• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 536 0

he did not know the date according to the Jewish religious calendar. He could not even remember the secular date. At any rate, there was no doubt that it was only February and already spring was raising its head. Fima felt that there was a simple symbolism here: he did not ask himself what was symbolized, but he was happy. As though he had been given responsibility for the entire city, unasked, and to his surprise it turned out that he had not entirely failed in the discharge of his duties. The pale blue of the early morning had turned to a deep azure, as though the sea were suspended upside down over the city and were showering it with nursery-school cheerfulness. Geraniums and bougainvilleas blazed in front gardens. The low stone walls gleamed as though they were being caressed. "Not bad, eh?" Fima said mentally to an invisible guest or tourist.

At the turning to Bayit Vagan stood a young man in an army windbreaker, a submachine gun over his shoulder and surrounded by buckets of flowers. He suggested that Fima take a bunch of chrysanthemums for the weekend. Fima asked himself if this wasn't a settler from the Territories, who grew his flowers on other men's land. He immediately decided that someone who was prepared to make peace with Arafat should not excommunicate his own domestic opponents. Although he could see the argument for excommunicating. But he could find neither hatred nor anger in his heart, perhaps because of the radiant light. Jerusalem this morning seemed to be a place where all should respect the different opinions of others, and so he put his hand in his pocket and found three one-shekel coins, no doubt the change he had been given last night by his new minister of information. He pressed the flowers to his chest as though to protect them from the cold.

"Pardon?" said Fima. "Did you say something? I'm sorry, I didn't hear it."

The boy selling the flowers said with a broad smile:

"All I said was have a good weekend. Good Sabbath."

"Absolutely," Fima agreed, laying the foundations for a new national consensus. "Thank you. And a good weekend to you too."

The air was cold and vitreous, even though there was no wind. As though the light itself contained a dazzlingly clear arctic ingredient. The words "dazzlingly clear" afforded Fima a strange, secretive thrill. One must avoid malice, he thought, even when it disguises itself as principle. He ought to repeat to himself over and over that the real enemy was despair. It was vital not to compromise with despair, not to submit to it. Young Yoezer and his contemporaries, the moderate, reasonable people who will lead their carefully modulated lives here in Jerusalem after us, will be astonished at the suffering we brought on ourselves. But at least they won't remember us with contempt. We didn't give in without a struggle. We held on in Jerusalem as long as we could, against incomparably superior odds and stronger forces. We did not go under peacefully. And even if we were overcome in the end, we still have the advantage of Pascal's "thinking reed."

So it was that, excited, unkempt, and mud-spattered, at a quarter past ten in the morning, clutching a bunch of chrysanthemums and shivering with cold, Fima rang Ted and Yacl's doorbell. When Yael came to the door, wearing gray corduroy trousers and a burgundy sweater, he said to her without any embarrassment:

"I happened to be walking past and I decided to look in just for a minute, to wish you a good Sabbath. I hope I'm not disturbing you? Shall I come back tomorrow? I've got the painters in next week. Never mind. I brought you some flowers for the Sabbath. Can I come inside for a minute or two?"

28. IN ITHACA, ON THE WATER'S EDGE

"ALL RIGHT," SAID YAEL, "COME IN. JUST BEAR IN MIND THAT I'VE got to go out shortly. Hang on, let mc button your shirt properly. Tell me, when did you change it last?"

Fima said:

"You and I have to talk."

Yael said:

"Not again."

He followed her into the kitchen. On die way he peeked into the bedroom. He was vaguely hoping to see himself still sleeping in the bed since the