Instead of writing the appeal, Fima went and stood at the window to put his ideas in order. He watched the winter light spread like a noble material over the hilltops and slopes. He knew and loved the idea of "noble metals," although he had no idea which they were. Once, in his father's flat in Rehavia, Baruch and Dimi tried to inflict an elementary chemistry lesson on him. Fima, like a stubborn child, defended himself with wisecracks and wordplay until Dimi said, "Forget it, Granpa; it's not for him." And the two of them embarked without him into the realm of acid and alkali, which Fima loathed on account of his heartburn.
The light kissed the ridges, overflowed into the valleys, awakening in each tree and rock its dormant radiant quality that had been buried all these days under layers of gray, inanimate routine. As if here in Jerusalem thousands of years ago the earth had lost its power to renew itself from within. As if only the gracious touch of this enchanted light could restore to things, however ephemerally, the primordiality that had been eclipsed in days of old. Will Your Worship condescend to favor me with a slight nod of the head if I go down on my knees and offer my humble prayers of gratitude? Is there something that Your Worship wishes me to do? Is Your Worship interested in us at all? Why did you put us here? Why did you choose us? Why did you choose Jerusalem? Is Your Worship still listening? Is Your Worship smiling?
The ancient Aramaic phrases, such as "the days of old," "not of this world," "the concealed side," filled Fima with a sense of mystery and awe. For a moment he asked himself if it was not possible after all that the light and the mud, the glowworms in the almond tree and the radiant sky, the arid land extending eastward from here to Mesopotamia and southward to Bab el-Mandeb at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, and indeed his shabby flat and his aging body and even his broken telephone, were all nothing but different expressions of the same being, a being condemned to be broken into countless flawed, perishable embodiments, even though in itself it was whole and eternal and one. Only on a winter morning like this, under the nuptial veil of limpid light, which is perhaps what is meant by the ancient Aramaic phrase "supernal radiance," does the earth along with your watching eyes recover the thrill of that primordial touch. And everything returns to its state of original innocence. As on the day of creation. And for an instant the constant murky cloak of dreariness and deceit is removed.
And so Fima's thoughts arrived at the hackneyed concept of "the heavenly Jerusalem," to which he gave his private interpretation, valid solely for what he felt at that particular moment. He mused that there were times when the state of sleeping seemed less tainted with falsehood than the state of waking, and times when it was the other way around, and that ultimate wakefulness was the most longed-for ideal. He now reached the thought that it might be a matter of three states and not two: sleeping, waking, and this light that had been flooding him both from without and within ever since the start of this morning. For want of a suitable name he described the light to himself as the Third State. And he felt that it was not only a matter of the pure light on the hills but of the light truly flowing out of the hills and out of himself too, and that it was in the commingling of these rays of light that the Third State came into being, equidistant from complete waking and from the deepest slumber and yet distinct from both.
There is no more tragic loss in the whole world, he thought, than missing the Third State. It happens because of the news on the radio, because of business, because of hollow desires and the pursuit of vanities and trivia. All suffering, Fima said to himself, everything that is ridiculous or obscene, is purely the consequence of missing the Third State, or of that vague nagging feeling that reminds us from time to time that there is, outside and inside, almost within reach, something fundamental that you always seem on the way to yet you always lose your way to. You are called, and you forget to go. You are spoken to, and you don't hear. A door is opened, and you leave too late because you choose to satisfy some craving or other. "The sea of silence casts up secrets," but you were preoccupied with trivial arrangements. You preferred to try to make an impression on someone, who himself missed it because he wanted to make an impression on someone else, who also ... and so on, and so forth. Unto dust. Again and again you rejected what exists in favor of what does not, never did, and cannot. Gad Eitan was right when he said that wastefulness runs riot here. His wife was right to get away while she could. The order of priorities, Fima said to himself sadly and half aloud, is all wrong. What a pity, for instance, that Tsvi Kropotkin, such a hard-working man, should have spent three years chasing after the details of the Catholic church's attitude to the voyages of Magellan and Columbus, like someone sorting out the buttons of clothes that have long since become rags. Or Uri Gefen, running from one affair to the next, wide awake but with his heart asleep.
