Five Seasons (31 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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