said, his voice full of unsuspected malice. She gave him a startled look. “Come on,” he said, not knowing what made him so angry, “let’s at least get our feet wet.” He knelt to take off his shoes and socks, rolling up the cuffs of his pants. “Come,” he said more softly. Hesitantly, her cigarette still in her mouth, she removed her shoes and white socks, laying them next to his. He caught his breath, glimpsing the delicate blur of white legs in the darkness, and strode ahead of her into the warm, oily water, rolling his pants up still further. The hem of her jumper, he saw, was wet, yet she made no effort to raise it.

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!”

AND WAKE HIM SHE DID. Why, obedient isn’t the word for her! he thought, pretending to be still asleep. He let her knock, open the door, step inside, and call to him, hoping all the time that she would touch him. But she didn’t. She simply called his name again and contrived to make some noise until he sat up and thanked her, though in fact it was so early that he soon fell back upon the pillow, from where he went on thinking about her while looking out the window at an overcast, prematurely autumnal day.

A few minutes later she knocked and called again. “Just a minute!” he called back. It’s no wonder she never finished high school, he thought. She’s fifty-two years old and never sleeps—and neither will I if I marry her! Defiantly he sank back into bed, curling up in a ball beneath the sheet and dozing off again, only to feel even sleepier upon awakening. He washed and dressed hurriedly to the muffled sound of the radio in her room, where he pictured her hungrily waiting for her breakfast, but when he looked for her there after noting with satisfaction that the kitchen table had been set (she was finally beginning to feel at home, then!), he found only her suitcase beneath her hastily made bed and three dresses hanging in the closet. Didn’t she have any dirty laundry? he wondered, tempted to look for it in the suitcase.

He returned to the living room. No doubt she had gone for another walk in the ravine, and he went down to look for her, only to see her coming up the street with a bag of milk, her large sunglasses flattering her small eyes. The milk in the refrigerator was sour, she announced with an edge in her voice, starting up the stairs ahead of him as he took the morning paper from the mailbox. Before he could apologize, a friendly neighbor wished them a good morning, and Molkho, glancing at her neatly folded bobbysocks, decided that their relationship had a future. I can’t afford to be choosy, he told himself, carefully taking the milk as though it weighed a great deal and remarking that the day would be another scorcher once the clouds burned off. I’m sure I once loved her, he thought, following her up the stairs. That’s something we can build on. If only she’ll dye her hair and use makeup. She can even keep the same wedding ring. What do I care who she got it from?

They sat down to breakfast. He was glad he had given the cleaning woman the day off, and Ya’ara washed the dishes without prompting, though she forgot to clean the sink and left suds and soggy food in the drain. She was looking forward to Yodfat. “We’ve thought of visiting there so many times,” she told him, “but the place meant so much to us that we were always afraid to go back.” Before leaving, Molkho phoned his mother-in-law, who asked when he planned to be in his office, because she wanted to consult him about her Russian friends. “As a matter of fact, I’m taking the day off,” he said, “but I’ll be in tomorrow. I hope it’s not urgent.” Apparently it was, though, for he felt her hesitate, though typically she didn’t press the matter. “Well, then, perhaps tomorrow,” she said, remembering to ask about the children. Pleased to hear that the high school boy was off on a hike, she asked where it was to. “To the Galilee,” replied Molkho after a moment’s pause. “Yes, I believe it’s to the Galilee.” “Is it a school hike?” she asked. He paused again. “No, it’s a Scout hike.” How could it be a school hike when school was out for the summer?

THEY ARRIVED in Yodfat shortly before noon. The roads leading out of the city were clogged, and on one he took a wrong turn and had to backtrack, yet once on the new highway to the Lower Galilee, they sped along unobstructed and Molkho praised everything he saw: the well-engineered road, the fresh green forests, the new settlements on the hilltops, the large, clearly lettered road signs. Belted in beside him and looking good in her sunglasses, Ya’ara, too, kept oohing and aahing. The silence as they climbed the last curves to Yodfat reminded him of the approach to Zeru’a, but here the houses were well built and attractive, surrounded by trees and neat lawns. Hardly able to wait, Ya’ara undid her seat belt and guided him to a parking lot by a large, red stone building, jumping youthfully out of the car the moment it came to a stop. “Does it still look the same to you?” he asked, pleased to see her so excited. “Yes and no,” she answered, looking eagerly around her. “I guess more no than yes, though.” She was already starting up a narrow path toward several prominent houses standing amid the gray rocks of the hillside. “You go ahead,” he told her, sensing her wish to be alone with her memories. “I’ll catch up with you.”

