Touch the Water, Touch the Wind

by Amos Oz

  One night Stefa was invited to meet Stalin himself. Comrade Fedoseyeva had been praised by many for her large warm eyes, for her sweeping eyelashes, her overpowering smile. In addition, her work was considered by various comrades to be masterly, and Fedoseyev, too, had been mentioned with approval.

  The conversation touched on the history of the kings of Poland, the complicated younger generation of intellectuals, the delusive influence exerted by things French on the exasperating Poles. Stalin served tea and honey cakes with his own hands, and suddenly began juggling with the sugar lumps like a little boy. It was a fascinating and amusing display of dexterity: one lump resting on Stalin's huge nicotine-stained thumbnail, another arching through the air, the two touching in mid-air and landing safely in Stefa's glass, splashing the scalding tea. Stalin roared and thundered: hee-hee, Comrade Fedoseyeva, that's something no Pole can do, such feats are beyond them, I'm willing to bet on it here and now, Comrade Fedoseyeva, and I can assure you, Comrade Fedoseyeva, you won't be the winner. Now have another glass of tea, my beauty, and then—forward march, you back to your work and I to mine, otherwise we'll both get arrested for flirting on duty. We'll just exchange a tiny kiss to release a little of our mighty passions. And Stefa said to herself: Look, without lifting a finger, almost without a smile, I'm making the Bear dance.

  Stalin detained Stefa for a few minutes longer to tell her about the beautiful regions that he with his own hands had wrested from the Germans and served up to the Poles, to eat and relish till the fat ran down over their silly Polish chins. Stefa was advised to keep a close watch on all her friends, because only a fool or a Czech would trust a Pole, and that it would also be a wise precaution to keep an occasional eye on her own Fedoseyev, because he had blue eyes, as far as he could remember, and a Russian with blue eyes was like a Jew with a straight nose: you never knew what he might get up to. As Stalin saw Stefa to the door and out into the corridor and said good night and nevertheless insisted on accompanying her downstairs, he once or twice pinched her cheek with a large-nailed thumb and forefinger. The Russians at that time still hung great hopes on the political enthusiasm of Polish Jews. And soon afterward they hung Fedoseyev too. In the course of a purge, that is.

  And Stefa took his place, by special command.

  From now on she had secret agencies at her disposal. Her task was to identify treacherous elements in various far-off places. And she said to herself: until I get hold of the Bear's skin.

  13

  Suddenly, in the course of an autumn in the late 'fifties, Pomeranz realized beyond all shadow of doubt that he was being followed, wherever he went, cunningly, silently, patiently.

  His life was well ordered. Every morning, the paper, the news on the radio, a roll and cheese, halva, olives, coffee. Then a stem, almost angry shave. As if the mirror were water, not glass.

  At eight o'clock, clutching a small briefcase, youthful in a blue shirt and sandals, he left his flat and walked down to the lower town to his shop opposite Aldubi's Garage, Automobile Parts and General Repairs. The town was at the mercy of the blazing morning. The white light tormented the lake. The ancient mountains stood, as always, unchanged. Pomeranz would note that their repose had endured yet another day.

  In his shop he would switch on the fan, and fiddle with the radio until he found some Greek music from Nicosia, then move on to listen to an ecstatic announcer on Radio Damascus, pass on again to setde on the wail of a muezzin, sad, forlorn, and yet tense with a veiled menace.

  Every half hour or so he would stop, look up from his work, and stare out the window. Muscular, guttural men, amazing dark-skinned girls, handsome wolflike youths with a spring in their walk passed in front of his shop. Every now and again an old Jew would walk past, with a beard and sidelocks, and the youths would neither abuse him nor taunt him nor spit at him nor pull his beard. Promised Land, Pomeranz would say to himself: pure and free.

  All morning a moderate breeze blew slyly from the east, as if sent by the mountains to collect and assemble specific facts and take them back to the mountain clefts. Here and there on the slopes up which the town of Tiberias spread there still grew a few ancient, gnarled olive trees, furiously sucking up buried juice with roots like hooked claws. Nothing was settled yet. Anything was possible.

