Now, as he remembered that ghost, he smiled and comforted himself with the words of the dismissed clerk from Mrs. Scheinfeld's café, the man whom God had forgotten: "Anyway we all dies."
Going up Strauss Street, Fima passed the garish window of an ultrapious travel agency named Eagles' Wings. He stood for a while contemplating a brightly colored poster picturing the Eiffel Tower between Big Ben and the Empire State Building. Nearby, the Tower of Pisa leaned toward the other towers, and next to it was a Dutch windmill, with a pair of plump cows grazing blankly below. The words on the poster read: "With G-d's help: COME ON BOARD — TRAVEL LIKE A LORD!" Underneath, in the characters normally reserved for holy books: "Pay in sue easy installments, interest free." There was also an aerial photograph of snow-covered mountains, across which was printed in blue letters: "OUR WAY'S POSHER — STRICTLY KOSHER."
Fima decided to go inside and ask the price of a bargain ticket to Rome. His father would surely not refuse to lend him the fare, and in a few days' time he would be sitting with Uri Gefen and Annette's husband in a delightful café on the Via Veneto, in the company of bold, permissive women and pleasure-loving men, sipping a cappuccino, discoursing wittily about Salman Rushdie and Islam and feasting his eyes on the shapely girls walking past. Or he would sit alone by a window in a little albergo with old-fashioned green wooden shutters, staring at the old walls, with a note pad in front of him, and occasionally jot down aperçus and pithy musings. Maybe a crack would open in the blocked-up spring, and some new poems gush forth. Some light, easy encounters might take place, lightheartedly, with no strings attached, weightless relationships that are impossible here in this Jerusalem teeming with dribbling prophets. He had read recently in a newspaper that religious travel agents knew how to fiddle things so that they could sell flights for next to nothing. Over there in Rome, amid impeccable palazzos and stone-paved piazzas, life was carefree and gay, full of fun and free of guilt and shame, and even if acts of cruelty or injustice occurred there, the injustice was not your responsibility and the suffering did not weigh on your conscience.
An overweight, bespectacled young man, with clean-shaven pink cheeks but a broad black skullcap on his head, raised his childlike eyes from a book that he hastily hid behind a copy of Hamodia' and greeted Fima with a smug Ashkenazic accent:
"And a very good day to you, sir."
He was only about twenty-five, but he looked prosperous, supercilious, and eager to please.
"And what might we do for you, sir?"
Fima discovered that in addition to foreign travel the shop also sold tickets for the national lottery and various other lotteries. He leafed through a brochure offering "holiday packages" in splendid religious hotels in Safed and Tiberias, combining treatment for the body under the care of qualified medical staffs with purification of the soul by means of devotions "at the Holy Tombs of Lions of Torah and Eagles of Wisdom." At that moment, perhaps because he noticed that the young travel agent's starched white shirt was rather grubby at the collar and cuffs, just like his own, Fima changed his mind and decided to postpone his trip to Rome. At least until he had a chance to talk to his father about it and consult Uri Gefen, who was coming back today or tomorrow. Or was it Sunday? Nevertheless he took his time, leafed through another brochure with pictures of kosher hotels in "splendiferous Switzerland," hesitated between the national lottery and the soccer pool, and decided to buy a ticket for the Magen David Adorn drawing so as not to disappoint the agent, who was waiting patiently and politely for him to finish making up his mind. But Fima had to make do without even this, because all he could find in his pocket, apart from Annette's earring, was six shekels, the change from his meal in the flyblown cafeteria in Zephaniah Street. He therefore accepted with thanks some illustrated leaflets containing the itineraries and the minutest details about organized tours for groups of Torah-True Jews. In one of them, he found written in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish that by the grace of Almighty G-d it was now once again possible to make one's devotions at the tombs of "aweful saints" in Poland and Hungary, to visit "Holy Places destroyed by the persecutors, may their name be blotted out!" and to enjoy "the mind-broadening beauties of Japheth — and all in an atmosphere of real yiddishkeit, strictly kosher under the auspices of qualified, pious, and seemly guides, and all with the blessing and recommendation of Leading Giants of Torah." The travel agent said:
"Maybe you will change your mind and come and sec us again when you have had a chance to think it over, sir?"
Fima said:
"Maybe. We'll see. Thank you anyway, and I'm sorry."
"Don't mention it, sir. Our honor and pleasure. And a very good Sabbath to you."
As he walked on up toward the Histadrut Building, it occurred to him that this obsequious, overfed young man with the sausagelike fingers and starched shirt that had a grimy collar and cuffs was the same age as the son that Yael had got rid of two minutes away from here at some clinic in the Street of the Prophets. And he smiled sadly because, despite the skullcap and cantorial tenor voice, it was possible that an impartial observer could find a certain resemblance between him and that pudgy, grubby, smooth-talking young travel agent who was so eager to please. But could Yael feel any maternal affection for that bloated creature, with his murky blue eyes behind thick glasses and his porky-pink cheeks? Could she sit and knit him a blue woollen bonnet with a pompom bobbing on top? Could she link arms with him and let him choose spicy black olives for her in Mahane Yehuda Market? And how about you? Would you really feel the need occasionally to tuck a folded bill in his pocket? Or get the painters in for him? Which goes to prove that Yael was right. As always. She was born being right.
However, Fima thought wryly, it might have been a girl. A miniature Giulietta Masina with soft bright hair. She could have been named after his mother: Liza, or, in its Hebrew mutation, Elisheva. Although it is fairly certain Yael would have vetoed that.
A cold, bitter woman, he said to himself with surprise.
Was it really only your fault? Just because of what you did to her? Just because of the Greek promise that you didn't keep and could not have kept and that no one could have kept? Once, next to Nina Gefen's bed he saw an old translated novel, in a shabby paperback edition, called A Woman Without Love. Was it by François Mauriac? André Maurois? Alberto Moravia? He must ask Nina sometime if it was about a woman who did not find love or a woman who was incapable of love. The title could be taken either way. Though at the moment the difference struck him as insignificant. Only very rarely had he and Yael used the word "love." With the possible exception of the period of the Greek trip, but at that time neither he nor the three girls had been particular about their choice of words.