He circled the large red building, no doubt a public structure of some sort, looking for an open door. But there was none, and so he walked up the paved street searching for a place to relieve himself, encountering only closely spaced houses with gardens featuring the same gray rock. He had despaired of finding even a suitable tree when he spied an old prefab that apparently served for office space, inside of which, at the end of a short corridor, he came to a small, dirty washroom. Extracting a warm and somewhat distended penis, he tenderly aimed it with both hands at the toilet bowl, dissuaded from talking to it only by the sound of an electric calculator on the other side of the wall, where an unseen bookkeeper was at work. He flushed the toilet, washed at the soapless, towelless little sink, and returned to the corridor, shaking drops of water from his hands, where he was intercepted by the bookkeeper, a short, burly man with thick, steel-rimmed glasses and a head of blond curls. Who, the bookkeeper wanted to know, was he looking for? “I’m just accompanying someone who once lived here,” Molkho told him, mentioning Ya’ara by name. “What, they’re here?” asked the short man excitedly. “Just she is,” answered Molkho. “By herself?” The man seemed mystified, as if it made no sense. “But where is he?” “In Jerusalem,” Molkho said. “And is it true what they say about him?” asked the man tensely. “Yes,” replied Molkho, who could only guess at the meaning of the question. The bookkeeper gave his head of boyish curls an angry though not unadmiring shake. “I might have known!” he said. “An anarchist like him is capable of anything.” Molkho nodded sympathetically. Though he would have liked to inquire about the village, the man seemed in the grip of such powerful memories that he deemed it best not to. “Is there anything you’d like me to tell her?” he asked, wiping his wet hands on his pants. “Never mind,” snapped the bookkeeper with inexplicable ire, wheeling to return to his cubicle.

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.

He went to shower and emerged to find her eating melon on the terrace with her dusty shoes and socks off, her toes stuck through the railing of the terrace. How worn and raw they looked, so different from the delicate cut-glass ones he had seen in Jerusalem! It can’t be that she’s fallen in love with me, he thought, gazing westward at the sun struggling out of the afternoon haze, feeling groggy from his missed nap. All summer long the sun had seemed to rise several times a day, each sunrise hotter and more brutal. The red juice of the watermelon trickled down her chin. She wiped it with the back of her hand and went off to shower and wash her hair, which was wrapped in a red-striped towel when she returned.

It was 6 P.M., though the light still glared fiercely. Suddenly the house seemed full of her: there wasn’t a corner where she hadn’t left some part of her, some item she had touched or used. Through her thin house frock, her breasts looked small and weak. It would have been different if I’d found her myself, he thought, instead of having her served up to me. She was leafing through the newspaper, drops of water dripping from her hair, still eating slice after slice of watermelon. “That lunch made me terribly thirsty,” she apologized, glancing at the movie section. Had he decided what film he wanted to see? Molkho hesitated. If he knew his son, the boy hadn’t taken a key; perhaps they should wait for him, after which he would be glad to see Carmen. The music, he smiled, would be livelier than last night’s chamber concert, although if she wasn’t in the mood for opera, Gandhi was recommended too.

All at once he found himself telling her about his trip to Berlin. She listened tensely while he described the Voles Opera, which were the latest thing in Europe, where the opera houses were as full as the theaters were empty; the performance of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which the male lead had astoundingly been sung by a woman; and—but why was he doing this; and with a grin yet!—his conversation in the beer cellar with the legal adviser. What an absurd idea that woman had sprung on him—and yet, as if it made perfect sense, he hadn’t stopped thinking of it since! From time to time, Ya’ara turned her bowed head to stare at the sea, which glittered with the rays of the slowly setting sun. “How could she have said such a thing?” he demanded resentfully. “Maybe I could have done more to keep my wife alive. I wouldn’t have minded her telling me that. After all, she had a husband who died too. If I killed my wife, then you killed him, I told her. But that didn’t faze her one bit. Maybe I did, but not like you, she said to me.”

He sniffed glumly. There were sounds outside the apartment. Suddenly fearing that his son might arrive and find Ya’ara in a house frock with his wife’s towel like a turban on her head, he rose impulsively. “Come,” he said, “let’s catch the first show. We’ll leave the key with the neighbors and put a note on the door. I honestly can’t remember what time he said he’d be back—if he said anything, because lately he doesn’t say much to me.”

THE LAST STRANDS of light were still glimmering in the summer night when they returned after nine. From the stairs, he saw with a sinking feeling that his note was still there, and hurriedly unlocking the door, he found the apartment dark and empty. “But what’s the matter with him!” he cried out in despair, overcome by fresh worry. “Where is he? He said he’d be home tonight! He’s been gone since Saturday morning; how long can a hike last?” Going to the boy’s room, which looked like a foreign land in the yellow lamplight, he began rummaging among piles of papers on the desk, fumbling through drawers of old notebooks, even turning inside out the pockets of the dirty jeans on the bed, looking for some sign, some Scout circular, some name of a friend, that might be a clue to the boy’s whereabouts. “It’s ridiculous to have to be doing this,” he yelled irately, grabbing the phone book and searching for the number of his son’s classmate’s parents who had called the night before. “Did your boy turn up in the end?” he asked them over the phone. It took them a while to remember that he had ever been lost. “Now it’s my turn to be worried,” he said to them. “My son still isn’t back from his hike. I thought perhaps you might know the names of some of the boys in the class.”

He jotted down some names and numbers and dialed them one by one, yet no one could tell him anything. Wide-eyed, he looked at Ya’ara, who was sitting in front of the silent television, calmly watching him panic. “But I can’t have this!” he wailed, pacing frantically. “I want to know where he is and who he went with! Maybe I should go to his Scout den.” “Why don’t you,” said Ya’ara. “I’ll wait here.” “No, come with me,” he insisted. “He’ll have the shock of his life if he comes home to find a strange woman in the house. Let’s go.”

