He finished the roll in the elevator and laid the tray on the reception desk, behind which sat a schoolgirl doing homework. She took his key with thin fingers and hung it up. The door of the apartment was wide open now, and inside the family was eating its lunch from steaming bowls of crockery; indeed, every one of the receptionists of the last twenty-four hours was gathered around the table, at the head of which sat the paterfamilias, a hefty man of about Molkho’s age dressed in overalls. Seeing the guest, he came out to greet him, asking in broken English whether everything was all right and even half-inviting him to join them. Politely, with words of praise for the hotel, especially for its old swords and daggers, Molkho declined. He would have liked to say something about the woman upstairs, who was no doubt causing concern, at least to assure them that she was being cared for, but in the end he made do with inquiring about a thermometer, which he would perhaps have need of later. At first, he failed to get his meaning across; he did not give up, however, but continued popping an imaginary thermometer in and out of his mouth until the worried German understood and promised to bring him one after lunch.
9
AGAIN HE STEPPED OUTSIDE, where he now saw that the storm had died down to reveal a strip of blue, Israeli-looking sky amid the clouds overhead. The snow-carpeted street hummed with people. Workers in caps and overalls and elegant women in high leather boots strolled on the crispy surface, against which a golden sun dashed its rays. Church bells rang. The restaurants and cafés were crowded. Should he eat something now or keep walking to build up an appetite? In the end, he chose to grab a bite, since who knew if he would find another place as cheap as the one near the hotel. Joining the throng inside, he squeezed in at a table beside some jolly young workers and ordered sausages, potatoes, and beer, all reasonably priced. Then, full and slightly groggy from the ice-cold lager, he asked directions to the expressionist museum; yet arriving at the gloomy old building and spying the long line in front of it, he thought, Who needs all those morbid German paintings; I’m getting enough culture as it is. And turning left, he continued downhill on the street that led to the wall, which, he now realized, mysteriously attracted him. Soon he reached it and struck out alongside it, noticing the delicate white, vinelike pattern traced on it by the newly fallen snow. Yes, there was something about it that he liked. It serves them right, he thought, though it did not particularly seem to bother the Germans at all. On the contrary, because of the wall the busy city had a chain of peaceful nooks right in its center.
He kept walking until he reached a broad boulevard that appeared to lead onward to some central spot, and indeed, surrounded by lawns and gardens, he soon found himself at the Reichstag Building, where he joined a trickle of tourists climbing the stairs of an observatory with a view of the eastern half of the city and the Brandenburg Gate, which, ringed by wide, shopperless streets, looked dreary and deserted. Even the snow seemed heavier and deeper there. Two sentries with fur coats and submachine guns trundled back and forth like baby bears. It was freezing, but the storm (now that it’s found me, thought Molkho with a smile) seemed to be over. Starting back for the hotel, he made his way down busy streets and came to a large building whose familiar look puzzled him until he realized that it was the opera house seen from behind. On the clean white steps—newly washed by the melted snow—that the legal adviser had tumbled down, fair-haired youngsters sat, eagerly taking in the brightening afternoon sun.
He carefully climbed the steps, trying to see just where and why she had fallen and what had stopped her when she did. It was only a matter of luck, he concluded, that the accident hadn’t been worse. Inside the building he scanned pictures of the somber performance they had seen, studying the faces of the singers, who looked different close up, and glancing at the advance billings for Don Giovanni, which they were to see that night. The sets, costumes, and performers seemed quite splendid and promising, and for a long time he stood gazing at a photograph of someone done up as a statue, advancing from the depths of the stage with his arm out to seize the frightened Don Giovanni.
By the box office were stacks of colored fliers, with which Molkho stuffed his pockets, even though they were in German, intending to present them to his Sleeping Beauty. Tonight, he thought happily, we’ll see something calming and human for a change; indeed, he felt as though the Mozart opera were meant especially for him, as if it were the final act of the Drama of Death, whose uncomplaining hero he had been for months.
