Fima - Amos Oz [88]
"Look, Nina. About the night before last. No, it was the night before that. I burst in looking like a half-drowned dog, I talked nonsense, I jumped on top of you, I upset you, and then I ran away without explaining. Now I'm ashamed. I can't imagine what you must think of me. I just wouldn't like you to think that I don't find you attractive or something. It's not that, Nina. On the contrary. I do, more than ever. I'd simply had a bad day. This just isn't my week. I feel that I'm not really living. Just existing. Creeping from day to day. Without sense and without desire. There's a verse in the Psalms: My soul droops with sorrow. That about sums it up: drooping. Sometimes I have no idea what I'm doing hanging around here like last year's snow. Coming and going. Writing and crossing out. Filling in forms at the office. Putting my clothes on and taking them off again. Making phone calls. Bothering everybody and driving you all crazy. Needling my father on purpose. How come there are still people who can stand me? How come you haven't sent me to Hell yet? Will you teach me how to make amends?"
Nina said:
"Be quiet, Fima. Just stop talking."
Meanwhile she arranged the new provisions on the shelves of the now gleaming refrigerator. Her frail shoulders were trembling. From behind she looked to Fima like a small animal trapped in a cage, and he felt tenderness for her. Still with her back toward him, she continued:
"I don't understand it either. Look. An hour and a half ago, at the office, I suddenly had a feeling that you were in trouble. That something bad had happened to you. Maybe you were ill, lying here alone in a fever. I tried to call, but your phone was always busy. I thought perhaps you'd forgotten to put the receiver back, once again. I dashed out in the middle of quite an import ant meeting about an insurance company that's gone broke, and came running straight to you. Or, rather, I stopped on the way to do some shopping for you, so you wouldn't starve to death. It's almost as though Uri and I have adopted you as our child. Except that Uri seems to get a kick out of the game, whereas all I get is depressed. The whole time. Again and again I get this feeling that something terrible has happened to you, and I drop everything and come running. Such an awful feeling, as though you were calling out to me from far away: Nina, come quick. There's no explanation. Do me a favor, Fima; stop stuffing yourself with bread. Look how fat you're getting. And, anyway, I haven't got the strength or the inclination right now for your earth-shattering theories about Mitterrand and the British Labour party. Save it for Uri, for Saturday night. All I want you to say is what's wrong. What's happening to you? Something strange is going on that you're keeping from me. Even stranger than usual. As if you were slightly drugged."
Fima obeyed immediately. He stopped munching the piece of bread he was holding and put it down absent-mindedly in die sink like an empty cup. He began to stammer that the wonderful thing about her was that with her he felt hardly any embarrassment. He wasn't afraid of appearing ridiculous. He didn't even care if he was miserable or stupid in her presence, as happened the other night. As if she were his sister. Now he was going to say something trite, but so what? Trite wasn't necessarily the opposite of true. What he wanted to say was that for him she was a good person. And that she had the loveliest fingers he had ever seen.
Still with her back to him, bending over the sink, picking out the piece of bread Fima had put there, scrubbing the ceramic and die taps, carefully rinsing her hands, Nina said sadly:
"You left a sock at my place, Fima."
And then:
"It's ages since we slept together."
She stubbed out her cigarette, clutched his arm with her exquisitely shaped hand, like that of a young girl from the Far East, and whispered:
"Come now. I have to be back in the office in