They drove the few blocks to the den, a green cabin that stood at the bottom of some stairs. “Don’t bother,” he said to her as she opened her car door, “I’ll be right back.” He all but ran down the dark steps, but the cabin was locked and lifeless. In an empty lot nearby, some children were standing around a small fire, and he went to have a word with them; though they too knew nothing about any hike, they were at least able to give him the name and address of one of the Scout leaders. “That’s the best I could do,” he told Ya’ara when he rejoined her in the car. “Maybe I’m being hysterical, but I feel I should go there.”

Again he told her to wait for him in the car. “I won’t be a minute,” he said, dashing into the building, where he quickly scanned the mailboxes, bounded up the stairs, and rang a doorbell. The Scout leader was not home.

Although she was waiting obediently in the car when he returned, she gave him a searching look. “I know I’m overdoing it,” he apologized, boyishly out of breath, “but I have to clear this up. It doesn’t make sense that no one knows anything. Maybe he went off somewhere on his own. Why don’t we drop by his school? Of course, it’s closed for vacation—but still...”

Indeed, the school was dark and abandoned. “Wait here,” he said once more to Ya’ara, who clearly hadn’t thought of doing anything else. “I’ll have a look around and see if there are any notices up. Here, let me turn on the radio for you.” He found her a station that played music, unsuccessfully tried the locked gate, and then worked his way along the fence until he came to a hole. It was small and nearly at ground level, but after a moment’s indecision, he knelt and wriggled through it into the schoolyard, ducking volleyball nets and dodging backboards until he came to the main building, where he passed a bare bulletin board in a hallway and tried in vain to force the door of the principal’s office. Ya’ara was smoking thoughtfully when he came running back. “I couldn’t find a thing,” he shouted through the fence. “The place is dead. But I think there’s a janitor on the premises, and if you’ll just wait a while, I’ll try to find him.” He ran back into the building and down a staircase, passing from wing to wing, through the high school, the junior high school, the elementary school, losing his way in the eerily silent corridors with their inexpungible smells of rotten bananas and old sneakers, and even entering an open classroom, through whose windows the thin moon that shone on the desks stacked with chairs made him feel all over again the stomach-knotted sorrow of youth. Damn him! he thought, weeping inwardly. And I’m to blame, I’m to blame too.

It was nearly ten by the time he returned to the car, pale and anguished. “Let’s listen to the ten o’clock news,” he said. “If anything happened, we’ll hear about it.” But there was nothing. “Maybe he’s home by now,” suggested Ya’ara softly. “Yes,” Molkho agreed, “and here we’ll have been going out of our minds with worry! There’s a pay phone up the street by the post office; we can call from there. Now you see what children are like! Sometimes they’re nothing but trouble.”

But there was no answer when he called. He laid his head on the steering wheel, feeling his fear get the better of him, and then decided to look for the college student. “I know he’s studying for an exam,” he told Ya’ara, “but it is his brother.” He drove to the campus and parked by the library. “If you don’t mind,” he said gently yet another time, for it was premature to introduce her to the family, “wait for me here. You can stretch your legs on the lawn if you’d like. I want to see if Omri knows anything.” He entered the large reading room with its windows looking out on the lights of the city and its air-conditioned atmosphere, which felt like that of another planet, passing down the rows of students hunched by their lamps until he found the college boy sitting drowsily beside a pile of books and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. But tall, thin Omri, when told in a whisper what had happened, did not seem at all upset. “He must be delayed somewhere, Dad. What are you so worried about?” “But what hike was he on?” demanded Molkho. “No one knows a thing about it.” “Maybe he went with a different Scout pack,” drawled Omri. “Why don’t you wait for him at home?” “No, I’d better call the police,” said Molkho inconsolably. “But it’s too early for that,” objected his son with a baffled look. “They won’t understand what you want from them.” “You’re right,” whispered Molkho, turning the pages of a book “I’m at my wits’ end. It’s a good thing your mother is dead. If anything’s happened to him, I’ll want to die too!” The college student shut his eyes, his head full of formulas and numbers. “Would you like me to sleep at your place tonight?” he asked wearily. “No, there’s no need,” answered Molkho. “If he’s not home by midnight, I’ll let you know. I just hope he knows what he’s doing.”

He rose, leaned over his son’s crew-cut head, patted it lightly, and stepped out into the night, where Ya’ara’s silhouette through the dark window of the car looked like a smoke-wreathed ghost. He thought of Gandhi and of millions of Indians and then tried picturing the cosmos flipping over and his son falling out of it. “You smoke too much,” he said, brushing against Ya’ara as he slipped into the car. “You’re poisoning yourself for no good reason.” Annoyed, she huddled in her seat without answering. Naturally, Omri knew nothing, Molkho told her. “Since my wife’s death, it’s been every man for himself in our family. Let’s drive to Carmel Center. Maybe he’s waiting for a bus.” He cruised slowly past the bus stops in the Center, but the boy wasn’t there, and he swung around and started home, driving slowly downhill in low gear. “Maybe he decided to walk. You look on your side and I’ll look on mine. If you see a teenager with curly hair just like mine, that’s him.”

She quickly opened her door when they pulled up by the house, exhausted and eager to get upstairs. “Just a minute, you wait here,” he ordered, jumping out first and stopping short when he saw that the apartment was still dark. And the note was still on the door, an air of permanency about it. Unthinkingly he grabbed it and hurried back to the car, where her thin, pale arm was resting in the window. “He’s not there,” he said. “I can’t just sit up waiting for him. He’s only sixteen. Suppose something happened? His mother would murder me! We’d better look some more. I know you’re tired, but what if he missed the last bus from the Central Station and can’t get home? I’m worried,” he said with a lump in his throat. “If he’s not there, I’ll call the police.”

This time he insisted that she come with him, leading her through an underground passage and up to the silent ramps that stood between the deserted fast-food stands and the parked rows of dusty buses. She followed him in silence, lagging behind a bit, yellow in the dim, fluorescent light. By some pay phones they watched the last buses whoosh up and discharge a few rumpled passengers—red-eyed soldiers with rifles, yeshiva students with bags of books, young vagabonds with backpacks. All vanished quickly, as if into the thick concrete walls, while Molkho went off to dial his apartment and stood listening to the telephone ringing in the darkness.

They returned to the car and drove past the bus station toward the traffic lights at the corner. But, instead of continuing straight, he instinctively turned left toward Rambam Hospital, in front of which, despite the late hour, there was the usual commotion of shiny ambulances slipping in and out the gate. Security guards stood talking to visitors, including entire families with baskets and pots of food. Over the main entrance shone the green light that meant the emergency room was functioning normally. A car pulled up and out of it stepped a young woman in an advanced state of pregnancy, a gay grimace of pain on her face; plucked away like a large, ripe fruit, she slowly advanced toward the lit entrance without waiting for her husband, who, having parked, was now running after her with a small suitcase. For a moment Molkho sat there transfixed, feeling the old fear rise from his gut and bear him off on a sweet wave of longing. He glanced up at the cloudless midnight sky, in which large, splendid stars stood silent sentinel. “As long as we’re here anyway,” he almost begged, seeing the disbelief on Ya’ara’s face, “why not take a look inside? I know it’s irrational, but I’ll feel better if I check the emergency room. Won’t you come too? There’s no point in waiting out here.”

ALTHOUGH THE APARTMENT was still dark, there was nothing to do but return to it. At the top of the stairs, however, he saw a new note on the door, which bore a message from the neighbor: Molkho’s mother-in-law, it said, had called to announce that the high school boy was with her, having arrived home at ten-thirty with no key. His sleeping bag was by the fence behind the house. “Didn’t I tell you he’d forget his key?” exclaimed Molkho triumphantly. “What can you do with such a child!” He let Ya’ara inside, switched on the lights, and went down for the sleeping bag, which was dirty and covered with burrs, hugging its campfire smell to his chest with untold relief and exhaustion. She was out on the terrace when he returned, her face turned to the night as if away from him. Should he embrace her gratefully? But no, that might prove awkward—and so he laid a limp hand on her shoulder and stared down with her at the ravine, which lay bright and vital in the moonlight. “Well, we had a nice day,” he said. “I’m sorry if Gabi and I spoiled the evening for you.” “But you didn’t,” she answered earnestly. “It’s not your fault. I could see how worried you were.” “Yes,” he said swallowing hard, the waves of tiredness that were breaking within him threatening to carry him away. “He always makes me feel so guilty. I’ve never had an easy time with him. He’s taken everything the hardest in this family, and he still hasn’t accepted the fact of his mother’s death. But it’s awfully late. Go to bed. It’s time you got some rest. Go to bed,” he repeated with the last of his strength, feeling as if an impersonator within him had taken over to keep him from collapsing.

In the morning he was pleased to find her still obediently sound asleep. He phoned his mother-in-law, who listened to him berate her grandson, speaking up only to ask that he bring the boy some fresh clothes. The house seemed to bask in Ya’ara’s slumber, as once it had done when his wife was peacefully sleeping off a hard night, and glad to be by himself, he ate breakfast, washed the dishes, went downstairs for the paper, hung his son’s sleeping bag out to air on the terrace, made himself a sandwich for work, and put it in his briefcase. Lastly, he packed some fresh clothes for his son in a shopping bag, taking two of everything just to be on the safe side. He was almost out the door when he recalled his wife’s insistence that he always say goodbye to her, no matter how fast asleep she was, and so he knocked lightly on Ya’ara’s door and opened it. She did not feel him enter. He sat on the edge of her bed and touched her shoulder, surprised to encounter the soft, round warmth of her breast beneath her flannel nightgown, as if it had changed places during the night. “You really were bushed,” he said with a bright smile. Disconcerted by the sight of him, she sat up and apologized for having been up until dawn. “Go back to sleep,” he said, gently restraining her, as if her insomnia were medically indicated. “I’m going to the office. If you want to go out, the key is on the kitchen table by the newspaper. Feel at home. Take what you want from the refrigerator and use the stove too if you wish. I think there’s a morning movie on TV. I’ll be back by one.”

He drove with the clothes to the old-age home, where he found his mother-in-law alone by the garden pool, her cane beside her and a crumpled straw hat spangled with glass cherries on her head. Looking pale and drawn, she said she had come downstairs to intercept him before he woke the sleeping boy to scold him. “But I wouldn’t have done that at all!” he objected. “I’ll give him hell later, but now he can sleep all he wants. You should have seen what he did to us,” he added, wondering if she had guessed that he had spent the last few days with a woman. Still, he was sorry not to have warned her about the boy in advance, since they both knew he had a habit of going off without his key. “And without enough money,” declared the old lady. “What do you mean?” asked Molkho indignantly. “That’s what he told me,” she insisted. “He said you didn’t give him enough.” “But that’s ridiculous,” protested Molkho. “I always give him exactly what he needs, because he just loses the rest of it anyway.”

