Authors: A. B. Yehoshua
His counselor opened the door. “So you're here,” he smiled glumly, a saturnine flush in his cheeks. “You really are going through with it!” “I am?” gulped Molkho guiltily. “How is that?” His counselor laid a light hand on him. “I was afraid you'd get cold feet. But come in, come on in.”
Yet, when he entered, there was only darkness and an open suitcase on the bed where Ya'ara had lain the last time. The apartment was chilly, perhaps because the windows and shutters had been closed against the sun all day long, and smelled as if the Sabbath, trapped between its walls for over twenty-four hours, had begun to go bad. “I'll get her,” declared Uri, reaching for his hat and explaining that Ya'ara had gone to visit a sick friend in the next building. “No, don't go yet,” requested Molkho, blocking the way. “I have to tell you that I still don't know what to make of all this, that I feel like I'm in a strange dream. Not that I'm against arranged matches. If they were good enough for the Middle Ages, they're good enough for me. But I'm asking you again, why me? Why not someone else?”
“It happened by pure chance,” whispered his counselor to Molkho, who replied, feeling weak as if with stage fright, “Where do you get the strength for all this? I feel that I'm completely in your hands, that this whole thing is humanly incredible, that it will be a miracle if it works. I've already told my mother and elder son and was amazed it didn't shock them, because I'm still in shock myself. Are you sure you've thought it through?” His counselor was listening with his eyes shut, as if to a musical theme. “You say I once loved her, but what difference does that make now? And there's something else I don't get either: does your divorcing her just depend on me?”
“No,” said his counselor, opening his eyes, “it depends on me too.” He smiled faintly and patted Molkho's back. “And on her,” Molkho pointed out logically. “She's already agreed,” smiled his counselor again. “But what does she know about me?” asked Molkho in alarm. “I'm not so easy to get along with. In fact, I was even accused by someone of causing my wife's death.” “Forget it,” said Uri unconcernedly. “Don't listen to what other people say. Listen to yourself. Your life is your own now.” He glanced at his watch. “It's getting late,” Molkho said. “I'd like to get an early start.” “I'll go get her,” said his counselor. “I really don't know what can be keeping her.”
Molkho walked about the small apartment, in which he now took an almost proprietary interest, even entering the little bedroom to inspect the open suitcase. In it were some dresses and a pair of slippers, the thought of whose arrival in his Haifa home made him tingle expectantly. Packed away, too, was a large, mysterious package of absorbent cotton and a small jar of red pills bearing the label of a local pharmacy. Was she still bleeding from her miscarriages? Would she be penetrable or blocked by debris? Was he meant to heal her or put her out of her misery? For he did want to heal her, he thought.
Through the bedroom window, the only one open in the house, a mild scent of pine trees was borne on the cool breeze that drifted in from the Jerusalem night. Staring at the carelessly made bed, he suddenly felt that everything about itâthe pillows, the blankets, even the scattered booksâreeked of endless fornication. For a moment he froze; yet hearing the rumble of the elevator in the hallway, he hurried back to the living room just as the front door opened. She was alone, dressed in a checked jumper that stressed her little belly, loafers with white bobbysocks folded schoolgirlishly over them, and a tight kerchief that she removed and tossed on the table while shaking out her gray hair. “I see Uri found you,” he said, still not sure how he felt about her. Should he offer to shake hands? Not that it matters, he thoughtâyet he gave her his hand and she took it in her own as if not quite knowing what to do with it. “I was paying a sick call, but I'm already packed,” she explained, stepping into the bathroom to collect her toilet articles as her husband entered the apartment. “All right,” said Molkho's counselor, “let's go. We don't want to take all night. Are you sure you have everything?” he asked, shutting the suitcase and carrying it outside. “Yes,” said Ya'ara after a moment's thought. “What about toothpaste?” he asked. “She's not going to the wilderness,” put in Molkho, who had been listening nervously. “But your book, you forgot your book,” exclaimed Uri, and she returned to the little bedroom and slipped it into her bag before putting her kerchief back on. They turned off the lights. “Wait a minute,” said Molkho's counselor, opening the windows to let in the cool air while Molkho, dazzled by the great clusters of lights on the hillsides, remarked, “I don't know a single one of all those new neighborhoods. I couldn't even tell you which are Jewish and which are Arab.” Neither Uri nor Ya'ara responded. As though suddenly gripped by a powerful emotion, their attention seemed focused elsewhere.