With that, Fima decided to stop standing idly at the window and to start getting the place ready for the painters, who were coming after the weekend. The pictures would have to come down off the walls. Also the map of Israel on which he had once penciled reasonable compromise borders. All the furniture would have to be moved into the middle of the room and covered with plastic sheeting. The books would have to be put away. So would all the dishes and the pots and pans. Why not take advantage of the opportunity to get rid of the piles of old newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and newsletters? The bookcases would have to be dismantled, and that would mean enlisting Uri's help. Is it tonight he's coming back? Or tomorrow? Or the day after? And then Nina could deliver her detailed report of how she tried not once but twice to give me my regular service and how she found the tap blocked. Perhaps Shula Kropotkin could be brought in as reinforcement to help with putting all the kitchen things away. Possibly Annette Tadmor would be glad to lend a hand. And the Pizantis also expressed a readiness to help, provided they didn't murder each other first. And Teddy would willingly come to take down the curtains and the wall lights. Maybe he'd bring Dimi with him. The old man was quite right: it's well over twenty years since this den was last spruced up. The ceiling's filthy, grubby from the kerosene heater. There are cobwebs in the corners. There's mold in the bathroom. The ceramic dies are cracked. The plaster is peeling. There are patches of mildew. There's a dank, sweaty smell here the whole year, an old bachelor's smell. It's not only the bottle of worms on the balcony that smells bad. You've grown so used to it that you don't even care.
Surely habit is the root of all evil. It's precisely what Pascal was thinking of when he wrote about the death of the soul.
In a comer of his desk Fima found a green advertisement announcing huge discounts at the local supermarket. On a comer of this notice he scribbled the words:
Habit is the beginning of death. Habits are a fifth column.
And underneath:
Routine = lies.
Habituation—deterioration—dilapidation.
His intention was to remind himself to improve and develop these thoughts over the weekend. And since he had remembered that tomorrow was Saturday, he deduced that today was Friday, from which he inferred that he ought to do some shopping. But Friday was his free day, the clinic was closed, so why should he hurry? Why start pushing furniture around at seven in the morning? Best wait for the reinforcements to arrive. There was no urgency. Even though when he glanced at his watch, he saw that it was not seven o'clock but twenty past eight. Time to have a word or two with Tsvika, who would have finished his shaving ritual by now.
Had there been any further improvement in the condition of the telephone? Fima tried again. He could hear a faint sound, but it had not yet rallied to the point of being a dial tone. Despite which, he dialed Yael's number. And concluded that he ought to wait for the patient to make a full recovery, because his impatient attempts might delay the process. Or was Yael's phone also out of order? Was the whole city cut off? Could it be a strike? Sabotage? Sanctions? Had the exchange been blown up in the night? Had a right-wing terrorist group seized all the means of communication and the other centers of power? Had there been a Syrian missile attac
k? Unless Ted Tobias was leaning on the phone again and preventing Yael from picking it up. Fima felt disgusted, not with Ted but with his own word games. He twisted up the supermarket advertisement and threw it at the wastepaper basket. He missed, but could not be bothered to crawl under the desk to look for it. No point. The whole place was going to be turned upside down to prepare for the painters.
