Five Seasons (27 page)

And yet, despite himself, he fell asleep, waking up five hours later with a feeling of amazement at having gotten through the night. As in his distant days of army service, he rose at once and dressed, made the bed, and put on his shoes in a jiffy. Then, returning his things to the briefcase, he opened the window and leapt straight out into the grainy light of the thick mist swaddling the mountain. Soon the sun would be up. Shivering with cold, he stopped to relieve himself by the cowshed before stepping inside to look at the cow, who stood there alertly as if expecting company. Wondering if cows had feelings, he took a friendly step toward her, tapping her bony forehead with his fist and folding her ears in two like cardboard. No, they didn't, he concluded, stepping back outside with his briefcase. The rim of the sun appeared over the hill, directly above Ben-Ya'ish's house, the windows of which, he noticed, were open. And indeed, hurrying up to it, he found its bed occupied and woke the sleeper at once.

It was Ben-Ya'ish himself, a young man in heavy flannel pajamas who resembled a student more than a politician and lay beneath a pile of quilts surrounded by electrical appliances. “I'm so terribly sorry,” he said, smiling at Molkho guiltily, already apologizing before he was awake. “Please, please forgive me. We kept getting our signals crossed. Why, I went all the way to Haifa just to see you, and getting back from there wasn't easy. Why didn't you sleep here? I told my secretary to give you the keys, and all the account books too. You've got me wrong and I'll prove it. I know, I know, you looked for the road and the park and couldn't find them, but I'll show you all the plans. There were just so many out-of-work men who had used up their unemployment checks that I had to dip into the budget to help them, but we'll balance the books yet; everything will add up in the end. Maybe you can show me the best way to do it, because I'm really not very experienced. I mean, I know the money was budgeted for development, but how can you develop a village that's starving to death?”

Molkho sat there listening quietly, incapable of anger, resigned to defeat by this sleepy, stubble-cheeked, bright-eyed young man, toward whom he was feeling increasingly sympathetic. In the end, he knew, he would not even be able to scold him, especially not now, when he had just seen the sun rise in its glory on men in need of mercy. And so he waited for him to dress and drink his coffee, and followed him outside into the still chilly but now clear morning, feeling slightly feverish as he was led to a field with some saplings and bushes that had apparently been planted the night before in lieu of a park and, thence, greeted by cheerful good-mornings, to the other end of the village, where some fresh piles of sand and gravel dumped on a path beside an oil drum full of bubbling tar were meant to signify a road. There was even a steamroller, painted green like a picture from an old children's book. Ben-Ya'ish talked on and on, waving documents and plans. “Just show me the best way to state the facts,” he begged Molkho, “the best way to keep us out of trouble, because more trouble is the last thing we need.” And in the end, that was just what Molkho did.

T
HEY WORKED TOGETHER
all morning in the office, besieged on all sides by the sound of children practicing Passover songs for a school assembly. The music teacher, Molkho had to admit, was a force to be reckoned with; the singing, coming from all the classrooms, filled every cranny of the building and inspired him to fill in the missing gaps in the accounts. By eleven, the job was finished and he knew that it was time to leave; but first he asked to see the Indian girl, who was taken out of class for him to remind her to thank her parents. She nodded, darkly solemn behind her big, funny glasses, dressed in her leotard again, and Molkho, who felt sure that hard times were in store for her, was overcome by pity. Damp-eyed, he could not restrain himself from bending down and giving her a kiss. “You're a fine girl,” he said to her. “I'll never forget you. Would you like a little brother or a sister?” “Whatever comes,” she murmured by rote, as though the answer were rehearsed. By now, it was nearly twelve, and he was being warned not to miss the last bus, which left early on Friday, if he did not want to be stuck in the village again.

The bus took two-and-a-half tiresome hours and seemed to stop in every town in the Galilee, and though evening was still far away when he arrived in Haifa, there was already a Sabbath quiet in the air. At home he was surprised to find his three children happily eating together in the kitchen, his daughter still in her officer's uniform and the college student in high spirits because he had done well on an exam that morning. “You got a nice tan up there,” they told him, and he described the village, with all its Indians, for them and even said a few words about the girl. He peered into the pots, emptied food from one to another, ordered the college student to do the dishes, and went to run a bath, shave, and nap, feeling worn out but satisfied, as if after a long but happily ended ordeal.

