At that moment he felt as affectionate and tender toward the person sitting opposite him, dressed in a well-worn pair of men’s jeans with a zipper fly and a wide-cut man’s shirt, as he would if she were his own sister. Her lack of prettiness and femininity suddenly struck him as painfully feminine and attractive. Her large soft breasts cried out to him to lay his head between them. Her short gray hair drew his fingertips. And he knew precisely how to wipe that hunted vixen look off her face and replace it with the her pampered little girl expression. At this his organ began to stir. With Fima, kindness, generosity, compassion for a woman always heralded the stirrings of lust. His loins were on fire with a desire that was close to pain: it was two months since he had slept with a woman. The smell of damp wool that he had sniffed on Yael when he kissed her back in the dark entrance to her building was blended now with the smell of his clothes drying in front of the fire. His breathing quickened, and his lips parted and quivered. Like a child’s. Nina noticed, and said:

“Just a minute, Fima. Let me finish my cigarette. Give me another moment or two.”

But Fima, bashful yet burning with lust and pity, ignored this, knelt in front of her, and tugged at her leg until he succeeded in dragging her down to join him on the rug. A clumsy tussle with his clothes and hers ensued by the table legs. With some difficulty he disposed of her lighted cigarette and spectacles, while he rubbed uninterruptedly against her thigh and smothered her face with kisses as if to distract her attention from the ever more furious friction. Until she managed to push him away and release both of them from their clothes, whispering, “Gently, Fima: you’re eating me alive.” But, heedless, he lay on top of her with all his weight, still kissing her face, still whispering entreaties and stammering excuses. When she finally relented and said, “All right, come on then,” his organ suddenly shriveled. It withdrew into the recesses of its lair like a startled tortoise.

Even so, he did not stop kissing and hugging and apologizing for his tiredness; he had had a bad dream last night, and this evening Ted had thrown him out after making him drink brandy, and now the Scotch. It seemed as though today really wasn’t his day.