by Amos Oz
Instead of love he offered her an orange, though he omitted to check first that there was another one left in the drawer under his desk. He startled her by adding that her light-blue skirt flattered her figure and she should wear it more often. And he thought her hair was lovely.
Tamar said:
‘Stop it, Fima. It’s not funny.’
Fima said:
‘I suppose it’s like a fish: it’s only when it’s lifted out of the water for the first time that it realises it needs to be in the water to live. Never mind. I just want to tell you I wasn’t joking. I meant exactly what I said about the light blue and your hair.’
‘You’re rather a darling yourself,’ Tamar said timidly. ‘You’re very knowledgeable, you’re a poet and all that. A good man. The trouble is, you’re a child. It’s just incredible how childish you are. Sometimes I feel like coming around in the morning and shaving you myself so you don’t cut yourself, your cheeks and your chin. Look, you’ve done it again today. You’re nothing but a baby.’
After that they sat facing each other and hardly spoke. She concentrated on her crossword while he looked at an old copy of Woman that he picked out of the basket. He found an article about an ex-call girl who had married a handsome Canadian millionaire and then left him for a group of Bratslav Hasidim in Safed.
After a silence Tamar said:
‘I’ve just remembered. Gad asked us to clean and tidy his room. And Wahrhaftig said to sterilise the forceps and speculums and boil the towels and gowns. Only I don’t feel like moving. I’ll just finish this crossword first.’
‘Forget it,’ Fima said enthusiastically. ‘Just you sit there quietly like a queen, and I’ll do it all. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’
At that he stood up and went into Dr Eitan’s room, holding the duster. First he changed the roll of paper sheets, which felt pleasantly rough to his fingertips. Then he tidied the drugs cupboard, pondering on his father’s anecdote about the length and width of railway tracks. He discovered he had a soft spot for the Israeli representative: in refusing to give way to his US counterpart, he had delivered a devastating reply. It was only on the surface that it appeared funny: in fact, it was the American’s position that was ridiculous. As if there was any sense in his implied claim that in an international gathering of railway chiefs each delegate’s speech should be in direct ratio to the length of track in his country. Such a crude approach was both morally untenable and logically absurd. While he was pursuing this line of thought further, he absent-mindedly attempted to take his own blood pressure with the device he found on Eitan’s desk. Perhaps it was because he had remarked jokingly to Tamar that Gad Eitan may not have been feeling well the day before, since he had failed to tyrannise her. But Fima’s efforts to bind the rubber tube, phylactery-like, around his arm with his free hand were unsuccessful, and he abandoned the attempt. He contemplated a coloured poster on the wall: a humorous picture of a good-looking young man with a pregnant tummy holding a plump baby in his arms, the two of them beaming with joy. The wording read: ‘Materna 160 – your vitamin supplement. Easy to take. Odourless. Tasteless. The leading product in the field. Massively endorsed by expectant mothers in the USA. Available strictly on medical prescription only.’ One of the two words, ‘strictly’ and ‘only’, was redundant, Fima mused, but for some reason he could not decide which to delete. The expression ‘leading product’ struck him as crude, while ‘massively endorsed by expectant mothers’ was positively offensive.
Moving on, he flicked an imaginary speck of dust from the examination couch. He struggled against the sudden urge to lie down with his legs apart for a minute or two, just to experience the sensation. He was certain there must be a mistake in Tamar’s crossword: the only country he could think of in Africa with eleven letters was South Africa, but that didn’t fit because it didn’t have two Es. As though if it did have two Es, everything there would be perfect!
Fima eyed the stainless-steel speculums intended for taking cervical smears. When he imagined to himself the mysterious entrance exposed and dilated by means of the metal jaws, he felt a dull pang of revulsion in his stomach. He made a sound like an intake of breath through clenched teeth, as though he had been scalded but was determined not to shriek. Laid out with obsessive precision beside the speculums were long-bladed scissors, forceps, IUDs hermetically sealed in sterile plastic. To the left behind the doctor’s desk, on a small trolley, stood the suction pump that was used, Fima knew, to terminate pregnancy by means of suction. He shuddered at the grim thought that this was a kind of enema in reverse, and that womanhood was an irreparable injustice.
And what did they do with the foetuses? Put them in a plastic bag and drop them into the rubbish bins that he or Tamar emptied at the end of the day? Food for alley cats? Or did they flush them down the lavatory and rinse with disinfectant? Snows of yesteryear. If the light within you darkens, it is written, how great is the darkness.
On a little stand was the resuscitation equipment, an oxygen bottle and an oxygen mask. Nearby was the anaesthetic equipment. Fima switched on the electric radiator and waited for the elements to glow red. He counted the drip bags, trying to understand the formula printed on them, glucose and sodium chloride. With his duster poised in his hand he reflected on how anaesthesia and resuscitation, fertility and death, rubbed shoulders with each other within this little room. There was something absurd, something unbearable about it, but what it was he could not say.
