"There. To Hadassah. To see him. Perhaps…"
Fima shrugged.
"What is there to see? I suppose he's as dapper as usual. Why bother him?" And he instructed Shula to make some strong black coffee for Uri, because he had been on the go ever since he got off the plane in the morning. "In fact, you ought to give him something to cat too: he must be starving. I figure he must have left his hotel in Rome at about three this morning, so he really has had a long, hard day of it. Come to think of it, you look pretty tired yourself, Shula; in fact, you look worn out. And where are Yael and Dimi? I want Yacl here. And Dimi too."
"They're at home," said Ted apologetically. "The boy took it quite hard. You might say he had a special attachment to your father." He went on to say that Dimi had locked himself in the utility room, and they had had to call a friend of theirs, the child psychologist from South Africa, to ask what to do. He told them just to leave the child alone. And, sure enough, after a while Dimi had come out, and then he'd glued himself to the computer. The South African friend had advised them…
Fima said:
"Balls."
And then, quietly and firmly:
"I want them both here."
As he spoke, he was surprised at this new assertiveness he had acquired since his father's death. As if it had given him an unexpected promotion, entitling him henceforward to issue orders at will and to command instant obedience.
Ted said:
"Sure. We could go and fetch them. But from what the psychologist said, I think it might be better if…"
Fima nipped this appeal in the bud:
"If you wouldn't mind."
Ted hesitated, held a whispered consultation with Tsvi, glanced at his watch, and said: "Okay, Fima, whatever you like. That's fine. I'll pop around and collect Dimi. If Uri wouldn't mind lending me his keys; Yael's got our car."
"Yael too, please."
"Right. Shall I call her? See if she can make it?"
"Of course she can make it. Tell her I insist."
Ted went out, and at that moment Nina arrived. Small and thin, practical, razor-sharp in her movements, her narrow vixen's face projecting common sense and a survivor's shrewdness, brimming with energy, as though she'd spent the day rescuing casualties under fire rather than making arrangements for a funeral. She wore a light gray pantsuit, her glasses were shining, and she was clutching a stiff black attaché case that she did not put down even when she gave Fima a quick angular hug and a kiss on the forehead. But she found no words.
Shula said:
"I'm going to the kitchen to get you all something to drink. Who wants what? Would anyone like an omelette? Or a slice of bread with something?"
Tsvi remarked hesitantly:
"And he was such a robust man too. So full of energy. With that twinkle in his eyes. And such a zest for life, for good food, business, women, politics, the lot. Not long ago he turned up at my office on Mount Scopus and gave me a furious lecture about how Yeshayahu Leibowitz is making demagogic capital out of Maimonides. Neither more nor less. When I tried to disagree, to defend Leibowitz, he launched into some story about a rabbi from Drohovitz who saw Maimonides in a dream. I would say, a deep lust for life. I always thought he'd live to a ripe old age."
Fima, as though delivering the final verdict on a dispute that was not of his making, declared:
"And so he did. He wasn't exactly cut off in his prime, after all."
Nina said:
"It was a sheer miracle that we managed to complete the arrangements. Everything's fixed for Sunday. Believe me, it was a mad race against the clock, to get it all done before the Sabbath. This Jerusalem of ours is getting worse than Teheran. You're not angry we didn't wait for you, Fima? You'd simply vanished; that's why I took the liberty of dealing with the formalities. To spare you the headache. I put announcements in Sunday's Ha'arets and Ma'ariv. Maybe I should have put it in some other papers, but there simply wasn't time. We've arranged the funeral for the day after tomorrow, Sunday, at three o'clock in the afternoon. It turns out that he'd fixed himself up with a plot, not in Sanhedriya, next to your mother, but on the Mount of Olives. Incidentally, he purchased an adjacent plot for you. Right next to him. And he left detailed and precise instructions in his will about the funeral arrangements. He even chose the cantor, a landsman of his. It was a sheer miracle I managed to locate him and catch him on the phone a minute and a half before the Sabbath came in. He even left his own wording for the tombstone. Something with a rhyme. But that can wait till the end of the first month, if not till the anniversary. If a quarter of the people who benefited from his philanthropy come to the funeral, we'll have to allow for at least half a million. Including the mayor and all sorts of rabbis and politicians, not to mention all the brokenhearted widows and divorcées."
Fima waited until she had finished. Only then did he ask quietly:
"You opened the will by yourself?"
"At the office. In the presence of witnesses. We simply thought…"
"Who gave you permission to do that?"
"Quite frankly…"
"Where is it, the will?"
"Here, in my attaché case."
"Give it to me."
"Right now?"
Fima stood up and took the black attaché case out of her hand. He opened it and drew out a brown envelope. Silently he went out and stood alone on the balcony, at the very spot where his parents had stood that Friday evening a thousand years before, looking like a pair of shipwrecked survivors on a desert island. The last light had long since faded. Stillness wafted up from the avenue. The streetlights flickered with an oscillating yellow radiance mixed with drifting patches of mist. The stone buildings stood silent, all shuttered. No sound came from them. As if the present moment had been transformed into a distant memory. A passing gust of wind brought the sound of barking from the Valley of the Cross. The Third State is a grace that can only be achieved by renouncing all desires, by standing under the night sky sans age, sans sex, sans time, sans race, sans everything.
But who is capable of standing thus?
Once, in his childhood, there lived here in Rehavia tiny, exquisitely mannered scholars, like porcelain figurines, puzzled and gentle. It was their custom to greet one another in the street by raising their hats. As though to erase Hitler. As though to conjure up a Germany that had never existed. And since they would rather be thought absent-minded or ridiculous than impolite, they raised their hats even when they were not certain if the person coming toward them was really a friend or acquaintance or merely looked like one.
One day, when Fima was nine, a short time before his mother's death, he was walking down Alfasi Street with his father. Baruch stopped and began a lengthy conversation, in German or perhaps in Czech, with a portly, dapper old man in an old-fashioned suit and a dark bow tie. Eventually the child's patience ran out and he stamped his foot and started tugging at his father's arm. His father hit him and bellowed "Ty durak, ty smarkatch." Later he explained to Fima that the other man was a professor, a world-famous scholar. He explained what "world fame" meant and how it was acquired. Fima never forgot that explanation. The expression still afforded him a mixture of awe and contempt. And once, seven or eight years later, at half past six in the morning, he was walking with his father again, in Rashbam Street, when they saw coming toward them, with short, vigorous strides, the prime minister, Ben Gurion, who lived at that time on the comer of Ben Maimon and Ussishkin and liked to start his day with a brisk early-morning walk. Baruch Nomberg raised his hat and said: