Five Seasons

Part V AUTUMN

AND INDEED it wasn’t autumn, just a mellower summer, with days so wonderfully clear that Molkho felt he was looking at the world with new eyes. There were mornings when, driving to work down the Carmel, he could see clear to the white cliffs of the Lebanese border twenty miles away, the shoreline along the soft curve of Haifa Bay traced in precise detail. How little we’re aware of what the smogs and mists hide from us, he mused. Why, if one more veil were to fall away, I might see all the way to Turkey! In the evenings the air glimmered like a golden wine, which was perhaps the reason for his hearty appetite, which had caused him to put on a few pounds again. And yet, as guilty as the orgies of food on his terrace made him feel, he kept returning to the refrigerator for more.

He had begun Volume II of Anna Karenina, vaguely recalling his counselor’s warning that it ended with Anna’s suicide, though forgetting the reason why. They were telling the truth, he thought. I was really in love with her my whole junior year. Why couldn’t I at least have allowed myself a kiss or two? I’m sure her body is still young. Maybe some people never grow old, because the cells of their bodies keep changing. There were spots, he remembered, where even his wife had remained lusciously youthful to the end—around her hips, for instance, and in the curves of her thighs and insteps. They never gave me a chance, he thought dejectedly. Or had they simply used him to shore up their childless love in their little apartment in fertile Jerusalem?

He felt thankful that his own children had been brought into the world easily and long ago, and that they were no longer small. The problem was that he was seeing less and less of them. Though his daughter was back from Europe, she had enrolled in the psychology department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and rarely came home, even on weekends, while the college student now spent his free time with his older girlfriend. Molkho had once seen her at the movies, a pinched-looking woman with ferrety eyes that aroused his instinctive hostility. “But what does she want from you?” he angrily asked his son, who seemed unable or disinclined to tell him and didn’t seem to think it mattered. “She doesn’t want anything,” he answered uncomprehendingly. “We’re just good friends who like to get together.” Even the secretly consulted computer of the Ministry of the Interior could supply Molkho with no more than the woman’s date of birth, her marital status (she had been divorced ten years ago), and an address that proved incorrect.

One Saturday he emotionally discussed the matter with his daughter, who didn’t seem troubled at all. Omri, she told her father straightforwardly, was probably just looking for a mother figure. “A mother figure?” Molkho was dumbstruck. “What is that supposed to mean?” In grim silence he listened to her explanation, suddenly persuaded that the woman in fact resembled his dead wife. “But what an awful thing to happen!” he exclaimed. “The boy needs to see a psychiatrist! Please talk to him! Just the thought of that woman being in this house is too much for me!” “But why, Dad?” smiled Enat. “It’s only a superficial relationship.” “All right,” he said resentfully, trying to smile back. “If you say so.”

The child he felt sorriest for was the high school boy, who, after long, soul-searching discussions with his principal and teachers, had been left back a grade. “It’s for his own good,” explained the principal after patiently listening to Molkho’s fears. “It’s really not such a tragedy.” Molkho nodded, thinking how he too might have liked to be left back, though in a different way.

THE SAVAGE SUMMER was still mellowing when the government overcame months of indecision to announce a bold new economic program that called for drastic wage cuts, shortly after which daylight saving time ended and the early darkness brought home the changing seasons. The approaching autumn made Molkho nostalgically recall the anxious days of a year ago. Premature though it was, he took out the calendar, sat staring at it for a long while, and finally circled a date for visiting the cemetery that fell several days before the anniversary of his wife’s death. After all, he told himself, if I’m free to remarry, I’m free to move a date around. “Make sure you have no commitments or exams then,” he warned his children. “Later it will be too late to change, because I intend to invite that nice rabbi again.”

That Friday night, after the usual frozen fish served up with the inevitability of Fate, he told his mother-in-law. “What, you’ve already decided?” she asked, removing her glasses and bending over to pinpoint the day on the calendar, taken aback by his haste, despite her own penchant for orderliness. Molkho glanced mildly at the old woman, of whom there seemed to be less and less, as if her daughter’s death had sprung a leak through which she herself was gradually escaping. Somehow she seemed to him like a burden he had to carry or like a barrier standing in his way. If only she had remarried and had had more children when she first came to this country, he thought, I wouldn’t be saddled with her now. Had she ever had a lover after her husband’s death? He found it hard to meet her eyes; lately, he felt, she was constantly appraising him, as if taking his measure for something. Before her mother entered the old-age home, his wife had sometimes sent him to her apartment to tighten a screw, change a light bulb, or drive a new nail in the wall, all of which he took his time doing, as if to put her patience to the test; after all, she had already bought the materials at his request and possessed her own little hammer, screwdriver, and box of nails and screws, so that she could easily have done the repair herself instead of waiting for him. Yet the fact was that he liked using her tools, even though he sometimes had to go back for a drill or wrench of his own, which led to yet further delays. “She has more patience than God,” he would say with a smile to his wife, who never suspected him of deliberately procrastinating. Now, though the home had a janitor for such things, she sometimes still looked at Molkho as though sizing him up for some job.

So things stood when late one Friday afternoon, after a brief but violent squall that seemed to have come out of nowhere to put an end to the lingering summer, followed by an equally sudden clearing in which the sun emerged alive and well again, she stepped out of the home to greet him in the same heavy winter coat and red woolen cap that she had worn on the night of his wife’s death. When he opened the car door for her heavily bundled figure with its brightly sunken eyes, he found himself wondering if she might be getting senile, even before she startled him by asking, “How would you like to take another trip to Europe?”

IT WAS TRULY AUTUMN NOW: one rain followed another until he could hardly remember it having ever been otherwise. Leaves that had seemed fated never to fall turned yellow and scudded along the sidewalks before fierce winds. Early one such morning, dressed in a warm coat and with a suitcase at his feet, Molkho stood downstairs peering into a thin fog that made the streetlamps flicker unsteadily, repeatedly feeling his pockets to make sure that the passport, tickets, and money that his mother-in-law had given him were still there. He thought of the protean newspaper deliverer on the morning of his wife’s death, and of how, though realizing in the end it was a man, he still preferred to think it was a grimly large woman, wearing glasses and wrapped in a scarf. He would have liked to see her again now, pedaling along with her wavering light.

But his taxi was already coming up the street, its motor audible above the shriek of the wind. Soon it appeared, on its roof rack a low wooden object that it took him a while to identify as a steamer trunk. I don’t believe it, he thought resentfully. Of all the luggage in the world, she has to travel with that antique! He quickly put his suitcase in the baggage compartment and slipped into the empty front seat, nodding hello to the three women who sat huddled in the back like a single lump of furry dough, their eyes red from lack of sleep. They nodded back deferentially. Why, those two old biddies actually make me feel young, he though debonairly, trying to catch the low music on the radio, which sounded like a church choir singing in the vast nave of some cathedral. What kind of station plays music like that at 4 A.M.? he wondered, glancing at the car radio before noticing the cassette that the elderly chauffeur of the old-age home, a retired bus driver in a brimmed cap, had put in the tape deck. When it comes to German Jews, even the cabbies are cultured, he thought with a smile, turning around to exchange glances with the plump young Russian, whose documents were in his pocket. Squeezed between the two old women, only her pretty eyes were clearly her own. And that, I’m sorry to say, is about all there is to her, thought Molkho, remembering the steamer trunk on the roof. In fact, this whole trip is one big wild wild goose chase, he told himself, loosening his seat belt a bit and turning to ask his mother-in-law how she had passed the night with her two guests. “We’re all set, then,” he said to her, “although to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t pin my hopes too high.” He had told her that from the start, from the moment she first had proposed him as an escort, and if he repeated it now, it was not to convince anyone but simply to point out that even a model of common sense like herself was capable of a rash venture. Her only response, however, was a cough and wan smile. Her Russian friend whispered something to her daughter, perhaps even a translation of his words, and he shook a despairing head to confirm that such was indeed his opinion, though the way the plump young lady smiled back at him left him far from sure that she agreed.

ONLY AT THE AIRPORT, when he had to take it off the roof, did he realize how heavy the trunk was. Although at first the old driver tried holding up his end of it, he soon let the full weight fall on Molkho, who was left to wrestle it to the ground while the women watched unconcernedly, not feeling the slightest compunction, not even his mother-in-law, who stood silently clutching her worn handbag. “Oh yes, it has a handle, we just had one put on,” she remembered to tell him once the trunk was safely down, pointing to a gilded appurtenance screwed into the dark wood. “They must think I’m their native porter,” he thought with a new sense of grievance. The plump little Russian, too, he noticed, was standing idly by without even looking for a baggage cart, curiously regarding the travelers coming and going in the dawn light. Well, you can’t blame her, he told himself, going off to fetch two carts, in Russia they haven’t invented the wheel yet. But why a steamer trunk when two or three plain suitcases would do just as well? “You see,” said his mother-in-law as though reading his mind, “she couldn’t bear to part with it,” and indeed, it was a handsome piece, a narrow oak chest with an old wrought-iron lock. Molkho knew that he, too, would have done all he could to keep it.

The four of them stood silently in line at the baggage counter, already exhausted, though the journey had barely begun. To Molkho’s surprise and somewhat to his disappointment, for he had hoped for a glimpse of its contents, the steamer trunk passed security with a cursory check and rode quickly off on a conveyor belt, disappearing via a portal through which an overcast morning was visible. Linking arms, the three women walked to the departure gate, where a sleepy policeman checked the boarding passes. “Well, then,” Molkho told his mother-in-law, “this is as far as you go. From here on, it’s just the two of us.” The old woman said something in German to her friend, who halted, let out a sudden wail, distraughtly grabbed hold of the oddly passive little Russian, and hugged her in a deathly embrace while Molkho quickly maneuvered them out of the gateway and stepped back to let them part, half tempted to cry himself, though his mother-in-law, he noticed, stood there dry-eyed, her soft face looking out of focus. I suppose that at the age of eighty-three all this emotion must seem pointless, he thought. While the two Russians went on sobbing, he removed his new bifocals, folded them carefully, and put them away in his pocket. Why, he recalled, I didn’t even cry when my wife died and neither did her mother. The illness dried up all our tears. I’d cry now if she would, but what good would it do, because I’m not going to get my wife back.

“If you ask me, this is all a wild goose chase,” he said with a smile to his mother-in-law, who didn’t appear to understand the expression. “No one is going to take her back. I’m only doing this to help her make peace with the fact that this is where she’ll have to live.”

AND THEN they were by themselves. Though he had prepared himself for this moment, no sooner did they mount the escalator leading to passport control than the silence between them grew onerous. Even as his wife lay dying, he had spoken to her and understood her, whereas now, setting out with this funny little Russian, there was little hope of communication between them (Hebrew, their only common language, being by no means a reliable medium), which was why he had decided to keep her new laissez-passer in his pocket; indeed, his mother-in-law had as much as told him that her friend’s daughter had a tendency to lose things and should not be trusted with important papers. And yet, unlike Molkho’s wife, who wouldn’t hear of his carrying her passport, the little Russian did not seem to mind, whether because she lacked the words to object or because she didn’t care about a document from a country she had already renounced. Silently they watched their hand luggage pass through electronic surveillance, first her large red handbag, than her green umbrella, and finally his own faithful briefcase, which contained, besides his correspondence on her behalf with the Jewish Agency in Vienna, Volume II of Anna Karenina, the weekend supplement of the Friday newspaper, and several apples that he was loath to let rot in the refrigerator.

In the large waiting room they still had an hour until takeoff. The little Russian’s tears had dried, leaving only a thin scar in her makeup, and once more she was looking curiously about her with her baby blue eyes. Like a little white rabbit, thought Molkho, observing her plump body, the fleshy folds of which exuded pampered innocence. And stubborn too—for since she looked far from stupid, what else but stubbornness could account for her having sat for months in an immigrants’ Hebrew class while barely learning a word? No, she was not stupid, he decided as she anxiously appealed to him for permission to visit the duty-free shop, which she had nosed out with an animal instinct, despite the fact that this was her first commercial flight. Eagerly scurrying off to it, she snatched a shopping basket and headed for the well-stocked shelves with Molkho on her heels checking prices. Once he would have gone straight to the tobacco department, but one of the first sacrifices he had made to his wife’s illness had been smoking, and in any case, what interested the little Russian was not cigarettes: apart from some chocolate bars, her basket already contained two bottles of Scotch, to which, with a nervous glance in his direction, she now added a fifth of vodka. Could she still be a virgin? wondered Molkho, mentally adding up the bill. His mother-in-law had given him eight hundred dollars for expenses, and he had to make the money last; yet, as though it were meant to flow through his fingers, he now counted it out with a smile. Unsuccessfully trying out a few words of beginner’s Hebrew, he led her gently to a seat by the boarding gate, where she sat for a while, blissful with her purchases, until she suddenly popped up again and dashed off to the bathroom, leaving him with her things.

So far, so good, thought Molkho, who was only now beginning to feel his fatigue, having hardly slept a wink all night. Slouched in his seat, he scanned the faces of the other passengers, looking especially for Arabs who might hijack him. But Arabs, it seemed, did not fly El Al to Europe and, in fact, probably did not fly to Europe at all, being by nature thriftier than Jews. Why, just look at me, he thought: my wife isn’t dead a year yet and I’m taking my second trip abroad, although, of course, I’m not doing it for pleasure. In the plate-glass window that looked out on the gray morning he saw the reflection of his own silver curls and his dark eyes, which brimmed with liquid melancholy. Though the clouds looked thick as concrete, their plane would find a way through them.

He shut his eyes, listening to the quiet murmur around him. Once it would have been louder, but Israelis were becoming more civilized: the more they failed in war and politics, the politer they became, he mused, dozing off for a moment to be awakened by a loudspeaker announcing their flight. His fellow passengers rose to queue up by the gate, but the little Russian was nowhere in sight, and Molkho, who hated being late, impatiently grabbed her things and ran to the women’s bathroom. For a moment he stood helplessly outside, recalling the special whistle he and his wife had had for such contingencies; then, giving the door a slight push, he furtively stuck in his head. An eerie silence greeted him from the deserted row of white sinks, broken only by a thin trickle of water, as if an underground spring were bubbling up in one of the toilet booths. Could she have locked herself in there? he wondered, not daring to enter. The first order of business in Europe would be to teach her to whistle. At least we can communicate that way, he decided, anticipating a difficult trip. But meanwhile there must be a way of luring her out of the bathroom. How would it look if he couldn’t even get off the ground with her? Out in the waiting room their flight was being announced again. Trying not to panic, he ran back to the duty-free shop. After all, he told himself, if worse comes to worst and I’ve lost her, I can always go home and catch up on my sleep. In fact, she wasn’t there, and he hurried to the boarding gate, arriving just in time to see the last stewardess vanish through the door. But this is madness, he thought bitterly, hearing the two of them paged on the loudspeaker, a white-rabbit hunter whose quarry had eluded him. Just then, however, she waddled out of the bathroom on her high heels, freshly made up and bright with excitement. “We’d better hurry,” he exclaimed, wagging a finger at her, a resort to words being pointless. Could his mother-in-law be plotting to marry her off to him out of pity—for her, for him, or for both?

