Amos Oz - Fima

From his window Fima watched the sun straining to free itself from the clouds. An elusive change was coming over the streets and the hills. Not so much a brightening as a slight quivering of hues, as though the air itself were smitten with hesitations or doubts. All the things that filled the lives of the group — Uri, Tsvi, Teddy, and the rest of them — the things that stirred them to longing or enthusiasm, seemed to Fima as forlorn as the dead leaves rotting under the bare mulberry tree in the garden. There is a forgotten promised land somewhere here — no, not a land, not promised, not even really forgotten, but something calling to you. He asked himself whether he would care if he died today. The question did not arouse anything in him: neither apprehension nor desire. Death seemed as boring as one of Wahrhaftig's stories. Whereas his daily life was as predictable and weary as his father's moralizing. In his head he suddenly agreed with the old man, not about the identity of the Indians, but when he said that the days go by without joy or purpose. The shlemiel and his friend did indeed deserve pity rather than ridicule. But what were they to him? Surely he, Fima, was full of unbelievable powers, and it was only tiredness that made him put off exercising them. Like someone waiting for the precise timing. Or for a blow to crack the inner crust. He could, for example, drop his job at the clinic, extract a thousand dollars from the old man, and sail away on a cargo boat to start a new life. In Iceland. In Crete. In Safed. He could shut himself up in that guesthouse in Magdiel and write a play. Or a confession. He could devise a political program, pick up some followers, and start a new movement that would shatter the mood of indifference and sweep through the public like wildfire. Or he could join one of the existing parties, apply himself to public activities for five or six years, moving from branch to branch, casting new light on the national situation until even the most stolid hearts were jolted, and eventually he would get his hands on the tiller and bring peace to the land. In 1977 a private citizen named Lange or Longe had managed to get himself elected to the New Zealand parliament, and by 1982 he held the reins of power. Or else Fima could fall in love, or get involved in his father's business and turn the cosmetics factory into the nucleus of an industrial conglomerate. Or he could clamber up the academic ladder, overtake Tsvi and his friends, get a chair, and start a new school. He could take Jerusalem by storm with a new book of poems. What a ridiculous expression, "take Jerusalem by storm." Or win back Yael. And Dimi. Or he could sell this ruin and use the money to restore an abandoned house on the outskirts of a remote village in the hills of Upper Galilee. Or do the opposite: bring in builders, carpenters, decorators, renovate the whole flat, send the bill to his father, and open a new chapter.

The sun suddenly came out of the fleeting clouds above Gilo and cast a tender, precious light on one of the hills. This time Fima did not find any exaggeration in the expression "precious light," but he chose to discard it. Not before saying the words aloud and feeling a flush of inner response and pleasure. He went on to say the words "sharp and smooth," and again he experienced enjoyment mixed with mockery. A sliver of glass caught fire below him in the garden, as though it had found the way and was signaling to him to follow. In his mind Fima repeated his father's words. Snows of yesteryear. A handful of dust. Somehow instead of saying "snows of yesteryear," he said "bones of yesteryear."

What did the lizard, immobile on the wall, and the cockroach under the kitchen sink have in common, and how did they differ? Seemingly, neither of them wasted the treasure of life. Even if they too were subject to Baruch Nomberg's iron rule about living without sense and dying without desire. But at least without fantasizing about seizing power or bringing peace to the land.

Stealthily, Fima opened his window, taking great care not to startle the meditative reptile. Even though his friends, and he himself, considered him to be a clumsy oaf, he managed to open it without a squeak. He was certain now that the creature was focusing on some point in space that he too ought to be looking at. From what remote province of evolution's realm, from what dim, primeval landscape replete with volcanos gushing clouds of smoke and with jungles and misty vapors rising from the ground long before language and knowledge came into being, whole eons before all those kings and prophets and saviors who once roamed these hills, came this creature that now stared at Fima from a distance of not more than three feet with a kind of anxious affection? Like a distant relation concerned about your health. Yes, a perfect little dinosaur, shrunk to the size of a yard lizard. Fima seemed to intrigue the creature, otherwise why was it moving its head to left and right, slowly, as if to say: I'm really surprised at you. Or as if regretting the fact that Fima was acting unwisely but that there was no way of helping him.

And truly it is a distant relation: there is no doubting that it belongs to a remote branch of the family. Between you and me, pal, and between both of us and Trotsky, there is much more in common than divides us: head neck spine curiosity appetite limbs sexual desire the ability to tell light from darkness and cold from warmth, ribs lungs old age digestive and secretory systems nerves to perceive pain metabolism memory sense of danger a ramifying maze of blood vessels a reproductive mechanism and a mechanism for limited regeneration programmed ultimately for self-destruction. Also a heart functioning as a complex pump and a sense of smell and an instinct for self-preservation and a talent for escape and concealment and camouflage and also direction-finding systems and a brain, and apparently also loneliness. There arc so many things we could talk about, compare, learn from each other, and teach each other. Perhaps we should also take into account an even more remote kinship that links the three of us to the vegetable kingdom. Lay your hand on a fig leaf, for instance, or a vine leaf: Only a blind person would deny the similarity of form, the spread of the fingers, the branching vessels and sinews, whose function it is to distribute nourishment and eliminate waste matter. And who can say whether behind this kinship there does not lurk an even subtler one between all of us and the minerals in particular or the inanimate world in general. Every living cell is made up of a mass of inanimate substances which are not really inanimate at all but are constantly pulsing with infinitesimal electrical charges. Electrons. Neutrons. Perhaps there too is a pattern of male and female that can neither merge nor separate? Fima smiled. It would be best, he decided, to come to terms with young Yoezer, standing at this window in a hundred years' time, staring at his own lizard. I shall matter to him less than a grain of salt. Perhaps something of me, a molecule, an atom, a neutron, will actually be present in this room, possibly indeed in a grain of salt. Assuming people still use salt a hundred years from now.

And why shouldn't they?

Dimi is the only person I might be able to talk to about these fantasies.

At any rate, better to fill his head with prophets and lizards and vine leaves than bombs made out of nail varnish.

In an instant the lizard had wriggled away and hidden itself inside or behind the gutter. It had disappeared, sharp and smooth. Fauré's Requiem ended and was followed by Borodin's Polovetsian Dances, which Fima did not like. And the brightening light was beginning to hurt his eyes. He dosed the window and began to look for a sweater, but he was too late to save the electric kettle, which had boiled dry some time before and now smelled of smoke and burned rubber. Fima would have to choose between taking it to be mended on his way to work and buying a new one.