Fima

8. A DISAGREEMENT ON THE QUESTION OF WHO THE INDIANS REALLY ARE

AT TEN O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING, AS HE WAS STANDING AT THE window counting the raindrops, he saw Baruch Nomberg taking his leave of the taxi driver. Fima's father was a dapper old man in a suit and bow tic, with a pointed white beard that curved upward like a Saracen scimitar. At the age of eighty-two he still kept a firm hold of the reins of the cosmetics factory he had set up in the 'thirties.

His father was bending over the window of the taxi, apparently lecturing the driver, with his white hair waving in the breeze, his hat in his left hand and his carved stick with the silver band in the other. Fima knew that the old man was not haggling about the fare or waiting for his change; he was finishing an anecdote he had started telling on the way. For fifty years now he had been conducting an extended seminar with Jerusalem taxi drivers on Hasidic tales and pious stories. He was a dedicated storyteller. And he had a fixed habit of commenting on every anecdote and pointing up the moral lesson. Whenever he told a joke, he would follow it by explaining what the point was. Sometimes he would also explain both the apparent point and the real point. His commentaries always made his listeners laugh, which encouraged the old man to tell more stories and explain them too. He was convinced that the point of the stories had escaped everybody, and that it was his duty to open their eyes.

As a young man Baruch Nomberg had fled from the Bolsheviks in Kharkov and studied chemistry in Prague, then he had come to Jerusalem and started producing lipsticks and face powders in a small domestic laboratory. From these small beginnings a successful cosmetics factory had developed. He was a flirtatious, garrulous old man. A widower for several decades now, he was always surrounded by female friends and companions. Jerusalem gossip had it that they were attracted to him only for his money. Fima thought otherwise: he considered his father, for all his bluster, a good and generous man. All these years it had been his habit to lend his financial support to any cause he found deserving or moving. He was a member of endless committees, councils, societies, associations, and groups. He was a regular participant in fundraising campaigns for the homeless, for the absorption of immigrants, for people in need of complex surgical operations abroad, for land purchase in the Occupied Territories, for the production of commemorative volumes, for the restoration of historic ruins, for the creation of homes for abandoned children and shelters for battered wives. He volunteered his support for needy artists, for the ending of experiments on laboratory animals, for the purchase of wheelchairs, and for the prevention of environmental pollution. He saw no inherent contradiction in backing traditional values in education while also funding a campaign for the prevention of religious coercion. He dispensed grants to students from minority groups, to victims of violent crime, and also for the rehabilitation of the violent criminals. In each of these initiatives the old man committed modest sums, but together they apparently consumed about half of the total income yielded by the cosmetics factory, as well as the greater part of his time. In addition, he had a passion verging on addiction for anything to do with contracts and small print. Whenever he had to purchase new chemicals or dispose of used equipment, he would engage a veritable battery of lawyers, consultants, and accountants in order to close up every conceivable loophole. Legal agreements, notarial ultimatums, copies of initialed memorandums would excite in him a thrill of the game that almost bordered on artistic fulfillment.

He spent his spare time in the company of women. Even now that he was over eighty, he still loved sitting in cafés. Summer and winter alike he wore a formal suit and bow tie, with a triangle of gleaming white silk protruding from his breast pocket like a snowflake in a heat wave, with silver cuff links, a jeweled ring flashing on his little finger, his white beard sticking out in front like a wagging finger, his carved stick with the silver band parked between his knees, and his hat on the table in front of him. A pink old man, scrubbed and polished, he was invariably accompanied by an elegant divorcée or a well-preserved widow, always cultured European women with refined manners in their late fifties or early sixties. He would sometimes sit at his usual table in the café with two or three of them. He would order them espresso and strudel, while he normally had a liqueur and a dish of fresh fruit in front of him.

As the taxi drove off, the old man waved it good-bye with his hat, following his invariable habit. Being a sentimental person, he treated every farewell as final. Fima went out to meet him. He could almost hear him humming a Hasidic folk tune to himself as he climbed the stairs. Whenever he was alone, and even sometimes when he was being spoken to, the old man would be constantly intoning the characteristic ya-ba-bam. Fima sometimes wondered whether he did it in his sleep too: like a musical liquid welling up from some invisible hot spring, overflowing his father's shrunken body, or seeping out through the tiny cracks caused by old age. Fima could also almost sniff his father's special smell waiting up the stairs, that smell that he remembered from his infancy and could identify even in a roomful of strangers: the scent of airless rooms, old furniture, steaming fish stew and boiled carrots, feather beds, and sticky liqueur.

