Five Seasons (23 page)

Her father smiled at her. “He has a way with kids. They're very fond of him,” he explained, telling Molkho that the young man had arrived in the village two years ago as a substitute teacher, had taken a liking to the place, and had done such a good job as an organizer and fund-raiser that he was elected council manager. In fact, he obtained all kinds of things for next to nothing, or even for nothing at all, which was a great help, since everyone had debts and times were so hard that no one could have managed without him. “What kind of things?” Molkho asked. “Everything. Seed. Fodder for the animals and chickens. Cheap clothes.” “And food too,” the girl reminded her father. “Yes,” he nodded, “food too.” “Food?” queried Molkho. “What sort of food?” “Why, canned goods and meat.” “And cake and ice cream too,” said the girl, who appeared to love Ben-Ya'ish dearly. “But where does he get it all from?” asked Molkho anxiously. “From all kinds of organizations and agencies in Tel Aviv,” said the Indian. “He's there all the time studying, because he's still working on his BA.” “But not a word of that's written down here!” exclaimed Molkho in exasperation. “That's true,” explained the Indian. “It isn't, but that's only because it comes from outside funds, not from the village budget.” Molkho felt himself losing his temper. “All right, fine,” he declared, “outside funds are his own business; but here he lists a road that cost ten million shekels, and here he says he's planted a park. Where is this park of his? I'd like to see it!” And when the Indian said nothing, casting a worried glance at his daughter, he continued sarcastically, “And here it says he bought himself a tractor! Where does he get off buying unauthorized tractors? Doesn't he know he has to go through proper channels? Look here, the reason I'm here is to get your side of the story before we hand this over to the police.” But still the Indian was silent, his head bowed languidly. “Where's the road?” demanded Molkho. “Where's the park? Nothing in these accounts makes any sense!” “He'll explain everything,” insisted the Indian with dogged obstinacy. “All I did was add up the figures for him. He'll explain them to you himself.”

All at once, as if the mountain opposite the window had caved in on the house, the bright sunlight faded and Molkho felt as hungry as if he had not eaten all day. Gathering up his papers, he returned them to his briefcase. In the sudden gloom the girl looked as dark as if a black night were under her skin and he jumped to his feet with a start. “Where are you going?” asked the Indian. “Why don't you wait? He should be here any minute.” “I'm going to have a look at the village,” said Molkho. “But won't you have lunch with us?” asked the man. “No, thank you,” said Molkho, thinking of his expense-account meal. “If you'll be so kind as to show me the bathroom first, I think I'll have a look around.”

Yet, when the girl led him to a room that at first glance looked clean and comfortable, he was shocked to discover that it had no door, just a curtain over the entrance. He relieved himself as quietly as he could, his face toward the open window, through which there was a breathtaking view of a snowcapped Mount Hermon. So the snow is still after me, he thought with a smile, washing his hands. Controlling himself, he kept from peeking at the medicine cabinet and emerged with a friendly glance at the Indian, who, as though lost in thought, had not budged from his place. “If you'E just let your daughter show me the way back to my car,” Molkho told him, “I'll have myself a little look around.”

And so, again he strode behind her, this time along the main street, her body, thin as a rail, growing longer in the soft, grayish light that seemed a throwback to winter. As they passed beneath a huge pylon that hummed electrically, apparently the relay of a regional grid that seemed to come from and continue to nowhere, he asked her for her name and the name of the cow in the shed, after which, his supply of questions exhausted, he continued to trail after her through the ghostly silence, falling a little behind. There was not a sign of human activity anywhere, let alone a paved road or park, not even the sound of a farm vehicle, though three workers were standing by a fire in a distant field, from which the moist scent of burning brush was wafted on the air. His hunger growing, he kept his eyes on the little bottom bouncing firmly in its tight leotard. What, he wondered, did he find so infatuating about her? Why, it was sheer madness! Suddenly, the horrendously funny, frightening, ghastly thought occurred to him that he could quite unsexually eat her like an animal, literally chew her flesh. Fortunately, she did not seem to guess what the wintry man lagging behind her with his briefcase was thinking and went on leading him with proud but fragile determination past the schoolhouse to his car, around which a crowd of children was swarming like flies, touching the shiny paint and sprawling on the ground to peer up at the chassis. Sternly he made his way among them, aided by the girl, who imperiously began driving them away, though soon she vanished in their midst.

