Fima, as though delivering the final verdict on a dispute that was not of his making, declared:

“And so he did. He wasn’t exactly cut off in his prime, after all.”

Nina said:

“It was a sheer miracle that we managed to complete the arrangements. Everything’s fixed for Sunday. Believe me, it was a mad race against the clock, to get it all done before the Sabbath. This Jerusalem of ours is getting worse than Teheran. You’re not angry we didn’t wait for you, Fima? You’d simply vanished; that’s why I took the liberty of dealing with the formalities. To spare you the headache. I put announcements in Sunday’s Ha’arets and Ma’ariv. Maybe I should have put it in some other papers, but there simply wasn’t time. We’ve arranged the funeral for the day after tomorrow, Sunday, at three o’clock in the afternoon. It turns out that he’d fixed himself up with a plot, not in Sanhedriya, next to your mother, but on the Mount of Olives. Incidentally, he purchased an adjacent plot for you. Right next to him. And he left detailed and precise instructions in his will about the funeral arrangements. He even chose the cantor, a landsman of his. It was a sheer miracle I managed to locate him and catch him on the phone a minute and a half before the Sabbath came in. He even left his own wording for the tombstone. Something with a rhyme. But that can wait till the end of the first month, if not till the anniversary. If a quarter of the people who benefited from his philanthropy come to the funeral, we’ll have to allow for at least half a million. Including the mayor and all sorts of rabbis and politicians, not to mention all the brokenhearted widows and divorcées.”

Fima waited until she had finished. Only then did he ask quietly:

“You opened the will by yourself?”

“At the office. In the presence of witnesses. We simply thought . . .”

“Who gave you permission to do that?”

“Quite frankly . . .”

“Where is it, the will?”

“Here, in my attaché case.”

“Give it to me.”

“Right now?”