Amos Oz - Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

He found a small secure shop in a narrow side street which seemed to suit his purpose. He rented it, cleaned it out, decorated it, he lavished his savings on a counter and shelves, a fan, a chair, a picture, he arranged the shop, rearranged it, his whole body trembling with the effort and the passion.

When the preparations were complete he excitedly printed on a large card a two-word Hebrew poem:

POMERANZ

WATCHMAKER

Pomeranz was forty-three years old when he wrote these words. For an instant he suddenly experienced a belated love. Something inside him was swept away, dissolved, released.

Next he settled on a routine. The bars on the outside of his window curved in rusty arabesques. He painted them. He revived the geraniums in the window boxes. The low ceiling, arching gently above his head, seemed to be trying to testify to Emanuel Zaicek's theory of universal circularity.

No longer young, starting new daily habits in a new place, in an alien climate, surrounded by unfamiliar objects. A need for great caution in small things, buying a brush, plugging in the tall thin kettle, crossing the road, the strange salesmen and policemen, the neighbors' dogs and children, duplicated circulars in Hebrew script.

Opposite his shop there was a garage for automobile repairs. A rickety shed. There was a young man working there, almost a boy, with sunburned skin and a mustache. Pomeranz stared at him from his shop because this handsome, self-confident youth was in the habit of talking to himself. When there was no one else about in the garage, generally during the hottest hours of the day, Pomeranz could see him through his shop window bending over a heap of junk, kicking, muttering, making a pleading gesture with his hand, then canceling it with a wave of dismissal, raising his hand to his face as if at the sight of a calamity, drooping his head, shoulders, and arms in despair, once more muttering, then suddenly clapping his hand to his mouth and disappearing hurriedly into the shed. The air was full of the smell of dust steeped with grease and gasoline, of metal being soldered in sweltering heat, the painful groan of an engine refusing to start.

The work of mending watches and clocks brought about a cool feeling of enjoyment, a gradual rallying of the forces of order. It was an experience resembling convalescence, an almost mathematical delight, something approaching music.

He would focus a narrow beam of light on his work, fix a magnifying glass in his left eye socket, pick up a fine pair of tweezers. His hands had learned to be calm and controlled. Time that was out of joint he set right, and restored a steady movement. Sometimes he took the pleasure he got from the work into account when fixing the price of a repair.

After work he went home, put on a clean shirt, and served himself bread, yoghurt, fresh dates, and coffee. He sat back in the rocking chair he had bought, and gazed out the window for an hour or two at the swaying curves of the palm trees, at the distant mountains and at their reflection in the water of the lake. Slowly, with great caution, he debated with the blazing light, and with the alien, disturbing landscape. Negotiating, considering terms, bargaining formulae, examining alternative suggestions, perpetually on his guard against baits and snares. It was a fascinating, if tiring, procedure. Gradually there was a healing, because Europe was far away, and the refuge seemed, so far as any refuge could be, safe and secure.

Journey's end, Pomeranz said to himself.

Time passed, and Pomeranz, still squinting, still dreamy, began to resume his old researches, which he had neglected for more than ten years now, somewhere in the twilight zone between pure mathematics and theoretical physics. The way back was difficult and exhausting, because here, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, the very figures seemed to play a different tune. Mathematical arabesques.

In spring, in autumn, and even on beautiful winter days, Pomeranz was in the habit of taking a short walk as the day ended. Gentle and pensive as a westerly breeze, as a distant caress, he passed through the streets of Tiberias, testing with the tip of his cane the solidity of a park bench, of the paving stones, tapping the trunk of a palm tree and standing motionless for a moment, with his eyes closed and his senses strained. Perhaps he would hear an answer.

Was it not conceivable that it would happen here, a hint, a sound, a sign?

Sometimes his wanderings led him to the shore of the darkening lake, near a wooden jetty or a little fishing harbor. Here he would stand for a long while, as the shadows enfolded him, looking like a secret agent on a preliminary reconnaissance.

He would turn to go, nodding his head as if caught up in a complicated inner debate.

On his way back up the hill he would linger, trying to count the birds shrilling in the trees, solemnly contemplating the view of the darkening mountains on the other side of the lake, committing as many details as possible to memory. Then he would head for home.

Tiberias seemed to him an insubstantial town, built on shallow foundations, perhaps hesitating between two contrasting rhythms. Tall palm trees reaching longingly skyward; low arches bowing and prostrating themselves. But surely the haughtiness of the palms and the submissiveness of the arches were simply two different expressions of the same underlying idea.

Here and there the authorities had set up green-painted benches, surrounded by a few pathetic plants and a display of written prohibitions. Here and there somebody had begun to put up a monumental building, but had had second thoughts when he reached the second story, realized what he had not seen at the outset, and changed his mind. Flimsy housing developments spread up the hillside month by month. Little square matchboxes, uniformly whitewashed, like a drawing by an unimaginative child. Neat row upon neat row, apartment houses, submitting to the harsh rule of the white summer light and obediently offering their whiteness in return. Pomeranz had no difficulty in understanding this sudden Jewish passion for neatness. For whitewash. For clean-cut lines. For simplicity and uncompromising brightness. For building here and just so and quickly, without any concession to the rolling hills and gently curving domes. Tense as a clenched fist. And if the earth curves and arches beneath us, if hills softly ripple beneath the modern streets, then surely this undulation will merely serve to excite still further the fire blazing in our breasts, and set the land aflame with a blaze of green.

The lake, for its part, sometimes roused feelings of nostalgia, and at times he could sense a passing breeze of silent, elusive mockery.

Then, night by night, the sly conspiracy of the stars against a crescent moon. The night wind had a message to deliver, and Pomeranz concentrated and strained his senses.

There were, naturally, superficial relations with four or five people. The grocer, who at six o'clock would listen to two different news broadcasts simultaneously on two radio sets, in French and Arabic, who was surrounded by piles of newspapers and magazines, and was daily expecting a major disaster. Pomeranz would exchange a few sentences with him, bloodcurdling political speculations, apocalyptic forecasts, international conspiracies and maneuvers. Then there were the meter readers, the neighbors, their dogs, their children, regular and occasional customers. They all crossed his path without impinging on him, because he did not want to encroach or to make friends, but only to sit quietly and calculate, sit and silently listen.

The summer in Tiberias was long and white-hot. For nine or ten months everything roasted in an opaque white glare, and a fine dust filled the air; in the morning crowds of birds ran amok, and at midday even a handrail would scorch the hand that touched it All summer long, dark men swarmed the streets, exuding a warm, brown peaceful smell like freshly baked bread. To Pomeranz their presence was amazing, not Jewish, but not Gentile either; it called for cautious observation and a new exertion of the senses. Slowly. Without taking risks.