Fima

  "So let it not tolerate it. So what?"

  And did Nora, Wahrhaftig's only daughter, who had been married to Gad Eitan and had run off ten years ago with a visiting Latin-American poet, ever suffer pangs of nostalgia? Of conscience? Of shame and guilt? Her name was never mentioned here. She was never alluded to, even indirectly. As if she had never existed. Only Tamar occasionally whispered something to Fima about a letter that had been returned to sender, or a telephone hung up without a word. Tamar persisted in trying to persuade him that Gad was not really a bad man but was just frightened and hurt. Except when she occasionally said the exact opposite: Any woman would have left such a viper.

  Fima put on his short white coat, sat down behind his reception desk, and looked at the appointments book. As though he was trying to guess which patient was going to materialize in his life as the next Annette Tadmor.

  Tamar said:

  "There arc two patients inside. The one with Dr. Basso Profundo is a little like Margaret Thatcher; Gad's looks like a schoolgirl, quite pretty."

  Fima said:

  "I nearly phoned you in the middle of the night. I managed to find your Finnish general, the one who begins and ends with M. It's Mannerheim. He was really called von Mannerheim. A German name. He was the one who amazed the whole world by halting Stalin's invasion in 1938. He led the tiny Finnish army against vastly superior Soviet forces."

  Tamar said:

  "You know everything. You could have been a university professor. Or a Cabinet minister."

  Fima considered this, agreed with her in his heart, and replied warmly:

  "You are the ideal woman, Tamar. It's a disgrace to the male sex that nobody has snatched you away from us yet. Though on second thought there isn't a man alive who's worthy of you."

  Her stocky, robust body, her soft, fair hair gathered into a small bun at the back, even her one green eye and one brown one suddenly made her look touchingly childlike, and he asked himself why he shouldn't go up to her, clasp her shoulders, and bury her head in his chest as though she were his daughter. But this urge to console was mixed with another: to boast to her that two women had made the pilgrimage to his flat that morning and offered themselves to him, one after the other. He hesitated, pulled himself together, and said nothing. When had a man's hand last touched that stout body? How would she react if he suddenly reached out and cupped her breasts in his hands? With shock? Outrage? Guilty surrender? You fool, he said to his penis: now you remember. And as though he could feel her nipples nestling in the soft center of each palm, he clenched his fists and smiled.

  Tamar said:

  "Can I ask you something else?"

  Fima could not remember what the last question was, but he replied cheerily, expansively, as though aping his father's lordly manner:

  "Up to half my kingdom."

  "Pacific island, also bathing costume."

  "Pardon?"

  "That's what it says here. Do you think it's a misprint? 'Pacific island, also bathing costume.' Sue letters. It's almost the last clue left."

  "I don't know," said Fima. "Try Tahiti. I've got a child who keeps asking me to take him away to the Pacific. He wants us to build a cabin out of wattles and live on fish and fruit. I don't mean that he's my child exactly. Well, he is and he isn't. Never mind. Try Hawaii. Would you like to come with us, Tamar? To live in a cabin built of wattles and eat nothing but fish and fruit? Far away from cruelty and stupidity? Far away from this rain?"

  "Do you spell Tahiti with an I or a Y? Either way it won't help, because the second letter has got to be an I and the third's a K. Do you mean Yael's little boy, Dimi? Your Challenger? Maybe I shouldn't meddle, Fima, but you ought to think carefully whether you're not complicating that child's life too much by trying to be a spare father to him. I sometimes think..."

  "Bikini," said Fima. "The swimsuit was named after doomsday. Bikini was a tiny island that was evacuated and blown to bits with atom bombs. It was the testing ground for doomsday. In the South Pacific. We'll have to look for some other island. Some other ocean, in fact. Anyway, how can I make a cabin out of wattles: I can't even put up a bookshelf. Uri Gefen assembled my bookcases for me. Please, Tamar, don't stand at the window like that with your back to me and the room. I've told you a thousand times I can't stand it. My problem, I know."

  "What's the matter with you, Fima? You're very funny sometimes. I was only drawing the curtains because Pm fed up with looking at the rain. We don't need to look for any other island: Bikini is just right. What do you think is the name of the ruling party in Nicaragua?"

