Fima

by Amos Oz

  It was Annette herself who answered. Fima said:

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you. It’s the reception clerk from yesterday. Efraim. Fima. Do you remember? We chatted at the clinic. I thought …’

  Annette remembered it well. She said she was delighted. And suggested meeting in town. ‘Shall we say in an hour? An hour and a half? If that suits you, Efraim? I knew you’d call today. Don’t ask me how. I just had a feeling. There was something, well, unfinished between us yesterday. So, shall we say an hour then? At the Savyon? If I’m a bit late, don’t give me up.’

  10

  Fima forgives and forgets

  HE waited for a quarter of an hour at a table to one side of the café, then ordered coffee and a cake. At a nearby table sat a right-wing member of the Knesset with a slim, good-looking, bearded youth who looked to Fima like an activist for the Jewish settlements in the Territories. The youth was saying:

  ‘You are eunuchs too. You’ve forgotten where you came from and who put you where you are.’

  They lowered their voices.

  Fima remembered how he had left Nina’s house the previous night, how he had disgraced himself with her, how he had disgraced himself in Ted’s study, how he had shamed himself and Yael in the hall in the dark. In fact, it would be quite nice to pick an argument with these two conspirators now. He could easily tear them to shreds. He guessed that Annette Tadmor had changed her mind, thought better of it, would not keep their date. Why should she? Her full, rounded form, her misery, her plain cotton frock like a schoolgirl’s uniform, all stirred in him a hint of desire mingled with self-mockery: Just as well she changed her mind; she spared you another disgrace.

  The young settler stood up and in two long strides he was at Fima’s table. Fima was startled to see that the youngster had a gun in his belt.

  ‘Excuse me, are you by any chance Mr Prag, the lawyer?’

  Fima considered the question, and for a moment he was tempted to answer in the affirmative. He’d always had a soft spot for Prag.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  The settler said:

  ‘We’ve arranged to meet someone we’ve never seen. I thought perhaps it was you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Fima declared forcefully, as though firing the first shot in a civil war, ‘one of you. I think you’re all a plague.’

  The young man, with an innocent, sweet smile and a look suggesting Jewish solidarity, said:

  ‘Why not save expressions like that for the enemy? It was groundless hatred that brought down the Temple. It wouldn’t hurt all of us to try a little groundless love for a change.’

  A delicious argumentative thrill went through Fima like wine, and he had a devastating reply poised on his tongue, when he caught sight of Annette in the doorway, looking around vaguely, and he was almost disappointed. But he was obliged to wave to her and drop the settler. She apologised for being late. As soon as she was sitting opposite him, he said that she had arrived just in time to rescue him from the Hezbollah. Or, rather, to rescue the Hezbollah from him. He went on to unburden himself of the essence of his views. Only then did he remember to apologise for ordering without waiting for her. He asked what she would like to drink. To his surprise she said a vodka, and then began to tell him all about her divorce, after twenty-six years of what she had considered to be an ideal marriage. At least on the surface. Fima ordered her vodka, and another coffee for himself. He also ordered some bread and cheese and an egg sandwich, because he still felt hungry. He continued to listen to her story, but with divided attention, because in the meantime a bald man in a grey raincoat had joined the next table. Presumably their Mr Prag. Fima had the impression that the three of them were scheming to drive a wedge into the state prosecutor’s department, and he tried to intercept their conversation. Hardly aware of what he was saying, he remarked to Annette that he could scarcely believe what she had said about being married for twenty-six years, because she didn’t look a day over forty.

  ‘That’s sweet of you,’ Annette answered. ‘There’s something about you that radiates kindness. I believe that if only I can tell the whole story from beginning to end to someone who’s a good listener, it may help me to sort out my ideas. To grasp what’s happened to me. Even though I know that once I’ve told the story, I’ll understand even less. Have you got the patience?’

  The politician said:

  ‘Let’s try to play for time at least: it can’t do any harm.’

  And the man in the raincoat, presumably the lawyer Prag:

  ‘It may look very easy to you. In fact, it isn’t.’

  ‘As if Yeri and I had been standing quietly for a long time on a balcony,’ Annette said, ‘leaning on the railing, looking down on the garden and the woods, shoulder to shoulder, and suddenly, without any warning, he grabs me and throws me off. Like an old crate.’

