Fima - Amos Oz [23]
Fima followed him to the kitchen and continued heatedly:
"The comparison with Vietnam, that's our biggest mistake, Teddy. This is not Vietnam and we're not the flower people. The second mistake is to expect the Americans to do the job for us and get us out of the Territories. What do they care if we're going to the devil?"
"True," said Ted, in the tone he used for praising Dimi for getting his sums right. "Too right. Nobody docs anybody else any favors. Everyone looks after himself. And they don't always even have enough sense for that." He put the kettle on and started emptying the dishwasher.
Fima excitedly pushed Ted out of the way and started to help him unbidden, as though bent on proving him wrong. He pulled a large handful of knives, forks, and spoons out of the dishwasher and ran around the kitchen with them, flinging doors open, pulling out drawers, looking for somewhere to unload his booty, and not interrupting for a moment his lecture on the difference between Vietnam and Gaza and between the Nixon syndrome and the Shamir syndrome. A few stray items of cutlery slipped through his fingers and lay scattered on the kitchen floor. Ted bent down to pick them up, and expressed his unfamiliarity with the Hebrew word for "syndrome": was it a newly invented word?
"Syndrome: like the Vietnam syndrome that you went through in the States."
"Didn't you say a moment ago that the comparison with Vietnam was a mistake?"
"Yes. No. In a certain sense yes. That is, perhaps we need to distinguish between a syndrome and a symptom."
"Here," said Ted, "just put them here in the middle drawer."
But Fima had already abandoned the struggle, and left his bundle of cutlery on top of the microwave. Pulling his handkerchief out of his pocket, he wiped his nose again and then absent-mindedly set about wiping the kitchen table too, while Ted was still sorting plates according to type and size and putting each pile away in its proper place in the cupboard over the sink.
"Fima, why don't you give that to the newspapers. You should publish it so that more people can read it. Your language is so rich. And it'll do your soul good too: anyone can sec you're suffering. You take politics so personally. You take the situation too much to heart. Yael will be back with Dimi in another three-quarters of an hour. Now I've got to do some work. How do you say 'deadline' in Hebrew again? Maybe the best thing would be if you took your coffee with you into the living room and I'll put the TV on for you; you can still catch about half the news. Okay?"
Fima immediately assented: he had never intended to intrude for the whole evening. But instead of picking up his coffee and heading for the living room, he forgot the mug on the drainboard in the kitchen and insisted on pursuing Ted all the way down the hallway until Ted excused himself and locked himself in the bathroom. Fima concluded his sentence through the locked door:
"It's all right for you people; you've got U.S. passports, you can always get out of here by jet propulsion. But what'll happen to the rest of us? Okay, I'll go and watch the news. I won't pester you anymore. The only trouble is, I have no idea how to switch your television on."
Instead of going to the living room, he turned in to the boy's bedroom. Instantly he was overcome by great tiredness. Unable to find the light switch, he lay down in the dark on the little bed surrounded by shadows of robots and airplanes and time machines, while overhead a gigantic phosphorescent spaceship hovered, suspended from the ceiling by an invisible thread, its nose pointing straight at him, revolving slowly, menacingly at the slightest draft like an accusing finger. Until Fima closed his eyes and said to himself suddenly:
"What's the point of all this talking? The die is cast, and what is done cannot be undone."
Then sleep overtook him. Just as he was dropping off, he was vaguely aware of Ted covering him with a soft woollen blanket. Indistinctly he mumbled:
"The truth, Teddy? Just between the two of us? The Arabs have evidently realized that