She nodded curtly when asked how she was. The endless summer, it seemed, was beginning to get to her too. The radio predicted cooler weather, she told him, but could you believe what they said? “Why not?” argued Molkho. “No one’s paying them to say it, so it must be true.” He handed her the bag of clothes, pointing out the double items. A long silence ensued while he waited for a cleaning woman to finish mopping the lobby in order to walk her back inside. “Until when will you be in the office today?” she asked. “Until noon,” he replied. “I’m taking a half-day off.” The cherries tinkled thoughtfully on her hat. He could tell there was something she wanted from him but was embarrassed to ask for.

THERE WAS GRUMBLING in the office at his lateness. No one gave him credit anymore. A new generation of secretaries clamored for his signature and decisions, for he was the only ranking official not away on vacation. He worked hard all morning, looking up toward noontime to discover that the papers on his desk were flapping in a sudden, dusty breeze.

His thoughts turned to the woman in his apartment. Later in the day he would bring her to the bus station, but first he would embrace her, though not so unequivocally as to keep her from guessing what it meant. He considered how best to deliver a kiss that would arouse neither resistance nor false hopes, and then he dialed his mother-in-law. “Has the boy turned over in bed yet?” he inquired, startled to hear that his son was already up, dressed, and on his way home. He rushed out of the office, stopped to buy a cake at a bakery, and drove home as fast as he could. Stepping into the apartment, he momentarily feared he had gone blind, for the living room was dark except for a few motes of light that fell through the lowered blinds and drawn curtains upon the rug and chairs. Apprehensively he made out Ya’ara’s suitcase in the kitchen door. She was chatting quietly with Uri and Gabi, who, washed and combed, was sitting in the easy chair like a defendant in juvenile court. “We waited to say good-bye to you,” said his counselor, rising to shake Molkho’s hand, a melancholy smile on his lips. “But what are you doing here?” asked Molkho, turning red as if from a reprimand. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting, but you needn’t have come,” he said to Uri, stunned by the thought that Ya’ara had asked him to. She sat in the corner in her old jumper and white bobbysocks, her little eyes watching him with fresh interest. “You should have let me know. I couldn’t leave the office sooner, because I’m temporarily in charge of the department.” Was I supposed to be making love to her all this time? he wondered, noticing their depressed look. Was that the secret plan I spoiled? “Why, I thought you’d sleep at least until tomorrow!” he said with a brave smile to his son. “How come you’re up so bright and early? And after giving me all those gray hairs last night too! Did you tell him about it, Ya’ara?” he asked his counselor’s wife, who sat there intently, her hands folded over her little belly. “Did you tell him he had me worried sick?” He went over to shake the boy’s shoulders and then stood there gripping them. But Uri and Ya’ara were already on their feet, preparing to depart. “So soon?” asked Molkho despairingly. “Won’t you at least have a bite to eat first?” But they had eaten and drunk before he came and were eager to get back to Jerusalem.

But he was not ready to part with them. At least he owed them a summation, some sort of grade that could be given to his days with her, which were certainly not uneventful. Hurriedly he began with their visit to Yodfat, relating his impressions of the place. “Why, they’re still waiting for you there!” he told his tall counselor, who stood with his head to one side. “They think of you and hope you’ll come back when you’re through with the phase you’re in.” Uri smiled and shook his head impatiently, gently steering Ya’ara toward the door while donning his broad, cowboyish hat. And yet on anyone else it wouldn’t look half so classy, thought Molkho admiringly. If they would wait for him to drink a glass of water, he told them, seeing their minds were made up, he would gladly drive them to the bus station: there was a bus to Jerusalem every hour on the hour, and they could still make the two o’clock one. “But why don’t we just take a cab?” asked his counselor. Molkho’s feelings were hurt. “The hell you will!” he snapped, no less startled by his language than they were.

In the busy station he was left alone with Uri while Ya’ara went to buy a ticket. “When shall we meet again?” he asked, feeling his old counselor softening. “It’s terrible not being able to phone you. How can you live without a phone? Suppose I have to talk to you!” When, asked his counselor, did he plan to be in Jerusalem again? “Soon,” answered Molkho eagerly. “Very soon. In fact, maybe even this Saturday. But how can I let you know?”

Uri stood thinking. “Please phone me,” Molkho urged as Ya’ara, tall and stately, approached from the ticket booth. He seized her hand ardently. “I’m counting on a call from you,” he said. But their bus was already pulling out and they rushed to board it without answering. As he was unlocking his car in the street outside the station a gust of cool wind announced the end of the heat wave. He thought of his mother-in-law. Had she felt it too? he wondered, proud of having told her that morning to put her trust in the radio.