They slipped through the building in their religious garb, which looked half like a disguise and half like an exotic costume. Opening the baggage compartment of his car, Molkho laid the suitcase in it while his counselor, who had decided to drive with them to the city limits, sat in the front seat with his wife behind him. With a sinking feeling, Molkho glanced at her in the mirror, her kerchiefed face small, lined, and gray, framed by the dusky night. It's what I get for not looking harder, he thought bitterly, for expecting others to do it for me. Slowly he backed out of the parking lot and drove to the outskirts of town, stopping by a yellow filling station at the point where the road began its long plunge to the coast. “Do you need gas?” asked his counselor, getting slowly out of the car as if loath to part with them. “No, I have plenty,” said Molkho impatiently. “And where should Ya'ara sit?” inquired Uri, “in the front or in the back?” “In the front,” answered Molkho. “It's more comfortable and safer, because of the seat belt.” His counselor opened the front door for her, and the two men helped belt her in. “Are you all right?” asked Uri nervously. She nodded with a dutiful smile. “Just a minute,” declared Molkho, noticing how cramped she was, “let's give you some more legroom.” He bent toward her to pull her seat handle while his counselor pushed her back, the smell of her sweat making her seem very real. “How about taking a soldier?” asked Uri as several hitchhikers in uniform began crowding around the car. “I'd rather not,” said Molkho. “You never give lifts to soldiers?” Ya'ara asked. “Yes, I do, but not now,” he answered crossly. “Maybe later, when we reach the coast.”
Uri seemed satisfied, suggesting only that they clean the windshield, which was smeared with dust and dead bugs. “Otherwise you won't see a thing,” he told Molkho, who got out of the car, wiped the front window, got back in again, refastened his seat belt, and drove off into the night. His last glimpse of his tall counselor was in the rearview mirror, standing in the cold yellow light by the air pump. Has he really signed her away to me? he wondered, his heart going out to the man.
S
HE CERTAINLY DOES
what she's told, he marveled as she sat there in her seat belt, wide awake and content to watch the night go by outside the window. Perhaps they would make a happy couple after all. Meanwhile, he had to be on his best behavior and, above all, to avoid awkward silences. On his way to Jerusalem he had already thought of a few things to talk about apart from his wife and her illness, which he would leave for the next day, when Ya'ara would be better able to concentrate. The best thing was to get her to tell him about herself: thirty-two years had passed since their schooldays, so that at a rate of no more than four minutes per year they could reach Haifa without his having to make small talk or carry on intellectually like her husbandâalthough just to be on the safe side, he had a tape of
The Magic Flute
playing softly in the deck, its volume ready to be turned up the moment the conversation faltered. Indeed, Ya'ara was no more talkative than he was, being evidently used to letting Uri hold the stage, so that already by the first sharp downhill turns he had to start drawing her out. Who, he cautiously asked her, a bit uncomfortable for her sake, was the match that Uri was thinking of? The woman, she replied, was a young widow, the mother of a small child, whose husband, a follower of the rabbi, was killed a year ago in a car accident. “Have you ever met her?” he asked, intrigued. “No,” she said. “Neither has Uri. He doesn't see the point of it before there's an arrangement for me.” Molkho winced. It might simplify matters, he thought wryly, if he would take the young widow for himself and leave his friends' marriage intact.
But young widows attracted him less than this woman beside him, who made him feel so full of life. She had removed her kerchief again, making her face look broader, and now sat with her legs crossed comfortably, smoking her first cigarette after having found the ashtray by herself, her pearllike eyes darting from the dashboard to the gear shift with an impressive if somewhat frightening intensity. In the darkness broken by the flicker of headlights her face had softened above the slim shoulders that belied the bulge below. Even when someone like her fell ill, the prognosis was bound to be good. And perhaps he could get her to dye her hair, use makeup, and dress more smartly. And to learn to drive so that she might find a better job. Again he stole a glance at her, afraid to look away for too long from the serpentine curves; one hand resting on the open window and a cigarette glowing in her mouth, she was calmly observing the thinly wooded hills by the roadside. They can't have been waiting just for me, he told himself, the odd thought crossing his mind that this mightn't be the first time, that perhaps they had tried it before. Was I really in love with her? he struggled to recall. Or was it just an adolescent crush; after all, who hadn't had one on her back then, such a strikingly well-developed girl?
