And truly it is a distant relation: there is no doubting that it belongs to a remote branch of the family. Between you and me, pal, and between both of us and Trotsky, there is much more in common than divides us: head neck spine curiosity appetite limbs sexual desire the ability to tell light from darkness and cold from warmth, ribs lungs old age digestive and secretory systems nerves to perceive pain metabolism memory sense of danger a ramifying maze of blood vessels a reproductive mechanism and a mechanism for limited regeneration programmed ultimately for self-destruction. Also a heart functioning as a complex pump and a sense of smell and an instinct for self-preservation and a talent for escape and concealment and camouflage and also direction-finding systems and a brain, and apparently also loneliness. There arc so many things we could talk about, compare, learn from each other, and teach each other. Perhaps we should also take into account an even more remote kinship that links the three of us to the vegetable kingdom. Lay your hand on a fig leaf, for instance, or a vine leaf: Only a blind person would deny the similarity of form, the spread of the fingers, the branching vessels and sinews, whose function it is to distribute nourishment and eliminate waste matter. And who can say whether behind this kinship there does not lurk an even subtler one between all of us and the minerals in particular or the inanimate world in general. Every living cell is made up of a mass of inanimate substances which are not really inanimate at all but are constantly pulsing with infinitesimal electrical charges. Electrons. Neutrons. Perhaps there too is a pattern of male and female that can neither merge nor separate? Fima smiled. It would be best, he decided, to come to terms with young Yoezer, standing at this window in a hundred years' time, staring at his own lizard. I shall matter to him less than a grain of salt. Perhaps something of me, a molecule, an atom, a neutron, will actually be present in this room, possibly indeed in a grain of salt. Assuming people still use salt a hundred years from now.
And why shouldn't they?
Dimi is the only person I might be able to talk to about these fantasies.
At any rate, better to fill his head with prophets and lizards and vine leaves than bombs made out of nail varnish.
In an instant the lizard had wriggled away and hidden itself inside or behind the gutter. It had disappeared, sharp and smooth. Fauré's Requiem ended and was followed by Borodin's Polovetsian Dances, which Fima did not like. And the brightening light was beginning to hurt his eyes. He dosed the window and began to look for a sweater, but he was too late to save the electric kettle, which had boiled dry some time before and now smelled of smoke and burned rubber. Fima would have to choose between taking it to be mended on his way to work and buying a new one.
"Your problem, pal," he said to himself.
He chewed a heartburn tablet and opted for freedom. He called the clinic and told Tamar he would not be coming in today. No, he wasn't ill. Yes, he was sure. Everything was perfectly okay. Yes, a personal matter. No, there was nothing wrong and he didn't need any help. Thanks anyway, and please say I'm sorry. He looked in the phone book, and, lo and behold, under The found Tadmor, Annette and Yeroham, in one of the suburbs, Mevaseret.
It was Annette herself who answered. Fima said:
"I'm sorry to bother you. It's the reception clerk from yesterday. Efraim. Fima. Do you remember? We chatted at the clinic. I thought…"
Annette remembered it well. She said she was delighted. And suggested meeting in town. "Shall we say in an hour? An hour and a half? If that suits you, Efraim? I knew you'd call today. Don't ask me how. I just had a feeling. There was something, well, unfinished between us yesterday. So, shall we say an hour then? At the Savyon? If I'm a little late, don't give up."
10. FIMA FORGIVES AND FORGETS
HE WAITED FOR A QUARTER OF AN HOUR AT A TABLE TO ONE SIDE in the café, then ordered coffee and cake. At a nearby table sat a right-wing member of the Knesset with a slim, good-looking, bearded youth who looked to Fima like an activist for the Jewish settlements in the Territories. The youth was saying:
"You are eunuchs too. You've forgotten where you came from and who put you where you are."
They lowered their voices.
Fima remembered how he had left Nina's house the previous night, how he had disgraced himself with her, how he had disgraced himself in Ted's study, how he had shamed himself and Yael in the hall in the dark. In fact, it would be quite nice to pick an argument with these two conspirators now. He could easily tear them to shreds. He guessed that Annette Tadmor had changed her mind, thought better of it, would not keep their date. Why should she? Her full, rounded form, her misery, her plain cotton frock like a schoolgirl's uniform, all stirred in him a hint of desire mingled with self-mockery: Just as well she changed her mind; she spared you another disgrace.
The young settler stood up and in two long strides he was at Fima's table. Fima was startled to see that the youngster had a gun in his belt.
"Excuse me, arc you by any chance Mr. Prag, the lawyer?"
Fima considered the question, and for a moment he was tempted to answer in die affirmative. He'd always had a soft spot for Prag.
"I don't think so," he said.
The settler said:
"We've arranged to meet someone we've never seen. I thought perhaps it was you. I'm sorry."
"I'm not," Fima declared forcefully, as though firing the first shot in a civil war, "one of you. I think you're all a plague."
The young man, with an innocent, sweet smile and a look suggesting Jewish solidarity, said:
"Why not save expressions like that for the enemy? It was groundless hatred that brought down the Temple. It wouldn't hurt all of us to try a little groundless love for a change."
A delicious argumentative thrill went through Fima like wine, and he had a devastating reply poised on his tongue, when he caught sight of Annette in the doorway, looking around vaguely, and he was almost disappointed. But he was obliged to wave to her and drop the settler. She apologized for being late. As soon as she was sitting opposite him, he said that she had arrived just in time to rescue him from the Hezbollah. Or, rather, to rescue the Hezbollah from him. He went on to unburden himself of the essence of his views. Only then did he remember to apologize for ordering without waiting for her. He asked what she would like to drink. To his surprise she said a vodka, and then began to tell him all about her divorce, after twenty-six years of what she had considered to be an ideal marriage. At least on the surface. Fima ordered her vodka, and another coffee for himself. He also ordered some bread and cheese and an egg sandwich, because he still felt hungry. He continued to listen to her story, but with divided attention, because in the meantime a bald man in a gray raincoat had joined the next table. Presumably their Mr. Prag. Fima had the impression that the three of them were scheming to drive a wedge into the state prosecutor's department, and he tried to intercept their conversation. Hardly aware of what he was saying, he remarked to Annette that he could scarcely believe what she had said about being married for twenty-six years, because she didn't look a day over forty.