Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

by Amos Oz

  Most of the kibbutz members maintained an impartial attitude. How could simple folk be qualified to judge. It might be, or it might not. Wait and see. What are we expected to do. Certainly not to take any difficult decisions. There's no hurry: we'll cross our bridges when we come to them. There may not be any bridges to cross.

  Meanwhile the backward pupils continued to come, dense but determined. To sit. To sweat. To belch. To strain their minds to the utmost. If they had a flash of illumination, their eyes lit up and they looked at him with inspiration. If there was no illumination they went home quietly, only to come back and try again in another day or two. Yotam, Ernst's crazy son, attached himself to Pomeranz and talked to him compulsively. But then, who had not fallen victim to the body's insatiable appetite for talking. He even used to speak to the doves, and lectured the oleander bushes, not to mention the girls, who were all forced to run away and hide when they saw him approaching.

  The mothers of these girls would watch Elisha Pomeranz from where they sat on benches or on deck chairs in the cool of the evening, and say to one another:

  "Fame and publicity are quick to come and quick to go."

  "We've seen all sorts of shooting stars in the past—and who remembers them now."

  "We had a lecture once about a piece by Borokhov which was very much to the point. It was called 'Castles in the Air.' Or maybe it was by Tabenkin."

  "It's like the fashions. Somebody turns up, creates a stir, and then disappears. That's the way it is."

  And they said:

  "The whole thing's unreasonable. It's not natural."

  And they also said:

  "Maybe die ganze zach is a drey, a speculatsie, a gigantishe bloff."

  36

  The subject is the terrifying ruthlessness and desperate cunning of agents of various secret services. The story unfolds against a background of narrow alleys, deserted railway stations, and hotel lobbies in such towns as Milan, Turin, Locarno. The central character: an important figure in the Russian intelligence service, a woman, beautiful, extravagant, mysterious, who has decided to desert into the arms of the Israeli secret service, at great personal risk, because in the depths of her heart an ancient love has suddenly begun to stir, and for other reasons that are only hinted at. The night of terror is filmed in gray-black tones in sharp, nervous contrasts, while the memories of the central character, which are interwoven with the fast-moving action, appear in soft grays and reds, slightly hazy, like an impressionist painting. The dialogues are few and pointed. Most of the scenes are shot against a background noise of dimly throbbing engines. There is no music. Few effects. The atmosphere is one of silent, vicious violence, like a fight with daggers underwater. Milan. Night. Neon. A telephone booth. A Mongolian character, an expression of cruel cunning and ruthless stupidity, close-up, flat-headed Andreitch waiting in the darkness between two huge trucks parked in a side street. Cut. Hotel lobby. Waiters. A sheik wearing desert robes and gold rings. An old man in a wheelchair. Monkeys and parrots. Ice-cold beauties. A shortsighted man pushes between two gentlemen. A figure in a bridal veil. And in a flash two fat men firing after a speeding car, missing, firing again. They are shot from behind, they are not greatly disturbed, they operate some kind of flashing ray device, they are hit again, again they take no notice, they complete an electrical circuit, then they collapse in each other's arms like ballet dancers and suddenly they are both nothing but rag dolls filled with synthetic stuffing. Then a change of color. A change of rhythm. A background. A distant view. And once more gray-black, night, sharp cuts. A freight plunges into a ravine. A light aircraft lands without lights and in an instant takes off again and proceeds on its way. It is night, someone is a hair's breadth faster than the rest, someone causes a clever diversion, someone is caught in a trap and gnashes his teeth, a Bashing movement in the gloom, a shadow changes shape, there is a betrayal, a coup, fury, then the night pales and stillness settles over all. The production benefited from the support of the Cabinet minister who came from the same town as Stefa and Pomeranz and had once belonged to the Goethe Society. The man who looked like an adulterous rabbi returned to his shabby bachelor apartment on the outskirts of Old Bat-Yam and slept alone there for two nights and a day, then extended his short triumphal holiday by a day and advanced two pages in his private researches into the unexplored origins of the bitter rift between the rival talmudists Eibeschutz and Emden in the eighteenth century, and here too he made discoveries which no previous research had brought to light. As for flat-skulled Mikhail Andreitch, he was not slow to grasp the consequences of his failure and sought political asylum in America. After rendering some assistance and receiving his reward, he earned his living for a time by playing the part of old-fashioned Russian landlords in films, also specializing in unscrupulous villains and aristocratic émigrés. Eventually he landed in Argentina, where, if there is anything in the rumors, he made a fortune in the canned-beef trade.

