Fima (19 page)

"Are you going to tell them, Fima?"

Fima thought about it. All through the confession he had not stopped stroking the albino hair. As in a bad dream he felt that the dog and Dimi and he had become one. In the same psalm where it says, "Their mind is gross like fat," it also says, "My soul droops with sorrow." He declared earnestly:

"No, Dimi, I'm not going to tell."

The boy peered obliquely up at him. His rabbit's eyes through the thick lenses seemed agonized yet full of trust, as though he was trying to demonstrate what he had described earlier in the eyes of the dog. So this is what love is.

Fima shuddered as though outside, from the depths of the darkness, wind, and rain, his ears had caught an elusive echo of a howl.

He stroked the little Challenger's head and dragged him inside the chunky sweater. As though he were pregnant with him. After a moment Dimi freed himself and asked:

"But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you agree not to tell them?"

"Because it wouldn't help Winston, and you've already suffered enough."

"You're okay, Fima."

And then :

"Even though you're a rather funny man. Sometimes they call you a clown behind your back. And you really are a little like a down."

"Now, Dimi, you're going to have a glass of milk. And tell me where I can find that Valium your mother said you're to take."

"I'm a little like a clown too. But I'm not okay. I should have said no. I shouldn't have let myself be carried away by them."

"But they made you do it."

"Still, it was murder."

"You can't tell," Fima ventured. "Maybe he was only wounded."

"He lost a lot of blood. A whole sea of blood."

"Sometimes you can bleed a lot even from a scratch. Once, when I was little, I was balancing on a wall and fell off, and I bled a huge amount from a tiny little gash on my head. Granpa Baruch nearly fainted."

"I hate them."

"They're just children, Dimi. Children sometimes do very cruel things, simply because they don't have enough imagination to know what pain is."

Dimi said:

"Not the children. Them. If they could have chosen, they wouldn't have had me. And I wouldn't have chosen them either. It's not fair: you can choose who you marry but you can't choose who your parents are. And you can't divorce them cither. Fima?"

"Yes."

"Shall we take a flashlight and some bandages and iodine and go and look for him down in the wadi?"

"In this darkness and rain there isn't a hope of finding him."

"True," said Dimi. "You're right. We haven't got a hope. But let's go and search anyhow. So at least we'll know we tried and failed." As he said this, he looked to Fima like a pocket-sized edition of his self-possessed, rational father. Even his intonation was a reflection of Ted's: the quiet voice of a well-balanced, solitary man. Dimi wiped his glasses as he added: "Tslil's family are also to blame. Why did they go abroad and leave their dog behind when he was sick? They could have taken him. They could have made some arrangements for him at least. Why did they throw him out on the trash heap like that? The Cherokees have a law that you mustn't throw anything away. Even a broken pot they keep in the wigwam. Anything you've ever used you mustn't get rid of. It might still need you. They even have a sort of ten commandments, or less than ten, and die first one is, Thou shalt not throw out. I have a chest in the storeroom full of toys from when I was so high. They're always shouting at me to throw them out, who needs them, they just take up space, they're just gathering dust, but I don't agree. Throwing away is like killing,' said Snow Daughter to Whispering Wind Lake, tightening her delicate fingers round the wolfstone."

"What's that?"

"It's a story about a Cherokee girl. Whispering Wind Lake was the chief of the banished tribe."

"Tell me."

