Amos Oz - Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

He saw Stefa, slender and noble, silhouetted against the parapet of the bridge at night, smoking, facing toward the water the darkness the invisible forests, her back toward him. He himself standing apart a few paces behind her, not addressing her, not reminding her of his presence, not reminding her of the passing time, standing humbly, thoughtfully, almost desperately, he too smoking quietly. And just beneath their feet the river and the bridge, making no concession or allowance, ceaselessly flowing in two conflicting directions. The two crossed streams were love.

Stefa came home to the hills of Galilee on the morning of the day that Ernst died. The same morning, almost at the same time, Yotam too appeared, hurrying back from Argentina to take his leave of his father. Dying parents, Yotam thought, exercise a power over you that they have never had before. And when your father dies you will pick him up and carry him inside you all your life like an unborn child or a malignant growth, he will accompany you through all your rebellions, he will never again be angry or punish you but only laugh quietly inside you. All your life.

Naturally, Audrey too arrived in time: along with Jeff and Sandy and guitars, here as a volunteer, to work in the fields and in the evening to dream in the wood and at night make love. Audrey bronzed by the Red Sea sun, flashing revolutionary sparks, calling everything in the world by a new and more fitting name.

The day of Ernst's death was hot and sunny. Early summer, harsh merciless light, angry yellow stubblefields, the harvest almost over, three black crows seemingly nailed to the sewing-room roof. And the radio brought the grim news of concentrations of enemy troops on all four borders.

People furiously exchanged opinions and speculations. Interpreted the signs. Seized on circumstantial clues. Voiced desperate hopes.

Ernst had been sent home from the hospital the previous afternoon because instructions had been issued to discharge civilian patients, because his illness was incurable, and because Ernst himself had insisted on going home.

On account of the stifling heat his bed had been brought out onto the porch, and there the Secretary lay with his eyes open. He made a simple calculation and discovered that he had lived some twenty thousand days. He realized that for half this time, absurdly, he had tried to squander time, to speed it up, to leave the first ten thousand days behind him, so as to reach the point where exciting things start happening as soon as possible. He had resented the irritating slowness of those first days. Whereas in the second half, in the last ten thousand days, he had subsided gradually into regret at the passing of all that had gone before: places, sounds, faces, smells, broken-down doors, paths he had never trodden, paths he would never tread again, nostalgia, yearnings, longings whose pain could only be driven away with other longings, he had become an addict, a slave, and the days in the second half had flashed past with vindictive, almost comic, speed. Like tiny figures in a silent film. And then this will-o'-the-wisp had appeared at the last moment, the peace of the mighty silent elements, the stars, the sea, the wind, the sands, darkness, music. Was there or was there not any substance in all this mirage. The powers of sober reflection which you have nurtured and trained for years and years abandon you now when you need them as you have never needed them before. Or perhaps they too were merely hidden traitors, making fun of you, pulling faces behind your back, fiends in disguise, demons and hobgoblins.

Ernsts features suddenly regained their long-lost expression of surprise and disappointment, the left eyebrow raised in discreet irony and veiled rebuke, "How could you have done such a thing."

There are various conflicting accounts of Ernst's death. Not long afterward war broke out, everything changed, minor matters were swept aside. According to one version, Ernst himself apparently decided to spare himself several days of agony and either took — or was given by his two mistresses acting on his instructions — an overdose of the morphine which had been prescribed to relieve his pain. And died within the hour. Others maintained the contrary, that he refused even to take the drugs which were essential to keep him alive for another week or two, that he terrorized the two women, dashed the medicine in their faces, threw the pills on the ground, and would not answer their questions with so much as a nod.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Ernst lay on his bed on the porch with the Lebanon Mountains behind him and the Syrian Heights to his left, and beyond the heights the legendary city of Damascus: its rivers Abana and Pharpar, myrrh and frankincense on the hidden side of the trenched and fortified hills. Ernst's two aged mistresses, little Vera, all shriveled yet almost violently energetic, and tall, stooping Sara, with her thinning hair and her skill in making weird ceramic animals, sat with him all the time, almost day and night.

Occasionally one or other of them would take a damp handkerchief and soothe Ernst's gray hair, his temples, his mouth which still formed single carefully chosen words which pierced Yotam like nails as he sat nearby on a stool saying nothing and silently hating his own love for his dying father.

Sometimes Vera and Sara would get up nervously in unison and patrol the concrete path angrily together as far as the corner of the house and back again to the porch and the invalid's bedside. If Sara served Yotam a glass of tea, Vera would hasten to stroke his short-cropped hair. If Vera put a cushion behind his head, Sara wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the same damp handkerchief she had used to cool his father's brow. And whenever in an incautious moment the two women's eyes met, such meetings were always as brief as they could possibly be.

There is always a sense of something out of place in the death of a veteran pioneer in a well-organized, well-to-do kibbutz: as if some rule has been broken, the authority of one of the committees flouted, a discordant misdemeanor committed, the principle of seniority challenged, or even an enlightened ideal infringed. Something out of place, something that cannot be passed over in silence, or perhaps, on the contrary, something that cannot be mentioned at all, in case the general equilibrium is disturbed, or a dangerous precedent set.

And so a sensible, reasonable man, a broad-shouldered man, a man possessed of an excellent sense of proportion and clearheadedness which have never abandoned him even in times of crisis, such a man writhes in sweat and agony under a sheet on his bed on his porch in broad daylight, utters a jumble of names, dates, and places, for some reason passes complicated comments on subjects of which he knows nothing, such as the Caribbean Sea or Eights of cranes in autumn in another country, reaches out to clasp his thin son Yotam in his big tortured arms, tries to remember the name of an old book, the name of a Czech nurse, and cannot; his heavy body swelling with rage, he utters a vague protest, gurgles, pushes away something that no one else can see, throws a faint sentence to Yotam in his native tongue, lets out a slight sob or belch, beats his brow with a blind fist, and is gone.

Ernst died at ten past four in the afternoon. A little earlier, toward the end of the morning, Stefa arrived at the kibbutz. She was wearing a summer frock with an abstract pattern of green lines. She was driven by the man with bat's ears. He leapt out and opened the car door for her with a waiter's alacrity and comically broad gestures; then he took her arm lighdy and told his handsome young men to walk ahead and point out any steps or obstacles in their way, and so, as if to the accompaniment of a cheap bold march tune, the little procession wended its way toward Elisha Pomeranz's room.