The Same Sea Read online

  The Same Sea

  Amos Oz

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  ...

  Copyright

  A Note on Pronunciation

  A cat

  A bird

  Details

  Later, in Tibet

  Calculations

  A mosquito

  It's hard

  Alone

  A suggestion

  Nadia looks

  Rico looks

  On the other side

  All of a sudden

  Olives

  Sea

  Fingers

  You can hear

  A shadow

  Through us both

  Albert in the night

  Butterflies to a tortoise

  The story goes like this

  The miracle of the loaves and the fishes

  Back in Bat Yam his father upbraids him

  But his mother defends him

  Bettine breaks

  In the Temple of the Echo

  Blessed

  Missing Rico

  No butterflies and no tortoise

  And what is hiding behind the story?

  Refuge

  In the light-groping darkness

  In lieu of prayer

  The woman Maria

  A feather

  Nirit's love

  A Psalm of David

  David according to Dita

  She comes to him hut he is busy

  He isn't lost and even if he is

  Desire

  Like a miser who has sniffed a rumor of gold

  Shame

  He resembles

  The Narrator copies from the dictionary of idioms

  A postcard from Thimphu

  A pig in a poke

  She goes out and he stays in

  And when the shadows overwhelmed him

  A shadow harem

  Rico considers bis father's defeat

  Rico reconsiders a text he has heard from his father

  The cross on the way

  Seabed bird

  He hesitates, nods and lays out

  Outsiders

  Synopsis

  The peace process

  In the middle of the hottest day in August

  The riddle of the good carpenter who had a deep bass voice

  Duet

  The well-fed dog and the hungry dog

  Stabat Mater

  Comfort

  Subversion

  Exile and kingdom

  An ugly bloated baby

  Soon

  Rico shouts

  A hand

  Chandartal

  What never was and has gone

  Get out

  Only the lonely

  Rico feels

  And the same evening Dita too

  A wish stirs

  I think

  A web

  Rico thinks about the mysterious snowman

  One by one

  Your son longs

  A wandering merchant from Russia who was on his way to China

  It's not a matter of jealousy

  It's only because of me that it came back to her

  Every morning he goes to meet

  What I wanted and what I knew

  De profundis

  Giggy responds

  Dies irae

  My hand on the latch of the window

  And you

  The hart

  At the end of the jetty

  Passing through

  Then he walks around for a while and returns to Rothschild Boulevard

  Squirrel

  Never mind

  He adds sugar and stirs then adds more sugar

  Adagio

  Nocturne

  Meanwhile, in Bengal, the woman Maria

  Talitha kumi

  How would I like to write?

  With or without

  Dita offers

  But how

  From out there, from one of the islands

  There is definitely every reason to hope

  Who cares

  Little boy don't believe

  Nadia hears

  Half a letter to Albert

  The Narrator drops in for a glass of tea and Albert says to him

  In Bangladesh in the rain Rico understands for a moment

  Magnificat

  Where am I

  In the evening, at a quarter to eleven, Bettine phones the Narrator

  In a remote fishing village in the south of Sri Lanka Maria asks Rico

  His father rebukes him again and also pleads a little

  In between

  Dita whispers

  But Albert stops her

  Then, in the kitchen, Albert and Dita

  Scorched earth

  Good, bad, good

  Dubi Dombrov tries to express

  Scherzo

  Mother craft

  It's me

  A tale from before the last elections

  Half-remembering, you have forgotten

  It will come

  Burning coals

  Bettine tells Albert

  Never far from the tree

  A postcard from Sri Lanka

  Albert blames

  Like a well where you wait to hear

  A negative answer

  Abishag

  He closes his eyes to keep watch

  Xanadu

  If only thy let her

  The winter is ending

  A sound

  He's gone

  All there

  Going and coming

  Silence

  Draws in, Jills, heaves

  At journey's end

  Here

  What you have lost

  Translator's Note

  Footnotes

  Translated from the Hebrew by

  Nicholas de Lange

  in collaboration with the author

  A HARVEST BOOK

  HARCOURT, INC.

  San Diego New York London

  Copyright © 1999 by Amos Oz and Keter Publishing House Ltd.

  Translation copyright © 2001 by Nicholas de Lange

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work

  should be mailed to the following address:

  Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  This is a translation of Oto Ha-Yam

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Oz, Amos.

