Amos Oz - Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

On Saturday evening, as previously announced, after some appropriate introductory music, the radio devoted a special program to Pomeranz's sensational discovery.

The interviewers began by tackling Ernst, the Secretary of the Kibbutz Council.

In carefully chosen and well-balanced phrases, as if he were a head of intelligence being cross-examined before a large audience, Ernst responded to the request to describe some aspects of kibbutz life in general and in detail. In his slow voice and in carefully selected words he enlarged on the place of a creative thinker within the framework of a collectivist society.

Abruptly the voice of a young broadcaster rang out, describing in lyrical, ecstatic tones the landscape of Upper Galilee, the trees and rocks, the kibbutz, the idyllic flocks of sheep on the beautiful hillside, the neighboring houses, the house itself, its four walls taken together and separately, the furnishings of the room, the vase of flowers, and then again the earth and sky and the modest porch. Even the dog was not left out. Only for some reason he was promoted to the rank of a pedigreed Alsatian.

Next they dealt briefly with the national significance of the event, and invited a panel of distinguished scholars to discuss the subject of infinity: Ancient Greece, Atomists and Pythagoreans, Kant and infinity, infinity and Cantor. Neo-Kantianism, too, and the inevitable failure of Gavronski and Hermann Cohen. Bolzano's hopeless entanglement in irresoluble contradictions in his attempt to explain mathematical infinity. In contrast, the modesty and humility of Einstein's attitude to infinity. Potential and actual infinity. Dedekind and Pearce. Inescapable absurdity. The challenge to human understanding.

The mental limitations of mere flesh and blood.

The silent irony of secretive Nature.

An excellent lesson in humility.

The impossibility of understanding infinity, and the consequent impossibility of understanding death.

And the result — mysticism. Metaphysical yearnings.

The hope of miraculous enlightenment.

Of redemption.

Of illumination.

Next an acid, rasping scholar recommending caution: this discovery too might eventually come to be refuted, as a clever exercise in mathematical deception. And, incidentally, mathematical infinity was not unclaimed territory. It had been delimited once and for all by the Formalist school of Hilbert and from another angle by the school of Whitehead and Russell. It would be better, said the strident scholar, not to celebrate before the event. Time would tell.

Rabbi Doctor Erich Vandenberg, for his part, took this opportunity to remind listeners that the mystical Jewish teachings of the Cabala mentioned several different kinds of infinity, such as the Enveloped Infinite, the Enveloping Infinite, and the Supernal Infinite. Science itself had come, as it were — belatedly, as always — to make its peace with Faith, and it was in this perhaps that the real importance of the discovery lay, as a first step toward Redemption.

The chairman wound up the discussion by stating that this was a happy day for science and especially for the Israeli scientific community, and above all else this was a unique and moving human document. As he stopped speaking, the radio put out a piece of electronic music, followed by a look at motoring conditions or the problems in the Customs Department.

That night in the port of Piraeus the water succeeded in undermining and destroying a fishing jetty made of rotten planks. The sea water seethed and bubbled saltily from its depths. The waves arched up and pounded rhythmically against the sea wall, mounting and lustily hammering blow after blow, soft and then hard, ruthlessly, relentlessly, again and again to the rhythm of its joy, sea within sea within sea. In the distance mountain peaks bit and tore at the crescent moon which they clasped in their jaws.

And a young woman stood all night at the window of her house facing the port in Piraeus, watching it all, and suddenly she dashed out of the house, never to return.

Meanwhile strangers continued to pour in: fortune seekers, the idly curious, all of them excited and enthusiastic. There were representatives, too, of foreign universities, research centers, celebrated scientific institutions.

Secretively, as though on tiptoe, emissaries also insinuated themselves from forces which preferred to remain in the background. Representatives of giant concerns and agencies cloaked in darkness. German-Belgian capital. A Swiss-American conglomerate. An Austrian agent representing a Progressive government. A black woman. A gang of young Latins in a car which looked like a pleasure cruiser. A pair of Greek Jews bearing a concrete proposal from the Far East.

Most of these visitors appeared to Pomeranz as astute, almost friendly figures, sharp-witted, at times as possessed of a cunning verging on virtuosity.

All of them, in their different ways and different languages, wanted to talk, to approach, to peer, to touch with their fingertips, to snatch a spark, however tiny, to take something at least away with them, to gain a glimmer of understanding, to make friends with the great man at all costs.

The members of the kibbutz, at least among themselves, called the visitors "the Pilgrims."

All of them without exception sniffed the theorem with dilated nostrils, groped for its ramifications, pursued the possibilities which might, who knew, result from just this new discovery:

Mysterious rays which could operate even at a great distance.

Accumulations of a new form of energy, wonderfully simple yet amazingly potent.

The incidental conquest of some of the most powerful laws of nature.

An absolute weapon which nothing could withstand.

The vacuum.

The defiance of gravity.

Remote control.

A possible approach to the essence of the earth's equilibrium.

A check on the forces of the universe, or the ability to balance them one against the other as the need might arise.

Inconceivable powers whose possessor would have an unchallengeable domination which could not be undermined until Doomsday.

Total mastery.

Pomeranz, as though he felt his private life to be besieged by these fervent crowds of visitors, tried for a time to evade them. He asked the office not to pass on telephone messages, he did not answer letters. In the afternoons he hid in the library or the treasurer's office. Not here. Gone away. Busy. No visitors. No such person. Never was. Next month. Next year. That's flat.

But the efforts were all in vain. The more brazenly determined tracked him down even at the far end of the orchard, or discovered him in the evening sitting in the empty sewing room. So he abandoned subterfuge. He talked freely to them all, without distinction or discrimination, to groups and individuals, Japanese journalists or pure mathematicians from Glasgow, he described concisely and graphically the inherent power of music or the tranquillity of forests in autumn. His voice was relaxed and relaxing, almost didactic, trying to soothe each of them, to release them from the grip of inner claws. At times his face bore a hint of what appeared, to the more shortsighted, as well-mastered mockery. No doubt the thick jaws aroused suspicion. In his heart he was far from all taint of irony. In his own solitary way he felt almost sympathetic toward the wound of their burning desire to imbibe power. Japanese journalist, social reformer from Cornell, East European agent, team of Scandinavian cameramen, for an instant it became apparent that beneath their clothes their bodies were contorted by a terrible lust for the secret of power, for unimaginable variations on its delight, to dominate, to vanquish, to master, filled with a bitter, relentless yearning for omnipotence. This deformity, Pomeranz discovered, was more tormenting than carnal lust, more insidious than the lust for honor, stronger than thirst, depraving, corroding body and soul.