WITHOUT THINKING twice about it, he gallantly offered her the window seat. She had hardly flown before and might never fly again, so why not let her enjoy it? He explained the seating arrangements to her in sign language, making sure to fasten her belt while considering how to convey to the other passengers, who were staring at him curiously, that she was neither his wife, cousin, nor mistress but rather someone he was escorting to Europe for a fee and a free weekend in Paris. Perhaps her broken Hebrew would suffice to make that clear; indeed, he now regretted not having brought along a pocket Hebrew-Russian dictionary. Meanwhile, he spoke as simply as possible, omitting adverbs and adjectives and sticking mainly to nouns, with an occasional verb thrown in. She listened to the Hebrew words with amusement, giggling at being treated like a retarded child as she had done when discovered by him that summer in his mother-in-law’s bed.

Unawed by the takeoff, she turned away from the window once the plane gained altitude over the sea. Yet again, her savoir faire surprised him, for as soon as the stewardess came down the aisle with drinks, she asked for a glass of Scotch and downed it before break fast, merely picking at her food while he finished his and hungrily eyed her full tray, which his wife, had it been hers, would have been thoughtful enough to offer him. They were over the Greek islands by now, and since she still seemed wide awake and he was tired of looking up all the time from his magazine to smile at her, he rented her a pair of earphones, helped adjust them on her head, and ordered her another whiskey, though this time letting her pay for it, which she anxiously did from a little purse stuffed with one-dollar bills. Then, to help pass the time, he reached for his Anna Karenina, showing her the title page. “Ah, Tolstoy, Tolstoy,” she exclaimed with a tragic sigh, though he rather doubted she had ever read a word of it. Before he had gotten very far in Part Seven the plane was already descending through the clouds, bouncing and shuddering in the gray fog, and she was on her third Scotch. He shut the book and glanced at the contents of his briefcase, annoyed to discover that his mother-in-law, who had promised to see to everything, had forgotten to take out medical insurance for him. I should never have trusted her, he thought, already worrying about what might happen if he fell ill.

AT THE AIRPORT in Vienna the wooden trunk was the first piece of luggage to appear on the conveyor belt, sailing proudly into the arrival hall as if it had come all the way from Tel Aviv under its own steam. Molkho let it circle, grabbed it by its new handle, and struggled to stand it upright on a cart, convinced that either it had grown heavier or he had grown weaker during the flight. Soon their two suitcases came, and they wheeled the cart out into a muggy afternoon over sidewalks strewn with autumn leaves. But here, too, the trunk proved a problem, for the Austrian capital did not boast many cabs with baggage racks. Moreover, the little Russian, who, smelling faintly of alcohol, seemed as happy as a puppy, suddenly discovered that she had lost her umbrella, which not only strengthened Molkho’s resolve to hold onto her documents but made him wonder whether to confiscate her personal effects and money too. It was nearly four o’clock, and all at once the brief day was fighting for its life as the light ebbed out of it. Impatiently he scanned the traffic for the right kind of cab, hoping he might still manage to call the Jewish Agency before closing time to confirm their next day’s appointment. He had never spoken to his wife about Austria. Would she have objected to his coming here too? Most likely she had never thought of it. She had thought of most things, but not all.

Their hotel, in which his mother-in-law had made reservations through a travel agent on the recommendation of someone in her old-age home, turned out to be a large, centrally located, overpriced, slightly rundown, decadently grand establishment, in which the old steamer trunk, dragged into the lobby by Molkho, nearly created an anti-Semitic incident. “What’s in it?” demanded the Austrians, evidently concerned for their reputation, first surrounding it with several bellhops and then bundling it off into an elevator as quickly as possible. Though not as fancy as the lobby, the little Russian’s room was large and faced out on a broad boulevard. At first, the bellhops tried sliding the trunk beneath the big double bed, but it was several inches too high. Nor did it fit into the closets, and so they pushed it into a corner and draped it with a cloth while Molkho stood stonily watching from the doorway. His own room, though on the same floor, was off a dark corridor and faced in a different direction. Too late did the profuse thank-yous of the bellhops, who put down his light suitcase with an expression of relief, inform him that he had overtipped them.

AT LEAST THIS TIME there aren’t any stairs to climb, Molkho thought, still sorrowing over the size of the tip. His first task, he decided, was to learn the value of the Austrian currency that his mother-in-law had handed him in an envelope. Spreading out the bills and coins on his bed, he studied their colors and pictures, turning them this way and that. How big had the tip been? Why, they might think he was a gangster with a corpse in his trunk! Finally, satisfied it wasn’t that much, only about seven dollars, he hung up his pants and jackets, put away his shirts and underwear, and shoved the empty suitcase underneath the bed, feeling immediately less transient. There was no New Testament in the room, nor for that matter any Old, just a brochure about Vienna, and so he went to have a look at the large, multimirrored bathroom, which offered all the modern conveniences, despite its period appearance. Stashing away the extra bars of soap in his toilet kit, he decided to leave the container of blue bath bubbles by the tub and proceeded to check the plumbing, whose bent, rusty pipes testified to its age. Still, there was no denying that the place was kept up well.

He returned to the bedroom and theatrically flung open the velvet curtain on the large window, which unfortunately faced a drab side street lined by gray buildings that made him think of the wings of a hospital. Had his mother-in-law forgotten the little Russian’s medical insurance too? Drawing the curtain, he read the fire regulations that hung on the wall beside the authorized room price, whose exorbitance dawned on him only now. As if having to spend the next few days with a plump rabbit he couldn’t talk to was not bad enough, there would be, he suddenly realized, almost no money left for his planned weekend in Paris. He would have to operate on a shoestring: if he could not arrange her return to Russia within a day or two, he would simply transfer her to a cheaper hotel and let her and her trunk get back to Israel by themselves.

He took off his shoes and undressed, preparing to take a bath. It was one of the pleasures of good hotels that there was plenty of hot water, just as there had been in Jerusalem during his childhood, when he bathed once a week on Thursday night. His wife had been so shocked by this revelation that she had all but called off their marriage. “But you have to shower daily!” she had told him. “In bathtubs you just sit in your own filth!” Indeed, even as she lay dying thirty years later, she still didn’t trust him, sometimes sitting up deliriously in bed to ask if he had washed yet. The surest way to her heart was by showering twice a day, a measure guaranteed to win a loving look. Only in hotels was he granted a special dispensation to take baths.

He had already opened both faucets of the tub when he remembered his phone call to the Jewish Agency. After all, he thought, I didn’t come to Vienna to bathe. Still in his underpants, he turned off the water and went to dial the number given him of a certain Mr. Shimoni, whose Israeli secretary answered the phone. Molkho introduced himself, explained that he was representing a Miss Nina Zand, referred to the letters sent on her behalf and to the answers received, and asked to confirm the appointment he had made for the next day in order to obtain the assistance and missing documents still required. “I’m afraid,” said the secretary, “that your appointment has been canceled because Mr. Shimoni is indisposed. He hasn’t come to work for several days.” “You mean he’s sick?” asked Molkho in dismay. He hadn’t taken such a possibility into account. “But we’ve come all the way from Israel just to see him!” “Yes, indeed,” the secretary assured him. She knew all about it. Mr. Shimoni hadn’t forgotten the appointment. In fact, he had taken the file home with him and even telephoned her that morning to ask that Mr. Molkho call him there.

Molkho breathed a sigh of relief, and the secretary gave him the phone number, requesting only that he call later in the day, since Mr. Shimoni liked to take a long afternoon nap. “As one public servant to another,” Molkho told her, “I want to thank you for being so helpful. I must say we don’t deserve our bad name.” “No, we don’t, do we?” answered the secretary vivaciously. “If it’s not too much to ask,” continued Molkho, “what exactly ails Mr. Shimoni?” The secretary wasn’t sure. “It’s probably a diplomatic illness,” she laughed, “because he’s terribly bored being an immigration official without immigrants.” Molkho laughed too and started to hang up, but now it was her turn to question him. When did he arrive in Vienna? And how was his flight? And what was new in Israel? “Nothing is new,” he said. “And how’s the weather?” she asked to make conversation, as bored by her job as was her boss. “It’s been rainy,” said Molkho, “but not very cold, although, of course, not as hot as the summer.” Apparently, however, she hadn’t heard of the hellish summer. How long was he staying in Vienna, she wanted to know. “Oh, just a day or two,” Molkho said. “As long as it takes to find out if the Soviets will repatriate Miss Zand.” “Just a day or two?” She seemed disappointed. “Why not stay longer and enjoy yourself? There’s lots to do here that doesn’t call for any German, all kinds of operas and concerts. Would you like me to suggest something?” Molkho guffawed. “No, thank you,” he said, “I’ve been to enough operas and concerts to last me for a while. But perhaps you could recommend some good ballet.” At once, as if she worked for a ticket office, she listed several performances, even spelling them out for him in Hebrew letters. Clearly, she didn’t want to hang up, and Molkho listened patiently, distressed to see in the large wall mirror that he had indeed put on weight and had even sprouted little breasts.

When he finally got into the bath, he lay for a long while in the deliciously sudsy water with his eyes closed. Then he dried himself, shaved, applied some lotion, ate the last apple in his briefcase, dressed, stepped out into the corridor, and knocked on the little Russian’s door. There was no answer. He knocked harder, but there was still no response. Good grief, he wondered, do I have another Sleeping Beauty on my hands?

HE DIALED HER ROOM, but no one answered the telephone either. I shouldn’t have spent so long in the bathtub, he fretted, descending to the lobby to look for her. But she was not there either, nor had she left any message or key at the desk. He searched in vain in the large dining room, where a gypsy band was playing, and stepped out into the broad boulevard, which was now bathed in twilight, peering into shops as he passed them, though the chances of finding her were slim. Could she have gone off to see the sights without telling him? Not that she was under any formal obligation, but it was a matter of simple courtesy. He asked again at the desk, knocked once more on her door, tried phoning her room a second time—but she had vanished into thin air. Could she, he wondered, racking his brain, have unknown friends in Vienna? It was getting dark out. Bright lights came on in the lobby. He sank grouchily into a leather chair that commanded a view of the entrance, ordered some coffee, and was about to ask for a slice of the cream pie on the pastry cart when he remembered his little breasts in the mirror and decided to wait for dinner.

Three veiled young ladies with their arms full of shopping bags entered the lobby with a man who could have been either their father or their husband, a large, swarthy Arab with the mien of a desert prince, no doubt from the Persian Gulf, dressed in a white kaffiyeh and an expensive European suit. Chattering in rapid Arabic, they deposited him and their parcels in a seat next to Molkho’s and darted excitedly out again, off on another spree. The prince, in a state of shock from his purchases, or perhaps from the Western clothes he had been made to wear, tilted his sun-bronzed face toward an invisible horizon and soon sank into such a trance that he did not even notice the cup of coffee brought him by a sedulous waiter. Suddenly, however, sitting up amid the bags of women’s wear and glancing desperately around him, he noticed Molkho, who was sitting a few feet away, and beamed with recognition, as though spying a fellow tribesman. Molkho looked uncomfortably away, yet the big Arab was already leaning toward him with a grin, his dark eyes lighting up. Not wanting to disappoint him, Molkho fled to the telephone booths by the reception desk and dialed Mr. Shimoni’s home number. Mr. Shimoni answered the phone. “Yes, I’m not well,” he declared in an overrefined voice, “but if time is of the essence, perhaps I could receive you at home this evening and see what I can do.” Dictating his address, he insisted that Molkho write it down.

The little Russian’s disappearance was getting to be serious. Molkho hurried to her room and knocked loudly on the door, though not so loud as to attract the attention of the guests descending for dinner, and then went to look for her again in the dining room, sidestepping tray-laden waiters, passing a small, dimly lit bar whose customers were lining up for their first cocktails, and emerging in a garden where some staff was folding chairs. This is no joke, he thought worriedly, stepping back into the street. Might she be in trouble somewhere and in need of help? I shouldn’t have been so standoffish on the plane, he chided himself, returning to the lobby, which he decided to explore in greater depth. Descending some stairs, he opened an apparently locked door and soon came to a floor of large conference rooms, smoke-filled billiard parlors, a gymnasium, and even an empty swimming pool still smelling of chlorine. Peering into dark washrooms, he headed for some lights at the end of a passageway and found himself in an underground shopping center full of little boutiques and cafes, a subterranean world that was shutting down for the night. A few last customers were leaving the shops, in which the personnel was wiping counters and mopping floors before closing. A sixth sense telling him that his white rabbit was near, he quickened his stride. We must have a whistle, he resolved just as he saw her through the window of a small beauty parlor, happily seated beneath a dryer with curlers in her hair. He was about to burst angrily inside when he spied a large, pasty woman in a corner, staring balefully with her arms crossed at the obstinate client whose hair had to be done at the last minute, when the lights were already dimmed and the scissors and combs put away for the day. Relieved to have found her, he stood watching from a safe distance. Though it was comic to think that a fresh permanent would matter to Mr. Shimoni, he slowly felt his ridicule yield to an odd compassion.

AT NINE THAT EVENING a taxi brought them to a baroque apartment building in a middle-class suburb, where a stocky guard met them at the door and took them up to the second floor in a dark elevator. Stepping into a vestibule wallpapered with a forest of gold trees and faded green leaves, they waited for their guide to unlock a door and usher them into an ornate drawing room in which stood a grand piano covered with musical scores. Large windows looked out on a dimly lit park; on the leather chairs and sofa lay piles of newspapers, magazines, and office files; shelves of books and Judaica lined the walls; and the overall jumble was such that Molkho cast a worried glance at his plump Goldilocks while their guide vanished down a hallway to look for Mr. Shimoni, who proved to be a tall, thin, sallow, bald man in his sixties, dressed in a silk bathrobe and high slippers and with a cultivated air. Sucking on a cough drop, he shook their hands formally, the blue veins bulging in his broad, intellectual brow. Yes, he’s even sicker than I thought, decided Molkho, begging pardon for the late-hour intrusion. Mr. Shimoni waved off the apology and sank into a leather armchair, imperiously dismissing the silent guard while inviting his guests to sit down. “Well, then, this is the Miss Zand that I wrote you about,” began Molkho, removing some Hebrew newspapers from a chair and pointing to his rabbit, who teetered on her high heels in a dress slightly creased from her suitcase. “She was processed by you in Vienna nearly a year ago on her way from Russia to Israel. I understand you don’t see many new faces these days, so perhaps you even remember her.”

