Five Seasons (36 page)

T
HEY ARRIVED
in Yodfat shortly before noon. The roads leading out of the city were clogged, and on one he took a wrong turn and had to backtrack, yet once on the new highway to the Lower Galilee, they sped along unobstructed and Molkho praised everything he saw: the well-engineered road, the fresh green forests, the new settlements on the hilltops, the large, clearly lettered road signs. Belted in beside him and looking good in her sunglasses, Ya'ara, too, kept oohing and aahing. The silence as they climbed the last curves to Yodfat reminded him of the approach to Zeru'a, but here the houses were well built and attractive, surrounded by trees and neat lawns. Hardly able to wait, Ya'ara undid her seat belt and guided him to a parking lot by a large, red stone building, jumping youthfully out of the car the moment it came to a stop. “Does it still look the same to you?” he asked, pleased to see her so excited. “Yes and no,” she answered, looking eagerly around her. “I guess more no than yes, though.” She was already starting up a narrow path toward several prominent houses standing amid the gray rocks of the hillside. “You go ahead,” he told her, sensing her wish to be alone with her memories. “I'll catch up with you.”

He circled the large red building, no doubt a public structure of some sort, looking for an open door. But there was none, and so he walked up the paved street searching for a place to relieve himself, encountering only closely spaced houses with gardens featuring the same gray rock. He had despaired of finding even a suitable tree when he spied an old prefab that apparently served for office space, inside of which, at the end of a short corridor, he came to a small, dirty washroom. Extracting a warm and somewhat distended penis, he tenderly aimed it with both hands at the toilet bowl, dissuaded from talking to it only by the sound of an electric calculator on the other side of the wall, where an unseen bookkeeper was at work. He flushed the toilet, washed at the soapless, towelless little sink, and returned to the corridor, shaking drops of water from his hands, where he was intercepted by the bookkeeper, a short, burly man with thick, steel-rimmed glasses and a head of blond curls. Who, the bookkeeper wanted to know, was he looking for? “I'm just accompanying someone who once lived here,” Molkho told him, mentioning Ya'ara by name. “What, they're here?” asked the short man excitedly. “Just she is,” answered Molkho. “By herself?” The man seemed mystified, as if it made no sense. “But where is he?” “In Jerusalem,” Molkho said. “And is it true what they say about him?” asked the man tensely. “Yes,” replied Molkho, who could only guess at the meaning of the question. The bookkeeper gave his head of boyish curls an angry though not unadmiring shake. “I might have known!” he said. “An anarchist like him is capable of anything.” Molkho nodded sympathetically. Though he would have liked to inquire about the village, the man seemed in the grip of such powerful memories that he deemed it best not to. “Is there anything you'd like me to tell her?” he asked, wiping his wet hands on his pants. “Never mind,” snapped the bookkeeper with inexplicable ire, wheeling to return to his cubicle.

Molkho retraced his steps to the parking lot, from where he started up the path after Ya'ara. Beneath the overcast sky the air was hot and dry. Scraggly pine forests covered the hillsides, some of which were dotted with white houses, the same new settlements advertised by the road signs. Somewhere off in the distance a machine buzzed stubbornly, its faint rasp set against the silence. A young woman emerged from a house with a baby in a blue backpack, glanced at Molkho slipping past her, and started down the path. When he reached the top of it, by the uppermost houses, Ya'ara was still not in sight. He paused for a moment, debating which way to turn in the rocky terrain, which seemed to grow wilder in the stillness. There was a rustle in the bushes. He headed toward it, crossing a stony field full of weeds, and soon spied her standing beneath a window. A rusty hoe and some crates of rotting potatoes stood against the wall of a house that was apparently empty. Mysterious-looking in her dark sunglasses, she took several crates, piled them on top of each other, and climbed up to look through the window.

