Five Seasons (17 page)

He stretched out in the armchair and watched the snowflakes, which, caught in an updraft, seemed to blow skyward from the earth; they did not look to him like crystals of frozen vapor but like the tom whites of an egg or some scrambled, primeval matter. Well, then, he told himself, I'll just sit here like I used to do in Haifa. In fact, it was even quieter here because of the storm windows. He thought of that final month, in which so much time had sometimes elapsed without talking that at last his wife would beg, “Say something, anything, tell me what's new in the world.” “Nothing is new,” he would answer. “All I care about is you, nothing else interests me”—which happened to be true enough. Now he was sitting by another bed, trusting once more in his patience to compensate for the intellectual superiority of its occupant, yet harassed by a feeling of fatigue. Groping for a pick-me-up, he noticed a copy of the Bible here too. This one—perhaps because the bed was a double one—had the Old Testament in it as well, but unfortunately only in German. He tried mouthing the first line of Genesis, but then shut the volume and put it down.

He could feel his tiredness flowing through him. Should he take off his shoes and lie down beside her? After all, his coming and going all morning had exhausted him too. And yet he stayed where he was. In the first place, it might frighten her; and in the second, even if it didn't, as soon as she realized he only wanted to sleep, she would suspect him of being a pervert. The best tactic was to get some shut-eye in the chair while she slept. Was she someone he could marry? And if so, where would they live—in his house or hers? Perhaps they would have to sell both apartments and buy a single larger one with room for all their children. He was beginning to doze off himself now, lulled by the rhythm of his breath, but suddenly, still curled beneath her blanket, she woke him by saying quietly, “You really needn't sit here all day. Why don't you have a look at the city? You're flying home tomorrow, and who knows when you'll be back. There's an expressionist museum not far from here with some important early twentieth-century paintings. Go out and enjoy yourself. I'll feel better soon, I promise.”

He sensed a note of rejection in her voice. “All right,” he said, getting up, “I'll take another walk.” He collected the coffee cups and unfinished roll and asked if there was anything else she wanted, a thermometer perhaps. “No thanks,” she replied, leaving him to exit quietly with the tray, though he could just as well have left it behind. As he waited for the elevator he heard her patter across the floor and turn the key in her lock, and felt sure, cut to the quick, that their brief affair was over.

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.

A
GAIN 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.

I
T 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 temperamental, 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.”