4. HOPES OF OPENING A NEW CHAPTER
THE PRIVATE CLINIC IN KIRYAT SHMUEL WAS APPROACHED through the garden behind the building, along a pathway paved with Jerusalem stone. Now that it was winter, the path was covered with slippery rain-soaked pine needles. Fima was totally absorbed in considering whether a frozen bird he had just spotted on a low branch could hear the thunder that was rolling from west to east; the bird's head and beak were buried deep in the plumage of its wing. Struck by a sudden doubt, he turned back to see if it really was a bird or if it was just a wet pine cone. That was how he came to slip and fall to his knees. He stayed crouching, not because he was in pain, but because of self-mocking pleasure at his own predicament. Softly he said, Well done, pal.
For some reason he felt he had deserved this fall as a sort of logical sequel to the minor miracle he had experienced outside the Hilton Hotel on his way here.
When he eventually managed to get to his feet, he stood absent-mindedly in the rain, looking like someone who does not know where he has come from or where he must go. Raising his head toward the upper floors, he saw nothing but closed shutters or blank curtained windows. Here and there on a balcony was a geranium in a pot. The rain had given them a sensual sparkle that brought to his mind the painted lips of a vulgar woman.
Beside the entrance to the clinic there was an elegantly restrained plate of black glass inscribed in silver lettering: DR. WAHRHAFTIG DR. EITAN CONSULTANT GYNECOLOGISTS. For the thousandth time Fima asked himself why there were not specialists for male disorders too. He also objected to the Hebrew, which contained a construction that the language does not tolerate. Then he found himself ridiculous for thinking such an absurd sentence. And felt shame and confusion as he recalled how indignantly he had reacted to the news, indignant not because of the death of an Arab boy in the Jebeliyeh refugee camp but because of the phrase "killed by a plastic bullet."
As if it's the bullets that do the killing.
And was he getting soft in the head himself?
He summoned his cabinet for another meeting in the dilapidated classroom. At the door he posted a burly sentry in khaki shorts, Arab headdress, and knit cap. Some of his ministers sat on the bare floor at his feet, others leaned against the wall, which was covered with educational diagrams. In a few well-chosen words Fima presented them with the need to choose between the territories conquered in 'sixty-seven and our very identity. Then, while they were still buzzing excitedly, he called for a vote, which he won, and immediately gave them his detailed instructions.
Before we won the Six Days' War, he mused, the state of the nation was less dangerous and destructive than it is now. Or perhaps it wasn't really less dangerous, just less demoralizing and less depressing. Was it really easier for us to face up to the danger of annihilation than to sit in the dock facing the accusations of international public opinion? The danger of annihilation gave us pride and a sense of unity, whereas sitting in the dock now is gradually breaking our spirit. But that's not the right way to state the alternatives. In fact, sitting in the dock may be breaking the spirit only of the secular intelligentsia of Russian or Western origin, whereas the ordinary masses are not in the least nostalgic for the pride of David standing up to Goliath. Anyway, the expression "ordinary masses" is a hollow cliché. Meanwhile, because you fell, your trousers are covered with mud and the hands that are wiping them clean are also muddy and the rain is pouring down on your head. It is already five past one. However hard you try, you'll never get to work on time.
The clinic was two ground-floor flats joined together. The windows, guarded by arabesque grilles, looked out on a typical back garden, damp and deserted, shaded by dense pine trees around whose bases a few gray boulders sprouted. A rustle of treetops started at the slightest breeze. Now, with a strong wind blowing, Fima had a fleeting image of a remote village in Poland or one of the Baltic States, with storms shrieking through the surrounding forest, whipping across snowbound fields, assailing thatched cottage roofs, and making the church bells ring. And wolves howling not far away. In his head Fima already had a little story about this village, about Nazis, Jews, and partisans, which he might tell to Dimi this evening, in exchange for a ladybug in a jam jar or a spaceship cut out of orange peel.