DRIVING HOME, he felt a new wave of worry. Had his counselor come solely to bring Ya’ara back to Jerusalem, or had he also hoped—and failed—to receive a clear answer? In the house, he found Gabi half-naked in the kitchen, eating some yellow stringbeans from a pot. Recognizing them from the vegetable bin of the refrigerator, he realized that Ya’ara must have cooked them that morning and rejoiced that she had left him a memento. “Wait a minute,” he said to his son, “why don’t you warm them first?” But the boy kept on eating uncontrollably. “Are they that good?” asked Molkho excitedly, breading a cutlet and tossing it into a frying pan. “Didn’t Grandma ask you to join her for lunch?” “No,” answered Gabi. “That Russian friend of hers came with her daughter and I left.” He kept on eating hungrily, stringbeans falling off the fork as he shoveled them into his mouth. “Will you stop eating like an animal!” shouted Molkho, losing his temper. “Here, you can have all you want, but be civilized,” he said, bringing a plate and lighting a fire beneath the pot. But the boy, his bean-passion having abated, merely slumped in a chair and stared dully at his father dancing around the stove.

Molkho sat down to eat, from time to time salting the tasty stringbeans and tender cutlet while describing Ya’ara and Uri to Gabi as if they had been his guests together. “When I was your age I even had a crush on her,” he said, taking more beans from the bubbling pot. His son looked at him with a gleam of curiosity. “How was your hike?” he asked. Receiving the usual grunt in reply, he resolved not to take it for an answer. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, surprised by the deathly quiet of his voice. “You change Scout packs without telling me, you go off with some kids from another school and don’t even let me know—who do you think I am, the doorman? And you have the nerve to complain that I don’t give you enough money! When did I ever refuse you money?” “But that’s not what I said,” protested Gabi hotly. “Yes, it is!” replied Molkho, cut to the quick. “Your Grandma would never make it up. How do you think that makes me look?” He was shouting now and practically in tears. “You, of all people, who lose your school-bus ticket every week, who can’t put a pair of pants in the wash without leaving money in the pockets—you dare accuse me?” Frightened by the display of temper, the boy rose to leave the house. “And don’t forget your key!” cried Molkho running after him, suddenly full of pity for his mortified, curly-headed son. “Where is it?” he demanded. But the boy couldn’t find it, and so he slipped his own key off its chain, passed a string through it, knotted it, and hung it around his son’s neck as though he were a toddler. At first, Gabi looked for a pocket; then, realizing his sweat suit didn’t have one, he sheepishly let the key hang, even returning the bear hug his father gave him.

Only now did Molkho realize how tired he was. He showered, lay down, and fell into a deep sleep, awakening hours later with the feeling that someone was walking silently about the house. Was it his son? But no, the boy had not come back. It was as quiet as could be. Suddenly he was reminded of the end of the week of mourning, with its hollow feeling of freedom that had accompanied him ever since. Still, the house felt less empty now. Which is strange, he thought, considering she was here for all of three days and hardly spoke. He pictured her tall, question-mark figure, which seemed to bear the last of its unborn babies inside it. Grieving as if for yet another death, although this time a small, quick one, he set out in quest of her, going first to the kitchen, where he scraped the last charred, sweet beans from the pot, chewing them sleepily and licking his fingers clean. From there he went to his daughter’s room but there, too, there was no trace of her, the sheets so neatly folded and stacked on the bed that he wondered whether to keep them for the next time or to throw them in the wash. Not that she’ll ever know the difference, he told himself, putting them away in the closet. He glanced at his watch. By now they were in Jerusalem. Had they made up their minds about him yet? Returning to the kitchen to throw out a scrap of paper, he was surprised to find some half-eaten stringbeans and a crushed pack of cigarettes in the garbage pail. Though he was tempted to salvage the half-empty pack, it was already much too begrimed.

THOUGH HE WASN’T SURE if he really missed her, he thought of her all the next day. Things were simpler without her, yet he was already considering another trip to Jerusalem to see her. Both the loss of her and the thought that she might still be available made him desire her more. Even the legal adviser, when he ran into her now at the office, aroused nothing but warm, friendly feelings. Was she aware that she had grown slightly dumpy since the winter? Not only did he no longer fear her, but he felt strong enough to readmit her to his life.

One blinding, hot noon he felt an urge to see her. He rose from his desk, left his room, and wandered off down the empty corridors of the Ministry of the Interior, most of whose employees were away, though even those who remained seemed on vacation, as if their hearts were not in their work. Inventing some imaginary problem to discuss, he descended the stone steps of the dignified old British building, crossed the courtyard to the opposite wing, climbed two flights of stairs, and knocked on the legal adviser’s door. As there was no response, he entered the office of her secretary, an impish young thing who sat doing her nails with red polish. “Is the legal adviser away?” he asked. “Yes,” she said, not bothering to look up. “How long has she been gone?” he inquired. “Three weeks,” said the secretary. “Three weeks and no one is filling in for her?” marveled Molkho. “No one can,” smiled the secretary. “But suppose I have a legal problem?” he demanded. “In the middle of a summer like this?” she teased, amused by his seriousness. “Yes, in the middle of a summer like this,” he insisted. “Then it will have to wait,” she replied. “But suppose it can’t?” he asked. “Then let it solve itself,” laughed the secretary.

