The Same Sea (9 page)

One evening, in this hut, he ate his fill till midnight, paid
a girl to wait on his couch and warm his bedding,
and, when she had left, he settled comfortably on his back
to count and calculate how much he had gained this year,
how much the next would bring, and how much more
he would accumulate in the course of the decade. Until his eyelids
dropped and he slept and at daybreak the servant girl
shook his shoulders to no avail, so she raised her voice and cried,
frightening all the village. All this happened long ago
and has long since been forgotten. Soon you too.

Good evening, this is Bettine speaking, I'm a friend of Albert Danon. We met a couple of times while you were staying with him but we didn't talk much: we didn't get the chance, or perhaps we felt awkward. I hesitated for a long time before calling you. I hope I'm not disturbing you. And you're perfectly entitled to say, Look, it's none of your business. Or even to hang up. I'll understand. The thing is this: you moved into his flat as his son's girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, I'm not asking and you don't have to answer. Either way, he took you in and got you out of trouble and apparently he even ended up finding you or helping you to find a place of your own. I don't know the details and I don't want to. He is a generous and efficient man in his quiet way. But you, whether deliberately or not, are doing something bad to him. I use the present tense because even now that you've moved to wherever you've moved to, he's still unsettled because of you or else not because of you but, let's say, in your wake. Wait. Don't interrupt me. This conversation is not exactly easy for me as it is. I'm very concerned that you don't misunderstand me. I don't want to be judgmental and I'm certainly not trying to tell you off but merely to advise you, not even advise you really but simply to ask you to give it some thought. You're a good-looking young woman and you belong to a generation where certain things have become quite simple, perhaps too simple. I'm not passing judgment, I'm merely voicing an impression that may be groundless. I'm older than you, possibly older than your mother, so it's not a matter of jealousy or competition. Surely you too—but no, I don't want to get into that, and please consider what I have just said unsaid, because even a denial of jealousy is liable to arouse suspicion. Let me try putting it this way: He is grieving for his wife, and on top of that, as you know, he is upset that his son has gone away. Even though he's by no means a weak man, you will surely agree with me that it is not necessary to add to his pain. When you were staying in his flat he was almost looking for somewhere to
run away to, whereas now that you've left it's all he can do to stop himself from going to look for you, because you promised to visit him and you forgot No, don't apologize, you're busy, of course I understand, a girl your age and so on. I'm sorry. Just give me another minute or two and I'll stop. What I wanted to say, or rather ask, is that you shouldn't leave him hanging in mid-air. He doesn't sleep at night and he looks as though he may be getting ill. You have caused a misunderstanding, and you are the only person who can clear it up. Apart from which, you may not have thought about what will happen when Rico comes back. What sort of relationship will you have with the two of them, and what sort of relationship will they have with each other? Forgive me for raising these questions, I have been a civil servant for thirty-eight years, and I may have picked up a rather bureaucratic tone. I'm not asking you to break off relations or disappear but rather—how should I put it—to observe some boundaries. Perhaps I have not succeeded in explaining myself. I feel the need to say to you, Look, Dita, you arouse something in him that makes him very sad, depressed, you may not even have noticed, but if you want to put it right you'll have to draw some lines. No. That wasn't quite what I wanted to say to you, and it may have sounded petty. It's hard for me to find the words. One weekend, many years ago, my husband Avram and I took Albert and Nadia for a day trip to Upper Galilee. At dusk we saw, all four of us, a furry creature scurry down a slope and vanish among some trees. We tried to keep it in sight but it had vanished. The sun went down and for a long time afterwards it seemed as though the whole world was shimmering and would go on shimmering for ever. Albert said it was definitely a stray dog, and Nadia said it was a wolf. It was a pointless argument, because look what has happened since: Avram died long ago, and now Nadia has died, and the wolf or dog is dead too. Only Albert and I are still alive. By my reckoning you may not even have been born the evening that I've remembered all these years, with no pain now but with a clarity that gets sharper and sharper with the passage of time. A wolf or a stray dog? The wood was in darkness and there were Albert and I confronting Avram and Nadia in an argument that had no ending and could not have any, the creature had vanished into the dark and around us everything was empty and silent and shimmering. You must understand, I've told you this story not to make you feel uncomfortable but only to make a request, or rather to convey to you what I am asking myself and that is why I am asking you too. You don't have to answer. Naturally, all this will remain just between you and me. Or rather, between you and yourself.

