In 1965 Yael went to work, on special contract, at the Boeing research center in Seattle. Fima declined to join her, arguing that a period of separation might do them both good. He stayed behind in the two-room flat in Kiryat Yovel. He had a modest post as receptionist in a private gynecological clinic in Kiryat Shmuel. He kept his distance from academic life, unless Tsvi Kropotkin dragged him to a one-day conference on the importance of personality in history, or on the notion of the historian as eyewitness. On weekends he would turn up at Nina and Uri Gefen's or at other friends', and was easily caught up in their political discussions; he would occasionally astound all those present with some mordant summation or paradoxical prediction, but he never knew how to stop when he was winning; he would persist like a compulsive gambler, arguing volubly on subjects he knew nothing about, even over trivial details, until he wore out even his most loyal friends.
Sometimes he would arrive with a few books and keep an eye on his friends' children while they went out for the evening. Or cheerfully offer to help them with an article, by proofreading, copyediting, or preparing an abstract. Sometimes he would undertake shuttle diplomacy on a mission of mediation for a feuding couple. Every now and again he would publish a short trenchant article in Ha'arets on some aspect of the current political scene. Once in a while he would take a few days' holiday alone in a private guesthouse in one of the older settlements in the northern Sharon. Every summer he attempted with renewed enthusiasm to learn to drive, and every autumn he failed the driving test. Now and again a woman he had met at the clinic or through friends found her way to his untidy bachelor flat and into his bed, whose sheets needed changing. She would soon discover that Fima was more interested in her pleasure than his own. Some women found this wonderful and moving; others found it unsettling and hastened to disengage themselves. He could spend an hour or two inflicting endless varied exquisite sensations full of playful inventiveness and physical humor, before casually snatching his own satisfaction, and then, almost before his partner noticed that he had exacted his modest commission, he would be devoting himself to her again. Any woman who tried to obtain a measure of continuity or permanence in her relationship with Fima, who succeeded in extracting a key from him, caused him to take refuge after a week or two in a run-down guesthouse in Pardés Hanna or Magdiel and not come home until she had given him up. But such episodes had become rare in the past five or six years.
When Yael wrote to him from Seatde early in 1966 to say there was another man in her life, Fima laughed at the trite expression. The love affairs of his billy-goat year, his marriage to Yael, Yael herself, now seemed as trite, as overacted, as childish as the underground revolutionary cell he had tried to set up when he was in high school. He decided to write her a line or two simply to send his best wishes to her and the other man in her life. He sat down at his desk that afternoon, and did not stop writing until midday the following day: in a feverish missive of thirty-four pages he confessed the depth of his love for her. After reading it through, he rejected it, tore it up, and flushed it down the toilet. You cannot describe love in words, and if you can, that's a sign the love no longer exists. Or is on the way out. Finally he tore a page of graph paper from a notebook and scrawled on it: "I can't stop loving you because it's not up to me, but of course you're a free agent. How blind I've been. If there's anything you need from the flat, let me know and I'll send it. Meanwhile I'm sending you a parcel with three of your nighties and your furry slippers and the photos. But if you don't mind, I'd like to keep the picture of the two of us at Bethlehem in Galilee." Yael took this letter to mean that Fima would not place any obstacles in the way of a divorce. But when she came back to Jerusalem and introduced a colorless, inexpressive man with a jaw that was too broad and thick eyebrows like a pair of bushy mustaches, saying, Efraim Nisan, Ted Tobias, let's all be friends, Fima changed his mind and adamantly refused to grant a divorce. So Ted and Yael flew back to Seattle. They lost contact, apart from a few aerograms and postcards about practical matters.
Early in 1982 Ted and Yacl turned up at Fima's flat one winter afternoon with their three-year-old son, a slightly cross-eyed albino child-philosopher with thick glasses, dressed in an American astronaut's space suit bearing a shiny metal badge inscribed with the word CHALLENGER. The little fellow soon revealed an ability to compose complicated conditional sentences and to duck awkward questions. Fima instantly fell for little Dimi Tobias. Regretting his earlier opposition, he offered Yael and Ted a divorce, his assistance, and his friendship. Yael, however, no longer attached any importance to the religious divorce and saw no point in friendship. In the intervening years she had managed to leave Ted twice and have affairs with other men before making up her mind to go back to him and to have Dimi at what was almost the last moment as far as she was concerned. Fima won the heart of the thoughtful little Challenger with a story about a wild wolf who decided to give up being wild and tried to join a colony of rabbits. When the story was over, Dimi offered his own ending, which Fima found logical, sensitive, and not unfunny.
Thanks to the intervention of Fima's father, the divorce was arranged discreetly. Ted and Yael settled in the suburb of Beit Hakerem, found jobs together in a research institute, and divided their year into three: the summer in Seattle, the fall in Pasadena, the winter and spring in Jerusalem. Sometimes they invited Fima on Friday evening, when the Kropotkins and the Gefens and the rest of the group were there. Sometimes they left Dimi with Fima in Kiryat Yovel and went off to Elat or Upper Galilee for a couple of days. Fima became their unpaid baby sitter, because he was available and because a friendship had grown up between him and Dimi. By some odd logic Dimi called him Granpa. He called Fima's father Granpa too. Fima taught himself to make houses, palaces, and castles with loopholes out of matchsticks, matchboxes, and glue. This was totally at odds with the image of Fima shared by his friends, by Yael, and by Fima himself, namely, a clumsy oaf who was born with two left hands and could never get the hang of replacing a faucet's washer or sewing on a button.