He laughed too and walked slowly back down the stairs, at the bottom of which he encountered his mother-in-law in her big, crumpled hat, palely clutching some office forms. “Why, what are you doing here?” he asked, the thought crossing his mind that she wasn’t long for this world. Among some people determinedly waiting on a bench, he spied the old Russian, who bowed cordially in his direction, while next to her, her plump daughter beamed at him brightly. The office forms were printed on old, yellow paper the likes of which he hadn’t seen for years: one was a request for a laissez-passer, the other for a waiver of Israeli citizenship. “But why waive citizenship?” he asked after ushering the three of them into an empty room. Because, explained his mother-in-law, grateful for his help, the Finnish embassy in Tel Aviv, which represented the Soviet Union, thought it the best way to convince the Russians that her friend’s daughter really wished to return. It would be even better, of course, for her to regain her refugee status, but that could only be done through the Jewish Agency in Vienna, which had refused to answer her letters. “Then her mind is made up?” asked Molkho impartially, looking curiously at the young woman, who was dressed too warmly for the weather, while his mother-in-law translated. Satisfied that this was the case, he went to another department, received a new set of forms from an unfamiliar clerk, and brought them back to be filled out and stamped before the office closed for the day. The women couldn’t thank him enough, and the plump little Russian—laughing, sighing, and turning beet-red as the talk went from Hebrew to German, to Russian, and back again—tried explaining herself in rapid-fire bursts, of which all he understood was that the Israeli bureaucracy was to blame for everything. You might think, he mused with a sense of injury, that there weren’t any bureaucrats in Russia—but his mother-in-law seemed so anxious to humor him that he shrugged it off good-naturedly, took the forms to the department head to be stamped, had duplicates made on the office copying machine, and even gave the three women a lift, dropping the two Russians off at a bus stop and driving his mother-in-law to the home.

Their shared hour of paperwork had renewed the old bond between them, and she looked so pale, old, and tired in the blinding afternoon light that he went to open her car door and walked her to the lobby while she continued to thank him for his efforts. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “I admire your energy, but if you had just bothered to explain it to me on the phone, I could have saved you the trouble of coming down in person.” Why, though, he asked, advancing with her across the lobby, was her friend’s daughter so eager to return to Russia? But he barely listened to her answer, for he was busy peering through the open doors of the dining room, in which at the tables, with their starched white cloths, a mere handful of oldsters sat in silence, as if all their companions had died overnight. “What’s happened?” he demanded. “Where is everyone?” Some of the residents, his mother-in-law explained, were vacationing abroad, while others were visiting their children. “And they keep the dining room open for so few of you?” he marveled, watching the waitresses come and go with trays of soup. His mother-in-law countered with a question of her own: Was his housekeeper still on vacation too? “Yes,” Molkho said. “I gave her the whole month off. That’s what she asked for. As a matter of fact, I think she’s pregnant, though I’m not even sure if she’s married.” The old woman nodded fretfully. “Perhaps you should find someone else,” she advised. “But what will you do for a hot meal today?” And before he could tell her that he would open a can, she had invited him to lunch in requital for his pains. “Don’t you have to notify the management?” he asked. “Not in summer,” she replied, taking off her shapeless hat and leading him to a table at which a little old man was eating soup.

The food was not as good as Molkho had imagined; indeed, it was overdone, saltless, and cooked with almost no oil. Judging by the curious looks he received, the other diners were pleased to have his company, no doubt flattered to be joined by such a youngster. What’s happening to me? he asked himself gloomily, politely chewing his meal in the large, quiet hall, with its white tablecloths and polished silver. Instead of finding myself a woman, here I am sitting with my dead wife’s mother among a lot of old German Jews, practically ready for an old-age home myself!

AFTER A BRIEF NAP at home, he took out some stationery and began to write. “Dear Friends, I’m writing you both together. I’m too confused to know how to feel. You must admit that this whole thing is very strange. I don’t know what marks you’ve given me, but the days together left me with a nice feeling. But I feel that I still need more time and that you must have patience with me. Perhaps we should try again next month. Ya’ara and I could take a trip abroad, because here at home you’re always running into the wrong people.”

He put down his pen. The word “nice” seemed inadequate and he tried to think of something better while crossing out “abroad” and writing over it, “to some hotel.” But after composing a few more sentences he gave up, paced restlessly up and down, and then put on a pair of old work pants and took a can of black paint from the closet. Prying the can open with a screwdriver, he stirred the sticky dark mixture, brought a small ladder, spread some newspapers on the floor, and began painting the bars on the window. “It’s just temporary,” he explained to the high school boy, who came to watch. “When I get around to it, I’ll order new bars like you want, with room for flowerpots, but meanwhile these may as well be painted.”

HE STILL JUMPED whenever the telephone rang, hoping it might be them. As it never was though, he finished his letter, made a clean copy, and was about to put it in an envelope when he realized that he didn’t know their address and had no way of finding it out. And so, deciding to drive to Jerusalem that Saturday, ascertain what it was, and drop the letter in the nearest mailbox, he called his mother to tell her he was coming. “Good,” she said. “Come Friday and we’ll visit your father’s grave. It’s about time we did.” “But I can’t take the day off,” he explained. “I’m the only senior person left in the department. After all, think how nice they’ve been to me.”

He arrived in Jerusalem late Saturday morning, just in time for the heavy lunch she had cooked. “Never mind,” she said to him, sensing at once that something had gone wrong with his new relationship. “At least you tried, that’s all anyone can do.” But when she tried pumping him for more details, he suddenly cried out, “For God’s sake, leave me alone!”

