by Amos Oz
‘On the contrary. Sorry. Nothing. I thought maybe something fell down in your flat? Or broke? I just thought, I imagined, I heard … something like that? I must have been mistaken. Perhaps it was just an explosion somewhere a long way away. Perhaps the Messianic Faithful have dynamited the Temple Mount and turned it into a Vale of Tears.’
‘Sorry?’ said Mrs Pizanti, staring at Fima with bewilderment and some apprehension.
Her husband, an x-ray technician, replied from behind her back in a tone that struck Fima as not entirely honest:
‘Everything’s a hundred per cent in here, Dr Nisan. When you ring the bell, I think maybe you got some kinda problem No? You are shorta something? Outa coffee again? Blown a fuse? I come and change it for you?’
‘Thank you,’ Fima said, ‘that’s very kind of you. I’ve got plenty of coffee and the electricity is working fine. It so happens my telephone is out of order, but I’m quite pleased, actually; it means I can have some peace and quiet at last. Sorry to bother you so early in the morning. I just thought … Never mind. Sorry. Thank you.’
‘No problem,’ said Pizanti expansively. ‘We always get up at six-fifteen anyway. If you need to make some phone call, just feel free. On the house. If you like, I come down and check your contacts. Maybe something come loose.’
‘I was thinking,’ Fima said, appalled at the words he heard coming out of his own mouth, ‘of calling a lady friend of mine who may have been waiting for me since last night. Two lady friends, actually. But right now I think it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to let them wait. It’s not urgent. I’m sorry I disturbed you.’
As he was on the point of leaving, Mrs Pizanti said hesitantly:
‘Could be maybe something fell down outside from the wind. Some washtub or something. But with us everything is fine.’
These words convinced Fima that once again he was being lied to. But he forgave the neighbours, because in fact he had no reason to expect them to tell him about the row they must have been having, and also because he himself had not told the truth about ringing his girlfriends. When he was back in his flat he said:
‘What a fool you are.’
But he forgave himself too, because he had meant well.
He did his exercises in front of the mirror for ten minutes or so, shaved, dressed, combed his hair vaguely, boiled some water in the new electric kettle, made his bed, and for once managed all these activities without mishap. He hit her, he thought, he may even have banged her head against the wall; he might have killed her; who knows, he might well do it one of these days, perhaps this very morning. What Hitler did to us didn’t finish in 1945; it still goes on, it seems it always will. Murky things go on behind every door. Acts of cruelty and desperation. Underneath this whole state, a hidden insanity is simmering. Three times a week our long arm catches the murderers in their dens. We can’t get to sleep before we have inflicted a little pogrom on the Cossacks. Every morning we kidnap Eichmann and every evening we nip Hitler in the bud. In the basketball we defeat Chmielnicki and in the Eurovision we avenge Kishinev. But what right do I have to interfere? I’d be happy to gallop up on a white charger and rescue that Pizanti woman, or the pair of them, or the whole state, if only I knew how. If only I had some idea where to start. There’s Baruch with his Trotsky goatee and his carved walking stick; he does his bit to put the world straight by handing out donations and grants, whereas all I ever do is sign petitions. Maybe after all I should have persuaded that policeman last night to let me in to see Shamir? For a heart-to-heart chat. Or introduced Shamir to my taxi driver?
It occurred to him that he ought to sit down and compose a short but heartfelt appeal to the hawkish right. To suggest to them, in Ha’arets, the broad outline of a partial national consensus. A sort of new deal between the moderates and the non-messianic hawkish element, which might still be willing to swallow a return of some territories were it not for what it sees as the left’s tendency to uncontrolled appeasement. The taxi driver was right: Our worst mistake over the past twenty years has been not to take seriously the sensibilities of Pizanti and his wife and hundreds of thousands of other Israelis like them, in whom the Arabs stir genuine feelings of anger, fear, and suspicion. Such feelings surely deserve not contempt but a gradual, rational effort to allay them by means of intelligent argument. Instead of reasoning with them, we emptied a chamberpot full of patronising ridicule on them. It would make sense therefore to try to draw up an agreement that would define the precise limits of our, the moderates’, willingness to make concessions to the Arabs. So that they don’t imagine, like Baruch, that we are, so to speak, advertising a closing-down sale. So that they know what we, the left, are even prepared to go to war for again, if it turns out that the Arab side is reneging or taking us for a ride. In that way, we may be able to mollify some of the hawks and bring about a thaw.
