The Same Sea Read online

  Refuge

  Dita is at the door. On her slender back a mountain of a backpack

  with another bundle tied to it, clutching some plastic bags

  and a handbag: she is seeking refuge, for a couple of days,

  a week at most, if it's not an imposition. She's ended up with no flat

  and no money, all her savings and everything gone; she found

  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.

  In the light-groping darkness

  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.

  In lieu of prayer

  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.

  The woman Maria

  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.

  A feather

  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.

  Nirit's love

  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.

  A Psalm of David

  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 th
e 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.

  David according to Dita

  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

  night at Giggy Ben-Gal's in Melchett Street. You dragged me out of the party

  onto the balcony and at the window opposite a beefy man wearing nothing

  but an undershirt and his loneliness was polishing his glasses

  against the light, he put them on, saw us watching and shut

  his shutters. And then because of him you told me what it is

  about a man that attracts you: the Charles Aznavour type, or Yevgeny

  Yevtushenko. From them you went on to King David. It attracts

  you when there is a needy side, a rascally side and a side

  that plays the fool. And you also showed me from the balcony that night

  what a ragged sexy city this Tel Aviv is.

  You don't see a sunset or a star, you see how the plaster

  peels from an excess of adrenaline smells of sweat and diesel fuel a tired

  city that doesn't want to sleep at the end of the day it wants to go out wants it

  to happen wants it to end and then wants more. But David, you said,

  reigned for thirty years in Jerusalem the ultra-Orthodox City of David

  which he could not stand and which could not stand him

  with his leaping and dancing and his one-night stands.

  It would have been more fitting for him to reign in Tel Aviv,

  to roam the city like a General (Retd.) who is both a grieving parent

  and a well-known philanderer, a loaded high-liver and a king

  who composes music and writes poetry and sometimes gives a recital,

  "The Sweet Psalmist," in a trendy venue then goes

  off to the pub to drink with young fans and groupies.

  She comes to him hut he is busy

  She has made him some tea and brought him some crackers and olives

  and goat cheese on a tray and now here she is barefoot in the doorway

  of his room, feeling partly like a daughter and partly like a waitress,

  waiting for him to turn his tired head. But he has not noticed. He

  is hunched over a document, absorbed in checking the details

  of the rotten agreement she has so incautiously signed. She has been

  taken for a ride. She had such high hopes. He finds that all she gets

  in return for the money is not a commitment but, at best, only

  a conditional intent. It is a contemptible contract, yet so full of holes

  that even without lawyers there is a fair chance of rescuing her

  and putting pressure on him to pay back the money.

  Barefoot with her tray she waits for him to notice her. If she calls him

  he will start and his voice will tremble. Yesterday evening she said Albert

  and he jumped, almost shuddered. What will happen if she touches

  his hand, not like a woman but like a child asking

  When are you going to stop being busy?

  He glances at his watch: ten to five. Ten to nine out in Nepal. He'll

  pay it back, and how: we'll scare him. At the meeting

  tomorrow we'll point out, here and here, how we'll nail him if he tries

  to get clever. On the other hand, if he admits his errors and makes amends,

  our side may consider taking no further action on this occasion.

  While he is still making notes, the tray arrives with the touch of her hand,

  not like a daughter but like a bold schoolgirl, deliberately

  teasing a middle-aged teacher who is shy but endearing.

  He isn't lost and even if he is

  Crystalline silence, transparent and blue.

  The wind has died. Over deserted plains

  a veil of glassy frost descends.

  Cold and empty. Vast. Just over the horizon

  according to the map there is a little village.

  There is no sign of the village. Perhaps he is lost.

  He will press on a little further. If he is lost

  never mind: he will give up and go back

  silently. The way he came.

  The road is level. The frost is fine and bright

  Beside the sea his father is waiting

  and beyond, in the depths, his mother.

  Desire

  His father is waiting and so is his mother and Dita is with them

  in a strange shack and the woman Maria and the mountain shadows

  and the roar of the sea and David and Michal and Jonathan too,

  and there is no limit to their passionate longing many waters cannot quench

  and mighty rivers cannot drown. See, he is returning to them filled.

  Like a miser who has sniffed a rumor of gold

  But what is the Narrator trying to say? Is he resentful? Is his blood pounding

  or his heart aching or his flesh bristling on the threshold? Here he has made

  a list of words: in the word woods there is a vague dread. In the word hills is

  a world of lust. If you say shack, or meadow, or wayfarer, rain, compassion,

  at once he lights up like a miser who has sniffed a rumor of gold. Or if,

  for instance, the evening paper prints the phrase "new horizons," at once

  I am on my way to bathe twice in the same river.

  Shame

  A miser who has sniffed a rumor of gold should wrap himself in dark robes.

  Mr. Danon is working as usual compiling balance sheets on his computer

  screen. Next screen previous screen. Checking every entry. His heart is not

  in it. In vain he clears his mind, he has no refuge from her smell. Her smell

  on her towel her smell on her sheets whom did she call whom did she talk to.

  Her smell in the kitchen where has she gone where has she gone when

  will she be back in the hall her smell in the living room her smell who

  has she gone out with what is there between them. Her smell in the bathroom

  where has she gone and what if she is taken for a ride again. The smell

  of her shampoo. Her smell in the laundry basket. Where has she gone. When

  will she be back. She'll be back late. In the Himalayas it's already tomorrow.

  Where can I hide from her smell.

  He lies in the dark with his life in his hands. Her breasts are so soft, her juice

  running over the down of her thighs but he is alone. With half of his pleasure

  still warm in his hand he shuffles to the washbasin, shattered. A man

  of his age. His son's girlfriend. He should wrap himself in dark robes

  but where can he take his disgrace. Tomorrow night he should get out of here

  and seek sleep in some hotel. Perhaps Bettine would take him in?

  He resembles

  It would be interesting to know what she is thinking about now, what is the source of that secret smile, like a drowsy, satisfied cat She is remembering a morning of love in a hotel in Eilat in the springtime. She didn't feel like a swim and she didn't feel like getting up. They stayed in bed with the air-conditioning on, sated with night games, she in half a bikini and he stark naked, their skin still pink and hot from the beach yesterday. Breakfast in bed and a game of rummy, laughing at nothing at all, looking for a rhyme for stowaway. Throwaway. Go away. I stow away, you stowed away, he has stown away. Then, with pencil and paper, listing palindromes. Collapsing with laughter at this too. No
on. Boob. Poop. Toot (As in, toot if you've pooped.) Whoever found a new word could demand a forfeit In the course of this game Dita discovered something she had never noticed before, that Rico could write with either hand. I've never seen anything like that before; let's see now if you can write with your toes. He tried and scribbled and made her laugh. He explained that he was not born ambidextrous, he was actually born left-handed, but his parents made him write with his right hand and even punished him if he didn't Especially his mother, because where she came from left-handedness was considered a handicap, a sign of poor upbringing, the mark of a bad family background. They forced me to be right-handed, and the result is that now I can write with either.