From the second floor came the sounds of piano, violin, and cello being played by the three elderly women who lived there and gave private music lessons. They also probably gave recitals and played at memorial meetings, at the presentation of a prize for Yiddish literature, at the inauguration of a community center or a daytime center for the elderly. Although Fima had worked at the clinic for several years now, their playing still wrung his heart, as though a cello deep inside him responded with its own mute sounds of longing to the one upstairs. As though a mystic bond was growing stronger with the passing years, between what was being done down here to women's bodies with stainless-steel forceps and the melancholy of the cello upstairs.
The sight of Fima, pudgy and disheveled, smiling sheepishly, with his hands and knees covered with mud, filled Dr. Wahrhaftig as usual with good humor mingled with affection and a strong urge to reprimand him. Wahrhaftig was a gentle, rather shy man, so emotional that he had difficulty holding back his tears at times, especially when anybody apologized to him and asked to be forgiven. Maybe that was why he cultivated a severe manner, and always tried to terrorize those around him by shouting rebukes at them. Rebukes that turned out to be mild and inoffensive.
"Hah! Your Excellency! Herr Major General von Nisan! Straight from the trenches, I see! We should pin a medal on you!"
"I'm a little late," Fima replied bashfully. "I'm sorry. I slipped on the path. It's so wet outside."
"Ach so!" roared Wahrhaftig. "Once more this fatal lateness! Once again force majeure!" And he recounted for the nth time the joke about the dead man who was late for his own funeral.
He was a stocky man with the build of a basso profundo, and his face had the florid, flabby look of an alcoholic, crisscrossed with an unhealthy network of blood vessels that were so near the surface, you could almost take his pulse by their throbbing. He had a joke for every occasion, invariably introduced with the phrase "There is a well-known story about." And he always burst out laughing when he got close to the punch line. Fima, who had already heard ad nauseam why the dead man was late for his own funeral, nevertheless let out a faint laugh, because he was fond of this tenderhearted tyrant. Wahrhaftig was constantly delivering long lectures in his stentorian voice about such subjects as the connection between your eating habits and your worldview, or about the "socialist" economy and how it encouraged idleness and fraud and was therefore unsuited to a civilized country. Wahrhaftig would utter these last words in a tone of mystical pathos, like a true believer praising the works of the Almighty.
"It's quiet here today," Fima remarked.
Wahrhaftig replied that they were expecting a famous artist any minute now with a minor obstruction of the tubes. The word "tubes," in its medical usage, reminded him of a well-known story, which he did not spare Fima.
Meanwhile, stealthily as a cat, Dr. Gad Eitan emerged from his office. He was followed by the nurse, Tamar Greenwich, who looked like an early pioneer, a woman of forty-five or so in a light-blue cotton dress with her hair pinned neatly back into what looked like a small ball of wool at the base of her skull. As a result of a pigment peculiarity one of her eyes was green and the other brown. She crossed the reception hall supporting a pale patient, whom she escorted to the recovery room.
Dr. Eitan, lithe and muscular, leaned on the counter, chewing gum with a leisurely motion of his jaws. He replied with a jut of the chin to Fima's greeting or to a question from Wahrhaftig, or perhaps to both at once. His watery blue eyes were fixed on a spot high above the reproduction Modigliani on the wall. With his self-satisfied expression and his thin blond mustache, he looked to Fima like an arrogant Prussian diplomat who has been posted against his will to Outer Mongolia. He allowed Wahrhaftig to finish another well-known story. Then
there was a silence, after which, like a lethargic leopard, almost without moving his lips, he said quietly:
"Let's cut the chatter and get on with it."
Wahrhaftig obeyed at once and followed him to the treatment room. The door closed behind them. A sharp, antiseptic whiff escaped between its opening and closing.
