Authors: A. B. Yehoshua
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.
T
HE 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.
B
UT 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 rainâno 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.
A
T 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 himâmost of them subdued West Germansâlike 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.