Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

by Amos Oz

  Some years later Osip, the son of his old age, rose high in the ranks of the accursed Bolsheviks, and the turncoat sent his brother Mitya, who was an artist, to a labor camp in Siberia. Osip had perpetrated this outrage out of deliberate malice. For this deed the old man cursed his remaining child and said to him publicly on the Great Sabbath, The voice of your brother's blood cries against you, Cain, and he also said, Cursed and a servant of servants. He vowed that he would never see him again, and indeed he did not set eyes on him for nine years.

  Only when Gershon Kumin succumbed to his unsavory disease, and the authorities began to move him from place to place because of the complaints of all those around him, had Osip intervened and had the old man transferred from sanatorium to sanatorium, from one hell to another, until finally their mutual disgust burst all bounds. Then Osip signed a document which enabled the old man to leave Odessa for good and go to his ancestral land, which was not, by any manner of means, even the palest shadow of what it should have been. So that his heart wept and his soul pleaded at night to soar skyward and seek out the heavenly Jerusalem and the true Promised Land.

  Small wonder, then, that when Old Kumin heard on the radio and also read reports in two newspapers about Pomeranz's discovery, he hastily sat down and composed a letter in which he posed a number of questions to the esteemed mathematician:

  1. Was it true, as reported in the Weekend Magazine, that the whole universe was expanding? And if so, where was it expanding to and at the expense of what was it expanding?

  2. The writer understood nothing of mathematics and did not give a fig for mathematics. The only significant question for him was the question of infinity, and that only with one end in view: was there or was there not an afterlife? Would he kindly answer yes or no, and if no, would he kindly admit that all the fuss was about nothing, infinity was no infinity and the discovery was no discovery.

  3. If the whole universe was in fact subject to fixed laws, what room was there for the "paradoxes" to which the article in the magazine referred? And if, notwithstanding, the discovery did involve "paradoxes," what authority was there for the arrogant assertion that the laws were in fact laws?

  4. Why did scientists, even in the kibbutzim, shut themselves in ivory towers and preen themselves with all sorts of so-called "universal" questions, instead of combating the decadence and degeneracy in the country and in the government?

  5. How much longer?

  It was nine o'clock in the morning when Gershon Kumin stuck a New Year's greeting stamp, and an "express" sticker, and a "registered" label, on his letter, and went out to mail it.

  By three o'clock in the afternoon he was feeling impatient: would he get a reply, when would it come, would it be an adequate reply? His questions suddenly seemed to him of absolutely unsurpassable urgency. He had an attack of indigestion, to boot. So he got into his brown check suit, put on a tie, tucked a white handkerchief into his breast pocket All without so much as a glance in the mirror. Then he snatched up his stick and hurried on his way, nodding his birdlike chin up and down all the while and muttering out loud, Yes, yes.

  For five hours and fifty minutes the old man journeyed from bus to bus, from dusty bus station to dusty bus station, and in addition to the oppressive heat and the pain in his guts and his dripping ear he also began to be tormented by a feeling of furious self-hatred.

  After sweeping northward through Samaria and the valleys like an evil spirit, he reached Galilee and alighted finally at Pomeranz's kibbutz. It was nine o'clock in the evening, and the old man was still as furious as when he had set out, if not more so. He immediately began to cross-examine two youths as to the whereabouts of the local sage and prophet. The stunned young men led him to Pomeranz's room. But at the very instant that Old Kumin's blurred gaze fixed on the square of light at the window, he suddenly underwent a change of heart. He was assailed by powerful misgivings. He may have recalled Tchernikhovsky's famous poem about the visions of the false prophets, or the contempt that the other great poet, Bialik, had heaped on the scoffers. In short, Kumin was filled with a terrible anger at himself, his letter, his stupid journey, revolutions, science, and youth in general.

  Without a second thought he turned and strode through the night to the kibbutz gate. Somebody addressed him, inquired, spoke kindly to him, but he as usual did not hear, did not listen, took no notice. He found the winding road, and made his way back to the highway.

  It was night. From the valley rose the snicker of frogs. The stars of Galilee shimmered. The gentle breeze seemed to sweep a delicate, stirring veil of light in its train.

  The mountain air worked wonders for the old man. Suddenly he felt his lungs swell. An old song stirred in his heart. His journey was unexpectedly shortened: an army transport picked him up at the bus stop and whisked him quick as lightning southward, went out of its way for him and deposited him reverently outside the old people's home.

  It was midnight when he went to bed. At two o'clock he was awakened by a vision of Galilee, the smells, the breeze, the wavering light.

  Kumin lit his lamp and sat for two or three hours composing his famous poem "The Soul of the Hills," which has since been included in several school textbooks.

  After he had written the poem Gershon Kumin's mind was at rest, his fury abated, even his digestive trouble improved somewhat, and, what was more, the dripping in his ear vanished without a trace. He had always detested miracles and suchlike, but on this occasion he permitted himself—after a serious inner debate—to employ for once the term "grace."

