Fima (17 page)

Fima's eyes explored the recovery room through die open door, the reception area, the desk, as though he was looking for an answer to her question. An air conditioner. Reproductions of a Degas and a Modigliani. Two unpretentious plants in hydroponic gravel. A white fluorescent tube. Pale green wall-to-wall carpet. A clock with Roman numerals. A telephone. A combined coat and umbrella stand. A basket full of magazines. A few magazines lying on the table. A blue leaflet: "Osteoporosis—Accelerated Deterioration of the Bones: A Guide for Women. Which women are especially vulnerable? High-risk groups: Underweight women. Women with fine bone structure. Women who have had their ovaries removed. Women who have undergone radiation therapy and ceased to produce estrogen. Women who have never been pregnant. Women with a family history of the condition. Women who have been on a low-calcium diet. Women who smoke. Women who do not take sufficient physical exercise, or whose consumption of alcohol is excessive, or who suffer from hyperthyroidism."

He peered at another explanatory leaflet, in purple this time, on the table in front of him. "My Little Secret the Menopause: Hormone-Replacement Therapy. What is menopause? What are female hormones and how are they produced? What are the characteristic signs of the onset of menopause? What are the changes resulting from decreased production of female hormones? Comparative graph of estrogen and progesterone. What are hot flashes and when can you expect them? What is the connection between estrogen, high blood-fat levels, and heart disease? Is it possible to improve your ability to cope emotionally with the changes in your body at this time of life?"

Fima contented himself with reading the main headings. Tears of compassion suddenly flooded his eyes, not for a specific woman, Nina, Yael, Annette, Tamar, but for womanhood in general. The separation of humankind into two sexes struck him as an act of cruelty and an irreparable injustice. He felt that he had a share in this injustice and was therefore partly to blame, because he had sometimes unintentionally benefited from its consequences. Then he thought for a while about the punctuation of the leaflet and how it could be improved. Whoever left these leaflets here foolishly forgot that men sometimes come to the clinic, including religious men: problems of infertility and so forth. Pamphlets like these might embarrass them. Women might even be embarrassed, waiting and watching a man reading this kind of literature. Then he recalled that it was he himself who put the pamphlets out: he had never looked at them before. Also, despite the risk of embarrassment or tactlessness, various pictures, ornaments, and souvenirs were displayed on the walls and shelves bearing messages of thanks from grateful patients. They signed their dedications only with their initials or with their first name and the first letter of the surname, like that brass dish from Carmela L., "in eternal gratitude to the dedicated and wonderful staff." Fima had not forgotten this Carmela, because one day he heard that she had killed herself. Even though she always struck him as somebody outstandingly courageous and cheerful. The mayor of Jerusalem ought to ban the use of the word "eternal," at least within the city limits.

He began to comb the map of Africa in his mind from north to south, from Egypt to Namibia, and then again from east to west, from Madagascar to Mauretania, looking for the country that was holding up Tamar's crossword puzzle. While he did so, he conjured up a vision of Gad Eitan, the arrogant catlike Viking, as a miserable unloved child wandering forlornly through the jungles and deserts of Africa. He could not find the answer. But he asked himself whether those who came after us, Yoezer and his contemporaries, living here in Jerusalem a hundred years from now, would also be solving crossword puzzles. Would they too suffer the humiliation of unrequited love? Would they button their shirts wrong? Would they be condemned to a lack of estrogen? Would abandoned children in a hundred years continue to roam forlornly around the Equator? Fima could feel sadness gripping him. In his sadness he was ready to lean over and hug Tamar. To press her wide face to his chest. To stroke her beautiful hair, which was gathered in a chaste bun at the back, like a pioneer's in the previous generation. If he were to suggest that she sleep with him here and now, on the sofa in the recovery room, she would no doubt turn red and white in alarm, but in the end she would not refuse him. After all, they would be alone till four o'clock at least. He could give her more pleasure than she had ever known in her life, and draw forth laughter, pleas, sobs, whispered requests, low groans of surprise, sounds that would produce in him too the sweetest pleasure he knew: the joy of altruism. So what if she was not pretty? Good-looking women only made him feel humble and submissive. Only the unwanted and rejected were capable of igniting in him that spark of generosity that always fueled his desire. But what if she wasn't protected? What if she got pregnant here, of all places, in this abortion inferno? Instead of love he offered her an orange, though he omitted to check first that there was another one left in the drawer under his counter. He startled her by adding that her light-blue skirt flattered her figure and she should wear it more often. And he thought her hair was lovely.