The word ‘thaw’ reminded him that he had forgotten to light the heater. Bending down, he was relieved to discover that there was enough paraffin left. After lighting the heater, he felt the need to consult Tsvi Kropotkin before he sat down to compose his appeal. In his enthusiasm he did not care if he disturbed Tsvi in the middle of shaving again, because he felt his new idea was potentially fruitful and beneficial and indeed very urgent. But once again the telephone was silent. Fima thought the silence was, if anything, less deep than last night. A sort of intermittent rumbling sound, like the grinding of teeth, was almost audible. A groaning from the depths. Fima diagnosed faint signs of life, a first indication of recovery. He felt sure the instrument was not dead but merely in a very deep coma, and that now, even if it had not recovered consciousness, it was beginning to make a feeble response, a faint groan of pain, a slight pulse giving grounds for some hope. Even taking account of the fact that the fridge had just started rumbling in the kitchen. It was therefore possible that the hope was premature.
Even the expression ‘hawkish element’ suddenly struck him as repugnant: it was wrong to characterise human beings as ‘elements’. Besides which, he thought it was ridiculous to put the right-wing thinkers on the psychiatrist’s couch: it was not as if our camp was the embodiment of sanity. We too are troubled by despair, frustration, and rage. We too are caught in an emotional tangle, no less than our opponents. No less than the Arabs. But the expression ‘our camp’ is utterly ridiculous. What does ‘our camp’ mean? The whole country is a front line, the whole nation an army. Everything is divided into camps. The forces of peace. The battalion of moderation. The strike force of coexistence. The lookouts of disarmament. The commando of the brotherhood of nations. The spearhead of reconciliation.
Instead of writing the appeal Fima went and stood at the window to set his ideas in order. Meanwhile he watched the winter light spreading like a noble material over the hilltops and slopes. Fima knew and loved the idea of ‘noble metals’, although he had no idea which they were. Once, in his father’s flat in Rehavia, Baruch and Dimi tried to pin him down and inflict an elementary chemistry lesson on him. Fima, like a stubborn child, defended himself with wisecracks and wordplay until Dimi said, ‘Forget it, Granpa; it’s not for him.’ And the two of them embarked without him for the realms of acid and alkali which Fima loathed on account of his heartburn.
The light kissed the ridges, overflowed into the valleys, awakening in each tree and rock its dormant radiant quality that had been buried all these days under layers of grey, inanimate routine. As if here in Jerusalem thousands of years ago the earth lost its power to renew itself from within. As if only the gracious touch of this enchanted light could restore to things, however briefly, the primordiality that had been eclipsed of the days of yore. Will Your Worship condescend to favour me with a slight nod of the head if I go down on my knees and offer my humble prayers of gratitude? Is there something that Your Worship wishes me to do? Is Your Worship interested in us at all? Why did you put us here? Why did you choose us? Why did you choose Jerusalem? Is Your Worship still listening? Is Your Worship smiling?
The ancient Aramaic phrases, such as ‘days of yore’, ‘not of this world’, ‘the concealed side’, filled Fima with a sense of mystery and awe. For a moment he asked himself if it was not possible after all that the light and the mud, the glow-worms in the almond tree and the radiant sky, the arid land extending eastwards from here to Mesopotamia and southwards to Bab el-Mandeb at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, and indeed his shabby flat and his ageing body and even his broken telephone, were all nothing but different expressions of the same being, condemned to be dissolved into countless flawed, perishable embodiments, even though in itself it is whole and eternal and one. Only on a winter morning like this, under the nuptial veil of limpid light, which is perhaps what is meant by the ancient Aramaic phrase ‘supernal radiance’, does the earth along with your watching eyes recover the thrill of that primordial touch. And everything returns to its state of original innocence. As on the day of its creation. For an instant the constant murky cloak of dreariness and lying is removed.
And so Fima’s thoughts arrived at the hackneyed concept of ‘the heavenly Jerusalem’, to which he gave his private interpretation, valid solely for what he felt at that particular moment. He mused that there were times when sleeping seemed less tainted with falsehood than waking, and times when it was the other way round, and that ultimate wakefulness becomes the most longed-for ideal. He now reached the thought that it might be a matter of three states, not two: sleeping, waking, and this light that had been flooding him both from without and within ever since the start of this morning. For want of a fitting name he described this light to himself as the Third State. And he felt that it was not only a matter of the pure light on the hills but of the light truly flowing out of the hills and out of himself too, and that it was in the commingling of these rays of light that the Third State came into being, equidistant from complete waking and deepest slumber, and yet distinct from both of them.
