Fima - Amos Oz [120]
"That's it. I've had enough of this farce. I'm fed up with the lot of you. Coming in here, washing the dishes, trying to make me feel sorry for you all the time. I can't feel sorry for you. I don't want to be a mother to you all. That child, he's always scheming for something, though I really don't know what he's missing in life, what we haven't bought him, a video, an Atari, a compact disc player, a trip to America every year, and next week he's even getting his own private TV in his room. You'd think we're bringing up a prince here. And then you come around all the time, driving him crazy and making me feel guilty, asking what sort of parents we are, and filling Dimi's head with the same sick birds that are fluttering inside yours. I've had it up to here. Don't come here anymore, Fima. You pretend you're living alone, but you're always clinging to other people. And I'm just the opposite; everybody clings to me, when the only thing I want really is to be alone. Go away now, Efraim. I have nothing to give to you or to anyone. And I wouldn't even if I did. Why should I? I don't owe anyone anything. And I have no claims on anyone. Teddy is always a hundred percent okay. Never just ninety-nine. He's like a year-planner that tells you what you have to do, and when you've done it, you wipe it out and write more things to do. This morning he offered to rewire the flat to a three-phase system as a birthday present for me. Have you ever heard of a husband giving his wife a three-phase system for her birthday? And Dimi waters the houseplants morning and evening, morning and evening till they die, and Teddy buys new ones, and they get drowned too. Dimi can even handle the vacuum cleaner; once Teddy showed him how. He vacuums everything, even the pictures and mirrors. Even our feet. There's no stopping him. You remember my father, dear devoted comrade Naftali Tsvi Levin, founding member of the historic settlement of Yavne'el? He's an old pioneer now, he's eighty-three and completely gaga. He sits in the old people's home in Afula staring at the wall all day, and if ever you ask him a question, like how are you feeling, what's new, what do you need, who are you, who am I, where does it hurt, he invariably replies with the same three-word question: 'In what sense?' He says it with a Yiddish lilt. Those three words are all he has left from the Bible, the Talmud, the Midrash, the Hasidic tales, the Haskalah, Bialik, and Buber, and all the other Jewish sources he knew by heart once. I'm telling you, Efraim, soon I too will have only three words left. Not 'In what sense?' but 'Leave me alone.' Leave me alone, Efraim. I'm not your mother. 1 have a project that's been dragging on for years now because a whole bunch of toddlers have been tugging at my sleeves to wipe their noses. Once, when I was little, my father the pioneer told me to remember that men are really the weaker sex. It was a joke of his. Well, shall I tell you something, now that I've missed my hairdresser's appointment because of you? If I knew then what I know now, I'd have joined a nunnery. Or married a jet engine. I'd have passed on the weaker sex, with great pleasure. Give them a finger, they want your whole hand. Give them your whole hand, they won't even want the finger anymore. Just sit quietly over there, make the coffee, and don't interrupt. Don't draw attention to yourself. Do the washing and the ironing, provide sex, and shut up. Give them a rest from you, and after a week they're crawling back on all fours. What exactly did you want from me today, Efraim? A little early-morning screw in memory of the good old days? The fact is you don't even want that, any of you. Ten percent lust and ninety percent playacting. You turn up here when you imagine Teddy's out, loaded with flowers and fine phrases, an expert at comforting orphans and widows, hoping that this time I'll finally take pity on you and go to bed with you for a quarter of an hour. As a bribe to make you go