Amos Oz - The Same Sea

everyone starts making false noises and everything is filled with malice.

Help yourself, have some of the other one, Nadia's sister-in-law baked them

for me so I'd have something to offer people who come to pay

their condolences. Try the cheesecake, whichever you like, they're both

very good. When you write for the papers, of course you must write

whatever you wish, even harsh things, but don't forget that the human

voice may have been created to express both protest and ridicule, but

essentially it contains a considerable percentage of quiet, precise speech

which is meant to come out in measured words. It may seem

that amid all the hubbub such a voice has no chance,

but nevertheless its worth using it, even in a small room among three

or four listeners. There are still some people in this country who maintain

that the emperor is usually neither naked nor fully dressed, but, for example,

wearing clothes that do not suit him. He may even be excellently

dressed, but every bit as foolish as the cheering crowd, or the other

crowd that is no longer cheering, but jeering, or shouting that

the emperor is dead, or deserves to be. And anyway, who says that

a naked emperor is such a bad thing? After all, aren't the crowd also naked,

and the tailor and the little boy? Perhaps the best thing for you is to

steer clear of the procession altogether. Stay put in your house in Arad

and try to write in a quiet way if you can. At times like these, quiet

is the most precious commodity in the country. And let there be no

misunderstanding, I'm talking about quiet, definitely not about silence.

With his back to his mother on the bridge in the warm rain

between a small town and a swamp Rico hears wet voices

in the distance. Women, foggy bears, are laughing in the flooded

field and one of them waves to him, inviting him to join them.

His waterlogged hair in his face and a whiff of stray smell

that reminds him of overripe figs, the smell of Dita with his

tongue in her ear and his hand stroking the inside of her thigh.

The warm rain keeps falling and under the bridge the muddy

river flows porridge-like. Sorrow and desire come, desire rises like

mercury in the thermometer of his cock pressed against the wall

of the bridge while his hands move to and fro over the rough

parapet He looks at the trees with their roots half-exposed

in the soggy air, extra-terrestrial fingers, clutching at nothing.

Because his back is to his mother, inevitably he is facing

his father. If he turns his back on his father he will face

his mother again. He must change this staging, move my parents

closer to each other so that I can have my back to both

and return. The peasant woman who was calling him gives up

and stoops toward the mud, as the rain goes on and on.

Morning of orange-tinged joy: I get up at half past four and by five I have

finished my coffee and am settling down at my desk, and almost at once

there emerge two fully-formed lines running straight from my pen to

the paper like a kitten weaving on tiptoe out of the bushes, there they are

as though they were not written but always existed, not mine but their own.

The light of the hills to the east cannot keep its hands to itself, shamelessly

groping at private parts, causing heavy breathing all around, in birds branches

sand bees, so here we are delightedly leaving the desk and going off to work

in the garden, although it is not even six, the fictional Narrator, the whole

cast of characters, the implied author, the early-rising writer, and I.

Roses, myrtles, bougainvillaea, violets and sage have all gathered dewdrops

and are now gently lit. Rico and Giggy Ben-Gal are clearing the ground

round the two lemon trees, while Nadia, my father and Dombrov are pruning

suckers from the roses and Avram is helping the author and Albert to hoe

the edges of the flowerbed, weeding by hand among the flowers. Bettine,

my mother and Dita are stooping and tying sweet peas to canes and even

the Russian merchant stops on his way to China, and repairs the vine trellis,

while my daughter Fania helps him, asking him how much they know

in Nanking about Nizhni and how Nizhni looks from Nanking, and Maria

is planting a window box and here are the Dutchmen as well, Thomas Johan

Wim and Paul, making holes in the ground where Elimelech the carpenter

tells them to, and my daughter Galia is pruning even though she would

definitely have laid the whole thing out quite differently, and the man who

was Nadia's first husband hums as he rakes up dead leaves and my son Daniel

turns over the soil, improvising tunes with the fork, and the carpenter's

daughter follows him with a roller, while Rajeb spreads fertilizer. In Sea Road

and in Cyclamen Street my little grandchildren, Dean, Nadav, Alon and Ya'el,

are still dreaming, while here in the garden, careful not to wake them, I caress

the sweet air that trembles around their hair, suppressing a powerful urge

to lick their cheeks or foreheads, to nibble their toes with my teeth.

Morning of orange-tinged joy, every wish is switched off and only delight

is alight. Grief fear and shame are as far from me today as one dream is

from another. I take off my shoes, play the hose on my feet my plants and

the light, whatever I have lost I forget, whatever has hurt me has faded,

whatever I have given up on I have given up on, whatever I am left with

will do. My children's thirty fingers, my grandchildren's forty, and my garden,

and my body, the few lines that came right this morning, and here at the window

my lovely wife who is close to the core of life is calling us all indoors, there is

bread ready sliced cheese and olives and salad, and soon there'll be coffee

as well. Later I'll go back to my desk and maybe I'll manage to bring back

the young man who went off to the mountains to seek the sea

that was there all the time right outside his own home. We have wandered

enough. It is time to make peace.

