A Late Divorce by A. B. Yehoshua Page A

pounds for each no.
    â€œAll right, then. Call Goren right away and tell him that I still haven’t gotten his check and that if he doesn’t get it to me this morning I’m not going to the rabbinical court tomorrow and he can stay married a few years more ”
    A fancy divorce settlement that I finished two months ago. In the end it upsets people to realize that they’ve gone to a lawyer when they could have gotten the same deal on their own if only they’d kept their cool. Maybe they could have but it takes a certain amount of intelligence to know when you’ve run into a blank wall most people prefer to bang their heads against it and then hire a lawyer to explain to them that it can’t be moved. Why is she looking at me like that in a minute she’ll be asking me what Goren’s number is.
    â€œI don’t know Mr. Goren’s telephone number.”
    â€œAnd why indeed should you? I’ve only given it to you thirty times. It’s a pity you can’t move away from that heater, because if you could you might free your legs enough to get to the telephone book. When is your birthday?”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI want to know. Is it a secret? Do I have to find it out from the police?”
    â€œJune tenth.”
    â€œThen maybe you could move it up a bit so that I can buy you the present I’ve been meaning to—an electric blanket to wrap yourself in so as not to be addicted to that heater...”
    Those dark Moroccan eyes regard me does she get it or am I jerking off another joke in vain she’s already cried more than once over my jokes in a second she’ll cry again I’ll have to add the cost of all that Kleenex to the electric bill.
    â€œI was only kidding. Don’t take me so seriously. I see you’re feeling low this morning. Did something happen at home?”
    â€œNo.”
    Her father must have beat her. Those primitives run amuck before each Jewish holiday or maybe one of them’s in jail I already once had to bail out a brother of hers after he socked somebody in the market that’s how I made the acquaintance of a family of greengrocers for my fee they sent me a check drawn on eggplant we ate them for a whole month now when I see one I cross to the other side of the street. It was clever of them to plant a daughter in a lawyer’s office though if you intend to run regularly afoul of the law you need dependable legal coverage.
    She gets up and goes to the stack of telephone books she turns their pages as though they were the Talmud. Let’s see how long it takes her.
    â€œI won’t be in the office this morning. I told you yesterday that I’d be out today, didn’t I?”
    â€œYes.”
    Yes? Did she really say yes? All is not lost there’s still hope.
    â€œDid you finish typing that agreement that I gave you the day before yesterday?”
    â€œYes. It’s on your desk.”
    Yes again. If she keeps it up she’ll find a husband after all the agreement is in fact on my desk I can’t deny she makes clean copies she works slowly but surely.
    â€œDid you guess who the parties in it are?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThat’s just as well.”
    She looks at me with huge surprised eyes like a witness japped by the prosecution she won’t have any peace of mind until she japs me back.
    â€œIf you’d look for Goren in the Haifa phone book instead of in the Tel Aviv one you might find him there before noon.”
    She’s so alarmed she drops the phone book but I look at my feet to avoid embarrassing her the phone book’s not made out of glass after all the phone company’s taken her into account.
    I quickly read the divorce agreement I drew up. A good one a really good one. In a few years I can publish a treatise on divorce and get a university chair. Everybody’s uncle writes a book in this country and everybody’s cousin praises it in the newspapers so why