"That's sweet of you," Annette answered. "There's something about you that radiates kindness. I believe that if only I can tell the whole story from beginning to end to someone who's a good listener, it may help me to sort out my ideas. To grasp what's happened to me. Even though I know that once I've told the story, I'll understand even less. Have you the patience?"
The politician said:
"Let's try to play for time at least: it can't do any harm."
And the man in the raincoat, presumably the lawyer Prag:
"It may look very easy to you. In fact, it isn't."
"As if Yeri and I had been standing quietly for a long time on a balcony," Annette said, "leaning on the railing, looking down on the garden and the woods, shoulder to shoulder, and suddenly, without any warning, he grabs me and throws me off. Like an old crate."
Fima said:
"How sad."
Then he said:
"Terrible."
He laid his hand on hers, which lay clenched on the edge of the table, because there were tears in her eyes again.
"So we're agreed, then," the settler said. "Let's keep in touch. Just be careful of using the phone."
"Look," said Annette. "In novels, in plays, in films, there are always these mysterious women. Capricious, unpredictable. They fall in love like sleepwalkers and fly away like birds. Greta Garbo. Marlene Dietrich. Liv Ullmann. All sorts of femmes fatales. The secrets of the female heart. Don't make fun of me for drinking vodka in the middle of the day. After all, you don't look too happy yourself. Am I boring you?"
Fima called the waiter and ordered her another vodka. He ordered a bottle of mineral water and some more bread and cheese for himself. The three conspirators got up to leave. As they passed his table, the settler gave him a sweet, saintly smile, as though he could sec into his heart and forgave him. He said:
"Bye now, and all the best. Don't forget, when it comes to the crunch, we're all in the same boat."
In his mind Fima relocated this moment to a coffeehouse in Berlin in the last days of the Weimar Republic, putting himself in the role of martyr: Carl von Ossietzky, Kurt Tucholsky. Immediately he canceled the whole picture because the comparison was ridiculous, almost hysterical. To Annette he said:
"Take a good look at them. Those are the creatures that are dragging us all down."
Annette said:
"I'm already as low as I can go."
And Fima:
"Go on. You were talking about fatal women."
Annette emptied her second glass. Her eyes were gleaming, and a hint of coquetry slipped into her words:
"The nice thing about you, Efraim, is that I really don't mind what sort of impression I make on you. I'm not used to that. Generally, when I'm talking to a man the most important thing for me is what impression he has of me. It's never happened to me before to sit like this with a strange man and talk so freely about myself without getting all sorts of signals, if you know what I mean. Just one person talking to another. You're not offended?"
Fima unconsciously smiled when she used the expression "a strange man." She noticed his smile and beamed at him like a child consoled after tears. She said;
"What I meant was, not that you're not masculine, just that I can talk to you like a brother. We've had to put up with so much bullshit from the poets, with their Beatrices, their earth mothers, their gazelles, their tigresses, their sea gulls, their swans, and all that nonsense. Let me tell you, being a man strikes me as a thousand times more complicated than that. Or maybe it's not complicated at all, all that lousy bargaining. You give me sex, I'll give you a bit of tenderness. Or an impression of tenderness. Be a whore and a mother. A puppy by day and a kitten by night. Sometimes I have the feeling that men like sex but hate women. Don't be offended, Efraim. I'm just generalizing. There must be exceptions. Like you, for instance. I feel good now, the way you're listening to me quietly."
Fima bent forward to light the cigarette she had taken out of her handbag. He was thinking: In the middle of the day, in broad daylight, in the middle of Jerusalem, they're already walking around with guns in their belts. Was the sickness implicit in the Zionist idea from the outset? Is there no way for the Jews to get back onto the stage of history except by becoming scum? Does every battered child have to grow up into a violent adult? And weren't we already scum before we got back onto the stage of history? Do we have to be either cripples or thugs? Is there no third alternative?
"At the age of twenty-five," Annette continued, "after a couple of love affairs and one abortion and a B.A. in art history, I meet this young orthopedic surgeon. A quiet, shy man, not at all like an Israeli, if you know what I mean. A gentle person who courts me with sensitivity and even sends me a love letter every day but never tries to touch me. A hard-working, honest man. He likes to stir my coffee for me. He thinks of himself as an average, middle-of-the-road sort of fellow. As a junior doctor, he works like a madman, long hours on duty, on call, night duty. With a small group of close friends who are all very much like him, with refugee parents who arc cultured and good-mannered like him. And after less than a year we get married. Without any upheavals, without any ups and downs. He handles me as though I'm made of glass, if you know what I mean."
Fima almost interrupted her to say: But we're all like that; that's why we've lost the state. But he restrained himself and said nothing. He merely made a point of carefully putting out the cigarette stub that Annette had left smoldering on the edge of the ashtray. He finished off his sandwich and still felt hungry.
"We put together our savings, our allowances from our parents, and we buy a small flat in Givat Shaul; we buy furniture, a refrigerator, a stove, we choose curtains together. We never disagree. All respectful and friendly. He simply enjoys giving way to me, at least that's what I think at the time. Friendly is the right word: we both try our best to be good the whole time. To be fair. We compete with each other at being considerate. Then our daughter is born, and, two years later, our son. Yeri, naturally, is a reasonable, devoted parent. Consistent. Stable. The correct word is reliable. He's happy washing diapers, he knows how to clean the mosquito nets, learns from books how to cook a meal and look after plants. He takes the children into town whenever the burdens of work allow. In time he even improves in bed. Gradually he realizes I'm not made of glass, if you know what I mean. Occasionally he can tell a funny story over a meal. Still, he also starts to develop one or two habits I find quite irritating. Little inoffensive habits that won't go away. Tapping on things with his finger, for instance. Not like a doctor tapping on a patient's chest. More like tapping on a door. He's sitting reading the paper, and all the time he's unconsciously tapping on the arm of his chair. As if he's trying to get in. He locks himself in the bathroom, splashes around in the bath for half an hour, and all the time he's tapping on the tiles as if he's searching for a secret compartment. Or his habit of saying in Yiddish "Azoy instead of replying to what you're saying to him. I tell him I've found a mistake in the electricity bill, and he says, ' Azoy.' Our little girl tells him her doll is angry with her, and he smiles, 'Azoy.' I intervene, and say, Why don't you listen to what your children are saying once in a while? and all he can say is, Azoy. Or the sarcastic whistle he lets out through the gap in his front teeth: it's probably not a whistle, not sarcastic at all, just letting the air out through his teeth. No matter how often I tell him it's driving me insane, he can't stop it. He doesn't even seem to notice he's done it again. But when all's said and done, these are minor irritants; you can learn to live with them. There are drunken husbands, lazy husbands, adulterous brutes, perverts, lunatics. In any case, I may well have developed some habits myself that he doesn't like but says nothing about. There's no point in making a big fuss about his tapping and whistling, which he can't even control. So the years go by. We close in the balcony to make an extra room; we take a trip to Europe, buy a small car, replace our first furniture. We even get a German shepherd. We get all four of our parents into a private old folks' home. Yeri does his bit; he tries to make me happy, he's pleased with everything we've achieved together. Or so I think. And he goes on whistling and tapping and occasionally muttering Azoy.