Fima - Amos Oz [112]
The word "thaw" reminded him that he had forgotten to light the heater. Bending down, he was relieved to discover that there was enough kerosene left. After lighting the heater, he felt the need to consult Tsvi Kropotkin before he sat down to compose his appeal. In his enthusiasm he did not care if he disturbed Tsvi in the middle of shaving again, because he felt his new idea was potentially fruitful and beneficial and indeed very urgent. But once again the telephone was silent. Fima thought the silence was, if anything, less deep than last night. A sort of intermittent rumbling sound, like the grinding of teeth, was almost audible. A moaning from the depths. Fima diagnosed faint signs of life, a first indication of recovery. He felt sure the instrument was not dead but merely in a very deep coma, and that now, even if it had not recovered consciousness, it was beginning to make a feeble response, a faint groan of pain, a slight pulse giving grounds for hope. Even taking into account the fact that the fridge had just started rumbling in the kitchen. It was therefore possible that the hope was not premature.
Even the expression "hawkish element" suddenly struck him as repugnant: it was wrong to characterize human beings as "elements." Besides which, he thought it was ridiculous to put the right-wing thinkers on the psychiatrist's couch: it was not as if our camp was the embodiment of sanity. We too are troubled by despair, frustration, and rage. We too are caught in an emotional tangle, no less than our opponents. No less than the Arabs. Besides which, the expression "our camp" is utterly ridiculous. What does "our camp" mean? The whole country is a front line, the whole nation an army. Everything is divided into camps. The forces of peace. The battalion of moderation. The shock troops of coexistence. The sentries of disarmament. The commando of the brotherhood of nations. The spearhead of reconciliation.
Instead of writing the appeal, Fima went and stood at the window to put his ideas in order. He watched the winter light spread like a noble material over the hilltops and slopes. He knew and loved the idea of "noble metals," although he had no idea which they were. Once, in his father's flat in Rehavia, Baruch and Dimi tried to inflict an elementary chemistry lesson on him. Fima, like a stubborn child, defended himself with wisecracks and wordplay until Dimi said, "Forget it, Granpa; it's not for him." And the two of them embarked without him into the realm of acid and alkali, which Fima loathed on account of his heartburn.
The light kissed the ridges, overflowed into the valleys, awakening in each tree and rock its dormant radiant quality that had been buried all these days under layers of gray, inanimate routine. As if here in Jerusalem thousands of years ago the earth had lost its power to renew itself from within. As if only the gracious touch of this enchanted light could restore to things, however ephemerally, the primordiality that had been eclipsed in days of old. Will Your Worship condescend to favor me with a slight nod of the head if I go down on my knees and offer my humble prayers of gratitude? Is there something that Your Worship wishes me to do? Is Your Worship interested in us at all? Why did you put us here? Why did you choose us? Why did you choose Jerusalem? Is Your Worship still listening? Is Your Worship smiling?
The ancient Aramaic phrases, such as "the days of old," "not of this world," "the concealed side," filled Fima with a sense of mystery and awe. For a moment he asked himself if it was not possible after all that the light and the mud, the glowworms in the almond tree and the radiant sky, the arid land extending eastward from here to Mesopotamia and southward to Bab el-Mandeb at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, and indeed his shabby flat and his aging body and even his broken telephone,