Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

by Amos Oz

  Stefa said:

  "I can't hear any tinkling. The windows are closed and shuttered. There's nothing there."

  The Karl Marx face, furrowed by wisdom and agony, seemed to brighten and darken and brighten again in the flickering light, and the warm voice spread through the room as if seeking the darkness beyond the shuttered windows. How can he, thought Stefa, how can he ask me to put on all the lights. Now. These are almost the last days. There is no more time.

  In that instant a tortured, emaciated form floated soundlessly into the room, grinning from ear to ear, the drunken gardener who was nicknamed Run-Jesus. He bowed twice, first to his master and mistress and then to the wall, perhaps to the stuffed bear's head. He laid some damp logs in the grate, grinned another depraved grin, displaying his rotting teeth, and exacted his wages and the price of his silence from Stefa. Suddenly he began to plead, with short sharp sobs and hoarse coughs, sounds which resembled the barking of a fox:

  "Multiplying beyond all bounds, they are. No one to keep an eye on them, that's what. Like bedbugs they're spreading. Millions of them. Laughing they are, too, the dogs' blood. What's so funny here, eh? Won't be long before we'll all have to sleep standing up, won't even have room to lie down at night. There's a thousand of 'em born every minute. And as soon as they're born they start breeding. Into their own mothers' wombs, the sons of bitches. And how they breed. Like a plague. Holy Mary forgive me for what I'm saying. Is there enough water for us and for them, eh? No, there's not. Dogs' blood, there's not. Look at me, now, I'm a sick man, sick through and through, my poor legs, and then there's the coughing, and what's more I'm a sinner, but don't I deserve a drop of water same as anyone else? Millions of 'em. More and more born every minute, some says a thousand, some says more, church mice can't hold a light to 'em. And what's the upshot? Millions of them'll die of thirst. Not enough water. Not enough room to stand up in, even. Not enough air to breathe. And on Tuesday I brought you eggs and potatoes, and if God Almighty wills it, there'll be feathers, too. Not to mention the flour. And suppose the river dries up, what'll they drink then, eh? And that lot'll breathe up all the air too, and we'll all suffocate, grrr, like leprous dogs. It's cold tonight, good Sir and Madam, it's very cold, very very cold. Jesus guard me from this cold. Me, I'm a sick man, a coughing man, and I'll tell you a secret, I'm dogs' blood too. But Jesus won't laugh at me. It's stupid for us to laugh, good Sir and Madam, stupid, sinful, indecent, nothing to laugh at here while that lot, curse 'em, breed and breed without a moment's pause. Christ's blessing on you both."

  Furiously poised on the sideboard stood a carved African warrior covered in war paint. Day and night the savage threatened the terrified girl in the Matisse painting with his huge, grotesque manhood. And from above, the bear's head, amazingly silent, looked down.

  The glass eyes reflected the candlelight and shot back flashing sparks.

  7

  Once again the tranquillity of dark forests. The night wind's caress. The silent frost. The squelching mud. Flight without escape. If you strike with all your might, the ax will break.

  Beneath the crust of ice lurk different forces, far from the nature of ice and far from peace and rest. Powerful forces which cannot be exorcised by formulae or incantations. Even music gradually abandons you night by night and flows into the night and with the powers of night it grinds its teeth at you.

  Deep in the evil Polish forest deep in the heart of the darkness deep in the womb of the soggy undergrowth can be seen shadows of giant creepers clasping and choking the dead tree trunks with silent fury as though squeezing the last drops from a desperate loving embrace.

  And the wide wastes resound with the frantic howling of wolves.

  Pomeranz had suddenly had enough.

  He was tired of wandering, tired of peasants, of Germans, of the soughing fir trees, of fleeing like a sick animal.

  And the snow and the fire and the wind.

  So he played his mouth organ at them with all his might and main, until the Russians heard and burst across all the rivers in their way, San, Bug, Wisla.

  And the war ended.

  8

  Blood poisoning. Pneumonia. Exhaustion.