Why do we never see you anywhere, they say to him, why

do you bury yourself in that hole, they say, far away from your friends,

with no parties, no nights out, no fun, you ought to get out,

see people, clock in, show your face, at least give some signs

of life. Forget it, he says to them, I get up at five o'clock have a coffee

and by the time I have erased and written six or seven lines

the day's already over and evening is falling to erase.

Bettine is at home again tonight. She has drawn the curtains and rolled down the blinds to the balcony so as not to have to see the fat neighbor opposite excavating his nose, hairy in an undershirt and sweat pants gawking from his armchair at some sitcom on the television. On the other side the sea, smooth tonight, chilly, shining darkly, a sea like the black glass nameplate of a respectable firm, with lines of gleaming gold writing, a pricey, highly polished sea, Current Liquidations Ltd. Bettine is in her armchair, lit by the glow from a parchment lamp shade, reading Troyat's biography of Chekhov. At the end of each page she shuts her eyes and thinks about the Narrator, he must be in Arad in the desert now, at the desk that Elimelech the carpenter made for him. She dips a honey cake into the tea that has gone cold in the cup at her side: on the cover is a photograph of Dr. Chekhov, almost a young man but his soft beard and hair and eyebrows are turning silver. He is wearing a striped jacket with wide lapels and a waistcoat, a stiff collar with a bow tie that is slightly askew, and a sad pince-nez secured by a cord. His eyes are those of a humble doctor who has made his diagnosis and knows what is going to happen but has not told his patient yet, although he knows that it is his duty to tell him now. I'm not the Almighty, his eyes say to the patient in front of him, after all you've known for some time now deep down inside, although you hoped, I hoped too, that these tests would surprise us and announce a reprieve. I cannot grant a reprieve, say Dr. Chekhov's eyes in the photograph, but I can and must do something now to block the pain. I'll prescribe you some tincture of opium. I'll also give you a sleeping potion, and some morphine injections to help you breathe. Get plenty of fresh air, sunshine and rest, don't try to do anything, just wrap up warm and sit in a wicker chair in the garden in the shade of the arbor and dream. Our business here is grim and hopeless, it goes round and round in circles, it is dreary and troublesome, but I'll prescribe you a dream and delusion, that you will still recover, that you will drive in your carriage to Tula, to Kazan, that you will still send rafts laden with merchandise down the river, that you will still buy Nikitin's estate at a favorable price, that you will still charm Tania Fyodorovna into leaving that vulgar Gomilev and coming back to you. Sit and dream. Dr. Chekhov is lying, and the shadow of a humble smile flits around the corners of his mouth. My soul is weary, he writes to Suvorin in August 1892, "I am bored. Not my own master, thinking about nothing but diarrhea, waking suddenly at night at the bark of a dog or a knock at the gate, are they coming to call for you? Travelling in a trap drawn by a worn-out mare along unknown tracks, reading about nothing but cholera, waiting for nothing but its coming, and at the same time feeling totally indifferent to the illness and the people you are treating." And in another letter: "The peasants are coarse, filthy, suspicious, I am the most wretched of the doctors in the district, my carriage and horse are useless, I do not know the roads, I cant see anything at night, I have no money. I tire very quickly, and above all I cannot forget that I must write, and I have a mighty urge to spit on the cholera and sit down and write." Bettine lays the book face down open on the arm of her chair and goes to the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. Through her kitchen window the fat neighbor in his kitchen window opposite, in a long-sleeved vest and sweat pants, leans staring into the darkness or peering into her window, is caught out and smiles guiltily, perhaps he is dreaming about sending rafts down the river. Bettine draws the curtain and shuts him out. It's a quarter to eleven, the Narrator is still up, she dials. Sorry to call so late. I just wanted to tell you that Dita has moved back to Albert's because she has lent the flat he rented for her in Mazeh Street to Dombrov, who has been evicted from his own flat because he owes rent, and Giggy Ben-Gal, who promised to advance him some cash on account, has gone off to Spain and forgotten. And there was a postcard yesterday from Bengal, he's still chasing his shadow, as usual. Do you happen to have read Troyat's book about Chekhov? It brings me, right here in Bat Yam, a sense of fallen leaves in the snow, a sense of vast gardens abandoned to the autumn wind. It's all quite hopeless really, but at the same time quite diverting. It turns out that something that never was and never will be is all that we have. We are woken suddenly at night, every time a dog barks or a gate creaks, but the barking subsides to a whimper, the gate stops creaking, and all is quiet again. Did I interrupt you while you were writing? I'm sorry. Good night. By the way, next time you're in Tel Aviv call me, we'll have a glass of tea at my place or on Albert's veranda. It wasn't bad, what you wrote about the sea tonight, a pricey sea, smooth black with golden letters, a respectable company, Current Liquidations Ltd. Spit on the cholera. Just sit down and get on with your writing.