Amos Oz - The Same Sea

some kind of producer, got taken for a ride. But why are you standing

in the doorway? You'll fall over. Come inside. Then you can

tell me all about it. We'll have a think. We'll get you out of this mess.

She gulped down a soft drink. Undressed. Took a shower. For a moment she embarrassed him when she emerged wrapped in a towel from mid-breast

to thigh. She stood in front of him

in the kitchen and told him in detail how she had got stung.

And her parents were abroad and their flat was let, she had simply nowhere

to turn. It was no good his staring down at the floor:

the sight of her naked feet

sets his heart at odds with his body.

Rico's room is yours from now on. It's empty

anyway. Here is the bedding. That's the air-conditioning. His wardrobe isn't

too tidy, but there's some room. I'll bring you a cold drink in a minute.

Lie down. Get some rest. We'll talk later. If you need me for anything

just say Albert and I'll be right there. Don't be shy. Or simply come

to my office. It's through there. I'll just be sitting finishing off some accounts.

You're no trouble at all. On the contrary: for some time now—

He stopped himself. Under the towel her hips made a whispering sound

and he was blushing as though he had been caught red-handed.

A widowed father with an honest name

lies wide awake in the night consumed with shame:

a sleeping woman the cause of his pain.

She's there alone — his eyes are open wide—

next door she's lying naked, on her side.

So young. A child. My daughter, my bride!

He switches on the bedside light and blinks

at his son and wife on the sideboard. He thinks

for a while. Then pads to the kitchen and drinks.

He sits down at his desk and begins to dream

heavy thoughts: his shadow stares back from the screen.

What a difficult summer, he types, this has been.

From the garden outside where nothing has stirred

in the light-groping darkness, a single bird:

narimi narimi. Yes, I heard.

Restless he stands: how he longs to spread

a blanket on her, and stroke her head.

He stifles these feelings, and goes back to bed.

He turns and tosses. Of sleep there's no sign.

He turns on the light and checks the time:

it's five o'clock here — so in Tibet it's nine.

Its nine in the morning now in Bhutan. Without the Dutchmen. On a bench

in a wood the youth sits wrapped in a blanket, absorbing

the mountain shadows among the mountains. A tranquil silence

envelops the view. How empty and strange the light here flows, light

longing for shade. Light shading itself. Wind in the grass. A deserted valley.

True peace shall surely come.

remembers him: the last of the boys.

His brow. His eyes. The groan as he came.

The touch of his arm and the spring of his seed. When the others had left

he came back and kissed the soles of her feet.

After four troubled nights he went back to Bostros Street for a second visit

to the old Greek who called forth the dead. True, on his previous visit

all that his money had bought him was two glasses of water, one lukewarm

and the other cool and fresh. And a picture of a crucified Christ-child

looking as though the Crucifixion and the Resurrection had preceded

the raising of Lazarus and the other miracles. As he left he had seen a woman

going down the street who had looked a little like her from behind. This time

he would not give up. He would follow her to the ends of

Mr. Stavros Evangelides, the eighty-year-old sorcerer, his bald head patterned

with brown stains, moles and sparse grey bristles, his Phoenician nose,

big and protruding, but his teeth were young, and his joyful, guileless

eyes, which seem to see only good, looked down at the visitor

from a sepia photograph in a tortoiseshell frame. In his place was a skinny

crow-like old woman with cracked leathery skin and an evil mouth. She

motioned him to sit, claimed her fee, counted the cash, went out, returned,

and handed him a glass containing a viscous liquid with a yellow taste.

While he drank she bent over him. Sweet and terrible the smell of her flesh

hit him, a smell of decay. She waited. Motionless. Her dress was embroidered.

Once or twice her beak opened wide, parched with thirst, closed then opened

a crack. Narimi, she cried harshly and flew away. In his bosom

one black feather remained.

Dubi Dombrov Productions Ltd. woke up at ten o'clock, sweaty and

thick-headed. He went for a piss, his eyelids still gummed together, then

turned on the tap and washed in cold water. He thought about shaving.

Couldn't be bothered. Put on a rancid shirt from yesterday, and clumsily

groped his way to the kitchen to make some coffee. When he went

to the rack for a clean cup a spider ran away. Why? What's the matter?

What have I done? I'd never harm you, so why are you running away from me?

Barefoot, tired, he sat down to wait for the water to boil and remembered

Nirit's Love, that script by Dita Inbar. And the money. True, it wasn't exactly

honest what I did, but she had only herself to blame, and why did she have to

show me, right to my face, that she found me disgusting, like some lower kind

of scum? Surely even a repulsive man has a right to be attracted to

a woman, has a right to finer feelings which a woman can choose to

ignore, but why must she rub salt in the wound? Why did she have to

show me how disgusted she was? And just when I was thinking that she

was different from all the rest, that she had a higher tolerance.

My fatal mistake was that like an idiot apparently I identified her

with her screenplay, where this Nirit takes pity on a real dog of a man. As for

the money, no one has ever given anything back to me. Everyone has always

taken from me. All I've ever had back has been insults.

In a hanged mans house one must not mention that the rope follows

the pail. It is not in vain that a woman is bewitched by a nocturnal shade,

and gives her body to a wandering minstrel in Adullam, or here on the plains

of Bhutan. At your age David of the beautiful eyes did not play the harp,

only with his reed pipe did he make the hinds to dance. And this was the

instrument that drew Michal and Ahinoam and the woman of Carmel to him

like a rope. Such a plain, homely instrument, but maidens were beguiled by

its strange, mournful sound, the ruddy-faced rascal who leaped and danced

and grazed his flocks among the lilies, chasing the wind and deflowering

women whose storm-racked flesh bristled under his hand that was soaked in

the fat of the mighty and their blood, skilled with the sling. So he roamed,

slew, loved, smote his tens of thousands, and so he became king. After many

years, on that great oak tree, the rope followed the pail.

Then came mourning. The house of a hanged man. Then came the harp

of the psalms. Finally came the dagger. How the day has faded. Passed.

Now all is dust.

How the day has faded. When were we talking about King David,

how did we get to talking about him? Do you remember, Dita? One Friday