A Late Divorce by A. B. Yehoshua Page B

not let the world see for itself the grade-A work that I do. I just hope the old lady signs today with no problems. When I was alone with him in the living room last night I said be a sport don’t quibble over each cent don’t forget you live in dollars now the Messiah himself when he comes couldn’t up the value of the Israeli pound against them do you know how many men over sixty would love to get a divorce like this and trade in the old jalopy? He sat shocked in the shadow of the unlit lamp looking at me angrily a savage glitter in his glasses he jumped up shaking flushed with rage I was sure he was going to hit me. Maybe it’s true that I come on as a bastard I’ve got a big mouth my poor dead father used to say there’s no clutch between your brain and your tongue though it was he who taught me that style it’s just that he had to aim most of his jokes at himself since who’d have laughed at them if he hadn’t? How he used to lose his temper with me yet secretly pleased with me too two hours before he died with twenty tubes stuck up him I still got a laugh out of him but he had a sense of humor how many people like that do you find nowadays? I have to be more careful. Once I made a gag in court I waited for the merry tinkle of laughter it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop one of the judges was so stunned he nearly fell off the dais. I thought I’d be debarred for it in the end I got off with a reprimand. What can you do? That’s the world we live in. The trouble is that sometimes I regret having said things myself it’s not that I really think of her like that I’ve learned to respect and even to like her although those first years she wasn’t totally human I mean the way it’s defined in the encyclopedias.
    But what could I tell him that I’m sorry then he’d think I’d really meant it so I just waited for him to insult me back because at least if I hurt people’s feelings I’m willing to have mine hurt too let him say what he wants that I’m fat that I’m clumsy that I’m a very mediocre lawyer I’ll even write his lines for him something really mean he’ll see I’m the first to applaud him but he didn’t say a thing he just spun around dumbstruck in the room how I hate all these people with thin skins.
    â€œMaybe you’d like a glass of some good, special cognac?”
    But he refused with an angry wave of his hand as though chasing away a fly and left the room. Let him suit himself. Afterwards when I undressed in the bedroom Ya’el kept asking me what did you say to him. What did you say? Did you say something to him? I only said he should be a little more generous. That’s all? Yes that’s all. For sensitive souls like him that’s apparently too much come to sleep do you know how many nights it’s been since you’ve fulfilled your connubial duty I could get a rabbinical permit for adultery but she just looked at me mournfully and walked out in the middle of the sentence. The family’s falling apart. The last bastion.
    Should I go or wait for the mail?
    Levana comes to tell me that Goren insists that he sent me the check four days ago. The thought that a check for a hundred thousand in my name is making the rounds of this town in the hands of those morons in the post office is enough to give me the willies. I asked him the day before yesterday didn’t you at least send it registered. It turned out it hadn’t even occurred to him. When he married his wife ten years ago it didn’t occur to him that he might want to dump her one day either. Should I go or wait for the mail?
    It’s so quiet. What’s going on here? No one needs me today? No one killed anyone last night? No one stole no one burgled no one cheated no one put his hand in the till? No one wants to sell an apartment or to rent anything? Anyone reading the newspapers might think that half of Israel