  Large peasants with broad sashes and clay pipes, suspicious men with bushy whiskers, took Pomeranz to a tumbledown hospital in northern Hungary. It was in a long narrow valley, a swampy region fed by the Carpathian streams. Here they raised lean pigs and strange vegetables, and an alarming number of the children were deformed from birth.

  The barracks of the ducal regiment were now a revolutionary hospital, or it may originally have been stables. The walls were daubed with crooked Magyar crosses. At the top of each cross someone had pinned brightly colored pictures of the fathers of the Russian Revolution. The portraits had been hurriedly or clumsily torn from some propaganda pamphlet, and their outlines were irregular.

  Pomeranz was laid on two sacks of straw. His groin and armpits were sprayed with DDT and he was given antisyphilis tablets from the stocks left behind by the Germans. No other medicines were available as yet.

  There was a Ruthenian doctor, as tiny as a grasshopper and wrecked by nicotine. He believed with perfect faith that Dziobak Przywolski was indeed the son of a virgin and that he had risen from the dead. But then he also ascribed virgin birth to Stalin, to the Polish Marshal Smigly-Rydz, to several local herdsmen, and, finally—in a sudden fit of high-pitched fury—to himself as well.

  In sum, the unwashed Ruthenian doctor argued that every proletarian, provided he was not Pontius Pilate or Judas Iscariot, must be Jesus. He argued by elimination: if you are not Jesus, who are you? To support this opinion, and also his claim to be the inventor of aspirin, he produced a parchment scroll written and sealed in a Ukrainian dialect, and he insisted that this same dialect had been used by the writer Gogol in his early works.

  All the doctor's ideas were enthusiastically seconded by a one-armed organist, a local man, who was indisputably related to the Bach family; he had once made his living by eating live flies in a cabaret in Budapest, and now he was in the habit of kicking at every door and shouting, Serve them right, serve them right, they've got their just deserts, load of skunks, everything that's hit them on land and sea and air is only a foretaste of the punishment that's waiting for them in Heaven, in the Angelic Realm, even outside the Solar System, if you'll all just keep quiet for a moment you'll hear for yourselves the sound of the knives being sharpened.

  Pomeranz lay very quiet. He was regaining his strength. The place gave him perfect rest and healing. His mouth organ lay untouched.

  One night, by the light of a crazed Hungarian candle, the Ruthenian entered, neighing wildly, bringing the virgin Mary herself to the invalid's bed. She smelled of milk and rye and goat dung, and she was lacking most of her teeth. Pomeranz opened his eyes wide, tore her sackcloth off her, inhaled her smell, Jewish loneliness suddenly flooded him so that his soul wanted to burst out howling. But his watchmaker's fingers retained their precision and expertise. They brought the virgin Mary to shrill giggles, pleading whimpers, desperate sighs, she began to revel with her legs with her teeth with her nails. The doctor and his friend the organist stood beside the ragged palliasse and shielded the cavorting flame from the wind with their hands as a wild draft swept through the cellar and they sang Ave Maria in harmony like an angelic choir until the vision was fulfilled and the holy virgin was led out of the stable laughing cursing dripping blood sweat and tears.

  Pomeranz recovered, too. He got up and continued on his way, to the Land where Spring reigns eternal.

  9

  Where is that land, that Promised Land, Joy of the World, our journey's end?

  Pomeranz now carried several new sets of documents:

  Bulgarian.

  Polish.

  Red Cross.

  Jewish Agency.

  Red Partisan Brotherhood.

  And he sometimes had whole packages of Rumanian cigarettes. A Russian greatcoat. Superbly German fur-lined boots. And, what
was more, a pair of woolen gloves from the Joint Distribution Committee. It was a slow, lunatic journey, through the length and breadth of the Balkans. As if his soul's inner flow had been beset by a sudden stammer, a need to linger, to prepare, to setde something once and for all. He tried in Vienna. He tried in South Tyrol. And once, in a Zionist refugee hostel named after Max Nordau, Pomeranz happened to hear the gospel from his Promised Land. David Ben-Gurion, on his way to London, stayed overnight and addressed the survivors, passionately and with the fervor of inner conviction, a fire blazing in our breasts, human chaff will once again become a nation, we shall rebuild the Temple, set the land aflame with a blaze of green.