He kept turning the conversation back to her husband, as if regretting having abandoned him at the gas station. Clearly, she adored
the man: hadn't she, his faithful fellow wanderer, always followed him blindly wherever he went? They were out of the mountains now, and Molkho wondered whether to take the old road by the airport, which was shorter but slower, or to go by the coast. In the end, he chose the inland route, switching on the radio to drown out her adulation, though when he made some comment on the news bulletin, he saw that she either hadn't been listening or didn't know who the foreign minister wasâa fact, however, that he found rather pleasing, indeed even titillating. As she was lighting up a fresh cigarette by the entrance to the airport, he turned the radio off and delicately broached the subject of her childlessness. “You know,” he said, a catch in his voice, “my wife had a miscarriage too. We wanted a fourth child, but after a few weeks she lost it. Maybe that was the first sign of her illness, though we couldn't have guessed it at the time.” Ya'ara bowed a sorrowful head. She herself, she told Molkho, had had seven miscarriages, all the same. “The same as what?” he asked. “I mean, what month did it happen in?” “The fifth or sixth,” she answered quietly. “The sixth?” he exclaimed with an involuntary grimace. “How awful!” She smiled appreciatively but said nothing. “You must have suffered terribly,” he went on. “Why, it can be dangerous then!” She listened to him uncertainly, the yellow light from the terminals falling on her face, while he thought of soft, dead fetuses. On the cabinet of the nature room in high school had stood a jar of formaldehyde in which was preserved an upside-down embryo, its arms and legs folded. The girls had been scared of it, and the boys had joked and even given it a pet name; but Molkho sometimes looked at it sympathetically, trying to make out its tiny limbs in the cloudy solution. Now, however, he had better curb his desire to know more about her medical history. It wouldn't do to show his fascination with the details of her pregnancies, of the long months spent bedridden in all the cheap rooms they had rented in their travels. Had his counselor taken good care of her? Had he been able to change the sheets without hurting her, or was he too busy searching for the Meaning of Life? And her poor, bleeding uterusâdid she still have it or had it been removed? He felt sure it had not been and wanted nothing more than to kneel with his head pressed against it. If I don't scare her off, he thought, she'll let me do that too.
And indeed, sitting there contentedly in the steamy coastal humidity while staring at the moon rising over the mountains and shimmering on the distant white foam of the sea, she did not seem scared in the least. It's good she's so relaxed, he thought, too weary to remember the names of the old classmates about whom he had planned to reminisce with her. It was past midnight when he drove through the empty streets of Haifa, giddy with the promise of happiness. She's a real option, he told himself, carrying her suitcase, which he rather wished were heavier, up the stairs. And she wouldn't die on him either, that was for sure. He wished it were earlier so that the neighbors might see her. They would be relieved to hear that the first woman he brought home wasn't young, because widowers who took up with young women were disapproved of. Afterward, he might start reducing the age. Meanwhile, here he was with the autumn and mild winter and summery spring behind him, already halfway through this cruelly hot summer that had begotten two hotter summers than itself.
He switched on the hallway light and opened the front door for her, again noticing her girlish loafers with their white bobbysocks. He could fall in love with her easily, he thought, turning on lights everywhere and showing her the apartment like a moonlighting real estate agent; it was simply a matter of getting to know her. “It's nice here,” she said, looking cheerily around her. “Yes, we tried to make it that way,” he replied with a smile that thanked her while reminding her of the woman who preceded her. Dead tired, he brought in her suitcase. “This is my daughter Enat's room,” he said. “She's in Europe now.” “By herself?” asked Ya'ara. “Yes,” Molkho said, “she's very independent.” They returned to the living room, where Ya'ara sat in the armchair and took another cigarette from her pack, wide awake and every inch a night bird. “Would you like something to eat or drink?” he asked none too eagerly, already missing his lost privacy. “If you're having a bite, I'll join you,” she replied. He led her to the kitchen, took out bread, cheese, and cake, and put some water up to boil. At least she isn't spoiled, he thought, amazedly watching her eat everything he put before her, even a piece of old cheese. Although I wish she had a better-paying job.