Fima (32 page)

He made himself another cup of coffee, ate a few slices of black bread and jam to quell the hunger pangs, took a couple of tablets to quell the heartburn. Then he went to have a piss. He felt furious with his body, always bothering him with its needs, and preventing him from following through a single thought or observation. He stood for a few moments without moving, his head to one side, his mouth half open, as though deep in thought, and his penis in his hand. Despite the pressure in his bladder he was unable to release a single drop. He resorted to his usual subterfuge, pulling the handle in the hope that the sound of rushing water would remind his sluggish organ of its duty. But it refused to be impressed by that old and well-worn stratagem. It seemed to be saying: It's time you thought up a new game for me. Grudgingly it released a brief, thin trickle, as a special favor. As soon as the tank stopped, this pathetic trickle stopped too. His bladder remained urgently full. Fima shook the offending member gently, then more violently, but nothing happened. Finally he pulled the handle again, but the tank had not had time to fill, and instead of a roaring cascade it gave a sort of hollow, contemptuous grunt, as though it was mocking Fima in his misfortune. As though in its defiance it was showing solidarity with the telephone.

Nevertheless he persisted. He did not retreat. He would wage a war of attrition against this recalcitrant organ. We'll see who cracks first. The limp, shellfish-like flesh between his fingers suddenly put him in mind of a lizard, some kind of grotesque creature that had emerged from the depths of the evolutionary process and now clung irritatingly to his body. In another century or two people would probably be able to replace this troublesome appendage with a neat mechanical device that would drain the body's superfluous fluids at a touch. The whole absurd association between the processes of urination and copulation in a single organ struck him as a crude expression of vulgar adolescent humor, in poor taste: it would be no more distasteful if humans reproduced by spitting into each other's mouths or by blowing their noses into each other's ears.

Meanwhile the cistern had refilled. Fima pulled the handle again, and succeeded in releasing another intermittent jet, which once again ceased the moment the water stopped pouring. He was furious: to think of all the massive efforts he had invested over the past thirty years in gratifying every whim and appetite of this pampered, selfish, corrupt, insatiable reptile, which turned you into a mere vehicle created for the sole purpose of conveying it comfortably from female to female, and after all that it repaid you with such ingratitude.

As though addressing a naughty child, Fima said:

"All right, You've got exactly one minute to make your mind up. In another fifty-five seconds by my watch I'm zipping up and going, and after that you can burst for all I care."

This threat only seemed to reinforce the reptile's recalcitrance: it seemed to shrivel between his fingers. Fima was determined not to yield this time. Furiously he zipped up his fly and banged down the lid of the toilet. He slammed the bathroom door behind him. Five minutes later he slammed the door of the flat, strode past the mailbox without succumbing to the temptation to take out the newspaper, and marched resolutely toward the shopping center. He had made up his mind to go to the bank to see to four transactions, which he recited to himself as he walked along, so as not to forget. First, draw some cash. He had had enough of going around without a penny in his pocket. Second, pay all his bills: telephone, water, kerosene, sewage, gas, electricity. Third, find out at last the state of his account. By the time he reached the newspaper-and-stationery shop on the corner, he had forgotten the fourth thing. He strained his mind, but it was no good. On the other hand he noticed a new issue of
Politics
displayed on the inside of the closed door of the shop. He went in and perused it for a quarter of an hour, shocked to read Tsvi Kropotkin's article, which maintained that the chances of peace were nil, at least for the foreseeable future. He must go and see Tsvika this very morning and read the riot act to him about the defeatism of the intelligentsia: not the kind of defeatism that our opponents on the hawkish right so stridently accuse us of, but something else, something deeper and in the long term more serious.

His upsurge of fury yielded some benefit: as soon as he left the shop, he cut across a waste plot, entered an unfinished building, and barely had time to unzip his fly before his bladder emptied itself with a rush. He felt so triumphant that he did not even mind getting his shoes and trouser cuffs muddy. Proceeding northward, he walked past the bank without seeing it, but observed with excitement that the almond tree in his back garden was not the only one that had blossomed without waiting for the Trees' New Year. Although on second thought he was not sure about this, because he did not know the date according to the Jewish religious calendar. He could not even remember the secular date. At any rate, there was no doubt that it was only February and already spring was raising its head. Fima felt that there was a simple symbolism here: he did not ask himself what was symbolized, but he was happy. As though he had been given responsibility for the entire city, unasked, and to his surprise it turned out that he had not entirely failed in the discharge of his duties. The pale blue of the early morning had turned to a deep azure, as though the sea were suspended upside down over the city and were showering it with nursery-school cheerfulness. Geraniums and bougainvilleas blazed in front gardens. The low stone walls gleamed as though they were being caressed. "Not bad, eh?" Fima said mentally to an invisible guest or tourist.

