Fima - Amos Oz [98]
"Who the hell needs all this? We've gone out of our minds. We've gone right off our rockers. What are we doing squabbling with the Poles about who owns Auschwitz? It's already beginning to sound like an extension of our usual story about 'ancestral rights' and 'ancestral heritage' and 'we shall never hand back territory that we have liberated.' Any moment now our dashing pioneers will be out there planting a new settlement among the gas chambers. Establishing facts in disputed territory. What makes Auschwitz a Jewish site anyway? It's a Nazi site. A German site. As a matter of fact, it really ought to become a Christian site, for Christendom in general and Polish Catholicism in particular. Let them cover the whole death camp with convents and crosses and bells. Wall to wall. With a Jesus on every chimney. There's no more fitting place in the world for Christendom to commune with itself. Them, not us. Let them go on pilgrimages there, whether to beat their breasts or to celebrate the greatest theological victory in their history. For all I care, they can baptize their Auschwitz convent The Sweet Revenge of Jesus.' What arc we doing scurrying in there with protesters and placards? Are we out of our minds? It's quite right that a Jew who goes there to commune with the memory of the victims should see a forest of crosses all around him and hear nothing but the ringing of church bells. That way he'll understand that he's in the true heart of Poland. The heart of hearts of Christian Europe. As far as I'm concerned, it would be an excellent thing if they'd move the Vatican there. Why not? Let the pope sit there from now to the Resurrection on a golden throne among the chimneys. And for another thing—"
"And for another thing, come out of your trance," hissed Eitan, holding his elegant fingers up to the light and inspecting them sternly, as though suddenly anxious that they might have undergone some mutation. He did not trouble to specify whether he was of a different opinion.
"In any civilized country," said Wahrhaftig, trying to get the conversation back on the rails, "you two would not be permitted to say such macabre words about this tragic subject. There are certain things one must not joke about even in a private conversation behind closed doors. But our Fima is addicted to paradox, while you, Gad, are only happy when you have a chance to poke fun at the government, Auschwitz, the Entebbe raid, the Six Million, anything to be provocative. You're dead inside. You'd hang the lot of them. The Hangman from Alfasi Street. It's because you both hate the state, instead of getting up every morning and thanking God on bended knee for everything we have here, including the Asianness and the Bolshevism. You can't see the cheese for the holes." And suddenly, swelling with sham fury, as though he had made up his mind to impersonate a fearsome tyrant, the old doctor turned crimson, his drunkard's face trembled, his crisscrossed blood vessels looked as though they were about to burst, and he roared politely:
"Cut the cackle now! Everyone back to work, quick march! My clinic is not a parliament!"
Barely opening the crack of his lips, Eitan hissed under his blond mustache:
"But that's just what it is. A senile parliament. Alfred, step into my room. And I need you too, you sex-starved Miss World, with Mrs. Bergman's notes."
"What have I done to you?" Tamar whispered tearfully. "Why do you torment me all the time?" And with a flicker of timorous courage she added:
"One of these days I'll hit you."
"Great." Eitan grinned. "I'm at your service. I'll even turn the other cheek, if that'll help to calm your hormones down a bit. Then Saint Augustine here can comfort you, and me, together with all those who mourn for Zion and Jerusalem, amen." So saying, he wheeled around with military precision and stalked lithely away, smoothing his white sweater and leaving silence behind him.
The two doctors disappeared into Dr. Eitan's room. Fima rooted in his pocket and managed to produce a crumpled, none too clean handkerchief,