He made himself another cup of coffee, ate a few slices of black bread and jam to quell the hunger pangs, took a couple of tablets to quell the heartburn. Then he went to have a piss. He felt furious with his body, always bothering him with its needs, and preventing him from following through a single thought or observation. He stood for a few moments without moving, his head to one side, his mouth half open, as though deep in thought, and his penis in his hand. Despite the pressure in his bladder he was unable to release a single drop. He resorted to his usual subterfuge, pulling the handle in the hope that the sound of rushing water would remind his sluggish organ of its duty. But it refused to be impressed by that old and well-worn stratagem. It seemed to be saying: It's time you thought up a new game for me. Grudgingly it released a brief, thin trickle, as a special favor. As soon as the tank stopped, this pathetic trickle stopped too. His bladder remained urgently full. Fima shook the offending member gently, then more violently, but nothing happened. Finally he pulled the handle again, but the tank had not had time to fill, and instead of a roaring cascade it gave a sort of hollow, contemptuous grunt, as though it was mocking Fima in his misfortune. As though in its defiance it was showing solidarity with the telephone.
Nevertheless he persisted. He did not retreat. He would wage a war of attrition against this recalcitrant organ. We'll see who cracks first. The limp, shellfish-like flesh between his fingers suddenly put him in mind of a lizard, some kind of grotesque creature that had emerged from the depths of the evolutionary process and now clung irritatingly to his body. In another century or two people would probably be able to replace this troublesome appendage with a neat mechanical device that would drain the body's superfluous fluids at a touch. The whole absurd association between the processes of urination and copulation in a single organ struck him as a crude expression of vulgar adolescent humor, in poor taste: it would be no more distasteful if humans reproduced by spitting into each other's mouths or by blowing their noses into each other's ears.
Meanwhile the cistern had refilled. Fima pulled the handle again, and succeeded in releasing another intermittent jet, which once again ceased the moment the water stopped pouring. He was furious: to think of all the massive efforts he had invested over the past thirty years in gratifying every whim and appetite of this pampered, selfish, corrupt, insatiable reptile, which turned you into a mere vehicle created for the sole purpose of conveying it comfortably from female to female, and after all that it repaid you with such ingratitude.
As though addressing a naughty child, Fima said:
"All right, You've got exactly one minute to make your mind up. In another fifty-five seconds by my watch I'm zipping up and going, and after that you can burst for all I care."
This threat only seemed to reinforce the reptile's recalcitrance: it seemed to shrivel between his fingers. Fima was determined not to yield this time. Furiously he zipped up his fly and banged down the lid of the toilet. He slammed the bathroom door behind him. Five minutes later he slammed the door of the flat, strode past the mailbox without succumbing to the temptation to take out the newspaper, and marched resolutely toward the shopping center. He had made up his mind to go to the bank to see to four transactions, which he recited to himself as he walked along, so as not to forget. First, draw some cash. He had had enough of going around without a penny in his pocket. Second, pay all his bills: telephone, water, kerosene, sewage, gas, electricity. Third, find out at last the state of his account. By the time he reached the newspaper-and-stationery shop on the corner, he had forgotten the fourth thing. He strained his mind, but it was no good. On the other hand he noticed a new issue of Politics displayed on the inside of the closed door of the shop. He went in and perused it for a quarter of an hour, shocked to read Tsvi Kropotkin's article, which maintained that the chances of peace were nil, at least for the foreseeable future. He must go and see Tsvika this very morning and read the riot act to him about the defeatism of the intelligentsia: not the kind of defeatism that our opponents on the hawkish right so stridently accuse us of, but something else, something deeper and in the long term more serious.
His upsurge of fury yielded some benefit: as soon as he left the shop, he cut across a waste plot, entered an unfinished building, and barely had time to unzip his fly before his bladder emptied itself with a rush. He felt so triumphant that he did not even mind getting his shoes and trouser cuffs muddy. Proceeding northward, he walked past the bank without seeing it, but observed with excitement that the almond tree in his back garden was not the only one that had blossomed without waiting for the Trees' New Year. Although on second thought he was not sure about this, because he did not know the date according to the Jewish religious calendar. He could not even remember the secular date. At any rate, there was no doubt that it was only February and already spring was raising its head. Fima felt that there was a simple symbolism here: he did not ask himself what was symbolized, but he was happy. As though he had been given responsibility for the entire city, unasked, and to his surprise it turned out that he had not entirely failed in the discharge of his duties. The pale blue of the early morning had turned to a deep azure, as though the sea were suspended upside down over the city and were showering it with nursery-school cheerfulness. Geraniums and bougainvilleas blazed in front gardens. The low stone walls gleamed as though they were being caressed. "Not bad, eh?" Fima said mentally to an invisible guest or tourist.
At the turning to Bayit Vagan stood a young man in an army windbreaker, a submachine gun over his shoulder and surrounded by buckets of flowers. He suggested that Fima take a bunch of chrysanthemums for the weekend. Fima asked himself if this wasn't a settler from the Territories, who grew his flowers on other men's land. He immediately decided that someone who was prepared to make peace with Arafat should not excommunicate his own domestic opponents. Although he could see the argument for excommunicating. But he could find neither hatred nor anger in his heart, perhaps because of the radiant light. Jerusalem this morning seemed to be a place where all should respect the different opinions of others, and so he put his hand in his pocket and found three one-shekel coins, no doubt the change he had been given last night by his new minister of information. He pressed the flowers to his chest as though to protect them from the cold.
"Pardon?" said Fima. "Did you say something? I'm sorry, I didn't hear it."
The boy selling the flowers said with a broad smile:
"All I said was have a good weekend. Good Sabbath."
"Absolutely," Fima agreed, laying the foundations for a new national consensus. "Thank you. And a good weekend to you too."
The air was cold and vitreous, even though there was no wind. As though the light itself contained a dazzlingly clear arctic ingredient. The words "dazzlingly clear" afforded Fima a strange, secretive thrill. One must avoid malice, he thought, even when it disguises itself as principle. He ought to repeat to himself over and over that the real enemy was despair. It was vital not to compromise with despair, not to submit to it. Young Yoezer and his contemporaries, the moderate, reasonable people who will lead their carefully modulated lives here in Jerusalem after us, will be astonished at the suffering we brought on ourselves. But at least they won't remember us with contempt. We didn't give in without a struggle. We held on in Jerusalem as long as we could, against incomparably superior odds and stronger forces. We did not go under peacefully. And even if we were overcome in the end, we still have the advantage of Pascal's "thinking reed."
So it was that, excited, unkempt, and mud-spattered, at a quarter past ten in the morning, clutching a bunch of chrysanthemums and shivering with cold, Fima rang Ted and
Yacl's doorbell. When Yael came to the door, wearing gray corduroy trousers and a burgundy sweater, he said to her without any embarrassment:
"I happened to be walking past and I decided to look in just for a minute, to wish you a good Sabbath. I hope I'm not disturbing you? Shall I come back tomorrow? I've got the painters in next week. Never mind. I brought you some flowers for the Sabbath. Can I come inside for a minute or two?"
28. IN ITHACA, ON THE WATER'S EDGE
"ALL RIGHT," SAID YAEL, "COME IN. JUST BEAR IN MIND THAT I'VE got to go out shortly. Hang on, let mc button your shirt properly. Tell me, when did you change it last?"
Fima said:
"You and I have to talk."
Yael said:
"Not again."
He followed her into the kitchen. On die way he peeked into the bedroom. He was vaguely hoping to see himself still sleeping in the bed since the night before last. But the bed had been made and spread with a dark blue woollen counterpane. On either side of it were twin lamps on matching bedside tables, and on each table a solitary book and, as in a hotel, a glass of water and a note pad and pencil. There were even identical alarm clocks.
Fima said:
"Dimi isn't well. We can't go on pretending there's nothing the matter with him. You'd better put the flowers in water; they're for you, for the Sabbath. I bought them from a settler. Besides which, it's your birthday around the end of February. You wouldn't make me a cup of coffee, would you? I've walked all the way from Kiryat Yovel and I'm half frozen to death. My upstairs neighbor tried to murder his wife at five this morning: I rushed upstairs to help and only made a fool of myself. Never mind. I've come to talk to you about Dimi. The other night, when you went out and I looked after him..."