Tamar said:

"Stop it, Fima. It's not funny."

Fima said:

"I suppose it's like a fish: it's only when it's lifted out of the water for the first time that it realizes it needs to be in the water to live. Never mind. I just want to tell you I wasn't joking. I meant exactly what I said about the light blue and your hair."

"You're rather a darling yourself," Tamar said timidly. "You're very knowledgeable, you're a poet and all that. A good man. The trouble is, you're a child. It's just incredible how childish you are. Sometimes I feel like coming around in the morning and shaving you myself so you don't cut yourself, your cheeks and your chin. Look, you've done it again today. You're nothing but a baby."

After that they sat facing each other and hardly spoke. She concentrated on her crossword while he looked at an old copy of
Woman
that he picked out of the basket. He found an article about an ex-call girl who had married a handsome Canadian millionaire and then left him for a group of Bratslavan Hasidim in Safed.

After a silence Tamar said:

"I've just remembered. Gad asked us to clean and tidy his room. And Wahrhaftig said to sterilize the forceps and speculums and boil the towels and gowns. Only I don't feel like moving. I'll just finish this crossword first."

"Forget it," Fima said enthusiastically. "Just you sit there quietly like a queen, and I'll do it all. It'll be all right, you'll see."

At that he stood up and went into Dr. Eitan's room, holding the duster. First he changed the roll of paper sheets, which felt pleasantly rough to his fingertips. Then he tidied the drugs cupboard, pondering on his father's anecdote about the length and width of railway tracks. He discovered he had a soft spot for the Israeli representative: in refusing to give way to his U.S. counterpart, he had delivered a devastating reply. It was only on the surface that it appeared funny: in fact, it was the American's position that was ridiculous. As if there was any sense in his implied claim that in an international gathering of railway chiefs each delegate's speech should be in direct relation to the length of track in his country. Such a crude approach was both morally untenable and logically absurd. While he was pursuing this line of thought further, he absent-mindedly attempted to take his own blood pressure with the device he found on Eitan's desk. Perhaps it was because he had remarked jokingly to Tamar that Gad Eitan may not have been feeling well the day before, since he had failed to tyrannize her. But Fima's efforts to bind the rubber tube, phylactery-like, around his arm with his free hand were unsuccessful, and he abandoned the attempt. He contemplated a colored poster on the wall: a humorous picture of a good-looking young man with a pregnant tummy holding a plump baby in his arms, the two of them beaming with joy. The wording read: "Materna 160—
your
vitamin supplement. Easy to take. Odorless. Tasteless. The leading product in the field. Widely endorsed by expectant mothers in the USA. Available strictly on medical prescription only." One of the two words, "strictly" and "only," was redundant, Fima mused, but for some reason he could not decide which to delete. The expression "leading product" struck him as crude, while "widely endorsed by expectant mothers" was positively offensive.

Moving on, he flicked an imaginary speck of dust from the examination couch. He struggled against the sudden urge to lie down with his legs apart for a minute or two, just to experience the sensation. He was certain there must be a mistake in Tamar's crossword: the only country he could think of in Africa with eleven letters was South Africa, but that didn't fit because it didn't have two E's. As though if it did have two E's, everything there would be perfect!

Fima eyed the stainless-steel speculums intended for taking cervical smears. When he imagined to himself the mysterious entrance exposed and dilated by means of the metal jaws, he felt a dull pang of revulsion in his stomach. He made a sound like an intake of breath through clenched teeth, as though he had been scalded but was determined not to shriek. Laid out with obsessive precision beside the speculums were long-bladed scissors, forceps, IUDs hermetically sealed in sterile plastic. To the left behind the doctor's desk, on a small trolley, stood the suction pump that was used, Fima knew, to terminate pregnancy by means of suction. His guts went into spasm at the grim thought that this was a kind of enema in reverse, and that womanhood was an irreparable injustice.

And what did they do with the fetuses? Put them in a plastic bag and drop them into the trash cans that he or Tamar emptied at the end of the day? Food for alley cats? Or did they flush them down the toilet and rinse with disinfectant? The snows of yesteryear. If the light within you darkens, it is written, how great is the darkness.

