Fima - Amos Oz [125]
And every Friday his mother would wait for him precisely at midday at the gate of his school, with her blond plait framing her head like a wreath and a brown tortoiseshell comb planted at her golden nape. They would go together to do the last-minute shopping in Mahane Yehuda Market, he with his satchel on his back and she clutching her wicker shopping basket, a sapphire ring gleaming on her finger. The smells of the market, sharp, savory Oriental smells, filled them both with childish glee. As though they were conspiring secretly against the heavy Ashkenazic sweetness of the pics at home and the cloying carrot and the strudel and the compote and the sticky jams. And indeed, his father disliked these Friday raids on the market. He grumbled sardonically that the child ought to be doing his homework or improving his body with exercises, and in any case they paid a fortune to have a maid, whose job it was to do the shopping, and surely one could buy everything nearby in Rehavia, so there was no need to drag the child among those filthy stalls with foul liquids swilling on the pavement. The Levant was swarming with germs, and all those pungent spices with their clamorous smells were nothing but a camouflage for filth. He made a joke of his wife's attraction to the enchantments of the Thousand and One Nights, and what he termed her weekly quest for Ali Baba. Fima trembled inwardly at the recollection of the illicit thrill of helping his mother to choose from among various kinds of black olives, with their almost indecent smell and their sharp, dizzying taste. Sometimes he noticed the smoldering look one of the stall holders fixed on his mother, and although he was too young to know its meaning, he could faintly feel, as in a dream, an echo of a tremor that ran through his mother's body and seemed to overflow into his own. He could hear her voice now, in the distance. Look what they've done to you, stupid. But this time he answered cheerfully, Never mind, you'll see that I still haven't said my last word.
On their way home after the market he always insisted on carrying the basket. His other arm he linked in hers. They always had lunch on Fridays in a little vegetarian restaurant on King George Street, a red-curtained establishment that made him think of abroad as he knew it from the cinema. It was run by a refugee couple, Mr. and Mrs. Danzig, a charming pair who looked so alike, they might have been brother and sister. As indeed, Fima thought, perhaps they were. Who could tell? Their gentle manners brought a smile to his mother's face like a beam of light. Fima felt a pang of longing as he recalled it. At the end of their meal, Mrs. Danzig always placed two exact squares of almond chocolate in front of Fima. And she would say with a smile:
"That is for gutt-boy who didn't leave anything on his plate."
She pronounced "gutt-boy" without an article, as though it were his name. As for Mr. Danzig, he was a round man with one cheek that was like raw butcher's meat: Fima did not know if he had a chronic skin disease or a strange birthmark, or if it was a mysterious trace of an extensive burn. Mr. Danzig would intone a verse, like a ritual, at the end of those Friday lunches:
"Efraim iss a lovely child,
He finish all his dinner;
So now he vill be strong and vild,
And in our town the vinner—
Vot town?"
Fima's role in this ceremony was to reply:
"Jerusalem!"
But once, he rebelled and perversely answered: "Danzig!" which he knew from his father's stamp collection and also from the heavy German adas that he used to browse in for hours on end, spread-eagled on the carpet in a corner of the salon, especially on winter evenings. This reply made Mr. Danzig smile wistfully and say something that ended with "mein Kind." Meanwhile his mother's eyes for some reason filled with tears, and she suddenly squeezed Fima's head to her bosom and covered his face with a volley of quick kisses.
What became of the Danzigs? They must have died ages ago. A branch of a bank had stood for years on the site of that little