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By Root 582 0

about the length and width of railway tracks. He discovered he had a soft spot for the Israeli representative: in refusing to give way to his U.S. counterpart, he had delivered a devastating reply. It was only on the surface that it appeared funny: in fact, it was the American's position that was ridiculous. As if there was any sense in his implied claim that in an international gathering of railway chiefs each delegate's speech should be in direct relation to the length of track in his country. Such a crude approach was both morally untenable and logically absurd. While he was pursuing this line of thought further, he absent-mindedly attempted to take his own blood pressure with the device he found on Eitan's desk. Perhaps it was because he had remarked jokingly to Tamar that Gad Eitan may not have been feeling well the day before, since he had failed to tyrannize her. But Fima's efforts to bind the rubber tube, phylactery-like, around his arm with his free hand were unsuccessful, and he abandoned the attempt. He contemplated a colored poster on the wall: a humorous picture of a good-looking young man with a pregnant tummy holding a plump baby in his arms, the two of them beaming with joy. The wording read: "Materna 160— your vitamin supplement. Easy to take. Odorless. Tasteless. The leading product in the field. Widely endorsed by expectant mothers in the USA. Available strictly on medical prescription only." One of the two words, "strictly" and "only," was redundant, Fima mused, but for some reason he could not decide which to delete. The expression "leading product" struck him as crude, while "widely endorsed by expectant mothers" was positively offensive.

Moving on, he flicked an imaginary speck of dust from the examination couch. He struggled against the sudden urge to lie down with his legs apart for a minute or two, just to experience the sensation. He was certain there must be a mistake in Tamar's crossword: the only country he could think of in Africa with eleven letters was South Africa, but that didn't fit because it didn't have two E's. As though if it did have two E's, everything there would be perfect!

Fima eyed the stainless-steel speculums intended for taking cervical smears. When he imagined to himself the mysterious entrance exposed and dilated by means of the metal jaws, he felt a dull pang of revulsion in his stomach. He made a sound like an intake of breath through clenched teeth, as though he had been scalded but was determined not to shriek. Laid out with obsessive precision beside the speculums were long-bladed scissors, forceps, IUDs hermetically sealed in sterile plastic. To the left behind the doctor's desk, on a small trolley, stood the suction pump that was used, Fima knew, to terminate pregnancy by means of suction. His guts went into spasm at the grim thought that this was a kind of enema in reverse, and that womanhood was an irreparable injustice.

And what did they do with the fetuses? Put them in a plastic bag and drop them into the trash cans that he or Tamar emptied at the end of the day? Food for alley cats? Or did they flush them down the toilet and rinse with disinfectant? The snows of yesteryear. If the light within you darkens, it is written, how great is the darkness.

On a little stand was the resuscitation equipment, an oxygen bottle and an oxygen mask. Nearby was the anesthetic equipment. Fima switched on the electric radiator and waited for the elements to glow red. He counted the drip bags, trying to understand the formula printed on them, glucose and sodium chloride. With his duster poised in his hand he reflected on how anesthesia and resuscitation, fertility and death, rubbed shoulders with each other within this little room. There was something absurd, something unbearable about it, but what it was he could not say.

After a moment he pulled himself together and caressed the screen of the ultrasound machine with his duster. It did not seem much different from the screen of Ted's computer. When Ted had asked him how to say "deadline" in Hebrew, he had not been able to