Fima (23 page)
"There you go again with your 'we.'" Tsvi chuckled. "You're a little too far out, Fima. Just make up your mind: Are we 'we' or aren't we? In a hanged man's house you shouldn't throw the rope after the bucket. Never mind. I'm sorry, but now I really must hang up and run. By the way, I heard that Uri will be back this weekend. Why don't we fix something up for Saturday night? See you."
"Of course we're not a nation," Fima insisted, deaf and aflame with self-righteousness. "We're a primitive tribe. Scum, that's what we arc. But those Germans, and the French and the British too, have no right to talk down to us. Compared to them we're saints. Not to mention the rest of them. Have you seen the paper today? The way Shamir went on yesterday in Netanya? And what they did to that old Arab at Ashdod Beach?"
When Tsvi apologetically hung up, Fima continued to harangue the indifferent, bloated gargle emanating from the phone:
"In any case, we've had it."
He was referring collectively to the state of Israel, the dovish left, himself, and his friend. But after putting the receiver down, he thought it over and changed his mind: we mustn't get hysterical. He nearly called Tsvi again to warn him against the despair and hysteria lurking all around nowadays. He felt ashamed of his rudeness to his long-standing friend, such a learned and intelligent man, and one of the last voices to have stayed sane. Even though he was somewhat saddened by the thought that this mediocre scholar should now be head of the department and sit on the same chair as his illustrious predecessors, compared to whom he was a pygmy. At which point Fima suddenly remembered how, eighteen months ago, when he was admitted to Hadassah Hospital to have his appendix removed, Tsvika had enlisted the help of his brother the doctor. He had also enlisted himself and Shula; in fact the two of them had hardly left Fima's bedside. When he was discharged, Tsvi, with the Gefens and Teddy, had organized round-the-clock shifts to take care of him, and he had run a high fever, behaved like a spoiled child, and pestered them endlessly. And now, here he was not only hurting Tsvi but also interrupting him in the middle of shaving and maybe making him late for his lecture at the university. And just when he was on the point of becoming head of the department too. This very evening, Fima decided, he would call him again. He would apologize, but he would still try to explain his position all over again. But this time with restraint and cold, sharp logic. And he wouldn't forget to send a kiss to Shula.
Fima hurried to the kitchen, because he had the impression that before his conversation with Tsvika he put the new electric kettle on to boil, and by now it had probably gone the way of its predecessor. Halfway there he was stopped by the ringing telephone and found himself drawn in two directions. After a moment's hesitation he picked up the phone and said to his father:
"Just a moment, Baruch. There's something burning in the kitchen."
Rushing in, he found the kettle alive and well, shining happily on the marble countertop. So it was yet another false alarm. But in his haste he knocked the black transistor radio off the shelf and broke it. Returning, panting, to the phone he said:
"Everything's okay. I'm listening."
It turned out that the old man just wanted to tell him that he had found some workmen, who would be arriving the following week to replaster and paint the flat. "They're Arabs from Abu Dis village, so from your point of view it's strictly kosher, Efraim." Which reminded the old man of a charming Hasidic story. Why, according to Jewish tradition, are the righteous in Paradise permitted to choose between feasting on the Leviathan or on the wild ox? The answer is that there may always be some ultrafussy Jew who will insist on eating fish because he can't rely on the kashrut of the Almighty himself.
He went on to explain to Fima the ostensible point and the true point of this joke, until Fima had the impression that his father's distinctive smell had managed to infiltrate the telephone wires: it was an East European cocktail, combining a whiff of perfume with a lungful of unaired quilts, a smell of boiled fish and carrots, and the fragrance of sticky liqueurs. He was filled with revulsion, which he was ashamed of, and with the ancient urge to provoke his father, to challenge everything that was sacred to him until he lost his temper. And he said:
"Listen, Dad. Listen carefully. First, about the Arabs. I've already explained to you a thousand times that I don't think they're great saints. Can't you understand that the difference between us is not about kosher or nonkosher, or about Hell and Paradise; it's simply a matter of common humanity—theirs and ours."
Baruch agreed at once:
"Naturally," he intoned in a Talmudic singsong, "nobody would deny that the Arab too is created in the divine image. Except the Arabs themselves, Fimuchka: to our regret they do not comport themselves like human beings created in the image of God."