As father and son exchanged a perfunctory embrace, this Eastern European aroma aroused in Fima a revulsion mixed with shame at the revulsion, together with the long-standing urge to pick a quarrel with his father, to trample on some sacrosanct principle of his, to disclose the irritating contradictions in his views, to exasperate him a little.

"Nu," the old man began, panting and wheezing from the exertion of his climb, "so what does my esteemed professor have to report to me today? Has the Redeemer come unto Zion? Have the Arabs had a change of heart and made up their minds to love us?"

"Hello, Baruch." Fima contained himself.

"Right. Hello, my dear."

"What's new? Is your back still bothering you?"

"My back?" said the old man. "Fortunately my back is doomed to be forever behind me. I am here, it is there; it will never overtake me. And if, God forbid, it ever does, why, I'll simply turn my back on it. But my breath is getting shorter. Like my temper. And here the roles are reversed: It is not chasing me; I am chasing it. So, what is Herr Efraim busying himself with in these awesome days? Still bent upon setting the world to rights in readiness for the Kingdom of God?"

"There's nothing new," said Fima, and, taking his father's stick and hat, he saw fit to add:

"Except that the country's going to the dogs."

The old man shrugged. "I've been hearing such obituaries for fifty years already — the country this, the country that — and in the meantime the obituarists are all six feet underground and the country is improving every day. For all your protestations: The more they afflict it, the more it flourishes. Don't interrupt me, Efraim. Let me tell you a charming little story. Once in Kharkov, before Lenin's revolution, a silly anarchist daubed a slogan on the wall of a church in the middle of the night: GOD IS DEAD SIGNED FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. He was alluding to the late demented philosopher. Nu. So, the next night someone more clever comes along and writes: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE IS DEAD SIGNED GOD. Wait a minute — I haven't finished yet. Kindly permit me to explain to you the point of this little story, and in the meantime why don't you put on the kettle and pour me a minuscule drop of that Cointreau I gave you last week. By the way, it's time you had this old ruin of yours redecorated, Fimuchka. Before the evil spirits take it over. Just call in a decorator and send me the bill. Where were we? Yes, tea. Your beloved Nietzsche is a noxious contagion. I wouldn't touch him with a barge pole. Here, I'll tell you a true story about Nietzsche and Nachman Krochmal when they met once on the train to Vienna."

As usual, his father insisted on adding an explanation of the point of the story. Fima laughed: unlike the story, the explanation was amusing. His father, delighted by Fima's reaction, was encouraged to offer him a further anecdote concerning a train journey, this time about a honeymoon couple who found themselves compelled to seek the assistance of the guard. "And you do see, don't you, Efraim, that the real point is not the bride's behavior, but the bridegroom's witlessness. He was a real shlemazel."

Fima recited to himself the words he had heard Dr. Eitan say the day before: "I'd hang the pair of them."

