A little reflection revealed that all was not lost: it was nothing more than a technical difficulty. Because of the overcast sky and the heavy mist there was not enough light in the room. He needed light. That was all. He switched on his desk lamp, hoping by so doing to make a fresh start on his article, his morning, his life. But the lamp was broken. Or perhaps it needed a new light bulb. Angry, he hurried to the cupboard in the hall, where, contrary to his expectation, he actually did find a bulb, and he managed to replace the old one with it. But the new bulb must have been defective, or perhaps it had fallen under its predecessor’s influence. He went back to look for a third one, and on the way it occurred to him to try the light in the hall, and then he had to exonerate both bulbs, because it turned out there was a power cut. To save himself from idleness he decided to call Yael. If her husband answered, he would hang up. If she was there, the inspiration of the moment would tell him what to say. Like that time, after a terrible fight, when he had mollified her with the words: If only we weren’t married, I’d ask you to be my wife. And she, smiling, had answered through her tears, If you weren’t already my husband, I think I might say yes. After ten or twenty hollow rings Fima understood that Yael did not want to speak to him, unless Ted was leaning on the phone to prevent her picking up the receiver.

He felt weary. His long nocturnal prowl through the alleys of Valladolid had ruined his whole morning. At one o’clock he had to be at his post behind the reception desk of the private clinic where he worked in Kiryat Shmuel, and already it was twenty past nine. Fima crumpled up the headings for his article and his electricity bill and his shopping list and his computerized bank statement and tossed them all in the trash can: clearing his desk for action at last. He went to the kitchen to make himself a fresh cup of coffee, and while he was waiting for the water to boil, he stood in the half-darkness remembering the evening light in Jerusalem some thirty years before, in Agrippa Street outside the Eden cinema a few weeks after his trip to Greece. Yael had said then, Yes, Effy, I do quite love you and I like loving you and I like it when you talk, but what makes you think that if you stop talking for a few minutes you’ll stop existing? And he had shut up like a child scolded by its mother.