It was evening when he awoke and found the three of them eating again in the kitchen. “Why didn't you wait?” he scolded them. “It's Sabbath eve!” Even when they explained to him that their grandmother had called to say she wasn't coming, because she had guests of her own, her Russian friend and the friend's daughter, Molkho was not mollified. “So what? That doesn't mean we needn't have a Sabbath dinner! What's the matter with you?” Brooking no objections, he made them stop eating, move their plates to the large table in the dining room, and light the Sabbath candles.

After dinner some friends he had long been out of touch with phoned to invite him over, which pleased him greatly, because he had felt abandoned by their social circle since his wife's death. He had known, of course, that she was more popular than he, for he was considered a dull conversationalist. Still, he had kept telling himself, you would think they'd feel an obligation—toward her, if not toward me.

He dressed his best for the occasion, arrived at his hosts' home to find several couples already there, some of whom he knew, and was seated next to an overweight, heavily bejeweled woman, a divorcée who had come all the way from Tel Aviv and stared at him with liquid, bovine eyes he did not like. Though at first the situation amused him, he soon lapsed into indignant silence. The woman, it seemed, knew a great deal about him and asked him many well-informed questions, to which his answers were short and laconic. Did he ever get to Tel Aviv? she inquired at last. Hardly ever anymore, he replied; the gas simply cost too much. “You could take a bus,” she said, blushing. “Yes, I know,” answered Molkho. “I took one from the Galilee for three hours today, and I hope I never take another.” The guests sitting close to him snickered, and he felt sure that his hostess was offended. Suddenly he feared they might give up on him.

Though he rose early the next morning, it was already very hot. He put on old clothes, did a wash in the machine, and went down to wash his car and hoe his little garden plot. At ten, he called his mother-in-law, but her room did not answer and the information desk did not know where she was, so he sat down to itemize his Galilee expenses, which seemed far too small, no matter how long the list grew. He then hung the wash on the line, cleaned the storeroom, throwing out some old cans of dry paint, and was about to shower when, loath to take off his work clothes so soon, he went about energetically looking for something else to do. Finding nothing, he said to his younger son, “Come on, let's take a walk in the ravine. That's something we haven't done in ages.” The boy, however, was too lazy to move, so that Molkho, though reluctant to go by himself, changed his shoes and headed down the familiar path. At first, he had to traverse an obstacle course of building debris, old cement sacks, rusting boilers, and even an intact washing machine, all indisputable evidence of his neighbors' economic progress; but the farther down he walked, the more nature reasserted itself with rank lushness, and a deep silence descended on the path, which wound in and out among bushes. The sea below him vanished from sight, as did the houses above, leaving him as alone as if he were in the heart of a jungle. Conscious of his quickened heartbeat, he stopped and considered turning back, knowing that the climb up would be even harder; but the last few days had given him new strength and he kept on going to the bottom, where the winter rain had unfurled such a carpet of curly grass that he could have lain down and rolled in it were it not for all the detritus, which included the bleached bones of a large animal. The sea was back in sight now, and deciding not to retrace his steps but rather to ascend the opposite slope, where the vegetation was thinner, and from there to telephone his children to pick him up in the car, he set out in that direction, passing three merrily picnicking women drinking tea. He exchanged a few friendly words with them and started up the path, which was less overgrown but very steep, heading toward a row of houses crowning the hill. The sun was beating down now, and the unfamiliar ascent was fatiguing, especially as it ended at a barbed-wire fence surrounding the backyard of the first house. By the time he managed to get through it, he had tom his pants, cut his leg, and come to regret the whole adventure. Dirty and thirsty, he came out on a little street that did not seem to have a pay phone, only a synagogue, from which some men were just emerging. He would be better off, he decided, going to his mother-in-law's nearby old-age home, slipping unnoticed up to her room, and tidying up there.

Head down, he passed quickly through the big glass entrance and crossed the spic-and-span lobby, whose occupants, dressed in their Sabbath best, looked approvingly at the figure in tom work clothes, no doubt a repairman come to fix something. Taking the slow, solid elevator up to the ninth floor, he walked down the dim hallway and knocked on his mother-in-law's door. Though there was no answer, the door opened when he tried the handle. Surprisingly, the room was in a state of great disorder: an open suitcase lay on the floor with a dress half-thrown over it, and pillows and pillowcases had been hung out to air on the railing of the little terrace. He was still bewilderedly taking it in when the sheets rustled on his mother-in-law's bed and up sat a stranger in pajamas, a plump, sturdy woman of about thirty-five with big bright eyes.

