Five Seasons Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the week of mourning, so it seemed, had been taken by them all as a signal to kick over the traces. There was a deep, strange silence in the house. Molkho drew the bedroom blinds and lay down to take a nap, as he had done regularly when his wife was sick and he had had to get up at all hours; yet, though awake since dawn, he couldn’t fall asleep, for all at once he felt worried about his son. He rose, switched on some classical music on the radio, and began to go through the medicines, of which there was a great pile, throwing some out, returning others to the cabinet, and leaving the twenty boxes of Talwin on the shelf, where he built a colorful wall of them. It was madness, he thought, to throw out anything so new and expensive. Next, turning to the room itself, he slowly began restoring it to its former state, before its paramedical conversion. Dragging back the chairs and table that had been moved out of it, he tried them in different places, pausing to decide where they looked best and were most sensible. Arranging the furniture had always been his wife’s job. The double bed alone still remained on the terrace, covered with a large sheet of plastic, its mattress hopelessly rotted. Picking up the special bath basin he had bought, he leaned it against the doorway: it was brand-new and could surely be sold, perhaps even to his mother-in-law’s old-age home. It was best not to involve her in it, though, because she might expect him to donate it and he was not about to lose all that money.
    His son was still not home, and Molkho realized that he didn’t know the name or even the telephone number of a single one of the boy’s friends. He went downstairs to wait for him, but a cold, dull wind drove him back up to the apartment, where he made the boy some coffee and put a plate of cookies by the cup. Then, sitting down at his desk, he began going over the bank statements that had lain neglected since his wife’s death. He had already drawn up a list of the sums still owed her by the Department of Education.
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    H IS SON TURNED UP at half past five, without a key naturally, since he had grown accustomed in the last half-year to someone always being at home. “We’re under new management,” Molkho told him. “From now on you better take a key; I’m not going to sit around all day waiting for you like a nursemaid!” He set the table for supper, and they sat down to eat the new dishes, whose spiciness the boy did not like. Molkho, too, had no appetite. A new worry on his mind, he dutifully dialed the old-age home; yet again there was no answer, and inquiring about his mother-in-law at the switchboard, he was told she had gone out at noontime and not returned. Since he could feel himself coming down with a cold, which he must have caught in the cemetery, he decided to go to bed. Meanwhile, his son had sat down in front of the television. “Don’t you have another history exam tomorrow?” Molkho asked him. The boy wasn’t concerned: the later at night he studied for it, the better he would remember in the morning. “Well, then,” said Molkho, “I’m going to bed. If your grandmother calls, tell her I’m sleeping.” Reflecting on the events of recent days, which seemed to have happened not close together but rather at great intervals of nebulous time, he went to the bedroom, now its old self again. Turning off the night-light, he was plunged at once into unfamiliar darkness and fell asleep; yet shortly after midnight he sat up in a fright, for he had suddenly heard wheezing close by. Quickly he jumped out of bed. The light was on in the kitchen, and the kettle was steaming on the stove. At first, he thought it must be morning and that the housekeeper was back; it was, however, still night, and fully dressed, his son strolled casually into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee, his hair falling over his face. “Are you crazy?”