  Fima had the answer to this question on the tip of his tongue, but at that instant the sound of a woman's voice suddenly burst out behind Or. Eitan's closed door. It was a short, piercing scream, full of terror and outrage, the sort of sound that might be wrenched from the throat of a small child who was the victim of searing injustice. Who was being butchered in there? Perhaps someone destined to be Yoezer's father or grandfather. Fima tensed, straining to block his mind, to fortify himself, not to imagine, what those plastic-gloved hands were doing in there, on that couch covered in white oilcloth and a disposable sheet of coarse white paper, with a white trolley nearby carrying a set of sterile scalpels, speculums, different-sized scissors, forceps, syringes, a razor, special needle and thread for sewing human flesh, clamps, oxygen masks, and saline drips. And the femininity exposed to its fullest extent, with no hiding place, flooded with bright light from the powerful lamp behind the doctor's head; pink and raw like a wound, looking like a toothless old man's open mouth, oozing dark blood.

  While he was still struggling to banish this image, not to see or hear or feel, Tamar said gently:

  "You can relax now. It's all over."

  But Fima felt ashamed. Somehow, in a way that was not clear to him, he felt that he himself was not free of guilt. That he too was responsible for the agony going on behind the dosed door. That there was a connection between his humiliation of Annette and then Nina this morning and the pain and shame on that spotless couch which now was no doubt far from spotless, full of blood and other secretions. His penis shrank and retreated like a thief. A vague, repulsive pain suddenly throbbed in his testicles. If Tamar had not been there, he would have reached down to ease the pressure of his trousers. Though actually it was better like this. He must abandon his pathetic attempt to convince Tsvi that we are all entitled to discharge ourselves from responsibility for atrocities committed in our name. We have to admit the guilt. We have to accept that everybody's suffering rests on all our shoulders. The oppression in the Territories, the disgrace of old people poking around in trash cans, the blind man tapping at night in the deserted street, the misery of autistic children in run-down institutions, the killing of the dog with edema, Dimi's ordeal, Annette's and Nina's humiliation, Teddy's loneliness, Uri's endless wanderings, the surgical procedure that had just taken place on the other side of this wall, stainless-steel forceps deep inside the wounded vulva—everything was on all our shoulders. How useless to dream of running away to Moruroa or the Galapagos Islands. Even Bikini, poisoned by a radioactive cloud, was on all our shoulders. For a moment he pondered the curious fact that in Hebrew the word for "pity" appears to be related to "womb," while "forceps" appears to be derived from "learning a lesson." But then he rebuked himself for these verbal games, his poeticizings, which were no less despicable than the minister of defense's saying "cost" when he meant "death."

  "There's a stanza in one of Alterman's poems," he said to Tamar, "called 'Songs of the Plagues of Egypt,' that goes like this: The rabble soon assembled / Bearing the noose of blame, / To hang the King and Council / And free themselves from shame. That is more or less the bottom line of all history, I think. It's the story of all of us, condensed into a dozen words. Let's make her a cup of coffee. And one for Gad and Alfred too."

  Tamar said:

  "That's all right. You're excused. I put the kettle on. Anyway, it'll take her a while to come around and stand up. You're excused
from cleaning up too. I'll do it if you just see to the sterilizer and the washing machine. How come you can remember everything by heart? Alterman and Bikini and everything? On the one hand, you're so absent-minded you can't even button your shirt right; on the other hand you turn the world upside down for a clue in a crossword puzzle. And you organize everyone's life for them. Just look at your sweater: half in and half out of your trousers. And your shirt collar's half in and half out too. Like a baby."

  At this she fell silent, though her warm smile continued to haunt her broad, open face as though it had been forgotten there. After being absorbed in thought for a while, she added sadly, without explaining the connection:

  "My father hanged himself in the Metropole Hotel in Alexandria. It was in 'forty-six. They didn't find any letter. I was five and a half. I hardly remember him. I remember that he smoked cigarettes called Simon Am. And I remember his wristwatch: yellow, square, with phosphorescent hands that glowed in the dark like a ghost's eyes. I have a picture of him in British army uniform, but he doesn't look much like a soldier. He looks so sloppy. And tired. In the picture he actually looks fair-haired, smiling, with beautiful white teeth and lots of lovely little lines at the corners of his eyes. Not sad, just tired. And he's holding a cat. I wonder if he suffered from unrequited love too. My mother would never talk to me about him. The only thing she said was: He didn't think about us either. Then she'd change the subject. She had a lover, a tall Australian captain with a wooden arm and a Russian name, Serafim. They explained to me once that it comes from the Hebrew word 'seraphim.' Then she had a weepy banker who took her to Canada and dropped her. In the end she wrote to me from Toronto in Polish. I had to have the letter translated; she never managed to learn to write Hebrew. She said she wanted to come back to Nes Tsiyona to start a new life. But she never made it. She died of cancer of the liver. I was brought up in an institution run by the Working Women's Council. About Alterman: tell me, Fima, is it true what they say—that he has two wives?"