On a little stand was the resuscitation equipment, an oxygen bottle and an oxygen mask. Nearby was the anesthetic equipment. Fima switched on the electric radiator and waited for the elements to glow red. He counted the drip bags, trying to understand the formula printed on them, glucose and sodium chloride. With his duster poised in his hand he reflected on how anesthesia and resuscitation, fertility and death, rubbed shoulders with each other within this little room. There was something absurd, something unbearable about it, but what it was he could not say.

After a moment he pulled himself together and caressed the screen of the ultrasound machine with his duster. It did not seem much different from the screen of Ted's computer. When Ted had asked him how to say "deadline" in Hebrew, he had not been able to think of the answer. The only equivalent he could think of sounded artificial and anemic. "Tasteless and odorless," like the leading product that was widely endorsed by expectant mothers in the USA. Meanwhile he upset a neat pile of transparent plastic gloves made by a firm called Pollack, each encased in a sterile wrapping that was similarly transparent. As he carefully remade the pile, he asked himself what it meant, this transparency that was so prevalent here, as if it were an aquarium.

Eventually he made his way to the utility room, a kind of open cubicle formed by closing in a balcony with opaque glass. He fed a heap of towels into the washing machine, pushed his duster in too, read and reread the instructions, and surprised himself by getting the machine to work. To the left of the washing machine stood the sterilizer, with the instructions printed on a panel in English: 200° centigrade, 110 minutes. Fima decided not to put this machine on yet, even though it contained a couple of pairs of scissors and several forceps, as well as some stainless-steel bowls. Perhaps it was because the temperatures struck him as lethal. Going into the lavatory, he inhaled with a strange pleasure the pungent cocktail of disinfectant smells. He tried to empty his bladder but failed, perhaps because of his thoughts about drowned infants. Angrily he gave up, cursed his penis, zipped up, returned to Tamar, and, resuming their earlier conversation, said: "Why don't you try breaking off contact? Just ignore his rudeness? Signal nothing from now on except utter indifference? I dusted and tidied everything and put the washing machine on. As if he was thin air, that's the way to treat him."

"How can I, Fima? I'm in love with him. Why can't you understand? But there is one thing I ought to do, really: instead of looking glum, I ought to slap his face. Sometimes I have a feeling he's just waiting for me to do it. I think it might do him good."

"The truth is"—Fima grinned—"he's earned himself an honest slap from you. What is it Wahrhaftig says: 'like in a civilized country.' I'd really enjoy seeing that. Even if in principle I'm not keen on violence. There, I've found it for you."

"Found what for me?"

"Your African country. Try Sierra Leone. I didn't put the sterilizer on because it was almost empty. A waste of electricity."

Tamar said:

"Stop loving him. That's the only thing that would save me. Stop just like that. But how do you do it? You know everything, Fima. Do you know that too?"

He laughed, shrugged his shoulders, muttered something, regretted it, finally pulled himself together and said:

"What do I understand of love? Once I used to think that love is the point where cruelty and compassion meet. Now I think that's idle chatter. Seems to me now I never understood anything. I comfort myself by reflecting that apparently other people understand even less than I do. It's all right, Tamar, just cry, don't hold back, it'll make you feel better. I'll make you a glass of tea. Never mind. In a hundred years love and suffering will go the way of the dinosaurs, along with blood feuds, crinolines, and whalebone corsets. Men and women will mate by exchanging tiny electrochemical impulses. There will be no mistakes. Do you want a biscuit with it?"

After making the tea, and after some hesitation, he told her the story about the conference of railway chiefs, and he explained why in his opinion Mr. Cohen was right and Mr. Smith was wrong, until she smiled faintly through her tears. In the drawer of his desk he found a pencil sharpener, a pencil, some paper clips, a ruler and a paperknife, but there were no more oranges, and no biscuits. Tamar said it didn't matter, thanks. She was feeling better already. He was always so goodhearted. Her projecting Adam's apple seemed not so much funny as tragic. Because of this tragic feeling he began to doubt whether those to come, Yoezer and his friends, would really manage to live more rational lives than ours. At most, cruelty and stupidity would adopt subtler and more sophisticated forms. What use are jet-propelled vehicles to someone who is aware that his place docs not know him?