Amos Oz - The Same Sea

Mr. Danon apologized, he couldn't take on, overwhelmed with work, etc., but finally, on the doorstep, to their mutual surprise, he suddenly heard himself utter the words Call me, we'll talk about it.

At six she woke from a heavy siesta. She took a shower

and washed her hair. Stopped in the doorway of his room,

wearing only a wet shirt that did not quite cover her underwear.

I slept like a log and I must rush to work (receptionist

in a hotel). Be a dear and lend me two hundred shekels

just till the end of the week, will you. There's some rice and chicken

in the fridge and tonight after the news there's a program

about Tibet. Will you watch and tell me about it tomorrow?

She combed her hair, dressed and stopped in his doorway again,

I'm off now, bye, and don't you dare wait up for me,

just you go to bed, don't worry, I promise not to take any sweets

from strangers. She blew him a kiss and left him

changing a light bulb in the hall, in deepening gloom.

And if she stays out all night what will he do all night, and if she gets back

at midnight and goes straight to bed what will he do while she sleeps?

Tomorrow he'll tell her that her money is safe, that from now on

she is free and he is of no further use. Around nine there was a power outage,

and like a solitary mountaineer on whom night falls in a deserted place

he groped and found a flashlight and shifted the blocks of shadow around.

When the shadows overwhelmed him he gave up and went

to Bettine's, which was also in darkness with only an emergency light

glowing palely by her bed. And as the lights did not come back on

and the emergency light was fading he found himself telling her how

a bedraggled bird had nested uninvited in his flat, and how today he

himself had made sure — why on earth had he done it — that she too

would soon fly away. Reading between the lines, Bettine picked up

his secret and found it partly ridiculous and partly moving and painful. She

took his hand in hers, and they listened to the tossing and turning

of the sea in the depths of the dark, and then came a reaching out, a shy

embrace with no clothing removed, partly for loneliness of the flesh

and partly for grace and favor. Bettine knew from her flesh that he

was imagining another in her but she forgave him: had it not been

for the other, this would never have happened.

Wisely, firmly, yet gently, he had rescued and retrieved

her lost cash. And what was the outcome? Simply

that in another day or two she would pluck her underwear

off the washing line, blow him a kiss, and vanish. The wrong

had been righted, but an invisible hand, not his own,

certainly not his right hand, possibly his left, had mockingly

frustrated him. Fear not. It was not in vain. With her going, the shade

of the dead one will surely return to be with you.

And hers too. The shades of two women. And Bettine as well.

A shadow harem under the shade of your roof.

Dad's sitting reading a paper. Dad's watching the news headlines.

His face is pained, like a disappointed teacher: reprimanding, chiding

the state of the world whose antics really go

too far. The time has come to take steps. He has

made up his mind to respond severely.

My father's severity is ineffectual. A poor mans severity. Weary fading

powerless. Instead there is a touch of sadness about him, an air of

resignation. He is not a young man. He's just a humble citizen.

What difference can he make

with his puny cane. And sometimes my father quotes the verse:

As the sparks fly upward, man is born unto labor. But what is he trying

to say to me? That I should fly upward? Or get a job? Not to fight

lost battles? My father's severity. His defeated shoulders.

Because of them I left. To them I shall return.

And there's another great text in Job that he quotes to me

so that I'll remember that properly and possessions are

not the most important thing: Naked came I forth from my mother's womb

and naked shall I return thither. So what is the point of the race to amass

and hoard so-called belongings. My father is blind

to the hidden secret of this verse: her womb

is waiting for me. I came forth. I shall return. The cross on the way

is less important.

He circles aimlessly around. And returns. Between one sleep and the next

he barely wakes. He travels from village to remote village. A day here a day

there. He meets Israelis, what's new back home, and falls asleep. He meets

women, exchanges a first signal and gives up. Like a tortoise.

On his travels he has crossed three or four maps. So what if he crosses

yet another, more valleys. Another climb. This view has run out.

His money too, almost. With a little luck he'll make it to Bangkok,

where the money his father sent is waiting. And then Sri Lanka. Or Rangoon.

In the autumn he'll go home. Or not. By a feeble light in a hostel, lying

neither sleeping nor waking, like an invalid waiting for it to become clear

one way or the other, seeing on the sooty ceiling stains of mountains

suspended between one shadow and the next. Not to climb but to find

a way in, or a way through, an opening, or a narrow crack, through which

Shortly before my death a bird on a branch enticed me.

Narimi its feathery down touched me wrapped all of me

in a marine afterbirth.

Night after night, my widower weeps on his pillow, where has she gone

whom my soul loves. My orphan child is wandering far, conjuring omens.

Child bride you are their wife, you have my nightdress,

you have their love. My flesh is wasted. Set me as a seal.

He returns from Bettine's when the power is restored and sits for a while

on the veranda alone. It is still August but the night is almost chilly, the cool

of the sea is an advance payment on the autumn. Around one o'clock,

five already in Bhutan, he drinks some chilled fruit juice

and goes to bed. Who knows who she is out on the town with

at this moment, she must be shivering in her light clothes. He gets up

and spreads a blanket on her bed and then hesitates,

nods and lays out on her pillow a blue nightdress,

because she is bound in her sleep to kick off the blanket.

Now for a riddle: what if anything does the shabby film producer Dubi

Dombrov have in common with the fictional Narrator who is about to

bring him back to Albert for a second visit? Besides the fact that both of them

require the services of a tax adviser, we may note some other parallels. He and I

as children were both outsiders. And we were both orphaned

at a fairly tender age and in need of a guiding hand, which is, as

Dubi observed, both an unquenchable personal need and, shall we say, a

religious quest Both of us would like to create at least one work

that will turn out properly. And we are both on our way. True, he is a

clumsy, sloppy man, a thing of shreds and patches, which ostensibly