by Amos Oz
The sky is dark and empty. A mist flows through a mist.
It has not rained this evening. It seems it will not rain.
Its grey and calm here. Getting darker. A still bird on a post.
Two cypresses grow almost joined. A third one grows apart.
I'm curious to know why there is this smell of smoke
although there is no fire. A piece of an old kite
is hanging on the fence. A mist drifts through a mist.
I'm not there any longer, yet I'm all there: standing still.
Going and coming
Here is how we could sum it all up. A man is at home. His son is not here.
His daughter-in-law is staying with him for the time being. She
goes out. Comes back. She has someone in the meantime. He's doing well,
sleeps with her when he's free, a smart lad, who comes and goes.
A man is sitting at his desk It is night. All is quiet. His son
is not here. On the sideboard place mats, lace doilies, and two
photographs. Sea at the window. Brown furniture. Tonight
he has to check some accounts. What balances. What doesn't.
A widow with bobbed hair was here earlier this evening,
almost by chance, she drops in now and then for a glass
of tea. The winter is passing. The sea remains. As for the light,
it goes and it comes. Now like this and now like that.
Tonight he needs to work out his profits and losses, what
does it profit a man. Rows of columns. Sorrow is not
like this: it has no measure. The carpenter is dead. The desk
is still here. The Narrator is running his fingers over it.
He's told the story of himself and of his mother, he's tried to avoid
the word "like." He's told the tale of a wandering Russian merchant
who did not reach China and would never see his home again.
The tale of a snowman that roams alone among the rugged
mountains; he's told of the sea and of Chandartal. It revolves,
the whole business, it comes and it goes. The moon tonight
is pale and sharp, frightening the garden, twisting the fence,
tapping lightly on your window: now please begin all over again.
Silence
Even you. Everyone. All Bat Yam will be full of new people and they
in their turn, all alone in the night, will wonder at times with surprise what
the moon is doing to the sea and what is the purpose of silence. And they too
will have no reply. All of this hangs more or less on a thread. The purpose
of silence is silence.
Draws in, Jills, heaves
And now it's as clear as can be. The moon is bending low over the dark of
the sea, drawing up toward itself expanses of many waters and the mighty
waves of the deep, covering them as if with lead. All over the sea the moon
spreads a quicksilver web which it draws in and heaves up to itself. That
is what I am talking about.
At journey's end
Now he is resting up in a cheap inn in a small town in the south
of Sri Lanka. Through the crisscrossed bars three huts, a slope,
little sailing boats, the Indian Ocean, warm, its waves are sharp
slivers of green bottleglass in the harsh sun. Maria is not here. She
has gone to Goa, from where she may return to Portugal Or
she may not. Its hard for her. In the tiny cell is a stool, a rusty nail,
a hanger, a yellow rush mat, and in the corner a mattress.
There is a cracked washbasin whose enamel surface is scarred by black
patches. A nibbled electric wire curls slackly along the walls, draped
in cobwebs. A hotplate stained brown by milk that has boiled over
and not been cleaned for years. And there is a picture cut out of a
magazine, showing the Queen of England, with an air of faint distaste,
bending and patting the head of an almost crying local child, his shabby
trousers drooping, his limbs gaunt, a starving alley-cat.
The picture is dotted with fly droppings. And there is a cracked sink,
and a tap leaking rusty water drop by drop. Lie down now on
the mattress and listen. You've been here and there, you've sought
and you've found, this is the place. And when the daylight fades,
when the damp tropical evening smothers this glassy light, you
will still lie on this mattress, sweating and listening, not
missing a drop. And in the night too, and tomorrow: drop drop
drop and this is Xanadu. You've arrived. Here you are.
Here
Moon in the morning moon in the evening wreaking light in the night
skeletal all the day hurting every part O my child Absalom my son
my son Absalom, the desk is here the bed is here the guitar is here but
you are a dream moon in the night moon in the day glowing on the sea
pale in the window, preying on every living part my son my son.
What you have lost
Giggy Ben-Gal who had arrived back only the previous day from Brussels
drove in his new BMW to look at an old orange grove near Binyamina
that was about to be dug up. He had had a reliable tip that in a couple of years
this whole area would be released for housing. It would pay to snap up today
at the price of farmland what tomorrow would be prime building lots in a
sought-after district. He sat till evening in a fairly run-down village house,
was offered thick coffee and home made carob jam, and had a jocular
conversation with the heirs of the deceased farmer. The younger son was
on the ball, he'd served in a crack regiment; the older son seemed rather
tricky, saying hardly a word, with one eye closed and the other only half
open, too mean to waste more than a quarter of a look on you.