“This was my window,” she told him, taking off her glasses to peer inside. “I lay in bed beneath it for four months.” “Was it winter?” he asked, rather oddly. She didn't turn to look at him. “Yes, it was winter,” she answered, as if the question were perfectly natural. “And autumn. And once, for three months, summer. And there was another time too, right before we left. It was every year and every season,” she said, standing on tiptoe to get a glimpse of the house she had felt happy and loved in, despite her great anguish, because she still had had hope. “But why not go inside?” he suggested. She threw him a grateful look, stepped down from the crates, circled the house to a locked door, and groped for a rusty key above the lintel. With a squeak it turned in the lock. Pushing the door open with her little belly, she stepped unhesitatingly inside. Molkho remained in the doorway, peering curiously into the house, which looked surprisingly tidy, with its plain furniture, straw mats, and shelves full of books and clay figurines. Who last had lived here? he wondered. Had they had children? Ya'ara stood looking around her, tall against the low ceiling. She looks best in this gray light, he thought as she led him to her old room, though I'll never know her if I don't make love to her. If she would only cry now, it would melt me so fast that sex would be no problem. Yet, though he waited patiently, she did not. Eagerly she prowled about the room, handling things, forgetting she was not in her own house, even opening an old closet as if hoping to find her dead babies there.

There was a crackle of dry grass. Someone was coming up the path. It was the curly little bookkeeper, determined to speak to her after all. Oblivious of Molkho's presence, he began plaintively inquiring about Uri, while Ya'ara fended him off with polite but evasive replies. Now and then she tried asking him about himself, but each time he returned to Molkho's counselor. Why had he never come to visit? How could he have forgotten them? He had to come, he had to, if only to explain himself! Ya'ara nodded, bending down to the little man, apparently a bachelor, who was perhaps once in love with her too. “We'll come again,” she promised, looking her most majestic, so that Molkho, half in shadow in the corner, felt comforted too.

I
F YOU'D LIKE TO HAVE LUNCH
in a really unusual restaurant, let me take you to that little town called Zeru'a that I was telling you about,” said Molkho as the car silently took the curves back down to the main road. “It's a bit far but well worth it.” He stopped to check the road map, then took the next turnoff, made a right onto the Acre-Safed highway, and turned left soon after at Rama, heading north on the climb toward Peki'in. They drove slowly up the winding mountain road, recalling the hikes taken by their youth group, a new feeling of intimacy between them. Had she ever thought of going back to Yodfat by herself? he asked. “No, I could never live without a man,” she answered, her frankness startling him again. “And certainly not there.”

It was nearly two o'clock when they reached Zeru'a, which was as quiet as a ghost town. He drove past the shopping center and along the dirt road that led to the Indians' house, telling her whimsically about the dark-skinned girl he had all but fallen in love with. Yes, she said earnestly, you can fall in love even with a child. Wait here, he told her, parking near the house and going to knock on the door. But it was locked and the windows were shuttered, the only sign of life being the cow, which stood sadly chewing her cud in her shed, her face crawling with flies. He went to ask at the house of some neighbors, who recognized him at once. The Indians, they said, had gone to visit some cousins down south; in fact, they were thinking of moving there. “Did they have a boy or a girl?” he asked. “Another girl,” they said. “And how is the father?” asked Molkho. “Oh, he's fine now,” they told him, causing him to feel a sudden pang. “He's all better.”

They drove back to the shopping center, which was abandoned for the afternoon siesta. The little restaurant was open, however, its tall, dark owner sitting shadelike in a corner. He, too, remembered Molkho and rose to shake his hand warmly, as did the handful of customers; he had made, it seemed, quite an impression. They shook Ya'ara's hand too, though blind, Molkho sensed, to her old beauty and disappointed she wasn't younger. Moreover, the Indian was all out of organ stew. “If only I had known,” he lamented upon hearing how far Molkho had come for it. If they didn't mind waiting a few hours, he would be glad to whip up a new batch, but to Molkho's chagrin, they made do instead with dry steaks and soggy french fries, though the friendly crowd that formed around the table was compensation of sorts. Soon Ben-Ya'ish himself arrived, smiling, unshaven, and heavier than Molkho remembered him. “Whatever happened to that report of yours?” he asked, shaking hands with a conspiratorial grin. “It's on the state comptroller's desk,” Molkho told him. “We tried putting things in the best light, but it's up to him now.” Satisfied that he had come just to show off his new girlfriend, a much-appreciated gesture despite their doubts about her, the locals grew even friendlier. When he rose to ask for the bill, the Indian owner flashed him a dark smile. “Don't worry about it—it's on the house!” called out voices. “The pleasure was ours!” They were offended when Molkho, loath to be suspected of venality, insisted on paying. “You're insulting us,” they told him, pointing out that in any case, the Indian having suddenly vanished, there was no one to pay.

On their way back to Haifa, Molkho felt that he and Ya'ara had been together for weeks. She, too, seemed more relaxed, and once out of the mountains, after stopping to buy a watermelon at a roadside stand, she shut her eyes and fell asleep. Just then, though, the engine began to knock, and glancing sideways at her tired face, Molkho felt depressed by the thought of coming home and having to explain her to the high school boy, who, hungry and dirty, would no doubt be back from his hike.

She awoke at the outskirts of Haifa, lit her last cigarette, and asked him to stop for a new pack, reading the movie ads on a signboard while he entered a grocery. Though his anxiety grew worse as they neared home, he was relieved to discover that the boy wasn't there yet. Ya'ara rushed inside uninhibitedly, beating him to the bathroom, as if she were no longer a guest but a roommate. Had she perhaps really decided to move in with him? Before he knew it, she had gone to the kitchen, taken out the big cutting knife, split the melon in half, sliced each half lengthwise, and put the pieces away in the refrigerator. The miracle is happening, thought Molkho, watching her move freely around the apartment, turn on the television, take out some cake, and put water up to boil. “How's your head?” he asked. “Oh, it's fine,” she laughed.

He went to shower and emerged to find her eating melon on the terrace with her dusty shoes and socks off, her toes stuck through the railing of the terrace. How worn and raw they looked, so different from the delicate cut-glass ones he had seen in Jerusalem! It can't be that she's fallen in love with me, he thought, gazing westward at the sun struggling out of the afternoon haze, feeling groggy from his missed nap. All summer long the sun had seemed to rise several times a day, each sunrise hotter and more brutal. The red juice of the watermelon trickled down her chin. She wiped it with the back of her hand and went off to shower and wash her hair, which was wrapped in a red-striped towel when she returned.

It was 6
P.M.,
though the light still glared fiercely. Suddenly the house seemed full of her: there wasn't a corner where she hadn't left some part of her, some item she had touched or used. Through her thin house frock, her breasts looked small and weak. It would have been different if I'd found her myself, he thought, instead of having her served up to me. She was leafing through the newspaper, drops of water dripping from her hair, still eating slice after slice of watermelon. “That lunch made me terribly thirsty,” she apologized, glancing at the movie section. Had he decided what film he wanted to see? Molkho hesitated. If he knew his son, the boy hadn't taken a key; perhaps they should wait for him, after which he would be glad to see
Carmen.
The music, he smiled, would be livelier than last night's chamber concert, although if she wasn't in the mood for opera,
Gandhi
was recommended too.

All at once he found himself telling her about his trip to Berlin. She listened tensely while he described the
Voles Opera,
which were the latest thing in Europe, where the opera houses were as full as the theaters were empty; the performance of
Orpheus and Eurydice,
in which the male lead had astoundingly been sung by a woman; and—but why was he doing this; and with a grin yet!—his conversation in the beer cellar with the legal adviser. What an absurd idea that woman had sprung on him—and yet, as if it made perfect sense, he hadn't stopped thinking of it since! From time to time, Ya'ara turned her bowed head to stare at the sea, which glittered with the rays of the slowly setting sun. “How could she have said such a thing?” he demanded resentfully. “Maybe I could have done more to keep my wife alive. I wouldn't have minded her telling me that. After all, she had a husband who died too. If I killed my wife, then you killed him, I told her. But that didn't faze her one bit. Maybe I did, but not like you, she said to me.”

He sniffed glumly. There were sounds outside the apartment. Suddenly fearing that his son might arrive and find Ya'ara in a house frock with his wife's towel like a turban on her head, he rose impulsively. “Come,” he said, “let's catch the first show. We'll leave the key with the neighbors and put a note on the door. I honestly can't remember what time he said he'd be back—
if he
said anything, because lately he doesn't say much to me.”