Fima trembled and turned for home. As though by way of self-mortification he finished washing the dishes, including the greasy frying pan; he wiped the surfaces in the kitchen; he flushed the toilet. The only thing he did not do was take the trash downstairs — because it was already a quarter to two in the morning, because he was frightened of the blind man tapping his way through the darkness outside. And why not leave something for tomorrow?
12. THE FIXED DISTANCE BETWEEN HIM AND HER
IN HIS DREAM HE SAW HIS MOTHER. THE PLAGE WAS A GRAY, neglected garden that extended over several low hills. There were parched lawns overgrown with thistles. And there were a few bare trees and traces of flower beds. Below him on the hillside was a broken bench, and next to it he saw his mother. Death had transformed her into a schoolgirl from a religious boarding school. From behind she looked very young, a pious girl in a modest long-sleeved dress that came down over her ankles. She was walking alongside a rusty irrigation pipe. At fixed intervals she stopped and bent down to turn on a tap. The sprinklers did not revolve, but merely released a thin spray of brownish water. Fima's task was to follow her down the hill and turn off each tap she'd turned on. So he saw her only from behind. Death had made her light and lovely. It had endowed her movements with grace but also with a certain childlike awkwardness. The sort of mixture of agility and clumsiness that is seen in newborn kittens. He called after her, using her Russian name, Lizaveta, her nickname, Liza, and her Hebrew name, Elisheva. To no avail. His mother did not turn around or react. So he began to run. After every seven or eight strides he had to stop, crouch down, and turn off a tap. The taps were made of something soft and slimy to the touch, like a jellyfish, and it was not water that dripped from them but a sticky liquid that felt like jellied fish stock. For all his running, breathlessly, like an overweight child, for all his shouts that echoed dimly in the gray distance, mingled at times with a sharp sound reminiscent of a snapping cord, it was impossible to reduce the fixed distance between him and her. He was overcome by the desperate fear that the pipe would never end. But at the edge of the wood she stopped and turned toward him. Her lovely face was the face of a slain angel. Her forehead glowed in the moonlight. A skeletal pallor covered her sunken cheeks. Her lipless teeth gleamed. Her flaxen plait was made of dry straw. Her eyes were hidden by the dark glasses of the blind. On her religious schoolgirl's uniform he could see dried blood where the wires had pierced her: her knees, her belly, her throat. As though she had been made into a stuffed hedgehog. She shook her head sadly at Fima and said, Look what they've done to you, stupid. She reached up with her dry fingers to remove the dark glasses. Terrified, Fima turned away. And woke up.
13. THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
WHEN HE HAD FINISHED WRITING IN HIS NOTEBOOK, HE GOT UP and stood by the window. He saw a bright, shiny morning. On a bare branch crouched a cat that had climbed closer to hear what the birds were singing. Don't fall, chum, Fima said affectionately. Even the Bethlehem hills looked as though they were within reach. The nearby buildings and gardens were drenched with cold, clear light. Balconies, garden walls, cars, everything was sparkling clean after the rain that had fallen in the night. Even though he had slept less than five hours, he felt fresh and full of energy. He did his exercises in front of the mirror, arguing all the time with the arrogant woman reading die seven o'clock news on the radio and who was able to declare without hesitation what the Syrians were planning to do and could even suggest a simple countermove. More contemptuous than angry, Fima replied: You can't be very bright, lady. And he saw fit to add, But look how lovely it is outside. The sky is singing a song. How would you like to take a little walk with me? We'll stroll down the street, we'll wander through the woods and wadis, and as we go, I'll explain to you the policy we really ought to be adopting toward the Syrians, and where their Achilles' heel is, and where our own blind spot is.
He went on thinking about the life of this newscaster, who had to leave her warm bed at five-thirty on a cruel winter morning to get to the studio in time to read the news at seven. Suppose one morning her alarm failed to ring? Or suppose it rang on time but she gave in to the temptation to snuggle up in bed for another couple of minutes and then fell asleep again? Or suppose her car wouldn't start because of the cold, as happened every morning to the neighbor with the barking starter? Or perhaps this girl — Fima pictured her: shortish, freckled, with bright laughing eyes and curly fair hair — slept at night on a camp bed at the studio. Like the doctors on night duty at the hospital. How did her husband, the insurance salesman, cope with that? Did he spend his lonely nights imagining all kinds of wild scenes between her and the technicians? There's no one worth envying, Fima decided. Except perhaps Yoezer.
It was because of Yoezer that Fima cut himself shaving. He tried without success to stanch the flow of blood with a piece of toilet paper, with cotton wool, finally with a damp handkerchief. Consequently he forgot to shave the folds of skin under his chin. Which he hated shaving anyway, because they put him in mind of the crop of a plump chicken. Pressing the handkerchief against his face as though he were suffering from toothache, he went to get dressed. And came to the conclusion that the positive side of last night's disgrace was that at least there was no fear that he had made Annette pregnant.
While he was looking for the chunky sweater he had inherited from Yael, his eye suddenly caught a glimpse of a small insect gleaming on the scat of the armchair. Was it really possible that some foolish glowworm had forgotten to switch itself off at the end of the night? Actually, he had not seen a glowworm for forty years at least and had no idea what they looked like. With the cunning of a seasoned hunter Fima leaned over and with a lightning movement of the right hand that began like a slap and ended with a clenched fist he managed to capture the creature without hurting it. The rapidity and accuracy of the movement belied his reputation as a clumsy oaf. Opening his fingers to examine what it was he had caught, he wondered whether it was one of Annette's earrings, a buckle of Nina's, a piece of one of Dimi's toys, or one of his father's silver cuff links. After a careful inspection he chose the last of these possibilities. Although some doubt remained.
Going to the kitchen, he opened the fridge and stood pensively holding the door open, fascinated by the mystic light shining behind the milk and the cheeses, reexamining in his mind the expression "the price of morality" in the tide of the article he had written in the night. He found no reason to revise or alter it. There was a price of morality and a price of immorality, and the real question was: What is the price of this price, i.e., what is the point and purpose of life? Everything else derived from that question. Or ought to. Including our behavior in the Occupied Territories.
Closing the fridge, Fima decided to go out for breakfast this morning, to Mrs. Scheinbaum's little café across the road, partly because he did not want to spoil the impeccable tidiness of his newly cleaned kitchen, partly because the bread was stale and the margarine reminded him of the horrible jellylike taps in his dream, and above all because the electric kettle had burned itself out the previous day, and without a kettle there would be no coffee.
At a quarter past eight he left the flat without noticing the bloodstained wad of cotton wool clinging to the cut on his cheek. But he did remember to take the trash down, and he also remembered to slip the envelope containing the article he had written in the night into his pocket, and he did not even forget the mailbox key. At the shopping center three blocks away he bought fresh bread, cheese, tomatoes, jam, eggs, some yogurt, coffee, three light bulbs, to have a reserve, and also a new electric kettle. He instantly regretted not having checked to see if it was made in Germany: he did his best to avoid buying German products. To his relief he discovered that it came from South Korea. Unpacking the shopping, he changed his mind and decided to skip the café and have his breakfast at home after all. Although, on second thought, South Korea was also a notoriously repressive country, famous for smashing the skulls of demonstrating students. While he waited for the water to boil, he reconstructed the Korean War, the era of Truman, MacArthur, and McCarthy, and ended with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The next nuclear holocaust won't start with the superpowers, it'll start with us here, he thought. With our regional conflict. The Syrians will invade the Golan Heights with a thousand tanks, we'll bomb Damascus, they'll fire a salvo of missiles at the coastal towns, and then we'll set off the doomsday mushroom. In a hundred years there won't be a living soul here. No Yoezer, no lizard, no cockroach.