Amos Oz - Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

Every single one of them, young and old alike, Greeks, women, and Jews, all of them were in unceasing pursuit of the one thing Pomeranz might be able to give them.

In exchange for this thing they eagerly promised, with the merest of hints or the most disgusting of winks, to lavish on him:

Money.

Honors.

Women.

World fame.

All or any of these.

Elisha Pomeranz, tirelessly though with no great hopes, tried his best to set their haunted souls to rights. He gave them nothing, received nothing from them, he no longer tried to hide from them, he only longed to bring relief to his haunted haunters. To instill in them a different inner rhythm. To teach them rest. To wish peace to all men and to bring all men peace.

To wish all men peace and to bring peace to all men, that was what Audrey longed for too. Along with five or six young travelers like herself, Dutchmen, wrecks, Americans, she had been living for some time on the shore of the Red Sea, where summer never ends. There on the beach they had built themselves a hut of broken planks, and shared each other's dreams and daydreams. They were bronzed by the sun, lean and bony, splashing and swimming in the sea, star-struck at night, slow as though succumbing to gradual paralysis in this dazzling region. Every evening the orphans sprawled at the entrance to one of the hotels or night clubs, where they played the guitar and sang soul-stirring songs, holding out their hands for pennies. Mostly they waited, even though for most of the time they did not feel, did not know that they were waiting, waiting for what, perhaps for a sudden voice from the wilderness, or for the red mountains to move and mightily join in the singing.

Meanwhile, it occurred to them to walk eastward some time, to search out the soldiers guarding the Jordanian border, and help them see the light.

One evening, when the fierceness of the sun was somewhat assuaged, the barefoot orphans started walking east along the shoreline. The smooth gravel scraped the soles of their feet and added a sensual joy to the spiritual joy which throbbed inside them. How enthusiastic they were, seeing themselves as poor apostles, swept along by their mission, Jeff and Harry with guitars and Sandy singing songs of peace, Audrey as if windborne leading the way.

As the sun was being pierced by the mountain tips to the west they reached the barbed wire, and there they halted.

The savage light had died, and now from the water there rose the water's gentle light. It was desert night; the sky turned to gray and the red mountains stood like the remains of a fearsome fire. By the barbed wire they found a small dugout, with sandbags and a casual trench, and outside the entrenchment on the beach Elyashar, Vilnay, and Adorno sitting peacefully smoking cigarettes. Like the newcomers the three soldiers were barefoot.

Jeff and Harry with guitars and Sandy singing songs of peace, and the soldiers quietly smoking and only half-turning to size them up indifferently. Then Vilnay stood up, cleared his throat, paused, suddenly pulled out a handkerchief and began noisily blowing his nose. Little Elyashar could not take his eyes off Audrey's body, but dared not look at her face. Adorno skimmed pebbles on the darkening water. And far away a hooting cargo boat. Doubtless maneuvering out of the harbor, doubtless lit up, doubtless heading for the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, to the Indian Ocean and the Far East.

It was Adorno who spoke first, in crippled English: This is army place. No photograph here. What you want here?

These simple words raised shallow laughs on both sides. Did the travelers, could the travelers, have a camera? Then Sandy put his hand out, and Vilnay gave him a cigarette. And Jeff, who was a kind of spokesman, explained that killing only leads to more killing, but love begets love.

Within a few minutes the language barrier stifled the sermon.

Yet one word, one of his words, pierced the barrier and entered into their hearts, causing a certain change, a turn in the relations.

Elyashar, Moshe — a withdrawn boy from a religious school-received and understood the English word "love." And he had never seen what girls have under their skirts, though twice he had sneaked into the cinema and witnessed a momentary flash of naked breasts. Now, as Jeff said the English word "love," Audrey stooped to get through the barbed wire so as to sit down with the soldiers. She was wearing only a length of cloth wrapped round her body, perhaps a colored sheet, and as she bent down her breasts fell out and started to sway, and she pressed her arm against them, but they rebelled and a slight slap sounded, all in the gray light of evening.

Pain and humiliation suddenly got the better of Elyashar, Moshe. The bloodthirsty painted redskin stirred in his trousers, the tomahawk was brandished, and from all the caverns and hideouts came a war whoop of hatred and fury. Private Elyashar, Moshe began to gesture coarsely, snigger, and plead in guttural English; he even used bad language. An ugly gleam lit his eyes and half his face twisted in a filthy smile.

Like a forest fire it seized hold of his comrades too. They trembled visibly. Suddenly a heavy bitter silence fell. The air grew dark. Not a sound was heard. The place was remote and far from help. Even the black water seemed to be seething and plotting.

The band of players turned to go. After a moment Sandy and Harry started running, dragging Audrey by her arms. She ran with them, tears trickling down her cheeks. Stones pursued them. Private Elyashar, maddened by his tortures, screamed outrageous curses after them in Arabic. Until the enemy soldiers beyond the border heard and cursed back with fourfold vigor.

Toward dawn light firing was heard. A complaint was lodged.

On the edge of the lake in the beautiful German town of Baden-Baden stands a hut made to look like the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel. From this hut small rowboats are rented for boating on the lake, mainly to foreign tourists and nature-seeking couples.

One cold blue spring day the hut was being watched from concealed vantage points by three strangers. All three were young and athletic, with short-cropped fair hair, strikingly good-looking and amazingly like one another in appearance. They remained in their hiding-places watching the hut.

One of them, hidden in the thick cover of an ancient tree, was listening attentively to the earpiece of a tiny wireless receiver. The second, concealed among the reeds, kept the hut under constant observation through the sights of an accurate, silent rifle. The third, wearing a diving-suit, waited beneath the surface of the shallow water for any event which might require his intervention.

And now, down the path leading to the hut there stepped a brisk little man, a short, small-fingered man with batlike ears straining forward. He looked like a rabbi who had turned his collar up as high as possible and slunk out to an adulterous assignation on the edge of town. He was not young, and the woman on account of whom he had turned his coat collar up and dabbed cologne behind his ears this morning, for whom he now hired the best rowboat, alone with whom he gently rowed into the center of the lake — the woman was not young, either.

But charming, and attractive, and exquisite in every line.

She was tall and thin, with a gentle downward slope to her shoulders: she looked as though she had suddenly grown faint and needed support. This quality was deceptive, and even at a distance a second glance would reveal the ruthless strength contained in the line of her chin or the sudden movement of her small hand as it deftly brushed a speck of dust or a spot of mud from her green woolen dress.