Fima

29. BEFORE THE SABBATH

HE WAS SO HAPPY THAT HE DID NOT FEEL HUNGRY, DESPITE HAVING eaten nothing since the early morning, apart from the biscuits he nibbled in Yael's kitchen. When he got off the bus, the rain had stopped. Among the wisps of dirty cloud, islands of blue were shining. For some reason it seemed that the clouds were standing still and the blue islands were floating westward. And he felt that this blueness was aimed at him and was calling him to follow.

Fima began walking up Ezekiel Street. The first two lines of the song about Johnny Guitar were still resounding in his chest. But how did the song go on? Where in the world did Johnny end up? Where is he playing now?

There was a Sabbath eve smell in the Bukharian Quarter, even though it was still only half past twelve. Fima attempted to identify the components of this thick smell which reminded him of his childhood and of that fine excitement that used to course through him and through Jerusalem as the Sabbath approached. The smell sometimes began to fill the world even on Thursday afternoon, with the washing and the scrubbing and the cooking. The maid used to cook stuffed chicken's necks sewn up with a needle and thread. His mother would make a plum compote that was as sweet and sticky as glue. And sweet stewed carrots, and gefilte fish, and pies, or a strudel, or pastries filled with raisins. And all kinds of jams and marmalades, one of which was called varyennye in Russian. Vividly there came back to Fima, as he walked, the smell and appearance of the wine-colored borscht, a semisolid soup with blobs of fat floating on the surface like gold rings, which he used to fish for with a spoon when he was little.

And every Friday his mother would wait for him precisely at midday at the gate of his school, with her blond plait framing her head like a wreath and a brown tortoiseshell comb planted at her golden nape. They would go together to do the last-minute shopping in Mahane Yehuda Market, he with his satchel on his back and she clutching her wicker shopping basket, a sapphire ring gleaming on her finger. The smells of the market, sharp, savory Oriental smells, filled them both with childish glee. As though they were conspiring secretly against the heavy Ashkenazic sweetness of the pics at home and the cloying carrot and the strudel and the compote and the sticky jams. And indeed, his father disliked these Friday raids on the market. He grumbled sardonically that the child ought to be doing his homework or improving his body with exercises, and in any case they paid a fortune to have a maid, whose job it was to do the shopping, and surely one could buy everything nearby in Rehavia, so there was no need to drag the child among those filthy stalls with foul liquids swilling on the pavement. The Levant was swarming with germs, and all those pungent spices with their clamorous smells were nothing but a camouflage for filth. He made a joke of his wife's attraction to the enchantments of the Thousand and One Nights, and what he termed her weekly quest for Ali Baba. Fima trembled inwardly at the recollection of the illicit thrill of helping his mother to choose from among various kinds of black olives, with their almost indecent smell and their sharp, dizzying taste. Sometimes he noticed the smoldering look one of the stall holders fixed on his mother, and although he was too young to know its meaning, he could faintly feel, as in a dream, an echo of a tremor that ran through his mother's body and seemed to overflow into his own. He could hear her voice now, in the distance. Look what they've done to you, stupid. But this time he answered cheerfully, Never mind, you'll see that I still haven't said my last word.

On their way home after the market he always insisted on carrying the basket. His other arm he linked in hers. They always had lunch on Fridays in a little vegetarian restaurant on King George Street, a red-curtained establishment that made him think of abroad as he knew it from the cinema. It was run by a refugee couple, Mr. and Mrs. Danzig, a charming pair who looked so alike, they might have been brother and sister. As indeed, Fima thought, perhaps they were. Who could tell? Their gentle manners brought a smile to his mother's face like a beam of light. Fima felt a pang of longing as he recalled it. At the end of their meal, Mrs. Danzig always placed two exact squares of almond chocolate in front of Fima. And she would say with a smile:

"That is for gutt-boy who didn't leave anything on his plate."

She pronounced "gutt-boy" without an article, as though it were his name. As for Mr. Danzig, he was a round man with one cheek that was like raw butcher's meat: Fima did not know if he had a chronic skin disease or a strange birthmark, or if it was a mysterious trace of an extensive burn. Mr. Danzig would intone a verse, like a ritual, at the end of those Friday lunches:

"Efraim iss a lovely child,

He finish all his dinner;

So now he vill be strong and vild,

And in our town the vinner—

Vot town?"

Fima's role in this ceremony was to reply:

"Jerusalem!"

But once, he rebelled and perversely answered: "Danzig!" which he knew from his father's stamp collection and also from the heavy German adas that he used to browse in for hours on end, spread-eagled on the carpet in a corner of the salon, especially on winter evenings. This reply made Mr. Danzig smile wistfully and say something that ended with "mein Kind." Meanwhile his mother's eyes for some reason filled with tears, and she suddenly squeezed Fima's head to her bosom and covered his face with a volley of quick kisses.

What became of the Danzigs? They must have died ages ago. A branch of a bank had stood for years on the site of that little restaurant that gleamed with a cleanness which even now, a thousand years later, Fima could feel in his nostrils, and which for some reason smelled to him like fresh snow. On each table, on the spotless white tablecloth, there was always an upright rose in a glass vase. The walls were adorned with calm landscapes of lakes and forests. Sometimes at a table in the far comer near the potted palms a slim British officer would be lunching on his own. He would sit stiffly, with his peaked cap parked at the foot of the rose. Where have those pictures of lakes and forests ended up? Where in the world is that lonely British officer eating now? A city of longings and madness. A refugee camp, not a city. But you could still get away from it. You could take Dimi and Yael away from here and join a kibbutz in the desert. You could propose to Tamar or to Annette Tadmor, settle down with her in Magdiel, and get a job as a clerk in a bank, in the health service, or in the national insurance, and start writing poetry again in the evenings. Start a new chapter. Get a little closer to the Third State.