Every time the conversation inched in the direction of a deal, he would throw
in a sour half-sentence. Forget it, mate. We weren't born yesterday either.
At last, as it was getting dark, Giggy stood up and said, Right, OK, let's
put it on hold, first the two of you try to sort out what game you're in, then
give me a call and we'll talk, here's my card. Instead of driving straight back
into town he decided to take another look at the orange grove that was dying
because it didn't pay to irrigate it. There was a giant ficus tree nearby,
bowed with age, and beneath it Giggy parked and walked down the rows
of orange trees, treading on thistles and whistling. Birds whose names he
didn't know replied from the branches, chattering, pleading, as though
they too were trying to sell him some marvelous piece of property
that they had no real idea of the value of, nor of its potential. For a quarter
of an hour he wandered, forcing his way through ferns and brambles until thick
darkness settled over the neglected grove and it was only with difficulty,
after getting lost, that he managed to locate his ficus tree, but his new BMW
had vanished with his cell phone inside it and all the birds fell silent all at once,
as though their singing had been no more than a cunning trick to lure
and distract him, so as to help the thief. Giggy was left all alone
in this out-of-the-way place where it was definitely not healthy to be alone
after dark, especially unarmed. He started to grope his way through the
undergrowth toward the village but the long low building he was heading for
turned out to be no more than an abandoned packing shed, and suddenly
a jackal or f
ox broke into a howl. Rather close. And in the distance dogs
barked and the darkness filled with stealthy movements. Giggy sat down
on the ground and leaned back against the wall of the dilapidated shed,
sensing the stab of cold stars among the branches of the grove and the glow
of his watch and patches of shadow among the trees. For a few moments
he cursed, then he stopped. He felt calm. A cold, mute beauty, a deep wide
night was opening up before his eyes. Here and there large shadows looked
at him and a feminine breeze from the sea inserted its fine fingers between his
shirt and his skin and for a moment he felt that all this, breeze, branches,
stars, even the darkness itself, was staring at him as though patiently waiting
for some delayed coin to drop. The dead farmers house where he had spent
most of the day, with its two palm trees in front, suddenly
struck him as perfect for Nirit's Love: the cypresses all round the yard,
the tumbledown henhouses, the stacks of utility furniture,
the flower-patterned plaster all stained, the plywood and formica surfaces
blistered and peeling at the edges, this was the perfect location.
And now he opened himself up to hear the prickly carpet of crickets
and a cow lowing in the dark as though it was his own soul keening and
village women in the distance answered with a heart-rending Russian tune
the like of which you would never hear again in Tel Aviv. Arise now
and go, light and calm get up and go in search of what you have lost.
Translator's Note
The Same Sea is replete with allusions to the Bible, the rabbinic writings and modern Hebrew literature. It is not essential to its reading to be able to identify and locate all these allusions, and I felt that to indicate them all by means of footnotes would interfere with the readers enjoyment, but I offer here the references of some of the recurrent biblical allusions, particularly those which might otherwise seem puzzling. The commonest allusions, too frequent and generally familiar to be given here, are to the story of David, told in i and 2 Samuel and the beginning of i Kings. The two short texts, the Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon) and Ecclesiastes, are also alluded to, as are the Psalms and the Book of Job, in particular the following verses (all quoted from the Authorized King James version):
Song of Songs
1:15 Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.
2:7 ... by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
2:9 My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
2:16 My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.
5:1 I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk...
5:2 I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
5:4 My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.
5:5 I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
8:7 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
Ecclesiastes
1:2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
1:3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
1:4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
1:5 The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
1:6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
1:7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
1:8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
1:9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
11:7 Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun:
11:8 But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all;, yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity.
Psalms
42:1 As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
Job
1:21 Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
The New Testament allusions are mainly to the Gospels. Of the many references to post-biblical Hebrew literature I shall single out one which seems particularly relevant. It is a poem by Rahel (1890–1931):
Only of myself I know how to tell,
my world is as narrow as an ant's,
like an ant too my burden I carry,
too great and heavy for my frail shoulder.
My way too—like the ant's to the treetop—
is a way of pain and toil;
a gigantic hand, assured and malicious,
a mocking hand lies over all.
All my paths are made bleak and tearful
by the constant dread of this giant hand.
Why do you call to me, wondrous shores?
Why do you lie to me, distant lights?
Nicholas de Lange
Cambridge, May 2000
Footnotes
*English in the original.
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