  37

  Meanwhile, Galilee woke up to the billowing perfumes of spring. Each morning everything was bathed in moist sunlight. Brooding hills suddenly burst into ecstasy, blazed with red anemones, whirled heedlessly, dizzy in the ever-changing light. And close up: Some butterflies. The drone of a bee. The low buzz of flying ants. Dewdrops at dawn. New birds with new songs. And the buds appeared.

  Elisha Pomeranz too appeared each morning on his way past the kibbutz office, a dwarfish figure in working clothes, his hat uncompromisingly hiding the upper half of his head, a shepherd's stick in his hand. Through the office window Ernst, unseen, suppresses a smile and raises an eyebrow: Really? And at once he returns to his work at the duplicating machine: Really.

  Each morning, three or four days a week, Pomeranz tended the sheep. Each evening he sat in his room. If he had a visitor he offered him coffee and cookies. Ernst's two middle-aged lady friends, Vera and Sara, made themselves responsible for seeing to it that he was never short of cookies. Sometimes there were other volunteers. He carried on a light, intelligent conversation with his guest: music, the hopes for progress and its dangers, things in general, things here and now. Occasionally the guest would start talking about emotional stress; he might give an example from his own immediate experience. Elisha would listen attentively, would sometimes answer gently, and even hint vaguely at a tranquillity, at a possibility of peace even when it seemed there was no peace to be had. Then he would stop talking and give his undivided attention to whatever was said, even if it was very dull.

  He also listened constantly to other sounds, such as the rebellious throbbing of the water in the water pipes, the shriek of a child on a distant lawn, the seduction of passing breezes and the pine trees' response, the starlight at night, the simmering of wind-struck fields, the whisper of silence just before the dawn.

  His room was always as tidy as he could keep it, a place for everything and everything in its place. Almost as if it were uninhabited. And there was a faint, disturbing smell, perhaps somewhat sour, perhaps not a smell at all, an elusive presence, the imprint of a fussy bachelor who senses the approach of old age. It caused at times a moment's irritation, since the man could not accustom himself to this new element, or resign himself to it.

  He rendered unto the kibbutz what belonged to the kibbutz, and when his work was done he shut himself up in his room.

  Modest but meticulous principles governed the ordering of his day. Rising early he did six or seven vigorous exercises of Indian origin which Professor Zaicek had disseminated among his friends and acquaintances thirty years previously in the town of M——. The Professor himself, however, had never practiced them, for they were far beyond his physical powers.

  After the exercises Elisha went outside in his working clothes, which gave him an unbelievably clownlike appearance. So dressed he passed the window of Ernst's office and entered the dining hall. A thick doorstep of bread. Marmalade. Olives. Greasy coffee. From there to the sheep pens and from there with his flocks to the pastures.

  By six o'clock in
the morning the early spring light has spread over the plains. Sadness sounds from the hills. The wind of passing time blows faint and deadly. Across the valley the farmyard can be seen wrapped in a light morning mist. Large shapes slowly rusting in the scrap yard, around all the farmyard, coils of barbed wire, up which wild plants climb and twine in an effort to assuage their ugliness. Wooden towers fitted with searchlights stand at regular intervals along the fence. Each tower rises out of the barbed wire as if it alone existed, and there were, there could be, no other searchlight than its own.

  Around the corrugated-iron sheds the agricultural machines stand swathed in silence, wrapped in oiled sackcloth, as if they were Russian bears transported to these sun-smitten regions, and now lying panic-stricken and motionless.

