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."