His feet led him of their own accord into the maze of narrow streets which is the Bukharian Quarter. Slowly he shuffled underneath gaudily bedecked clotheslines stretched across the gray street. On balconies with rusting wrought-iron balustrades he could see dried skeletons of palm booths left over from Sukkoth, heaps of scrap iron and junk, suspended copper washing kettles, moldering packing boxes, jerry cans, all the refuse of the run-down flats. Almost every window here was curtained in garish colors. On the windowsills stood glass jars inside which cucumbers were slowly pickling in a broth of garlic, dill, and parsley. Fima suddenly felt that these guttural places, built around courtyards with ancient stone wells, smelling of grilled meat, onions, baking pastry, spiced dishes, and smoke, offered him a simple, straightforward answer to a question he had totally failed to frame. Something was hammering urgently at his chest both outside and within, gently plucking and gnawing, like the long-forgotten music of Johnny Guitar, like the lakes and forests on the walls of the little restaurant that his mother used to take him to after shopping in the market on Fridays. And he said to himself:

"That's enough. Drop it."

Like someone scratching at a sore, unable to stop even though he knew he should.

In Rabbenu Gershom Street he passed three short, plump women who looked so alike that Fima supposed they were sisters, or perhaps a mother with her daughters. He eyed them with an intrigued gaze. They were lush, generously fleshed women, as curvaceous as slave girls in a painting of an Oriental seraglio. His imagination pictured their expansive, abundant nakedness, then their submissive, obedient surrender, like waitresses dishing out warm helpings to a queue of starving men without taking the trouble to distinguish the recipients one from another, bestowing the gift of their bodies indifferently, out of habit, and with a touch of boredom. The boredom and indifference seemed far more sexual and provocative to Fima at that moment than all the sensual excitement in the world. A moment later came a wave of shame that extinguished his desire. Why had he forgone Yacl's body that morning? If he had only invested a little more cunning and patience, if he had only persevered, surely she would have given in. Without desire, but so what? Was it a question of desire?

But, then, what was it a question of?

The three women disappeared around the corner, but Fima stayed rooted to the spot, staring blankly, excited and ashamed. Surely the truth was that this morning he had not craved Yael's emaciated body. Rather, he had longed vaguely for a different kind of union, not a carnal union, nor the union of child and mother, perhaps no union at all, something that Fima could not even name, but nevertheless he felt that this thing, elusive as it was and too fine to be defined, if he could only be blessed with it once, just once, might change his life for the better.

On second thought, the words "change his life for the better" seemed to suit a muddled, acne-ridden adolescent rather than a man who was capable of leading a nation out of crisis and onto the road to peace.

Later, Fima lingered outside a tiny shoeshop which was also a cobbler's, to inhale the smell of caoutchouc, the intoxicating cobbler's glue. And meanwhile he caught a snatch of conversation between a middle-aged religious man, who looked like the bursar of a charitable foundation or a minor synagogue functionary, and an overweight, shabby, unshaven reservist in ill-fitting fatigues.

The soldier said:

"The thing with them is, the boy always looks after the granny. He doesn't budge from her side all day long. Every thirty seconds he checks to make sure she hasn't walked off again, Heaven forbid! Her head's gone to pieces, but she's still got the use of her legs, and take it from me, she's as quick as a cat on them."

The older man, the bursar, remarked sadly:

"The mind inside the head looks like a piece of cheese. Sort of yellowy-white, with wrinkles. They showed it on the TV. And when your memory goes, the scientists have discovered that it's because of the dirt. It's little worms that get inside and nibble at the cheese. Till it's all rotten. You can even get a whiff of it sometimes."

The soldier corrected him knowledgeably:

"It's not worms, its bactaria. The size of a grain of sand. You can hardly see them even with a magnifying glass, and there are hundreds of them born every hour."

Fima went on his way, thinking over what he had heard. For a moment his nostrils could almost catch the smell of rotting cheese. Then he lingered in the doorway of a greengrocer's. Crates of aubergines, onions, lettuces, tangerines, and oranges were laid out on the pavement. Around them hovered flies and one or two wasps. It would be good to go for a walk down these lanes with Dimi someday. He could feel the warmth of the boy's fingers in his empty hand. And he tried to imagine what sort of intelligent remarks he would hear from the pensive Challenger when they strolled here together, in what new light he would be made to see all these sights. Dimi would certainly notice aspects that were hidden from him, because he lacked the boy's powers of observation. Who did Dimi get them from? Teddy and Yael were always concentrating on the tasks in front of them, whereas Baruch was absorbed in his anecdotes and morals. Maybe the best plan of action would be to move in with them. He could begin, for instance, with a temporary invasion, a bridgehead, using the painters as an excuse, assuring the family at first that it was only for a day or two, a week at the most, he wouldn't be a nuisance, he'd gladly sleep on a mattress in the utility room off the kitchen balcony. As soon as he arrived, he'd start cooking for them, washing up, ironing, looking after Dimi while they were out, helping him with his homework, washing Yael's underwear, cleaning Teddy's pipe for him; alter all, they were out of the house a good deal, whereas he was a man of leisure. After a few days they'd get used to the arrangement. They would appreciate its advantages. They would come to be dependent on Fima's domestic services. They wouldn't be able to manage without him. It might well be Ted, a broad-minded, unprejudiced individual, a clear-thinking scientist, who would see the all-around benefits. Dimi would no longer be left to roam alone outside all day, relying on the kindness of the neighbors, at the mercy of their bullying children, or condemned to solitary confinement in front of the computer screen. Ted himself would be relieved of the burden of living constantly tête-à-tête with Yael, and so he also would be liberated a bit. As for Yael, it was hard to predict: She might accept the new arrangement with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders, she might just give one of her occasional silent laughs, or she might walk out and go back to Pasadena, leaving Dimi to Ted and me. This last possibility bathed Fima's mind in a supernal glow of light. It seemed really exciting: a commune, an urban kibbutz, three male friends devoted to one another, full of consideration, tied to each other by bonds of affection and mutual attentiveness.

The whole neighborhood was pullulating with feverish preparations for the Sabbath. Housewives carried overflowing shopping baskets, traders hoarsely cried their wares, a battered pickup with one rear light shattered like a black eye maneuvered backward and forward four or five times until miraculously it managed to squeeze into a parking spot on the pavement between two equally battered trucks. Fima rejoiced at this success, as though it held a hint of an opportunity that lay in store for him too.

A pale East European with sloping shoulders and protruding eyes, who looked as though he suffered from ulcers if not a terminal illness, panted heavily as he pushed a squeaking baby carriage laden with provisions in paper or plastic bags and a whole platoon of soft drinks up the hill. On top of the pile was an evening paper whose pages fluttered in the breeze. Fima squinted at the headlines as he reached out and carefully tucked the paper in among the bottles, so it wouldn't blow away.

The old man merely said, in Yiddish:

"Nu. Shoin."

A tawny dog sidled up obsequiously with its tail between its legs, timidly sniffed the trouser cuffs of an apprehensive Fima, found nothing special, and moved away with lowered snout. Was it possible, Fima mused, that this dog was a son of a son of a daughter of a daughter of the notorious Balak, who went mad here eighty years ago and terrorized these very streets before dying in agony?

In a front yard he saw the remains of a castle built by children out of crates and broken packing boxes. Then, on the wall of a synagogue named Redemption of Zion, Lesser Sanctuary of the Meshed Community were several graffiti that Fima stopped to inspect. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Fima thought he detected a minor mistake in the Hebrew, although he was chagrined to find he was not entirely certain. "Kahana's the master — Labur's a disaster." "For slanderers be there no hope." Be there? May there be? Let there be? Again, he was not certain, and decided to check later, when he got home. "Shulamit Allony scrues with Arafat." "Remember thou art but dust." Fima agreed with this last motto and even nodded his head. "Rachel Babaioff is a whore." To the left of this inscription Fima was pained to read: "Peace Now — pay later." But, then, he had always known that it was essential to plow deep. And: "An eye for an eye for an," which made Fima smile and wonder what the poet had meant. A different hand had written: "Traitor Malmilian — souled his mother!" Fima, while realizing that the author had meant to write "sold," nonetheless found the error charming. As though a poetic inspiration had guided the writer's hand to produce something he could not have been aware of.

Across the street from the Redemption of Zion stood a small shop, hardly more than a hole in the wall, selling stationery. The shop window was dotted with dead flies and still marked with the traces of crisscrossed tape put up against explosions, a souvenir of one of our vainly won wars. In the small window were displayed various types of dusty notebooks, exercise books whose covers were curling with age, a faded photograph of Moshe Dayan in lieutenant general's uniform in front of the Wailing Wall, which had also not been spared by the flies, plus compasses, rulers, and cheap plastic pencil cases, some of which bore pictures of wrinkled Ashkenazi rabbis or Sephardi Torah sages in ornate robes. In the midst of all this Fima's eye fell on a thick exercise book in a gray cardboard binding, containing several hundred pages, the sort that writers and thinkers of earlier generations must have used. He felt a sudden longing for his own desk, and a profound resentment toward the painters who were threatening his routine.

In three or four hours from now the siren would be wailing here to herald the advent of the Sabbath. The bustle of the streets would subside. A beautiful, gentle stillness, the silence of pines and stones and iron shutters, would spill down from the slopes of the hills surrounding the city and settle on the whole of Jerusalem. Men and boys in seemly festive attire, carrying embroidered tallith bags, would walk calmly to evening prayers at the innumerable little synagogues dotted around these narrow streets. The housewives would light candles, and fathers would chant the blessings in a pleasant Oriental melody. Families would gather together around the dinner table: poor, hard-working people who placed their trust in the observance of the Commandments and did not delve into things too deep for them, people who hoped for the best, who knew what they must do, and who were ever-confident that the powers that be also knew what to do and would act wisely. Greengrocers, shopkeepers, hawkers and peddlers, apprentices, lowly clerks in the municipality and the civil service, petty traders, post office workers, salesmen, craftsmen. Fima tried to picture the weekday routine of a district like this and the enchantment of Sabbaths and festivals. Even though he did not forget that the residents here no doubt earned their meager crusts with the sweat of their brow and were burdened with debts, worries about making ends meet, and mortgages, nevertheless he felt that they lived decent, truthful, restful lives, with a quiet joy that he had never known and never would, to his dying day. He suddenly longed to be sitting in his own room, or rather perhaps in the elegant salon in his father's flat in Rehavia, surrounded by the lacquered furniture, the oriental rugs, the Central European candelabra, and books and fine china and glass, concentrating at last on what really mattered. But what was it that really mattered? In God's name, what was it?

Perhaps it was this: to sweep away at a single stroke, starting today, from the onset of this Sabbath, the empty talk, the wastefulness, the lies that buried his life. He was ready to accept his misery humbly, to reconcile himself finally to the solitude he had brought on himself, to the very end, with no right of appeal. From now on he would live in silence, he would cut himself off, he would sever his repugnant links with all the do-gooding women who flocked around him in his flat, in his life, and he would stop pestering Tsvi and Uri and the rest of the group with casuistic sophistry. He would love Yael from a distance, without being a nuisance. He might not even bother to have his telephone repaired: from now on let it too be silent. Let it stop boasting and lying.

And what about Dimi?

He would dedicate his book to him. Because, starting next week, he would spend five or six hours before work in the reading room of the National Library. He would systematically recheck all the extant sources, including the most obscure and esoteric ones, and in a few years' time he would be in a position to write an objective and dispassionate history of the Rise and Fall of the Zionist Dream. Or perhaps he would write instead a sort of whimsical, half-crazy novel about the life, death, and resurrection of Judas Iscariot, based on himself.

But better not to write. Better to say good-bye now and forevermore to the papers, the radio, the television. At most he would listen to classical music programs. Every morning, summer and winter alike, he would get up at daybreak and walk for an hour in the olive grove in the wadi below his flat. Then he would have a leisurely breakfast: vegetables, fruit, and a single slice of black bread with no jam. He would shave — no, why should he shave; he'd grow a shaggy beard — and sit and read and think. After work every evening he would devote another hour or two to strolling around the city. He would get to know Jerusalem systematically. He would gradually uncover its hidden treasures. He would explore every alley, every back yard, every recess; he would find out what was hiding behind every stone wall. He would not accept another penny from his demented father. And in the evening he would stand alone at the window listening to his inner voice which up to now he had always tried to silence with inanities and buffoonery. He would learn a lesson from Yael's senile father, the veteran pioneer Naftali Tsvi Levin, who sat staring at the wall for whole days, answering every remark with the question "In what sense?" Not a bad question, in fact. Although on second thought even this question could be dispensed with, the term "sense" being itself devoid of meaning.

The snows of yesteryear.

Azoy.

Fima remembered with disgust how the previous Friday, exactly a week ago, at Shula and Tsvi Kropotkin's the conversation had turned after midnight to the Russian component, which had had such a strong influence on various currents of Zionism. Tsvika made ironic fun of the naive Tolstoyism of A. D. Gordon and his disciples, and Uri Gefen recalled how once the country had been full of fans of Stalin and songs about Budyonny's cavalry. Whereupon Fima stood up, stooped slightly, and had the whole room doubled up with laughter when he began declaiming in liquid, orotund tones a typical passage from an early translation of Russian literature:

"Dost thou here also dwell, my good man? Beside Spasov I dwell, close by the V — Monastery, in the service of Marfa Sergeyevna, who is the sister of Avdotya Sergeyevna, if Your Honor might condescend to recall, her leg she broke as from the carriage she leaped, when to the ball then she was going. Now beside the monastery she dwells, and I — in her house."

Uri had said:

"You could go around the country giving public performances."

And Teddy said:

"It's straight out of the wedding scene in The Deerhunter—what was it called in Hebrew?"

Whereas Yael remarked dryly, almost to herself:

"Why do you all encourage him? Just look at what he's doing to himself."

Fima now accepted those words of hers like a slap in the face that brought tears of gratitude to his eyes. And he resolved that he would never again make a fool of himself in her presence. Or in the presence of others. From now on he would concentrate.

While he was standing there preparing his new life, staring at the names of the residents inscribed on a row of worn mailboxes in the hallway of a gray stone building, startled to see that there was a Pizani family here too and half surprised not to find his own name underneath it, a smooth-talking Sephardi rabbinical student, a thin, bespectacled youth clad in the costume of an Ashkenazi Hasid, addressed him politely. Warily, as if fearing a violent reaction, he urged Fima to fulfill the commandment of putting on tefillin, here, on the spot. Fima said:

"So, will that hasten the coming of the Messiah, in your opinion?"

The youth replied at once, eagerly, as though he had prepared himself for this very question, in a North African accent with a Yiddish lilt:

"It will do your soul good. You will feel relief and joy instantly, something amazing."

"In what sense?" asked Fima.

"It's a well-known fact, sir. Tried and tested. The arm tefillin cleanses the defilement of the body and the head tefillin washes all the dirt out of the soul."

"And how do you know that I have a defiled body and a dirty soul?"

"Heaven forbid that I should say such a wicked thing. Lest I sin with my lips. Every Jew, even if he be a sinner — may it not happen to us! — his soul was present at Mount Sinai. This is a well-known fact. That is why every Jewish soul shines forth like the heavenly radiance. Nevertheless, sometimes it happens, sadly, on account of all our troubles, on account of all the rubbish that life in this lower world is always heaping on us, that the heavenly radiance inside the soul becomes dirty, so to speak. What does a man do if he gets dirt inside the engine of his car? Why, he takes it to be cleaned out. That is an allegory of the dirt in the soul. The commandment of putting on tefillin cleanses that dirt out of you instantly. In a moment you will feel like new."

"And what good will it do you if a nonbeliever puts on tefillin once and then goes on sinning?"

"Well, you sec, it's like this, sir. First, even once helps. It improves the maintenance. One commandment leads to another. It's also like a car: after so many kilometers you service it, clean out the carburetor, change the oil, and all that. Naturally, once you've invested a little something in maintenance, you start to take better care of your car. So it keeps its value. Gradually you get into a daily maintenance routine, as we call it. I give you this example only as an illustration, to help you grasp the idea."

"I don't have a car," Fima said.

"No, really? You see, it's true what they say: everything comes from Heaven. I've got a car for you. A bargain like you've never seen. A once-in-a-lifetime chance. But first let's mark the difference between sacred and profane."

"I can't drive," said Fima.

"We'll get you through the test for three hundred dollars in all. Unlimited lessons. Or we'll find a way to include it in the price of the car. Something special. Just for you. But, first, put on tefillin: you'll see, you'll feel like a lion."

Fima laughed:

"Anyhow, God's forgotten me."

"And second," the young man continued, oblivious, with ever-mounting enthusiasm, "you should never say 'nonbeliever.' There's no such thing as a nonbeliever. No Jew in the world can be a nonbeliever. The very expression is tantamount to slander, or even — Heaven forbid! — to blasphemy. As it is written, a man should not reckon himself as wicked."

"I happen," Fima insisted, "to be a one-hundred-percent nonbeliever. I don't observe a single commandment. Only the six hundred and thirteen transgressions."