  At lunchtime in the dining hall, meatballs with potatoes, Mostly garnished with fried onion. Girls. Notices. Letters and mimeographed news-sheets. Fruit compote for desert. Handsome young men in blue overalls. Old men with faces carved from gnarled wood. Elderly thin-lipped women who a generation and a half before had suddenly declared war on Nature itself. Now the fight was still not won, the elderly women were still here, still uncompromising, still on guard.

  Somewhat apart several bald or white-haired men of ideas huddled round a table. They were forever deep in arguments about an article in the newspaper, an event, deviation, the sudden and unnecessary death of one of the founders of the Cooperative or the Farmers' Union, political events, what's happening, why, where will it lead, what's the lesson, what's the hidden meaning of the general situation.

  From the kitchen wafts the rich smell of baking pies. And of sauerkraut. The debaters offer no comment.

  After lunch Elisha Pomeranz would take a stroll along the shady paths. He walked slowly, with his stick, a spiritual gait, those who saw him said, a continental way of walking. As if he were deep in convoluted calculations.

  And waiting.

  After his stroll he would devote some time to his garden : weeding, pruning, hoeing, watering a little. It was a miniature garden, laid out on a meticulous plan: four or five kinds of cactus were planted in crevices in some rocks, which were arranged in two symmetrical semicircles, prevented from meeting by two identical shrubs trimmed as neatly as sentries.

  After his gardening comes the moment for a short afternoon nap. Even in his sleep a kind of calculation sometimes takes place, a process of equation. An unstable equilibrium.

  At the end of sleep the world is dark. The walls of the room are black. The rectangle of the window is still gray.

  Coffee. Cookies. A cigarette. Wash the cup. Dry it and put it back in its proper place. Wipe the table. Slight hesitation, what else to do with the cloth. Decision: dust the windowsill. Shake out the cloth. Change the water in the vase—on second thoughts, change the Bowers as well.

  The evening newspaper. Israel has once again warned; her enemies once more threaten. Commentary. Counter-commentary. Oddities and Anecdotes. On the inside pages: Speeches. Natural disasters. Development programs. The renewal of an old public controversy. And now, time for the radio, the news, and the daily review. Perhaps, too, a brief musical interlude. Everything is obliterated by the smell of the evening, which is a gentle, poignant smell here. A few powerful longings pierce the soul to its depths, until the desire to die now to die this evening to die like suddenly shattering at a blow some tormenting blinding searchlight becomes overwhelming. Consideration of possible means. A fleeting memory insinuates itself and is repelled at once. The final possibility, if not to die at this very moment, to devote oneself to mathematical speculation.

  And the evening itself: The yellow electric light. A change in the appearance of all the inanimate objects in the room. Once there was a dog, admittedly a wretched dog, a questionable dog, an impossible dog, but now there is nothing and the shadow of the bookshelves changes or moves without the shelves changing or moving, and what can help or sustain you at this moment.

  Beyond the window the night blows invisibly. The hills of Galilee, gray boulders and a solitary olive tree on the slope. To the west the black wind. There is no peace for the darkened valleys, something is rising up in the night, something is mounting, gathering, something is silently happening. What is it, what does it intend to smash and shatter? Who is behind it?

  The man standing alone at the window of his room in the kibbutz in the hills of Galilee senses and knows facing him in the living darkness only hills upon unpeopled hills which pretend to be hills but are not hills but abstract longing which has taken on for a while a covering of stones and cypresses. For the time being.

