Amos Oz - Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

On occasion one of the pupils receives illumination. He stares at the page and the equations with wide-gaping eyes and mutters over and over again: I see, yes, now I see.

When the private lessons are finished, a little after ten o'clock, he takes up his stick again and goes out for his evening walk. Squares of light in the windows of the veterans' quarters. The sound of the radio. Sounds of laughter. A woman grumbles in Yiddish.

For a while he paces the paths by lamplight, then goes down to the end of the avenue, recalling perhaps for an instant the image of Jaroslaw Avenue. He smokes a last cigarette in the dark. His face is clouded. The night hurls night sounds at him. The King of Poland in the Isles of Greece sinks slowly into his night silence. Then he returns to his room. He fiddles with the radio and finds a distant, European station, which plays late-night music. He sits at his desk and gives himself over for twenty or twenty-five minutes to his equations.

And suddenly, enough.

He gathers up his papers. Puts them away in the desk drawer and locks it. Hides the key in the hem of the curtain. Absently turns off the radio. And prepares his body for sleep. If some small hindrance occurs at this stage, if the tube of toothpaste splits open at the bottom or his pajama cord gets tangled in an obstinate knot, he says a couple of sentences to himself in Polish. Then he turns out the light at the head of his bed.

Slumber:

Howling wolves. Vampires. Ax blow. Forests upon forests. Snow. Greek music. American banknotes. Audrey.

That is: simple elements and violent combinations.

And once more before dawn the blaze of sunrise casts a spell on the eastern mountains as if a mournful orgy is coming to an end somewhere just at this moment, gradually fading away in the distance beyond the rugged eastern skyline.

Sometimes the shepherd and his flock are joined by two large Alsatian dogs which belong to young Shaulik, the son of Yehuda Yatom. Shaulik is responsible for the sheep.

Lost in their dreams the sheep scattered on the hillside lazily crop the grass. At times they stop and stand motionless for a long while staring toward the Galilean hill light at the sky's edge.

And then suddenly one of the sheep raises a startled head and lets out a long, bitter bleat from deep inside her, as if in response to a sudden faraway call.

At the same instant the two Alsations also brisde with a vague dread, a fearful growl rumbles deep in both their throats, turns hoarse, wails as if suffocated underwater, and expires.

And down they both sprawl once more in repose.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger tried to see in the fear of cessation and the constant presence of death a new key to the understanding of the riddle of the connection between Time, Being, and Thought.

In his celebrated work An Introduction to Metaphysics (1953), he is repeatedly at pains to explain that the German word ist is a word possessed of different and even contradictory meanings. In illustration of this he quotes a charming collection of random sentences in each of which the word appears "in a use which is so common that we scarcely notice it. We say: 'God is,' 'the earth is,' 'the lecture is in the auditorium,' 'the man is a Swabian,' 'the cup is made of silver,' 'the peasant is out in the fields,' 'the book is my property.'"

And a little later:

" The enemy is in retreat,' 'there is famine in Russia,' 'the dog is in the garden,'" and so on.

Finally Heidegger cites a pair of famous lines from a poem by Goethe:

Uber alien Gipfeln

ist Ruh,

which may be translated:

Over all hilltops

is rest.

From all these examples Heidegger draws support for the conclusion at which he arrives, apparently, with extreme reluctance: language, by its very nature, is always misleading. And particularly so in those matters which are the foundation of our existence. Hence it is our duty to purify and refine our language, to create a proper language, before we weigh anchor and set sail for unknown worlds, for the secret realms of Time and Being.

Indeed, from the time that the University of Freiburg was purged of Jews and Professor Heidegger was appointed its Rector with the approval of the Nazi authorities (1933), the philosopher did not cease to seek a possible loophole that would allow the crust of deceptive language and conventions of thought fossilized in distorted grammatical structures to be pierced. Tirelessly and assiduously he strove to penetrate to the sphere of mystery, to the depths of the secrets of Being. He attempted to touch the enigma with fingers of Reason, with an ascetic refusal to employ words or forms of speech that had not been tested in its light. But, to his great embarrassment and perplexity, in the middle 'forties the régime in Germany suddenly changed, foreign ideas were carried into Germany on foreign bayonets, and the old philosopher was involved for a time in misunderstandings and unpleasantness.

So a man assails words with all the spiritual power at his command, he struggles to capture in words the existential dread, so he lifts up his eyes to the restful hills, and suddenly the ground changes underneath his feet: the enemy is in retreat, there is famine in Russia, the dog is in the garden, and he himself is suddenly sinking in pork fat.

Ernst, the Secretary of the Kibbutz, thought to himself: It may be that we have a real mathematical genius living with us here. But in fact he is not living among us. He takes no part in the general assemblies, he contributes nothing to the committees, he takes no interest in the great questions like the reform of society or the future of the Movement and the State, and even the small questions on which our daily life is built do not concern him. On the other hand, he does mend watches. He helps the backward school children. He takes the flocks to pasture. This is all well and good, but it will lead to no good.

Each detail must be closely examined in turn. Examined under a bright light, to see the tiny blemishes, to see where precisely the trouble starts.

The matter of the watches: no complaint. Excellent workmanship, and a laudable social gesture: even though you all know and none of you can forget for a moment who and what I am, yet I am not proud, success has not gone to my head, bring me your watches and I shall be, for two or three hours each week, your humble servant.

The case of the private lessons is more ambiguous. In some instances the man has worked wonders in setting boys and girls on the right track and instilling in them a deeply rooted respect for law and responsibility and for learning in general. Very good. On the other hand, there is something about him which upsets their calm and peace of mind. He arouses in these young adolescents, especially the girls, all sorts of undesirable reactions and undefined emotional disturbances: they all hide something from the others. So there is something lurking here which goes beyond mere mathematics, physics, geometry. In general, there is something wrong with bachelors in a properly ordered society.

He makes no demands on us. For the time being, at any rate. But, on the other hand, what does he give us? What is his contribution? In what sense can he be considered one of us? What does the community receive from him? What, in fact, keeps him here?

To be sure, mathematical infinity is a respectable subject. But in these times and in this place, what can it give us, what can it offer us?

It needs further reflection.

Perhaps a little consultation.

Now it's time for the news.

Ernst had an only son, a shiftless, withdrawn lad named Yotam.