Fima - Amos Oz [144]
At that moment he caught sight of Dimi kneeling on the carpet in a corner, a quaint, philosophical child, slowly revolving with his finger Baruch's huge terrestrial globe, which was illuminated from within. The electric light painted the oceans blue and the land masses gold. The child seemed absorbed, detached, concentrating entirely on what he was doing. And Fima remarked to himself, like a man making a mental note of the whereabouts of a suitcase or an electric switch, that he loved this child more than he had ever loved any living soul. Including women. Including the boy's mother. Including his own mother.
Yael got up and approached him, uncertain whether to shake his hand or just rest a hand on his sleeve. Fima did not wait for her to make up her mind, but hugged her hard and pressed her head to his shoulder, as though it were she, not he, who needed and deserved consolation. As though he were making her a present of his new orphanhood. Yael mumbled into his chest something that Fima did not catch and did not even want to hear, because he was enjoying the discovery that Yael, like Prime Minister Ben Gurion, was shorter than he by almost a head. Even though he was not a tall man.
Then Yael broke away from his clasp and hurried, or escaped, to the kitchen, to help Shula and Teddy, who were making open sandwiches for everybody. It occurred to Fima to ask Uri or Tsvi to call the two gynecologists on his behalf, and also Tamar, and why not Annette Tadmor too? He had a sudden urge to gather together all the people who had some bearing on his new life. As though something inside him was planning, without his knowledge, a ceremony. To preach to them. To tell them something new. To announce that henceforth ... But perhaps he was confusing mourning with a farewell party. Farewell to what? What sort of sermon could he preach? What news did a man like him have to give? Be holy and pure, all of you, in préparation for the Third State?
He changed his mind, and abandoned the idea of a gathering.
He suddenly chose not to sit in the place vacated by Yael next to Uri on the sofa, but in his father's armchair. He stretched his legs comfortably on the upholstered footstool. He relished the soft seat that took his body as though it had been made to measure for him. Without thinking, he banged twice on the floor with the silver-headed cane. But when they all stopped talking and looked at him attentively, ready to do his bidding, to offer him affection and condolence, Fima smiled benignly and exclaimed:
"Why this silence? Carry on."
Tsvi, Nina, and Uri tried to draw him into a conversation to distract him, a light exchange about subjects dear to his heart, the situation in the Territories, the way it was presented on Italian television, which Uri had been watching in Rome, the significance of the American overtures. Fima refused to be drawn. He contented himself with keeping the absent-minded smile on his face. For a moment he thought of Baruch lying in a refrigerated compartment in the basement of Hadassah Hospital, in a sort of honeycomb of freezer drawers, populated, in part or in whole, by the fresh Jerusalem dead. He tried to feel in his own bones the frost, the darkness of the drawer, the dark northern ocean bed below the whaling station. But he could find no pain in his heart. Or fear. No. His heart was light, and he almost began to see the humor in the metallic mortuary honeycomb with its drawers of corpses. He recalled his father's anecdote about the argument between the Israeli and the American railway boss, and the story of the famous rabbi and the highwayman who exchanged their cloaks. He knew he would have to say something. But he had no idea what he could tell his friends. However, his