Fima

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FIVE NIGHTS BEFORE THE SAD EVENT, FIMA HAD A DREAM WHICH he recorded at half past five in the morning in his dream book, a brown notebook that always lay beneath an untidy heap of old newspapers and magazines on the floor at the foot of his bed. In this book Fima had made it his habit to write down, in bed, as the first pale lines of dawn began to appear between the slats of his blinds, whatever he had seen in the night. Even if he had seen nothing, or if he had forgotten what he had seen, he still switched on the light, squinted, sat up in bed, and, propping a thick magazine on his knees to serve as a writing desk, wrote something like this:

"Twentieth of December — blank night."

Or:

"Fourth of January — something about a fox and a ladder, but the details have gone."

He always wrote the date out in words. Then he would get up to relieve himself and lie down in bed again until the cooing of the doves came into the room, with a dog barking and a bird nearby that sounded surprised, as though it could not believe its eyes. Fima promised himself he would get up at once, in a few minutes, a quarter of an hour at most, but sometimes he dropped off again and did not wake till eight or nine. His shift at the clinic started only at one o'clock. He found less falsehood in sleeping than in waking. Even though he had long ago come to understand that truth was beyond his reach, he wanted to distance himself as much as possible from the petty lies that filled his everyday life like a fine dust that penetrated even to the most intimate crannies.

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