"And for another thing, come out of your trance," hissed Eitan, holding his elegant fingers up to the light and inspecting them sternly, as though suddenly anxious that they might have undergone some mutation. He did not trouble to specify whether he was of a different opinion.
"In any civilized country," said Wahrhaftig, trying to get the conversation back on the rails, "you two would not be permitted to say such macabre words about this tragic subject. There are certain things one must not joke about even in a private conversation behind closed doors. But our Fima is addicted to paradox, while you, Gad, are only happy when you have a chance to poke fun at the government, Auschwitz, the Entebbe raid, the Six Million, anything to be provocative. You're dead inside. You'd hang the lot of them. The Hangman from Alfasi Street. It's because you both hate the state, instead of getting up every morning and thanking God on bended knee for everything we have here, including the Asianness and the Bolshevism. You can't see the cheese for the holes." And suddenly, swelling with sham fury, as though he had made up his mind to impersonate a fearsome tyrant, the old doctor turned crimson, his drunkard's face trembled, his crisscrossed blood vessels looked as though they were about to burst, and he roared politely:
"Cut the cackle now! Everyone back to work, quick march! My clinic is not a parliament!"
Barely opening the crack of his lips, Eitan hissed under his blond mustache:
"But that's just what it is. A senile parliament. Alfred, step into my room. And I need you too, you sex-starved Miss World, with Mrs. Bergman's notes."
"What have I done to you?" Tamar whispered tearfully. "Why do you torment me all the time?" And with a flicker of timorous courage she added:
"One of these days I'll hit you."
"Great." Eitan grinned. "I'm at your service. I'll even turn the other cheek, if that'll help to calm your hormones down a bit. Then Saint Augustine here can comfort you, and me, together with all those who mourn for Zion and Jerusalem, amen." So saying, he wheeled around with military precision and stalked lithely away, smoothing his white sweater and leaving silence behind him.
The two doctors disappeared into Dr. Eitan's room. Fima rooted in his pocket and managed to produce a crumpled, none too clean handkerchief, which he was about to hand to Tamar, whose eyes were brimming. But, unnoticed by him, a small object fell out of the folds of the handkerchief and landed on the floor. Tamar bent over, picked it up, and returned it to him, smiling through her tears. It was Annette's earring. Then she wiped her eyes, the brown one and the green one, on her sleeve, pulled out the requisite files, and hurried after the doctors. In the doorway she turned her harassed face toward Fima and said with desperate pathos, as though swearing by all that was most dear to her:
"One of these days I'll grab a pair of scissors and murder him. Then I'll kill myself."
Fima did not believe her, but nevertheless he picked up the paperknife and concealed it in the drawer of the desk. The handkerchief and the earring he tucked carefully back in his pocket. Then he tore off a sheet of paper and placed it in front of him, thinking to jot down his thought about the heart of Christendom. It might develop into an article for the weekend supplement.
But his mind was elsewhere. He had slept for less than three hours, and in the morning he had been worn out by his indefatigable lovers. What did they sec in him exactly? A helpless child who stirred their maternal instincts, a child to swaddle and suckle? A brother to wipe away their tears? An eclipsed poet they longed to play muse to? And what got women worked up about a cruel hussar like Gad? Or a garrulous dandy like his father? Fima marveled, smiling. Perhaps Annette was wrong after all, and there is a mysterious side? The enigma of what women prefer? Or perhaps she didn't make a mistake but was just keeping a secret from the enemy. Cunningly dissimulating its very existence. No doubt she did not really desire me this morning; she was just sorry for me and decided to give herself, so she did. Whereas I, half an hour later, didn't desire Nina but I was sorry for her and tried to give myself to her, but nature itself denied me what it makes possible for them without any difficulty.
And he muttered:
"But that's not fair."
And then, self-mockingly:
"So, why not sign a petition?"
His tired hand was doodling on the paper in front of him, drawing circles and triangles, crosses, six-pointed stars, missiles, and big breasts. Among these doodles he unconsciously inscribed the line that had come into his head earlier: "Cranes wheel and whirl." Underneath he wrote: "Wains heel and curl." Then he crossed it all out. Crumpling the page into a ball, he tossed it at the wastepaper basket. And missed.
Then he thought of making use of the spare time by composing two letters, one an open letter, a reply to Günter Grass about guilt and responsibility, and one private, a belated reply to Yael's farewell letter of twenty-four years ago. It was particularly important for him to explain to Yael and to himself why he had been so rude to the two air force colonels who had come to their home that Saturday evening specially to convince him that Yael's going to work in Seattle or Pasadena for a year or two was of national importance. He still remained unshaken in his conviction that the words "national interest" generally served as a cover for all sorts of monstrosities. But now, half a lifetime later, he no longer saw himself as entitled to preach. By what right? What have you accomplished with your life? Will it be of any use to Yoezer and his friends, living here a hundred years from now, that once in Jerusalem there lived a troublesome layabout who got on everybody's nerves with his petty linguistic corrections? Who fornicated with married women? Who reviled and insulted Cabinet ministers? Who argued with lizards and cockroaches? While even vile men like Gad Eitan healed sick women and opened barren wombs?
When the phone rang, instead of his usual greeting, "Clinic, good evening," there slipped out of his mouth the words "Clinic, good dreaming." He immediately apologized, stammered, tried to cover up his slip with a feeble joke, made a mess of it, corrected himself, tried to explain the correction, and booked an urgent appointment for Rachel Pinto for the following week when she had asked for only a routine checkup.
Who knew? Maybe her husband had also left her. Or found a younger mistress. Or been killed on reserve duty in the Territories, and she had no one to comfort her.
25. FINGERS THAT WERE NO FINGERS
AT SEVEN O'CLOCK THEY DREW THE BLINDS AND LOCKED THE CLINIC. The rain and the wind had stopped. A clear, glassy cold had descended on Jerusalem. The stars glowed with a sharp wintry radiance. And from the east, Christian bells tolled loudly and forlornly, as though the Crucifixion were happening at Golgotha that very moment.
Dr. Wahrhaftig went home in a taxi, taking Tamar with him, since he had offered as usual to drop her off opposite the Rehavia high school. Eitan sneaked through the darkness to the side street where he had parked his sports car. While Fima, in his heavy overcoat, with the collar turned up, with his battered, greasy cloth cap on his head, stood for ten minutes or so at the deserted bus stop waiting for a miracle. He had an urge to go to Tsvi and Shula Kropotkin's flat just down the Gaza Road, accept the Napoleon brandy Tsvi had promised him, put his feet up near the radiator, and expound his theory about the rift between Jews and Christians being all the deeper because it was, so to speak, in the family. Our quarrel with Islam, by contrast, is merely an ephemeral dispute over land, which will be forgotten within thirty or forty years. But the Christians in a thousand years' time will still see us as deicides and as an accursed elder brother. This last phrase pierced his heart all of a sudden, reminding him of the baby his mother had borne half a century ago, when he was four. The baby died after only three weeks, of some congenital defect which Fima knew nothing about: it was never discussed in his presence. He had no memory of the baby or of the mourning, but he had a vivid mental picture of a tiny light-blue knit bonnet laid out on his mother's little bedside table. When his father threw out all his wife's belongings at her death, the blue knit bonnet vanished too. Had Baruch given it to the leper hospital in Talbiyeh along with all her clothes?