  [Oto ha-yam. English]

  The same sea/Amos Oz; translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange

  in collaboration with the author.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-15-100572-9

  ISBN 0-15-601312-6 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-0-1560-1312-3

  I. De Lange, N. R. M. (Nicholas Robert Michael), 1944– II. Title.

  PJ5054.O9 O8613 2001

  892.4'36—dc21 2001024121

  Text set in Centaur MT

  Designed by Linda Lockowitz

  First Harvest edition 2002

  K J I H G F E D C B

  Printed in the United States of America

  A Note on Pronunciation

  One point that was impossible to convey in the translation: the name "Albert"

  is pronounced as in French (with a silent t) by everyone except Bettine, w
ho

  pronounces it as it is written, with the stress on the second syllable.

  Nicholas de Lange

  A cat

  Not far from the sea, Mr. Albert Danon

  lives in Amirim Street, alone. He is fond

  of olives and feta; a mild accountant, he lost

  his wife not long ago. Nadia Danon died one morning

  of ovarian cancer, leaving some clothes,

  a dressing table, some finely embroidered

  place mats. Their only son, Enrico David,

  has gone off mountaineering in Tibet.

  Here in Bat Yam the summer morning is hot and clammy

  but on those mountains night is falling. Mist

  is swirling low in the ravines. A needle-sharp wind

  howls as though alive, and the fading light

  looks more and more like a nasty dream.

  At this point the path forks:

  one way is steep, the other gently sloping.

  Not a trace on the map of the fork in the path.

  And as the evening darkens and the wind lashes him

  with sharp hailstones, Rico has to guess

  whether to take the shorter or the easier way down.

  Either way, Mr. Danon will get up now

  and switch off his computer. He will go

  and stand by the window. Outside in the yard

  on the wall is a cat It has spotted a lizard. It will not let go.

  A bird

  Nadia Danon. Not long before she died a bird

  on a branch woke her.

  At four in the morning, before it was light, narimi

  narimi said the bird.

  What will I be when I'm dead? A sound or a scent

  or neither. I've started a mat.

  I may still finish it. Dr. Pinto

  is optimistic: the situation is stable. The left one

  is a little less good. The right one is fine. The X-rays are clear. See

  for yourself: no secondaries here.

  At four in the morning, before it is light, Nadia Danon

  begins to remember. Ewes' milk cheese. A glass of wine.

  A bunch of grapes. A scent of slow evening on the Cretan hills,

  the taste of cold water, the whispering of pines, the shadow

  of the mountains spreading over the plain, narimi

  narimi the bird sang there. I'll sit here and sew.

  I'll be finished by morning.

  Details

  Rico David was always reading. He thought the world

  was in a bad way. The shelves are covered with piles of his books,

  pamphlets, papers, publications, on all sorts

  of wrongs: black studies, women's studies,

  lesbians and gays, child abuse, drugs, race,

  rain forests, the hole in the ozone layer, not to mention injustice

  in the Middle East. Always reading. He read everything. He went

  to a left-wing rally with his girlfriend Dita Inbar.

  Left without saying a word. Forgot to call. Came home late. Played his guitar.

  Your mother begs you, his father pleaded. She's not feeling too—

  and you're making it worse. Rico said, OK, give me a break.

  But how can anyone be so insensitive? Forgetting to switch off.

  Forgetting to close. Forgetting to get back before three in the morning.

  Dita said: Mr. Danon, try to see it his way.

  It's painful for him too. Now you're making him feel guilty;

  after all, it's not his fault she's dead. He has a right

  to a life of his own. What did you expect him to do? Sit holding her hand?

  Life goes on. One way or another everyone gets left

  alone. I'm not much for this trip to Tibet

  either, but still, he's entitled to try to find himself. Especially after

  losing his mother. He'll be back, Mr. Danon, but don't hang around

  waiting for him. Do some work, get some exercise, whatever. I'll drop by

  sometime.

  And since then he goes out to the garden at times. Prunes the roses.

  Ties up the sweet peas. Inhales the smell of the sea from afar,

  salt, seaweed, the warm dampness. He might

  call her tomorrow. But Rico forgot to leave her number

  and there are dozens of Inbars in the phone book.

  Later, in Tibet

  One summer morning, when he was young, he and his mother took the bus

  from Bat Yam to Jaffa, to see his Aunt Clara,

  The night before he refused to sleep: he was afraid the alarm clock

  would stop in the night, and he wouldn't wake. And what if

  it rains, or if we are late.

  Between Bat Yam and Jaffa a donkey cart

  had overturned. Smashed watermelons on the asphalt,

  a blood bath. Then the fat driver took offense

  and shouted at another fat man, with greased hair. An old lady

  yawned at his mother. Her mouth was a grave, empty and deep.