There is no more tragic loss, he thought, in the whole world than missing the Third State. It happens because of the news on the radio, because of business, because of hollow desires and the pursuit of vanities and trivia. All suffering, Fima said to himself, everything that is ridiculous or obscene, is purely the consequence of missing the Third State, or of that vague nagging feeling that reminds us from time to time that there is, outside and inside, almost within reach, something fundamental that you always seem on the way to yet you always lose your way. You are called, and you forget to go. You are spoken to, and you don’t hear. A door is opened, and you leave too late because you choose to satisfy some craving or other. The sea of silence casts up secrets, but you were preoccupied with trivial arrangements. You preferred to try to make an impression on someone, who himself missed it because he wanted to make an impression on someone else, who also … and so on, and so forth. Unto dust. Again and again you rejected what exists in favour of what does not, never did, and cannot exist. Gad Eitan was right when he said mockingly that wastefulness runs riot here. His wife was right to get away while she could. The order of priorities, Fima said to himself sadly and half aloud, is all wrong. What a pity, for instance, that Tsvi Kropotkin, such a hard-working man, should have spent three years chasing after the details of the Catholic church’s attitude to the voyages of Magellan and Columbus, like someone sorting out the buttons of clothes that have long since become rags. Or Uri Gefen, running from one affair to the next, wide awake but with his heart asleep.
With that, Fima decided to stop standing idly at the window and to start getting the place ready for the decorators, who were coming after the weekend. The pictures would have to come down off the walls. Also the map of Israel on which he had once pencilled reasonable compromise borders. All the furniture would have to be moved into the middle of the room and covered with plastic sheeting. The books would have to be put away. So would all the crockery and the pots and pans. Why not take advantage of the opportunity to get rid of the piles of old newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and newsletters? The bookcases will have to be dismantled, and that means enlisting Uri’s help. Is it tonight he’s coming back? Or tomorrow? Or the day after? And then Nina can deliver her detailed report of how she tried not once but twice to give me my regular service and how she found the tap blocked. Perhaps Shula Kropotkin can be brought in as reinforcements to help with putting all the kitchen things away. Possibly Annette Tadmor would be glad to lend a hand. And the Pizantis also expressed a readiness to help, provided they don’t murder each other first. And Teddy will willingly come round to take down the curtains and the wall lights. Maybe he’ll bring Dimi with him. The old man was quite right: it’s well over twenty years since this old den was last spruced up. The ceiling’s filthy, it’s all grubby from the paraffin heater. There are cobwebs in the corners. There’s damp in the bathroom. The ceramic tiles are cracked. The plaster is peeling. There are patches of mildew. There’s a mouldy, sweaty smell here the whole year round, an old bachelor’s stench. It’s not only the old can of worms on the balcony that smells bad. You’ve grown so used to it that you don’t even care.
Surely habit is the root of all evil. It’s precisely what Pascal was thinking of when he wrote about the death of the soul.
In a corner of his desk Fima found a green advertisement announcing huge discounts at the local supermarket. On a corner of this notice he scribbled the words:
Habit is the beginning of death. Habits are a fifth column.
And underneath:
Routine = lies.
Habituation – deterioration – dilapidation.
His intention was to remind himself to improve and develop these thoughts over the weekend. And since he had remembered that tomorrow was Saturday, he deduced that today was Friday, from which he inferred that he ought to do some shopping. But Friday was his free day, the clinic was closed, so why should he hurry? Why start pushing furniture around at seven in the morning? Best wait for the reinforcements to arrive. There was no urgency. Even though when he glanced at his watch, he discovered that it was not seven o’clock but twenty past eight. Time to have a word or two with Tsvika, who would have finished his shaving ritual by now.
Had there been any further improvement in the condition of the telephone? Fima tried again. He could almost hear a faint sound, but it had not yet rallied to the point of being a dialling tone. Despite which, he dialled Yael’s number. And concluded that he ought to wait for the patient to make a full recovery, because his impatient attempts might delay the process. Or was Yael’s phone also out of order? Was the whole city cut off? Could it be a strike? Sabotage? Sanctions? Had the exchange been blown up in the night? Had a right-wing terrorist group seized all the means of communication and the other centres of power? Had there been a Syrian missile attack? Unless Ted Tobias was leaning on the phone again and preventing Yael from picking it up. Fima felt disgusted, not with Ted but with his own word games. He screwed up the supermarket advertisement and threw it at the wastepaper basket. He missed, but could not be bothered to crawl under the desk to look for it. No point. The whole place was going to be turned upside down soon to prepare for the decorators.
He made himself another coffee, ate a few slices of black bread and jam to quell the hunger pangs, then took a couple of tablets to quell the pangs of heartburn. Then he went to have a piss. He felt furious with his body, always bothering him with its endless needs, and preventing him from carrying 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, with 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 such an old, well-worn stratagem. It seemed to be saying: It’s high time you thought up a new game for me. Grudgingly it released a brief, thin trickle, as a special favour. As soon as the cistern stopped, this pathetic trickle ceased too. His bladder rem
ained urgently full. Fima shook the offending member gently, then more violently, but nothing happened. Finally he pulled the handle again, but the cistern 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 it was showing solidarity with the telephone in its gesture of defiance.
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 humour, 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 effort 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.