Authors: Amos Oz
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.
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