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By Root 472 0

her detailed report of how she tried not once but twice to give me my regular service and how she found the tap blocked. Perhaps Shula Kropotkin could be brought in as reinforcement to help with putting all the kitchen things away. Possibly Annette Tadmor would be glad to lend a hand. And the Pizantis also expressed a readiness to help, provided they didn't murder each other first. And Teddy would willingly come to take down the curtains and the wall lights. Maybe he'd bring Dimi with him. The old man was quite right: it's well over twenty years since this den was last spruced up. The ceiling's filthy, grubby from the kerosene heater. There are cobwebs in the corners. There's mold in the bathroom. The ceramic dies are cracked. The plaster is peeling. There are patches of mildew. There's a dank, sweaty smell here the whole year, an old bachelor's smell. It's not only the bottle of worms on the balcony that smells bad. You've grown so used to it that you don't even care.

Surely habit is the root of all evil. It's precisely what Pascal was thinking of when he wrote about the death of the soul.

In a comer of his desk Fima found a green advertisement announcing huge discounts at the local supermarket. On a comer of this notice he scribbled the words:

Habit is the beginning of death. Habits are a fifth column.

And underneath:

Routine = lies.

Habituation—deterioration—dilapidation.

His intention was to remind himself to improve and develop these thoughts over the weekend. And since he had remembered that tomorrow was Saturday, he deduced that today was Friday, from which he inferred that he ought to do some shopping. But Friday was his free day, the clinic was closed, so why should he hurry? Why start pushing furniture around at seven in the morning? Best wait for the reinforcements to arrive. There was no urgency. Even though when he glanced at his watch, he saw that it was not seven o'clock but twenty past eight. Time to have a word or two with Tsvika, who would have finished his shaving ritual by now.

Had there been any further improvement in the condition of the telephone? Fima tried again. He could hear a faint sound, but it had not yet rallied to the point of being a dial tone. Despite which, he dialed Yael's number. And concluded that he ought to wait for the patient to make a full recovery, because his impatient attempts might delay the process. Or was Yael's phone also out of order? Was the whole city cut off? Could it be a strike? Sabotage? Sanctions? Had the exchange been blown up in the night? Had a right-wing terrorist group seized all the means of communication and the other centers of power? Had there been a Syrian missile attack? Unless Ted Tobias was leaning on the phone again and preventing Yael from picking it up. Fima felt disgusted, not with Ted but with his own word games. He twisted up the supermarket advertisement and threw it at the wastepaper basket. He missed, but could not be bothered to crawl under the desk to look for it. No point. The whole place was going to be turned upside down to prepare for the painters.

He made himself another cup of coffee, ate a few slices of black bread and jam to quell the hunger pangs, took a couple of tablets to quell the heartburn. Then he went to have a piss. He felt furious with his body, always bothering him with its needs, and preventing him from following through a single thought or observation. He stood for a few moments without moving, his head to one side, his mouth half open, as though deep in thought, and his penis in his hand. Despite the pressure in his bladder he was unable to release a single drop. He resorted to his usual subterfuge, pulling the handle in the hope that the sound of rushing water would remind his sluggish organ of its duty. But it refused to be impressed by that old and well-worn stratagem. It seemed to be saying: It's time you thought up a new game for me. Grudgingly it released a brief, thin trickle, as a special favor. As soon as the tank stopped, this pathetic trickle stopped too. His bladder remained urgently full. Fima shook