In his old room he couldn’t fall asleep. A new family with a baby that cried all the time had moved in next door, and not even the thick stone walls were able to shut out the noise. Having decided it was safest to visit his counselor’s building during the afternoon siesta, he drove there at two-thirty, when the city was deep in Sabbath slumber, parking a distance away from the religious neighborhood to avoid the risk of being stoned. I mustn’t get on their wrong side, he told himself.

The housing project seemed larger by day than it had on his two nighttime visits. Apart from a few children at play, it was indeed deserted. The day was hot, and the sweat stung his eyes. When he came to where his counselor lived, there was no house number anywhere, and the building itself, he now noticed, was but part of a much larger complex. Stopping a young woman on her way out the front door, he asked for the address. “Which house are you looking for?” she asked. “For this one,” he replied. “Then you’ve found it,” she said. “So I have,” smiled Molkho, “but suppose I want to send someone a letter?” She paused to consider and then said, “There is no address. Just write the name of the project and the family. It will reach them. We’ve never used house numbers.”

Nevertheless, deciding it was safer to leave the letter underneath his friends’ door, he thanked her and slipped inside, hearing the groan of the elevator as it started and stopped overhead. Finally it arrived with a creak, smelling of pot roast and boiled carrots. It was a Sabbath elevator that stopped automatically at each floor; the door would open and Molkho would remain standing in silence, awkwardly waiting for what seemed forever, until it buzzed and shut again as slowly as if designed for paraplegics. When at last he reached his destination, a pregnant woman in a doorway informed him that the Adlers lived a floor below. He descended the stairs and was about to slip the letter beneath their door when it struck him that they might think it a cowardly thing to do. Besides, he missed their little apartment. If only he could have made love to her there! In his own home it simply wasn’t possible.

He knocked lightly. Someone came to the door. It was a drowsy-looking Uri, dressed in an undershirt and gym shorts, his beard shiny in the sunlight. “Oh, it’s you,” he said drily, looking neither glad nor annoyed. “You don’t have a telephone, you don’t have an address, a person can’t even get in touch with you!” exclaimed Molkho defensively as he entered. “I felt we couldn’t just leave things the way they were. I had to talk to you, to know what you think.” “Who is that?” called a husky voice from the bedroom. “It’s me,” Molkho called back. “It’s me, Ya’ara. I just thought I’d drop by.” Uri went to the bedroom to put on a shirt, and Molkho heard them whispering, after which they came out together. Ya’ara, too, must have been sleeping, the last traces of her Galilee suntan still visible on the once beautiful face that was now past its prime. Why does she seem so much more desirable to me here? he wondered.

“We had no idea you were coming,” they said in a reserved but not unfriendly tone. “Neither did I,” he apologized wanly. “I wrote you a letter but had no address to mail it to, and so I brought it myself. Tell me, though, what exactly is the rationale for that weird Sabbath elevator of yours?” But his attempt at humor only made his counselor frown. “I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss the religious ontology of elevators,” said Uri so sharply that Molkho cringed. “Talking to a nonbeliever about such things simply makes them seem ridiculous.” They all sat down. Too downcast to talk, Molkho nervously took out his letter and handed it to the two of them. They read it together with a new sense of solidarity, as if the sole purpose of Ya’ara’s visit to Haifa had been to return her to this overpopulated Orthodox world more dependent on her husband than ever. Automatically she reached out for the cigarettes on the table, and gently Uri’s hand closed over hers to remind her that she musn’t smoke on the Sabbath.

“Well?” asked Molkho from the edge of his chair as they silently put the letter down. “Well,” said his counselor. “I agree that all this may have been a bit premature for you. We had no idea that you were like this.” “Like what?” asked Molkho in a whisper. “Why, so inhibited,” said his counselor. “So depressed over your wife’s death. You haven’t begun to confront your guilt for having killed her.” There were steps outside in the hallway. Molkho looked up in puzzlement. Was Uri trying to keep his hopes alive? “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is a bit premature. I’m on the slow side, and you yourselves do everything so quickly, so almost ... anarchistically. You really are anarchists,” he complained. Uri smiled, content with the description. “I don’t know myself very well,” confessed Molkho, preferring to look out the window rather than meet their eyes. “And suppose I should want to have more children,” he continued, pleased and alarmed by the unexpected thought. “It’s true my wife warned me not to, but she couldn’t have thought that far ahead or known what would be best for me.”

They sat in weary silence. A light breeze blew the food smells of the elevator through the open window. In the afternoon light, the white rocks on the hillside were turning copper. He glanced involuntarily at Ya’ara’s smooth, bare feet, sorry he hadn’t ever kissed them. She and Uri seemed to be growing steadily more distant, as if regretting the involvement and wishing he would go away.

He walked back to his car like a sleepwalker, down streets whose Sabbath silence only made him feel worse. Once behind the wheel, he drove to the Old City, where he strolled through the narrow lanes of the souk until twilight, thinking it was a good thing Jerusalem had Arabs to give it some life on Saturdays. Passing the house where his father was born, he felt weak and wished he were dead. The stars were already out when, hot and tired, he reached his mother’s apartment, carrying bags of fruit from the market, grapes and fresh figs and fragrant apples and pomegranates, just like his father used to do. “The weather here is unbearable,” he told her. “But look how cool the evenings are,” she soothed him. “Summer is over. It’s already autumn now.”

“No, it isn’t,” cried Molkho in despair, expertly dividing the fruit between them. “They may call it that, but it isn’t any such thing.”