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.
THE 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.”
The director leafed through the file, asked a few questions, and thanked Molkho profusely, as if he had done something heroic, after which he inquired about the health of his children and his mother-in-law, whom he remembered well. And that was the end of it. Or, at least, so Molkho thought until later that day he was again called to the director’s office, where, to his alarm, he found the legal adviser sitting in a sleeveless knit dress, her high-heeled shoes crossed, turning the Xeroxed pages of the file. She looked pale, and he suddenly feared that she was about to exact her pound of flesh for his failure to go to bed with her. Why, oh why, couldn’t he at least have kissed those lily-white arms, which certainly deserved some consideration? Greeting him with a faint smile, she made no attempt to conceal the coolness with which she had already written him off. She had been invited, explained the director, to ask Molkho a few questions, which he proceeded to answer as best he could. Yes, work on the road had begun; he had seen it himself. And the park, too; the trees and bushes had already been planted. Not that he knew what they needed a park for with all that natural magnificence around them, but of course, it was their prerogative to have one. As for the tractor, yes, it was in his report—that is, it was not exactly a tractor: it was a secondhand steamroller, but it did exist and a copy of its registration was included. And though there was no denying that Ben-Ya’ish was a rather muddled young man who had taken administrative liberties with unemployment checks, this was not the first such case come across by their office, which had always looked the other way in the past. After all, times were hard up there.