"Hey, Brigitte Bardot. Bring me an ampule of pethidine chop-chop."
So Fima was obliged to postpone his lecture. He unplugged the boiling kettle and decided to put a heater on in the recovery room. Then he had two phone calls, one after the other: he booked an appointment for Mrs. Bergson for the end of the month and he explained to Gila Maimón that they never gave out the results of tests over the telephone; she'd have to come in and be told the answer by Dr. Wahrhaftig. For some reason he addressed them both sheepishly, as though he had done them some wrong. He agreed in his mind with Annette Tadmor when she'd made fun of the clichés of mysterious womanhood, Greta Garbo, Beatrice, Marlene Dietrich, Dulcinea, but she was wrong when she tried to place the cloak of mystery on the shoulders of the male sex. We are all steeped in falsehood. We all pretend. Surely the plain truth is that each and every one of us knows exactly what pity is and when we ought to show it, because each and every one of us aches for a little pity. But come the moment when we should open the gates of compassion, we pretend we know nothing. Or that compassion and mercy are merely a way of patronizing others, something too old-fashioned and sentimental. Or that that's the way it is and what can be done about it and why me of all people? That was presumably what Pascal meant by "the death of die soul" and about human agony being that of a dethroned king. His efforts not to imagine what was happening on the other side of the wall struck him as cowardly, ignoble, and ugly. As was his attempt to turn his thoughts from the death of Tamar's father to the gossip about Alterman's life. Surely it was the duty of all of us at least to look suffering in the eye. If he were prime minister, he would make each member of the Cabinet stay for a week with a reserve unit in Gaza or Hebron, spend some time inside the perimeter of one of the detention camps in the Negev, live a couple of days in a run-down psychogeriatric ward, lie in the mud and rain for a whole winter's night from sundown to dawn by the electronic fence on the Lebanese border, or join Eitan and Wahrhaftig without any intervening barrier in this abortion inferno, which was now once more filled with the sounds of piano and cello from upstairs.
A moment later he was disgusted by these reflections, because on second thought they struck him as the embodiment of nineteenth-century Russian kitsch. The very term "abortion inferno" was an injustice: after all, there were times when life was actually created here. Fima recalled a patient by the name of Sarah Matalon who had been advised by leading specialists to give up and adopt a child, and only Gad Eitan persevered single-mindedly for four years, until he finally opened her womb. The whole staff of the clinic was invited to the circumcision of her son. The father suddenly announced that the child would be called Gad, and Fima noticed Dr. Eitan biting hard on his leather watch strap; indeed for a moment his own eyes filled too. They had to make do with Dr. Wahrhaftig, who held the baby enthusiastically.
Fima leaped forward to help Tamar, who was helping a dazed girl of about seventeen, pale as a sheet and thin as a matchstick, walk falteringly toward the recovery room. As though to atone for the sins of the whole male sex, Fima bustled here and there, hurrying to fetch a soft blanket, a cold glass of mineral water with a slice of lemon in it, paper tissues, aspirins. Later he called a taxi for her.
At four-thirty there was a coffee break. Dr. Wahrhaftig came and leaned on the reception desk, wafting a smell of medicine and disinfectant into Fima's face. His massive chest, blown up like that of a tsarist governor-general, and his broad round hips did give his heavy body the look of a basso profundo. His cheeks were crisscrossed by a network of unhealthy bluish, red, and pink blood vessels that were so close to the surface, you could almost take his pulse by their throbbing.
Lithe and silent, with velvety movements like a cat on hot tin, Dr. Eitan arrived. He was chewing gum slowly, impassively, with his mouth closed. His lips were thin and pursed. Wahrhaftig said:
"That was a very odd Schnitz. Just as well you stitched her up nice and tight."
Eitan said:
"We pulled her through. It didn't look too good."
Wahrhaftig said:
"About the transfusion: you were absolutely right."
Eitan said:
"Big deal. It was obvious from the start."
And Wahrhaftig said:
"God has given you clever fingers, Gad."
Fima interrupted gently:
"Drink your coffee. It's getting cold."
"Herr Exzellenz von Nisan!" roared Wahrhaftig. "And where has His Highness been hiding all these days? Has he been writing a new Faust for us? Or a Kohlhaas? We had almost forgotten what your face looks like!" He went on to recount a "well-known joke" about three layabouts. But he could not restrain himself from bursting into guffaws before he had even reached the third layabout.
Gad Eitan, lost in thought, suddenly remarked:
"Even so, we shouldn't have done it here, under a local. It should have been done in a hospital, with a general anesthetic. We nearly made a mess of it. We ought to think about it, Alfred."
Wahrhaftig, in an altered voice, said:
"What? Are you worried?"
Eitan took his time. After a pause he said:
"No. Not now."
Tamar hesitated, her mouth opened and closed twice, and finally she said warily:
"You look good in that white turtleneck, Gad. Would you rather have lemon tea instead of coffee?"
Eitan said:
"Yes, but no tail-wagging, please."
Wahrhaftig, a clumsy peacemaker, hastily turned the conversation to current affairs:
"So, what do you say about that Polish anti-Semite? They've learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Did you hear on the radio what the cardinal in Warsaw said about the Auschwitz convent? It's a straight replay of their old tunes: Why are the Jews so pushy, why are the Jews making such a fuss, why are the Jews inciting the whole world against poor Poland, why arc the Jews trying to make capital out of their dead again? After all, millions of Poles were killed too. And our cute little government, with old-fashioned Jewish obsequiousness, turns a blind eye to the whole thing. In any civilized country we'd have sent their chargé d'affaires home with a good kick in the you-know-where."
Eitan said:
"Don't you worry, Alfred. We won't take it lying down. One night we'll drop airborne commandos on them. A lightning raid. An Auschwitz Entebbe. We'll blow that convent sky high, and all our forces will return safely to base. Surprise will be total. The world will hold its breath like the good old days. Then Mr. Sharon and Mr. Shamir will gabble on about the long arm of the IDF and the renewal of Israel's deterrent force. They can christen it Operation Peace for the Crematoria."
Fima was instantly ignited. If I were prime minister, he thought, but before he could complete the thought, he had burst out furiously:
"Who the hell needs all this? We've gone out of our minds. We've gone right off our rockers. What are we doing squabbling with the Poles about who owns Auschwitz? It's already beginning to sound like an extension of our usual story about 'ancestral rights' and 'ancestral heritage' and 'we shall never hand back territory that we have liberated.' Any moment now our dashing pioneers will be out there planting a new settlement among the gas chambers. Establishing facts in disputed territory. What makes Auschwitz a Jewish site anyway? It's a Nazi site. A German site. As a matter of fact, it really ought to become a Christian site, for Christendom in general and Polish Catholicism in particular. Let them cover the whole death camp with convents and crosses and bells. Wall to wall. With a Jesus on every chimney. There's no more fitting place in the world for Christendom to commune with itself. Them, not us. Let them go on pilgrimages there, whether to beat their breasts or to celebrate the greatest theological victory in their history. For all I care, they can baptize their Auschwitz convent The Sweet Revenge of Jesus.' What arc we doing scurrying in there with protesters and placards? Are we out of our minds? It's quite right that a Jew who goes there to commune with the memory of the victims should see a forest of crosses all around him and hear nothing but the ringing of church bells. That way he'll understand that he's in the true heart of Poland. The heart of hearts of Christian Europe. As far as I'm concerned, it would be an excellent thing if they'd move the Vatican there. Why not? Let the pope sit there from now to the Resurrection on a golden throne among the chimneys. And for another thing—"