Amos Oz - Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

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.