"You are mistaken," the young man said politely but firmly, "totally mistaken, sir. There is no such thing in the whole world as a Jew who does not keep some commandments. There never has been. One does more, another does less. As the Rebbe says, it is a matter of quantity, not quality. Just as there is no such thing as a righteous man who never sins, so there is no such thing as a sinner who does not perform some righteous acts. Just a few. Even you, sir, with all due respect, every day you observe a few commandments, at least. Even if a person considers himself a total apikoros, he still observes a few commandments each day. For example, the fact that you're alive, you're already keeping the commandment Thou shalt choose life.' Every hour or two, every time you cross the road, you choose life, even though you could have chosen the opposite, Heaven forbid! Am I right? And then the fact that you've got kids — they should be healthy! — you have observed the commandment 'Be fruitful and multiply.' And the fact that you're living in the Land of Israel — that's another half-dozen commandments. Then if you feel happy sometimes, you've got another one. Every one's a winner! Sometimes you may have an overdraft up in Heaven, but they never cut off your credit. Unlimited credit, that's what you get. And meanwhile, for the few commandments that you do keep, you've got your own private savings plan up there, and every day you invest a bit more and a bit more, and every day they credit you with interest and they add it to your capital. You'd be amazed, sir, how rich you are without even knowing it. As it is written, the ledger lies open and the hand writes. Five minutes to put on tefillin, less than five minutes even — believe me, it doesn't hurt — and you accumulate an extra bonus for Sabbath. Whatever your line of business in the lower world, believe me there's no other five-minute investment that will give you a higher yield. It's a tried and tested fact. No? So it's not so terrible. Maybe it's just that your time hasn't come yet to put on tefillin. When it comes, you'll know. You'll receive a signal there's no mistaking. The main thing, sir, don't forget: The gates of repentance stand ever open. Around the clock, as they say. Sabbaths and festivals included. Now, about the business of the car and the driving test, here, take these two phone numbers."

Fima said:

"Right now I haven't even got a phone."

The missionary shot him a pensive sideways glance, as though making some kind of mental assessment, and hesitantly, in a voice that was close to a whisper, he said:

"You're not in some kind of trouble, are you, sir? Shall we send someone around to sec what we can do to help? Don't be embarrassed to say. Or maybe the best thing would be, why don't you come and make Sabbath with us? Feel what it's like to be among brothers, just for once?"

Fima said:

"No, thank you." This time there was something in his voice that made the young man timidly wish him a good Sabbath and move away. He turned twice and looked back toward Fima, as though afraid he might be pursued.

For a moment Fima was sorry he had not given this peddler of pious deeds and used cars a vitriolic answer, a theological knockout blow that he would not forget in a hurry. He could have asked him, for example, whether you got five credit points up there for killing a five-year-old Arab girl. Or whether to bring a child into the world that neither you nor the mother wanted was a virtuous act or a transgression. After a moment, to his surprise, he felt some regret that he had not said yes, if only to afford a small pleasure to this North African youth in the Volhynian or Galician costume, who, despite his transparent guile, seemed to Fima to be innocent and goodhearted. No doubt in his own way he too was trying to put right what cannot be put right.

Meanwhile he shuffled past a carpenter's workshop, a grocer's that smelled strongly of salt fish, a butcher's shop that struck him as murderously bloodstained, and a dingy shop selling snoods and wigs, and he stopped at a nearby newsstand to buy the weekend editions of Yediot, Hadashot, and Ma'ariv. For once he also bought the ultrapious paper Yated Ne'eman, out of vague curiosity. And so, laden with newspapers, he entered a small café on the comer of Zephaniah Street. It was a family restaurant, with three tables covered with peeling pink Formica, and lit by a single feeble bulb that cast a sickly yellow light. Lazy flies wandered everywhere. A bearlike man was dozing behind the counter, his beard between his teeth, and Fima wondered for a moment about the possibility that this was actually himself behind the reception desk at the clinic transported here by magic. He dropped onto a plastic chair that seemed none too clean, and tried to recall what his mother used to order for him on those Fridays a thousand years ago at the Danzigs' restaurant. Eventually he asked for chicken soup, beef stew, a mixed salad, pita and pickles, and a bottle of mineral water. As he ate, he rummaged in his pile of papers until his fingers were black and the pages were grease-stained.

In Ma'ariv, on the second page, there was a report about an Arab youth in Jenin who had been burned to death while trying to set fire to a military jeep that was parked in the main street of the town. An investigation had shown, the newspaper reported, that the Arab mob which gathered around the burning youth prevented the military orderly from offering him first aid and did not allow the soldiers to get close enough to douse the flames, apparently in the belief that the young man burning to death in front of them was an Israeli soldier. He roasted for about ten minutes in the fire that he himself had lit, uttering "fearful screams" before finally expiring. In the town of Or Akiva, on the other hand, a minor miracle had occurred. A five-year-old boy who fell from an upper story, receiving serious head injuries, had been lying unconscious since the Day of Atonement. The doctors had written him off and placed him in a home, where he was expected to live out the rest of his days as a vegetable. But the mother, a simple woman who could neither read nor write, refused to give up hope. When the doctors told her the child did not have a chance and that only a miracle could save him, she prostrated herself at the feet of a famous rabbi in Bnei Brak, who told her to have a certain rabbinical student who was known to be brain-damaged himself repeat a page of the Zohar about Abraham and Isaac day and night into the ear of the child (whose name was Yitzhak or Isaac). And indeed, after four days and nights the boy began to show signs of life, and he was now fully recovered, running around and singing hymns and attending a religious boarding school, where he had a special scholarship and was gaining a reputation as a budding genius. Why not try reading the same passage of the Zohar into the ears of Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir, Fima thought, chuckling to himself, and then muttered when he spilled sauce on his trousers.

In the religious paper, Yated Ne'eman, he skimmed through various malicious rumblings about desertions from the kibbutzim. According to the paper, the younger generation of kibbutzniks were all wandering around the Far East and the Indian mountains, attaching themselves to all sorts of terrible pagan sects. And in Ma'ariv a veteran columnist again argued that the government should not be in a hurry to rush off to all sorts of dubious peace conferences. We should wait until the Israeli deterrent was renewed. We must not go to the negotiating table from an inferior position, with the sword of the intifada, as it were, at our throats. Discussions about peace might be desirable, but only when the Arabs finally realized that they had no chance politically or militarily, indeed no chance at all, and came pleading for peace with their tails between their legs.