  A week later he received a letter from his disinherited son Osip. As usual, he tore it up without opening it, without looking at it, without even sparing the rare stamps ,and Bushed the pieces down the lavatory. But for once he felt a pang of remorse deep inside him: was he not a mean, selfish, insensitive old man, what moral right had he to explode, to cause offense and sorrow, to cast doubt on a brilliant discovery, and even suddenly to call Prime Minister Eshkol "troubler of Israel"?

  He had a moral obligation to apologize at once. In writing.

  34

  Night in the beautiful German town of Baden-Baden.

  The Dominican friary is surrounded by large walls and darkness. The chapel is deserted. Flagstones, wooden benches, high vaulting, biting cold. The organ is ringed with shadow. There is a slight restlessness in the air of the empty chapel. For several hours there has been no one here, no music, yet still something clings to the crannies in the walls. Majestic music has throbbed here, billows of melancholy grandeur, and now the ancient walls release it all like an invisible radiation. Four or five hours after the end of the Office, empty ancient chapels have a way of animating their darkness with vague stirrings. If the chapel is closed and not a candle is alight, and the thunder of the organ's yearning for celestial purity is broken up into distinct echoes, sound and silence, no-sound and silence, at such times the chapel should be left to itself. Not be disturbed.

  A single candle burns in a cell in a wing of the friary. A man of middle years, broad of body and large of limb, stands at the small barred window of his cell and stares at the moon, or perhaps at the shadows of the lonely poplar trees outside shaking in the wind.

  In his left hand he holds a large, heavy razor. A single candle glows on the chest of drawers behind him. Because of the candle the steel of the razor gives off sharp flickers of light. At times it flashes with a red fire.

  Deep in the outer darkness the friar can hear the roar of a night train, and the sudden wailing of the engine as it approaches a junction.

  Through the bars of the window the man watches two lean girl students at the corner of the lane, beneath a yellow street lamp, writing, no doubt in red, on a dark wall. Presumably they are writing a slogan against the established order.

  From the darkness of his tiny cell in the Dominican friary the lone watcher fancies he observes that the two girls are freezing in the bitter cold and one of them is even sobbing or perhaps rather chuckling in silent malice. T
he steel razor shoots a lightning spark into his watching eye, the white of the eye glows red, and now the friar too chuckles to himself and quietly grinds his teeth.

  Then he puts the flaming razor to his throat. With his free hand he pulls his left ear. The back of his hand is extraordinarily hairy, a monkey's paw, and beneath the tangled black tufts the luxuriant flesh is as red as raw steak, as if there were no skin covering it. Thick dark-blue veins intertwine, seemingly unable to contain the throbbing of the heavy blood. Each heartbeat makes the blood vessels shudder and jump as if they are about to burst. Something is pushing, something is evidently struggling to burst out, a blind swell thrusting outward. This powerful body, there is no mistaking it, would never collapse under the weight of years or fade away in weakness; it would burst outward from the force of the pent-up tide.

  Every morning, an hour and a half before sunrise, the big-boned friar is in the habit of shaving with a cut-throat razor and ice-cold water. He shaves at the window of his cell, without a looking-glass, from memory; he knows all the features of his face by heart, like a simple time.

  The breadth and coarseness of the jaws.

  The heaviness of the chin.

  The almost monumental span of the nostrils, like mighty, shameless arches.

  The friar has also forsworn lather forever: nothing but blade and bare skin.

  And so, with dry gleaming razor on dry cardboard skin, he cuts through the bristles with short powerful strokes like a lumberjack felling a forest.

  Here is no self-mortification, certainly no joy of self-denial or humiliation of the flesh through pain, but, rather, the very opposite of all these virtues: his violent nightly shave affords him shudders of pleasure, a sensual enjoyment which he is neither willing nor able to conceal. He draws the finely stropped razor across his large jowl with strong, controlled strokes. He shaves cautiously at the point where the veins pulse warm and close beneath the skin, in the pit of the throat. The crackling sound of the bristles as they respond to the razor sends a delicious shudder down his back, fully arousing the big-boned body, spreading a flood of inner moans to the very tips of his toes, in his loins an exultant diapason, accompanied by tortures of boiling oil, of burning poison, flashes of criss-crossing sensations. Fire within ice.

  All this takes place without the slightest haste. As slowly as the flesh can stand, luxuriously, drawing out every movement, savoring the echo responding from the depths, with great precision, with practiced concentration and the utmost sensitivity.

  And yet on closer inspection there is no doubt that this is all a constant striving toward spiritual ecstasy:

  The very razor, a heavy, solid instrument when viewed normally, tapers gradually before your very eyes to a thin fine point, straining at its tip to rise upward, to escape from the realm of the physical. Just like a Gothic spire the razor is nothing less than solid matter straining on tiptoe toward distant ethereal heights, the gradual purification of steel whose very soul yearns ardently for insubstantiality, and more, to become pure idea or spirit.

