by Amos Oz
As though addressing a naughty child, Fima said:
‘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.’
These threats only seemed to reinforce the reptile’s recalcitrance: it seemed to shrivel between his fingers. Fima was determined not to yield henceforth. Furiously he zipped up his fly and banged down the lid of the lavatory. He slammed the bathroom door behind him. Five minutes later he slammed the door of the flat, strode past the letter box without succumbing to the temptation to take out the newspaper, and marched resolutely towards the shopping centre. 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, paraffin, sewage, gas, electricity. Third, find out at last the state of his account. By the time he reached the newsagents and stationers on the corner, he had forgotten what the fourth thing was. 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 around and see Tsvika this very morning, Fima decided, 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 bottoms muddy. Proceeding northwards, he walked past the bank without noticing 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 thoughts he was not sure about this, because he did not know the date according to the Jewish religious calendar. In fact 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 it symbolised, but he felt happy about it. 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 windcheater, with 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 arguments on both sides. 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 easily 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 catch what you said.’
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 again 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 be able to 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 lightly. 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 Yael’s doorbell. When Yael came to the door, wearing grey 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 decorators in next week. Never mind. I’ve brought you some flowers for the Sabbath. Can I come inside for a minute or two?’
28
In Ithaca, on the water’s edge
‘ALL right,’ said Yael, ‘come in. Just bear in mind that I’ve got to go out shortly. Hang on, let me button your shirt properly. Tell me, when did you change it last?’
Fima said:
‘You and I have got to talk.’
Yael said:
‘Not again.’
He followed her into the kitchen. On the way he peeped 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 cupboards on each of which was a solitary book and, as in a hotel, a glass of water and a note pad and pencil. There were even two 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 neighbour tried to murder his wife at five o’clock 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 already. 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, no 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 some instant coffee powder into two glasses. Fima had the feeling she was opening and slamming shut more cupboard doors and drawers than was strictly necessary. She said:
; ‘Fine. Great. So you came round 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 a 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. Even the idea of a tired cliché struck him as rather trite at the moment.
Next to him on the kitchen table was an open packet 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 had a bilions 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 neighbours’ children apparently 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 trivialised 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 affective 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 carry on? He didn’t mind waiting. It was Friday, his day off, the clinic was closed, and on Sunday he had the decorators 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 clean washing? One day, some other time, he’d like to tell her about a thought that had been preoccupying him rather a lot recently, an idea that he called the Third State. No, it wasn’t a political idea. It was more of 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 just plain 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 to you 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 little clown too. Doesn’t that shake you rather? I don’t mind being called a clown. It quite 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 stages. He’s got some 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 into 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 pretty ridiculous to an impartial outside observer. Even you, Yael, with your jet engines. Who needs jet engines around here when the only thing we are really short of is a bit of 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 crate. 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?’
With her back to him, folding teatowels and putting them away one by one in a drawer, Yael replied quietly:
‘Effy, once and for all: You’re not Dimi’s father. Now drink up and go. I’ve got an appointment at the hairdresser’s. The child you could have had twenty-five years ago I killed because you didn’t want it. So don’t start now. I sometimes feel as if I’ve never quite woken up from that anaesthetic. And now you come here to torment me. I’m telling you, if Teddy wasn’t such a tolerant man, such a walking crate as you call him, you’d have been thrown out of this flat a long time ago. There’s nothing for you here. Especially after what you did the other night. It’s hard enough here even without you. You’re a difficult man, Efraim. Difficult and also boring. And I’m still not convinced you’re not one of the main causes of Dimi’s confusion. Slowly but surely you’re driving that child mad.’
After a moment she added:
‘And it’s hard to know if it’s some sort of ruse of yours or just idle chatter. You keep talking, talking all the time: maybe you talk so much, you’ve really convinced yourself that you’ve got feelings. That you’re in love. That you’re partly Dimi’s father. All sorts of half-baked delusions like that. Why am I talking to you about feelings, about love? You don’t even know what the words mean. Once, when you still read books instead of just newspapers, you must have read something about love and unhappiness, and ever since then you’ve been all around Jerusalem preaching on the subject. I nearly said just now that you only love yourself, but even that isn’t true. You don’t even love yourself. You don’t love anything. Except maybe winning arguments. Never mi
nd. Get your coat on. I’m late because of you.’
‘Will you let me wait for you here? I’ll wait patiently. Till this evening if necessary.’
‘Hoping that Teddy will get back before me? And find you asleep on our bed again, under my blanket?’
‘I promise,’ Fima whispered, ‘that this time I’ll behave myself.’
And as though to prove it, he jumped up and poured his coffee into the sink. He had not touched it, although he had absent-mindedly eaten all the butter biscuits. Noticing that the sink was full of dirty dishes and pans, he rolled up one of his sleeves and turned on the tap. Eagerly he waited for the water to run hot. Even when Yael said, ‘You’re crazy, Efraim, leave it, we’ll put it all in the machine after lunch,’ he took no notice but started washing up enthusiastically and laying the soapy dishes out on the marble draining board, ‘It relaxes me,’ he said. ‘I’ll be finished in a few minutes, once the water finally makes up its mind to get hot. I’ll be glad to spare you the need to run the dishwasher; and the dishes will come out much cleaner; and meanwhile we can carry on talking a little longer. Which is the cold tap and which is the hot one? Where are we supposed to be, America? Everything’s topsy-turvy here. But if you’ve really got to go, that’s fine by me. You just go, Yael, and come back later. I’ll promise to restrict myself to the kitchen. I won’t wander around the flat, I won’t even use the lavatory. Shall I polish the silver for you? Or clean out the fridge? I’ll stay right here and wait, no matter how long you’re gone. Like a male Solveig. I’ve got this book about whale hunters in Alaska, and it talks about this custom … Never mind. Don’t worry about me, Yael, I don’t mind waiting all day. Instead of worrying about me, you ought to worry about Dimi. To use Ted’s amusing expression, you could say that Dimi is down. To my mind, the first thing we ought to do is find a totally different social setting for him. Maybe a boarding school for gifted children? Or the other way around, tame one or two of the neighbours’ kids …’