He stepped outside, where the clearing weather had grown remarkably, audaciously warmer. Tonight he would make sure to hold her tightly on the stairs. Should he walk back to the hotel? Afraid of losing his way, though, he hailed a taxi, taking one of the cards from his pocket and thrusting it at the driver. A warm glow of homecoming came over him as they pulled into the street. If only she hadn’t locked her door. Could she really be angry at him? But what had he done to her? At most he had helped her to a good sleep; brain damage was out of the question. Getting out of the taxi by the little barbershop, he noticed the proprietor and his wife sitting idly in their white smocks and stopped to check the price list in the window. Then, convinced he would be in good hands, he stepped inside.
A little bell tinkled softly, and the old couple hurried courteously toward him; the fact that a foreigner had chosen to patronize their shop, and one from Israel, as it turned out, seemed to make them inordinately proud. Not that they weren’t probably Nazis like the rest of them, thought Molkho, but what difference does it make? Now they’re just two doddering old people who may as well wait on me before they die. And they did, hand and foot, first tying a large white bib around his neck and then leading him to a big sink in a dark corner, at which, he realized with alarm, the old woman meant to wash his hair. There was no choice, however, but to present her with his head, lowering it into the sink, where her expert fingers massaged and tickled it, working steamy water and shampoo into his scalp. She repeated the treatment a second time, dried him with a towel, wrang it out, and led him wrapped in it to a large chair, where the barber was waiting with his scissors and instruments. It was all done quite slowly and methodically, with frequent pauses for whispered consultations, and the barber’s tools, though old, looked shiny and reliable. Between them, the old couple clipped and cut and swept and combed and powdered and clipped some more, and though Molkho tried lamely to warn them that he didn’t want his hair too short, the stubborn Prussian had his own ideas and gave him a military crew cut that met with the definite approval of another old Berliner who dropped in just then to pay a friendly visit.
10
IT WAS ALREADY LATE. The haircut had taken longer than he had expected, and he was sure that the legal adviser was up by now and perhaps already out of the hotel. At the reception desk he was handed his key and a black leather case like the one he had kept his compass in as a schoolboy; in it was a thermometer, gleaming in its bed of red velvet. Though he was so impatient to use it that he bounded up the stairs without waiting for the elevator, once standing outside her door he had an attack of cold feet. Nevertheless, he knocked lightly, and then, when there was no answer, more insistently, calling out in a voice that was tinged with desperation. “It’s me, it’s just me.” The jilted lover, he thought ironically, but at last he heard her footsteps and she opened the door, still sleepy and disheveled but awake. Cautiously he followed her into the dimly lit, overheated room, eyeing it, as he used to eye his wife’s sickroom, to see what was new in his absence. And indeed, as if afraid that the light might keep her up, she had lowered the blinds he had raised. Why, she’s on a real jag! he told himself in astonishment, her existence having as though split in two, one half of it, such as her slip, her scuffed pink sandals, and her toothbrush sticking out from a glass on the bathroom shelf, remaining familiar and even intimate, while the other was now a mystery, such as the odd smell he detected, which made him think of exotic mosses growing deep in a subterranean cave.
