“Tomorrow, though, we can go see a movie,” he added intimately. “I’d like that,” she smiled. “And perhaps,” he suggested, “we’ll go to the beach again.” She nodded her gray head. “The beach sounds nice. I haven’t been to it for ages.” “Did you bring a bathing suit?” he asked rhetorically, being thoroughly acquainted with the contents of her suitcase. “No,” she said. “But why not?” he asked. “Are you afraid that one of your religious friends from Jerusalem will see you?” “Maybe next time,” she blushed, as if baffled or overwhelmed by all his questions. If there is a next time, he almost said out loud. But he didn’t. After all, he thought, I really loved her once, and after a day or two I may remember why.
Though he had hoped she would change into another, livelier dress, she clearly did not share his taste and wore her jumper to the nearby shopping center, where they entered a small optometrist’s shop, the owners of which Molkho knew from the Philharmonic series. Facing her in a seat that looked like a barber’s chair, he tried on frames of glasses to see which went best with his new bifocals, which he had gotten because his once-perfect distance vision now called for correction too. The optometrist regarded Ya’ara curiously, appraising her odd combination of jumper, bobbysocks, gray hair, and wedding ring while gallantly asking for her opinion, as if it alone had any value. Lighting up a cigarette, she fumbled for words and seemed relieved when they all agreed on a pair of gold frames, on which Molkho put a deposit.
They made their way along the busy street. She had, Molkho noticed, a hapless way of falling behind that might once have appealed to him but simply annoyed him now. Abruptly he entered a building and climbed to a second-floor apartment that had been converted into a boutique, in the soft light of which local matrons in bright bathing suits circulated among curtained shelves. Only when they were approached by a salesgirl and Molkho gestured toward Ya’ara, however, did she realize what he had in mind. “I can’t!” she pleaded, turning crimson and stiffening. “But I’ll pay for it,” he whispered. “It’s so we can go to the beach.” Yet still she balked, taking a feeble step backward, so that in the soft light, surrounded by partially dressed ladies, he was struck again by her old beauty. He tried to persuade her while the salesgirl stood by politely smiling, even giving her hand a squeeze, though quickly letting go of it.
THEN AT LEAST A DRESS, he thought. If she would only buy one of those summery dresses in the show windows, something stylish and fresh-looking, because her faded old jumper, on which there was already a light stain of sweat, was making him more and more unhappy. She was unhealthily attached to it, which made him fear she might wear it to the concert that evening too. Not wanting to upset her even more, though, he decided to walk with her to Panorama Road for a scenic view of the harbor and bay, but arriving there, they found the visibility poor. A heavy mist lay over the bay, while to the north, the mountains of the Galilee lay shrouded in a grayish haze, the only clear landmark being the golden dome of the Bahai Temple down the mountainside. “In autumn,” he assured her disappointedly, “you can see for miles around. The houses in Acre look like toy blocks, and the mountains seem close enough to touch.” He suggested having coffee in an elegant café inside a big new department store, through which he led her past racks of dresses, pants, and shirts, stopping now and then to check fabrics and prices in the hope of arousing her interest. “The ‘in’ look today is the wide look,” he said, sounding more mystified than informed. “Anything goes—and usually with anything else!” Yet lagging behind again, she did not even glance at the clothes, perhaps afraid of being forced to buy something, so that they were both relieved to reach the men’s department, where she gladly looked with him at the new collarless shirts, one of which appealed to him especially. “What do you think?” he asked her, holding it up in front of him just as a young salesman approached and urged him to try it on for size. “Tell your husband not to mind the missing collar,” Molkho heard him say beyond the dressing curtail as he buttoned up the shirt. “He’ll get used to it. It’s the new look.” “But what do I want with the new look,” Ya’ara replied, her answer pleasing him greatly, “when his old look suited me fine?”
In the café he tried discussing politics, but the subject failed to interest her. Nor, when asked about her husband’s views, did she seem to think it interested him. “What does, then?” inquired Molkho. She looked at him in bewilderment, unused to having to explain the man who was always there by her side to explain himself. “He’s looking for the Meaning,” she murmured, drawing on her cigarette. “For the Purpose of it all. Not just to live with as much pleasure and as little pain as possible.” “What Purpose is that?” inquired Molkho. “But that’s what he’s looking for!” she answered. “Yes, I know,” he said a bit sarcastically. “He told us that in the movement thirty years ago—but what has he found since then?” “It’s not like discovering some Big Idea,” she tried to explain. “It’s something you have to live.” “But isn’t life itself the Purpose?” he asked. “To get through it as best you can before Death comes for you?” “But Death doesn’t mean a thing to him!” she retorted admiringly. “He doesn’t believe in it!” “Oh, he doesn’t!” Molkho grinned at her painfully. “Do you think Death cares whether he believes in it or not?” Frightened by his vehemence, she tried changing the subject. “But I want to know!” he insisted, just getting more worked up. “What does he believe in?” “Don’t ask me, ask him,” she answered softly. “And you? How about you?” he queried. “I’d rather not think about Death,” she said. “I feel more like you do about it. Even when I had all those miscarriages, I never thought of them as deaths, just as failures, because how can you die if you haven’t been born?”
Once again he was reminded of her old directness, of the naive honesty she had answered all their teachers with. So it wasn’t just her looks that made me love her, he mused, trying to remember more. Left back a grade, she had sat there not caring about her studies, wanting only to get through the year. She hadn’t even pretended to care. And though all her friends were seniors, she made a strong impression on the junior class she was banished to. “Sitting here with you,” Molkho told her, “I feel that I’m back in high school again, only this time without homework or exams and with spending money in my pocket.” She flashed him an intimate smile. How can we keep the feeling of closeness? he wondered just as he spotted the two little Russians, mother and daughter, heading for the exit of the café, followed by an old woman with a cane who stopped to pay the cashier. For a moment, sure he had been noticed, he caught his breath; then, turning to Ya’ara, he whispered, “Look over there, that woman in the white peasant blouse—she’s my mother-in-law. Just wait until you get to know her. She’s eighty-two and clear as a bell. Would you believe how she looks? And she does everything! She doesn’t even need that cane; it’s just something she carries around with her. It’s incredible how lucid she is.”
Ya’ara looked curiously at the old woman, who was counting her change over the counter. Satisfied it was correct, she scooped it up and made her way slowly toward the exit, listing slightly like a ship. “Was your wife like her?” asked Ya’ara. “I never used to think so,” said Molkho. “Recently, though, perhaps because I’m forgetting, I’ve begun to see a resemblance.”
HE CHANGED PLANS and took her to the Bahai Temple, where they joined a group of Dutch tourists in a manicured garden full of flowering bushes, led down a paved path by their guide to the golden dome of the sanctuary. “It reminds me so of Europe,” marveled Molkho. “I’ve been living in Haifa for thirty years—twice a day I drive right past this place, and yet I’ve never been here before. It’s something I’ve always meant to do.”