She says she's not jealous. Like hell she's not. Not angry.
Like hell she's not. She's right as rain but in fact
when all's said and done, she only wants him for herself. She wants me
to get out of his sight this minute, draw a line as she puts it,
or else she'll gouge my eyes out. It's my fault
he doesn't sleep. So what if he doesn't sleep. Being awake is being alive.
If I weren't around, by now he'd probably be dozing
for hours on end in an armchair or sitting on his veranda staring ahead
for a month, a winter, a year, gradually the sea would come up
to his head. Hers too. Instead of bugging me
she should actually say thank you nicely:
it's only because of me that it came back to her, that stray dog in Galilee
or that shimmering wolf, or whatever it was.
It's only because of me that what was almost blacked out is shimmering again
for her as well as for him. I'm quite fond of him. But not of her.
Not at all.

As for the Narrator, on these late September days he gets up each morning
before five and writes for an hour or so until the paper arrives. Then
he goes outside to check if there is anything new in the desert. To date
there is nothing. The mountains to the east are stamped out
against the sky. Every slope in its proper place. Like yesterday. And
the day before. That lizard, a pocket dinosaur, has not improved
his position. The Narrator is interested in registering all this, in trying
to clarify and record here what has been and what is. Things must be
called by their proper names or by another name that sheds a fresh light
or casts, here and there, some shadow. Fifty years have passed:
in Jerusalem, on Zechariah Street, in a two-room flat, a private
school belonging to Mrs. Yonina. My teacher was Mrs. Zelda, Zelda
who some years later wrote the poems in
The Spectacular Difference
and
The
Invisible Carmel.
Once, on a winter day, she chose to say
to me softly: If you stop talking sometimes
maybe things will sometimes be able to talk to you. Years later
I found it promised in one of her poems that
trees and stones
will respond Amen.
A spectacular difference she promised,
between stones and trees, to anyone who is prepared to listen.

I can still remember her room.
Zephaniah Street. A back entrance.
A frenetic boy, seven and a quarter.
A word-child. A suitor.

My room does not ask,
she wrote,
for sunrise or sunset. Enough
that the sun brings its tray of gold
and the moon its tray of silver.
I remember.

Grapes and an apple she gave me
in the summer holidays of '46.
I sprawled on the rush matting,
a fib-child. And in love.

From paper I used to cut her
flowers and blossoms. A skirt
she had, a brown one, like herself,
a bell and a smell of jasmine.

A soft-spoken woman. I touched
the hem of her dress. By chance.
What I wanted I didn't know
and what I knew still hurts.

What I knew still hurts. Nadia Danon, for instance: like my teacher Zelda
she too died of cancer. Despite the bird before dawn, despite embroidering
until two days before she died, despite Dr. Pinto mercifully drugging her,
a false hope deluded her. Struck roots inside her. Refused to let go.

The twilight of her suffering showed her a samurai in a china mask, who was
her first husband: a tall, stern, elegant man, who always knew what was right,
he would turn out the light, curl up, press her breast, burrow and fiddle
in her flesh, hurting her to the bone but in the end he always let go. Soon
he had had enough of her and she was saved. Not long now.

But what if anything would Giggy Ben-Gal say about all this? This story
is getting on his nerves, because the night is still young and there are
some juicy scenes still to come, women going down, shares going up
tonight he has plenty of tricks to turn. Tel Aviv is a big pond,
where he plays step by step, one move at a time.
Joking aside though, the bastard who laughs last laughs longest. In
less than a year he'll be number two in the firm,
and then he'll really hit the town,
the sky is the limit
and the limit is just the first step
.
^*
Those bad scenes, like sickness
suffering and death, are strictly for the losers who are stuck on
the south side of town. Lonely people
deserve to live alone, and the needy deserve to be poor. Life
may or may not be a picnic but, on the other hand, even your Mr. Perfect
is really just another show-off. Everyone pisses and fucks so why should they
all pretend otherwise, that frustrated Narrator and the other old moralizers.

A short time before or after sunset this Narrator goes outside to check
what is going on and if there is any news in the desert. The wind
is always leaving: it always blows from there to there,
through here but never from here. A dust devil rises, dissolves and
re-forms on another hill. And disappears again. One move
at a time, he laughs last, the gospel according to Giggy Ben-Gal. Suffering
sickness and death come and go. Unlike this desert. Unlike the stars
in the sky. They are fixed. But this too is only apparent. Better a living dog,
and the poor mans wisdom is poor, a barren heath in the desert which the
wind stirs up then abandons. Always abandons. It comes from there and
drifts to there, it whirls around and returns into stillness. It is not the dead
who will see it, and sweet is the light to the eyes.