At the turning to Bayit Vagan stood a young man in an army windbreaker, a submachine gun over his shoulder and surrounded by buckets of flowers. He suggested that Fima take a bunch of chrysanthemums for the weekend. Fima asked himself if this wasn't a settler from the Territories, who grew his flowers on other men's land. He immediately decided that someone who was prepared to make peace with Arafat should not excommunicate his own domestic opponents. Although he could see the argument for excommunicating. But he could find neither hatred nor anger in his heart, perhaps because of the radiant light. Jerusalem this morning seemed to be a place where all should respect the different opinions of others, and so he put his hand in his pocket and found three one-shekel coins, no doubt the change he had been given last night by his new minister of information. He pressed the flowers to his chest as though to protect them from the cold.

"Pardon?" said Fima. "Did you say something? I'm sorry, I didn't hear it."

The boy selling the flowers said with a broad smile:

"All I said was have a good weekend. Good Sabbath."

"Absolutely," Fima agreed, laying the foundations for a new national consensus. "Thank you. And a good weekend to you too."

The air was cold and vitreous, even though there was no wind. As though the light itself contained a dazzlingly clear arctic ingredient. The words "dazzlingly clear" afforded Fima a strange, secretive thrill. One must avoid malice, he thought, even when it disguises itself as principle. He ought to repeat to himself over and over that the real enemy was despair. It was vital not to compromise with despair, not to submit to it. Young Yoezer and his contemporaries, the moderate, reasonable people who will lead their carefully modulated lives here in Jerusalem after us, will be astonished at the suffering we brought on ourselves. But at least they won't remember us with contempt. We didn't give in without a struggle. We held on in Jerusalem as long as we could, against incomparably superior odds and stronger forces. We did not go under peacefully. And even if we were overcome in the end, we still have the advantage of Pascal's "thinking reed."

So it was that, excited, unkempt, and mud-spattered, at a quarter past ten in the morning, clutching a bunch of chrysanthemums and shivering with cold, Fima rang Ted and Yacl's doorbell. When Yael came to the door, wearing gray corduroy trousers and a burgundy sweater, he said to her without any embarrassment:

"I happened to be walking past and I decided to look in just for a minute, to wish you a good Sabbath. I hope I'm not disturbing you? Shall I come back tomorrow? I've got the painters in next week. Never mind. I brought you some flowers for the Sabbath. Can I come inside for a minute or two?"

"A
LL RIGHT," SAID
Y
AEL, "COME IN
. J
UST BEAR IN MIND THAT
I'
VE
got to go out shortly. Hang on, let mc button your shirt properly. Tell me, when did you change it last?"

Fima said:

"You and I have to talk."

Yael said:

"Not again."

He followed her into the kitchen. On die way he peeked into the bedroom. He was vaguely hoping to see himself still sleeping in the bed since the night before last. But the bed had been made and spread with a dark blue woollen counterpane. On either side of it were twin lamps on matching bedside tables, and on each table a solitary book and, as in a hotel, a glass of water and a note pad and pencil. There were even identical alarm clocks.

Fima said:

"Dimi isn't well. We can't go on pretending there's nothing the matter with him. You'd better put the flowers in water; they're for you, for the Sabbath. I bought them from a settler. Besides which, it's your birthday around the end of February. You wouldn't make me a cup of coffee, would you? I've walked all the way from Kiryat Yovel and I'm half frozen to death. My upstairs neighbor tried to murder his wife at five this morning: I rushed upstairs to help and only made a fool of myself. Never mind. I've come to talk to you about Dimi. The other night, when you went out and I looked after him..."

"Look here, Efraim," Yael cut in, "why do you have to meddle in everybody's lives? I know Dimi isn't doing well. Or that we're not doing well with him. You're not telling me anything I don't know. You're not doing too well yourself, if it comes to that."

Fima understood from this that he ought to say good-bye and go. But he sat down on a low kitchen bench, looked up at Yael with doglike devotion, blinked his brown eyes, and started to explain that Dimi was an unhappy and dangerously lonely child. Something had come out the other evening while he was looking after the child, ho point in going into details, but he had formed the impression that the boy might be, how to put it, in need of some help.

Yael plugged the kettle in. She put instant coffee into two glasses. Fima had the feeling she was opening and closing more doors and drawers than was necessary. She said:

"Fine. Great. So you came to give me a lecture on childhood and its problems. Teddy's got this friend, a child psychologist from South Africa, and we consult him occasionally. So just stop looking for disasters and things to worry about. Stop pestering everybody."

When Yael mentioned South Africa, Fima had difficulty fighting back the sudden urge to explain his scenario about what was going to happen there in the near future, when the apartheid regime was toppled. He was convinced there would be a bloodbath, not just between whites and blacks, but also between whites and whites and blacks and blacks. Who could tell if a similar danger did not exist in Israel, too? But the word "bloodbath" struck him as a tired cliché.

Next to him on the kitchen table was an open package of butter biscuits. Unconsciously his fingers reached for it, and he started eating the biscuits one by one. While Yael passed him his white coffee, he described to her in a somewhat oblique way what had taken place two nights previously, and how he had come to fall asleep in her bed while Dimi was still awake at one in the morning. It wasn't very fair of you two, either, having a night out in Tel Aviv and not even bothering to leave an emergency phone number. Suppose the child had a bilious attack? Or electrocuted himself? Or poisoned himself? Fima got into a muddle because he did not want to give away, even indirectly, the business about the dog sacrifice. Nevertheless, he muttered something about the way the neighbors' children made Dimi's life a misery. "You know, Yael, he's not like the rest of them, he wears glasses, he's so serious, he's an albino, he's shortsighted, you could almost say he's half-blind, he's very small for his age, maybe on account of some hormonal disturbance that you ought to be doing something about, he's hypersensitive, he's an internal—no, that's not right—an introverted child—even that isn't exactly the right word—perhaps it's soulful or spiritual; it's hard to define. He's creative. Or, more accurately, he's an original, interesting, you might even say a deep child."

From that Fima moved on to the difficulties of growing up in a time of universal cruelty and violence: every evening Dimi watches the TV news; with us, every evening murder is trivialized on the screen. He also talked about himself when he was Dimi's age: he too had been an introverted child, he too had had no mother, and his father had systematically tried to drive him insane. And he said that apparently the only emotional bond that this child had formed was with him of all people, even though Yael knew perfectly well that he had never seen himself as the fatherly type, fatherhood had always scared him to death, nevertheless he sometimes had the feeling that this had been a tragic mistake, that things could have been totally different, if only...

Yael cut him short again. She said frostily:

"Finish your coffee, Efraim. I have to go."

Fima asked where she had to go. He'd be happy to go with her. Anywhere at all. He had nothing to do this morning. They could continue their conversation. He believed it was vital and quite urgent. Or would it be better if he stayed behind and waited for her to come back, and then they could continue? He didn't mind waiting. It was Friday, his day off, the clinic was closed, and on Sunday he had the painters coming in, so the only prospect facing him at home was the depressing task of dismantling and packing. What did she think? Could she spare him Teddy for an hour or two on Saturday morning, to help take down the ... Never mind. He knew this was all ridiculous and irrelevant. Could he do some ironing till she came back? Or fold the laundry? One day, some other time, he'd like to tell her about a thought that had been preoccupying him recently, an idea that he called the Third State. No, it wasn't a political idea. It was more an existential idea, if one could still say "existential" without sounding corny. "Remind me sometime. Just say 'the Third State,' and I'll remember at once and explain it to you. Though it may be stupid. It's not important right now. After all, here in Jerusalem almost every other character you see is half prophet and half prime minister. Including Tsvika Kropotkin, including Shamir himself, that Brezhnev of ours. It's less like a city than a lunatic asylum. But I didn't come here to talk about Shamir and Brezhnev. I came here to talk about Dimi. Dimi says you and Teddy call me a clown behind my back. It may surprise you to learn that your son has taken to calling himself a clown too. Doesn't that shake you a little? I don't mind being called a clown. It suits somebody whose own father sees him as a shlemiel and a shlemazel. Although he's ridiculous too. The old man, I mean. Baruch. In some ways he's even more ridiculous than me or Dimi. He's another Jerusalem prophet with his own personal formula for salvation in three easy steps. He has a story about a cantor who gets stuck alone on a desert island for the High Holy Days. It doesn't matter. By the way, recently he's taken to whistling a bit. I mean wheezing. I'm rather worried. I may just be imagining things. What do you think, Yael? Maybe you could have a chat with him sometime, get him to go to the hospital for some tests? He's always had a soft spot for you. You might be the only person who can curb his Revisionist obstinacy. Which is a good illustration of what I meant about every other Jerusalemite wanting to be the Messiah. But so what? All of us must look ridiculous to an impartial observer. Even you, Yael, with your jet engines. Who needs jet engines around here when the only thing we are really short of is compassion and common sense? And all of us, including the impartial observer, are ridiculous when viewed by the mountains. Or the desert. Wouldn't you say that Teddy is ridiculous? That walking box. Or Tsvika? Only this morning I was reading a hysterical article of his, which tries to prove scientifically that the government is cut off from reality. As if reality lives in Tsvika's little pocket. Though there's no denying the government is full of people who are pretty dense, and some of them are quite unbalanced. But how did we get onto the government? That's what always happens to us: for once, we decide to have a serious chat about ourselves, about the child, about things that really matter, and somehow the government
comes
barging in. Where do you have to go in such a hurry? You don't have to go anywhere. It's a lie. Friday is your day off too. You're lying to me to get rid of me. You want me to leave. You're afraid, Yael. But what are you afraid of? Of facing up to thinking about why Dimi has started calling himself a little clown?"