After a moment he pulled himself together and caressed the screen of the ultrasound machine with his duster. It did not seem much different from the screen of Ted’s computer. When Ted had asked him how to say ‘deadline’ in Hebrew, he had not been able to think of the answer. The only equivalent he could think of sounded artificial and anaemic. ‘Tasteless and odourless’, like the leading product that was massively endorsed by expectant mothers in the USA. Meanwhile he upset a neat pile of transparent plastic gloves made by a firm called Pollack, each encased in a sterile wrapping that was similarly transparent. As he carefully remade the pile, he asked himself what it meant, this transparency that was so prevalent here, as if it were an aquarium.
Eventually he made his way to the utility room, a kind of open cubicle formed by closing in a balcony with opaque glass. He fed a heap of towels into the washing machine, pushed his duster in too, read and reread the instructions, and surprised himself by getting the machine to work. To the left of the washing machine stood the steriliser, with the instructions printed on a panel in English: 200° centigrade, 110 minutes. Fima decided not to put this machine on yet, even though it contained a couple of pairs of scissors and several forceps, as well as some stainless steel bowls. Perhaps it was because the temperatures struck him as lethal. Going into the lavatory, he inhaled with a strange pleasure the pungent cocktail of disinfectant smells. He tried to empty his bladder but failed, perhaps because of his thoughts about drowned infants. Angrily he gave up, cursed his penis, zipped up, returned to Tamar, and, resuming their earlier conversation, said: ‘Why don’t you try breaking off contact? Just ignore his rudeness? Signal nothing from now on except utter indifference? I dusted and tidied everything and put the washing machine on. As if he was thin air, that’s the way to treat him.’
‘How can I, Fima? I’m in love with him. Why can’t you understand? But there is one thing I ought to do, really: instead of looking glum, I ought to slap him round the face. Sometimes I have a feeling he’s just waiting for me to do it. I think it might do him good.’
‘The truth is’ – Fima grinned – ‘he’s earned himself an honest slap from you. What is it Wahrhaftig says: “like in a civilised country.” I’d really enjoy seeing that. Even if in principle I’m not keen on violence. There, I’ve found it for you.’
‘Found what for me?’
‘Your African country. Try Sierra Leone. I didn’t put the steriliser on because it was almost empty. A waste of electricity.’
Tamar said:
‘Stop lo
ving him. That’s the only thing that would save me. Stop just like that. But how do you do it? You know everything, Fima. Do you know that too?’
He laughed, shrugged his shoulders, muttered something, regretted it, finally pulled himself together and said:
‘What do I understand of love? Once I used to think that love is the point where cruelty and compassion meet. Now I think that’s idle chatter. Seems to me now I never understood anything. I comfort myself by reflecting that apparently other people understand even less than I do. It’s all right, Tamar, just cry, don’t hold back, it’ll make you feel better. I’ll make you a glass of tea. Never mind. In a hundred years love and suffering will go the way of the dinosaurs, along with blood feuds, crinolines, and whalebone corsets. Men and women will mate by exchanging tiny electrochemical impulses. There will be no mistakes. Do you want a biscuit with it?’
After making the tea, and after some hesitation, he told her the story about the conference of railway chiefs, and he explained why in his opinion Mr Cohen was right and Mr Smith was wrong, until she smiled faintly through her tears. In the drawer of his desk he found a pencil sharpener, a pencil, some paper clips, a ruler and a paperknife, but there were no more oranges, and no biscuits. Tamar said it didn’t matter, thanks. She was feeling better already. He was always so goodhearted. Her projecting Adam’s apple seemed not so much funny as tragic. Because of this tragic feeling he began to doubt whether those to come, Yoezer and his friends, would really manage to live more rational lives than ours. At most, cruelty and stupidity would adopt subtler and more sophisticated forms. What use are jet-propelled vehicles to someone who is aware that his place does not know him?
This biblical phrase, ‘his place does not know him’, so moved and fascinated him that he had to whisper it to himself. Suddenly, illuminated, he could see a whole sublime, beguiling Utopia enfolded in that everyday phrase. He made up his mind not to talk to Tamar about it, so as not to add insult to injury.
Tamar said:
‘Look: the paraffin heater is almost empty. Why are you talking to yourself?’
Fima said:
‘I put the electric one on in Gad’s room. I didn’t go into Alfred’s room at all. I’ll do it in a minute.’
Then he grasped what he was being asked, and went outside to refill the container. When he came back in, there was an urgent roll of thunder, as though a desperate tank battle had begun. Fima suddenly remembered the text ‘He toucheth the hills and they smoke,’ and he could almost visualise it. He trembled. From the flat upstairs came the sound of the cello, slow, solemn, soft, the same two heavy phrases repeated over and over again. Even though it was only half past three, the room was growing so dark that Tamar had to switch the light on to see her crossword puzzle. As she stood there with her back to him, Fima made up his mind to stand behind her and hug her, to bury her weary head in the hollow of his neck and switch off their thoughts, to sprinkle kisses on the nape of her neck and the roots of her lovely hair gathered up into such a neat little bun, which could be undone for once and set free. But he thought better of this, and they spent a little while together trying to discover the identity of a famous Finnish general, ten letters. At that moment Fima resigned himself to the realisation that, when all was said and done, he was not made of the stuff of great leaders who have the power to make history, to end wars, to heal the hearts of the masses consumed by suspicion and despair. He derived some comfort from the thought that the present political leaders were not made of this stuff either. Less so, if anything.