  Fima said:

  ‘How sad.’

  Then he said:

  ‘Terrible.’

  He laid his hand on hers, which lay clenched on the edge of the table, because there were tears in her eyes again.

  ‘So we’re agreed, then,’ the settler said. ‘Let’s keep in touch. Just be careful of using the phone.’

  ‘Look,’ said Annette. ‘In novels, in plays, in films, there are always these mysterious women. Capricious, unpredictable. They fall in love like sleepwalkers and fly away like birds. Greta Garbo. Marlene Dietrich. Liv Ullmann. All sorts of femmes fatales. The secrets of the female heart. Don’t make fun of me for drinking vodka in the middle of the day. After all, you don’t look too happy yourself. Am I boring you?’

  Fima called the waiter and ordered her another vodka. He ordered a bottle of mineral water and some more bread and cheese for himself. The three conspirators got up to leave. As they passed his table, the settler gave him a sweet, saintly smile, as though he could see into his heart and forgave him. He said:

  ‘Bye now, and all the best. Don’t forget, when it comes to the crunch, we’re all in the same boat.’

  In his mind Fima relocated this moment to a coffeehouse in Berlin in the last days of the Weimar Republic, putting himself in the role of martyr: Carl von Ossietzky, Kurt Tucholsky. Immediately he cancelled the whole picture because the comparison was ridiculous, almost hysterical. To Annette he said:

  ‘Take a good look at them. Those are the creatures that are dragging us all down.’

  Annette said:

  ‘I’m already as low as I can go.’

  And Fima:

  ‘Go on. You were talking about fatal women.’

  Annette emptied her second glass. Her eyes were gleaming, and a hint of coquetry slipped into her words:

  ‘The nice thing about you, Efraim, is that I really don’t mind what sort of impression I make on you. I’m not used to that. Generally, when I’m talking to a man the most important thing for me is what impression he has of me. It’s never happened to me before to sit like this with a strange man and talk so freely about myself without getting all sorts of signals, if you know what I mean. Just one person talking to another. You’re not offended?’

  Fima unconsciously smiled when she used the expression ‘a strange man’. She noticed his smile and beamed at him like a child consoled after tears. She said:

  ‘What I meant was, not that you’re not masculine, just that I can talk to you like a brother. We’ve had to put up with so much bullshit from the poets, with their Beatrices, their earth mothers, their gazelles, their tigresses, their seagulls, their swans, and all that nonsense. Let me tell you, being a man strikes me as a thousand times more complicated than that. Or maybe it’s not complicated at all, all that lousy bargaining. You give me sex, I’ll give you a bit of tenderness. Or an impression of tenderness. Be a whore and a mother. A puppy by day and a kitten by night. Sometimes I have the feeling that men like sex but hate women. Don’t be offended, Efraim. I’m just generalising. There must be exceptions. Like you, for instance. I feel good now, the way you’re listening to
me quietly.’

  Fima bent forward to light the cigarette she had taken out of her handbag. He was thinking: In the middle of the day, in broad daylight, in the middle of Jerusalem, they’re already walking around with guns in their belts. Was the sickness implicit in the Zionist idea from the outset? Is there no way for the Jews to get back onto the stage of history except by becoming scum? Does every battered child have to grow up into a violent adult? And weren’t we already scum before we got back onto the stage of history? Do we have to be either cripples or thugs? Is there no third alternative?

  ‘At the age of twenty-five,’ Annette continued, ‘after a couple of love affairs and one abortion and a BA in art history, I meet this young orthopaedic surgeon. A quiet, shy man, not at all like an Israeli, if you know what I mean. A gentle person who courts me with sensitivity and even sends me a love letter every day but never tries to touch me. A hard-working, honest man. He likes to stir my coffee for me. He thinks of himself as an average, middle-of-the-road sort of fellow. As a junior doctor, he works like a madman, long hours on duty, on call, night duty. With a small group of close friends who are all very much like him, with refugee parents who are cultured and good-mannered like him. And after less than a year we get married. Without any upheavals, without any ups and downs. He handles me as though I’m made of glass, if you know what I mean.’