Molkho opened the trunk, laid his briefcase in it, started to drive off, realized he did not know to where, and decided to stop in the little shopping center, where perhaps he could buy some expense-account groceries. He circled the square, which housed a wool store, an appliance store, a stationery store, a vegetable store, and a grocery, coming at last to a small café with a sign that featured a spit of shishkebab, his progress followed by every one of the shopkeepers. Apparently they had heard all about him, and the thought of his new prominence rather pleased him as he stepped out of the car.

He made his way past some scattered tables and entered the cafe, where he was greeted by an Indian even darker than the first. “Do you serve meals or just snacks?” Molkho asked him. “Meals too,” said the man. “And you'll give me a receipt?” Molkho asked. “No problem,” said the man. “What do you have to eat?” Molkho asked. “What would you like?” asked the man. “But tell me what there is,” insisted Molkho, looking around to check if the place was clean. Someone sat in a far corner eating something out of a bowl. “What's that?” Molkho asked. “Organs,” said the man. “Whose?” asked Molkho worriedly. “It's a lung-and-liver stew,” replied the cafe owner quietly, looking deferentially at his new customer. “It's real good.” “Do you have steak?” Molkho asked. “Whatever you like,” said the Indian. “Perhaps then,” said Molkho somewhat officiously, “you can show it to me.” Leading him into a dirty kitchen that Molkho's wife would have fled from, the man passed a big pot simmering on a burner, opened a refrigerator, and took out a drooping piece of meat clotted with old, purplish blood. Molkho regarded it doubtfully; it was certainly not very hygienic-looking. In the end, they'll poison me here, he told himself, still feeling a craving for meat. “Do you have sausages?” he asked. But the man did not. And so, after thinking it over, he ordered the organ stew, left the kitchen, and sat down irritably at a table, keeping an eye on his car while recalling the times his wife had made him go from restaurant to restaurant until she found one clean enough to suit her. But all that was past history. Now he would eat what and where he wanted. And his car seemed quite safe. Most of the children had gone off somewhere else, and those remaining now sat by the front wheels, among them the Indian girl, who crouched licking a popsicle like a little grasshopper with folded wings.

A pickup truck pulled up in the square and a young man climbed out of it. Could that be Ben-Ya'ish? wondered Molkho—but the young man was an Arab and his thoughts returned to his wife. No, he hadn't killed her—the idea was obscene and insane. He had simply helped her to die when she was ready. And yet, had he not perhaps been too quick to resign himself to her death? From the very beginning, bending down that spring night to kiss the nipple of her white breast and cautiously, tenderly saying, though the words cracked like a whip, “Yes, there's some kind of a lump here,” he hadn't believed in her chances. And now here he was, sitting in this unsavory spot in this God-forsaken Galilean village, watching the women shoppers—all of whom, even the young ones, still looked like immigrants—as they came and went, and thinking, How cold they all still leave me. A tractor emerged from an alleyway, tried climbing the steps of the shopping arcade, and came to a sudden halt. Some children passed by. Abandoning himself to the tranquillity, he let the cool breeze fan his appetite. The place did not look as if times were as hard as all that. It was just talk. If you believed half you heard, the whole country had been falling apart for years, and yet everything was still there. In fact, wherever you went, there was a tractor clearing new ground.

