Chapters (33)
Fima silently obeyed. He got up and found his coat, drank the remains of his second coffee, which had gone cold like its predecessor. She told me to go into town and buy an aquarium and some tropical fish for Dimi, he thought, so that’s what I’ll do. On his way out he managed to close the door behind him so carefully that it did not make the slightest sound. Then, as he walked northward, the same silence continued in the street and in his thoughts. He walked slowly the whole length of Hehalutz Street, to his own surprise trying to whistle the tune of the old song about the man they called Johnny Guitar. There, he said to himself, you could say that everything’s lost or you could say that nothing’s lost, and the two things are definitely not mutually exclusive. The situation seemed strange yet wonderful: he had not slept with his wife, yet he felt no lack in his body but, rather, the opposite, an exhilaration, an elation, a fulfillment, as though in some mysterious way there really had been deep and accurate intercourse between them. And as if in that intercourse with her he had finally begotten his son, his only son.
But in what sense?
The question seemed meaningless. In a senseless sense. So what.
When he reached Herzl Street, the fine rain reminded him that he had left his cap behind at Yael’s, on the edge of the kitchen table. But he was not anxious, because he knew he would return. He still had to explain to her and to Dimi, and why not to Ted too, the secret of the Third State. But not now. Not today. There was no hurry. Even when he thought of Yoezer and the other reasonable, sane people who would live in Jerusalem instead of us a hundred years from now, he felt no anguish, but, on the contrary, a sort of shy inner smile. What’s the matter? What’s the hurry? Let them wait. Let them wait quietly for their turn. We definitely haven’t concluded our business here yet. It’s a slow business, a rotten business, there’s no denying it, but one way or another we still haven’t said our last word.
He boarded the first bus that stopped, without bothering to check its number or its destination. He sat down behind the driver and hummed to himself, shamelessly out of tune, the song about Johnny Guitar. He saw no reason to get off before the terminus, which happened to be Prophet Samuel Street. Despite the cold and the wind, Fima was in very good form.