  "He died," Fima replied, "about twenty years ago." He was on the point of launching into a crash course on Alterman when Dr. Eitan's door opened, a pungent hygienic odor wafted out, and the doctor poked his head out and said to Tamar:

  "Hey, Brigitte Bardot. Bring me an ampule of pethidine chop-chop."

  So Fima was obliged to postpone his lecture. He unplugged the boiling kettle and decided to put a heater on in the recovery room. Then he had two phone calls, one after the other: he booked an appointment for Mrs. Bergson for the end of the month and he explained to Gila Maimón that they never gave out the results of tests over the telephone; she'd have to come in and be told the answer by Dr. Wahrhaftig. For some reason he addressed them both sheepishly, as though he had done them some wrong. He agreed in his mind with Annette Tadmor when she'd made fun of the clichés of mysterious womanhood, Greta Garbo, Beatrice, Marlene Dietrich, Dulcinea, but she was wrong when she tried to place the cloak of mystery on the shoulders of the male sex. We are all steeped in falsehood. We all pretend. Surely the plain truth is that each and every one of us knows exactly what pity is and when we ought to show it, because each and every one of us aches for a little pity. But come the moment when we should open the gates of compassion, we pretend we know nothing. Or that compassion and mercy are merely a way of patronizing others, something too old-fashioned and sentimental. Or that that's the way it is and what can be done about it and why me of all people? That was presumably what Pascal meant by "the death of die soul" and about human agony being that of a dethroned king. His efforts not to imagine what was happening on the other side of the wall struck him as cowardly, ignoble, and ugly. As was his attempt to turn his thoughts from the death of Tamar's father to the gossip about Alterman's life. Surely it was the duty of all of us at least to look suffering in the eye. If he were prime minister, he would make each member of the Cabinet stay for a week with a reserve unit in Gaza or Hebron, spend some time inside the perimeter of one of the detention camps in the Negev, live a couple of days in a run-down psychogeriatric ward, lie in the mud and rain for a whole winter's night from sundown to dawn by the electronic fence on the Lebanese border, or join Eitan and Wahrhaftig without any intervening barrier in this abortion inferno, which was now once more filled with the sounds of piano and cello from upstairs.

  A moment later he was disgusted by these reflections, because on second thought they struck him as the embodiment of nineteenth-century Russian kitsch. The very term "abortion inferno" was an injustice: after all, there were times when life was actually created here. Fima recalled a patient by the name of Sarah Matalon who had been advised by leading specialists to give up and adopt a child, and only Gad Eitan persevered single-mindedly for four years, until he finally opened her womb. The whole staff of the clinic was invited to the circumcision of her son. The father suddenly announced that the child would be called Gad, and Fima noticed Dr. Eitan biting hard on his leather watch strap; indeed for a moment his own eyes filled too. They had to make do with Dr. Wahrhaftig, who held the baby enthusiastically.

  Fima leaped forward to help Tamar, who was helping a dazed girl of about seventeen, pale as a sheet and thin as a matchstick, walk falteringly toward the recovery room. As though to atone for the sins of the whole male sex, Fima bustled here and there, hurrying to fetch a soft blanket, a cold glass of mineral water with a slice of lemon in it, paper tissues, aspirins. Later he called a taxi for her.

  At four-thirty there was a coffee break. Dr. Wahrhaftig came and leaned on the reception desk, wafting a smell of medicine and disinfectant into Fima's face. His massive chest, blown up like that of a tsarist governor-general, and his broad round hips did give his heavy body the look of a basso profundo. His cheeks were crisscrossed by a network of unhealthy bluish, red, and pink blood vessels that were so close to the surface, you could almost take his pulse by their throbbing.