Fima washed his hands and made a cup of coffee for the patient in the recovery room. Then he made another cup for Tamar and one for himself, donned a short white coat, sat down behind his counter, and began to look through the ledger in which he kept track of patients' visits. Here too he wrote the numbers out in words, not figures. He noted down accounts that were settled or deferred, dates for laboratory tests and their results, and any alterations to appointments. He also managed the file cabinet that contained patients' medical records and details of prescriptions, ultrasound tests, and x-rays. This, with answering the telephone, was the sum total of his job. Apart from making coffee every couple of hours for the two doctors and the nurse, and occasionally also for a patient if her treatment had been painful.
Across the hall from his counter there was a small coffee table, two armchairs, a rug, on the walls a reproduction Degas and the Modigliani: the waiting area. Sometimes Fima would help a patient through the difficult period of waiting by engaging her in light conversation about some neutral subject such as the rising cost of living or a TV program that had been shown the previous evening. Most of the visitors, however, preferred to wait in silence, leafing through magazines, in which case Fima would bury his eyes in his papers and minimize his presence so as not to cause embarrassment. What went on behind the closed doors of the treatment rooms? What caused the groans that Fima sometimes heard or thought he heard? What did the various women's faces express when they arrived and when they left? What was the story that ended in this clinic? And the new story that began here? What was the male shadow behind this or that woman? And the child that would not be born—what sex was it? What would it have grown up to be? These things Fima tried at times to decipher, or to invent, with a struggle between revulsion and the feeling that he ought to participate, at least in his imagination, in every form of suffering. Sometimes womanhood itself struck him as being a crying injustice, almost a cruel illness that afflicted half the human race and exposed it to degradations and humiliations that the other half was spared. But sometimes a vague jealousy stirred inside him, a sense of deprivation or loss, as though he had been cheated of some secret gift that enabled them to relate to the world in a way that was barred to him forever. The more he thought about it, the less he was able to distinguish between his pity and his envy. The womb, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, breast feeding, even menstruation, even miscarriage and abortion—he tried to imagine them all, struggling over and over again to feel what he was not meant to feel. Sometimes, while he was thinking, he absently fingered his own nipples. They seemed a hollow joke, a sad relic. Then he was swept by a wave of profound pity for all men and women, as though the separation of the sexes was nothing but a cruel prank. He felt that the time had come to rise up and with sympathy and reason do something to put an end to it. Or at least minimize the suffering that resulted from it. Without being asked, he would get up, fetch a glass of cold water from the refrigerator, and with a faint smile hand it to a woman waiting her turn, and murmur, It'll be all right. Or, Have a drink, you'll feel better. Usually this provoked only mild surprise, but occasionally he generated a grateful smile, to which he replied with a nod, as if to say, It's the least I can do.
When he had free time between answering the telephone and keeping his records up to date, Fima would read a novel in English or a biography of a statesman. Generally, though, he did not read books, but devoured the two evening papers he had bought on the way, taking care not to miss even the short news items, the commentary, the gossip: embezzlement in the co-op in Safed, a case of bigamy in Ashkelon, a story of unrequited love in Kfar Saba. Everything concerned him. After scouring the papers, he would sit back and remember. Or convene cabinet meetings, dressing his ministers up as revolutionary guerrillas, lecturing them, prophesying rage and consolation, saving the children of Israel whether they wanted it or not, and bringing peace to the land.
Between treatments, when the doctors and the nurses emerged for their coffee break, Fima would sometimes suddenly lose his ability to listen. He would wonder what he was doing here, what he had in common with these strangers. And where he ought to be if not here. But he could find no answer to that question. Even though he felt, painfully, that somewhere someone was waiting for him, surprised he was so late. Then, after scrabbling for a long time in his pockets, he would find a heartburn tablet, swallow it, and continue scanning the newspapers in case he had missed what really mattered.