  A few minutes after eight o'clock his pupils start to arrive. They come into his room hesitantly, almost timidly, tapping lightly on his door, entering, taking two steps inside and then halting confusedly as if they prefer to leave him the option of changing his mind and throwing them out into the night. They sit, unbelievably, on the edge of their chairs. Their shrinking timidity is all the more amazing because the boys are overgrown young men with large hands, with black grease hardened under their fingernails, with broad coarse foreheads and powerful shoulders, and the girls too are ample and powerfully built. Yet, as they process into Pomeranz's room, something makes them step delicately, as if they were tightrope-walking. And they arrive punctually at the time arranged. They sit and learn to solve simple equations and to prove theorems in geometry. Restless, confused, trapped wild animals. Only one of them comes not to learn but to pour out ideas to Pomeranz; that is Ernst's son Yotam. He is happy to stand talking for a long time at the door, or simply to doze in the only armchair in a corner of the room while the radio plays classical music and a backward pupil has a lesson. Pomeranz has the pupil sit down at the table, gives him a glass of lemonade (ignoring a muttered refusal), and now he plots a few simple curves for him on graph paper, solves some equations in one unknown, constructs triangles with the help of a fork and two cake knives, draws tangents, compares various magnitudes in his examples. Yotam, if he is present in the room, takes no part and seems not to hear.

  On occasion one of the pupils receives illumination. He stares at the page and the equations with wide-gaping eyes and mutters over and over again: I see, yes, now I see.

  When the private lessons are finished, a little after ten o'clock, he takes up his stick again and goes out for his evening walk. Squares of light in the windows of the veterans' quarters. The sound of the radio. Sounds of laughter. A woman grumbles in Yiddish.

  For a while he paces the paths by lamplight, then goes down to the end of the avenue, recalling perhaps for an instant the image of Jaroslaw Avenue. He smokes a last cigarette in the dark. His face is clouded. The night hurls night sounds at him. The King of Poland in the Isles of Greece sinks slowly into his night silence. Then he returns to his room. He fiddles with the radio and finds a distant, European station, which plays late-night music. He sits at his desk and gives himself over for twenty or twenty-five minutes to his equations.

  And suddenly, enough.

  He gathers up his papers. Puts them away in the desk drawer and locks it. Hides the key in the hem of the curtain. Absently turns off the radio. And prepares his body for sleep. If some small hindrance occurs at this stage, if the tube of toothpaste splits open at the bottom or his pajama cord gets tangled in an obstinate knot, he says a couple of sentences to himself in Polish. Then he turns out the light at the head of his bed.

  Slumber:

  Howling wolves. Vampires. Ax blow. Forests upon forests. Snow. Greek music. American banknotes. Audrey.

  That is: simple elements and violent combinations.

  And once more before dawn the blaze of sunrise casts a spell on the eastern mountains as if a mournful orgy is coming to an end somewhere just at this moment, gradually fading away in the distance beyond the rugged eastern skyline.

  Sometimes the shepherd and his flock are joined by two large Alsatian dogs which belong to young Shaulik, the son of Yehuda Yatom. Shaulik is responsible for the sheep.

 
Lost in their dreams the sheep scattered on the hillside lazily crop the grass. At times they stop and stand motionless for a long while staring toward the Galilean hill light at the sky's edge.

  And then suddenly one of the sheep raises a startled head and lets out a long, bitter bleat from deep inside her, as if in response to a sudden faraway call.

  At the same instant the two Alsations also brisde with a vague dread, a fearful growl rumbles deep in both their throats, turns hoarse, wails as if suffocated underwater, and expires.

  And down they both sprawl once more in repose.

  38

  The philosopher Martin Heidegger tried to see in the fear of cessation and the constant presence of death a new key to the understanding of the riddle of the connection between Time, Being, and Thought.

  In his celebrated work An Introduction to Metaphysics (1953), he is repeatedly at pains to explain that the German word ist is a word possessed of different and even contradictory meanings. In illustration of this he quotes a charming collection of random sentences in each of which the word appears "in a use which is so common that we scarcely notice it. We say: 'God is,' 'the earth is,' 'the lecture is in the auditorium,' 'the man is a Swabian,' 'the cup is made of silver,' 'the peasant is out in the fields,' 'the book is my property.'"

  And a little later:

  " The enemy is in retreat,' 'there is famine in Russia,' 'the dog is in the garden,'" and so on.

  Finally Heidegger cites a pair of famous lines from a poem by Goethe:

  Uber alien Gipfeln

  ist Ruh,