Dear parents, dear Fania and Arie, it's night now and I'm in my room
in Arad, alone with my tea and these pages. The requiem is by Fauré. A fan
is whirring, blowing, turning away, coming back. The desert
is empty and near. At the windows the darkness is warm. And you
are both resting in peace. Are you sleeping? Or quarrelling still? At least
you can't fight over me: I'm tidy, hard-working, successful. Bringing you
more and more pride and joy, a regular sorcerer's apprentice. I'm tired
but I never give up. You both wanted me to grow up to be one thing
or another. Dad one thing and Mother another.
Now the difference is gradually shrinking. What difference does it make
what I am. I shall be here for a little while longer, and then I shall rest.
It's late. This street is empty and the garden is whispering to itself
in Russian, so I won't understand. It's mistaken: at this hour secrets
are less secret and almost all things are revealed. For years and years
Dad you stockpiled footnotes while you, Mother, stood at the window,
clutching your usual lemon tea, with your back to the room. Tormenting
yourself and longing like Elimelech the carpenter to return to some orchard
you'd dreamed up. Which never existed. Whispering to each other
in Russian which sounds soft and deadly. Dad you stand up,
stooped. Mother you are sitting, erect and beautiful. Dad you appear to
insist, refusing to open the window. But you Mother won't give in.
In the deep darkness you weep in vain in a whisper,
in whispers Dad you try to explain. My hand on the latch of the window, I
must now choose. If I am to forgive, then this is the moment.

Piercing, despairing, in Yiddish, the sound in the distance of a woman
whose child in front of her eyes and she screams.
Then a wailing in Arabic, of a woman
whose home. Or whose child. Her voice is penetrating, terrifying. And you
sharpen a pencil or repair a torn dust jacket. At least
you could shudder.

As the hart pants after the water brooks, so does my soul. And a pair
of dark cypresses sway to and fro in wordless devotion. As the waters
cover the sea, the proud waters have gone over it: they passed over
and are gone and are no more. Return unto your rest my soul. Where
is your rest? Where will you return to, for what will you pant like a hart?
The kettle whistles. Time for coffee. If the light that is in you be darkness,
how great is that darkness. A fly is trapped between
the window pane and the screen. The house is empty.
A rug. A curled cat. When shall I come, when shall I appear?
The light is darkness. There was a hart at the water and it has gone.

And on the first rainy day, with a grey peaked cap, a raincoat and an umbrella, and a brown bundle firmly secured with string, Albert Danon caught two buses to go from Amirim Street to Mazeh Street to see how his sons girlfriend was doing. Under his sleeve, under his watch strap, he carefully tucked the two punched tickets. He looked like a retired schoolmaster. Waiting for the red light to change to green even though the street was empty. Crossing Rothschild Boulevard, picking up a sodden newspaper from a bench and dropping it into a litter bin. Tel Aviv in the first rain looks like a heap of jetsam. The streets are deserted: anyone who has anywhere to go has gone. In Mazeh Street there's an impression of fallen leaves: fallen plaster, fallen papers mixed with some brown leaves and soggy rubbish. Everything is soaked but not washed clean. On the rooftops antennae, solar water heaters and clouds. The birds are there but their singing is flattened. And in the unlit entrance is a row of mailboxes, Cherniak, Shikorsky, Benbassat and a private neurological clinic. On the left-hand door on the ground floor, a note: "The podiatrist is out of the country." On the door opposite was written Inbar. No Dita: just Inbar. Like a man. A stranger. Forsaken like a winter sea, this stairwell. Albert Danon, a thin, elderly man, stands staring at the end of the jetty as though waiting for the black water to give up a life raft. He presses a bell. Which does not work. A polite interval. He presses again. Hesitates. Taps softly on the door. Waits again. Maybe she is getting dressed? Or she's asleep? Or she's not alone? He puts his bundle down on the floor and rests his umbrella. He waits. And in the meantime he wipes his feet in front of her door so as not to bring any water or dead leaves inside. He waits. Inside the bundle there is a flannel nightdress of Nadia's and an old two-bar electric heater. Albert blows into his hands, sniffs his breath, suddenly fearing it may smell bad. Then he knocks on the door again. And waits.