If he took umbrage, the official gave no sign. Smiling faintly at Miss Zand, who, bright with excitement, was settling into a chair, he began questioning her in a fluent Russian that he evidently kept handy for such occasions. She answered him solemnly, her stiff curls shaking with each emphatic bob of her head. “Then you don’t remember her?” interrupted Molkho, feeling left out. “What difference does it make?” replied Mr. Shimoni brusquely, barely glancing in his direction. “They’re only here for a day or two; their train pulls in from Russia in the morning, and by the next evening they’re on a plane to Israel.” “Well,” said Molkho, discouraged by the patronizing tone, “she wants to go back. She’s been in Israel nine months and doesn’t like it. You don’t like it, do you?” he asked her while Mr. Shimoni stared ironically at the floor. Suspicious at the sudden switch to Hebrew, which no longer seemed quite so amusing, she looked from one man to the other. “Where in Israel did she live?” asked Shimoni, using his divide-and-conquer technique to repeat the question in Russian without waiting for Molkho to answer. Sitting on the edge of her chair, Miss Zand replied to all his queries, pulling out a packet of letters from her handbag and even showing him one from her old place of employment in the Soviet Union declaring its readiness to take her back.

“In Israel she was unemployed,” put in Molkho, refusing to be excluded. It was his duty, he felt, if only to his mother-in-law, to serve as the little Russian’s counsel. “She was enrolled in an intensive Hebrew course, though you can see that she didn’t learn a word.” “But no one at the embassy will take her back,” snapped Mr. Shimoni with sudden irritation. “You’re just wasting your time!” Molkho knew this was true, but startled to hear it put so baldly, he began zealously defending a faith he didn’t share—namely, that if the Jewish Agency would return Miss Zand’s exit visa and give her a letter stating that she had only left the Soviet Union to accompany her old mother to Vienna, all would be well. “But what good will that do?” scoffed Shimoni. “The Finns say it will give her back her refugee status,” answered Molkho. “A lot the Finns know!” jeered the official, putting on his glasses to read the Russian’s letters while continuing his interrogation.

Why argue? reasoned Molkho, growing calmer. The man is right. Why take all her problems on myself? He glanced out the paneled window at the bright lights of Vienna, glimpsing the electric spark of a trolley along the tree line of the park. Mr. Shimoni’s sickly pallor made him appreciate his own good health. Despite his fears that his wife’s illness would turn on him once she died, a year had gone by without a single visit to the doctor. Not even to the dentist, he thought contentedly, reaching into his jacket pocket for his bifocals in order to glance at a newspaper. Yet the little Russian’s musical voice held his attention. Happy to be speaking her own language, she was excitedly explaining something, now pointing to her letters and now to Molkho, as though telling the official all about him. Perhaps there’s more to her than just those pretty eyes after all, he thought, resolving not to be unkind. Though he didn’t understand a word, he felt he knew what she was saying. “After all,” he interrupted, eager to rejoin the conversation, “why shouldn’t they take Miss Zand back? Think of the publicity it will give them.” “They don’t need our publicity,” sniffed Mr. Shimoni, sucking on his cough drop like an elderly infant, his condescending expression unchanged. “And besides, even if they wanted to take her back, it’s not bureaucratically possible.” He grinned, baring decayed teeth. “But why must it be Russia? If Miss Zand is prepared to go to America or Canada, that’s something that might be arranged.” Molkho had no objections, but when the idea was broached to the little Russian, she so tearfully shook her head and heaved her ample bosom that her mettle rather pleased him, though it only made Shimoni crosser.

“Have you ever had such a case before?” Molkho asked. His mouth was dry from the central heating and it was beginning to dawn on him that the official, who apparently lived by himself, was not going to offer them refreshment. “One or two,” Shimoni replied. “They all come to me with their complaints as if it were my fault that they didn’t like Israel.” “You see,” said Molkho with a sympathetic nod at his client, who perhaps understood more Hebrew than she let on, “she couldn’t take the climate either. This past summer was an especially bad one.” And when the official merely snorted, he went on, “Why, she’s more Russian than Jewish. Just look at her! The idea of her having to go through all this is absurd! And don’t talk to me about a common Jewish destiny,” he added heatedly, though Mr. Shimoni had done nothing of the sort, “because there is no such thing! That’s only the slogan of unhappy Jews like us who want more Jews to be unhappy with them.” Sucking bemusedly on his cough drop, Mr. Shimoni rested his long buttery fingers on the leather arms of his chair. Molkho felt unbearably thirsty. “Could you please tell me where the bathroom is?” he asked hoarsely, and Shimoni led him down a long corridor and switched on a light at the end of it.

“You have a big place here,” Molkho said. “Big?” echoed Mr. Shimoni defensively. “Why, it’s huge, to say nothing of far too old! It’s too much for a single person like me, but it was a bequest to the Agency from some rich Jew, and there’s nothing to do about it. Tell me,” he asked Molkho, who wanted only to get into the bathroom, “did you really come all the way to Vienna just for Miss Zand?” “Yes,” Molkho said. “Her mother is an old friend of my mother-in-law’s, and I’m the only other person they could turn to. I didn’t want her to have to come alone, especially since she has heavy luggage, and so I offered to escort her.” “But you can’t even talk to her!” objected Mr. Shimoni. “No, I can’t,” conceded Molkho. “She doesn’t know any English or French either. It’s all terribly uncivilized, but what can I do?” “And you really think the Russians will take her?” asked Shimoni. “To tell you the truth,” answered Molkho honestly, “I don’t. I told my mother-in-law that too. But we thought it best to leave no stone unturned. It was really the Finns who put her up to it.”

Mr. Shimoni’s lips curled in a smile, and Molkho escaped into the bathroom, leaving the door slightly ajar. Taking off his bifocals, he turned on the faucet, bent over the sink, and gulped handfuls of cold water until he had had enough. Then, afraid to risk infection from the towels, he waited for his face to dry, threw a desultory glance at the toilet, and regarded the mirror of the medicine cabinet, his bloodshot eyes staring back at him. He had barely begun to explore the cabinet’s contents when he heard the little Russian gasp. I have to help her, he shuddered, thinking warmly of her snowy throat, whose double chin was perhaps only an illusion. I mustn’t be so critical. Every woman has something lovable. He turned out the light and groped his way back up the hallway, peering into the rooms leading off it, in one of which he was startled to glimpse a tiny old woman in a nightgown, crouched on a bed with her bare feet clawing the air.

He was barely noticed when he returned to the drawing room, where Shimoni, his bald, pale head between his hands, was listening intriguedly to Miss Zand, now and then grinning broadly. I must be missing a good story, mourned Molkho, collapsing into his chair, from which he took advantage of the first lull to inquire if Shimoni could lend him a Hebrew-Russian dictionary. “Hebrew-Russian?” marveled the official. “I doubt if we even have one in the office. But you can find English-Russian or French-Russian in any bookstore. Do you want to talk to her or understand her?” “Both,” answered Molkho. “It’s enough to drive a person crazy. Today she disappeared without telling me, and it took me an hour to find her in some beauty parlor.” Shimoni laughed. “It’s no joke,” declared Molkho, laughing too. “Please tell her to let me know where she goes.” The official translated, Molkho wagged an admonishing finger, and the little Russian giggled hotly. “Is that a promise?” he asked, smiling angrily. “Promise,” she agreed, latching on to the Hebrew word. “Promise, promise, promise.”

As they were leaving Molkho asked again if Mr. Shimoni couldn’t give them a letter to the Russian embassy certifying that Miss Zand was still a refugee. But the official was adamant. “Believe me,” he said, “any letter from me would only make things worse. She’ll just have to take her chances. And what are your own plans?” “Oh, I’ll stick around for a while to see what happens,” Molkho said. Shimoni nodded, loath to part with such an entertaining couple. “Well, let me know how it turns out,” he told them, first in Hebrew and then in Russian. “I feel responsible in spite of everything.” Molkho gratefully shook his hand, and Shimoni put a friendly arm around Miss Zand and steered them both toward the elevator. “What’s there to do mornings in Vienna?” asked Molkho as the red arrow lit up. “All sorts of things,” said Shimoni. “What are you interested in?” “Oh, some museum or historical site,” Molkho answered. “Even one of Jewish interest,” he added patriotically. “Some old synagogue, for instance, or maybe Herzl’s grave.” “Herzl’s grave?” chuckled the Jewish Agency official. “Herzl’s grave is in Jerusalem. Perhaps you mean Herzl’s house. There’s nothing but a plaque there though, and it’s hardly worth the effort.” He looked smugly at Molkho, who smiled in embarrassment. “If tomorrow is as nice as today, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be, I suggest you take a walk in the Vienna Woods and go to the zoo.” “The zoo?” Molkho was mortified. “Yes,” said Mr. Shimoni, “why not? The zoo here is marvelous, and you probably haven’t been to one in ages. Take the number 6 or 8 trolley, and you won’t regret it. Sometimes there’s a military band there too. I’m sure you’ll enjoy every minute.” Graciously opening the door of the groaning elevator, he saw them on their way.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT Molkho was awoken by a muffled shout and angry voices. He dragged himself out of bed to the sink, gulped more water while wondering why Vienna made him so thirsty, and went over to the dark window, where he drew the heavy curtain and stared down at the street below. By the locked gate of the building that he had taken for a hospital, two guards were arguing with the driver of a white car. In that case, he thought groggily, it can’t be a hospital, because it wouldn’t turn away an ambulance. Suddenly he remembered having dreamt about his wife. Although he had dreamt of her before, this time she was in company, sitting off to one side in a room with familiar wallpaper. The others did not know, or pretended not to know, that she was dead, so that, unaware of Molkho’s presence, as if he, not she, were the ghost, she sat there perfectly content. Meanwhile, down below, the argument finally ended with the opening of the gate and the disappearance of the white car. Much to Molkho’s relief, the night grew silent again.

In the morning he found his little rabbit in the lobby, pale and baggy-eyed in a conservative red woolen suit with stiff, padded shoulders. Her new curls had softened agreeably overnight, making her look rather cuddly. “How did you sleep?” he asked concernedly, repeating the question a second time in even more basic Hebrew. “Terrible,” she replied with a glum smile, the wealth of her vocabulary surprising him. “Much terrible.” Smelling alcohol as he led her to the dining room, he sat her at a table, took out a map, and showed her the location of the Soviet Embassy. As simply, though in as many ways as possible, because even if she understood only a fifth of what he said it was worth it, he reviewed their meeting with Mr. Shimoni, trying his best to sound hopeful. As a government official himself, he said, he had one bit of advice to give her: tell the Russians the truth and nothing but. Though the fact of the matter is, he thought, watching her tubbily bounce off to the buffet for another fresh roll, that if I believed they might take her, I would have made love to her last night as a parting gift from Israel. It’s not as if that could have been taken as a commitment. But the chin above her white, shapely throat was double after all, and he couldn’t be blamed if his wife’s illness had made him suspicious of swellings. Besides which, he told himself, I happen to have high standards. In fact, they’re only getting higher, which is why I’m wasting precious time on these oddballs instead of going to some dance hall and grabbing the first woman on the floor.

It was eight o’clock, and since the embassies didn’t open until nine and the weather was nice and the distance not great, Molkho suggested that they walk. They strolled through the awakening streets of the city, soon coming to a colorful farmers’ market that was just being set up. Making their way past mounds of fruits and vegetables, they lingered by stands of seafood sparkling with crushed ice, looking at the little black mussels, the large gray fossil-like clams, the piles of purplish shrimp and ruddy lobsters fanning slow antennae, the wicked coils of eels and lampreys. “Why, it’s just like Paris,” exclaimed Molkho enthusiastically, “it’s exactly the same!” Shoulder to shoulder, for he didn’t care what people here took them for, they followed the map through a clean, pleasant quarter, stopping now and then to window-shop while he translated prices into shekels and dollars.

A cordon of armed Austrian policemen indicated the site of the Soviet embassy from afar. Molkho halted and handed the little Russian her laissez-passer, which she deftly slipped into her handbag, after which they carefully circled the building, checking its various entrances and the visiting hours posted outside them. Even if nothing comes of it, he thought, even if it was only a gesture, I’ll have done my human duty. “I’ll wait here for an hour or two,” he said, pointing to a little café on the corner, “and after that we’ll meet back at the hotel. Just no more disappearing acts, please!” She nodded, and since they still had time, they entered the café together. From everywhere came the melody of Russian voices, for the place was full of embassy officials who had dropped in for a hot drink or something stronger. Aglow at the sight of so many compatriots, the little Russian followed Molkho to an empty table in a corner and ordered brandy, while he asked for coffee, wondering if he should be seen with her here, where he might be mistaken for a Western intelligence officer running a secret agent. She, too, it seemed, had the same thought, because as soon as she downed her drink, she went off to the rest room, leaving him by himself. Watching the embassy workers come and go with friendly greetings, he felt more optimistic. After all, they’re human beings just like us, he thought, why shouldn’t they agree to take her? What do they stand to lose? It’s natural to feel homesick. What’s one more Jew to them when they already have millions? If she stays in Israel, I’ll be the one to suffer, because I’ll just have to marry her in the end. Surreptitiously slipping one of the hotel’s cards into her handbag, he took his coffee to a distant table, from which he watched her leave the rest room. She looked for him, caught sight of his furtive wave, and showed she understood it by exiting to join the line already forming by the gate of the embassy, through which the Russians now streamed from the café, brandishing their ID cards at a new shift of burly guards.

He let the café empty out and went to pay the waiter, asking for a receipt. Not, he mused, that his mother-in-law would check his expenses, but he should be able to give her a general account of where her money had gone. Perhaps she would even want to send him abroad again; it was certainly more likely than a junket from work like the legal adviser’s. He jotted down what other outlays he remembered on the back of the receipt, counted his change carefully, stuck it in his pocket, and looked out at the busy street. The little Russian had vanished through the gate of the embassy, and when after a while she failed to return, his hopes soared even higher.

