In the middle of Wahrhaftig’s stories Eitan would sometimes turn quickly through one hundred and eighty degrees, like the turret of a tank, and vanish on cat’s paws through the door of his consulting room. It seemed as though all people, men and women alike, caused a faint revulsion in him. And because he had known for several years that Tamar was in love with him, he enjoyed occasionally firing an acerbic remark at her:

“What do you smell of today?”

Or:

“Straighten your skirt, will you, and stop wasting your knees on us. We have to watch that kind of view at least twenty times a day.”

This time he said:

“Would you kindly put that artist’s vagina and cervix on my desk. Yes, the famous lady. Yes, the results of her tests. What did you think I meant? Yes, hers, I’ve no use for yours.”

Tamar’s eyes, the green left one and the brown right one, filled with tears. And Fima, with an air of someone rescuing a princess from the dragon’s jaws, got up and placed the file in question on the doctor’s desk. Eitan shot a vacant glance at him and then turned his icy eyes to his own fingers. Under the powerful theater lights his womanly fingers took on an unnatural pink glow: they almost looked transparent. He saw fit to aim another lethal salvo, at Fima:

“Do you happen to know what menstruation means? Then please tell Mrs. Licht, today—yes, on the phone—that I need to have her here exactly two days after she next menstruates. And if that doesn’t sound nice on the phone, you can say two days after her next period. I don’t care what you say. You can say after her festival, for all I care. The main thing is to fix an appointment for her accordingly. Thank you.”

Wahrhaftig, like a man catching sight of a fire and hurrying over to throw the contents of the nearest bucket on it without stopping to check whether the bucket contains water or gasoline, intervened at this point:

“Festivals—that reminds me of a well-known story about Begin and Yasser Arafat.”

And he embarked for the nth time on the story of how Begin’s shrewdness once got the better of Arafat’s villainy.

Eitan replied:

“I’d hang the pair of them.”

“Gad’s had a hard day,” said Tamar.

And Fima added his own contribution:

“These are hard times everywhere. We spend all our time trying to repress what we’re doing in the Territories, and the consequence is that the air’s full of anger and aggression, and everybody’s at everybody else’s throat.”