Fima by Amos Oz

Author:Amos Oz [Oz, Amos]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Jewish Fiction, Jerusalem, General
ISBN: 9780156001434
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: 1991-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

18. "YOU'VE FORGOTTEN YOURSELF"

"...TERRIBLE IN YOU, BUT I SIMPLY DIDN'T UNDERSTAND IT. I STILL don't. There's no resemblance between the soulful, dreamy young man who inspired and entertained three girls in the mountains of northern Greece and the lazy, gossipy receptionist who moons around at home all morning, arguing with himself, listening to the news every hour, reading three newspapers and scattering them all over the flat, opening cupboard doors and forgetting to shut them, poking around in the fridge and complaining there isn't any this and there isn't any that. And scurrying off to your friends every evening, barging in without waiting to be invited, with a grubby shirt collar, a cap left over from the 'forties, picking quarrels about politics with everybody into the early hours of the morning until they arc literally praying for you to leave. Even your outward appearance has a secondhand look. You've put on weight, Effy. Maybe it wasn't your fault. Those eyes that were alert and dreamy started to fade and now they've gone dull. In Greece you could hold Liat, me, and Ilia spellbound from moonrise to sunrise with stories about the Eleusinian mysteries, the cult of Dionysos, the Erinyes, goddesses of fate, and the Moirai, goddesses of furious vengeance, Persephone in the underworld, and fabled rivers with names like Styx and Lethe. I haven't forgotten a thing, Effy: I'm a good pupil. Though I sometimes wonder if you yourself can remember anything. You've forgotten yourself.

"We lay on the ground near a spring and you played on a pipe. We found you amazing, enchanting, but also a little frightening. I remember one evening Ilia and Liat made a wreath of oak leaves and arranged it on your head. At that moment I wouldn't have minded if you'd slept with one of them in front of my eyes. Or even with both of them at once. In Greece, in that springtime four years ago, you were a poet even though you didn't write a single word. Now you sit and cover pages every night, but the poet isn't there anymore.

"What charmed us all was your helplessness. On the one hand you were so enigmatic, and on the other hand you were a little clown. A sort of child. One could be a hundred percent certain that if there was a single sliver of glass in the valley, you would tread on it with your bare foot; that if there was just one loose stone in the whole of Greece, it would fall on your head; that if there was a single wasp in the Balkans, it would sting you. When you played your pipe outside some peasant's hut or at the mouth of a cave, there was sometimes a feeling that your body was not a body but a thought. And vice versa: every time you talked to us at night about thoughts, we felt we could almost touch them. All three of us loved you, but instead of getting jealous, with each day that passed we loved each other more.

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