The Collected Stories

over the landscape. Passages of the Pentateuch flashed across my memory. It seemed to me that I was somewhere in the plains of Mamre, where presently would materialize Abraham’s tent, and the angel would bring Sarah tidings that she would be blessed with a male child at the age of ninety. My head whirled with stories of Sodom, of the sacrifice of Isaac, of Ishmael and Hagar. The stacks of grain in the harvested fields brought Joseph’s dreams to mind. One morning we passed a horse fair. The horses and the men stood still, congealed in silence like phantoms of a fair from a vanished time. It was hard to believe that in this very land, some fifteen years before, a civil war had raged and Stalinists had shot Trotskyites.
    Barely a week had passed since our departure, but I felt that I had been wandering for months. From sitting so long in one position I was overcome with a lust that wasn’t love or even sexual passion but something purely animalistic. It seemed that my partner shared the same feelings, for a special heat emanated from her. When she accidentally touched my hand, she burned me.
    We sat for hours without a single word, but then we became gabby and said whatever came to our lips. We confided intimate things to one another. We yawned and went on talking half asleep. I asked her how it happened that she had married a man forty years older than herself.
    She said, “I was an orphan. The Turks murdered my father, and my mother died soon after. We were rich but they stripped us of everything. I met him as an employee in his office. He had wild eyes. He took one look at me and I knew that he wanted me and was ready to marry me. He had an iron will. He also had the strength of a giant. If he hadn’t smoked cigars from early morning till late at night, he would have lived to be a hundred. He could drink fifteen cups of bitter coffee a day. He exhausted me until I developed an aversion to love. When he died, I had the solace that I would be left in peace for a change. Now everything has begun to waken within me again.”
    “Were you a virgin when you married?” I asked in a half dream.
    “Yes, a virgin.”
    “Did you have lovers after his death?”
    “Many men wanted me, but I was raised in such a way I couldn’t live with a man without marriage. In my circle in Turkey a woman can’t afford to be loose. Everyone there knows what everyone else is doing. A woman has to maintain her reputation.”
    “What do you need with Turkey?”
    “Oh, I have a house there, servants, a business.”
    “Here in Spain you can do what you want,” I said, and regretted my words instantly.
    “But I have a chaperon here,” she said. “Mark watches over me. I’ll tell you something that will seem crazy to you. He guards me even when he is in London and I’m in Ankara. I often feel that he sees everything I do. I sense it isn’t he but his father.”
    “You believe this?”
    “It’s a fact.”
    I glanced backward and saw Mark gazing at me sharply as if he were trying to hypnotize me.
    When we stopped for the night at a hotel, we first had to line up for the toilets, then wait a long time for our dinner. In the rooms assigned to us, the ceilings were high, the walls thick, and there were old-fashioned washstands with basins and pitchers of water.
    That night, we stopped late, which meant that dinner was not served until after ten. Once again, Mark ordered a bottle of wine. For some reason I let myself be persuaded to drink several glasses. Mark asked me if I had had a chance to bathe during the trip, and I told him that I washed every morning out of the washbasin with cold water just like the other passengers.
    He glanced at his mother half questioningly, half imperatively.
    After some hesitation, Mrs. Metalon said, “Come to our room. We have a bathroom.”
    “When?”
    “Tonight. We leave at five in the morning.”
    “Sir, do it,” Mark said. “A hot bath is healthy. In America everyone has a bathroom, be he porter or janitor. The Japanese bathe in wooden tubs, the whole family together. Come a half hour after dinner. It’s not good to bathe immediately following the evening meal.”
    “I’ll disturb both of you. You’re obviously tired.”
    “No, sir. I never go to sleep until between one and two o’clock. I’m planning to take a walk through the city. I have to stretch my legs. From sitting all day in the bus they’ve become cramped and stiff. My mother goes to bed late, too.”
    “You’re not