  Fima almost interrupted her to say: But we’re all like that; that’s why we’ve lost the state. But he restrained himself and said nothing. He merely made a point of carefully putting out the cigarette stub that Annette had left smouldering on the edge of the ashtray. He finished off his sandwich and still felt hungry.

  ‘We put together our savings, our allowances from our parents, and we buy a small flat in Givat Shaul; we buy furniture, a fridge, a cooker, we choose curtains together. We never disagree. All respectful and friendly. He simply enjoys giving way to me, at least that’s what I think at the time. Friendly is the right word: we both try our best to be good the whole time. To be fair. We compete with each other at being considerate. Then our daughter is born, and, two years later, our son. Yeri, naturally, is a reasonable, devoted parent. Consistent. Stable. The correct word is reliable. He’s happy washing nappies, he knows how to clean the mosquito nets, learns from books how to cook a meal and look after plants. He takes the children into town whenever the burdens of work allow. In time he even improves in bed. Gradually he realises I’m not made of glass, if you know what I mean. Occasionally he can tell a funny story over a meal. Still, he also starts to develop one or two habits I find quite irritating. Little inoffensive habits that won’t go away. Tapping on things with his finger, for instance. Not like a doctor tapping on a patient’s chest. More like tapping on a door. He’s sitting reading the paper, and all the time he’s unconsciously tapping on the arm of his chair. As if he’s trying to get in. He locks himself in the bathroom, splashes around in the bath for half an hour, and all the time he’s tapping on the tiles as if he’s searching for a secret compartment. Or his habit of saying in Yiddish, Azoy instead of replying to what you’re saying to him. I tell him I’ve found a mistake in the electricity bill, and he says, Azoy. Our little girl tells him her doll is angry with her, and he smiles, Azoy. I intervene, and say, Why don’t you listen to what your children are saying once in a while? And all he can say is, Azoy. Or the sarcastic whistle he lets out through the gap in his front teeth: it’s probably not a whistle, not sarcastic at all, just letting the air out through his pursed lips. No matter how often I tell him it’s driving me insane, he can’t stop it. He doesn’t even seem to notice he’s done it again. But when all’s said and done, these are minor irritants; you can learn to live with them. There are drunken husbands, lazy husbands, adulterous brutes, perverts, lunatics. In any case, I may well have developed some habits myself that he doesn’t like but says nothing about. There’s no point in making a big fuss about his tapping and whistling, which he can’t even control. So the years go by. We close in the balcony to make an extra room; we take a trip to Europe, buy a small car, replace our first furniture. We even get an alsatian. We get all four of our parents into a private old people’s home. Yeri does his bit; he tries to make me happy, he’s pleased with everything we’ve achieved together. Or so I think. And he goes on whistling and tapping and occasionally muttering Azoy.’

  Fima was thinking: The parliament building surrounded by tanks, paratroopers seizing the broadcasting station, a colonels’ putsch – that’s not what will happen here. Here we’ll just have creeping deterioration. An inch a day. People won’t even notice the lights going out. Because they won’t go out: they’ll fade out. Either we’ll finally get our act together and deliberately precipitate a serious national crisis, or else there just won’t be a definite moment of crisis. And he said:

  ‘You describe it so vividly, I can see it.’

  ‘I’m not boring you? Don’t be angry with me for smoking again. It’s hard for me to talk about all this. I must look a real sight; I’ve been crying. Be nice and don’t look at me.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Fima said, and after a moment’s hesitation he added:

  ‘Your earrings look nice too. Special. Like a pair of glow-worms. Not that I have the slightest idea what glow-worms look like.’

  ‘It’s nice being with you,’ said Annette. ‘First time in ages I’ve felt so good. Even though you hardly say anything, just listen and understand. Yeri encourages me to take a part-time job with the Jerusalem City Council when the children are a bit older. We start saving. We buy a new car. We dream of building ourselves a red-tiled house, with a real garden, outside the city, in Mevaseret. Sometimes in the evenings, when the children are in bed, we sit and look at American homemaking magazines, drawing up all sorts of plans. Sometimes he taps on our sketches with his finger, as though to test how solid they are. Both our children reveal a talent for music, and we decide to invest in music lessons, private teachers, the conservatory. We take summer holidays by the seaside, the four of us, at Nahariya. In December we leave the children behind and rent a bungalow in Eilat. Ten years ago we sold his parents’ flat and bought the bungalow. On Saturday nights we generally have a few couples round. Don’t be shy about stopping me, Efraim, if you’re tired of listening. Maybe I’m going into too much detail? Then this reliable man is appointed deputy head of his department. He starts seeing private patients at home. So the dream of the house with a garden in Mevaseret starts to become a reality. Both of us become experts on marble and ceramics and roof tiles, if you know what I mean. All these years, aside from superficial rows, not a shadow falls between us. Or so I think. Every row ends with apologies on both sides. He says he’s sorry, I say I’m sorry, and he mutters Azoy. And then we change the sheets or start making supper together.’