  On a bench at a stop sat a man in a tie and white shirt, wearing

  his jacket over his knees. He wouldn't board the bus.

  Waved it on. Maybe he was waiting

  for another bus. Then they saw a squashed cat. His mother

  pressed his head to her tummy: don't look, you'll cry out again

  in your sleep. Then a girl with her head shaved: lice? Her crossed leg

  almost revealed a glimpse. And an unfinished building and dunes of sand.

  An Arab coffee house. Wicker stools. Smoke,

  acrid and thick. Two men bending forward, heads almost touching.

  A ruin. A church. A fig tree. A bell,

  A tower, A tiled roof. Wrought-iron grilles. A lemon tree.

  The smell of fried fish. And between two walls

  a sail and a sea rocking.

  Then an orchard, a convent, palm trees,

  date palms perhaps, and shattered buildings; if you continue

  along this road you eventually reach

  south Tel Aviv. Then the Yarkon.

  Then citrus groves. Villages. And beyond

  the mountains. And after that it is already

  night. The uplands of Galilee. Syria. Russia.

  Or Lapland. The tundra. Snowy steppes.

  Later, in Tibet, more asleep than awake,

  he remembers his mother. If we don't wake up

  we've had it. We'll be late. In the snow in the tent in the sleeping-bag

  he stretches to press his head to her tummy.

  Calculations

  In Amirim Street Mr. Danon is still awake.

  It's two in the morning. On the screen before him

  the figures don't add up. Some company

  or other. A mistake

  or a fraud? He checks. Can't spot anything. On an embroidered mat

  the tin clock ticks. He puts on his coat and goes out. Its six now

  in Tibet. A smell of rain but no rain in the street in Bat Yam.

  Which is empty. Silent. Blocks of flats. A mistake

  or a fraud. Tomorrow we'll see.

  A mosquito

  Dita slept with a good friend

  of Rico's, Giggy Ben-Gal. He got on her nerves

  when he called screwing intercourse. He disgusted her

  by asking her afterwards how good it had been

  for her on a scale of zero to a hundred. He had an opinion

  about everything. He started yammering on about the female orgasm

  being less physical, more emotional. Then he discovered

  a fat mosquito on her shoulder. He squashed it, brushed it off, rustled

  die local paper and fell asleep

  on his back. Arms spread out in a cross.

  Leaving no room for her. His cock shrivelled too

  and went to sleep with a mosquito on if blood vengeance.

  She took a shower. Combed her hair. Put on a black T-shirt that Ri
co

  had left in one of her drawers. Less. Or more. Emotional. Physical.

  Sexy. Bullshit. Sensual. Sexual.

  Opinions night and day. That's wrong. That's right. What's squashed

  can't be unsquashed. I should go and see how the old man's doing.

  It's hard

  With the first rays of dawn he opens his eyes. The mountain range looks like

  a woman, powerful, serene, asleep on her side after a night of love.

  A gentle breeze, satisfying itself, stirs the flap of his tent.

  Swelling, billowing, like a warm belly. Rising and falling.

  With the tip of his tongue he touches the dip in the middle of his left hand,

  at the innermost point of his palm. It feels

  like the touch of a nipple, soft and hard.

  Alone

  An arrow poised on a taut bow: he remembers the line

  of the slope of her thigh. He guesses her hips' movement towards him.

  He gathers himself. Crawls out of his sleeping-bag. Fills

  his lungs with snowy air. A pale, opaline

  mist is rolling slowly upwards: a filmy nightdress on the curve

  of the mountain.

  A suggestion

  In Bostros Street in Jaffa there lives a Greek man who reads fortunes in cards.

  A sort of clairvoyant. They say he even calls up the dead. Not

  with glasses and Ouija boards

  but visibly. Only for a moment, though, and in a dim light,

  and you can't talk and you can't touch. Then death takes over again.

  Bettine Carmel, a chartered accountant, told Albert. She is a deputy inspector

  on the Property Tax Board. When she has a moment he is invited to her flat

  for herbal tea and a chat, about the children, life,

  things in general. He has been widowed since the early summer,

  she has been a widow for twenty years now. She is sixty

  and so is he. Since his wife died he has not looked

  at another woman. But each time they talk

  it brings them both a feeling of peace. Albert, she says, why don't you go

  and see him some time. It really helped me. It's probably an illusion, but

  just for a moment Avram came back. Its four hundred shekels and no

  guarantee. If nothing happens, the money's gone. People pay even more

  for experiences that touch them much less. No illusions

  is a current catchphrase which in my view is just a cliché:

  even if you live to be a hundred, you never stop searching

  for those long dead.