In Hadashot he read a satirical piece suggesting that instead of hanging Eichmann we should have had the foresight to spare him, so we could use his experience and his organizational skills at the present juncture. Eichmann would be well received among the torturers of Arabs and those who wanted to deport the Arabs to the east en masse, an operation in which Eichmann was known to have particular expertise. Then in the weekend magazine of Tediot Aharonot he came across an article, illustrated with color photographs, about the ordeals of a once popular singer who had become addicted to hard drugs, and now, when she was fighting that addiction, a heartless judge deprived her of custody of her baby daughter by a famous soccer star who refused to recognize his paternity. The judge ruled that the baby should be handed over to a foster family, despite the singer's protest that the foster father was actually a Yugoslav who had not been properly converted and might not even be circumcised. When Fima had searched all the pockets of his trousers, his shirt, and his overcoat and almost given up hope, he eventually fished out of the inside pocket of the coat, of all places, a folded twenty-shekel note which Baruch had managed to plant there without his noticing. He paid and took his leave with a muttered apology. He left all his newspapers on the table.

Outside the restaurant he found the cold had intensified. There was a hint of evening in the air, even though it was still only midafternoon. The cracked asphalt, the rusty wrought-iron gates, some of which had the word "Zion" worked into them, the signboards of the shops, workshops, Torah schools, real estate agencies, and charities, the row of trash cans parked along the street, the distant view of the hills glimpsed beyond neglected gardens — everything was becoming clothed in various shades of gray. Occasionally alien sounds penetrated the regular hubbub of the streets: church bells, high and slow, punctuated by silence, or low, or shrill, or heavy and elegiac, and also a distant loudspeaker, and pneumatic drills, and the faint blaring of a siren. All these sounds could not subdue the silence of Jerusalem, that permanent underlying silence, which you can always find if you look for it underneath any noise in Jerusalem. An old man and a boy walked slowly past, grandfather and grandson perhaps. The boy asked:

"But you said that the inside of the world is fire, so why isn't the ground hot?"

And the grandfather:

"First you must study, Yossel. The more you learn, the more you'll understand that the best thing for us is we shouldn't ask questions."

Fima remembered that when he was a child, there was an old huckster who went through the streets of Jerusalem wheeling a squeaky, broken-down handcart, with a sack on his back, buying and selling secondhand furniture and clothes. Fima remembered in his bones the old man's voice, which sounded like a cry of despair. At first you would hear it a few blocks away, indistinct and ominous, ghostlike. Slowly, as though the man were crawling on his belly from street to street, the shout grew closer, raucous and terrifying—"al-te za-chen" — and there was something desolate and piercing about it, like a cry for help, as if someone were being murdered. Somehow this cry was associated in Fima's mind with the autumn, with overcast skies, with thunder and the first dusty drops of rain, with the secretive rustling of pine trees, with dull gray light, with empty pavements and gardens abandoned to the wind. Fear would seize him, and it sometimes invaded his dreams at night. Like a final warning of a disaster that had already begun. For a long time he did not understand the meaning of the words al-te za-chen, thinking that the awful broken voice was addressing him, saying in Hebrew, "Al tezaken," "Do not grow old." Even after his mother explained to him that "alte zachen" was Yiddish and meant "old things," Fima remained under the spell of the bloodcurdling prophecy that advanced through the streets one by one, getting closer and closer, knocking at the garden gates, warning him from afar of the approach of old age and death, the cry of someone who has already fallen victim to the terrible thing and is warning others that their time will also come.

Now, as he remembered that ghost, he smiled and comforted himself with the words of the dismissed clerk from Mrs. Scheinfeld's café, the man whom God had forgotten: "Anyway we all dies."

Going up Strauss Street, Fima passed the garish window of an ultrapious travel agency named Eagles' Wings. He stood for a while contemplating a brightly colored poster picturing the Eiffel Tower between Big Ben and the Empire State Building. Nearby, the Tower of Pisa leaned toward the other towers, and next to it was a Dutch windmill, with a pair of plump cows grazing blankly below. The words on the poster read: "With G-d's help: COME ON BOARD — TRAVEL LIKE A LORD!" Underneath, in the characters normally reserved for holy books: "Pay in sue easy installments, interest free." There was also an aerial photograph of snow-covered mountains, across which was printed in blue letters: "OUR WAY'S POSHER — STRICTLY KOSHER."

Fima decided to go inside and ask the price of a bargain ticket to Rome. His father would surely not refuse to lend him the fare, and in a few days' time he would be sitting with Uri Gefen and Annette's husband in a delightful café on the Via Veneto, in the company of bold, permissive women and pleasure-loving men, sipping a cappuccino, discoursing wittily about Salman Rushdie and Islam and feasting his eyes on the shapely girls walking past. Or he would sit alone by a window in a little albergo with old-fashioned green wooden shutters, staring at the old walls, with a note pad in front of him, and occasionally jot down aperçus and pithy musings. Maybe a crack would open in the blocked-up spring, and some new poems gush forth. Some light, easy encounters might take place, lightheartedly, with no strings attached, weightless relationships that are impossible here in this Jerusalem teeming with dribbling prophets. He had read recently in a newspaper that religious travel agents knew how to fiddle things so that they could sell flights for next to nothing. Over there in Rome, amid impeccable palazzos and stone-paved piazzas, life was carefree and gay, full of fun and free of guilt and shame, and even if acts of cruelty or injustice occurred there, the injustice was not your responsibility and the suffering did not weigh on your conscience.

An overweight, bespectacled young man, with clean-shaven pink cheeks but a broad black skullcap on his head, raised his childlike eyes from a book that he hastily hid behind a copy of Hamodia' and greeted Fima with a smug Ashkenazic accent:

"And a very good day to you, sir."

He was only about twenty-five, but he looked prosperous, supercilious, and eager to please.

"And what might we do for you, sir?"

