Fima - Amos Oz [77]
"In December, when we went to Uri and Nina's for the surprise party that Shula put on to celebrate Tsvi getting his doctorate, you monopolized the whole evening. You had a fit of spite. I noticed that every time I started to say something, you looked at me like a cat looking at an insect. You simply waited for me to stop for a moment, to draw breath or to look for a word, and then you pounced, snatching my sentence away from me and finishing it yourself. In case I said something silly. Or sided with your opponents. Or wasted your rime. Or copied anything from you. Because it was your show, the whole of that evening. It always is. Which did not prevent your cuddling me while you were talking, Nina and Shula too: you joked that I may be the one who keeps the air force in the air, but in this debate you can manage fine without air cover. And you really did. By one in the morning you had demolished Tsvi's thesis brick by brick, even though he had made a point of thanking you in his acknowledgments and quoting you in his footnotes. And then you dazzled everyone by reconstructing a brand-new thesis out of the rubble. A counterthesis. The more Tsvika tried to defend himself, the more spiteful and ruthless you became. You never let him finish a sentence. Until Uri stood up, blew an imaginary whistle, and declared that you had won by a knock-out and that Tsvi could go out and look for a job on the buses. And you said: Why the buses? Maybe Yael could launch him on one of her rockets and send him straight to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella so that he can find out what really happened there and write a new thesis. When at long last Nina managed to change the subject, and we chatted about a Fernandel film, you just went to sleep in your armchair. You even snored. I had difficulty dragging you home. But when we got back at three o'clock, you were suddenly viciously wide awake, you made fun of them all, you gave me a blow-by-blow reconstruction of your victory. You then declared that you deserved a right royal fuck, you had earned it with the sweat of your brow. The sort of fuck that victorious samurai were granted in old Japan. I looked at you, and suddenly it was not a samurai I saw in front of me but a sort of secularized yeshiva student, perverted by sophistry and casuistry, ebullient and none too bright. You had forgotten yourself completely.
"You must understand, Effy: I'm not reminding you of your great night at the Gefens' to explain myself. That's something I haven't even managed to do to myself. At least not in words. After all, it's not your fault you've developed a little paunch. One doesn't wipe out a marriage just because one of the partners snips the hairs in one nostril and forgets to do the other. Or forgets to flush the toilet. Especially since I know that despite the pettiness and the vicious remarks you're still fond of me in your own way. Maybe more now than when we came back from Greece and for some reason I was the lucky one, even though you could hardly tell the three of us apart. Maybe it's something like this: You're in love with me, but you don't really love me. No doubt you'll say I'm just playing with words. What Fm saying is that, for you, being in love means wanting to be a baby. You want to be fed and changed and above all adored