“Dimi isn’t well. We can’t go on pretending there’s nothing the matter with him. You’d better put the flowers in water; they’re for you, for the Sabbath. I bought them from a settler. Besides which, it’s your birthday around the end of February. You wouldn’t make me a cup of coffee, would you? I’ve walked all the way from Kiryat Yovel and I’m half frozen to death. My upstairs neighbor tried to murder his wife at five this morning: I rushed upstairs to help and only made a fool of myself. Never mind. I’ve come to talk to you about Dimi. The other night, when you went out and I looked after him . . .”

“Look here, Efraim,” Yael cut in, “why do you have to meddle in everybody’s lives? I know Dimi isn’t doing well. Or that we’re not doing well with him. You’re not telling me anything I don’t know. You’re not doing too well yourself, if it comes to that.”

Fima understood from this that he ought to say good-bye and go. But he sat down on a low kitchen bench, looked up at Yael with doglike devotion, blinked his brown eyes, and started to explain that Dimi was an unhappy and dangerously lonely child. Something had come out the other evening while he was looking after the child, ho point in going into details, but he had formed the impression that the boy might be, how to put it, in need of some help.

Yael plugged the kettle in. She put instant coffee into two glasses. Fima had the feeling she was opening and closing more doors and drawers than was necessary. She said:

“Fine. Great. So you came to give me a lecture on childhood and its problems. Teddy’s got this friend, a child psychologist from South Africa, and we consult him occasionally. So just stop looking for disasters and things to worry about. Stop pestering everybody.”

When Yael mentioned South Africa, Fima had difficulty fighting back the sudden urge to explain his scenario about what was going to happen there in the near future, when the apartheid regime was toppled. He was convinced there would be a bloodbath, not just between whites and blacks, but also between whites and whites and blacks and blacks. Who could tell if a similar danger did not exist in Israel, too? But the word “bloodbath” struck him as a tired cliché.