Fima - Amos Oz [43]
"So we're agreed, then," the settler said. "Let's keep in touch. Just be careful of using the phone."
"Look," said Annette. "In novels, in plays, in films, there are always these mysterious women. Capricious, unpredictable. They fall in love like sleepwalkers and fly away like birds. Greta Garbo. Marlene Dietrich. Liv Ullmann. All sorts of femmes fatales. The secrets of the female heart. Don't make fun of me for drinking vodka in the middle of the day. After all, you don't look too happy yourself. Am I boring you?"
Fima called the waiter and ordered her another vodka. He ordered a bottle of mineral water and some more bread and cheese for himself. The three conspirators got up to leave. As they passed his table, the settler gave him a sweet, saintly smile, as though he could sec into his heart and forgave him. He said:
"Bye now, and all the best. Don't forget, when it comes to the crunch, we're all in the same boat."
In his mind Fima relocated this moment to a coffeehouse in Berlin in the last days of the Weimar Republic, putting himself in the role of martyr: Carl von Ossietzky, Kurt Tucholsky. Immediately he canceled the whole picture because the comparison was ridiculous, almost hysterical. To Annette he said:
"Take a good look at them. Those are the creatures that are dragging us all down."
Annette said:
"I'm already as low as I can go."
And Fima:
"Go on. You were talking about fatal women."
Annette emptied her second glass. Her eyes were gleaming, and a hint of coquetry slipped into her words:
"The nice thing about you, Efraim, is that I really don't mind what sort of impression I make on you. I'm not used to that. Generally, when I'm talking to a man the most important thing for me is what impression he has of me. It's never happened to me before to sit like this with a strange man and talk so freely about myself without getting all sorts of signals, if you know what I mean. Just one person talking to another. You're not offended?"
Fima unconsciously smiled when she used the expression "a strange man." She noticed his smile and beamed at him like a child consoled after tears. She said;
"What I meant was, not that you're not masculine, just that I can talk to you like a brother. We've had to put up with so much bullshit from the poets, with their Beatrices, their earth mothers, their gazelles, their tigresses, their sea gulls, their swans, and all that nonsense. Let me tell you, being a man strikes me as a thousand times more complicated than that. Or maybe it's not complicated at all, all that lousy bargaining. You give me sex, I'll give you a bit of tenderness. Or an impression of tenderness. Be a whore and a mother. A puppy by day and a kitten by night. Sometimes I have the feeling that men like sex but hate women. Don't be offended, Efraim. I'm just generalizing. There must be exceptions. Like you, for instance. I feel good now, the way you're listening to me quietly."
Fima bent forward to light the cigarette she had taken out of her handbag. He was thinking: In the middle of the day, in broad daylight, in the middle of Jerusalem, they're already walking around with guns in their belts. Was the sickness implicit in the Zionist idea from the outset? Is there no way for the Jews to get back onto the stage of history except by becoming scum? Does every battered child have to grow up into a violent adult? And weren't we already scum before we got back onto the stage of history? Do we have to be either cripples or thugs? Is there no third alternative?
"At the age of twenty-five," Annette continued, "after a couple of love affairs and one abortion and a B.A. in art history, I meet this young orthopedic surgeon. A quiet, shy man, not at all like an Israeli, if you know what I mean. A gentle person who courts me with sensitivity and even sends me a love letter every day but never tries to touch me. A hard-working, honest man. He likes to stir my coffee for me. He thinks of himself as an average, middle-of-the-road sort