And, indeed, why not knock on the door? He would be received with a glass of hot tea; he would take off his coat and explain once and for all what reason dictates and which way history is pointing. Or, on the contrary, he would persuade the prime minister to put his own coat on and join him in a night stroll and a prolonged heart-to-heart discussion in the empty rain-swept streets lit here and there by a wet streetlight wrapped in mist and gloom. A stern, ascetic city, Jerusalem, on a winter's night. But nothing is lost yet, sir. There is still hope of opening a new chapter. The bloodstained introduction has occupied a hundred years here, and now let's make a compromise and move on to the main story. Let the Jewish people start living as a nation that has found rest in its own land and reveals at long last the innate powers of creativity and renewal that have been buried under murky layers of fear and resentment, pogroms, persecutions, annihilation. Shall we give it a try, sir? Cautiously? By small, well-thought-out steps?
The policeman sitting in the sentry box in front of the residence poked his head out and asked:
"Hey, you: arc you looking for something?"
Fima replied:
"Yes. Fm looking for tomorrow."
The policeman politely suggested:
"Well, go and look for it somewhere else, sir. Move along please. You can't wait here."
Fima decided to take this advice. To move along. Keep going. Not give up. Go on struggling as long as he had the strength to fit one word to another and to discriminate between ideas. The question was, where could he move along to? What should he be doing? Wasn't the truth that he hadn't even begun? But begun what? And where? And how? At that moment he heard a calm, reasonable, prosaic voice somewhere nearby calling his name: "Fima, where are you?"
He stopped and replied at once, with devotion:
"Yes. Here I am. Fm listening."
But the only sound was of cats in heat behind the damp stone walls. Followed, like a sponge that wipes everything clean, by the soughing of the wind in the pines in the dark empty gardens.
Sitra de-itkasia: the concealed side.
He continued walking slowly. The Terra Sanaa Building stood in total darkness. In Paris Square he stood for a few minutes waiting for the traffic lights to change, then shuffled down King George Street toward the center of town. He paid no attention to the cold that pierced him through his overcoat, nor to the waterlogged old cap on his head, nor to the few passersby, all walking fast, some perhaps eyeing askance this strange, muffled figure plodding wearily and apparently absorbed in a violent argument with himself, accompanied by gesticulations and mouthings.
It was very bad that he had forgotten to take precautions that morning. What if he got Annette Tadmor pregnant? He'd have to jump aboard a tramp steamer again and run away. To Greece. To Nineveh. To Alaska. Or to the Galapagos Islands. In the dimness of Annette's womb, in a dark labyrinth of moist tunnels, his blind seed was now forcing its way with ridiculous tail-movements, jerking to and fro in the warm liquid, a sort of round, bald Fima-head, possibly wearing a microscopic wet cloth cap, ageless, brainless, sightless, and yearning out of the depths for the hidden source of warmth, nothing but a head and a tail and the urge to thrust and nestle, to ram the crust of the ovum, in every respect resembling its father, who longed to cocoon himself once and for all deep in the feminine slime and there snuggle up cosily and fall asleep. Fima was filled with worry but also a strange jealousy of his own seed. Under a yellow streetlight in front of the Yeshurun Synagogue he stopped and peered at his watch. He could still catch the second showing at the Orion. Jean Gabin certainly wouldn't let him down. But where exactly was he supposed to pick Annette up? Or was it Nina? Or where were they supposed to pick him up? It looked as if this evening he was doomed to let Jean Gabin down. A boy and girl, young and noisy, passed him as he shuffled slowly past Beit Hama'alot, near the old parliament building. The boy said:
"All right, so let's both give in."
And the girclass="underline"
"It's too late now. It won't make any difference."
Fima quickened his pace, hoping to steal some more snatches of their conversation. For some reason he needed to know what sort of concessions they were talking about and what it was that would make no difference now. Had they also forgotten to take precautions this evening? But suddenly the boy wheeled around furiously, leaped to the curb, and waved his arm. At once a taxi stopped, and the boy bent over and started to get in without so much as a glance at his partner. Fima realized immediately that in another moment or two this girl would be left abandoned in the middle of the wet street, and he already had some opening words ready on the tip of his tongue, cautiously encouraging words that would not alarm her, a sad, wise sentence that would make her smile through her tears. But he did not get the chance.
The girl called out:
"Come back, Yoav. I give in."
And the boy, not even troubling to close the door of the taxi behind him, rushed back and threw his arms around her waist, whispering something that made them both laugh. The driver hurled an oath after him, and Fima, without asking himself why, decided on the spot that his duty was to set matters to rights for the driver. So he got into the taxi, closed the door, and said:
"Sorry about the mix-up. Kiryat Yovel, please."
The driver, a thickset man with greasy silver hair, small eyes, and a trim Latin mustache, grumbled irritably:
"What's going on here? First you hail a cab, then you can't make up your mind? Don't you people know what you want?"
Fima realized that the driver took him to be with the couple. He muttered apologetically:
"What's the problem. It took us half a minute to decide. We had a difference of opinion. There's nothing for you to get excited about."
He resolved to initiate another political discussion, only this time he would not put up in silence with bloodthirsty savagery, but employ clear, straightforward arguments and irresistible logic. He was all ready to resume the sermon he had begun to deliver earlier to the prime minister, but when he began to feel his way cautiously, like a dentist probing to find the source of a pain, to see what the driver felt about the question of the Territories and peace, the man interrupted amicably:
"Just drop it, will you, sir? Me, my views just get people worked up. They start listening to me and they head straight for a breakdown. That's the reason I stopped having discussions long ago. So hang onto your temper. If I was in charge of this country, I'd have it back on its feet in three months. But the Israeli people have given up thinking with their brains. They think only with their bellies. And their balls. So why should I waste my health for nothing? Every time I get in a discussion, it just burns up the nerves. It's hopeless. It's mob rule here. Worse than the Arabs."