Fima discovered that in addition to foreign travel the shop also sold tickets for the national lottery and various other lotteries. He leafed through a brochure offering "holiday packages" in splendid religious hotels in Safed and Tiberias, combining treatment for the body under the care of qualified medical staffs with purification of the soul by means of devotions "at the Holy Tombs of Lions of Torah and Eagles of Wisdom." At that moment, perhaps because he noticed that the young travel agent's starched white shirt was rather grubby at the collar and cuffs, just like his own, Fima changed his mind and decided to postpone his trip to Rome. At least until he had a chance to talk to his father about it and consult Uri Gefen, who was coming back today or tomorrow. Or was it Sunday? Nevertheless he took his time, leafed through another brochure with pictures of kosher hotels in "splendiferous Switzerland," hesitated between the national lottery and the soccer pool, and decided to buy a ticket for the Magen David Adorn drawing so as not to disappoint the agent, who was waiting patiently and politely for him to finish making up his mind. But Fima had to make do without even this, because all he could find in his pocket, apart from Annette's earring, was six shekels, the change from his meal in the flyblown cafeteria in Zephaniah Street. He therefore accepted with thanks some illustrated leaflets containing the itineraries and the minutest details about organized tours for groups of Torah-True Jews. In one of them, he found written in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish that by the grace of Almighty G-d it was now once again possible to make one's devotions at the tombs of "aweful saints" in Poland and Hungary, to visit "Holy Places destroyed by the persecutors, may their name be blotted out!" and to enjoy "the mind-broadening beauties of Japheth — and all in an atmosphere of real yiddishkeit, strictly kosher under the auspices of qualified, pious, and seemly guides, and all with the blessing and recommendation of Leading Giants of Torah." The travel agent said:

"Maybe you will change your mind and come and sec us again when you have had a chance to think it over, sir?"

Fima said:

"Maybe. We'll see. Thank you anyway, and I'm sorry."

"Don't mention it, sir. Our honor and pleasure. And a very good Sabbath to you."

As he walked on up toward the Histadrut Building, it occurred to him that this obsequious, overfed young man with the sausagelike fingers and starched shirt that had a grimy collar and cuffs was the same age as the son that Yael had got rid of two minutes away from here at some clinic in the Street of the Prophets. And he smiled sadly because, despite the skullcap and cantorial tenor voice, it was possible that an impartial observer could find a certain resemblance between him and that pudgy, grubby, smooth-talking young travel agent who was so eager to please. But could Yael feel any maternal affection for that bloated creature, with his murky blue eyes behind thick glasses and his porky-pink cheeks? Could she sit and knit him a blue woollen bonnet with a pompom bobbing on top? Could she link arms with him and let him choose spicy black olives for her in Mahane Yehuda Market? And how about you? Would you really feel the need occasionally to tuck a folded bill in his pocket? Or get the painters in for him? Which goes to prove that Yael was right. As always. She was born being right.

However, Fima thought wryly, it might have been a girl. A miniature Giulietta Masina with soft bright hair. She could have been named after his mother: Liza, or, in its Hebrew mutation, Elisheva. Although it is fairly certain Yael would have vetoed that.

A cold, bitter woman, he said to himself with surprise.

Was it really only your fault? Just because of what you did to her? Just because of the Greek promise that you didn't keep and could not have kept and that no one could have kept? Once, next to Nina Gefen's bed he saw an old translated novel, in a shabby paperback edition, called A Woman Without Love. Was it by François Mauriac? André Maurois? Alberto Moravia? He must ask Nina sometime if it was about a woman who did not find love or a woman who was incapable of love. The title could be taken either way. Though at the moment the difference struck him as insignificant. Only very rarely had he and Yael used the word "love." With the possible exception of the period of the Greek trip, but at that time neither he nor the three girls had been particular about their choice of words.

Wains curled. And vanished.

As he crossed the road, there was a squeal of brakes. The van driver cursed Fima and shouted:

"You there, are you crazy?"

Fima considered, shuddered belatedly, and muttered sheepishly:

"I'm sorry. Really. Very sorry."

The driver screamed:

"Damn half-wit: you've got more luck than sense."

Fima considered this too, and by the time he reached the other curb he agreed with the driver. And with Yael, who had decided not to have his son. And also with the possibility of being run over here in the street this Sabbath eve instead of running away to Rome. Like the Arab child we killed two days ago in Gaza. Being switched off. Turned to stone. Reincarnated, as a lizard perhaps. Leaving Jerusalem to Yoezer. And he decided that this evening he would call his father and tell him firmly that the painting was off. In any case he would be going soon. This time he would not give in or compromise; he would see it through, and get Baruch's fingers out of his pockets and out of his life once and for all.

Near the Medical Center at the corner of Strauss Street and the Street of the Prophets a small crowd had gathered. Fima approached and asked what had happened. A small man with a birdlike nose and a thick Bulgarian accent informed him that a suspicious object had been found, and they were waiting for the police explosives experts to arrive. A girl with glasses said, What do you mean? It's not that at all. A pregnant woman fainted on the steps, and the ambulance is on its way. Fima burrowed toward the center of the crowd, because he was curious to know which of these two versions was closer to the truth. Although he bore in mind that they might both be mistaken. Or both right. What if it was a pregnant woman who had discovered the suspicious object and fainted from the shock?

From the police patrol car which drew up with flashing lights and siren blaring, someone with a megaphone told the crowd to disperse. Fima, with a good citizen's reflex, obeyed at once, but even so he was pushed roughly by a sweaty middle-aged policeman whose peaked cap was tilted back at a comical angle.

Fima was furious.

"All right, all right, no need to push, I've dispersed already."

The policeman roared at him with a rolling Romanian accent:

"You better stop being clever, quick, or you'll get it."

