Amos Oz - The Same Sea

She glances at her watch: what now? Go out? To Albert?

Who was here not two hours ago? It's late. It's absurd.

And that girl is still there, and there is, after all, something

cheap about her.

Something cheap and something soft and something hard and remote,

Dita Inbar in her orange uniform, with a name-badge on the lapel,

works three nights a week as a receptionist at an expensive seaside hotel,

tourists, investors, philanderers, foreign airline pilots in uniform

and teams of tired stewardesses. Forms. Credit cards.

At four in the morning she has some free moments for a casual chat

with the Narrator, who is staying here after a lecture at the expense

of the sponsoring organization (it is not easy for him to drive all the way back

to Arad so late at night on his own). But he can't sleep. In a fit

of hotel depression he goes downstairs and paces the lobby, where

he finds you at the desk, looking official, tired but pretty.

Good evening. Evening? Its nearly morning. What's it like

here? Do you take in stray birds? What do you mean birds—

corpses more like. Have you ever seen a face reflected in a spoon? That's

what the whole human race looks like after midnight. Aren't you

the author? A friend of mine reads your books.

The only one I've read is To Know A Woman. But what a woman is

the hero hardly knows. Maybe you don't either. Men

are mostly wrong, whether they're authors or not. Tell you the truth,

I write too. Not books, screenplays, just for my own amusement so far.

Shall I send you one? Would you read it? You must be drowning

in manuscripts. How about yourself? Got another

book on the way? Don't suppose you'll tell me what it's about?

If it weren't for the years and my fame and a fear of being made a fool of

I'd stand here, a desk's width away from your body, and tell you

about Nirit, narimi, Bhutan, and the cross on the way. Nearly.

But not quite. While you smile at me all of a sudden

both phones call you at once. I too

fake a smile, return a vague wave of the hand, and walk away

to stand at the big window overlooking the sea. It has been written

that exile is a kingdom and it's been written that it is a fleeting

shadow. A filthy old dog is this September dawn, dusty, yawning

on the seashore, limping among the dustbins.

After his mother became ill Rico stayed out quite a lot. It was useless his father pleading with him. That winter he came home at two o'clock almost every night. Only rarely did he sit by the invalids bedside. The selfish love of an only child. Sometimes when he was little he used to imagine that his father had gone away, that he had been sent to Brazil, or moved in with another woman, and the two of them were left on their own in a pleasantly enclosed life, consoling each other. At least he wanted all the traffic between his parents to flow through his own junction and not through a tunnel behind his back. Her illness seemed to him as though she had suddenly had a baby daughter, a demanding pampered creature, a little like him, it was true, but a spoilt child. He imagined that if he went away his mother would have to choose between the two of them, and he was sure she would never give him up. How astonished he was when she eventually chose the ugly bloated baby and left him alone with his father.

At the beginning of this autumn, like every year, I planted some

chrysanthemums next to the bench in the garden. And like every year

I had my hair cut at Chez Gilbert for Hanukkah and then I went shopping to

fill the gaps and replace some worn-out items on my shelf of flannel nighties,

and got home in time to light the first candle with Albert, because Dita

had rung to say sorry but she and Rico couldn't make it. It seems likely I

won't live to see the end of this winter. Dr. Pinto is optimistic, the situation

seems stable, if anything the left one is a little less good, but the right one

is clear and there are no secondaries. They even see some improvement there.

So the story moves on with intervals that are getting longer every time,

because I tire easily. Meanwhile I continue embroidering a place mat

that I'd like to finish. I rest every ten minutes, my fingers are turning white

and my eyes see things that aren't there. Sometimes I'm so terrified of it

like a pack of wolves and sometimes I just wonder how exactly it will come.

Is it like falling asleep? Like being burnt? Sometimes I regret we didn't take a

second trip last summer to Crete, where night fell so slowly and the salt smell

mingled with the tang of the pines and we drank wine with ewes' milk cheese

while the shadow of the mountains spread right across the plain but the

mountains themselves were still illuminated in the distance by a light that

promised that peace would come and the water in the stream was icy

even though it was August. Sometimes there's a pain and I lie down at once,

take a pill, I don't even wait the ten minutes I promised Dr. Pinto. He surely

won't be angry. And I sometimes feel something I can't remember the

word for, tmno, is it "dark"? My Hebrew is abandoning me, and making room

for more and more Bulgarian. Which is coming back to me now. Rico will

come back too, even though its past two o'clock, and Albert is waiting on

the veranda, fuming, now he has come back inside and is holding my feet.

He is holding me firmly and warmly and it really is soothing even though

I was calm already. Maybe this death is a Japanese? A sort of samurai.

Mannered. Hiding behind a childish ritual mask, a smooth shiny mask.

The unwrinkled cheeks are not even snowy-white but china-white, the cheeks

look powdered and the brow seems polished. The mouth turns downward

at the corners and there are long narrow empty cracks for eyes. Its really

a baby. If so it is rather terrifying, precisely because this china-white mask is

so smooth and expressionless. If it is a woman, it's strange that she hasn't

noticed there's a fried fish in the frying pan in the kitchen, cold and hard

from this morning. If it really is a baby, there's a diaper here; they put it

between my head and the pillow to soak up the perspiration. And if behind

the china mask there is a wrestler, a sumo wrestler, a Japanese weight-lifter,

what he will find at his feet is a body wrapped in a sheet Albert turned up

the heater for me and now it's too hot, I'm soaking, and he's gone outside

again, waiting on the veranda to tell Rico off the moment he gets back.

Should I take a nap? Not yet. It's a pity to miss details

and soon the bird.

But dont you let it Mother bite and scratch

youre so submissive and obedient dont you let

so cold and evil crouching over you undoing and ripping

your pale skin your breasts

youre blind youre not in Crete youre not

among the streams and mountains dont you let

it Mother dont be gentle with it it will tear

your flesh and chew you to the bone

ripping and sucking the marrow of your spine so shout

so cold and evil crouching over you tearing and preying

forcibly planting in your womb a monster a bloated baby

shout out dont let it Mother bite kick and scratch

gouge its eyeballs out so obedient cotton wool

bite and scratch dont lie down so submissively dont let it