Molkho saw at once by her resemblance to her mother that she was the daughter of the little old Russian, the young lady who was unhappy in Israel and wished to return to the Soviet Union. At first, roused from her beauty sleep by an unexpected intruder, she seemed terrified, even hysterical; yet before many seconds had gone by, he began to suspect that she was in fact drunk. And on a summery day like this, he marveled, startled by the strong scent of alcohol. She knew almost no Hebrew, let alone English or French, and the few words she uttered between giggles sounded odd indeed.

Through the open window the sky seemed very blue. He tried explaining who he was while the plump woman tried telling him where his mother-in-law had gone to, laughing over each Hebrew word as if it were a particularly funny joke. Finally, despairing of communicating, she led him out on the terrace and pointed at the lawn below, where, near the rosebush-ringed swimming pool, sat his wife's mother and her Russian friend, sunbathing on flowery blankets. Molkho nodded, weighed going to the bathroom for a drink of water, ruled against it, and strode quickly back out to the elevator. Yet he did not ride it all the way down but got out on the fifth floor, where the usual solemn silence prevailed in the medical ward, though because of the heat the doors of the sickrooms were open, revealing grave oldsters who sat leafing through magazines beside their moribund friends. Molkho thrilled to the sight of the familiar equipment, the white intravenous bottles, the wheelchairs, and the gray tanks of oxygen, and was about to sit down to rest when a nurse blocked his way. Rolling up his ripped pants, he showed her the cut on his leg. “I'm Mrs. Starkman's son-in-law,” he explained, “and I thought you might give me first aid.” At once he was ushered into a sunny little office, where, after he washed, the cut was disinfected, treated with a yellow, pollenlike powder, and bandaged with gauze. It must be a welcome change for the nurses to deal with something nonterminal, he thought, eagerly examining the apparatus around him and happily concluding that, allowing for his modest budget, the care received by his wife had been quite state-of-the-art.

He descended to the lobby with his bandaged leg. As usual, he reflected, summer had come all at once, bursting through every window. Head high, he made straight for the lawn, where he found his mother-in-law, drugged by the sun, in a state of brazen nirvana, fast asleep in a house frock that bared her veiny old legs, while her Russian friend sat silently guarding her, a bit fearful of the unaccustomedly strong sun, her white hair tinged with a few last strands of gold. Recognizing him at once, she rose and executed her odd little bow, then introduced herself in a pleasant voice as Stasya, and chatted in a Hebrew that wasn't bad at all. Molkho, for his part, speaking in a whisper so as not to wake his mother-in-law, whose profound slumber seemed slightly worrisome to him too, explained why he was there and even displayed his new bandage. He had just asked the Russian woman why her daughter didn't like Israel when his mother-in-law, hearing his voice, awoke and opened her faded gray, sun-softened eyes with surprise and a hint of annoyance. Yet, though Molkho began telling her at once of his adventures, rolling up his pants to show the bandage again, she did not appear to listen. Even when he switched the subject to her grandchildren, she seemed too weak from the sun to respond, barely able to keep her eyes from shutting. Why, in a minute she'll melt away right in front of me! he thought. It grieved him to see her so springlike and peaceful on this blue Saturday afternoon, as if she had already forgotten all about her daughter's death.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
he asked to see the director. At ten o'clock he was summoned, laying his report on the desk with a solemnity that took his easygoing boss by surprise. “I was there twice and even stayed over one night,” Molkho told him. “I had a look around and checked things out as best I could. I don't claim to have it figured out down to the bottom line, but I did see quite a lot, and my impression is that there may be a lot of confusion up there, but there's no corruption. There's a road being built and a park being planted, and while the village council doesn't own a tractor, I did see a steamroller. I helped them put their accounts in order and insisted that they itemize everything and attach receipts. If they do, I think we can pass the file on to the state comptroller's office. Maybe there are still dark secrets to unearth; that's their job. But I think we've done what we could. Of course, it's up to you.”