AT LAST, he stepped outside himself, surprised at how warm the clear autumn air had become. Fallen leaves crackling underfoot, he strode by the lavish storefronts determined to withstand temptation and not waste the morning shopping. And so, though still smarting from Mr. Shimoni’s advice, as if museums and galleries were beyond the ken of a mere Levantine like himself, he found a number-6 trolley stop, made sure he was headed in the right direction, and boarded the next car for the Vienna Woods with a contingent of old ladies, young mothers, and noisy children. At last, with a great clatter and clang of bells, the trolley came to the end of the line. It was indeed right next to the zoo, which Molkho, despite a moment’s uncertainty, decided he was too old for, opting instead to go for a walk among the tall trees of the park, its well-trodden paths being full of local hikers. Eventually he reached a large outdoor café with a fountain adorned by statues of animals, beside one of which, a skillful figure of a deer with blind, stony eyes, he sat down in a shady spot. After looking around at the crowd, which was composed mostly of old people enjoying the warm fall day, he glanced at an article about abused women in the weekend supplement of his Hebrew newspaper and then took out Volume II of Anna Karenina, turned to Part Seven, and began to read. Quickly he grew absorbed in the story, turning page after page until at last the beautiful Anna threw herself in despair beneath the wheels of a train and he shut the book with shaking hands. Though his old counselor had warned him of Anna’s fate months ago, the actual description of it, so precise and yet so simple, left him numb with a grief that yielded only slowly to a warm feeling of appreciation. Wanting somehow to express his gratitude to the dead author, he rose, walked stretching himself among the tables until he came to a glass case full of cakes, and ordered one that he ate hungrily. And yet, reopening the book to Part Eight, in which he had expected to be told of Vronsky’s reaction to Anna’s death, he was disappointed to discover that the novel took another turn entirely, so that after reading with flagging interest for several more pages he shut it dispiritedly.

It was nearly noon, and schoolchildren began arriving in the park, in which bright parasols against the sun now made their appearance too. Molkho took the trolley back into town, looked for his little Russian in the hotel, and then returned to their café, where there was no trace of her among the handful of customers. In front of the embassy all was quiet. Why, they must have agreed to take her after all, he told himself, smiling at the thought of Mr. Shimoni’s surprise.

MEANWHILE, HE THOUGHT, I had better put my time to good use, and so, though hungry again, he decided to find out the cheapest route to the Soviet Union. On a street they had walked on that morning, he recalled, there had been a travel agency whose window was designed to look like a train compartment, complete with a white-sheeted Pullman bed and a female mannequin looking out at the passing landscape while her hair whipped in the breeze. “Ne manquezpas la route,” had said a poster in French, and another in English, “Go by Rail and Know Where You’ve Been.” Retracing his steps to the place, on whose wall was a map of railroad lines reaching all the way to Peking, he was plied with so much helpful information that by the time he stepped back out into the street the sky had clouded over and the humid air brushed his face like a damp cloth.

He hurried back to the hotel to see if his little Russian had returned, but her key was still behind the desk, though he imagined for a moment that it swung back and forth as though it had just been hung up. Fraulein Zand, the desk clerk told him knowingly, had neither been back since the morning nor left any message, so that, though the sky was growing more threatening, Molkho had no choice but grumpily to set out again for the café in the hope that she was mistakenly waiting there. But she was not, and so he ordered a club sandwich and thought, She’s run out on me again and who’s fault is it but my own? I grew soft looking after a wife whose effective range shrank to zero and now I’m paying for it. To calm himself, he took out Anna Karenina and resumed reading Part Eight, but soon he put it down unhappily. Indeed, it was so obvious that nothing more was going to happen that he wondered what made Tolstoy keep writing.

Only one guard remained by the gate of the embassy, all the traffic through which was now outward. Could they really have taken her off his hands and left him with his mission accomplished? He paid for his sandwich, left the café, waited for the guard’s view to be blocked by some Russians leaving work, and boldly passed through the gate and into the building, down the corridors of which he walked with a pounding heart, reminded of the times he had come to take his wife home from her chemotherapy, which had always ended as the oncology ward was emptying out for the day, so that he would find her alone in a silent room, exhausted yet glowing with hope in her hospital frock. How, he had wanted to ask, did the isotope injected into her veins find the spreading cancer, which he imagined as a reddish lode in a dark mine? Controlling his fear, he glanced cautiously into rooms whose tired officials were cleaning their desks before quitting time, wondering whether, had he taught the little Russian a secret whistle, he would dare use it now. Outside the barred windows a noiseless rain began to fall, drowned out by the chorus of Russian voices in the building. A curly-headed stranger in their midst, he turned and headed back for the entrance, careful not to lose his way.

BRIEF THOUGH IT WAS, the fresh-smelling downpour cleared the muggy air, which turned a luminous velvet beneath the prodigal streetlights. After all, thought Molkho on his way back to the hotel, satisfied that his little rabbit wasn’t being held prisoner, not even the Russians would torture her in some dungeon just because she’s homesick. Taking a shortcut through a busy arcade, he let himself be swept into a large department store, where he decided to look for presents, considered buying a fat English-Russian dictionary in the book department on a top floor, and thought better of it. Why waste the money, even if it wasn’t his, when the little Russian would soon be gone anyway? Replacing the book on its rack, he wandered off to the classical music section, which had an especially rich collection of Viennese composers, and soon bought a cassette of Mahler’s The Song of the Earth for his mother-in-law. This time, rather than another embarrassing blouse or scarf, he would bring her something cultural.

As he was riding the escalator back down he suddenly spied the plump figure of Miss Nina Zand trying on hats before a little mirror. Droplets of rain still clung to her clothing and hair, whose curls had shriveled forlornly, and the makeup was streaked on her worn face. So the answer was no after all, he thought even before laying a pitying hand on her shoulder and smelling the liquor on her breath. She smiled sheepishly, not at all surprised he had found her there drowning her sorrows in shopping, as if it were only natural for him to dog her faithfully everywhere. “What happened?” he asked quietly. “They say no,” she replied, slowly removing another hat and throwing it into a pile of discards with a grimace of resignation. “No visa. No nothing. Byurokratya. Very too much byurokratya. They say no can take me.” Her big blue eyes filled with guilt for letting him down. Resignedly he led her to a corner and tried getting more information, but all he could find out was that she had been made to run from one office to another all day long. The bastards, he thought, plying her with more questions that she didn’t understand while steering her through the throng of shoppers, furious at the Russians for not helping, perhaps because she looked so crestfallen in her rumpled suit and white blouse, the open collar of which revealed the perspiring whites of her breasts. “Byurokratya,” she repeated, as if her encounter had been with some supernatural force. Suddenly he felt a flash of violence. Damn her! he thought, almost shoving her across the boulevard past clanging, orange-lit trolleys and into the regal lobby of the hotel, with its crowd of guests and wild strains of gypsy music from the dining room. Should he go straight to his room and telephone the bad news to Israel or should he wait a little longer?

AFTER DINNER they went to see Mr. Shimoni, who was curious to hear the little Russian’s story, even if the outcome, which Molkho had told him about on the phone, did not come as a surprise. No doubt he wanted to know about her contacts in the embassy, and perhaps, too, he felt guilty for having denied her the letter she had asked for. This time, they found other guests in the antique drawing room, two Viennese Jews who had come to pay a sick call. Mr. Shimoni, however, seemed much better, for he was now fully dressed in a dark suit and tie, although his face, the ascetic intellectuality of which had so impressed Molkho the night before, was as pale as ever. The tiny old woman from the back room was present too, wearing a black silk dress like a delicate mummy. She was Mr. Shimoni’s mother, and after introducing the new arrivals she sat Molkho by her side, while her son moved the piano stool over to Miss Zand’s armchair and began a brisk interrogation. Happy to be the center of attention, the little Russian related her adventures in her musical voice, gesturing broadly to help describe the Soviet officials and their offices.

Meanwhile, old Mrs. Shimoni, who didn’t know any Russian, commenced an interrogation of her own to find out what sort of Molkho Molkho was, quickly determining that she knew his grandmother and paternal aunt in Jerusalem, from which she had arrived several weeks ago to spend some time with her son. “Doesn’t he have children?” Molkho asked. “Of course he does,” said his mother, “and very successful ones too, but they’re all married with children of their own.” “And where is his wife?” inquired Molkho. “Ah,” exclaimed the old woman, “she passed away several years ago.” “And he never remarried?” asked Molkho with concern. “I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Shimoni with a poignant look, “that finding a new wife isn’t easy as you think.” Molkho nodded so vigorously that his teacup rattled on its saucer. “You’re quite right,” he declared. “Everyone thinks it’s easy, but it’s not. You see,” he added with a suffering smile, “I too lost my wife nearly a year ago. It was cancer.” He persisted plaintively, even though to his surprise the old woman knew all about it, as if it were written on his face, “An incurable cancer that started in one breast, then spread to the other, and then...” But Mrs. Shimoni knew all about that too. The little Russian, it seemed, had told the old woman’s son everything the night before.

Molkho fell silent in frustration and turned his attention to the men, who were hanging on the little Russian’s words, which Mr. Shimoni summarized for his guests in German, with a running commentary of his own. Slighted to find his presence treated as a mere technicality, Molkho demanded a translation into Hebrew, and so received a summary of the summary. At first, apparently, one of the Soviets had asked Miss Zand to sign an anti-Israel declaration, which she was perfectly willing to do, but at the last minute he changed his mind. Then someone else began to question her about her absorption center in Israel—especially about immigrants from Ethiopia, who seemed to arouse great interest—only to go on to something else. And so she had been passed from official to official, each of whom, she reported, had been friendly and eager to help, indeed even proud of her, yet unable to do a thing. “What did I tell you!” said Mr. Shimoni, jumping up and walking about. “They can’t make unroutine decisions. They’re paralyzed by their own bureaucracy!” Smiling in agreement, his two guests added something in German.

And yet, though Molkho tried hard to follow the conversation, even to participate in it, he soon found himself excluded and had to content himself with staring at his Russian, who sat glumly gripping her second glass of Scotch, a twice-failed émigrée. Finally, tired and feeling the need to take some action, he put down his cup of tea and rose to go. “But why so soon?” asked Mr. Shimoni, who seemed sorry to see them leave. “We’ve imposed on you quite enough,” insisted Molkho, adding something about the unseasonably warm weather while beckoning to Miss Zand and nodding good-bye to old Mrs. Shimoni and her guests. By the open door of the elevator, to which he clung as if refusing to part with them, Mr. Shimoni asked Molkho about his day. “I went to the Vienna Woods,” Molkho told him. “In fact, I enjoyed it, though I never got to see the zoo.” “What a pity,” said Mr. Shimoni. “Will the two of you be staying in Vienna or are you going straight back to Israel?” “No, we’re not,” replied Molkho, annoyed to be permanently coupled with the little Russian. “If I’ve come this far to get her into Russia, I’ll look for another way—one that’s less bureaucratic.”

AT THE CRACK OF DAWN, Molkho left his room with his suitcase and rapped nervously on the little Russian’s door. She was fully dressed, packed, and ready. Why, I just had to put my foot down like a man and she’s my slave! he congratulated himself, seizing the steamer trunk by its handle and dragging it to the elevator. If only someone had told me about this damn thing, I could have put some wheels on it, he thought. Two is all it would have needed.

Now, however, there was no time even for one. In fact, he was in such a hurry that he skipped breakfast, though it was included in the price of the room, and paid the bill without question, asking only that the desk clerk order a taxi with a roof rack. In the train station, an immense, bustling place still chill with the vapors of dawn, he had a moment’s panic that his little Russian might vanish again; but when he warned her not to, her eyes filled with tears, and indeed, she clung to him anxiously, tagging after him as he looked for their train while glancing back now and then as instructed to make sure that their porter was following.

They found their train, car, and compartment and managed to hoist the trunk onto the overhead rack, where it miraculously fitted right in. But of course, it’s an old railroad trunk! thought Molkho in amazement just as an elderly conductor passing down the aisle insisted that they take it back down again. Unable to convince him that it wasn’t a public menace, Molkho tried pushing it under a seat, attempted to put it on top of one, and finally dragged it to the baggage car behind the locomotive, where it was given a yellow tag, for which he paid a schilling and was handed a receipt.

He hurried worriedly back to his compartment, but the little Russian was sitting dutifully where he had left her, her face bathed in morning light. Has she gotten prettier or have I just gotten used to her? he wondered, gazing out the window at the arriving passengers. Distant music reached him from the train or station, and he shut his eyes, tired but pleased despite his sleepless night. You can’t say I haven’t tried, he said mentally to his mother-in-law, for whose sake he was doing all this. The air breaks hissed underneath him, and the train glided out of the station. But, throwing an arm across his face, he refused to watch or even glance at his companion, whose eyes, he felt sure, were on him. There’s time for that, he told himself, the ever-louder rattle of the wheels and car joints lullabying him to sleep, even as he sensed her slipping out of the compartment. Let her roam, he thought with a smile. This is one place she can’t run away from.

She was in the buffet when he awoke, chatting with a Russian soldier. Pretending not to recognize her, he ordered a container of coffee, returned with it to his seat, and reached into his briefcase for Anna Karenina, which he was determined to finish once and for all. So far, so good, he thought, checking to see how many pages were left. It’s still eight hours to Berlin. Five pages an hour is all that it will take.

WORDS WERE UNNECESSARY, the visiting card of the little hotel being all the taxi driver needed. But he could not drive up to it, for a large trench barring the street forced them to unload their luggage a block away despite the cold, rainy night. “Wait here, I’ll be right back,” said Molkho softly, leaping carefully over the trench with a suitcase in each hand and heading for the hotel, the little lobby of which, he was happy to see, was as neatly crammed with bric-a-brac as ever. Standing in a dignified black suit behind the small bar, where he was arranging bottles and glasses, the owner recognized Molkho at once, and Molkho shook his hand warmly, pleased to be remembered after so many months, if only because of his sleeper and a borrowed thermometer. In any event, here he was again with two suitcases, a trunk up the street that he needed some help with, and a new companion who would no doubt sleep well too. At once, someone dashed off to fetch the trunk and the little Russian, while someone else opened the register to look for Molkho’s name and room number. Alas, neither was there—the reason being, Molkho explained, that he hadn’t made a reservation, having just arrived unexpectedly from Vienna. Anxiously the register was consulted again before it was triumphantly announced that there was a room available and that if the guests would hurry up to it and change, they might still be in time for the opera.