  Pomeranz was almost tempted to take out his mouth organ and play an accompaniment.

  Only, the next morning persistent rumors spread among the refugees that it had not been Ben-Gurion at all, but someone else, an impersonator, a double, a dummy sent to draw the assassins' fire.

  So the dreamy son of a watchmaker began frantically buying and selling bales of cloth. For the time being. In private he belched and belched. The mouth organ lay untouched. Was there still a mouth organ, or was that too perhaps a double, a deliberate imposture?

  Now he only worked wonders when no one was looking. And he restricted himself to minor, trivial actions, like lighting a cigarette with a fountain pen, or soothing an aching tooth. He would not have hesitated to steal chickens left and right, if there had been any chickens to steal.

  And sold them for lire. And changed them into drachmas. Converted to dollars. For the time being.

  In Piraeus he was involved for some days and weeks with Polish deserters who were smuggling parts for sewing machines from port to port, westward toward Marseille. His job was to remove the rust, to stamp them with false names, to paint them convincing colors. The deserters, who were mostly old sailors, called Pomeranz Mieczyslaw the First, because they ecstatically believed that the Princess Magda Izawolska had conceived an illegitimate child by the late Pope, and that he was her son.

  Indeed, one night they anointed him with sewing-machine oil King of the New Poland. The tavern walls shook all night long with the sounds of cheering and singing. There was a rumor that the Americans were on the point of setting up a new kingdom of Poland in the Aegean Islands under the protection of the Ninth Airborne Division. Until circumstances changed. And when the right time came, they would join Greece to the Baltic by a gigantic canal.

  The deserters were preparing for the dawn of the New Poland, purifying their souls, enthusiastically anticipating the great moment, dedicatedly stealing whatever they might need on the day, clothing, food, wine, rifles and pistols, and especially flags and bugles. Pomeranz, for his part, ran a printing press and produced quantities of Swiss promissory notes.

  He said to himself:

  Wine, sardines, women, greatcoat, cigarettes, you've got everything for nothing. They don't demand anything from you in return. And if some stars suddenly wake up and start singing in the distance before dawn, why, all you have to do is stand alone on the quayside in Piraeus till daybreak, concentrate hard, and listen in perfect silence. You don't need to give any answer. This is Greece. The New Kingdom of Poland. Just say good night to the American sentry. Accept a cigarette. Przywolski the Last or Mieczyslaw the First, stand and smoke with your collar turned up. And because the sea is close at hand, proffer the glowing stub to the black water.

  10

  Stefa and the Professor jointly sent a lengthy and anguished letter of complaint to Professor Heidegger. Among other things they propounded a model for a hypothetical synthesis between suffering and the will: a kind of reciprocity, a new definition of the subjective-objective relationship in a sphere laden with will and suffering.

  This letter, owing to the circumstances, went astray and failed to reach the philosopher.

  Conditions worsened considerably. Snow, torture, and suppressed rage besieged the town of M——.

  The night wind hounded everything with its venomous fangs. Railway trucks left laden at night and next morning came back empty. Slowacski, Copernicus, and Pilsudski were torn from the street names. Even the chestnut trees were torn up to feed fires. Jews were taken from the town to learn productive labor to train them for their Palestine. Ukrainian peasants brought from far away toiled night and day in the workshops, machine-gun nests were set up on hills and rooftops, barbed-wire fences divided Jaroslaw Avenue, even the park benches were torn up and carted off to the foundry. Through the patchy fog thin tall tongues of flame could be seen rising from distant villages. The town grew ugly and flat.

  Worst of all, the military governor, General Baron von Topf, found himself somewhat indisposed. On account of the damp climate, on account of the heavy burden of responsibility, on account of the weight of official obligations, on account of the narrowing of cultural horizons, a repulsive growth developed.

