Amos Oz - Fima

"Your problem, pal," he said to himself.

He chewed a heartburn tablet and opted for freedom. He called the clinic and told Tamar he would not be coming in today. No, he wasn't ill. Yes, he was sure. Everything was perfectly okay. Yes, a personal matter. No, there was nothing wrong and he didn't need any help. Thanks anyway, and please say I'm sorry. He looked in the phone book, and, lo and behold, under The found Tadmor, Annette and Yeroham, in one of the suburbs, Mevaseret.

It was Annette herself who answered. Fima said:

"I'm sorry to bother you. It's the reception clerk from yesterday. Efraim. Fima. Do you remember? We chatted at the clinic. I thought…"

Annette remembered it well. She said she was delighted. And suggested meeting in town. "Shall we say in an hour? An hour and a half? If that suits you, Efraim? I knew you'd call today. Don't ask me how. I just had a feeling. There was something, well, unfinished between us yesterday. So, shall we say an hour then? At the Savyon? If I'm a little late, don't give up."

HE WAITED FOR A QUARTER OF AN HOUR AT A TABLE TO ONE SIDE in the café, then ordered coffee and cake. At a nearby table sat a right-wing member of the Knesset with a slim, good-looking, bearded youth who looked to Fima like an activist for the Jewish settlements in the Territories. The youth was saying:

"You are eunuchs too. You've forgotten where you came from and who put you where you are."

They lowered their voices.

Fima remembered how he had left Nina's house the previous night, how he had disgraced himself with her, how he had disgraced himself in Ted's study, how he had shamed himself and Yael in the hall in the dark. In fact, it would be quite nice to pick an argument with these two conspirators now. He could easily tear them to shreds. He guessed that Annette Tadmor had changed her mind, thought better of it, would not keep their date. Why should she? Her full, rounded form, her misery, her plain cotton frock like a schoolgirl's uniform, all stirred in him a hint of desire mingled with self-mockery: Just as well she changed her mind; she spared you another disgrace.

The young settler stood up and in two long strides he was at Fima's table. Fima was startled to see that the youngster had a gun in his belt.

"Excuse me, arc you by any chance Mr. Prag, the lawyer?"

Fima considered the question, and for a moment he was tempted to answer in die affirmative. He'd always had a soft spot for Prag.

"I don't think so," he said.

The settler said:

"We've arranged to meet someone we've never seen. I thought perhaps it was you. I'm sorry."

"I'm not," Fima declared forcefully, as though firing the first shot in a civil war, "one of you. I think you're all a plague."

The young man, with an innocent, sweet smile and a look suggesting Jewish solidarity, said:

"Why not save expressions like that for the enemy? It was groundless hatred that brought down the Temple. It wouldn't hurt all of us to try a little groundless love for a change."

A delicious argumentative thrill went through Fima like wine, and he had a devastating reply poised on his tongue, when he caught sight of Annette in the doorway, looking around vaguely, and he was almost disappointed. But he was obliged to wave to her and drop the settler. She apologized for being late. As soon as she was sitting opposite him, he said that she had arrived just in time to rescue him from the Hezbollah. Or, rather, to rescue the Hezbollah from him. He went on to unburden himself of the essence of his views. Only then did he remember to apologize for ordering without waiting for her. He asked what she would like to drink. To his surprise she said a vodka, and then began to tell him all about her divorce, after twenty-six years of what she had considered to be an ideal marriage. At least on the surface. Fima ordered her vodka, and another coffee for himself. He also ordered some bread and cheese and an egg sandwich, because he still felt hungry. He continued to listen to her story, but with divided attention, because in the meantime a bald man in a gray raincoat had joined the next table. Presumably their Mr. Prag. Fima had the impression that the three of them were scheming to drive a wedge into the state prosecutor's department, and he tried to intercept their conversation. Hardly aware of what he was saying, he remarked to Annette that he could scarcely believe what she had said about being married for twenty-six years, because she didn't look a day over forty.

"That's sweet of you," Annette answered. "There's something about you that radiates kindness. I believe that if only I can tell the whole story from beginning to end to someone who's a good listener, it may help me to sort out my ideas. To grasp what's happened to me. Even though I know that once I've told the story, I'll understand even less. Have you the patience?"

The politician said:

"Let's try to play for time at least: it can't do any harm."

And the man in the raincoat, presumably the lawyer Prag:

"It may look very easy to you. In fact, it isn't."

"As if Yeri and I had been standing quietly for a long time on a balcony," Annette said, "leaning on the railing, looking down on the garden and the woods, shoulder to shoulder, and suddenly, without any warning, he grabs me and throws me off. Like an old crate."

Fima said:

"How sad."

Then he said:

"Terrible."

He laid his hand on hers, which lay clenched on the edge of the table, because there were tears in her eyes again.

"So we're agreed, then," the settler said. "Let's keep in touch. Just be careful of using the phone."

"Look," said Annette. "In novels, in plays, in films, there are always these mysterious women. Capricious, unpredictable. They fall in love like sleepwalkers and fly away like birds. Greta Garbo. Marlene Dietrich. Liv Ullmann. All sorts of femmes fatales. The secrets of the female heart. Don't make fun of me for drinking vodka in the middle of the day. After all, you don't look too happy yourself. Am I boring you?"

Fima called the waiter and ordered her another vodka. He ordered a bottle of mineral water and some more bread and cheese for himself. The three conspirators got up to leave. As they passed his table, the settler gave him a sweet, saintly smile, as though he could sec into his heart and forgave him. He said:

"Bye now, and all the best. Don't forget, when it comes to the crunch, we're all in the same boat."

In his mind Fima relocated this moment to a coffeehouse in Berlin in the last days of the Weimar Republic, putting himself in the role of martyr: Carl von Ossietzky, Kurt Tucholsky. Immediately he canceled the whole picture because the comparison was ridiculous, almost hysterical. To Annette he said:

"Take a good look at them. Those are the creatures that are dragging us all down."

Annette said:

"I'm already as low as I can go."

And Fima:

"Go on. You were talking about fatal women."

Annette emptied her second glass. Her eyes were gleaming, and a hint of coquetry slipped into her words:

"The nice thing about you, Efraim, is that I really don't mind what sort of impression I make on you. I'm not used to that. Generally, when I'm talking to a man the most important thing for me is what impression he has of me. It's never happened to me before to sit like this with a strange man and talk so freely about myself without getting all sorts of signals, if you know what I mean. Just one person talking to another. You're not offended?"

Fima unconsciously smiled when she used the expression "a strange man." She noticed his smile and beamed at him like a child consoled after tears. She said;

"What I meant was, not that you're not masculine, just that I can talk to you like a brother. We've had to put up with so much bullshit from the poets, with their Beatrices, their earth mothers, their gazelles, their tigresses, their sea gulls, their swans, and all that nonsense. Let me tell you, being a man strikes me as a thousand times more complicated than that. Or maybe it's not complicated at all, all that lousy bargaining. You give me sex, I'll give you a bit of tenderness. Or an impression of tenderness. Be a whore and a mother. A puppy by day and a kitten by night. Sometimes I have the feeling that men like sex but hate women. Don't be offended, Efraim. I'm just generalizing. There must be exceptions. Like you, for instance. I feel good now, the way you're listening to me quietly."