But there remained a small hitch. “I don’t want one room; I want two rooms,” declared Molkho with a worried look at his little Russian, who had just arrived with her trunk and collapsed into a chair, her eyelids drooping with fatigue, oblivious of the swords and old maritime maps hanging over her. “Two roomps?” echoed the Germans sadly. “Two roomps again?” Doubtfully they rechecked the register, but there were no two roomps, only van roomps, and that, too, by a stroke of luck. “Only van roomps?” asked Molkho softly with a despairing glance at the little dining room that was already set for breakfast. He crossed the lobby, which seemed to have grown even tinier, and peered through the open door of the kitchen behind the reception desk. Everything looked dearly familiar. By the elevator the trunk and suitcases were impatiently waiting. “Can’t you find another room?” he pleaded with the proprietor. “But how?” asked the German with an ironic look at his puritanical guest who traveled around the world two-roompsing different women. “All right,” sighed Molkho, giving in and handing them his passport, for it was getting dark outside and the little Russian was exhausted. “We’ll start with van roomps and see.”

The grandfather of the family was summoned from the kitchen to celebrate the capitulation. He, too, recognized the newcomer at once and even made some German joke that led to peals of laughter. I certainly made an impression, thought Molkho, taking the elevator with his Russian to the second floor, where they were given a room next to the legal adviser’s—in fact, so like it, apart from the picture on the wall, that Molkho was flooded with warm memories. Soon they were joined by the suitcases and the trunk (which Prussian ingenuity fitted into a closet that would have defeated the Austrians) and were left to unpack, the little Russian laying her coat and jacket on the bed that she would have to share with him. How, he wondered, should he tell her? “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” he announced, hoping she might realize by herself. Then, her Hebrew vocabulary having reached the vanishing point as it always did when she was tired, he repeated, “I will be back soon.”

HE BYPASSED THE ELEVATOR and bounded down the narrow, familiar stairs two at a time, though once in the lobby he couldn’t say what the rush had been. Perhaps he simply wished to chat with the proprietor, who was already pouring a drink for his first customer, a dark, quiet Indian in evening dress. Were there any other reasonably priced hotels in the vicinity? Molkho asked, still looking for a way to find two roomps. Not that he knew of, frowned the German. That is, there was an establishment a few blocks away, but it didn’t cater to the best clientele and wasn’t clean; indeed, he couldn’t recommend it at all for a foreign woman. “I see,” nodded Molkho, eyeing the chairs in the lobby, from which perhaps a makeshift bed might be rigged.

Meanwhile, shaking drops of rain from his battered jacket, the tall student arrived with his books for the night shift and smiled a friendly hello. Whatever you say about her, thought Molkho of the legal adviser, she knew how to pick a place with the human touch. “Are the old prices still in effect?” he asked the student, who was organizing himself at the desk. They were indeed. And would his room be available the following night too? It most certainly would be. And how about the night after that? The night after that was a problem. “Well, then,” declared Molkho, his anxiety abating, “hold it for tomorrow anyway.”

Through the open door of the kitchen, he could see the family getting ready for dinner. The grandfather clock on the wall struck eight, and more courtly Indians began descending from above, some with white, sacerdotal turbans. Off to the opera, they filed past the desk to hand their keys to the student, who deftly hung each dove-shaped holder over its cubbyhole until there were eleven little pendulums in a row, all swinging slowly to a stop, so that Molkho, who held the twelfth in his hand and didn’t feel at all tired after napping on the train, had an urge to hand it in too, go dine on wurst and fries in his working-class restaurant, and take in an opera himself, perhaps even his lost Don Giovanni. But, instead, he climbed slowly back up the stairs, passed his old number Seeks, now inhabited by turbaned Sikhs, and knocked lightly on the little Russian’s door.

There was no answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. If she’s fallen asleep, so much the better, he thought—but just then he heard a barefoot patter and she came to the door, a little woman barely taller than a child. “We have a problem,” he smiled glumly. “This is the only room there is, which means I’ll have to sleep in it too.” Far from sounding despairing, however, the gusty sigh he sat down with seemed to say that this was but a minor setback in a boldly conceived plan that not only had brought them safely in a matter of hours from Vienna to Berlin but had deposited them unerringly on the doorstep of a hotel that actually had a free room, though unfortunately only one. No, he thought as she gaped at him with her big and slightly bleary eyes, I have nothing against those baby blues at all, but they definitely do not turn me on. Still, concerned for her faith in the honorable intentions of the middle-aged widower she was entrusted to, he began to pace up and down, trying to overlook the clothing she had flung all over the room. Suppose she had some organic deformity that a night with her would reveal? After all, there must be some reason she was single, some hidden flaw that might not come to light in airports and department stores but only in more intimate circumstances. Could she be missing a breast? He would have liked to stroke her curly head paternally, but unsure if the gesture would meet with her approval, he tried thinking more practically, for time was passing and they still had to eat and get to sleep if they were to rise refreshed in the morning, when they would try to find a hole in the Iron Curtain big enough for her to slip through.

He began unpacking his things, for which as usual there were not enough hangers. (The reason hotel hangers were always in short supply, his wife had once explained to him, was the management’s fear that desperate guests might hang themselves on them, a theory perhaps less farfetched than it seemed.) Opening the closet, he removed the steamer trunk, which left no space for anything else, carried it as gently as a baby’s casket to the side of the bed, and made of it a table for his suitcase, from which he took out his toilet articles and the clothes for Paris that he wished to keep from getting creased. Had the double bed had two mattresses, he could have laid one on the floor, but he was not about to sleep on the bare rug, nor for that matter in a chair. With a smile at the barefoot Russian, who stood mesmerized by his flurry of activity, he entered the bathroom and locked the door behind him. The sink was full of soaking laundry, pairs of underpants and bras whose suds aroused in him a flicker of hope. Should he take them out and hang them up? In the end he used the faucet in the bathtub, where he washed and brushed his teeth before placing his toothbrush beside hers in its cup on a basis of perfect equality. Silently he peed into the toilet bowl, surprised at how clearheaded he felt. Should he phone his mother-in-law that he was back in Berlin or keep it as a surprise.

IF YOU’D LIKE TO CHANGE into fresh clothes, I’ll wait for you in the lobby,” said Molkho, translating each word into sign language. Still aghast at having her porter for a bedmate, the little Russian sat slumped on the messy bed with her plump legs spread outward and stared at him in a trance. “We’ll have a bite to eat,” said Molkho, “and then I’ll show you around and perhaps even take you to the wall. Just dress warmly, because the autumn nights here are freezing, though that’s something I needn’t tell a Russian.”

He put on his coat, reached for the key, and then left it for her in the door, hoping she didn’t blame him for their predicament, which could have befallen any two travelers. Having seen their guests off to the opera, the friendly Germans were dining in their kitchen, and Molkho put on his bifocals for a better view of them. Time passed. Had the little Russian gotten her signals crossed again? At last, the elevator opened and out she stepped in an old gray raincoat with a funny, matching beret. She had begun to understand him so much better without improving her Hebrew one bit that he was beginning to wonder if language was humanly necessary.

THE SAME DRIZZLE that had greeted them at the railroad station was still falling in the reddish haze of the streetlamps. They crossed some boards laid over the trench (the dirt from which, Molkho noticed, pleased to see that the city was built on its own ruins, was full of smashed brick, rotted sacking, rusty iron, and bits of broken glass) and walked to the restaurant. It was practically empty, its low prices unchanged, as were its greasy menus. While waiting for the two beers he ordered, he thought of breaking the ice with a joke about Russian politics making strange bedfellows but was discouraged by her timid look.

After supper he took her to window-shop in the little streets of the quarter, but she seemed so exhausted that he decided she had best go to bed. It was ten o’clock when they returned to the hotel. “If you’re tired, go to sleep,” he said, letting her into the room and going downstairs to telephone his mother-in-law from the lobby, where he asked the student to place a collect call to Israel. The old lady, however, was not in. Smiling at the thought of an eighty-three-year-old woman being out on the town at such an hour, he sat down to wait and try again. The lobby was pleasantly quiet: the Indians were still at the opera, the student was engrossed in his books, and one of his sisters was setting the breakfast tables in the dining room. I just pray we get through the night, Molkho thought, leafing through some German magazines. Not that there’s any reason not to. Whatever happens, if it happens at all, is up to her. He sat there for almost an hour, missing his wife, who would have liked such a civilized place, until the Indians began drifting in, contentedly chock-full of music. What opera had they seen? he wondered, watching them collect their keys and go upstairs. He rose and asked the sleepy student to place another call, but again there was no answer. Now he was beginning to worry. Why, he thought, casting a glance at the swords in their cabinets which seemed smaller than he had remembered them, they’re nothing but overgrown daggers! If I had come here with Ya’ara, everything might have been different. The student spread a mattress for himself in a corner and began to turn out the lights.

It was midnight when Molkho took the trusty elevator up to the second floor and opened the door of the room, relieved to find it dark and pungent with innocent sleep. Breathing softly and moving like a cat, he slipped off his shoes and took out his pajamas while casting a wary look at the woman in bed. Had she kept to her side of it or would she have to be rolled back? Though it was hard to tell in the dark, he saw no signs of trespassing. Just then however, scotching his optimism, her young body tossed restlessly. Hurrying to the bathroom, he shut the door and switched on the light. The little room had been the scene of intense activity and was so full of steam that he had to wipe the mirror to see himself. The laundry from the sink had been draped over the radiator with a frank lack of inhibition, and he fingered a pair of panties to see if they would be dry by the morning. Indeed, they would be. He was already undressed when he recalled that he hadn’t taken his daily shower. Afraid to wake his sleeping companion, he considered skipping it; but loyalty to his dead wife prevailed and he turned on the water, hoping the sound would blend with her dreams. As he was about to put on his pajamas he noticed they were missing several buttons. My God, he thought bitterly, I should never have agreed to van roomps! But it was too late for needle and thread, and so he switched off the bathroom light and groped his way toward the bed, sensing the little Russian’s eyes opening in the darkness. Though his side of the sheet was warm about the ankles, a sure sign that her feet had crossed the border, she had left him plenty of room. Turning his back to her, he curled up in a fetal ball. The night will pass quickly after all, he told himself, relaxing in the restful silence. It’s a good thing the hotel is full of Indians and not Italians or Greeks. Just then, however, he noticed her breathing, a faint suck of air like a whistle, almost a light snore. Though it was not at all loud or rasping, he felt stunned. I’ve been sleeping alone for too long, he thought, but I’ll get used to it right away.

BUT HE DID NOT. He remained wide awake, listening to her breathe. For a while he tried guessing where his mother-in-law might have gone. Then he thought of a newspaper article he once had read about how sleeping with a partner decreased one’s chances of heart disease. Indeed, for years he and his wife had slept closely entwined, and her heart had held out to the end. Only during her illness did his embrace become painful, while later, when she was moved to her hospital bed, they no longer slept on one level. Now he had risen again in the world, and were he not such a worrier, it would be natural to cuddle up to the pale form by his side, whose warmth might help him fall asleep. If he managed to return her to Russia, she would no doubt remember him fondly. Yet suppose he didn’t? A night like this could be misinterpreted; in fact, there was something quite animal about sleeping in one bed without a common language. Why didn’t she know Hebrew, grieved Molkho, rubbing his bare feet together, or at least a little English? Though the room was hot, the soles of his feet couldn’t seem to get warm.

Where was his mother-in-law? Was she, too, a secret vanisher? He thought of the summer day seven years ago when she disappeared outside the operating room, where they were waiting for the result of the first biopsy. Just then, much sooner than expected, the green-smocked surgeon appeared to report that it was positive and that the breast would have to be removed. He retired to a little office while Molkho, thunderstruck, ran off to tell his wife’s mother. But she was nowhere to be seen, and so he ran back to the office, where the surgeon was nursing a cup of coffee while studying some X rays spread out on a newspaper. Was he waiting for Molkho’s consent or just resting before the operation? Molkho never found out, though knocking lightly on the open door, he began to plead with the man. “If there isn’t any choice. I have complete faith in you. She’s in your hands. The main thing is to get it all out.” The surgeon listened quizzically, finished his coffee, and strode wordlessly back to the operating room, leaving Molkho standing by a wall as white as his wife’s breast, thinking of all the times he had kissed it and of how he would have liked to say good-bye, after which he went despairingly off to look once more for his mother-in-law, the only person who could comfort him, searching everywhere until he found her on a bench in another ward, chatting with a sick friend. Her smile disappeared as soon as she saw him, but at a loss for words, feeling angry at her for the first time in his life, the only way he could think of breaking the news was to slash the air with his hand.

He lay trying to still the feeling of perpetual motion inside him. Does it have some goal, he wondered, or will it just keep going round and round? Something told him the little Russian was awake: her smooth breathing had stopped and her wholesomely warm body was stiff with tension. Yes, she was awake, there was no doubt of it; he knew the signs well enough even in the dark. During the last weeks of his wife’s illness, he had known before she did when she was about to open her eyes. Suppose the little Russian were to touch him now, he wondered, his back still fetally curved to her. What would he do? Their three days together had not encouraged him to think that she was attracted to him. Again he quietly rubbed his cold feet, which were keeping him awake. Though the civil thing to do was to turn and make some gesture, if only to whisper good night, he didn’t want to excite her, for she had a long day ahead of her and would need all the sleep she could get. Suddenly he realized that it was raining outside. Was that what had awoken her? Then she would soon fall asleep again, for it was just a soft, windless patter. And yet she kept tossing and turning. There was a sigh, followed by a tug and release of the blanket. Perhaps she, too, would sleep better cuddled up to him, he thought, worrying whether it wasn’t his duty to help her in any way he could. He opened his eyelids a crack to peek at the dark steamer trunk on which he had put his bifocals. All at once the little Russian sighed again and sat up, as if trying to see beyond his curved back.

She can touch me, he thought. I won’t stop her. After all, she knows I’m not sleeping, because I just got into bed. She knows I’m listening to the rain just like she is. She can touch me all she wants. And just then she did, her warm little hand making him ache queerly. I won’t stop her, he thought. She can go ahead. Or does she think I’m asleep? He lay with his eyes shut tight, no longer a live fetus rocked by motion but a dead one in the grip of a fateful womb. The warm, plump hand stole up his neck and stroked the back of his head as it might a sick child. Suddenly she slipped out of bed. I’ll let her come to me, he thought. But she did not. She went to the bathroom, turned on the light, and shut herself silently up there.

