Free The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson Page A

fly incident .
    They'd been away for a long romantic weekend, he and Joia - Joia whose voice had the quality of organza tearing and whose nervous system was visible through her skin, a tracery of fine blue lines like rivers on an atlas - three fretful days in Paris during which they hadn't been able to find a single place to eat. In Paris! They'd passed and looked into restaurants, of course, on some occasions even taken a seat, but whichever he fancied, she didn't - on nutritional or dietetic or humanitarian or simply feel-wrong grounds - and whichever she did, he didn't, either because he couldn't afford it or the waiter had insulted him or the menu made greater demands of his French than he could bear Joia - Hoia - to witness. For three days they walked the length and breadth of the greatest eating city on earth, squabbling, ashamed and famished, and then when they returned to Treslove's flat in sullen silence they found upwards of ten thousand flies in their death throes - mouchoirs , no, mouches : how come he remembered that word alone of all the French he knew; what a pity mouches had not been on a single menu - a mass suicide of flies in its final stages, flies dying on the bed, on the windows and the windowsills, in the dressing-table drawers, in Joia's shoes even. She had screamed in horror. It was possible he had screamed in horror too. But if he did, he stopped. And Joia, whose organza screams would have harrowed hell, did not. Treslove had seen enough films in which a man slapped a hysterical woman to bring her to her senses to know that that was how you brought a hysterical woman to her senses. But he only made as if to slap her.
    The making as if to slap her - the frozen gesture of a slap - was as bad, though, as if he'd slapped her in earnest, and maybe even worse since it signalled intentionality rather than temporary loss of sanity of which hunger was a contributory cause.
    He didn't deny, to himself at least, that the sight of all those flies dying like . . . well, like flies - tombant commes des mouches - had a no less deranging effect on him than it had on Joia, and that his almost-slap was as much to calm his nerves as hers. But it is expected of a man to know what to do when the unforeseen happens, and his not knowing what to do counted as much against him as the almost-slap.
    'Hit the flies if you must hit someone,' Joia cried, her voice quavering as though on a high wire of silk, 'but don't you ever, ever, ever, ever think of hitting me.'
    For a moment it occurred to Treslove that there were more evers multiplying in his bedroom than there were flies dying.
    He closed his eyes against the pain and when he opened them Joia was gone. He shut the door of his bedroom and went to sleep on his couch. The following day the flies were dead. Not a one twitched. He swept them up and filled the bin with them. No sooner had he finished than Joia's brother came around to collect her things. 'But not the shoes with the flies in,' he told Treslove, as though Treslove was a man who out of malice put flies in women's shoes. 'Those my sister says you can keep to remember her by.'
    Treslove remembered her all right, and knew it was not she who had attacked him. Joia's bones could not have carried the weight of his assailant. Nor could her voice have ever dropped so low. Besides, he would have known if she was in the vicinity. He would have heard her nerves twanging blocks away.
    And the contact would have destroyed his mind.

    Then there was the face-painting incident .
    Treslove remembered it only to forget it. He might have woken to an alien sensation of near-cheerfulness, but he wasn't up to recalling the face-painting incident .

    After four days of lying around in a fair bit of pain he rang his doctor. He had a private doctor - one of the perks of his having no wife or similar to put a strain on his finances - which meant he was able to get an appointment that afternoon instead of the following month by which time