"I can't. I can't think about anything else. That dog keeps howling at me, those brown eyes so obedient, so tame, so happy to be the center of attention, and wagging his tail, and giving a warm lick to anyone who bent over him. Even when Ronen was tying his legs together, he gave Ronen a lick. And his ear came off and fell on the ground like a slice of bread. I keep hearing him crying all the time in my head, and maybe he really is still alive, dying in a puddle among the rocks in the wadi, crying and waiting for the vet. In the night God will come and kill me for it. The best thing for me is not to go to sleep at all. Or he'll kill me because I hate them and it's forbidden to hate your parents. Who told them to have me? I didn't ask for any favors. There's nothing to do around here anyway. Whatever you do turns out badly. It's all just trouble and shouting. Whatever I do, just trouble and shouting. You were married to my mother once and then you didn't want her. Or she didn't want you. Trouble and shouting. Dad says it happened because you're a little like a clown. He said it to me in English. They don't have much use for me either. What they need is to always have peace and quiet in the flat and everything to be tidy and in die right place and not to slam the door. Every time a door slams, she yells at me and Dad. Every time some pen isn't where it's supposed to be, he yells at me and Mom. Every time the top of the toothpaste isn't screwed on properly, they both yell at me. No, they don't yell; they just point out. Like this: It would be preferable if, in future ... Or he says to her in English, Do something so that child doesn't get under my feet. And she says, It's your child, sir. When you were little, Fima, didn't you ever wish deep down that your parents would die? Didn't you want to be an orphan and free like Huckleberry Finn? Weren't you a little clown?"

Fima said:

"Every child has thoughts like that at one time or another. It's natural. But they don't really mean it."

Dimi said nothing. His albino eyes began to blink again fast, as though the light was hurting them. And he added:

"Say, Fima, you need a child, don't you? How'd you like it if we went away together? We could go to the Galapagos Islands and build ourselves a cabin out of branches. We could catch fish and clams, and grow vegetables. We could track the thousand-year-old tortoises that you told me about once."

Here we go again, Fima thought: more longing for the Aryan side. For Chili. He picked Dimi up in his arms and carried him to his room. He undressed him and put him into his pajamas. In the Galapagos Islands there is no winter. It's always springtime. And the thousand-year-old tortoises are nearly as big as this table because they don't hunt and they don't dream and they don't make a sound. As though everything was straightforward and fine. He picked the boy up again and took him to brush his teeth. Then they stood together at the toilet and Fima said, "Ready, steady," and they had a contest to see who would finish first. All the time Fima muttered muddled reassurances, which he hardly heard himself; Never mind little boy the rain will soon stop the winter will soon be over the spring will soon be over we'll sleep like tortoises and then we'll get up and plant vegetables and then we'll be all good and you'll see how great it'll be.

Despite these reassuring words they were both on the verge of tears. They clung to each other as though it was getting colder. Instead of tucking him in bed, Fima carried the child piggyback in his green flannel pajamas to his parents' bedroom and lay down beside him on die double bed, carefully removing his thick glasses, and the two of them huddled together under a single blanket while Fima told him one story after another, about lizards, about the evolutionary abyss, about the failure of the unnecessary Jewish revolt against Rome, about the railwaymen's conference and the width of the track, about the forests of Sierra Leone in Africa, about whaling in Alaska, about ruined temples in the mountains of northern Greece, about breeding tropical fish in heated pools in Valletta, the capital of Malta, about St. Augustine, about the poor cantor who found himself alone on a desert island on the High Holy Days. At a quarter to one, when Ted and Yael returned from Tel Aviv, they found Fima sleeping fully clothed, curled up like a fetus inside a blanket on their double bed, with his head on Yael's nightie, and Dimi sitting in his green pajamas at the computer in his father's study, with a very serious look on his owlish face, intent on defeating a whole gang of pirates single-handed, in a complicated game of strategy.