"Do you know the difference between a shlemiel and a shlemazel, Efraim? The shlemiel spills his tea and it always lands on the shlemazel. That's what they say. But in reality, behind this joke there is something mysterious and quite profound. The shlemiel and the shlemazel are both immortal. Hand in hand they wander from country to country, from century to century, from story to story. Like Cain and Abel. Like Jacob and Esau. Like Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov. Or like Rabin and Peres. Or perhaps even, who knows, like God and Nietzsche. And while we're on the subject of trains, I'll tell you a true story. Once upon a time the director of our state railways went to take part in an international meeting of railway chiefs. A kind of Konferenz. Now the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and our buffoon talked and talked; he simply wouldn't stop. He wouldn't get down from the podium. Until the American train chief had had enough. He raised his hand and asked our man, 'With all due respect, excuse me, Mr. Cohen, but just how many miles of track do you have in your country that you talk so much?' Nu, so our delegate doesn't lose his presence of mind; with the assistance of the Almighty, Who grants discernment even to the simple rooster, he says: The length I don't rightly remember, Mr. Smith, but the width is exactly the same as yours.' By the way, I heard this story once told by a foolish fellow who got it wrong and said Russia instead of America. He spoiled the whole point of the story, because the Russian railways have a different gauge from ours; in fact, it's different from the whole of the rest of the world. No reason; just to be different. Or else so that if Napoleon Bonaparte comes back and tries to invade them again, he won't be able to take his wagons to Moscow. Where were we? Yes, the honeymoon couple. In fact, there's no reason why you shouldn't bestir yourself and wed some lovely lady. If you wish, I'll be delighted to help by finding the lady ct cetera. But do get moving, my dear: after all, you're not a stripling anymore, and as for me, nu, any day now the fateful tocsin will sound and I shall be no more. Baruch Nomberg is dead, signed God. The amusing thing in the story of the honeymoon couple is not the bridegroom having to ask the guard for instructions on how to handle a bride. No, sir. It's the association with punching tickets. Although, on second thought, tell me yourself; what's so funny about it? Is there really anything to laugh at? Aren't you ashamed of yourself for chuckling? It is really sad, even heartbreaking. Most jokes are actually based on the improper pleasure that we derive from the misfortunes of others. Now why is that, Fimuchka? Perhaps you can kindly explain to me, since you yourself are a historian, a poet, a thinker, why is it that other people's misfortunes make us feel good? Make us guffaw? Afford us this curious satisfaction? Man is a paradox, my dear. A very curious creature indeed. Exotic. He laughs when he ought to weep. He weeps when he ought to laugh. He lives without sense and he dies without desire. Frail man, his days are as the grass. Tell me, have you seen anything of Yael lately? No? And your little boy? You must remind me later on to tell you a marvelous story from Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk, a parable of divorce and longing. He intended it to be a parable about the relationship between the community of Israel and the Divine Presence, but I have my own personal interpretation of it. But first of all tell me about your own life and doings. This is all wrong, Efraim: Here am I prattling on just like our dear railway chief, and you're saying nothing. Like the story about the cantor on the desert island. I'll tell you later. Don't let me forget. There was this cantor who found himself cast away on a desert island during the High Holy Days; it shouldn't happen to us! But there I go again, chatting away while you are silent. Say something. Tell me about Yael and that melancholy child. Just remind me to tell you afterward about the cantor: after all, in a way we're all like cantors on a desert island, and in a sense all days are High Holy Days."

Fima heard a faint, low, wheezing sound, almost like a cat's purr, coming from his father's chest with every breath. As though the old man had put a whistle in his throat as a joke.

"Drink your tea, Baruch. It's getting cold."

The old man said:

"Did I ask you for tea, Efraim? I asked you to talk. I asked you to tell me about that forlorn child that you insist on pretending to everybody is the son of that American dummkopf. And I asked that you should put a little order in your life. That you should be a mensch. That you should worry about the future for a change instead of worrying night and day about your beloved Arabs."

"I'm not," Fima corrected him, "worried about the Arabs. I've explained to you a thousand times. I'm worried about us."

"Of course, Efraim, of course. Nobody can impugn the integrity of your motives. The sad thing is, the only people you manage to take in are yourselves. As though your Arabs are just asking nicely and politely if they can have Nablus and Hebron back, and then they'll go home happily ever after, peace be upon Israel and upon Ishmael. But that's not what they want from us. It's Jerusalem they want, Fimuchka, and Jaffa, and Haifa, and Ramla. To slit our throats a little bit, that's all they want. To wipe us out. If you only took the trouble to listen a little to what they say among themselves. The sad thing is, all you ever listen to is yourselves, yourselves, yourselves." Another low, drawn-out whistle escaped from his father's chest, as though he were bewildered by his son's naïveté.

"Actually, they've been saying rather different things recently, Dad."

"Saying. How very nice. Let them say to their heart's content. Saying is easy. They've simply learned from you the rules of how to speak nicely. Eloquence. Winning words. Superciliousness. It's not important what they say. What counts is what they really want. As that roughneck Ben Gurion used to say about Jews and gentiles." Apparently the old man was about to expatiate on this theme, but he was overcome by breathlessness and let out a wheeze that ended in a cough. As though inside him a loose door on squeaky hinges were being blown by the breeze.

"They want to find a compromise now, Baruch. And now we're the intransigent side that refuses to make concessions and won't even talk to them."

"Compromise. Of course. Well spoken. There's nothing as fine as compromise. All life depends on it. Apropos, there's a wonderful story they tell about Rabbi Mendel of Kotsk. But who will you compromise with? With our sworn killers who long to destroy us? Now just you call me a taxi, so I won't be late, and while we're waiting for it, I'll tell you a true story about how Jabotinsky once met the anti-Semitic interior minister of tsarist Russia, Plehve. And d'ye know what Jabotinsky said to him?"