Feeling a new wave of worried compassion for this temperam
ental, loose-boundaried woman now flopping limply back onto the sheets, and determined to get close to her, he sat down on her warm, rumpled bed and began talking intimately in the slightly scolding, humorous tone he had sometimes employed with his wife when nothing else seemed to work. “Now look here. This has got to stop. You’re just using the pills as an excuse. It’s not them anymore, because I know all about them, and they can’t put anyone to sleep like this. Maybe you’re exhausted from your conference, but you can’t just go on like this without eating or drinking. I’m good and worried about you.” He laid a familiar hand on her arm and then moved it up to her head, gently palpating medical areas. “Maybe it’s too hot for you in here. Or else you’re coming down with something. Here, I brought you a thermometer. We’ll start by taking your temperature.” “My temperature?” she wondered. “Yes, why not?” he replied. “Do it for my sake.” But when he reached out to switch on the bed lamp, she begged him not to. “Please don’t turn on the light yet,” she said, opening her eyes to a snakelike slit, through whose faint flutter of an aperture he felt her studying him. He complied, keeping a fatherly hand on her while taking out the thermometer, which he then went to the bathroom to wash, not knowing what German germs might be on it. Peering anxiously in the mirror at his new crew cut, which made him look like a Wehrmacht officer at the siege of Stalingrad, he soaped, rinsed, and wiped the long pipette and carefully handed it to her, gently helping to slip it under her tongue. Surprisingly, she offered no resistance, and he timed three minutes on his watch, pacing up and down while entertaining her with an account of his morning, telling her about the wall, which seemed so peaceful, about the melting snow and slowly clearing skies, about coming across the opera house, and about the fliers he had brought so she could read up on that night’s performance. She lay in wizened silence, her mouth slightly twisted in protest, the elastic bandage from her foot rebelliously tossed on the chair. “Well, at least you don’t have any fever,” he declared, having put on his glasses and swiveled around to hold the thermometer up to the reddish, crepuscular light that filtered through the slats of the blinds. “And that means there’s no reason to sleep so much. Why, you’ll be up all night now!” But this, too, elicited no response, though an inner smile of sorts shone through the slit of her eyes.
Baffled, he scratched his head and persisted. “Look here. At least let me bring you something to eat. You’ll need your strength back for tonight. Do you want me to be blamed for not taking proper care of you?” Yet still she refused to budge, stubbornly clinging to her bed, though he felt sure she was wide awake now, probing him with her flickering laser beam, so that suddenly he felt a wave of panic in the dark room gloomy with twilight. “Come on!” he said, his voice cracking. “Get up! I’ll wait for you downstairs and we’ll go out. You’ll see—the snow and the cold will wake you and we’ll have a bowl of hot soup somewhere.” Though not a muscle stirred, he felt her make an effort to talk. And suddenly she did. “Did you get a haircut?” she asked. He grinned at her. “Yes, I did,” he answered, standing up and patting his head. “Down below on the street. They really dipped me, but it will grow back.” She ignored this, however, sitting up and turning on the light. “Don’t be angry with me,” she said quietly, “but I’m not going to the opera tonight. I don’t feel up to it. I’d better rest and keep off my foot. The last thing I need is to trip and fall again. You needn’t feel bad for me. I’ve seen enough operas in my life. Why, they even took us to one at the conference. Why don’t you go by yourself? It’s awkward, I know, but you’ll enjoy it. Don Giovanni is too good to miss.”
Though he did his best to seem disappointed, he felt a surge of relief. Indeed, with an almost hysterical adamance she insisted that he go without her, even asking for her purse and handing him his ticket like a mother sending her son to the movies, assuring him, as she lay propped up by the pillow with her eyes wide open now, that he needn’t worry and that she would soon get out of bed and have a meal sent up. It was her first day of real rest in ages; God knew how long her fatigue had been building up! She would, she promised, wait up for him and meanwhile read a book or listen to music on the radio. “Good, I’ll try it,” she said when told about Volume II of Anna Karenina that his daughter had given him by mistake. “The second half is fine because I read the book long ago and still remember a bit.” And so, having gone through the motions of protesting, he went downstairs to fetch the book, which she hurriedly took from him at the door as if anxious to be rid of him. It was all he could do to persuade her to bring him her ticket too, since perhaps he could manage to sell it.
11
TOWARD EVENING the hotel came festively alive. Previously concealed light bulbs helped brighten the little lobby, so that the swords gleamed in their glass cases and the blue seas reddened on the old nautical maps. The desk was now staffed by the grandfather of the family, a genial, immaculately dressed man who sat reading a newspaper while now and then helping his grandchildren in the apartment with their homework. In one corner stood several valises, sure proof of fresh guests. Self-conscious of his new crew cut, Molkho checked his key and stepped out into the street, which, too, was lit by numerous lamps whose warm, bubbly glow created a holiday feeling. People were doing their last-minute shopping and crowding into the bars, and the night, with its clear skies above and last patches of snow on the sidewalk, had a special magic. Entering his little working-class restaurant, which was nearly empty at this hour, Molkho ordered the usual, substituting coffee for beer. But afterward, looking for a taxi while glancing up at the still-reddish sky, he cursed his loneliness under his breath. How could you have left me all alone like this? he asked, picturing his wife back in Haifa, making supper for their daughter while he wandered, a stranger in a strange land.
