Amos Oz - The Same Sea

is hanging on the fence. A mist drifts through a mist.

I'm not there any longer, yet I'm all there: standing still.

Here is how we could sum it all up. A man is at home. His son is not here.

His daughter-in-law is staying with him for the time being. She

goes out. Comes back. She has someone in the meantime. He's doing well,

sleeps with her when he's free, a smart lad, who comes and goes.

A man is sitting at his desk It is night. All is quiet. His son

is not here. On the sideboard place mats, lace doilies, and two

photographs. Sea at the window. Brown furniture. Tonight

he has to check some accounts. What balances. What doesn't.

A widow with bobbed hair was here earlier this evening,

almost by chance, she drops in now and then for a glass

of tea. The winter is passing. The sea remains. As for the light,

it goes and it comes. Now like this and now like that.

Tonight he needs to work out his profits and losses, what

does it profit a man. Rows of columns. Sorrow is not

like this: it has no measure. The carpenter is dead. The desk

is still here. The Narrator is running his fingers over it.

He's told the story of himself and of his mother, he's tried to avoid

the word "like." He's told the tale of a wandering Russian merchant

who did not reach China and would never see his home again.

The tale of a snowman that roams alone among the rugged

mountains; he's told of the sea and of Chandartal. It revolves,

the whole business, it comes and it goes. The moon tonight

is pale and sharp, frightening the garden, twisting the fence,

tapping lightly on your window: now please begin all over again.

Even you. Everyone. All Bat Yam will be full of new people and they

in their turn, all alone in the night, will wonder at times with surprise what

the moon is doing to the sea and what is the purpose of silence. And they too

will have no reply. All of this hangs more or less on a thread. The purpose

of silence is silence.

And now it's as clear as can be. The moon is bending low over the dark of

the sea, drawing up toward itself expanses of many waters and the mighty

waves of the deep, covering them as if with lead. All over the sea the moon

spreads a quicksilver web which it draws in and heaves up to itself. That

is what I am talking about.

Now he is resting up in a cheap inn in a small town in the south

of Sri Lanka. Through the crisscrossed bars three huts, a slope,

little sailing boats, the Indian Ocean, warm, its waves are sharp

slivers of green bottleglass in the harsh sun. Maria is not here. She

has gone to Goa, from where she may return to Portugal Or

she may not. Its hard for her. In the tiny cell is a stool, a rusty nail,

a hanger, a yellow rush mat, and in the corner a mattress.

There is a cracked washbasin whose enamel surface is scarred by black

patches. A nibbled electric wire curls slackly along the walls, draped

in cobwebs. A hotplate stained brown by milk that has boiled over

and not been cleaned for years. And there is a picture cut out of a

magazine, showing the Queen of England, with an air of faint distaste,

bending and patting the head of an almost crying local child, his shabby

trousers drooping, his limbs gaunt, a starving alley-cat.

The picture is dotted with fly droppings. And there is a cracked sink,

and a tap leaking rusty water drop by drop. Lie down now on

the mattress and listen. You've been here and there, you've sought

and you've found, this is the place. And when the daylight fades,

when the damp tropical evening smothers this glassy light, you

will still lie on this mattress, sweating and listening, not

missing a drop. And in the night too, and tomorrow: drop drop

drop and this is Xanadu. You've arrived. Here you are.

Moon in the morning moon in the evening wreaking light in the night

skeletal all the day hurting every part O my child Absalom my son

my son Absalom, the desk is here the bed is here the guitar is here but

you are a dream moon in the night moon in the day glowing on the sea

pale in the window, preying on every living part my son my son.

Giggy Ben-Gal who had arrived back only the previous day from Brussels

drove in his new BMW to look at an old orange grove near Binyamina

that was about to be dug up. He had had a reliable tip that in a couple of years

this whole area would be released for housing. It would pay to snap up today

at the price of farmland what tomorrow would be prime building lots in a

sought-after district. He sat till evening in a fairly run-down village house,

was offered thick coffee and home made carob jam, and had a jocular

conversation with the heirs of the deceased farmer. The younger son was

on the ball, he'd served in a crack regiment; the older son seemed rather

tricky, saying hardly a word, with one eye closed and the other only half

open, too mean to waste more than a quarter of a look on you.

Every time the conversation inched in the direction of a deal, he would throw

in a sour half-sentence. Forget it, mate. We weren't born yesterday either.

At last, as it was getting dark, Giggy stood up and said, Right, OK, let's

put it on hold, first the two of you try to sort out what game you're in, then

give me a call and we'll talk, here's my card. Instead of driving straight back

into town he decided to take another look at the orange grove that was dying

because it didn't pay to irrigate it. There was a giant ficus tree nearby,

bowed with age, and beneath it Giggy parked and walked down the rows

of orange trees, treading on thistles and whistling. Birds whose names he

didn't know replied from the branches, chattering, pleading, as though

they too were trying to sell him some marvelous piece of property

that they had no real idea of the value of, nor of its potential. For a quarter

of an hour he wandered, forcing his way through ferns and brambles until thick

darkness settled over the neglected grove and it was only with difficulty,

after getting lost, that he managed to locate his ficus tree, but his new BMW

had vanished with his cell phone inside it and all the birds fell silent all at once,

as though their singing had been no more than a cunning trick to lure

and distract him, so as to help the thief. Giggy was left all alone

in this out-of-the-way place where it was definitely not healthy to be alone

after dark, especially unarmed. He started to grope his way through the

undergrowth toward the village but the long low building he was heading for

turned out to be no more than an abandoned packing shed, and suddenly

a jackal or fox broke into a howl. Rather close. And in the distance dogs

barked and the darkness filled with stealthy movements. Giggy sat down

on the ground and leaned back against the wall of the dilapidated shed,

sensing the stab of cold stars among the branches of the grove and the glow

of his watch and patches of shadow among the trees. For a few moments

he cursed, then he stopped. He felt calm. A cold, mute beauty, a deep wide

night was opening up before his eyes. Here and there large shadows looked

at him and a feminine breeze from the sea inserted its fine fingers between his