Fima - Amos Oz [128]
The whole neighborhood was pullulating with feverish preparations for the Sabbath. Housewives carried overflowing shopping baskets, traders hoarsely cried their wares, a battered pickup with one rear light shattered like a black eye maneuvered backward and forward four or five times until miraculously it managed to squeeze into a parking spot on the pavement between two equally battered trucks. Fima rejoiced at this success, as though it held a hint of an opportunity that lay in store for him too.
A pale East European with sloping shoulders and protruding eyes, who looked as though he suffered from ulcers if not a terminal illness, panted heavily as he pushed a squeaking baby carriage laden with provisions in paper or plastic bags and a whole platoon of soft drinks up the hill. On top of the pile was an evening paper whose pages fluttered in the breeze. Fima squinted at the headlines as he reached out and carefully tucked the paper in among the bottles, so it wouldn't blow away.
The old man merely said, in Yiddish:
"Nu. Shoin."
A tawny dog sidled up obsequiously with its tail between its legs, timidly sniffed the trouser cuffs of an apprehensive Fima, found nothing special, and moved away with lowered snout. Was it possible, Fima mused, that this dog was a son of a son of a daughter of a daughter of the notorious Balak, who went mad here eighty years ago and terrorized these very streets before dying in agony?
In a front yard he saw the remains of a castle built by children out of crates and broken packing boxes. Then, on the wall of a synagogue named Redemption of Zion, Lesser Sanctuary of the Meshed Community were several graffiti that Fima stopped to inspect. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Fima thought he detected a minor mistake in the Hebrew, although he was chagrined to find he was not entirely certain. "Kahana's the master—Labur's a disaster." "For slanderers be there no hope." Be there? May there be? Let there be? Again, he was not certain, and decided to check later, when he got home. "Shulamit Allony scrues with Arafat." "Remember thou art but dust." Fima agreed with this last motto and even nodded his head. "Rachel Babaioff is a whore." To the left of this inscription Fima was pained to read: "Peace Now—pay later." But, then, he had always known that it was essential to plow deep. And: "An eye for an eye for an," which made Fima smile and wonder what the poet had meant. A different hand had written: "Traitor Malmilian—souled his mother!" Fima, while realizing that the author had meant to write "sold," nonetheless found the error charming. As though a poetic inspiration had guided the writer's hand to produce something he could not have been aware of.
Across the street from the Redemption of Zion stood a small shop, hardly more than a hole in the wall, selling stationery. The shop window was dotted with dead flies and still marked with the traces of crisscrossed tape put up against explosions, a souvenir of one of our vainly won wars. In the small window were displayed various types of dusty notebooks, exercise books whose covers were curling with age, a faded photograph of Moshe Dayan in lieutenant general's uniform in front of the Wailing Wall, which had also not been spared by the flies, plus compasses, rulers, and cheap plastic pencil cases, some of which bore pictures of wrinkled Ashkenazi rabbis or Sephardi Torah sages in ornate robes. In the midst of all this Fima's eye fell on a thick exercise book in a gray cardboard binding, containing several hundred pages, the sort that writers and thinkers of earlier generations must have used. He felt a sudden longing for his own desk, and a profound resentment toward the painters who were threatening his routine.
In three or four hours from now the siren would be wailing here to herald the advent of the Sabbath. The bustle of the streets would subside. A beautiful, gentle stillness, the