"It was Herzl, Dad. Not Jabotinsky."

"It would be better for you, Mister Wise Guy, if you didn't take the names of Herzl and Jabotinsky in vain. Take your shoes off when you approach their hallowed ground. They must turn in their graves every time you and your friends open your mouths to pour scorn on Zionism."

Fima, suddenly beside himself with fury, forgot his vow of self-restraint and almost gave in to the dark urge to pull his father's goatee or smash his untouched teacup. He exploded in a wounded roar:

"Baruch, you are blind and deaf. We're the Cossacks now, and the Arabs are the victims of the pogroms, yes, every day, every hour."

"The Cossacks," his father remarked with amused indifference. "Nu? What of it? So what's wrong with us being the Cossacks for a change? Where does it say in Holy Scripture that Jew and gentile are forbidden to swap jobs for a little while? Just once in a millennium or so? If only you yourself, my dear, were more of a Cossack and less of a shlemazel. Your child takes after you: a sheep in sheep's clothing."

Having forgotten the beginning of their conversation, he explained all over again, while Fima furiously crushed matchsticks one after another, the difference between a shlemiel and a shlemazel and how they constituted an immortal pair, wandering hand in hand through the world. Then he reminded Fima that the Arabs have forty huge countries, from India to Abyssinia, whereas we have only one tiny country no bigger than a man's hand. He began telling off the names of the Arab states on his bony fingers. When he enumerated Iran and India among them, Fima could no longer endure in silence. He interrupted his father with a plaintive, self-righteous howl, stamped his foot, and exclaimed petulantly that Iran and India are not Arab states.

"Nu, so what? What difference docs it make to you?" the old man intoned in a ritualistic singsong, with a sly, good-natured chortle. "Have we managed at last to find a satisfactory solution to the tragic question of who is a Jew, that we need to start breaking our heads over the question of who is an Arab?"

Fima, in despair, leaped from his chair and rushed to the bookcase to fetch the encyclopedia, hoping at last to silence his father forever with a crushing defeat. However, as in a nightmare, he could not for the life of him imagine in which article to start looking for a list of the Arab states. Or even which volume. He was still fuming and frantically pulling out one volume after another, when he suddenly noticed that his father had got to his feet, quietly humming a Hasidic melody, mingled with a slight dry cough, and had picked up his hat and stick, and in the midst of taking his leave was furtively slipping folded money into his son's trouser pocket.

"It's just not possible," Fima muttered. "I simply can't believe it. This isn't happening. It's crazy."

But he did not attempt to explain what exactly was not happening, because his father, standing in the doorway, added:

"Nu, never mind. I give up. So forget about the Indians. Let's call it thirty-nine states and have done with it. Even that is more than enough and far more than they deserve. We must never let the Arabs come between us, Fimuchka. We won't give them that satisfaction. Love, so to speak, always overcomes discord. My taxi is probably waiting outside, and we mustn't stand between a man and his work. And we never got onto the real subject. Which is that my heart is weary. Soon, Fimuchka, I shall be going on my way, signed God Almighty. And then what will become of you, my dear? What will become of your tender son? Just think, Efraim. Apply your mind to it. After all, you are a thinker and a poet. Think carefully and tell me, please: Where are we all going? For my sins I have no other children. And you and yours, it seems, have nobody apart from me. The days go by with no purpose, no joy, and no profit. In fifty or a hundred years' time, there will doubtless be people in this room, of a generation of mighty heroes, and the question of whether you and I once lived here or not, and if we did, what we lived for, and what we did with our lives, whether we were worthy or wicked, happy or miserable, and whether we did any good, will matter to them less than a grain of salt. They won't spare us a thought. They will simply be here, living their own lives, as if you and I and all the rest of us were no more than last year's snow. A handful of dust. You haven't got enough air to breathe here, either. And the air is stale. You don't just need a decorator, you need a whole army of workmen. Send me the bill. As for the Cossacks, Efraim, leave them be. What does a young man like you know about Cossacks? Instead of worrying your head about Cossacks, better you should stop squandering the rich treasure of life. Like a tamarisk in the wilderness. Farewell."

Without waiting for Fima, who had intended to see him out, the old man waved his hat as though departing forever, and began to descend the stairs, hitting the banisters rhythmically with his stick and humming a Hasidic melody under his breath.