Fima restrained himself and moved off toward the Bikur Holim Hospital. He asked himself whether he would go on dispersing until one day he too collapsed in the street, or expired at home like a cockroach, on the kitchen floor, and was only discovered a week later, when the smell wafted out onto the landing, and the upstairs neighbors, the Pizantis, called the police and his father. His father would no doubt be reminded of some Hasidic tale about instant, painless death, often called "death by a kiss." Or he would make his usual remark about man being a paradox, laughing when he ought to cry and crying when he ought to laugh, living without sense and dying without desire. Frail man, his days are like the grass. Was there still a chance to halt this dispersal? To concentrate at long last on what really mattered? But if so, how to start? And what in God's name was it that really mattered?

When he reached the Ma'ayan Shtub department store on the comer of Jaffa Road, he absent-mindedly turned right and walked toward Davidka Square. And because his feet hurt, he boarded the last bus to Kiryat Yovel. He did not forget to wish the driver a good Sabbath.

It was a quarter to four, close to die beginning of the Sabbath, when he got off at the stop on the street next to his. He remembered to say thank you and good-bye to the driver. The early evening twilight had begun to gild the light clouds over the Bethlehem hills. And suddenly Fima realized sharply, with pain, that another day was gone forever. There was not a living soul to be seen in his street apart from a swarthy child of ten who pointed a wooden submachine gun at him and made him raise his arms in surrender.

Thinking about his own room filled him with disgust: that arid stretch of time from now till tonight, and in fact rill Saturday night, when the group might be getting together at Shula and Tsvi's. Everything he'd meant to do today he hadn't, and now it was too late: shopping, the post office, the telephone, cash from the bank, Annette. And something else that was urgent but he couldn't remember what it was. Added to which, he still had to get ready for the painters. Shift the furniture and cover it. Pack away the books and kitchen things. Take the pictures down, and the map of the country with the compromise borders penciled in. Ask Mr. Pizanti to dismantle the bookcases for him. But first of all, he decided, he must call Tsvi Kropotkin right away. Explain to him tactfully, without offending him this time, without being sarcastic, how his article in the latest issue of Politics was based on a false and simplistic assumption.

Provided the telephone had recovered in the meantime.

In front of the entrance to his building, inside a white car with the windows closed, a large man was sitting bent over, his arms resting on the steering wheel and his head buried in his arms, apparently dozing. What if it was really a heart attack? Murder? A terrorist attack? Suicide? Gathering his courage, Fima tapped lightly on the window. Uri Gefen straightened up at once, lowered the window, and said:

"So there you are. At last."

Startled, Fima tried to respond with something witty, but Uri cut him short. He said softly:

"Let's go upstairs. We have to talk."

Nina has told him everything. That I made love to her. That I didn't. That I humiliated her. But what's he doing here anyway? Isn't he supposed to be in Rome? Or has he got a secret double?

"Look here, Uri," he said, the blood leaving his face and draining into his liver, "I don't know what Nina's told you, but the fact is that for some time now…"

"Hold it. We'll talk when we get upstairs."

"The fact is, I've been meaning for some time…"

"We'll talk inside, Fima."

"But when did you get back?"

"This morning. Half past ten. And your phone's not working."

"How long have you been waiting for me out here?"

"Three-quarters of an hour or so."

"Has something happened?"

"Just a minute. We'll talk when we get upstairs."

When they were in the flat, Fima offered to make some coffee. Although the milk seemed to have gone bad. Uri looked so tired and thoughtful that Fima was ashamed to bring up the question of dismantling the bookcases. He said:

"I'll put the water on first."

Uri said:

"Just a moment. Sit down. Listen carefully. I have some bad news." And with these words he laid his big, warm peasant hand, which was rough like the bark of an olive tree, on the back of Fima's neck. As always, the touch of this hand made Fima shudder pleasurably. He closed his eyes like a stroked cat. And Uri said:

"We've been looking for you since lunchtime. Tsvi's been here twice and left a note on your door. Because your clinic's closed on Fridays, Teddy and Shula have been rushing around for two hours trying to locate your doctors. We didn't know where you'd got to after you left Yael's. And I just dropped my luggage off and came straight here to catch you as soon as you got back."

Fima opened his eyes. He looked up at Uri's towering form with an anxious, pleading, childlike expression. He did not feel surprised, because he had always expected it would be something like this. With his lips only, without any voice, he asked:

"Dimi?"

"Dimi's fine."

"Yael?"

"It's your father."

"He's not well. I know. For several days now…"

Uri said:

"Yes. No. Worse."

In a strange and wonderful way Fima was infected with Uri's wonted self-possession. Softly he asked:

"When exactly did it happen?"

"At midday. Four hours ago."

"Where?"

"At home. He was sitting in his armchair drinking Russian tea with a couple of old ladies who had come to ask him for a donation to some charity. The Blind Society or something. They said he was just starting to tell a joke or a story, when he suddenly groaned and passed away. Just like that. Sitting in his armchair. He didn't have time to feel anything. And since then we've all been searching for you."

"I see," said Fima, putting his coat back on. It was strangely sweet to feel his heart filling not with grief or pain but with a surge of adrenaline, of sober, practical energy.

"Where is he now?"

"Still at home. In the armchair. The police have been. There's some sort of a delay about moving him — it doesn't matter right now. The woman downstairs, who's a doctor, was there within a couple of minutes, and she checked that it was all over. Apparently she was a close friend of his too, Tsvi and Teddy and Shula are supposed to be waiting for you there. Nina is going there straight from her office as soon as she's finished making all the arrangements and dealing with the formalities."

"Good," said Fima. "Thank you. Let's go there."

After a moment he added:

"What about you, Uri? Straight from the plane? You just dropped your luggage off and came looking for me?"

"We didn't know where you'd got to."

Fima said:

"I ought to make you a cup of coffee at least."

Uri said:

"Forget it. Just concentrate for a moment and think carefully if there's anything you need to take with you."

"Nothing," Fima replied at once in a military tone, with uncharacteristic firmness. "No time to waste. Let's get moving. We'll talk on the way."