Like most intellectuals, she had never cared for Nature, which had bored her. Now he again walked by himself, sometimes still flicked by the damp, raw tail of winter, whose fog drifting in from the sea shrouded the mountain and sprayed him with drops of fragrant rain. He roamed the streets of different neighborhoods, sometimes stopping in front of a window lit by the ghostly glare of a television and listening to the laughing voices of the women within, or else sitting down on the bench of a deserted bus stop beside its illuminated ad, stared at by German shepherds selling dog food, huge boxes of detergent, or the faces and bodies of shapely women, against which he would occasionally lean his head, feeling their chill incorporeity. Mainly, though, he kept an eye on the new cars, pausing to peer at their interiors and dashboards while trying to guess what each knob and button was for. His own car, when he came home to it, seemed gray and tired-looking; and though his trip to Europe had eaten into his savings, the high school boy was a prodigal spender, and the German reparations had stopped coming, he was still determined to buy a new one, especially as the market was jittery and there were rumors of fresh automobile taxes. He had to act fast, he admonished himself, choosing a Citroen. “It’s a more feminine car than my old one,” he told the salesman with a grin, finally signing the order form after circling the floor model for several hours. The salesman took offense. “What do you mean ‘feminine’? Just because it’s French?” “Feminine and French,” insisted Molkho. “Just look at those curves, how she bellies down below, the flare of that rear of hers...”
GETTING RID OF HIS OLD CAR, however, was far from easy. There were no buyers at the price he was asking; mechanical problems kept turning up that he had no idea existed; and in the end he began to fear that he would not be able to sell it. Finally, after bringing it back a few times to the garage for repairs and bodywork, he lowered the price and found a buyer at once, only to discover that his new car had not arrived from France yet. Forced to travel by bus, he began coming late to work, so that, though he still had special status as a widower, he was summoned one day to the office of the director, an affable man who had both been to the funeral and paid a condolence call on Molkho at home. He shook Molkho’s hand, asked how he was, and inquired about his children and mother-in-law. “Is that old lady still alive? How is she getting along? And how are your kids coping? You have to let them let it all out!” He seemed relieved to hear that Molkho had riot five children but only three and that the youngest was a junior in high school. Well, then, it wasn’t so bad; he himself had an aunt who spent a whole year of her life attending to practical arrangements after her husband passed away. Though at first Molkho thought that the purpose of the summons was to fix him up with the director’s aunt, this roundabout opening was simply a way of popping a different question—namely, was he prepared to resume a full work load, since the director had a special job for him? The deadline for the state comptroller’s report was rapidly approaching, and it was imperative to check the books of certain small northern townships that were being run by inexperienced officials, several of whom were suspected of fraud. Most suspicious was a village called Zeru’a, the council manager of which, a young semistudent, had recently filed an annual statement of such irregular character that it was impossible to know which he was—hopelessly naive or cunningly corrupt. Both he and the village treasurer would have to appear before the comptroller, but perhaps Molkho should pay them a visit first and spot any malfeasances before they could be covered up. Naturally, the office would pay his expenses, and the work was sure to be interesting. How about it? Did he feel up to it, or was he still too busy with personal matters in consequence of his wife’s death?
At first, Molkho balked; psychologically he did not yet feel ready for the task, especially as the responsibility was great; yet the more the director pressed him with bureaucratic geniality, the more he began to reconsider. After all, why not? The office had gone out of its way, in recent years, to be nice to him. In fact, his wife had been shocked to hear that upon discovery of her illness he had gone at once to ask his boss for special consideration. Was he already, she had wanted to know, feeling as desperate as that? So that now, seeing the file waiting for him on the director’s desk, or rather several files banded together, he took them and left. Passing the legal adviser’s door, he decided to stop in and say hello. She was sitting behind her desk in her large, sunny office with a pair of glasses perched on her nose, talking on the phone; yet she smiled at him and he smiled back, waited for her to hang up, and said, “I was just passing by and thought of you. How was your trip back? How’s your ankle?” Holding a pencil, she rose amusedly to greet him, her squirrel eyes squinting in the sunlight looking slantier than ever. Her hair, too, Molkho saw, had been cropped even shorter and more girlishly. They stood there for a while chatting like old acquaintances, paring down their shared adventure into little particles of nothing. His heart aching for his lost wife and his own empty solitude, Molkho clutched the files to his chest.
CURIOUS AND APPREHENSIVE, he took the files home with him. At once, he saw they were a mess. Though the documentation of government budgets and loans, adding up to millions of shekels, seemed in order, the village’s records of how the money had been disbursed were pitifully inadequate. Most of them were handwritten and had pinned to them a small number of unacceptable receipts scribbled on loose notebook paper and signed with illegible scrawls. Despite his initial reaction that it was a clear case for the police, he tried going over the material, even attempting to telephone the council manager in Zeru’a the next morning. But it was impossible to get through; either there was no answer or for long periods the phone rang busy. Finally, it was picked up by a boy who said something incomprehensible in a gruff accent. “Let me talk to Ben-Ya’ish,” Molkho said, but he was left waiting for a long time on the line, over which he heard the voices of playing children and something that sounded like a schoolbell. Then there was silence, and after waiting in vain for the boy to return, he hung up.
An hour later he called again; once more the line was busy. At two o’clock, before quitting work, he tried a last time; now the phone was answered by a girl who spoke clearly. “Tell me,” Molkho asked her, “is the phone you’re speaking from in a school?” “Yes,” she said. “Then let me talk with the principal or one of the teachers,” he requested. “They’ve all gone home,” said the girl, “but the janitor’s here.” “Then give me the janitor,” said Molkho. But the janitor was hard of hearing and apparently none too bright. “No Ben-Ya’ish,” was all he kept saying, eager to hang up. “Then let me talk to the girl again,” said Molkho, loath to give up after having gotten this far, but the janitor had no idea whom he meant.