He listened for the gurgle of water, but there was no sound at all, just the ceaseless dripping of the rain—no paper being torn, no bottle being opened, no comb or nightgown or pill, as if she were a hunted little animal afraid to give itself away. Long minutes passed, and he realized that she was waiting too, waiting for him to fall asleep. Then I will, he thought, curling up even tighter and feeling his feet grow warm, so that sleep finally seemed possible. I’m drifting with the current, drifting, drifting, drifting, he thought, wondering whether to coax his little rabbit back under the blankets before sleep enveloped him completely. But where was she? As consciousness faded, so did his sense of direction. Was she nearby or gone for good? But no, she couldn’t be. Not even the dead were ever gone for good.

AT NINE the next morning, carrying two large handbags that were packed with the little Russian’s clothes, the two of them stood in a dim underground passage leading to East Berlin, Molkho with his bifocals on in case he should have to read or sign some document. Woozy from his night of insufficient if determined sleep, he tried gauging the halting flow of border crossers ahead of him—most of them subdued West Germans—like a boatsman nearing rapids, careful not to crowd the little Russian, who had been so taciturn all morning that even her few words of Hebrew seemed forgotten. Not that he minded her silence. On the contrary, it was so welcome that he all but forgave the ugly woolen suit she was wearing again, her rigidly retouched curls, and her overdone makeup. Was he really about to part with her or was this just one more illusion? In either case, he thought, no one can say I haven’t done my best. He was sorry he hadn’t brought his camera, for a visit to the East was worth recording. Though he had heard reassuring reports about the day trip behind the Iron Curtain (in fact, had the legal adviser not slipped and gone to sleep on him, he might have taken it with her), it was only natural to feel a tingle of fear as he stood facing the metallic gray doors of Communism and the khaki-clad policeman guarding them. You would think, he reflected, that if we in the free world are willing to risk it, the least they could do is paint the entrance something cheerier.

Having demonstrated her independence of him by allowing a German woman with some shopping baskets to push ahead in line and stand between them, the plump little Russian stood aloofly waiting her turn, holding the laissez-passer that he had returned to her that morning after breakfast. If they arrest her, he thought, I can always pretend not to know her. But no one was arrested or even questioned. The two of them were given their visas and directed to some stairs at the far end of the passageway, from which they emerged into a quite ordinary street no different from the one they had left: the same cobblestones, the same people, the same strips of grass and flowers, the same stubborn drizzle that failed to distinguish between East and West. He opened the new umbrella he had bought, and she teetered sulkily beneath it on her high heels as far as the first corner, where they paused to ask someone directions to the Anti-Fascist War Memorial. Though the man knew no English or Russian, he understood them well enough to guide them to a wide boulevard, along which he briefly accompanied them until satisfied they were headed the right way.

Sharing the umbrella, they came to a large, somber edifice covered with scaffolding and sheets of gray plastic and stood staring up at it disappointedly until another passerby took them in hand and pointed across the boulevard, where several tourist buses stood parked before a square, neoclassical structure with a colonnaded facade. Crossing over, they soon found themselves surrounded by tourists speaking a babble of languages, among which the little Russian, her face lighting up, made out her own musical tongue. Eagerly she looked for the source of it, for the first time almost believing that Molkho’s wild scheme might yet work.

The group progressed slowly into a large, dim interior, in which, flanked by two East German honor guards standing at attention with bayoneted rifles, an eternal flame burned in a glass chamber. No one spoke. All eyes, including Molkho’s, were on the bluish tongues of fire that burst from a sooty opening in the floor, spellbound by their primitive magic. Slowly he shuffled forward with his companion, who, however, was staring not at the flames but at the German soldiers, as though to catch their attention. She stopped to read a Russian inscription on the floor and then, refusing to move on with the crowd, stood reading it again, sighing with such anguish that he instinctively edged away, as if she had some communicable disease.

All at once she uttered something out loud that drew curious stares in her direction. Molkho kept heading for the exit, where he stopped and waited for her to join him. But she did not. Instead, approaching a middle-aged couple, she began speaking to them like old friends, reaching into her handbag for her papers while they stared at her with puzzled sympathy, as if searching within themselves for the code to her distress signal. Yes, she can take care of herself, Molkho observed with sudden admiration, struck by how her poorly cut clothes seemed perfectly in place here, as if everyone else had employed the same tailor. Still, he was worried that her rapid-fire Russian might get him into trouble. Before I know it, they’ll repatriate me too, he thought, backing off to the safety of a dark niche in a wall.

HAD HE REALIZED those were to be their last moments together, he might not have acted so furtively but rather said a fond good-bye, perhaps even kissing her on both cheeks like a Frenchman. As it was, though, fearful of being incriminated in something he couldn’t explain, he waited half in hiding for the tourists to disperse and clear a space around her.

But the crowd simply grew thicker until nothing remained of her but a few flashes of red fabric. Of course, they’re curious, he thought. Everyone else wants out of here and she wants in—why, she’s making history! Although several men in uniform were approaching and he knew that now was the time to slip out to the boulevard and back to the West, her shrill voice made him cling to his corner. After all, he reasoned, I can always say I’m a decadent tourist who’s afraid of the rain.

Suddenly he heard her sob. At last, he thought with relief, listening in the ensuing hush to the traffic in the boulevard. It’s about time she let it all out. She sobbed again and then broke once more into speech, her melodic voice rising and falling as though a tightly wound spring were slowly unwinding inside her. Good for her, he thought, noticing an inscription on the stone wall: “Karl Friedrich Schinkel, 1816–1818.” Was she crying, too, for her humiliating night with him? But it was all for the best.

And indeed, the crowd around her now asked a pale little officer with a broad-brimmed cap and red lapels, who made Molkho think of a Turkish railroad conductor, to see what he could do. Accompanied by a policeman, he cleared a path to the little Russian and brought her to a sentry booth, in front of which two fresh soldiers with rifles stood ready for the changing of the guard. Assured she was in good hands, Molkho darted from his dark corner, opened his umbrella, and stepped back into the street. The gloomy edifice covered in plastic—which, his map told him, was the old Berlin Opera House—seemed a good vantage point from which to watch for her.

TRUE, THAT MORNING he had larded her handbag and coat pockets with a few more of the hotel’s visiting cards to ensure her safe return, but his responsibilities, he believed, included keeping up morale in case of failure, and so he remained loyally by the opera house, trying not to lose sight of the memorial, which was continually being blocked by more tourist buses. When after a while she failed to appear, he recrossed the boulevard and joined a group of noisy Spaniards who swept him back past the honor guard, which was beginning, so he thought, to be a bit unsteady on its feet. Though the sentry booth was open, neither his Russian nor the pale officer were in it. Had she gone looking for him? Surely she must have realized that she should wait for him where they had parted. Circling the building, he joined some more tourists of unknown nationality and filed past the blue flame again. “When does the guard change?” he asked a policeman in English, and was answered with a tap of the East German’s watch that seemed to mean a quarter of an hour. He went back out to the boulevard, bought a bun to appease his hunger, and returned for the changing of the guard, which took place quite simply, the two replacements stepping smartly up, barking a command in unison, and receiving custody of the flame. Just then the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, and despite the light drizzle, he resolved to go for a walk on the boulevard, which struck him as being more authentically Berlinish than the fashionable streets of the Western zone.

Stopping to ask directions, he was told that the boulevard led to the Brandenburg Gate. Soon he was there, gazing up at the Berlin Wall and its watchtowers from the East. Now, too, an ugly scar reminding the forgetful of the retribution visited upon the Nazi horror, he found it a welcome sight. Walking back up the boulevard, which was called Unter den Linden, he innocently followed a group of Dutch tourists into the memorial, the flame, perhaps because of the sunshine, now looking rather faded. He stood through a lecture in Dutch, passed the sentry booth, where two guards were having lunch, and set out to look for the little Russian in the tourist shops of the Alexanderplatz. But she was not there either, and lured back by the magical flame, he returned to the memorial. Finding it empty, he entered and strolled past the honor guard, head down to avoid recognition, since by now he had been there a suspicious number of times.

It’s time to start back, he told himself, noticing the darkening sky. Indeed, the little Russian was most probably waiting in the hotel. He returned to the checkpoint, first stopping by a candy and souvenir stand that was meant to help relieve the visitor of his remaining East German marks, where, under the stern eyes of the kiosk operator, he did some complicated sums to decide how best to spend the money. It was something he was good at. More than once, while waiting for a flight back to Israel, he had exasperated his wife by running back and forth in the airport to buy souvenirs and chocolates, emptying his pockets of every last coin as if he meant never to travel again.

THE TRENCH HAD RETREATED up the busy street, which was bathed in the first rays of twilight when Molkho returned to the hotel. At the desk the schoolgirl was doing her homework, and everything seemed so familiar that he almost expected to see the legal adviser too. Disappointingly, though, his and the little Russian’s key was still in its cubbyhole. Loath to admit by asking about her that he couldn’t keep track of his women, he took the key with a smile, said a few words in German, and went up to the room, in which no one had been but the chambermaid. He considered a nap but chose to shower instead, thus easing pressure on the bathroom later on when they might want to go to the opera. While he was under the water, the telephone rang. Dripping wet, he ran to get it, but it was only the proprietor, happily informing him that there had been a cancellation and that another room was available. “On which floor?” asked Molkho doubtfully. “On the first,” said the German. “On the first? Don’t you have anything on the second?” No, replied the German slyly, he did not, though who knew better than his guest how few stairs there were between them. “All right,” mumbled Molkho into the phone, “I’ll let you know soon.”

He went to dry himself, wondering why he felt so put out. Was it simply his hating to waste the money? After all, the two of them had reached an understanding that was certainly good for one more night. Nevertheless, he went downstairs to see the room, which turned out to be tiny, almost prisonlike in its dimensions, as though it were the original cell from which the rest of the hotel had grown. Molkho hesitated. “There’s no air here,” he complained to the schoolgirl, who, meaning well, opened a small window. Unappeased, he went off to see the proprietor. Yet, though aware of the room’s deficiencies, the German urged Molkho to take it, since his present room was only good for one more night and he didn’t want to be left out in the cold.

Molkho agreed and was given a new registration form.

HAD HE NOT FELT SO SURE she would be back by midnight, he would never have rented the second room, but despite her talent for disappearing, he was certain that sooner or later she would have to return. He scribbled a note that said, “I’m here”; tore it up because she would be unable to read it; printed another note, which said “I’ve gone for a walk”; tore that up because she would be unable to understand it; and finally settled on a third note, which said, “I will be back.” Then he went out to have a look around and to shop for more presents.

Though it was dark outside and the construction, which was apparently going to be a new shopping mall, gave the quaint streets a harsh look, he still felt perfectly at home: every corner, shop, and restaurant reminded him of his previous stay, which he now saw in a magical light. Could I really have been happier then, he wondered, or was it just the combination of snow, sleep, and music? He felt a sudden urge to revisit the beer cellar where he and the legal adviser had spent their last night, found it easily, and descended to the large hall, which was even more hideous when empty, its cold walls smelling of stale tobacco. Paying no attention to the dozen or so waiters eating at a long table in a corner, he strode silently among the tables set with fresh red cloths. “You killed her,” she had said to him with a squirrelly look, sitting over there. “Yes,” he had answered suavely, keeping his wits about him, “but in that case, so did you.” “Perhaps, but not in the same way,” she had retorted. He should have had a comeback for that too. She never gave me a chance, he thought. It was much too soon after my wife’s death. Today I’d think of something that would put her in her place. “No, thank you,” he said to an approaching waiter who was about to show him to a table, “I’m only looking for a friend.”

He returned to the hotel, hoping to find his little Russian. But the key was still in its cubbyhole, his note a white feather sticking out of the dove-shaped holder. He tore it up, took the keys to both rooms, debated which to make his own, and climbed to the second floor, passing his first opera-bound Indian of the evening. From the room he tried placing a long-distance call to his mother-in-law, who was out again, after which he called his Haifa apartment. The high school boy answered, his voice indistinct. “It’s Dad,” shouted Molkho. “It’s Dad. How is everything?” The boy ran to turn off the television and returned. “Where are you?” he asked. “I’m in Berlin, Gabi, in West Berlin,” Molkho said. “I’m trying to cross her over from here. Why isn’t there any answer at Grandma’s? I’ve been trying to get her for days.”

The boy didn’t know why there wasn’t any answer, because his brother and sister were with their sick grandmother right now. “Sick?” Why couldn’t he be less vague! “Yes,” said Gabi. “She broke her arm and caught a bad cold.” “She broke her arm? Which? When? How?” asked Molkho excitedly. But the boy only knew that his grandmother was in a cast and had been in bed for several days—how many he couldn’t say. Afraid to run up the bill, Molkho hung up and paced worriedly about the room; then, hastily putting some things in his suitcase, he went down with it to the little room on the first floor and proceeded from there to the lobby. The gaily lit bar was deserted. Exhaustedly he leaned against the counter, sorry he hadn’t gone to the opera instead of waiting on tenterhooks here.

Through the open door of the kitchen he watched the German family eat dinner, ladling some sort of dumpling soup out of a large bowl. In a corner flickered the spectral blue light of a television, on which an announcer was reading a weather forecast from a map crisscrossed with arrows. Would he like to join them for a bowl of Schwemmele? asked the proprietor, noticing him and pointing to the doughy gray dumplings. Tempted, Molkho declined. “Thank you,” he replied warmly. Everything looked delicious, but he did not wish to spoil his appetite, for his lady friend would soon arrive and go out with him to eat. He had simply been trying to make out the forecast. “It could be worse,” said the German. “Lots of rain.” “But no snow?” smiled Molkho. “No snow,” the German laughed, remembering Molkho’s last visit. He translated for his family, which broke out laughing too. Oh no! No snow! Not yet! They must think I’m some sort of eccentric, Molkho thought as he stepped out into the street. First I bring them a sleeper and then a vanisher, although the truth is that the sleeper brought me.

A thin rain was falling again, and he walked down the block through the yellow fog, hoping his Russian might appear. Could she be lost in it somewhere, wandering between East and West? He recalled his last glimpse of her, sobbing childishly while a crowd formed around her as the pale East German officer arrived. Or was she perhaps crying for joy? Not everyone keeps his emotions under wraps like me, he thought, stepping into his working-class restaurant. Though he considered ordering Schwemmele, he dutifully asked for wurst and fries, as if determined to make up for all the sausage meat denied him as a child by his mother, who claimed it was made from offal. He returned to the hotel, wrote a new note that said, “I am in Room 1,” and entered his dwarflike cell. Leaving his suitcase unopened, he took off his shoes and lay down to wait in his clothes with the light on.