  And similarly the urgency of the blood struggling to burst out of the imprisonment of the flesh, to be released and become an unrestrained, unbounded flow.

  And similarly the movements of the furry hand holding the razor with the precise grip of a virtuoso, as if there were no razor, no nocturnal shaving, but as if he were playing the violin to himself in his cell by candlelight, the Dominican Friar Topf.

  And similarly the crackling of the bristles, a subtle variation on the crackling of mighty forests in a terrible summer fire.

  And similarly the sensual pleasure streaming inward and assailing some crucial point in the pit of the stomach or at the base of the spine until the throat holds back a low groan and every nerve bursts into a rhythmic spasm.

  And similarly with the first hints of murky daylight, the last rays of moonlight on the row of poplars in the lane. The friary walls. The two girls, too, laughing and freezing outside, or perhaps waiting for a sign. And the wailing of the train to the night's embrace. And the night itself, gradually dying away. The bars in the window. The crucifix on the cell wall. The pious books. The shame. The ecstasy. The creeping on of death. The smell of distant darkness. Suffering. Silence. Stony tranquillity.

  35

  The beautiful German town of Baden-Baden has been chosen as the venue for a world congress of mathematical logicians and philosophers.

  The aged philosopher Martin Heidegger, despite being a rather controversial personality, is to deliver the opening address.

  And now, at noontide, the red van of the Mobile Mail hurries up along the steep winding road among the gloomy Galilean hills. A cloud of dust surrounds the van, its horn blares, and Elisha Pomeranz too has received—in a large pile of otherwise uninteresting mail—an official invitation heavily embossed and sealed with a gold seal: the pleasure of his highly esteemed presence is requested and he is invited to honor the Congress by delivering a lecture on the subject of mathematical infinity. It is further requested that he be so kind as to submit in advance a synopsis or abstract of the lecture he proposes to deliver, for purposes of prior consideration and for the information of the other honored participants. In expectant anticipation, faithfully and with deep admiration, Germany, such-and-such a date, such-and-such a year.

  For several days Pomeranz weighed the invitation in his mind. He measured various angles and ranges, compared possible trajectories, as if he had been given the responsibility of digging a canal to link the New Kingdom of Poland in the Isles of Greece with the Baltic—or else to dismiss the responsibility out of hand.

  Suddenly he made up his mind to accept and to attend.

  Mieczyslaw the First or Przywolski the Last, can it be that the powers will abandon you in the place where sentence will publicly be pronounced.

  And if the powers do abandon you precisely at that time and in that place, even that can only be to the good.

  Let it be the lion's mouth, the crowds of doubters and mockers, the place of bloodshed.

  His decision filled him with excitement, almost with joy. He said to himself:

  "So far."

  And also:

  "The glass eyes of the stuffed bear."

  And:

  "Heidegger in person. Heidegger himself."

  The Kibbutz Committee approved the journey at once, gladly and in a friendly spirit.

  At the same meeting they noted that Pomeranz intended to continue to devote half his time to the sheep, and that he intended to carry on as usual repairing members' watches and giving extra tuition to the backward pupils.

  These facts created a positive and highly sympathetic impression. There were some who revised their previous bad opinions of Elisha. There were others who shrugged their shoulders and said, Well. Or, Very well. And, of course, there were others again who had their own ideas, who saw in all this devotion a pose of false humility which they considered worse than any pride or arrogance: Oh, look, he's taking his turn at dish washing in the dining hall, just like a mere mortal, just like one of us, quick, get a camera, you must get a shot of this, he's acting at being human, the Lord of the Infinite playing the Good Samaritan.

  Moreover: It had become known from the newspapers that the new discovery had found many challengers. Doubts had been raised in several famous universities. A rash of second thoughts. Here and there also a letter or note in a learned journal. An Italian-Jewish professor who directed several research institutes on the west coast of the United States accused Pomeranz of fraud, of mathematical acrobatics; he asserted publicly that no solution had been found, that the equation was merely a desperately clever piece of hocus-pocus in the no man's land between the two main schools of logic.

  On the other hand, an obstinate little teacher from Rotterdam emerged with the vague claim that he himself had already resolved the same mathematical paradox in 1939 and it was only due to his bad luck that the discovery had not been made public. In his address to the Soviet Academy of Sciences the Deputy Co
mmissar for Science and Energy, Osip Grigorich Kumin, attacked the barren sophistry of certain futile theories being propounded in the West and their ramifications in Tel-Aviv. The speaker attached to all this sophistry the epithet "talmudistic."

  Among the members of the kibbutz there were some who collected and circulated any such statement which appeared in the newspapers, even if only in the curiosity columns. Certain members derived pleasure from these challenges. They whispered and sniggered in private, reveled in rumors, and secretly awaited calamity. The collapse of the theorem. A minor, but colorful and heart-warming, scandal.