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By Root 580 0

what's so funny about it? Is there really anything to laugh at? Aren't you ashamed of yourself for chuckling? It is really sad, even heartbreaking. Most jokes are actually based on the improper pleasure that we derive from the misfortunes of others. Now why is that, Fimuchka? Perhaps you can kindly explain to me, since you yourself are a historian, a poet, a thinker, why is it that other people's misfortunes make us feel good? Make us guffaw? Afford us this curious satisfaction? Man is a paradox, my dear. A very curious creature indeed. Exotic. He laughs when he ought to weep. He weeps when he ought to laugh. He lives without sense and he dies without desire. Frail man, his days are as the grass. Tell me, have you seen anything of Yael lately? No? And your little boy? You must remind me later on to tell you a marvelous story from Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk, a parable of divorce and longing. He intended it to be a parable about the relationship between the community of Israel and the Divine Presence, but I have my own personal interpretation of it. But first of all tell me about your own life and doings. This is all wrong, Efraim: Here am I prattling on just like our dear railway chief, and you're saying nothing. Like the story about the cantor on the desert island. I'll tell you later. Don't let me forget. There was this cantor who found himself cast away on a desert island during the High Holy Days; it shouldn't happen to us! But there I go again, chatting away while you are silent. Say something. Tell me about Yael and that melancholy child. Just remind me to tell you afterward about the cantor: after all, in a way we're all like cantors on a desert island, and in a sense all days are High Holy Days."

Fima heard a faint, low, wheezing sound, almost like a cat's purr, coming from his father's chest with every breath. As though the old man had put a whistle in his throat as a joke.

"Drink your tea, Baruch. It's getting cold."

The old man said:

"Did I ask you for tea, Efraim? I asked you to talk. I asked you to tell me about that forlorn child that you insist on pretending to everybody is the son of that American dummkopf. And I asked that you should put a little order in your life. That you should be a mensch. That you should worry about the future for a change instead of worrying night and day about your beloved Arabs."

"I'm not," Fima corrected him, "worried about the Arabs. I've explained to you a thousand times. I'm worried about us."

"Of course, Efraim, of course. Nobody can impugn the integrity of your motives. The sad thing is, the only people you manage to take in are yourselves. As though your Arabs are just asking nicely and politely if they can have Nablus and Hebron back, and then they'll go home happily ever after, peace be upon Israel and upon Ishmael. But that's not what they want from us. It's Jerusalem they want, Fimuchka, and Jaffa, and Haifa, and Ramla. To slit our throats a little bit, that's all they want. To wipe us out. If you only took the trouble to listen a little to what they say among themselves. The sad thing is, all you ever listen to is yourselves, yourselves, yourselves." Another low, drawn-out whistle escaped from his father's chest, as though he were bewildered by his son's naïveté.

"Actually, they've been saying rather different things recently, Dad."

"Saying. How very nice. Let them say to their heart's content. Saying is easy. They've simply learned from you the rules of how to speak nicely. Eloquence. Winning words. Superciliousness. It's not important what they say. What counts is what they really want. As that roughneck Ben Gurion used to say about Jews and gentiles." Apparently the old man was about to expatiate on this theme, but he was overcome by breathlessness and let out a wheeze that ended in a cough. As though inside him a loose door on squeaky hinges were being blown by the breeze.

"They want to find a compromise now, Baruch. And now we're the intransigent side that refuses to make concessions and won't even talk to them."

"Compromise. Of course. Well spoken. There's