The crowd in front of the opera house was unexpectedly small. Indeed, it was clear from the outset that he stood no chance of selling his extra ticket, for even before he began climbing the steps, tickets were being offered to him. The audience was different too: instead of the intense-looking young people of the night before, he was now surrounded by the most bourgeois of audiences. Over the posters by the entrance, large red stickers announcing some change in the program had been affixed diagonally. Could the performance have been canceled? Sure enough, inquiring of a couple standing there, he was told that the man who was to play Don Giovanni was sick and that, to his astonishment, the opera tonight would be Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. How could they go and change operas just like that? And who was this Gluck, whom he had never even heard of? The thought that he was to be deprived of Don Giovanni after all he had been through was thoroughly unacceptable. “Who ever heard of changing operas?” he asked the couple loudly. “Why, I came a long way to see Don Giovanni/” “You did? Where from?” “From Israel.” “From Israel? Just to see an opera?” “Yes,” he said, telling them about the special Voles Opera while they listened in amazement. “Why isn’t there an understudy?” he asked. “I can’t believe no one else can sing the part!” But the sympathetic couple merely shrugged and went inside, not knowing the answer themselves, leaving Molkho debating whether he shouldn’t perhaps go to the movies or a nightclub instead. In the end, however, the ticket being paid for, he decided to see Orpheus and Eurydice and let himself be swept by the crowd into the familiar lobby, which now seemed to him dreary and plain. And there was nowhere even to lodge a complaint, for every single office was locked! That’s the sort of people they are, he thought bitterly, going off to relieve himself in the men’s room, whose four huge white walls seemed one big urinal. Just look where I’ve landed, he told himself, choking on his loneliness, as if his wife’s death were a spring whose action had flung him to the far ends of the earth.
He was one of the first to take his seat, which was in the center of a front row. The audience kept drifting in, but the hall was still far from full. He felt indescribably weary, and the people around him looked gray and listless too. A row in front of him sat a couple that drew his attention, e
specially the man, who sat with his head hunched between his shoulders: tall and fortyish, he had a pocked red face whose sad, suspicious eyes darted nervously and a shabby black suit over which was thrown a dirty white scarf. The seat on Molkho’s right, on the other hand, was occupied by a well-dressed, elderly German holding a large, fancy program that was partly in English. Yet though Molkho asked to borrow it, he was feeling too tired and dispirited to make head or tails of it, even of the cast, which listed a female alto in the role of Orpheus. Bewildered, he asked his neighbor if it wasn’t a misprint, to which the man replied in broken English that he hadn’t the slightest idea, since he came from a small provincial town where they didn’t have opera at all.
The orchestra began tuning up, and as if he were accompanying it, the man in the next row grew suddenly tense and emitted a series of small grunts that made his wife look worriedly about. Slowly the huge overhead lights were dimmed, the conductor strode forward, and the overture struck up, quick and forceful, while the pockmarked man swayed back and forth in time to it. Evidently he knew the score well, in fact, by heart, for he paused slightly before each transition, as if anticipating a new theme, so that Molkho wondered if he was perhaps an unemployed musician, possibly even a down-and-out conductor. Even when the music reached a crescendo, with new instruments joining in all the time, the man did not look up; head down, he kept listening intensely, conducting with his hands, springing up with the horns and kettledrums, and swaying rhythmically again with the strings in preparation for the next bars, which he telegraphed with his body as if convinced that the orchestra was following him, only suddenly to freeze and cast such a haughty glance around him that the audience began to whisper. His wife alone remained perfectly quiet, her hand resting soothingly on his knee as though to keep him under control.
Five Seasons Page 14
