Fima - Amos Oz [70]
The driver said:
"The goyim can go burn, the lot of 'em. They're all rotten. They hate us."
Strange lights flickered on the wet road. Wisps of mist drifted around the darkened buildings. Where the nearest wisps caught the orange glare of the streetlights at the junction, there was a kind of ghostly glow. Fima thought: This must be what the mystical writings call "the Radiance that is not of this world." The ancient Aramaic expression suddenly left him feeling dizzy. As if the words themselves came from over there, from other worlds. Not a car went past. There was not a lighted window to be seen. The desolate asphalt, the glare of the streetlights, the shadowy pines that stood shrouded in rain as though all gates had been locked forever, aroused a dread in Fima. As if his own life were flickering out, there in the icy mist. As if someone was expiring nearby, behind some damp wall.
The driver said:
"What a rotten fucking night. And these damn lights won't change."
Fima reassured him:
"What's the hurry? So we'll wait here another minute or two. Don't worry: I'm paying."
He was ten years old when his mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Baruch Nomberg, in his usual impetuous way, did not wait even a week: the weekend after the funeral he hurled all her belongings into boxes and crates, all her dresses and shoes and books, and her dressing table with the round Russian mirror, and the bed linen embroidered with her initials. He hastily donated the lot to the leper hospice in Talbiyeh. He erased every trace of her existence, as though her death had been an act of betrayal. As though she had run away with another man. But he did have her graduation photograph enlarged, and hung it over the sideboard, from where she looked down on the two of them all those years with a wistful, skeptical smile and with shyly down-turned eyes, as though she admitted her fault and repented of it. Immediately after the funeral Baruch took his son's education in hand with absent-minded strictness, with unpredictable emotional gestures, with tyrannical good humor. Every morning he checked the exercise books in Fima's satchel one by one. Every evening he stood in die bathroom with his arms crossed while Fima brushed his teeth. He inflicted on the child private tutors in math, English, and even Jewish tradition. Subtly he would bribe one of Fima's classmates to come home and play with him occasionally so that the child would not be too lonely. Unfortunately he was in the habit of joining in their games himself, and even when for pedagogic reasons he intended to lose, he would be carried away and forget his good intentions, whinnying exultantly when he won. He bought the wide desk that Fima still used. Winter and summer alike he forced the boy into clothes that were too warm. All those years the electric samovar went on steaming till one or two in the morning. Elegant divorcées and cultured widows of a certain age came for visits that lasted five hours. Even in his sleep Fima could hear broad Slavic voices coming from the salon, punctuated occasionally by laughter or weeping or by musical duets.
Forcefully, as though tugging him by his hair, his father dragged the idle Fima from one class to the next. He confiscated his reading books in favor of textbooks. He subjected him to early and advanced matriculation exams. He did not hesitate to use a veritable network of connections to rescue his son from military service in a combat unit and fix him up with a job in charge of cultural activities at the Schneller Barracks in Jerusalem. After his national service Fima became interested in the possibility of joining the merchant navy, at least for a year or two; he was under the spell of the sea. But his father vetoed this and condemned him to study business management, with the aim of involving him in the running of his cosmetics firm. Only after a bitter war of attrition did they compromise on history. As soon as Fima achieved