Fima - Amos Oz [46]
"I got back from Amsterdam riddled with guilt. It was hard for me to resist the urge to confess to him. But he suspected nothing. On the contrary. Over the years we have got into the habit of lying in bed sometimes, once the children arc asleep, reading magazines together. We learn how to do all sorts of things from them that we didn't know before. True, compromise and deliberation paint our lives a dull shade of brown. We don't have a lot of subjects for conversation. After all, I'm not that interested in orthopedics. But the silences never get us down. We can sit for a whole evening reading, listening to music, watching television. Sometimes we even have a drink before bedtime. Sometimes I wake up when I've been asleep only an hour, because he has trouble dozing off and is tapping absent-mindedly on the shelf at the head of our bed. I ask him to stop. He apologizes and stops and I go back to sleep and he falls asleep too. Or so I think. We remind each other to stick to our diet, because we both have a tendency to put on weight. Am I a bit fat, Efraim? Arc you sure? Meanwhile we purchase all sorts of electrical appliances for the home. We engage a helper three mornings a week. We visit his parents and mine. He goes to a medical congress in Canada without me, but invites me to join him for an orthopedic conference in Frankfurt. While we're there, we even go out one evening to see what a striptease joint is like. I was quite disgusted, but today I think I made a mistake in saying so to him. I should have kept my mouth shut. The fact is, Efraim, I'm afraid to imagine what you'll think of me if I ask you to order me another vodka. Just one more and that's it. It's so hard. And you're such a good listener. An angel. Well then, six years ago we finally moved into the house in Mevaseret. We had it built ourselves, and it turned out almost exactly like our dream, with a separate wing for the children, and a gabled attic bedroom like an Alpine chalet."
An angel with an erection like a rhinoceros, Fima thought and chuckled to himself, and once more he felt how along with the compassion there welled up inside him desire, and with the desire shame, anger, and self-mockery. And while he was thinking of rhinos, he remembered the motionlessness of the prehistoric lizard that had nodded to him that morning. And he thought about Ionesco's Rhinoceros; and, though careful of superficial comparisons, he had to smile, because the lawyer Prag had looked more like a buffalo than a rhinoceros.
"Tell me, Annette, aren't you hungry at all? Here am I gulping down bread and cheese nonstop, and you haven't even touched your cake. Shall we take a look at the menu?"
But Annette, showing no sign of having heard, lit a fresh cigarette, and Fima passed her the ashtray, which the waiter had emptied, and the vodka he had brought her. "Coffee, perhaps?"
"No, really," said Annette. "You make me feel good. We only met yesterday, and it's as if I've found a brother."
Fima inwardly almost used her husband's favorite expression, Azoy. But he refrained and, reaching across almost unconsciously, stroked her cheek.
"Go on, Annette," he said. "You were talking about the Alps."
"I was a fool. Blind. I thought the new house was the embodiment of happiness. How excited we were to be living out of town! With the view, the peace and quiet. At the end of the day we would go out in the garden to measure how much the saplings had grown. Then in the last light we would sit on the veranda to watch the hills go dark. Almost without talking and yet as friends. Or so I thought. Like a pair of comrades-in-arms who no longer need to exchange words, if you can understand that. Now I think even that was a mistake. That by tapping on the railing of the veranda he was trying to express something in a kind of Morse code, and waiting for my reply. Sometimes