Tsvi Kropotkin sometimes copied pieces for him from a literary supplement or a periodical that made reference to the Death of Augustine, when some critics bothered to drag those poems out of oblivion to use them as additional ammunition in a campaign for or against current trends in poetry. Fima would shrug and mutter, That's enough, Tsvika, just drop it. His poems, like his prophecies, seemed to him remote and irrelevant. Why does the soul pine when it has no idea what it is pining for? What really exists and what only seems to exist? Where can you look for something lost when you have forgotten what it is you lost? Once, in his billy-goat year, during his brief marriage to the hotel owner in Valletta, he was sitting in a waterfront café in the harbor watching a couple of fishermen play backgammon. In point of fact it was not so much the fishermen he was watching as a German shepherd that sat, panting, on a chair between them. The dog's ears were pricked forward earnestly, as though it were listening for the next move, and it kept following the players' fingers and the rolls of the dice and the moving counters with eyes that seemed to Fima full of fascination and humble wonderment. Fima had never, before or since, seen such a concentrated effort to understand the unintelligible, as if in its longing to decipher the game the dog had achieved a degree of disembodiment. Surely that is precisely the way we ought to look at what is beyond us. To grasp as much as we can, or at least to grasp our inability to grasp. Fima sometimes pictured the creator of the universe, in whom he did not entirely believe, in the form of a Jerusalem tradesman of Middle Eastern origin, aged about sixty, lean and tanned and wrinkled, eaten away by cigarettes and arak, in threadbare brown trousers and a not very clean white shirt buttoned right up to the skinny neck but without a tie, and with worn-out brown shoes and a shabby old-fashioned jacket a little too small for him. This creator sat drowsily on a wicker stool, facing the sun, his eyes half-closed, his head sunk on his chest, in the doorway of his haberdashery shop in Zichron Moshe. A dead cigarette end hung from his lower lip and a string of amber beads hung frozen between his fingers, where a broad ring flashed from time to time. Fima stopped and dared to address him, with exaggerated politeness, in the third person, hesitantly: Might I be permitted to disturb Your Worship with just one question? A twitch of irony flitted across the wrinkled, leathery face. Perhaps just a fly buzzing? Would Your Worship deign to consider the Brothers Karamazov? The argument between Ivan and the Devil? Mitya's dream? Or the episode of the Grand Inquisitor? No? And what would Your Worship deign to reply to that question? Vanity of vanities? Would Your Worship resort yet again to the old arguments: Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the world? I am that I am. The old man released a kind of belch reeking of tobacco and arak, turned up his two palms, which were as pitted as a plasterer's, and spread them empty on his knees. Only the ring on his finger glimmered for a moment and then faded. Was he chewing something? Smiling? Dozing? Fima abandoned his quest. Apologizing, he went on his way. Not running, not hurrying, yet nevertheless like one who runs away and knows he runs away, and also knows that running away is useless.
From his window Fima watched the sun straining to free itself from the clouds. An elusive change was coming over the streets and the hills. Not so much a brightening as a slight quivering of hues, as though the air itself were smitten with hesitations or doubts. All the things that filled the lives of the group — Uri, Tsvi, Teddy, and the rest of them — the things that stirred them to longing or enthusiasm, seemed to Fima as forlorn as the dead leaves rotting under the bare mulberry tree in the garden. There is a forgotten promised land somewhere here — no, not a land, not promised, not even really forgotten, but something calling to you. He asked himself whether he would care if he died today. The question did not arouse anything in him: neither apprehension nor desire. Death seemed as boring as one of Wahrhaftig's stories. Whereas his daily life was as predictable and weary as his father's moralizing. In his head he suddenly agreed with the old man, not about the identity of the Indians, but when he said that the days go by without joy or purpose. The shlemiel and his friend did indeed deserve pity rather than ridicule. But what were they to him? Surely he, Fima, was full of unbelievable powers, and it was only tiredness that made him put off exercising them. Like someone waiting for the precise timing. Or for a blow to crack the inner crust. He could, for example, drop his job at the clinic, extract a thousand dollars from the old man, and sail away on a cargo boat to start a new life. In Iceland. In Crete. In Safed. He could shut himself up in that guesthouse in Magdiel and write a play. Or a confession. He could devise a political program, pick up some followers, and start a new movement that would shatter the mood of indifference and sweep through the public like wildfire. Or he could join one of the existing parties, apply himself to public activities for five or six years, moving from branch to branch, casting new light on the national situation until even the most stolid hearts were jolted, and eventually he would get his hands on the tiller and bring peace to the land. In 1977 a private citizen named Lange or Longe had managed to get himself elected to the New Zealand parliament, and by 1982 he held the reins of power. Or else Fima could fall in love, or get involved in his father's business and turn the cosmetics factory into the nucleus of an industrial conglomerate. Or he could clamber up the academic ladder, overtake Tsvi and his friends, get a chair, and start a new school. He could take Jerusalem by storm with a new book of poems. What a ridiculous expression, "take Jerusalem by storm." Or win back Yael. And Dimi. Or he could sell this ruin and use the money to restore an abandoned house on the outskirts of a remote village in the hills of Upper Galilee. Or do the opposite: bring in builders, carpenters, decorators, renovate the whole flat, send the bill to his father, and open a new chapter.
The sun suddenly came out of the fleeting clouds above Gilo and cast a tender, precious light on one of the hills. This time Fima did not find any exaggeration in the expression "precious light," but he chose to discard it. Not before saying the words aloud and feeling a flush of inner response and pleasure. He went on to say the words "sharp and smooth," and again he experienced enjoyment mixed with mockery. A sliver of glass caught fire below him in the garden, as though it had found the way and was signaling to him to follow. In his mind Fima repeated his father's words. Snows of yesteryear. A handful of dust. Somehow instead of saying "snows of yesteryear," he said "bones of yesteryear."
What did the lizard, immobile on the wall, and the cockroach under the kitchen sink have in common, and how did they differ? Seemingly, neither of them wasted the treasure of life. Even if they too were subject to Baruch Nomberg's iron rule about living without sense and dying without desire. But at least without fantasizing about seizing power or bringing peace to the land.
Stealthily, Fima opened his window, taking great care not to startle the meditative reptile. Even though his friends, and he himself, considered him to be a clumsy oaf, he managed to open it without a squeak. He was certain now that the creature was focusing on some point in space that he too ought to be looking at. From what remote province of evolution's realm, from what dim, primeval landscape replete with volcanos gushing clouds of smoke and with jungles and misty vapors rising from the ground long before language and knowledge came into being, whole eons before all those kings and prophets and saviors who once roamed these hills, came this creature that now stared at Fima from a distance of not more than three feet with a kind of anxious affection? Like a distant relation concerned about your health. Yes, a perfect little dinosaur, shrunk to the size of a yard lizard. Fima seemed to intrigue the creature, otherwise why was it moving its head to left and right, slowly, as if to say: I'm really surprised at you. Or as if regretting the fact that Fima was acting unwisely but that there was no way of helping him.