HE MUST HAVE switched off the light in his sleep, because it was dark when he awoke hours later. At first, he couldn’t remember where he was. When he did, his first thought was of his mother-in-law. So now she’s broken her arm, he thought. That’s a bad business. At her age the bones don’t knit, which means I’ll have a cripple on my hands. Thank God it’s just an arm. Or is it? His son had sounded as if he were hiding something. His wife had been right to insist the old woman move to the home. Not that there couldn’t be problems there too. Why, just look how she had gone and fallen the minute his back was turned!

He could feel his anger at her growing. She had bitten off more than she could chew this time, and he was the one who would pay for it. He rose and descended to the lobby, where the only light came from the little bulbs lighting the cabinets of swords and maps. The clock showed after two. Behind the desk the student was asleep on his mattress. A lone dove nested in its cubbyhole. Beside it was his note, which he took and read. “I am in Room 1.” Then they must have taken her after all! Could it really have gone so smoothly? Or had they simply locked her up for disorderly conduct? And I didn’t even say good-bye, he mused sadly, missing his little rabbit. Why hadn’t he touched or kissed her plump breasts, which now seemed such an overture to pleasure? Returning to his room, he switched on the night-light and sat guiltily on the edge of the bed. It was irresponsible, even cowardly, to have left her, he thought, studying his passport, which the East Germans hadn’t bothered to stamp. Why couldn’t he have waited to see what happened to her, the two old women would ask, not fathoming his fear of being trapped in the East himself. The tiny room made him feel claustrophobic. He returned to the lobby, took the last key, went back to Room 1, packed a few things, and ascended with them to Room 9. If I’m paying for two rooms, I may as well sleep in both, he thought.

HE SLEPT LATE and saw by the luggage in the lobby when he came down for breakfast that most of the guests were checking out. A young girl was waxing the furniture and a thorough cleaning was under way.

He spent the morning buying a few last presents, sticking close to the hotel in the hope that his little Russian might give some sign of life, and then returned to the checkpost after lunch. “I crossed yesterday,” he told the East German policeman he handed his passport to, “and I liked it so much I’ve come back. Is that all right?” “Of course,” said the policeman without looking up. “Come back all you like. There’s no problem as long as you cross back before midnight.” He received his visa, ascended to the street, and strolled down Unter den Linden to the old opera house, from which he surveyed the War Memorial across the street. Then, joining a group of tourists, he filed past the glass-enclosed flame and the honor guard. Who knows, he thought, perhaps it really worked. Back on the boulevard he asked some East Germans for the Soviet embassy, but no one seemed to know where it was, and so he proceeded to the Alexanderplatz and walked about among the shops, watching some carefree teenagers who looked like youngsters anywhere. We project our fears and fantasies on the world, he thought, but the world just shrugs them off. He glanced at his map, in the margin of which his mother-in-law’s old address was still written, trying to orient himself.

Perhaps he should ask directions, he thought, debating whether to strike out for some low buildings to the east on which the autumn sun shone mildly. In the end he turned to an elderly woman, showing her the writing on the map. “Taxi?” he asked. She stopped to think. “No taxi,” she replied, pointing toward an entrance to the underground. “Metro?” inquired Molkho. “Metro,” she agreed, happy to find a word in common. He looked at her closely. She had a trustworthy, proletarian face with gray hair pulled straight back and glasses that she removed to study the map. “Magdalenastrasse,” she said, pointing to the underground again and ticking off seven stations on her fingers. He nodded gratefully, trying to memorize the name, but seeing it was hard for him, she took a pen and wrote it on the map. Then, as if assisting a foreigner were a privilege that she was determined to make the most of, she turned and climbed down the stairs to the underground, motioning to him to follow.

He did. After all, he smiled to himself, even if she was once a secret agent, she’s past retirement age. They came to a gate with a machine that sold tickets and a smaller one that stamped them, though in the absence of guards or ticket takers anyone could have walked right in. Fancy an underground honor system! thought Molkho, who nevertheless feared losing his way in the subterranean labyrinth. But it was too late to change his mind, for his elderly guide had already bought him a ticket and was leading him onto the platform.

Once aboard, he sat beside her and counted the stations, feeling one with the motion of the train, which was quite modern and not at all noisy, though the tunnel it sped through seemed rather crudely hacked out. Bad finish, that’s the trouble with Communism, he thought, postponing further consideration of the subject until his return to Israel, because meanwhile here he was in East Berlin, traveling the underground with ordinary people like himself. At the fifth stop his guide got off, holding up two fingers to indicate the stations that were left as if unsure whether foreigners could count. The other passengers now watched him for her. He wondered what they would think if they knew he was looking for his dead wife’s first home.

He got off at Magdalenastrasse, the whole car making sure that he didn’t miss his stop. Climbing some stairs to ground level, he saw that he was in an old residential area, far from the tourist sites and shops. He had barely taken a few steps when he noticed a sign with the name of his wife’s street, which a quick glance revealed to be only a few shabby blocks long. He smiled wryly, thinking of his mother-in-law. So you were right after all. There was nothing here to come back to. Nothing that has to do with you or her.

AND YET, suppose, Molkho thought, that his wife had wanted to come back—suppose she had—would she have recognized anything in this dreary street or only imagined that she had? That playground, for instance, with its little green gate made for children that led to a battered seesaw and some old trees with metal guards that stood sullenly stripped of their leaves. And yet it was here that her mother must have wheeled her in her carriage and here that she first began to crawl, memories that should have moved her as the thought of them moved him. Or that grocery over there—was it as drab before the War too, the few unappetizing tins of crackers, bottles of bilious oil, and bars of soap in its window suggestive of a trading post in some provincial backwater? Slowly he walked down the street, fingering his passport with its East German visa in his pocket. I’ve seen so many spy movies that I can’t help thinking I’m being followed, he thought, though turning around to look will just make me seem more suspicious. I’d better walk slowly enough for any tail to have to pass me, though not so slowly as to be conspicuous. Not as though I were looking for something, but more like someone out for a stroll, someone who isn’t quite well. Yes, that’s it, he thought eagerly—like someone who hasn’t been well and is just getting over it!

His mother-in-law hadn’t told him the house number, nor had he thought of asking her, never imagining he would return to Berlin so soon, a notion that would have seemed preposterous; yet now, trying to guess which house had been hers, he felt sure his wife would have approved of him despite all her principles. Yes, sometimes she had wanted him to resist her, not to be so afraid. Because I was afraid of you, he murmured.

A fine, lacy rain had begun to fall and Molkho quickened his steps until he came to a fish store that seemed in such an unlikely location that the only explanation for its being there was that it always had been. Somber gray swordfish lay on beds of crushed ice, and a woman sitting by a large tiled tub stared out the window at him, perhaps hoping he might buy a fish. Did she share in the store’s profits or was she simply a state employee who didn’t care if there were any? Once more regretting his mother-in-law’s vagueness, he walked as far as a large apartment building at the street’s end, crossed to its other side, and headed back at a convalescent pace, passing the fish store again and noticing old bullet holes in the walls of some of the houses. Enough! he scolded himself, worried that his leisurely promenade would be noticed from a window. Be glad you found the street. What does the house matter? Don’t be a worse perfectionist than she was! And yet the desire to know where she had lived persisted. For a whole year she’s run my life by remote control, he thought bitterly. It’s as though I’ve gone right on looking after her. How can I stop now?

He started back toward the underground, yet something in him would not admit defeat, and turning into another gray side street that was full of children on their way home from school, he stepped into a small stationery store with an old-fashioned bell that tinkled each time someone entered. Here, he felt sure, his wife had once bought her school supplies. There was no display window, all the merchandise being ranged behind the counter, and Molkho took out a ten-mark note, mentally chose a pencil and a notebook as mementos, and awaited his turn in the line of quiet children. Behind him the bell tinkled again and a new band of youngsters entered the store, among them a tall blond girl with large glasses and a wistful stare.

Molkho pointed in silence to the items on a shelf, smiling sagely to confirm the storeowner’s selection. He received a handful of change, stepped back out into the street, waited for the girl to emerge, and set out after her at a safe distance with a quicker though still ruminative gait. The girl, who had on an old gray raincoat, walked as far as the corner and turned familiarly into his wife’s deserted street. This is as far as I go, he told himself, a shiver running down his spine. I’ve done all I could, I cared for her to the end, and even if she still expects me to follow her, it’s time I thought of myself. I have children who need me, an old mother in Jerusalem, and a mother-in-law with a broken arm. Even in a free country a middle-aged man trailing a strange girl down an empty, rainy street would seem suspicious. And, indeed, the girl now turned around to look, her glasses glinting in the gray light. With a show of unconcern, he watched her disappear through a doorway. Suppose I say that’s the house, then, he told himself. Suppose I do. Isn’t that enough?

AFTER ALL, he thought, it’s not me who lived there or lay there having dead babies. It’s no concern of mine—why stand here with my heart in my throat? And yet he kept on toward it down the unpronounceable street, which swerved oddly at that point, as if badly rebuilt from a wartime bombing. Barely half an hour had passed since his descent into the underground, yet he was so wet to the bones from the driving rain that he felt he had to get out of it and so took shelter in the entrance to the house, a prewar apartment building that appeared to have seen better days. Several mailboxes lined a small vestibule that was too dark for him to read the names on them, and he opened a door that led to a dimly lit staircase, beside which stood the small red cage of an elevator. Then this really is it! he exulted, staring at the ancient box, which suddenly rose with an animal wheeze in response to a call from above, malignantly dragging its dark tail of cables behind it.

He waited in vain for it to return, its caller having apparently vanished. At last, he pressed the button himself. With a jerk and a wheeze the gray tail slid past, followed by the red cage. Molkho opened the two doors of ancient grillwork, entered the malignant cell, and pressed a button, watching the apartment slip by. Once, long ago, her faith in life already shattered, a young girl had stepped forth from one of those doors on her way to Jerusalem. But did I really kill her? he wondered. The elevator stopped, letting him out in a hallway, where he first looked for a door without a name and then knocked on one that had several. There was silence, followed by the scrape of a chair across a floor. A child clambered up to reach the high lock and opened the door a crack, peering earnestly out at the stranger. “Doctor Starkmann?” Molkho asked the wide-eyed little boy, who was apparently all alone. “Doctor Starkmann?” The boy frowned adorably, as if trying to recall the man who had killed himself here fifty years ago, and made a move to shut the door. For a second Molkho tried stopping him, flattening himself sideways as if to slip through the crack; then, with a quick backward step, he turned and dashed down the stairs and into the rainy street to the underground, by which he returned to the Alexanderplatz, which now seemed safely familiar, despite the falling night.

IF YOU’RE NOT OUT TO CHANGE THE WORLD, even East Berlin can be home, Molkho thought, passing the War Memorial again, where the tongues of flame flared up in the darkness with a stark beauty. Maybe I should take one last look inside so that I can say I tried everything. Attaching himself to some tourists, he was delighted to discover that they were French and that he finally could understand what the guide was saying. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, it appeared, was the name of the architect of the building, a neoclassical structure with Doric steps and columns that was built in 1816–1818. A guardhouse during the nineteenth century, it was converted into a war memorial after World War I and rededicated to the victims of militarism and fascism after World War II. Molkho listened with interest to the lively questions of the French tourists and then followed them across the boulevard to the old Berlin Opera House, which they were allowed to enter, despite the renovation underway.

He climbed the steps, which were even steeper than those of the West Berlin opera house. If the legal adviser had fallen here, he thought, she would have broken her neck. Beneath a high portico with grimy ecclesiastical walls, their guide lectured them about the building’s architecture. What a pity there’s no performance tonight, thought Molkho, whose musical reputation in Haifa would soar if he could see an opera in East Berlin. Meanwhile, impressed by the Frenchmen’s curiosity, their guide found a way to usher them into the plastic-wrapped auditorium, where some old paintings on the ceiling were being restored. From a side door came the sound of music and singing. “What’s that?” asked the Frenchmen. Unable to answer, their guide opened the door to reveal a small recital hall, where onstage several singers were rehearsing around a table. Could they watch for a while? he asked in German. “But of course!” said the opera singers. It would give them great pleasure for the visitors from France to see them work.

The stage was bare except for a piano and the singers kept repeating a single ensemble, which the short, dark conductor frequently interrupted to comment on. And yet though after a while the French tourists began to fidget, Molkho remained attentive. Even when they left, he stayed behind in his dark corner, particularly enthralled by one of the sopranos, whom he couldn’t take his eyes off. He had never been to a rehearsal before, and while he knew he never would see the finished product, watching an opera come into being seemed to him a rare experience.

The music was unfamiliar, and he hadn’t the vaguest idea if it was modern, romantic, or even classical. Indeed, sometimes it sounded so primitive that it could have been medieval, though he seemed to remember that opera did not exist then. Gradually his interest centered on the conductor, a furiously energetic little man who hopped about the stage waving his hands, breaking into snatches of song, rushing over to correct the pianist, even snatching the score from the hands of the performers and penciling in new notations, as if he were not only conducting the opera but composing it. The more exhausted the singers grew from his efforts, the more possessed he seemed to become.

Suddenly, noticing a sphinxlike figure in a corner of the stage, Molkho was gripped by the fear that the man was a musical commissar who might give an order to detain him and prevent his return to the West. Rising stealthily, he began to grope his way out. The music stopped. A hush descended on the stage. The little conductor called out to him in German. Stumbling down the aisles, Molkho ignored him. They’ll accuse me of musical espionage yet, he thought, making quickly for the door. The commissar rose from his seat. Someone called out again, and this time Molkho turned to look.

Though the singers could not see him clearly, the stage being lit and the hall in darkness, they seemed to think they knew him. “Siegfried?” called one of them in a friendly voice. “Siegfried?” Molkho spun around, but there was no one behind him, and he remained standing with his shoulders hunched forward, one hand over his eyes as if staring off into space. “Pardon?” he answered hoarsely, convinced the French word, half a question and half an apology, would be understood. “Pardon?” Stumbling on to the door, which to his relief was unlocked, he passed down a hallway full of more scaffolds and tools, exited into the broad boulevard, and hurried back to the checkpoint. Without bothering to rid himself of his East German marks, he stood in line with his passport, handed a policeman his visa, and returned to the West in the very best of moods.

