Chapters (33)
Here we go again, Fima thought: more longing for the Aryan side. For Chili. He picked Dimi up in his arms and carried him to his room. He undressed him and put him into his pajamas. In the Galapagos Islands there is no winter. It’s always springtime. And the thousand-year-old tortoises are nearly as big as this table because they don’t hunt and they don’t dream and they don’t make a sound. As though everything was straightforward and fine. He picked the boy up again and took him to brush his teeth. Then they stood together at the toilet and Fima said, “Ready, steady,” and they had a contest to see who would finish first. All the time Fima muttered muddled reassurances, which he hardly heard himself; Never mind little boy the rain will soon stop the winter will soon be over the spring will soon be over we’ll sleep like tortoises and then we’ll get up and plant vegetables and then we’ll be all good and you’ll see how great it’ll be.
Despite these reassuring words they were both on the verge of tears. They clung to each other as though it was getting colder. Instead of tucking him in bed, Fima carried the child piggyback in his green flannel pajamas to his parents’ bedroom and lay down beside him on the double bed, carefully removing his thick glasses, and the two of them huddled together under a single blanket while Fima told him one story after another, about lizards, about the evolutionary abyss, about the failure of the unnecessary Jewish revolt against Rome, about the railwaymen’s conference and the width of the track, about the forests of Sierra Leone in Africa, about whaling in Alaska, about ruined temples in the mountains of northern Greece, about breeding tropical fish in heated pools in Valletta, the capital of Malta, about St. Augustine, about the poor cantor who found himself alone on a desert island on the High Holy Days. At a quarter to one, when Ted and Yael returned from Tel Aviv, they found Fima sleeping fully clothed, curled up like a fetus inside a blanket on their double bed, with his head on Yael’s nightie, and Dimi sitting in his green pajamas at the computer in his father’s study, with a very serious look on his owlish face, intent on defeating a whole gang of pirates single-handed, in a complicated game of strategy.