Fima instantly forgot his solemn vow to refrain at all cost from political arguments with his father. He set out to explain, once and for all, passionately, that we must not become like the drunken Ukrainian carter who beat his horse to death when the beast stopped pulling his cart. Are the Arabs in the Territories our workhorses? What did you imagine, that they would go on hewing our wood and drawing our water forever and ever, amen? That they would be content to play the part of our domestic servants to all eternity? Are they not human beings too? Every Zambia and Gambia is an independent state nowadays, so why should the Arabs in the Territories continue come Hell or high water quietly scrubbing our shit-houses, sweeping our streets, washing dishes in our restaurants, wiping arses in our geriatric wards, and then saying thank you? How would you feel if the meanest Ukrainian anti-Semite planned a future like that for the Jews?
The phrase "domestic servants," or maybe it was "the meanest Ukrainian ami-Semite," reminded the old man of a story that was actually set in a small town in the Ukraine. As usual the narration dragged behind it a long train of explanations and morals.
Finally Fima gave up in despair and screamed that he didn't need any decorators anyway and that Baruch should stop poking his nose into his life all the time, subsidizing, plastering, matchmaking. "You may have forgotten, Dad, but I happen to be fifty-four years old."
When he had finished, the old man replied placidly:
"Very nice, my dear. Very nice. It seems I was wrong. I sinned, I erred, I transgressed. In that case I shall still try to find you a nice Jewish painter. Without any taint of colonial exploitation. Assuming that such a paragon still exists in our state."
"That's just the point," Fima crowed triumphantly. "In the whole of this miserable country of ours you can't find a single Jewish builder or male nurse or gardener. That's what your Territories have done to the Zionist dream! The Arabs are building the Land for us while we sit back gorging ourselves on the Leviathan and the wild ox. And then we go out and murder them, and their children too, just because they have the gall not to be happy and grateful for the privilege of unblocking drains for the chosen people till the Messiah comes."
"The Messiah," Baruch reflected sadly. "Perhaps he is already among us. Some say he is. And maybe it's just because of fine fellows like you that he hasn't made himself known yet. There's a story about Reb Uri of Strelisk, the Holy Seraph, the grandfather of Uri Tsvi Greenberg the poet, who was once wandering lost in the forest..."
"Let him wander!" Fima cut in. "Let him stay lost forever! And the grandson too. And the Messiah as well, for that matter, to say nothing of his ass."
The old man coughed and cleared his throat, like an old teacher about to hold forth, but instead of lecturing Fima he asked sadly: "So that's your humanism? That's the voice of the peace camp? The lover of mankind hopes that his fellow man will be lost in the forest? The defender of Islam prays that saintly Jews will perish?"
Fima was momentarily abashed. He regretted wishing misfortune on the rabbi lost in the forest. But he quickly rallied and counterattacked with a surprise flanking movement:
"Listen to this, Baruch. Listen carefully. Apropos of Islam. I want to read you word for word what it says here in the encyclopedia about India."
"India yourself!" chorded the old man. "But what's India got to do with it? The demon that's got into you and your friends, Fimuchka, isn't from India; it's all too European. It's a crying shame that precious young people like you have suddenly decided to sell the entire Jewish heritage for a mess of pottage of sham European pacifism. You want to be Jesus of Nazareth. You want to teach the Christians a lesson in turning the other cheek. You love our enemies and you hate Uri Tsvi and even his grandfather the Holy Seraph. But we've had it up to here with the famous European humanism. Our backs still carry the scars of your dear Western civilization. We've been on the receiving end of it, all the way from Kishinev to Auschwitz. Let me tell you a poignant tale about a cantor who was once marooned—it shouldn't happen to us!—on a desert island, and at the High Holy Days of all times. There stands a solitary Jew in the midst of the world in the midst of the times and wonders..."
"Hold on a minute," Fima erupted, "you with your wondering cantors. Chmielnicki and Hitler equal Western civilization the way India equals an Arab state. What a ridiculous idea! If it weren't for Western civilization, for your information, my dear sir, there would not be left of us one that pisseth against the wall. Who do you think sacrificed tens of millions of lives to defeat Hitler? Wasn't it Western civilization? Including Russia? Including America? Who was it who saved us, your holy rabbi from Strelisk? Was it the Messiah who gave us a state? Is it Uri Tsvi who makes us a present of tanks and jet planes and pours three billion dollars on us every year, as pocket money, so that we can carry on behaving like hooligans? Make a note of this, Dad: Every time in history that the Jews have gone out of their minds and started navigating their way through this world with messianic charts instead of real, universal ones, millions of them have paid with their lives. Apparently we still haven't managed to get it into the famous Jewish head that the Messiah is really our exterminating angel. That's it in a nutshell, Baruch: the Messiah is our angel of death. So it's perfectly okay to disagree about where we want to go; that is a legitimate subject for argument. But on one unshakable condition: Wherever we decide to go, we must use real, universal charts, not Messianic ones."