15
Bedtime stories
DIMI Tobias, an albino child with thick glasses and small red eyes, was ten years old but looked younger. He said little and spoke politely, in well-balanced sentences, sometimes surprising grown-ups with his striking phraseology and his cultivated ingenuousness, in which Fima imagined he could detect a trace of irony. His father sometimes called him a Levantine Einstein, but Yael complained that she was bringing up a devious, manipulative child.
He was sitting in the living room, huddled silently in a corner of his father’s wide armchair, looking like an elongated parcel that had been abandoned on a park bench. In vain did Fima attempt to get him to say what the trouble was. All through the evening Dimi sat motionless, apart from his rabbit’s eyes that blinked nonstop behind the thick lenses. Was he thirsty? Did he want a glass of milk? Juice? Fima had made up his mind that the child was dehydrating and needed fluids. Some iced water, perhaps? Some whisky?
Dimi said:
‘Stop it.’
Fima, who was certain he was not doing the right thing but was damned if he could think what he ought to be doing or saying, opened a window to let in some cool air. Then it struck him that the child might be nursing the flu, so he hurriedly closed it. He poured himself a glass of mineral water in the kitchen and came back to the living room to drink it, perhaps in the hope that Dimi would follow his example and drink something too.
‘Sure you’re not thirsty?’
Dimi raised his pale face slightly and looked at Fima with consternation, as one looks at a grown-up who is getting into difficulties but who cannot be helped. Fima attempted another line:
‘Well, let’s play cards then. Or how about a game of Monopoly? Or would you like to watch the news with me? Just show me how to switch on this TV of yours.’
‘You press the button. The top one,’ Dimi said. And he added:
‘You don’t offer spirits to a child.’
Fima said:
‘Course you don’t. I was just trying to make you laugh. Tell me what you feel like doing. Shall I do an impersonation of Shamir and Peres?’
‘Nothing. I’ve told you three times already.’
In vain Fima suggested an adventure story, a computer game, jokes, a pillow fight, a game of dominoes. Something was weighing on the child, and though Fima quizzed him about school, about the afternoon at the neighbour’s, tiredness, tummy aches, the US space programme, all he could get out of him was ‘stop it’. Could it be the beginning of tonsillitis? Pneumonia? Meningitis? Fima squeezed himself into the armchair, forcing the skinny Challenger to huddle even further into his corner. He put an arm around the limp shoulders, and insisted:
‘Tell me what’s happened.’
‘Nothing,’ said Dimi.
‘Where does it hurt?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Shall we be a little wild together? Or would you like to go to sleep? Your mother said to give you half a Valium. Do you want a story?’
‘You already asked.’
Fima was uneasy. Something nasty, something serious and possibly even dangerous was happening in front of his eyes and he could not think what to do. What would Teddy do now if he were here? He ran his fingers through the albino hair and muttered:
‘But you’re obviously not well. Where do they keep that Valium? Tell me.’
Dimi recoiled from the caress and slipped away like a cat whose rest is disturbed. He tottered to the other armchair, and buried himself under a heap of cushions so that only his head and shoes were visible. His eyes blinked behind his thick lenses.
Fima, whose anxiety had turned into panic mixed with mounting anger, said:
‘I’m going to call a doctor. But first we’ll take your temperature. Where do they keep the thermometer?’
‘Stop clowning,’ said Dimi. ‘Why don’t you watch the news?’
As though he had been hit in the face, Fima sprang to his feet in a muddled frenzy and tried to switch on the television, but he pushed the wrong button. Instantly, realising that he was being made a fool of, he regretted coddling the child and shouted at him:
‘I’ll give you sixty seconds to tell me what’s wrong, and if you don’t, I’m going to leave you here by yourself.’
‘Go on then,’ said Dimi.
‘Very well then,’ Fima snapped, attempting to imitate Ted’s strictness and even his accent. ‘I’m going. OK. But before I go, you’ve got exactly four minutes on the clock to
get ready and into bed. And no fuss. Teeth, glass of milk, pyjamas, Valium, the lot. And no more ridiculous scenes.’
‘You’re the one who’s making ridiculous scenes,’ said Dimi.
Fima walked out of the room and made his way to Ted’s study. He had no intention of leaving the sick child alone. On the other hand, he had no idea how to retract his ultimatum, so he sat down on Teddy’s padded chair in front of the computer, without turning the light on, and urged himself to think rationally. There were only two possibilities: either the child was developing some illness and needed immediate treatment, or he was tormenting him on purpose, and he, Fima, was behaving like a clown. Suddenly he felt full of pity for the pale, tortured Challenger. And for himself too: ‘They hadn’t even bothered to leave a phone number. They’re probably having a night out in Tel Aviv, living it up in some exotic restaurant or nightclub, without so much as a thought for us. What if something terrible is happening? How can I get hold of them? What if he’s swallowed something? Caught a lethal virus? Appendicitis? Polio? Or perhaps it’s his parents who are in trouble? A car crash on the way back to Jerusalem? Or a terrorist attack?’