Fima - Amos Oz [130]
The snows of yesteryear.
Azoy.
Fima remembered with disgust how the previous Friday, exactly a week ago, at Shula and Tsvi Kropotkin's the conversation had turned after midnight to the Russian component, which had had such a strong influence on various currents of Zionism. Tsvika made ironic fun of the naive Tolstoyism of A. D. Gordon and his disciples, and Uri Gefen recalled how once the country had been full of fans of Stalin and songs about Budyonny's cavalry. Whereupon Fima stood up, stooped slightly, and had the whole room doubled up with laughter when he began declaiming in liquid, orotund tones a typical passage from an early translation of Russian literature:
"Dost thou here also dwell, my good man? Beside Spasov I dwell, close by the V—Monastery, in the service of Marfa Sergeyevna, who is the sister of Avdotya Sergeyevna, if Your Honor might condescend to recall, her leg she broke as from the carriage she leaped, when to the ball then she was going. Now beside the monastery she dwells, and I—in her house."
Uri had said:
"You could go around the country giving public performances."
And Teddy said:
"It's straight out of the wedding scene in The Deerhunter—what was it called in Hebrew?"
Whereas Yael remarked dryly, almost to herself:
"Why do you all encourage him? Just look at what he's doing to himself."
Fima now accepted those words of hers like a slap in the face that brought tears of gratitude to his eyes. And he resolved that he would never again make a fool of himself in her presence. Or in the presence of others. From now on he would concentrate.
While he was standing there preparing his new life, staring at the names of the residents inscribed on a row of worn mailboxes in the hallway of a gray stone building, startled to see that there was a Pizani family here too and half surprised not to find his own name underneath it, a smooth-talking Sephardi rabbinical student, a thin, bespectacled youth clad in the costume of an Ashkenazi Hasid, addressed him politely. Warily, as if fearing a violent reaction, he urged Fima to fulfill the commandment of putting on tefillin, here, on the spot. Fima said:
"So, will that hasten the coming of the Messiah, in your opinion?"
The youth replied at once, eagerly, as though he had prepared himself for this very question, in a North African accent with a Yiddish lilt:
"It will do your soul good. You will feel relief and joy instantly, something amazing."
"In what sense?" asked Fima.
"It's a well-known fact, sir. Tried and tested. The arm tefillin cleanses the defilement of the body and the head tefillin washes all the dirt out of the soul."
"And how do you know that I have a defiled body and a dirty soul?"
"Heaven forbid that I should say such a wicked thing. Lest I sin with my lips. Every Jew, even if he be a sinner—may it not happen to us!—his soul was present at Mount Sinai. This is a well-known fact. That is why every Jewish soul shines forth like the heavenly radiance. Nevertheless, sometimes it happens, sadly, on account of all our troubles, on account of all the rubbish that life in this lower world is always heaping on us, that the heavenly radiance inside the soul becomes dirty, so to speak. What does a man do if he gets dirt inside the engine of his car? Why, he takes it to be cleaned out. That is an allegory of the dirt in the soul. The commandment of putting on tefillin cleanses that dirt out of you instantly. In a moment you will feel like new."
"And what good will it do you if a nonbeliever puts on tefillin once and then goes on sinning?"
"Well, you sec, it's like this, sir. First, even once helps. It improves the maintenance. One commandment leads