Fima - Amos Oz [24]
Ted whispered:
"No. The situation really isn't looking too good." And he went out.
Fima curled up inside the blanket. He meant to ask to be waked up the moment Yael got home. He was so tired that what came out was:
"Don't wake Yael."
He slept for about twenty minutes, and when the phone rang in the next room, he reached out and knocked over one of Dimi's Lego towers. He tried to fold the blanket, but gave up because he was in a hurry to find Ted. He still had to explain what it was that had brought him here this evening. Instead of going to the study, he strayed into the bedroom, which was lit by a warm red night-light. He saw that the wide bed was ready for the night: two identical pillows, two dark-blue blankets encased in silky sheets, two bedside tables, each with an open book lying face down on it, and he buried his face and his whole head in Yael's nightdress. At once he pulled himself together and rushed out to look for his coat. He searched every room in the flat with a sleepwalker's thoroughness, but he found neither Ted nor his coat, even though he doggedly checked every lighted place. Finally he sank down onto a stool in the kitchen and looked around for the knives that he hadn't been able to find a place for earlier.
Ted Tobias emerged from the darkness with a slide rule in his hand, and announced slowly and emphatically, like a soldier transmitting a message by shortwave radio:
"You fell asleep for a while. Shows you were tired. I can warm your coffee in the microwave."
"No need, thanks," said Fima. "I've got to run; I'm late."
"Oh. Late. What for?"
"A date," said Fima, to his own surprise, in a man-to-man voice. "I completely forgot I have a date tonight." And he went to the front door and started wrestling with the latch until Ted took pity on him and handed him his overcoat, opened the door, and said softly and, Fima thought, rather wistfully:
"Look, Fima, it's none of my business, but I think you could do with a break. You're looking a little run down. What'll I tell Yael?"
Fima inserted his left arm into the torn lining of his coat sleeve and wondered why the sleeve had turned into a cul-de-sac. He lost his temper, as though Ted was responsible for upsetting the insides of his coat.
"Don't say anything to Yael," he hissed. "There's nothing to say. I didn't come to see her, anyway. I came to talk to you, Teddy, but you're such a numbskull."
Ted Tobias did not take offense. It is likely he didn't understand the last word. He answered carefully, in English:
"Wouldn't it be better if I called you a taxi?"
Fima immediately felt profound shame and regret.
"Thanks, Teddy," he said, "No. I'm sorry I flew off the handle. I had a bad dream last night, and today just hasn't been my day. All I've done is kept you from working. Tell Yael I'm free to look after the kid any evening you need me. I can tell you the Hebrew word for 'commitment' but I can't think of the one for 'deadline.' Maybe you can translate it literally, a dead line. By the way, what do we need jet-propelled vehicles for? Don't we rush around enough as it is? Why don't you invent something that'll make us just sit quietly? Sorry. Bye, Teddy. You shouldn't have given me that brandy. I talk enough nonsense as it is."
As he stepped out of the elevator, he bumped into Yael in the dark. She was carrying Dimi, fast asleep, wrapped in her bomber jacket. Yael let out a little cry of alarm, and almost dropped the child. Then, recognizing Fima, she said in a tired voice, "What an ass you are."
Instead of apologizing, Fima embraced them roughly with his free arm and his crippled sleeve, and covered the drowsy Challenger's head with frantic pecks, like a starving chicken. He kissed Yael too, whatever he could lay hold of in the dark: not finding her face, he bent over and kissed her wet back, wildly, from shoulder to shoulder. Then he rushed outside to look for the bus stop in the dark in the pouring rain. Because in