The student, who would live in this flat a century from now, suddenly took on in Fima's mind the name Yoezer. He could see him in his mind's eye standing at this same window and staring out at those same hills. And he said to him: Don't you mock. It's thanks to us that you're here. Once there was a tree-planting ceremony in the city of Ramat Gan. The first mayor, the old man, Avraham Krinitzi, stood up in front of a thousand youngsters, from all the nursery schools, each one holding a sapling. The mayor too held a sapling. His task was to make a speech to the children, and he did not know what to say. Suddenly, out of the turmoil of his mind, a one-sentence speech burst forth, delivered with a heavy Russian accent: "Moy dzear cheeldren, you are the trees, and we are the manure." Would there be any point in carving that sentence here, on the wall, like a prisoner on the wall of his cell, for that arrogant Yoezer to read? To force him to think about us? But by then surely the walls will have been repainted, replastered, perhaps even rebuilt. In a hundred years life will be more vital, more vigorous, more reasonable, and more joyful. The wars with the Arabs will be remembered with a shrug, as a sort of absurd cycle of obscure tribal skirmishes. Like the history of the Balkans. I don't suppose Yoezer will waste his mornings hunting cockroaches or his evenings in grubby eating places behind Zion Square. Which will probably have been completely flattened and rebuilt in an energetic, optimistic style. Instead of eating greasy fried eggs, jam, and yogurt, they'll probably just swallow a couple of capsules every few hours. No more filthy kitchens, no more ants and cockroaches. People will be busy all day with useful, exciting things, and their evenings will be devoted to learning and beauty. They will live their lives in the bright light of reason, and if ever there are any stirrings of love, there will probably be some way of exchanging minute electromagnetic pulses from a distance to find out in advance whether it is a good idea to translate this love into physical intimacy. The winter rain will have been swept away from Jerusalem forever. It will be diverted to the agricultural regions. Everyone will be taken across safely to the Aryan side, as it were. Nobody, nothing will smell bad. The word "suffering" may sound to them the way the word "alchemy" does to us.
We've had another power cut. The lights came on again after a couple of minutes. It's probably a hint to me that I ought to pop into the bank to pay my bill, otherwise they'll cut me off and leave me sitting in the dark. I owe the grocer a lot of money too. And did I pay Mrs. Schneider across the road for her schnitzel yesterday, or did I sign for it again? I forgot to get that book for Dimi. What's holding us up? Why are we still here? Why aren't we getting up and clearing out, and leaving Jerusalem to those who will come after us? A very good question, he said under his breath.
This time he convened his cabinet in the old Sha'arei Zedek hospital on Jaffa Road, a splendid abandoned building that had fallen into decay since the hospital was moved to a new site. By lamplight, among remnants of broken benches and pieces of rusting bedsteads, he arranged his ministers in a semicircle. He asked each of them in turn for a briefing on the situation in their various departments. Then he stunned them all by announcing that he intended to fly to Tunis at dawn to address the Palestine National Council. He would place the main burden of historic responsibility for the plight of the Palestinian Arabs fairly and squarely on the shoulders of their extremist leadership since the 'twenties. He would not spare them our anger. However, he would offer to break out of the vicious circle of bloodshed and start building together a reasonable future based on compromise and conciliation. The only condition for starting to negotiate would be the total cessation of violence on both sides. At the close of the session, in the early hours, he appointed Uri Gefen minister of defense. Gad Eitan received the foreign-affairs portfolio. Tsvi would be responsible for education, Nina for finance, Wahrhaftig was put in charge of social welfare, and Ted and Yael would look after science, technology, and energy. For information and internal security he was retaining himself for the time being. And from now on the cabinet would be renamed the Revolutionary Council. The revolutionary process would be completed within six months. By then peace would be established. And immediately thereafter we can all return to our occupations and no longer interfere in the work of the elected government. I myself shall withdraw into total anonymity. I shall change my name and disappear. Now let us disperse separately by side entrances.
What about involving Dimi?
During the winter holidays the child spent a morning in the laboratory at the cosmetics factory in Romema. When Fima arrived to take him to the Biblical Zoo, he found that the old man had shut himself up in the lab with the child and taught him how to use acetone to manufacture explosives. Fima was furious with his father for corrupting the child: Haven't we got enough murderers already? Why poison his soul? But Dimi interrupted the argument by observing gently, like a mediator:
"Granpa's explosives are only good for painting fingernails."
And they all burst out laughing.
On the wall to the left of the window, about four feet away, in a corner of a patch of peeling plaster, Fima saw a gray lizard, immobile, staring like himself, longingly, toward the Bethlehem hills. Or else watching a fly that was invisible to Fima. Once upon a time, on those hills and in their winding valleys, there wandered judges and kings, conquerors, prophets of consolation and wrath, world-reforming saviors, impostors, dreamers, priests and hearers of voices, traitors, messiahs, Roman prefects, Byzantine governors, Muslim generals, and crusader princes, and ascetics, hermits, wonderworkers, and sufferers. To this day Jerusalem still resounds with their memory in the ringing of its church bells, sobs out their names from the tops of its minarets, and conjures them back with cabbalistic incantations. And now, at this moment, there was, it seemed, not a living soul left in the city, bar himself and the lizard and the light.
When he was younger he too used to fancy he could hear a voice as he walked among Jerusalem's alleys and boulder-strewn waste plots. He even tried to record in words what he fancied he had heard. In those days he might still have been able to stir some hearts. Even now he could sometimes fascinate a few souls, particularly women, in those Friday-night get-togethers at the Tobiases' or the Gefens'. Sometimes he would throw out a dazzling idea, and for an instant the whole room would hold its breath. His ideas would then make their way around by word of mouth, and occasionally they even reached the columns of the newspapers. Sometimes, when the spirit moved him, he managed to coin a new phrase, to formulate a perception of die situation in words that had not previously been used, to utter some penetrating aperçu which circulated in the city until he came across it a few days later on the radio, severed from him and his name, and often distorted. His friends enjoyed reminding him, as a sort of mild rebuke, how once or twice he had shown real foresight, as for example in 'seventy-three, when he had gone around lamenting to the point of ridicule the blindness that was afflicting Israel, the impending catastrophe. Or on the eve of the invasion of Lebanon. Or before the wave of Islamic fundamentalism. Whenever his friends reminded him of these prophecies, Fima would recoil and reply with a rueful grin that it was nothing, the writing was already on the wall and any child could read it.