  Frantic doctors came and went by day and by night. There was a consultation. A written opinion was even solicited from Professor Sauerbruch in Berlin. Meanwhile the offending growth thickened and spread: it sprouted from one of the lower vertebrae, it caused endless unpleasantness and embarrassment, and demanded humiliating subterfuges, it filled out the trousers, it hung obstinately down and could only with great difficulty be persuaded to conceal itself inside the knee-boot, it was warm and willful and brown, it was a frightening, indecent appendage, a hairy, outrageous postfix, which wriggled vigorously at the General Baron's command and for the most part even against his explicit orders, a mischievous extrusion, at one and the same time dependent and independent, flouting the rules of good taste and military discipline alike, and breaking free from the well-pressed trousers, a source of shame and anger.

  In short, a tail.

  So it was that the Baron von Topf gradually began to display less warmth toward the town's intelligentsia. He who had set up the historical circle and the orchestra and arranged theosophical debates. There were incidents which offended against good taste by any standards. For example:

  A dinner party was arranged in the old castle, behind the grim stone walls raised to the glory of the kings of Poland. All the leading members of the intelligentsia were invited by the governor. Not one of them saw fit to decline the invitation and thus detract from their collective good manners. A special pass entitled the intelligentsia to be abroad that night during the hours of curfew. The French chef of the Huntsman's Inn was summoned to work miracles. The guests were conveyed in evening dress to the forbidden side of the bridge and at the entrance to Kazimierz Hall the sentries saluted. There were four identical vases on each table, and each vase held five symmetrically arranged chrysanthemums. The staff officers appeared, spotlessly turned out; the town orchestra was ready and waiting. The master of ceremonies entered, stood to attention and announced the adjutant, who entered, stood to attention and announced the military governor, General Baron von Topf, who limped hurriedly to the head of the table, sat down, and motioned the company to be at their ease. The governor had a sensational piece of news to announce: just before the dinner, literally at the last moment, it had been discovered that the president of the Goethe Society, the eminent philosopher Professor Zaicek, was residing in the town in circumstances of extreme obscurity, turning his back on his many admirers of both nationalities; and they were to be highly honored, the governor's own official car had already been sent to fetch the great man, and here he was. The Baron clicked his heels, bowed to the thinker and kissed his companion's hand, and exchanged pleasantries as he escorted them both to their places. Music.

  It may be added that as an exotic touch a real Russian bear captured in the region of Smolensk had also been urgently summoned to be present. Among the topics discussed over dinner was the problem of causality, and the guests were not spared some surprising developments. In the course of the discussion, which was conducted in elaborate German, Professor Zaicek, along with the other guests, was served with hock and caviar, and the guest from Russia was served with the Professor. At
once the bear was tried by court-martial, presided over by General Baron von Topf with a Polish defense counsel and a German staff officer prosecuting. The accused himself behaved in a thoroughly shaggy and silent manner throughout the trial, displaying a grim Russian stoicism and an almost morbid attitude in his every gesture. While the case was being heard he seemed drowsy, somewhat gloomy, heavy, and distinctly Slavic. With sharp knives he was stripped of his Bolshevik pelt and his meat was served up garnished with almonds and crumbled egg yolk. And the guests were given a free choice between red and white wine.

  Later on the armed guards, and the adjutant's instructions, put out all the lights, and the party continued in darkness till daylight. The Polish intelligentsia, in their habitual way, were consumed with self-pity, tragic emotion, and theatrical grandeur. Indeed, outside, below the castle windows, several trucks were drawn up waiting for the guests to leave. Stefa, for her part, was ordered to play the piano. In obedience to a polite command she played till the night was done, Chopin, Schubert, fantasies and variations, agitation submission and rebellion, a marriage of souls in melancholy splendor between Poles and Germans, pork cooked in pork fat.

  In sum, that night changed something in Stefa. A certain hardening. A certain closeness to the dreamy son of a watchmaker. If she only knew if and where.