S
OME TIME AFTER ONE O'CLOCK, ON HIS WAY HOME IN THE TAXI
Teddy had called for him, Fima remembered his father's last visit. Was it two days ago or the previous morning? How the old man had begun with Nietzsche and ended with the Russian railways, which were constructed in such a way that they could be of no use to invaders. What had his father been trying to say to him? Fima now thought that the old man's conversation had revolved around some point that he could not or dared not express directly. In die midst of all those tales and morals, all those Cossacks and Indians, Fima had failed to notice that there had been complaints of a lack of air. Yet his father never talked about ill health, apart from the usual wisecracks about his backache. Now Fima recalled his panting, his coughing, the whistling sound that came from his throat or chest. As he was leaving, the old man seemed to be trying to say something, which Fima hadn't wanted to listen to. Now, he said to himself: You preferred to quibble about Herzl and about India. What was he hinting at amid all that jocular wordplay? On the other hand, his leave-taking always has an epic quality. If he goes to the café for half an hour, he wishes you a life replete with meaning. If he goes to buy a paper, he warns you not to squander life's rich treasure. What was he trying to say this time? You missed it. You were so intent on the thrills of a victory over the Occupied Territories. As usual. You thought that if you could just get the better of him in an argument, the obstacles to peace would be removed and a new era could begin. As when you were little: an acerbic child with no keener desire than to catch grownups out in a mistake or a slip of the tongue. To win an argument with an adult, force him to hoist the white flag. If some visitor or other used the expression "most of the majority of people," you chimed in exultantly to the effect that "most of the majority" actually signified 25.1%, in other words a minority, not a majority. If your father said that Ben Gurion was a blunt speaker, you pointed out that if he was blunt, he could not be very sharp. Yesterday when he was visiting you, there were moments when his cantorial tenor was almost silenced by breathlessness. True, he's an old chatterbox, a dandy and a bore, a philanderer, on top of which he suffers from political blindness of the most self-righteous and infuriating kind. And yet in his own way he is a generous, goodhearted man. He stuffs money into your pocket while he pokes his nose into your love life and tries to run your whole life for you. And just where would you be now without him?

The taxi stopped at the light at the Mount Herzl junction. The driver said:

"It's freezing out there. My heater's broken. The damn traffic lights aren't working. This whole country's fucked up."

Fima said:

"Why exaggerate? There may be twenty-five countries in the world that are more decent than ours, but on the other hand there are more than a hundred where you'd be shot for talking like that."

The driver said:

"The goyim can go burn, the lot of 'em. They're all rotten. They hate us."

Strange lights flickered on the wet road. Wisps of mist drifted around the darkened buildings. Where the nearest wisps caught the orange glare of the streetlights at the junction, there was a kind of ghostly glow. Fima thought: This must be what the mystical writings call "the Radiance that is not of this world." The ancient Aramaic expression suddenly left him feeling dizzy. As if the words themselves came from over there, from other worlds. Not a car went past. There was not a lighted window to be seen. The desolate asphalt, the glare of the streetlights, the shadowy pines that stood shrouded in rain as though all gates had been locked forever, aroused a dread in Fima. As if his own life were flickering out, there in the icy mist.
As
if someone was expiring nearby, behind some damp wall.

The driver said:

"What a rotten fucking night. And these damn lights won't change."

Fima reassured him:

"What's the hurry? So we'll wait here another minute or two. Don't worry: I'm paying."

He was ten years old when his mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Baruch Nomberg, in his usual impetuous way, did not wait even a week: the weekend after the funeral he hurled all her belongings into boxes and crates, all her dresses and shoes and books, and her dressing table with the round Russian mirror, and the bed linen embroidered with her initials. He hastily donated the lot to the leper hospice in Talbiyeh. He erased every trace of her existence, as though her death had been an act of betrayal. As though she had run away with another man. But he did have her graduation photograph enlarged, and hung it over the sideboard, from where she looked down on the two of them all those years with a wistful, skeptical smile and with shyly down-turned eyes, as though she admitted her fault and repented of it. Immediately after the funeral Baruch took his son's education in hand with absent-minded strictness, with unpredictable emotional gestures, with tyrannical good humor. Every morning he checked the exercise books in Fima's satchel one by one. Every evening he stood in die bathroom with his arms crossed while Fima brushed his teeth. He inflicted on the child private tutors in math, English, and even Jewish tradition. Subtly he would bribe one of Fima's classmates to come home and play with him occasionally so that the child would not be too lonely. Unfortunately he was in the habit of joining in their games himself, and even when for pedagogic reasons he intended to lose, he would be carried away and forget his good intentions, whinnying exultantly when he won. He bought the wide desk that Fima still used. Winter and summer alike he forced the boy into clothes that were too warm. All those years the electric samovar went on steaming till one or two in the morning. Elegant divorcées and cultured widows of a certain age came for visits that lasted five hours. Even in his sleep Fima could hear broad Slavic voices coming from the salon, punctuated occasionally by laughter or weeping or by musical duets.