"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.
9. "THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS WE COULD TALK ABOUT, COMPARE"
FIMA STILL HAD A COUPLE OF HOURS LEFT BEFORE HE HAD TO BE at work. He thought he would change the sheets, and while he was at it his shirt and underwear and the dishtowels and the bathroom towels, and drop the whole lot off at the laundry on his way to the clinic. When he went into the kitchen to take the towel off its hook, he saw that the sink was full of dirty dishes and that there was a frying pan on the drainboard with pieces of food in it, while on the table the jam had congealed in a jar that had lost its lid. A rotting apple was attracting swarms of flics on the windowsill. Fima gingerly picked it up between forefinger and thumb, as though it might be contagious, and threw it in the trash can under the overfull sink. But the can was overfull too. The infected apple rolled off the top of the heap and managed to find itself a hiding place among the old canisters and bottles of cleaning fluid. It could only be reached by getting down on all fours. Fima made up his mind that this time there would be no compromise, he would not give up as usual, he would recapture the fugitive at all costs. If he succeeded, he would take it as a green light, and he would maintain the momentum by taking the trash can downstairs to empty it. On the way back he would remember to fish the newspaper and his mail out of the box at last. He would continue by washing and tidying the refrigerator, and at the risk of making himself late he would even change the sheets.
But when he prostrated himself and started searching behind the trash can for the lost apple, he discovered half a roll, a greasy margarine wrapper, and the burned-out light bulb from yesterday's power cut, which it suddenly dawned on him was probably not burned out after all. Suddenly a cockroach came strolling toward him, looking weary and indifferent. It did not try to escape. At once Fima was fired with the thrill of the chase. Still on his knees, he slipped off a shoe and brandished it, then repented as he recalled that it was just like this, with a hammer blow to the head, that Stalin's agents murdered the exiled Trotsky. And he was startled to discover the resemblance between Trotsky in his last pictures and his father, who had been here a moment before begging him to marry. The shoe froze in his hand. He observed with astonishment the creature's feelers, which were describing slow semicircles. He saw masses of tiny stiff bristles, like a mustache. He studied the spindly legs seemingly full of joints. The delicate formation of the elongated wings. He was filled with awe at the precise, minute artistry of this creature, which no longer seemed abhorrent but wonderfully perfect: a representative of a hated race, persecuted and confined to the drains, excelling in the an of stubborn survival, agile and cunning in the dark; a race that had fallen victim to primeval loathing born of fear, of simple cruelty, of inherited prejudices. Could it be that it was precisely the evasiveness of this race, its humility and plainness, its powerful vitality, that aroused horror in us? Horror at the murderous instinct that its very presence excited in us? Horror because of the mysterious longevity of a creature that could neither sting nor bite and always kept its distance? Fima therefore retreated in respectful silence. He replaced his shoe on his foot, ignoring the rank smell of his sock. And he closed the door of the cupboard under the sink gently, so as not to alarm the creature. Then he straightened up with a grunt and decided to put off the household chores to another morning, because there were so many of them and they seemed unfairly burdensome.
He switched the electric kettle on to make himself a cup of coffee, turned the radio to the music program, and managed to catch the beginning of Fauré's Requiem, whose tragic opening notes made him stare out the window for a while in the direction of the Bethlehem hills. Those people of the future his father had mentioned, who a hundred years from now would live in this very flat without knowing anything about him or his life, would they really never feel any curiosity about who had lived here at the beginning of 1989? But why should they? Was there anything in his life that might be of use to people whose parents had not even been born yet? Something that might at least provide them with food for thought as they stood at this window on a winter's morning in the year 2089? No doubt in a hundred years' time jet-propelled vehicles would have become so commonplace that the people living here would have no special reason to remember Yael and Teddy, or Nina and Uri and their crowd, or Tamar and the two gynecologists. Even Tsvi Kropotkin's historical research would probably be out of date by then. At most all that would remain of it would be a footnote in some obsolete tome. His envy of Tsvi seemed pointless, vain, and ridiculous. That envy that he obstinately denied, even to himself, and whose insidious nibbling he silenced with endless arguments, calling Tsvi up on the phone and slipping in a question, out of the blue, about the exiled king of Albania, entangling them in a bad-tempered argument about Albanian Islam or Balkan history. After all, in the B.A. exams Fima had had slightly better marks than his friend. And he was the one who had had certain brilliant insights that Tsvi had made use of, insisting despite Fima's protestations on acknowledging him in footnotes. If only he could overcome his tiredness. He still had it in him to leap ahead, make up the time lost in the billy-goat year, and in a couple of years overtake that spoiled, conventional professor, clad in his sporty blazer and whining out his bland truisms. Not a stone would be left standing of all Kropotkin's edifices. Fima would smash and flatten the lot like a hurricane. He would cause an earthquake and establish new foundations. But what was the point? At the very most some student at the end of the next century would refer in passing, in a parenthesis, to the outmoded approach of the Nisan-Kropotkin school which enjoyed a short-lived vogue in Jerusalem in the late twentieth century, in the declining phase of the socioempiric period, which was marred by hyperemotionalism and the use of clumsy intellectual tools. The student would not even take the trouble to distinguish between them. He would link them together with a hyphen before closing the brackets on the two of them.