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, who
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 Rico
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.