Gad Eitan was Alfred Wahrhaftig's ex-son-in-law: he had been married to Wahrhaftig's only daughter, who ran away to Mexico with a visiting poet she had fallen for while working at the Jerusalem Book Fair. Wahrhaftig, the founder of the clinic and the senior partner, held Gad Eitan in strange awe: he would lavish on him little gestures of submission and deference which he camouflaged with explosions of polite rage. Dr. Eitan, who although his particular specialty was infertility also served whenever necessary as the anesthetist, was an icy, taciturn man. He had a habit of staring long and hard at his fingers. As if he was afraid of losing them, or as if their very existence never ceased to amaze him. The fingers in question were well shaped and long, and wonderfully musical. He also moved like a drowsy wild beast, or one that was just waking up. At times a thin, chilly smile spread over his face: his watery eyes took no part in it. Evidently his coolness aroused in women a certain confidence and excitement, and an urge to shake him out of his indifference or to melt his cruelty. Eitan would ignore any hint of an overture, and respond to confessions on the part of a patient with a dry phrase such as "Well, yes, but there's no alternative" or "What can one do: these things happen."
In the middle of Wahrhaftig's stories Eitan would sometimes turn quickly through one hundred and eighty degrees, like the turret of a tank, and vanish on cat's paws through the door of his consulting room. It seemed as though all people, men and women alike, caused a faint revulsion in him. And because he had known for several years that Tamar was in love with him, he enjoyed occasionally firing an acerbic remark at her:
"What do you smell of" today?"
Or:
"Straighten your skirt, will you, and stop wasting your knees on us. We have to watch that kind of view at least twenty times a day."
This time he said:
"Would you kindly put that artist's vagina and cervix on my desk. Yes, the famous lady. Yes, the results of her tests. What did you think I meant? Yes, hers, I've no use for yours."
Tamar's eyes, the green left one and the brown right one, filled with tears. And Fima, with an air of someone rescuing a princess from the dragon's jaws, got up and placed the file in question on the doctor's desk. Eitan shot a vacant glance at him and then turned his icy eyes to his own fingers. Under the powerful theater lights his womanly fingers took on an unnatural pink glow: they almost looked transparent. He saw fit to aim another lethal salvo, at Fima:
"Do you happen to know what menstruation means? Then please tell Mrs. Licht, today—yes, on the phone—that I need to have her here exactly two days after she next menstruates. And if that doesn't sound nice on the phone, you can say two days after her next period. I don't care what you say. You can say after her festival, for all I care. The main thing is to fix an appointment for her accordingly. Thank you."
Wahrhaftig, like a man catching sight of a fire and hurrying over to throw the contents of the nearest bucket on it without stopping to check whether the bucket contains water or gasoline, intervened at this point:
"Festivals—that reminds me of a well-known story about Begin and Yasser Arafat."
And he embarked for the nth time on the story of how Begin's shrewdness once got the better of Arafat's villainy.
Eitan replied:
"I'd hang the pair of them."
"Gad's had a hard day," said Tamar.
And Fima added his own contribution:
"These are hard times everywhere. We spend all our time trying to repress what we're doing in the Territories, and the consequence is that the air's full of anger and aggression, and everybody's at everybody else's throat."
At this point Wahrhaftig asked what the difference was between Ramallah and Monte Carlo, and then launched into another anecdote. He started laughing heartily halfway between Monte Carlo and Ramallah. Then, remembering his position, he suddenly puffed himself up, flushed deep red with the network of veins throbbing in his cheeks, and thundered carefully:
"Please! The break is finished. Sorry. Fima! Tamar! Please close this beer garden right away! This whole country of ours is more Asian than Asia! Not even Asia! Africa! But at least in my clinic we are still working as in a civilized country." A superfluous exhortation, since by then Eitan had shrunk back to his room, Tamar had gone to wash her face, and Fima had not left his desk.
At half past five a tall, golden-haired woman in a beautiful black dress came out. She stopped at Firm's desk and asked, almost in a whisper, whether it showed. Whether she looked a fright. Fima, who had not heard the question, replied mistakenly to another one: