IN HIS DREAM GAD EITAN ARRIVED IN A MILITARY JEEP WITH A machine gun mounted on the hood, to summon Fima to a meeting with the president. The president’s office turned out to be in a small basement synagogue at the edge of the Russian Compound behind the main police station. A foppish British officer sat behind the desk, with a leather belt aslant his black uniform. He urged Fima to sign a voluntary confession to the murder of the dog, who had been transformed in the dream into a woman whose corpse was lying, wrapped in a sheet soiled with black blood, at the foot of the Holy Ark. Fima requested permission to see the dead woman’s face. The interrogator replied with a smile, What for? Isn’t it a pity to wake her? It’s Chili again; she risked her life for you, she brought you over to the Aryan side, she saved your life repeatedly, and you betrayed her. When Fima plucked up the courage to ask what punishment was in store for him, the defense minister said, Look what a dummy you are. The crime is the punishment.

27

Fima Refuses to Give in

AT HALF PAST SIX IN THE MORNING HE WOKE WITH A START BECAUSE a heavy object fell in the flat above, followed by a woman shouting, not for long or particularly loudly, but terribly, desperately, as though she had seen her own death. Fima leaped out of bed and into his trousers, then hurried to the kitchen balcony to hear better. No sound came from the upstairs flat. Only an invisible bird, which kept repeating three gentle syllables, as if it had come to the conclusion that Fima was so slow on the uptake that he would surely not understand. Shouldn’t he go upstairs quickly to find out what had happened? To offer help? Rescue? To call the police or an ambulance? But he remembered that his telephone had been cut off, so he was relieved of the obligation to intervene. Besides which, it was possible that the crash and the scream had happened in his sleep, and his inquiry would cause nothing but embarrassment and derision.

Instead of going back to bed, he continued standing on the kitchen balcony in his long-sleeved undershirt, amid the vestiges of cages, jars, and boxes where he and Dimi had once kept their bottle of worms. Now these exuded the rank smell of decay, of wet sawdust mixed with blackened droppings and remains of rotting food: carrots and cucumber peel and cabbage leaves and lettuce. At the beginning of the winter Dimi had decided to free the tortoises, insects, and snails they had collected in the wadi.

And where was the snow of last night?

It was as if it had never been.

It had gone without a trace.