  Five thousand men, Fima thought, five thousand of us simply refusing to do our reserve service in the Territories – that’s all it would take. The whole occupation would collapse. But it’s just those five thousand who have turned into experts on roof tiles. Those bastards are right when they say that all they need to do is play for time. At the end of her story she’ll go to bed with me. She’s working herself up to it.

  ‘For a few winters,’ Annette continued, a sly, bitter line appearing at the corner of her mouth, as though she could read his mind, ‘he spends one night a week in Beer Sheva, because he’s been asked to teach some course or other at the medical school there. Thoughts of other women in his life never crossed my mind. I just didn’t think it was in him. Especially since even his domestic consumption had dwindled over the years, if you know what I mean. What would he do with a mistress? Just as it would never have occurred to me to imagine that he was, let’s say, a Syrian spy. It was simply impossible. I knew everything about him. At least, that’s what I thought. And I accepted him as he was, including that sarcastic whistle that I was convinced by now wasn’t really a whistle and definitely wasn’t sarcastic. On the other hand – I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I really
feel like telling everything – eight years ago, in the summer, I went to stay with a cousin of mine in Amsterdam for three weeks and I had a whirlwind romance with a stupid blond security officer from the embassy, twenty years younger than me. A real animal in bed, if you know what I mean, but the guy soon showed himself to be a narcissistic half-wit. It might make you laugh to know that someone thinks women get a kick out of having their stomachs smeared with honey. Just imagine! In a word, he was just a disturbed child. Not worth my good husband’s little finger.’

  Fima ordered her another vodka without her asking, and, yielding to his hunger pangs, another plate of bread and cheese for himself. The last. In his mind he resolved to be patient and gentle. Not to pounce on her. To drop politics. To talk only about poetry and loneliness in a general sort of way. Above all, to be patient.

  ‘I got back from Amsterdam riddled with guilt. It was hard for me to resist the urge to confess to him. But he suspected nothing. On the contrary. Over the years we have got into the habit of lying in bed sometimes, once the children are asleep, reading magazines together. We learn how to do all sorts of things from them that we didn’t know before. Compromise, consideration and concession paint our lives a dull shade of brown. True, we don’t have a lot of subjects for conversation. After all, I’m not that interested in orthopaedics. But the silences never get us down. We can sit for a whole evening reading, listening to music, watching television. Sometimes we even have a drink before bedtime. Sometimes I wake up when I’ve been asleep only an hour, because he has trouble dozing off and is tapping absent-mindedly on the shelf at the head of our bed. I ask him to stop. He apologises and stops and I go back to sleep and he falls asleep too. Or so I think. We remind each other to stick to our diet, because we both have a tendency to put on weight. Am I a bit fat, Efraim? Are you sure? Meanwhile we purchase all sorts of electrical appliances for the home. We engage a help three mornings a week. We visit his parents and mine – we’ve put all four of them in the same old people’s home. He goes to a medical congress in Canada without me, but invites me to join him for an orthopaedic conference in Frankfurt. While we’re there, we even go out one evening to see what a striptease joint is like. I was quite disgusted, but today I think I made a mistake in saying so to him. I should have kept my mouth shut. The fact is, Efraim, I’m afraid to imagine what you’ll think of me if I ask you to order me another vodka. Just one more and that’s it. It’s so hard. And you’re such a good listener. An angel. Well then, six years ago we finally moved into the house in Mevaseret. We had it built ourselves, and it turned out almost exactly like our dream, with a separate wing for the children, and a gabled attic bedroom like an Alpine chalet.’