The group of children by the car had disappeared. While the café owner set the bare table and brought a plate of pita bread and a small bowl of olives, Molkho queried him about the village. Had any new roads been paved lately? Not that he knew of. How about a park or public garden? He knew nothing about them either. Meanwhile, several men, looking freshly awakened from sleep, approached Molkho in a friendly manner. “Are you the fellow who's waiting for Ben-Ya'ish? He left a message saying he'll be here soon. What did you come to check out—the accounts? There's nothing wrong with them! He'll explain everything. We're all behind him.” “I heard your wife died,” said one of the men, reaching out to shake Molkho's hand, “I'm very sorry to hear about it.” Before he knew it, he was shaking hands with them all, startled by their knowledge, as if the wind had carried the news. He was about to ask them about the road and park, too, when the steaming bowl of stew arrived, full of dark, smooth, slightly rubbery chunks of meat swimming in a bright brown gravy and giving off a funky odor like his father's sweat, and shaking from hunger, he pitched in before it got cold. The meat, when speared with a fork, was of various spongy consistencies, apparently because it came from different organs, and had a strange sweetness that caused him a brief moment of anxiety before he attacked it in earnest, dipping his bread in the gravy between bites. “This mountain air gives a man an appetite,” he apologized to the café owner, who sat there watching him eat. “Where's this meat from?” he asked. “It's all kinds of organs,” answered the man. “Don't you like it?” “Yes, I do,” Molkho said, “it's delicious. I was just wondering if you took it from a cow.”
“I
took it from a cow?” The Indian seemed alarmed, though in the end he caught on. “Oh, you mean beef!” “Yes,” said Molkho, chewing away, his face lit by the sun, which had come back out of the clouds. All around him was silence, as if the whole village were hiding, except for the café owner sitting nearby, who rose now and then to bring a cold drink or more bread, which Molkho dipped ravenously in the gravy. “It's this mountain air,” he said again with a smile, and this time the man smiled back and said, “Yes, the one thing we've got here is air.” Then he cleared the table and made Molkho some coffee to wash down the gamy-tasting stew. “Should I list everything you ate?” he asked when Molkho rose to pay, tearing a page out of a notebook. “No,” Molkho said. “Just the date and what it cost.”

It was 2
P.M.
and the sun was beating down as if in anticipation of summer, the rainy morning a thing of the past. Passing a pay phone, he thought of calling home or maybe his mother, but then changed his mind. So what if I don't? I've got a right to disappear if I want to, he told himself while walking to his car, which stood baking in the sun. If I don't keep it covered, it will fade and lose its value, he thought. Yet, catching sight of the complicated dashboard, his hand resting on the fresh-smelling seat, he was conscious of getting less pleasure from it than from new cars in the past. He took off his jacket and sweater, loosened his tie, settled himself behind the wheel, and opened the window, through which the wind came whooshing down from the mountains, whistling straight toward him as though somewhere in the distance a giant fan were aimed at him. Well, that's that, he thought, that little swindler can look for me, now. But suddenly, as the wind shrieked high overhead, his eagerness to take off faltered, perhaps because the stew was weighing him down. Should he move the car into the shade and rest a bit? But he had lost all sense of direction and wasn't sure which way the sun was heading. In the end, locking the gear shift and flicking the hidden switch disconnecting the ignition, he stepped out of the car and started back toward the girl's house to tell her father he was leaving.

Once more he followed the muddy path among fields stippled with yellow flowers whose name he didn't know. Far-off, the mountains were turning purple. A rusty silence still hung over the village. The natives are taking their siesta, thought Molkho. The field with the fire was empty now, though thin wisps of grayish smoke still spiraled up from it and hot ashes writhed like ribbons of quicksilver on the moist, coppery ground. He noticed to one side a trail running off into a deep, jungly ravine, which lay between high, sawtoothed cliffs looking like ancient cadavers that had died clinging to the hillside. Fierce colors flashed there, green, blue, and claret, cut by the bold brown slash of the path. That's it, then! thought Molkho. It's a place that's hiked in; I must have been here with the Scouts. He stood gazing into it, listening to the wind gather strength, and musing that were he to die in there, no one would discover his traces. “Not that there's anything wrong with that,” he told himself out loud. “At least I'd rest in peace then.”

He turned and headed on toward the girl's house, passing it, however, and continuing on to Ben-Ya'ish's hut, where he knocked on the door and received no response. Through an open shutter he caught a glimpse of the interior: an unmade bed, a television, a video, a set of speakers, and a pile of dirty dishes on the table, which indicated that the occupant had left not long ago. Circling the dwelling through tall, thorny weeds, he glanced up the hillside and made out an old wooden outhouse that looked like an upended coffin. It still had a door, though, he saw as he approached it, clearing his way through the dense undergrowth. The ceiling was low, no higher than a man's head, and more weeds sprouted from the cesspit. Shutting the door behind him, the wind moaning dully through the dry wooden planks as though through a stifling hand, he unzipped his pants and tried relieving himself, but the trickle that came out only increased his sense of debility. Why, a person might think I was in love with that little dark girl, he thought, that I meant to wait right here for her to grow up! Walking back down the hill, he knocked on the door of her house.