The old man suddenly gave a little whistle, as though in amazement at Fima's wisdom or his own foolishness. He coughed, he groaned, he may have intended to interject a few words, but Fima was already carried away: "Why the hell are we all brainwashed into believing that the concept of human equality is something alien to Judaism, a flawed goyish commodity, tainted Christian pacifism, whereas the muddle-headed mishmash brewed up by some messianic rabbi, the grandfather of Gush Emunim, who has cobbled together a patchwork of scraps from Hegel, Judah Halevi, and Rabbi Loew of Prague, is suddenly considered to be the pure elixir of Judaism, straight from Mount Sinai? What is this? Sheer lunacy! Thou shalt do no murder' is alien to Judaism, according to you, it's untouchable? Christian pacifism. Whereas Rabbi Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, that proto-Nazi, is all of a sudden the genuine Jewish heritage! Let me tell you, Dad, Yosef Haim Brenner had more Jewishness in his little finger than all your frock-coated fossils and your psychopaths with their knit skullcaps. One group pisses on the state and says it's illegitimate because the Messiah hasn't come yet; the other group pisses on the state and says it's just a temporary scaffolding that we can dismantle now that the Messiah's standing at the gate. Both groups piss on Thou shalt do no murder' because they've got more important fish to fry: banning autopsies, or discovering the tomb of our ancestress Jezebel."
"Fimuchka," his father sighed, "have a heart. Fm an old Jew. All these mysteries are beyond me. I may be an anachronism—who knows? My own dear son is like a golem that has turned against its creator. Don't be angry, my dear; I only used the word 'golem' because you saw fit to mention Rabbi Loew of Prague. I liked it a lot, as a matter of fact, what you said about the universal charts. Amen, so be it. You scored a bull's-eye there. The only problem is, maybe Your Reverence can tell us which shop you go to buy such charts. Can you enlighten me? Will you do your father a real favor? No? Never mind. I shall tell you a deep and wonderful thing that Rabbi Loew of Prague once said as he walked past the cathedral. By the way, do you know the original meaning of 'real favor'?"
"All right, all right," Fima conceded. "So be it, then. You spare me the story of Rabbi Loew and in exchange I'll give in over those painters of yours. Send them on Sunday morning, and that's that." And to forestall his father's reply, he hurriedly employed the words his friend had uttered earlier: "We'll talk about the other things when we see each other. I really must run along now."
He intended to chew a heartburn tablet and go down to the shopping center to have the broken radio fixed or to replace it if necessary. But suddenly there appeared before his eyes, so vividly that he could almost touch it, the image of a frail, myopic East European Jew wrapped in a prayer shawl, wandering in a dark forest, muttering biblical verses to himself, hurting his feet on the sharp stones, while softly and silently the snow fell, a night bird gave a sinister shriek, and wolves howled in the darkness.
Fima was gripped by fear.
The moment he put the receiver down, it occurred to him that he had not asked his father how he was. He had forgotten his intention of taking him to the hospital for tests. He had even forgotten to notice whether the old man still had a whistle in his chest. He fancied he had heard a little squeak, but he was not certain: it might have been nothing but a slight cold. Or his father might just have been humming a high-pitched Hasidic tune. Or perhaps the noise had come from some fault in the telephone line. All systems were running down in this country and no one cared. This too was a byproduct of our obsession with the Territories. The ironic truth was that, as some future historian would discover, it was really Nasser who won the 1967 war. Our victory condemned us to destruction. The messianic genie that Zionism had managed to seal in the bottle popped out the day the ram's horn was sounded at the Wailing Wall. He laughs longest. Moreover, to pursue this line of reasoning resolutely to its bitter end, without flinching from the most unpalatable truth, perhaps the ultimate conclusion was that it was really Hitler, not Nasser, who had the last laugh. When all's said and done, he continues to persecute the Jewish people ruthlessly. Everything that is happening to us now has its origin one way or another with Hitler. Now what was I going to do? Make a phone call. It was something urgent. But who to? What about? What is there left to say? I also am lost in die forest. Just like that old saint.