Amos Oz - The Same Sea

Behind the first stream another rivulet is hiding.

The first one flows so loudly

that you can hardly hear the murmur

of the second, hidden one. Rico is sitting on a rock. Perhaps

you can only hear it in the dark? He is willing to wait.

If you are Giggy Ben-Gal, a man who helps himself with both hands because

you only live once, for whom toys and pleasures and fun wink

from every branch as though it's Christmas all year round, earning your living

as a security adviser while maintaining dovish views, attending

the occasional rally and signing every petition, with a flat and car provided

by your parents who aren't short of a penny or two, and on the sweeter

side of life you have Ruthy Levin and Dita and another one, a married

woman, your friends wife is your friend and anyway he has no idea (she's older

than you and full of surprises in bed), but at heart you're not selfish,

quite generous in fact, you enjoy fixing things for others, helping a friend

through a difficult patch, taking the weight off his shoulders, its not

surprising that one fine evening you'll collar this Dombrov for a man-to-man

chat, to sort out what's really going on with this filmscript

that seems to have got stuck: after all, we're talking about relatively small

sums of money, and anyway you know a source you can tap.

And so you will sit facing one another in Cafe Limor, you cheery and brisk

while he looks bitter, careworn, not completely on the ball, for instance

when you say "grant" and he, instead of taking notes, starts describing Nirit.

Or if you imply that there's this fund you know of he just stares abstractedly

into his beer then leans forward and downs it in one. For a moment you feel

disappointed, even hurt, is he really so ungrateful or has he just got

a screw loose? Suddenly you realize that the problem isn't the script, it's Dita.

The kids jealous. He sits there wriggling on his chair, full of wretchedness

and shame, and at the same time he's drawn toward you, he doesn't dare

but he'd love to touch your hand that touches Dita and probably does things

to her, any way and any time it likes, that he can only dream of. He would

sell you a year of his fucked-up life here and now, just like that, for a hint

of a chance to taste just once a tiny crumb from your nightly feasts with her.

Sweeter even than her body for you now is his embittered envy, that

stimulates your complacency gland, and also makes you feel pity and an urge

to share your bread with the hungry, to grant him an evening with her,

a secret gift or a donation of surplus goods. There's also a surprising

pang of jealousy at the poor sod, with that desperate thirst of his

that someone like you has never known and never will. Right now

you're feeling thirsty too, so you order two more big frothy beers.

But why do you keep worrying? Calm down. See for yourself

how well I'm looking after myself,

I'm eating, sleeping, wrapping up warm in my sleeping-bag,

protecting myself from the freezing

breath of the winds, I even drink fresh mountain goats' milk

for breakfast I won't get lost.

It's no good. She's all around me. She's worried. She's found

a hole in the elbow of my sweater, the soles of my boots

are worn too thin, and what's that cut on my cheek? She lays

a cold hand on my forehead

and another on her own, compares, naturally I'm warmer.

She doesn't trust me.

And why did you forget to send your father a postcard every week?

It's not so easy for him there,

looking after your girlfriend, well not exactly looking after her,

she's not exactly the one who's being looked after. In your place

I'd go back. You've checked out all these mountains one by one,

and it's nearly autumn,

it's time to go home. The mountains will always be here,

but your life wont Instead of wandering around you could

be an architect for instance: what with your fathers way with a balance sheet,

my gift for embroidery, your grandfather who was a silversmith, and Uncle

Michael, the pharmacist, put it all together and you'll be a master architect

Take a rest, Mother, I say to her. Sit down for a bit You're tired.

You've worried enough. Go back to sleep

curled up like a fetus in the hammock of the deep.

Master architect, doctor, they're

marketable professions. But every market closes in the end,

and everything perishes,

dust to dust. Suppose your son puts Number One first,

so the whole of Bat Yam is full of his glory and all the substance

of his house, a name and legacy, a Mercedes and precious unguents,

surely with the passing of the years all will be covered in dust.

The name will fade, the unguents will dry up and only a powdery crust

will remain and it too in the end will fly

to the four winds. A forgotten, invisible, imperceptible powder, Mother,

the dust of forsaken

collapsed buildings, shifting sands swept by the wind,

ashes returning to ashes,

from a handful of cosmic dust our planet was formed,

and to a black hole it shall return.

A doctor an architect in a dream house with fancy carpets

in the best part of Bat Yam. Powder.

Rest in your peace, Mother, after the mountains I shall come

and you and I shall hide

beyond reach of the cloud that existed before anything was made

and that when all has passed away shall be alone.

Shortly before sunset Albert walks round to Bettine's to seek her advice

on a particular case involving double taxation. Bettine is pleased to see him

but hasn't got time to talk, she has her grandchildren with her, she is three,

he is one-and-a-bit, she is drawing a palace and he has crawled into

a cardboard box hideaway. Bettine offers some homemade lemonade

to Albert, who, carried away, is already down on all fours giving a recital

of animal and bird noises but the lion strikes the wrong note,

the tot in the box is scared, tears, and a bottle for comfort. Albert too seems

chastened and in need of comfort, so the little girl offers him a present,

the palace, on condition he don't cough scare no more. Later, in the empty

alley on his way back to Amirim Street a bird on a branch calls to him.

With no living soul to hear he replies and this time he hits the right note.

Bettine likes to sit indoors in the evening

in her pleasant room that faces the sea, half-submerged in potted plants,

wearing a summer kimono, her still-shapely legs

propped up on a footstool.

She is deep in a novel about a divorce and an error.

The suffering of the fictional characters fills her

with a feeling of calm. As though their burden has fallen

from her own shoulders.

Yes, she too is getting older, but without feeling

humiliated by it. A senior civil servant of sixty,

with her bobbed hair and those earrings, she feels

younger than her age.

The sea that is close to her home seeps through her windows

and inside her body too there is a murmur

seductively, secretly pleading with her, like a little child

lightly pulling at her sleeve.

What is this body after? One more game?

Another outing? Let me rest. Its late.

But it pleads persistently,

not knowing when to give up.