THE TRENCH NEAR THE HOTEL had been filled in during the day, making the going in the street much easier. The lobby itself, however, was in an uproar: a noisy new group of Italians had arrived and all hands were busy with their reception. A merry fire crackled in the corner, and in cubbyhole number 1 were three messages in German that were immediately translated into English. The first message was from Fraulein Zand, who had telephoned that afternoon from East Berlin to tell Molkho not to worry because they had taken her, although who had taken her where was far from clear. The second message was from his daughter, Enat, who wished him to know that she would pick him up at the airport tomorrow night. As for the third message, it was from the hotel itself, informing him that Room 9 was now occupied as per prior warning, all its contents having been moved to Room 1.

He ascended to the first-floor room. Though great pains had been taken to find space for the little Russian’s belongings, the trunk, having proved an insurmountable challenge, had simply been laid on the bed as if Molkho were expected to sleep on it. At once he returned to the lobby to discuss the matter with the proprietress, who smiled at him charmingly from her post behind the bar, which had already opened for the evening. He himself, Molkho explained, was checking out in the morning, but the trunk belonged to Fraulein Zand, who had moved to East Berlin, though she might yet come back for it. The owner’s wife was sorry to hear about the Fraulein, but regarding the trunk, there was no problem: it was not the first piece of luggage to be left behind, and there was a special storage space for such items in the basement. She summoned the grandfather, who took the wooden trunk down with Molkho in the elevator, from which they dragged it across the lobby past a tumult of Italians, into the kitchen, through a small trapdoor, and down the basement stairs. Indeed, the old man was so gymnastic that it seemed to move by itself, bumping and bouncing along while Molkho apologized in English for the trouble and was answered with a friendly but uncomprehending nod.

The basement itself was warm, dry, and well kept. Firewood and racks of wine bottles stood against two walls, some tools and an old shotgun hung from a third, and the abandoned pieces of luggage were ranged along a fourth, each with its owner’s name written on it in large letters. As they pushed the trunk into place the old German stood looking at it thoughtfully, and Molkho realized that he wished to know what was in it. A not unreasonable request, he decided, miming that he didn’t have the key and that the lock would have to be pried off. At once the old man brought a flashlight and pliers, and they set to work, wrenching off the lock, opening the trunk, and rummaging through its contents, which predictably contained nothing but clothes and a few boxes of Israel sanitary napkins, whose square Hebrew lettering here, beneath the surface of Berlin, made Molkho feel suddenly homesick. Satisfied, the old German replaced the lock so expertly that no one could see it had been tampered with, and they climbed back up to the kitchen and went off together to wash. Once more the proprietor urged Molkho to join the family for dinner, and this time he agreed, thinking of the steaming Schwemmele he had been so curious to taste.

He was seated at the head of the table, by the grandmother. Why hadn’t he gone to the opera, everyone wanted to know. And so, in an English that was translated into German, he told them about his little Russian and her adventures in East Berlin, while they listened in astonishment, incredulous that anyone might wish to return to a place all wanted to flee from—indeed, briefly even suspecting him of being a secret agent, perhaps of having attempted to smuggle the legal adviser into East Germany too. Molkho turned red. Oh no, he laughed awkwardly, this was strictly a one-time affair. But why? they demanded. I believe she has a lover there, he told them, thinking of the first plausible excuse. There was no way of getting him out, so she decided to go back. Aha, they nodded, understanding at last, though still finding it hard to accept.

WHO WOULD HAVE BELIEVED two trips to Berlin in one year? Molkho asked himself, strapping himself into his El Al seat on the Saturday night flight from Munich. There was a full moon, and the sky was so clear that the captain kept directing the passengers to look at some magic sight below. Once his dinner tray was removed above the already snowy Alps, Molkho took out a sheet of paper and itemized his expenses, which fell far short of the eight hundred dollars given him. I must have forgotten some meals in Vienna or on the train to Berlin, he thought distractedly; this couldn’t be all I spent on her. At last he tore up the paper. His mother-in-law was unlikely to ask for an accounting, and even if she did, he could always add a service charge. Despite her condition, he looked forward to seeing her. He rose and strolled about the plane, searching the passengers for a familiar face, peering into the stewards’ quarters, and going to the bathroom, where he dabbed himself with some lotion left in a bottle on the sink. Over the Aegean he conversed with a fellow passenger about the latter’s aromatic cigar, which a stewardess, much to Molkho’s sorrow, had insisted he put out. When the man offered him one to take home, Molkho hesitated and then stuck it in his pocket. He had given up tobacco years ago, he said, but he would smoke the cigar at home and remember its generous bestower.

Standing in line at passport control, he caught sight of his daughter on the other side of the barrier and felt his heart skip a beat, for something must have happened for her to get permission to proceed beyond the arrival gate. “It’s Grandma,” she wept, throwing her arms around him. “She’s in a bad way, she keeps losing consciousness.” He clung to her in silence. “We’ve got to hurry if you want to speak to her,” said Enat. “She’s been so worried about you.” He hugged her hard and asked about her two brothers. “They’re fine,” she replied.

It was 10 P.M. when they emerged from the terminal into the cool, crisp air. One hand gripping his suitcase and the other resting on Enat, he let her relate the events of the past week. His mother-in-law, it seemed, feeling rather guilty for sending him off to Europe, had come straight back from the airport to make lunch for the high school boy, who was alone, and had slipped and broken her arm on the garden stairs, where she lay painfully in the cold until a neighbor happened by and called a taxi to bring her back to her home. That was on Monday, but the children heard nothing until Wednesday, when her Russian friend called to tell them she had pneumonia. On Thursday she was moved to the fifth-floor medical ward, where her condition was serious. “Now you see,” Molkho said, “why your mother and I made her enter a home. We were thinking of emergencies like this.”

Enat asked her father to drive. “Why don’t you,” he said, admiring the ease with which she handled the car. They reached Haifa before midnight and drove straight to the home. The night guard recognized them and opened the big glass door, and Molkho’s daughter guided him across the lobby and into the elevator to the fifth floor, where the nurse on duty rose deferentially to greet them. “This is my father,” said Enat in low tones. The nurse shook his hand warmly. “How was your flight, Mr. Molkho?” she inquired. “It was fine,” he replied, “very smooth.” “But you must be exhausted,” she said worriedly. “Not at all,” Molkho smiled. “I’m still on European time, and it’s an hour earlier there. How are things here?” The nurse shook a despairing head and led them to a dimly lit room in which, softly etched in the moonlight, Omri was dozing by the window. Gently Molkho went over and put his hand on him. The poor kids, he grieved, afraid to glance at the large bed, though he already knew everything, for Death, his old friend from last autumn, was waiting here in the room. They still aren’t over their mother and now this. It’s just a matter of hours.

She lay there gauntly with her broken left arm in a cast and her wiry hair in disarray on the pillow, so small and nakedly frail that it gave him a start. Her eyelids fluttered and she breathed with difficulty. Suddenly Death was real again, eliding the year that had passed. Enat took her grandmother’s hand. “Here’s Dad,” she said. The old woman opened her eyes. But did they see him? Molkho leaned over her. No, they didn’t know who he was. Their clever gleam was gone forever.

BUT HE WISHED to give her an accounting. He had carried out his mission against all odds, and he wanted her to know it. After all, she had been worried about him, and if he hadn’t lived up to her secret hopes for him and her friend’s daughter, it wasn’t for lack of good intentions. Yet, though Death was still waiting in the wings, this was no time to talk about his trip, for he knew from her fluttering eyes and labored breath that, her lips moving slightly, she was engaged in a more primal dialogue with herself.

He felt proud of his two elder children, especially of Enat, who had taken such good care of her grandmother, despite the trauma of her mother’s death. “Has Gabi been here too?” he asked. Yes, he was told. In fact, the boy had spent such long hours in the hospital that the nurses had forced him to go home. Molkho was satisfied. “You see,” he said to the nurse with a wry smile, “I’m not exactly a stranger to all this.” “Yes, I know,” she answered gently, and happy to see he was appreciated, he proceeded to inquire about his mother-in-law’s blood pressure, her pulse, her X rays, her temperature, her medicines, and the machines she was hooked up to.

Watching his daughter wet her grandmother’s lips with a Q-tip, he felt a wistful resentment. How afraid she had been even to approach her dying mother, and now she sat up with her grandmother as devotedly as if it were her mother instead. “Why don’t you go home now,” he said, putting an arm around her. “Why don’t you both go home and let me stay. Perhaps she’ll come to and we’ll be able to talk. Go on home. It’s later for you than for me, because I’m still on European time. I’ll call you if I need you. Just give me money for a taxi and take my suitcase. There’s chocolate in it for you, and tomorrow I’ll tell you everything.”

He inspected the night table by his mother-in-law’s bed. There was no tape machine in the drawer, not even a radio. “Why couldn’t you have played her some music like I did for your mother?” he asked his two eldest children. “Why didn’t you think of it?” But they had, they told him. Their grandmother hadn’t wanted it.

THEN LET IT BE WITHOUT, Molkho thought. What makes me so sure that dying is easier with music? Maybe it’s just harder. He went to wash and then telephoned his mother, gravely waking her in the middle of the night to inform her that he was home. “I don’t think she has long now,” he glumly told her, alarming her with the news, as if she were certain that Death, once finished in Haifa, would make a beeline for Jerusalem. “Don’t wake her,” she pleaded. “Let her rest.” He hung up and walked down the corridor, peering into the other rooms. Was Death waiting in them too? In one lay two old men hooked up to tubes and instruments. In another was a surprisingly young-looking woman and a private nurse reading a newspaper. In a third was yet another man who groaned in his sleep.

He returned to his mother-in-law’s room. She was having trouble breathing, and he opened a window to let in some air. The mild night was cool and clear, the sky studded with big stars, the invisible sea a velvety blur in the background. We in this country don’t appreciate what a human climate we have, he reflected, feeling a tap on his shoulder. It was the nurse, come to change the intravenous and bring him some coffee. He sipped it in his chair, no longer Death’s humble apprentice but its seasoned overseer, watching her attach the fresh solution. His mother-in-law opened her eyes. He gave her a tragic smile, the coffee mug unsteady in his hand. But already her eyes were blank, the moment of recognition, if such it was, passing at once. Let her wake when she’s ready, he thought, it’s up to her. Indeed, he could not help but suspect that she might be avoiding him. Had she really intended to fix him up with the little Russian? His wife had often accused him of harboring unconscious motives, and in retaliation, he had tried to find them in her too; but since her death he had rarely thought about such things, the unconscious sinking into oblivion.

AT MIDNIGHT he was awakened from a light sleep by the laughter of the new shift, two young nurses in starched blue uniforms and white bonnets who looked like they still were students. He and his mother-in-law were delivered to their care with a report on the previous eight hours that included a few words about him. “This is her son-in-law. He just flew in from Berlin.” “Especially?” asked the new nurses in surprise. “No,” Molkho said, “I was planning to come anyway.” “But you must be exhausted,” they said. “Why don’t you let us fix you up a bed?” Molkho thanked them but explained it wasn’t necessary: he lived nearby and was hoping his mother-in-law might regain consciousness long enough for him to have a few words with her. “And anyway,” he added with a self-deprecating smile, “I’m an hour up on you because I’m still on European time.” They took his empty mug, darkened the room a bit, and shut the door, leaving him cozily alone with the old woman and Death, though he still could hear them talking on the other side of the wall. They were louder but better-looking than the day shift, especially one of them, a vivacious, ivory-skinned brunette that something in him found irresistible. In recent years the girls had gotten prettier, that much was for sure.

IF SHE’S REALLY DYING, he thought after dozing off again and waking up with a start, imagining for a moment that she had disappeared from the bed, at least she’s doing it easily. I should only die as easily myself. It was 2 A.M. and he felt stiff and tired. Going to the door, he looked out at the quiet ward. Only the dark-haired nurse was visible, her graceful white neck arched like a swan’s above a book, a transistor radio beside her playing soft Arab music. Passing behind her as softly as a shadow, he did a sudden double take, for the book was in Arabic too. But how could I have mistaken her for a Jew? he wondered, appalled by the blindness of desire, he who had always prided himself on telling the two peoples apart. Was the other nurse also an Arab? He sought her in the hallway, failed to find her, looked in on the two old men, and noticed that an intravenous needle had slipped from its bag and was beginning to take in air. Nervously he readjusted it and returned to his mother-in-law’s room, pleased with himself and swearing at the nurses, who, aware that he was up and about, soon came to ask if he meant to stay the night. “Yes,” said Molkho, “if I can.” “Then why not lie down?” they suggested again. “If she wakes, we’ll wake you too.” “No, thanks,” he declined after a moment’s thought. He was fine as he was, though he wouldn’t object to another cup of coffee and a pillow. Intrigued by his stout, loyal figure, they brought him the coffee, a pillow, and a blanket, and he covered himself and settled back in his chair to watch the old woman fight for breath in her corner. Now and then, she opened unseeing eyes, as if deliberately snubbing him.

Suddenly he jumped to his feet, called for the nurses, and demanded that the bed be moved. “She has no air,” he told them indignantly. “Move her nearer to the window, with her face toward the sunrise. Move her!” he insisted. “The bed has wheels, move it!” They looked at each other in bewilderment, not knowing what to do, but his adamance was such that at last they gave in, first moving the chairs to make room. Drunk with fatigue he stood watching, remembering his wife with her earphones in the large hospital bed, like a radio operator going into battle. Now her mother was off to the front lines too, wheeled eastward toward a sun that soon would rise. Yes, he knew how every window in this hospital faced.

It was 3 A.M. It’s only 2 A.M. in Europe, Molkho thought, but so what? I’m not on their time anymore.

THE OLD WOMAN did not awaken when moved. He leaned over to speak to her, calling her name, praying for five minutes of consciousness. Why, she can’t leave me like this, he thought, desperate for a word with her. Yet, though her eyes kept fluttering open, even resting on him with seeming approval, she refused to come to. Did she know he was there? Could she hear him? He didn’t want to talk to the wall. Her thin arm helpless in its cast, like a schoolgirl’s hurt at play, filled him with pity and grief. Would she be buried like that? He wet her lips with the Q-tip, watching her hand fanning in Death. “Maybe we should call a doctor,” he pleaded with the nurses, who saw no point in it. “The doctor was here in the evening and will be back at eight,” they said. “Why make him come now?” “It’s an easy death,” added the brunette. “Why make it worse?” Yes, mine should be no harder, thought Molkho, sitting by the open window and wondering about the estate, of whose extent he had no idea. I’ll divide it up among the children right away, he decided. I’ll split it into three different savings plans for each, or maybe even six, or maybe nine to be on the safe side.

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

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