Tomorrow, Fima decided, first thing in the morning, I’ll take him to the hospital for tests. By force if necessary. This whistling is something new. Unless he’s extending his repertoire again, producing comic imitations of trains to accompany his railway stories. Or unless it’s just a slight chill and I’m losing my sense of proportion. Though how can I lose something I never had? He never did either, for that matter.

I ought to give Tsvi a call first; his brother is a consultant at Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus. Try to fix him up with a private room and all the indispensable little luxuries. That die-hard Revisionist is so stubborn, won’t so much as hear the word “hospital.” He’ll erupt like Vesuvius. In fact, why not ask Yael to soften him up first? He has an old weakness for her. What he calls a soft spot. Maybe it’s because he’s decided that Dimi is his grandson. Just as he decided that India is an Arab state and that Krochmal met Nietzsche, and that I’m a sort of Toynbee manqué or a Pushkin who’s gone off the rails. Typical ridiculous mistakes of a man who refuses to face reality and look it straight in the eye.

As the words “straight in the eye” flashed through his mind, Fima suddenly remembered the dog that was bleeding to death in the pitch-black wadi. He had a vivid picture of the last blood oozing from the gaping wounds, and the final spasms of the dying creature. In an instant illumination he realized that this horror too was the result of what was happening in the Occupied Territories.

“We’ve got to make peace,” Fima said to the driver. “We can’t go on like this. Don’t you think we ought to make the effort and start talking to them? What’s so terrible about talking? You don’t get killed by talking. In any case, we’re a thousand times better at talking than they are.”

The driver said:

“We ought to kill them when they’re young. Not permit them to raise their heads. Let them curse the day they were crazy enough to start with us. Is this your building?”

Fima suddenly panicked, because he was not certain he had enough money in his pocket for the fare. He decided he would hand his identity card over to the driver and go down to the taxi company next morning to pay. If he could only locate his identity card. But it transpired that Ted Tobias had foreseen this eventuality and paid the fare in advance. Fima thanked the driver, wished him luck, and asked him as he got out:

“So tell me: how long do you think we should go on murdering each other?”

The driver said: