Fima - Amos Oz [45]
"You describe it so vividly, I can see it."
"I'm not boring you? Don't be angry with me for smoking again. It's hard for me to talk about all this. I must look a real sight; I've been crying. Be nice and don't look at me."
"On the contrary," Fima said, and after a moment's hesitation he added:
"Your earrings look nice too. Special. Like a pair of glowworms. Not that I have the slightest idea what glowworms look like."
"It's nice being with you," said Annette. "First time in ages I've felt so good. Even though you hardly say anything, just listen and understand. Yeri encourages me to take a part-time job with the Jerusalem City Council when the children are a bit older. We start saving. We buy a new car. We dream of building ourselves a red-tiled house, with a real garden, outside the city, in Mevaseret. Sometimes in the evenings, when the children are in bed, we sit and look at American homemaking magazines, drawing up all sorts of plans. Sometimes he taps on our sketches with his finger, as though to test how solid they arc. Both our children reveal a talent for music, and we decide to invest in music lessons, private teachers, the conservatory. We take summer holidays by the seaside, the four of us, at Nahariya. In December we leave the children behind and rent a bungalow in Eilat. Ten years ago we sold his parents' flat and bought the bungalow. On Saturday nights we generally have a few couples come in. Don't be shy about stopping me, Efraim, if you're tired of listening. Maybe I'm going into too much detail? Then this reliable man is appointed deputy head of his department. He starts seeing private patients at home. So the dream of the house with a garden in Mevaseret starts to become a reality. Both of us become experts on marble and ceramics and roof tiles, if you know what I mean. All these years, aside from superficial quarrels, not a shadow falls between us. Or so I think. Every quarrel ends with apologies on both sides. He says he's sorry, I say I'm sorry, and he mutters Azoy. And then we change the sheets or start making supper together."
Five thousand men, Fima thought, five thousand of us simply refusing to do our reserve service in the Territories—that's all it would take. The whole occupation would collapse. But it's just those five thousand who have turned into experts on roof tiles. Those bastards are right when they say that all they need to do is play for time. At the end of her story she'll go to bed with me. She's working herself up to it.
"For a few winters," Annette continued, a sly, bitter line appearing at the corner of her mouth, as though she could read his mind, "he spends one night a week in Beer Sheva, because he's been asked to teach some course or other at the medical school there. Thoughts of other women in his life never crossed my mind. I just didn't think it was in him. Especially since even his home consumption had dwindled over the years, if you know what I mean. What would he do with a mistress? Just as it would never have occurred to me to imagine that he was, let's say, a Syrian spy. It was simply impossible. I knew everything about him. At least, that's what I thought. And I accepted him as he was, including that sarcastic whistle that I was convinced by now wasn't really a whistle and definitely wasn't sarcastic. On the other hand—I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but I really feel like telling everything—eight years ago, in the summer, I went to stay with a cousin of mine in Amsterdam for three weeks and I had a whirlwind romance with a stupid blond security officer from the embassy, twenty years younger than me. A real animal in bed, if you know what I mean, but the guy soon showed himself to be a narcissistic half-wit. It might make you laugh to know that someone thinks women get a kick out of having their stomachs smeared with honey. Just imagine! In a word, he was just a disturbed child. Not worth my good husband's little finger."
Fima ordered her another vodka without her asking, and, yielding to his hunger pangs, another