Fima

7. WITH THIN FISTS

AT A QUARTER PAST SIX IN THE MORNING HE WROTE DOWN IN HIS brown dream book what he had seen in the night. A coffee-table book about Jerusalem in Hebrew poetry resting slantwise on his raised knees served as a writing desk. He wrote the date, as always, in words, not in figures.

In the dream, war had broken out. The setting resembled the Golan Heights, only more barren. Like a moonscape. Dressed in military uniform but without belt or gun, he was walking along a deserted dirt track, both sides of which, he knew, were lined with minefields. He particularly remembered that the air was very close and gray, as though a storm were approaching. Far in the distance a bell tolled slowly, with long pauses between strokes, the sound echoing through invisible valleys. There was no other soul. Not so much as a bird. And no sign of human habitation. We had been caught off guard again. An enemy armored column was steadily approaching a narrow mountain pass, a sort of ravine that Fima could make out farther up the road, where the rugged heights began. He realized that the grayness in the air was the dust rising from their tracks. He also began to hear dimly, behind the clanging of the bell, a low rumble of engines. Somehow he knew that his appointed task was to wait for them in the ravine at the point where the road crossed the mountains. To delay them by talking to them until reinforcements could be brought up to block the canyon. He started to run as hard as he could. He was panting heavily. The blood throbbed in his temples. His lungs ached. He had a stitch in his side. Although he was exerting his muscles to the utmost, he was hardly moving at all, he was almost running in place, and all the while he was frantically searching for words he could use to delay the enemy. He simply had to find something, a phrase, an idea, a message, perhaps even something funny, words that would make the armored column that was advancing toward him stop, make heads emerge from turrets to listen to him. If he could not change their hearts, at least he must gain time. Without which there was no hope. But his strength was failing and his feet were stumbling and his head was empty of ideas. Not a word passed through his mind. The rumble of engines was getting closer, louder; he could already hear the thunder of guns and the barking of machine guns behind a bend in the road. And he could see flashes inside the cloud of smoke or dust that filled the ravine and filled his eyes and made his throat burn. He was too late. He would never make it in time. There were no words in the world that could hold back the mad bull charging toward him. In a moment or two he would be flattened. And the most terrible thing was not the fear; it was the shame of failure, of being at a loss for words. His crazed running slowed and turned to a shambling gait, because a heavy weight had settled on his shoulders. When he managed to turn his head, he discovered that there was a child riding him, pommeling his head with vicious thin fists, and forcing his head between his knees. Until he began to choke.

Fima also noted in his book:

"My bedclothes smell. I ought to take a bundle of washing to the laundry today. Yet there was something: I was left with a longing for those barren mountains and the weird light, and especially for the tolling of the bell that echoed in the deserted valleys with very long pauses between the strokes, and seemed to be coming to me from an unimaginable distance."