Fima - Amos Oz [94]
Fima considered this, agreed with her in his heart, and replied warmly:
"You are the ideal woman, Tamar. It's a disgrace to the male sex that nobody has snatched you away from us yet. Though on second thought there isn't a man alive who's worthy of you."
Her stocky, robust body, her soft, fair hair gathered into a small bun at the back, even her one green eye and one brown one suddenly made her look touchingly childlike, and he asked himself why he shouldn't go up to her, clasp her shoulders, and bury her head in his chest as though she were his daughter. But this urge to console was mixed with another: to boast to her that two women had made the pilgrimage to his flat that morning and offered themselves to him, one after the other. He hesitated, pulled himself together, and said nothing. When had a man's hand last touched that stout body? How would she react if he suddenly reached out and cupped her breasts in his hands? With shock? Outrage? Guilty surrender? You fool, he said to his penis: now you remember. And as though he could feel her nipples nestling in the soft center of each palm, he clenched his fists and smiled.
Tamar said:
"Can I ask you something else?"
Fima could not remember what the last question was, but he replied cheerily, expansively, as though aping his father's lordly manner:
"Up to half my kingdom."
"Pacific island, also bathing costume."
"Pardon?"
"That's what it says here. Do you think it's a misprint? 'Pacific island, also bathing costume.' Sue letters. It's almost the last clue left."
"I don't know," said Fima. "Try Tahiti. I've got a child who keeps asking me to take him away to the Pacific. He wants us to build a cabin out of wattles and live on fish and fruit. I don't mean that he's my child exactly. Well, he is and he isn't. Never mind. Try Hawaii. Would you like to come with us, Tamar? To live in a cabin built of wattles and eat nothing but fish and fruit? Far away from cruelty and stupidity? Far away from this rain?"
"Do you spell Tahiti with an I or a Y? Either way it won't help, because the second letter has got to be an I and the third's a K. Do you mean Yael's little boy, Dimi? Your Challenger? Maybe I shouldn't meddle, Fima, but you ought to think carefully whether you're not complicating that child's life too much by trying to be a spare father to him. I sometimes think..."
"Bikini," said Fima. "The swimsuit was named after doomsday. Bikini was a tiny island that was evacuated and blown to bits with atom bombs. It was the testing ground for doomsday. In the South Pacific. We'll have to look for some other island. Some other ocean, in fact. Anyway, how can I make a cabin out of wattles: I can't even put up a bookshelf. Uri Gefen assembled my bookcases for me. Please, Tamar, don't stand at the window like that with your back to me and the room. I've told you a thousand times I can't stand it. My problem, I know."
"What's the matter with you, Fima? You're very funny sometimes. I was only drawing the curtains because Pm fed up with looking at the rain. We don't need to look for any other island: Bikini is just right. What do you think is the name of the ruling party in Nicaragua?"
Fima had the answer to this question on the tip of his tongue, but at that instant the sound of a woman's voice suddenly burst out behind Or. Eitan's closed door. It was a short, piercing scream, full of terror and outrage, the sort of sound that might be wrenched from the throat of a small child who was the victim of searing injustice. Who was being butchered in there? Perhaps someone destined to be Yoezer's father or grandfather. Fima tensed, straining to block his mind, to fortify himself, not to imagine, what those plastic-gloved hands were doing in there, on that couch covered in white oilcloth and a disposable sheet of coarse white paper, with a white trolley nearby carrying a set of sterile scalpels, speculums, different-sized scissors, forceps, syringes, a razor, special needle and thread for sewing human flesh, clamps, oxygen