  Lithe and silent, with velvety movements like a cat on hot tin, Dr. Eitan arrived. He was chewing gum slowly, impassively, with his mouth closed. His lips were thin and pursed. Wahrhaftig said:

  "That was a very odd Schnitz. Just as well you stitched her up nice and tight."

  Eitan said:

  "We pulled her through. It didn't look too good."

  Wahrhaftig said:

  "About the transfusion: you were absolutely right."

  Eitan said:

  "Big deal. It was obvious from the start."

  And Wahrhaftig said:

  "God has given you clever fingers, Gad."

  Fima interrupted gently:

  "Drink your coffee. It's getting cold."

  "Herr Exzellenz von Nisan!" roared Wahrhaftig. "And where has His Highness been hiding all these days? Has he been writing a new Faust for us? Or a Kohlhaas? We had almost forgotten what your face looks like!" He went on to recount a "well-known joke" about three layabouts. But he could not restrain himself from bursting into guffaws before he had even reached the third layabout.

  Gad Eitan, lost in thought, suddenly remarked:

  "Even so, we shouldn't have done it here, under a local. It should have been done in a hospital, with a general anesthetic. We nearly made a mess of it. We ought to think about it, Alfred."

  Wahrhaftig, in an altered voice, said:

  "What? Are you worried?"

  Eitan took his time. After a pause he said:

  "No. Not now."

  Tamar hesitated, her mouth opened and closed twice, and finally she said warily:

  "You look good in that white turtleneck, Gad. Would you rather have lemon tea instead of coffee?"

  Eitan said:

  "Yes, but no tail-wagging, please."

  Wahrhaftig, a clumsy peacemaker, hastily turned the conversation to current affairs:

  "So, what do you say about that Polish anti-Semite? They've learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Did you hear on the radio what the cardinal in Warsaw said about the Auschwitz convent? It's a straight replay of their old tunes: Why are the Jews so pushy, why are the Jews making s
uch a fuss, why are the Jews inciting the whole world against poor Poland, why arc the Jews trying to make capital out of their dead again? After all, millions of Poles were killed too. And our cute little government, with old-fashioned Jewish obsequiousness, turns a blind eye to the whole thing. In any civilized country we'd have sent their chargé d'affaires home with a good kick in the you-know-where."

  Eitan said:

  "Don't you worry, Alfred. We won't take it lying down. One night we'll drop airborne commandos on them. A lightning raid. An Auschwitz Entebbe. We'll blow that convent sky high, and all our forces will return safely to base. Surprise will be total. The world will hold its breath like the good old days. Then Mr. Sharon and Mr. Shamir will gabble on about the long arm of the IDF and the renewal of Israel's deterrent force. They can christen it Operation Peace for the Crematoria."

  Fima was instantly ignited. If I were prime minister, he thought, but before he could complete the thought, he had burst out furiously:

  "Who the hell needs all this? We've gone out of our minds. We've gone right off our rockers. What are we doing squabbling with the Poles about who owns Auschwitz? It's already beginning to sound like an extension of our usual story about 'ancestral rights' and 'ancestral heritage' and 'we shall never hand back territory that we have liberated.' Any moment now our dashing pioneers will be out there planting a new settlement among the gas chambers. Establishing facts in disputed territory. What makes Auschwitz a Jewish site anyway? It's a Nazi site. A German site. As a matter of fact, it really ought to become a Christian site, for Christendom in general and Polish Catholicism in particular. Let them cover the whole death camp with convents and crosses and bells. Wall to wall. With a Jesus on every chimney. There's no more fitting place in the world for Christendom to commune with itself. Them, not us. Let them go on pilgrimages there, whether to beat their breasts or to celebrate the greatest theological victory in their history. For all I care, they can baptize their Auschwitz convent The Sweet Revenge of Jesus.' What arc we doing scurrying in there with protesters and placards? Are we out of our minds? It's quite right that a Jew who goes there to commune with the memory of the victims should see a forest of crosses all around him and hear nothing but the ringing of church bells. That way he'll understand that he's in the true heart of Poland. The heart of hearts of Christian Europe. As far as I'm concerned, it would be an excellent thing if they'd move the Vatican there. Why not? Let the pope sit there from now to the Resurrection on a golden throne among the chimneys. And for another thing—"