The car turned out to be an old pickup with a load in the back and the Arab’s wife, a large peasant woman dressed in black, in the front. Before Molkho could protest, he was made to sit between them, and they started out, driving slowly and with a great clatter of the engine in the heat of the day. Every now and then, they turned off the main road to make a delivery to some remote Arab village that Molkho had never even heard of. Sweatily squeezed between the driver and his wife and dismally cursing his fate, he watched the road go by while throwing hostile glances at the man shifting gears, an operation that was conducted each time with great caution but little sign of expertise. After asking where the man knew Ben-Ya’ish from and being told that the council manager had close ties with the nearby Arab villages and even helped them with their books, there was nothing left to talk about and they drove on in silence, the Arab’s wife dozing with her head resting lightly on Molkho’s shoulder. By the time they began the climb into the mountains, his eyes, too, began to close; periodically he nodded off, found himself tilting against the peasant woman’s heavy breasts, and sat up again with a start. The trip took three hours and included a stop in the driver’s village—which looked like something from the wilds of Anatolia—where the woman got out, took off her shoes, and slipped into her house while her husband unloaded the remaining crates and invited Molkho, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, to come in for a cup of coffee. He went to the bathroom, which surprised him by its cleanliness, and returned to the sitting room to find the coffee waiting there. “I understand you lost your wife,” said the Arab. Molkho was nonplussed. Was it written all over his face? But no, the man had heard of it in Zeru’a. What else had he heard there? Molkho asked. Nothing. They just told him to bring Molkho in his truck.
It was 5 P.M. when he reached the school building. Though he saw at once in the mild afternoon light that it was locked and deserted, he did not feel at all surprised; on the contrary, something had told him all along that Ben-Ya’ish would not be there. The fields had yellowed a bit in the ten days that had passed, but here and there he saw summer flowers he hadn’t noticed the last time, and on the whole, the place seemed more livable. He walked between the houses, feeling watched by dark silhouettes of Indians. “It’s that man from the ministry again,” he heard someone say. Slowly he crossed the shopping center, where this time, as though out of compassion, people avoided his eyes.
He walked on to the little house on the hillside, passing under the tall, humming pylon and once again experiencing the sense of déjà vu, though this time it was possible that his previous visit was the cause of it. Ben-Ya’ish’s house was locked and silent, the lowered blinds preventing a glimpse inside, but when he knocked on the door, he thought he heard a sound there. “Mr. Ben-Ya’ish?” he called out. “Mr. Ben-Ya’ish?” But the sound stopped, and Molkho, all but trembling with anticipation, walked back down the hill to the house of the treasurer, whose daughter opened the door. “Where’s your father?” he asked, feeling himself turn as red as her polka-dot dress. She seemed to have grown smaller since last he had seen her, but her gaze was as pure and earnest as ever. Her father, she said, was in the hospital. “In the hospital? How long has he been there?” he asked, his heart sinking. But he had gone only that morning and would soon be back, she informed him, her thin, finely wrought hand on the door, uncertain whether Molkho wished to enter, perhaps even concerned that he might sleep in her bed again. Nor was he at all sure himself how proper it was to be alone with her in the house. He felt unsteady, as if squatting inside him were a sexless little gnome who had fallen in love with a nymph. Behind her he could see her bedroom with one end of her antique bed, its blanket thrown off, and the heavy furniture. She followed his gaze earnestly, a joyless, humorless, somber little Indian, just like her father. “Do you want to wait here for him?” she asked. “No,” Molkho said, “I’ve come to see Ya-ir Ben-Ya’ish. Do you have any idea where he is?” “He was waiting for you all morning at the school,” said the girl, raising an arm as if to fend Molkho off. “You should look for him there.” “But the school is locked,” he said patiently, “I just came from there,” and when she said nothing he continued, “Why don’t you show me where the secretary lives, that music teacher.” She glided outdoors in her bare feet, explaining to him how to get there; yet touching her so lightly that he barely felt her, as though she were made out of air, he said, “Take me there yourself, please. Just put on some shoes first.” And so again he followed her between the houses, looking at her matchstick legs in their sneakers while trying to carry on a conversation, first asking her about her mother and when the new baby was expected, then about the cow, and finally about the wild ravine, the name of which he had forgotten. But she did not know it either and was not even certain that it had one. All she could tell him was that if you walked a ways down it, you came to a waterfall. “What waterfall is that?” Molkho asked. “Oh, just a waterfall.”
The music teacher turned pale when Molkho arrived with the girl. “It’s you? You came after all? But when? We’d already given up on you.” “You’d given up?” he snickered. “Yes, we waited for you all morning. Ya’ir was beside himself. An hour ago he took the bus to Fasuta to look for the driver.” While Molkho related what had happened, she hurried to give him a chair and a drink, and told the girl she could go. Molkho, though, did not want to stay in her house either, for it was noisy with children and too full of cheap bric-a-brac and glassware. He had a deep urge to stroll in the honeyed spring light, vigilant though forbearing in the knowledge, which both pleased and touched him, that the council manager was afraid of him, but determined to meet the young man and do what he could to console him. “Never mind. I’ll take a walk around and wait for him at their house,” he said to the music teacher with a nod toward the girl, who stood frozen for some reason in a corner. “Is your father back?” the music teacher asked her. “He will be soon,” said the girl. “Then find Mr. Molkho a place to rest,” said the teacher, happy to get rid of him.
And so once more Molkho walked behind the girl along the path between the houses, aware of the surreptitious stares cast his way. “Where’s the trail leading to that waterfall?” he asked her. She guided him to it, leading him across a field to a broad dirt track. “Well, then,” he said, “I’ll go down and have a look and come right back.” She was reluctant to leave him there, though. “You’d better let me show you the way.” “There’s really no need to,” answered Molkho, not trusting himself alone with her in the ravine. “I’ll find it by myself. Just please take my briefcase back to your house.” And indeed, the request reassured her, so that she stood there watching him set out, squinting through her comic glasses with a sudden, sweet flutter of her eyes. The broad trail soon narrowed and grew rocky, bushes and boulders blocked the way, and moisture from an unseen source softened the earth beneath his feet, which glistened a turfy green. And yet the more tangled and difficult the path became, the more lustrously vibrant grew the light. The far side of the ravine was hidden by the thick bushes, and from time to time he had to slide down a steep rock on his bottom. Should he stop and turn back? But the winding trail lured him on, the damp earth giving off new smells, joined now by a metal pipe, no doubt for sewage or irrigation, which snaked downward through the lush undergrowth, in which it seemed strangely out of place. Molkho followed it, treading on it now and then to make sure he could find his way back through the thickening brush. He skirted little puddles of water and crossed other paths joining this one, trodden grassless by hikers. It grew darker, there was a pungent smell of dust and rushing water, the walls of a little canyon rose on either side of him, and then all at once he was standing in a clearing of golden light and there was the waterfall.