Amos Oz - Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

Stefa and her team devised a comprehensive campaign. A close but unobtrusive watch was set on the Polish intelligentsia. Stefa would occasionally amuse herself by reading a photocopied love letter from some celebrated Marxist to a Martha Pinch-me-not, or listening to the broken whispers of two or three disappointed world reformers on a tape recorder. Some of these men were marched into her bureau in Moscow on their way to the vast developments in the northeastern regions of the Soviet State. It was in her power, sometimes, to spare one of them, in which case she would correct his misguided thinking, wag her finger at him like a schoolmistress, imprison him with one of her smiles, forgive him, and permit him to go back safely to Warsaw and justify her confidence in him. Once she even intervened on behalf of an aging musicologist and released him when springtime came to go to his beloved Palestine. Once there, he hastened to send her a colored picture postcard, some holy tomb, a Jewish soldier, and a pair of palm trees under an unimaginably blue sky. And he added in Polish: Be assured, Comrade, of the gratitude and blessing of a weary soul.

One night Stefa was invited to meet Stalin himself. Comrade Fedoseyeva had been praised by many for her large warm eyes, for her sweeping eyelashes, her overpowering smile. In addition, her work was considered by various comrades to be masterly, and Fedoseyev, too, had been mentioned with approval.

The conversation touched on the history of the kings of Poland, the complicated younger generation of intellectuals, the delusive influence exerted by things French on the exasperating Poles. Stalin served tea and honey cakes with his own hands, and suddenly began juggling with the sugar lumps like a little boy. It was a fascinating and amusing display of dexterity: one lump resting on Stalin's huge nicotine-stained thumbnail, another arching through the air, the two touching in mid-air and landing safely in Stefa's glass, splashing the scalding tea. Stalin roared and thundered: hee-hee, Comrade Fedoseyeva, that's something no Pole can do, such feats are beyond them, I'm willing to bet on it here and now, Comrade Fedoseyeva, and I can assure you, Comrade Fedoseyeva, you won't be the winner. Now have another glass of tea, my beauty, and then — forward march, you back to your work and I to mine, otherwise we'll both get arrested for flirting on duty. We'll just exchange a tiny kiss to release a little of our mighty passions. And Stefa said to herself: Look, without lifting a finger, almost without a smile, I'm making the Bear dance.

Stalin detained Stefa for a few minutes longer to tell her about the beautiful regions that he with his own hands had wrested from the Germans and served up to the Poles, to eat and relish till the fat ran down over their silly Polish chins. Stefa was advised to keep a close watch on all her friends, because only a fool or a Czech would trust a Pole, and that it would also be a wise precaution to keep an occasional eye on her own Fedoseyev, because he had blue eyes, as far as he could remember, and a Russian with blue eyes was like a Jew with a straight nose: you never knew what he might get up to. As Stalin saw Stefa to the door and out into the corridor and said good night and nevertheless insisted on accompanying her downstairs, he once or twice pinched her cheek with a large-nailed thumb and forefinger. The Russians at that time still hung great hopes on the political enthusiasm of Polish Jews. And soon afterward they hung Fedoseyev too. In the course of a purge, that is.

And Stefa took his place, by special command.

From now on she had secret agencies at her disposal. Her task was to identify treacherous elements in various far-off places. And she said to herself: until I get hold of the Bear's skin.

Suddenly, in the course of an autumn in the late 'fifties, Pomeranz realized beyond all shadow of doubt that he was being followed, wherever he went, cunningly, silently, patiently.

His life was well ordered. Every morning, the paper, the news on the radio, a roll and cheese, halva, olives, coffee. Then a stem, almost angry shave. As if the mirror were water, not glass.

At eight o'clock, clutching a small briefcase, youthful in a blue shirt and sandals, he left his flat and walked down to the lower town to his shop opposite Aldubi's Garage, Automobile Parts and General Repairs. The town was at the mercy of the blazing morning. The white light tormented the lake. The ancient mountains stood, as always, unchanged. Pomeranz would note that their repose had endured yet another day.

In his shop he would switch on the fan, and fiddle with the radio until he found some Greek music from Nicosia, then move on to listen to an ecstatic announcer on Radio Damascus, pass on again to setde on the wail of a muezzin, sad, forlorn, and yet tense with a veiled menace.

Every half hour or so he would stop, look up from his work, and stare out the window. Muscular, guttural men, amazing dark-skinned girls, handsome wolflike youths with a spring in their walk passed in front of his shop. Every now and again an old Jew would walk past, with a beard and sidelocks, and the youths would neither abuse him nor taunt him nor spit at him nor pull his beard. Promised Land, Pomeranz would say to himself: pure and free.

All morning a moderate breeze blew slyly from the east, as if sent by the mountains to collect and assemble specific facts and take them back to the mountain clefts. Here and there on the slopes up which the town of Tiberias spread there still grew a few ancient, gnarled olive trees, furiously sucking up buried juice with roots like hooked claws. Nothing was settled yet. Anything was possible.

Sometimes it was a young man with a slight hunch, who leaned against the wall of the Civic Center on the corner of the street and smoked with a melancholy expression. An overcast, high-browed Raskolnikov. He watched Pomeranz enter and leave his house, and his protracted stares betrayed a certain loneliness.

When Raskolnikov disappeared, two men with sunglasses settled at one of the tables which spilled out onto the sidewalk from the café next to Aldubi's Garage. Pomeranz nicknamed both of them together Run-Jesus. Most of the time it seemed to him that they had a tendency to doze off at their post. A second glance, however, always revealed that only one of them was dozing, his head resting on one side, as if he were listening to faraway music, while his companion leaned his hairy forearms on the Formica tabletop, toying with a salt shaker, his eyes behind his sunglasses apparently fixed in a stare. He chewed his tongue with calm, devoted persistence.

Pomeranz could not imagine who might have sent these young men to keep watch on his comings and goings. Or what might be the purpose or the idea behind it.

Fear and sadness took hold of him; sudden doubts about the continuing efficacy of the secret powers which had preserved him during the bad years that had gone before.

From time to time, standing in his room, he happened to lean his elbows on the windowsill, and found it solid: wood and stone. As if after all these years the whispering current of energy had weakened and something in the outside world was gradually congealing. Massivity was spreading. Even his body was solidifying from within. His face, once that of a spy in an American comedy, had assumed a new expression: that of a tired old businessman troubled by financial worries. His mop of tawny hair was streaked with gray. He was being followed. Some secret organization. A hostile power had remembered all these years and now its agents had come to Tiberias. The cordon would never be slackened. Should he consider ways of escape, or, rather, take no notice?

Is there anyone here, man or demon, who has the power of taking off and floating over rooftops, fields, and meadows? The natural order here is earthly. You can belch to your heart's content, flail with your arms, play music, test your own skull with an ax, boast of your virgin birth till you're blue in the face, but the ax will be soft as rubber and the lake, for its part, will yawn indifferently in the savage midday sun: that's old hat, we've heard it all before, virgin birth, signs and wonders, gospels and persecutions, can't you think of something new. And don't try walking on the water, either.