Fima - Amos Oz [119]
With her back to him, folding dish towels and putting them away one by one in a drawer, Yael replied quietly:
"Effy, once and for all: You're not Dimi's father. Now drink up and go. I have an appointment at the hairdresser's. The child which you could have had twenty-five years ago I killed because you didn't want it. So don't start now. I sometimes feel as if I've never quite waked up from that anesthetic. And now you come here to torment me. I'm telling you, if Teddy wasn't such a tolerant man, such a walking box as you call him, you'd have been thrown out of this flat a long time ago. There's nothing for you here. Especially after what you did the other night. It's hard enough here even without you. You're a difficult man, Efraim. Difficult and also boring. And I'm still not convinced you're not one of the main causes of Dimi's confusion. Slowly but surely you're driving that child mad."
After a moment she added:
"And it's hard to know if it's some ruse of yours or just idle chatter. You keep talking, talking all the time: maybe you talk so much, you've really convinced yourself that you have feelings. That you're in love. That you're partly Dimi's father. All sorts of half-baked delusions like that. Why am I talking to you about feelings, about love? You don't even know what the words mean. Once, when you read books instead of newspapers, you must have read something about love and unhappiness, and ever since then you've been all around Jerusalem preaching on the subject. I nearly said just now that you love only yourself, but even that isn't true. You don't even love yourself. You don't love anything. Except maybe winning arguments. Never mind. Get your coat on. I'm late because of you."
"Will you let me wait for you here? I'll wait patiently. Till this evening if necessary."
"Hoping that Teddy will get back before me? And find you asleep on our bed again, under my blanket?"
"I promise," Fima whispered, "that this time I'll behave myself."
And as though to prove it, he jumped up and poured his coffee into the sink. He had not touched it, although he had absent-mindedly eaten all the butter biscuits. Noticing that the sink was full of dirty dishes and pans, he rolled up one of his sleeves and turned on the tap. Eagerly he waited for the water to run hot. Even when Yael said, "You're crazy, Efraim, leave it, we'll put it all in the machine after lunch," he took no notice but started washing enthusiastically and laying the soapy dishes out on the marble drainboard. "It relaxes me," he said. "I'll be finished in a few minutes, once the water finally makes up its mind to get hot. I'll be glad to spare you the need to run the dishwasher; and the dishes will come out much cleaner; and meanwhile we can go on talking a little longer. Which is the cold water and which is the hot? Where are we supposed to be, America? Everything's topsy-turvy here. But if you've really got to go, that's fine with me. You just go, Yacl, and come back later. I'll promise to restrict myself to the kitchen. I won't wander around the flat, I won't even use the toilet. Shall I polish the silver for you? Or clean out the fridge? I'll stay right here and wait, no matter how long you're gone. Like a male Solveig. I've got this book about whale hunters in Alaska, and it talks about this custom ... Never mind. Don't worry about me, Yael, I don't mind waiting all day. Instead of worrying about me, you ought to worry about Dimi. To use Ted's amusing expression, you could say that Dimi is down. To my mind, the first thing we ought to do is find a totally different social setting for him. Maybe a boarding school for gifted children? Or the other way around, tame one or two of the neighbors' kids..."
Suddenly, as though