  Sometimes it was a young man with a slight hunch, who leaned against the wall of the Civic Center on the corner of the street and smoked with a melancholy expression. An overcast, high-browed Raskolnikov. He watched Pomeranz enter and leave his house, and his protracted stares betrayed a certain loneliness.

  When Raskolnikov disappeared, two men with sunglasses settled at one of the tables which spilled out onto the sidewalk from the café next to Aldubi's Garage. Pomeranz nicknamed both of them together Run-Jesus. Most of the time it seemed to him that they had a tendency to doze off at their post. A second glance, however, always revealed that only one of them was dozing, his head resting on one side, as if he were listening to faraway music, while his companion leaned his hairy forearms on the Formica tabletop, toying with a salt shaker, his eyes behind his sunglasses apparently fixed in a stare. He chewed his tongue with calm, devoted persistence.

  Pomeranz could not imagine who might have sent these young men to keep watch on his comings and goings. Or what might be the purpose or the idea behind it.

  Fear and sadness took hold of him; sudden doubts about the continuing efficacy of the secret powers which had preserved him during the bad years that had gone before.

  From time to time, standing in his room, he happened to lean his elbows on the windowsill, and found it solid: wood and stone. As if after all these years the whispering current of energy had weakened and something in the outside world was gradually congealing. Massivity was spreading. Even his body was solidifying from within. His face, once that of a spy in an American comedy, had assumed a new expression: that of a tired old businessman troubled by financial worries. His mop of tawny hair was streaked with gray. He was being followed. Some secret organization. A hostile power had remembered all these years and now its agents had come to Tiberias. The cordon would never be slackened. Should he consider ways of escape, or, rather, take no notice?

  Is there anyone here, man or demon, who has the power of taking off and floating over rooftops, fields, and meadows? The natural order here is earthly. You can belch to your heart's content, flail with your arms, play music, test your own skull with an ax, boast of your virgin birth till you're blue in the face, but the ax will be soft as rubber and the lake, for its part, will yawn indifferently in the savage midday sun: that's old hat, we've heard it all before, virgin birth, signs and wonders, gospels and persecutions, can't you think of something new. And don't try walking on the water, either.

  The mouth organ, naturally, had long since rusted away.

  A stem gravity reigns in these parts. No snow, no lunatic spires of village churches, no white steppes and black ravens, no howling wolves at night, no fir forests. The nights are quiet. Silence accumulates slowly. This is the Jordan Valley. And the lake at night is huddled and blind.

  And so, like a man waking up in a panic and dashing for his life, Mieczyslaw the First suddenly started taking an interest in other people. Checking his longitude and latitude. Clinging. Getting to know. He ordered a daily newspaper. He bought a map of the roads and settlements. Made the acquaintance of his neighbors. Began to pat the dogs and children. Met a woman.

  14

  When Stefa recalled her former life, her youth, the intelligentsia of the town of M——straining their fingertips to touch her with their ideas, when she recalled in the soft Russian sunshine how in a fit of caprice she had once suddenly given herself to the dreamy son of a mere watchmaker and how the town had buzzed with gossip and Emanuel Zaicek had whispered to her, In God's name, Stefa, you're throwing yourself away, when Stefa recalled how she used to touch the watchmaker's son on the forehead with her fingertip and touch their love and how her fingertip had lit up, when Stefa recalled all this
she was seized by a mood of wild restlessness. Her heart yearned for savage sun-drenched places, feverishly she dispatched coded cables to Timbuktu, Barcelona, Pago Pago, Newfoundland, and New Caledonia, Mikhail Andreitch at her command would flash a short signal in cypher and at once an officers' conspiracy would get under way in Brazzaville or a strike of armed workers in Caracas.

  Everybody, Stefa felt, every town and nation, we are all in need of urgent salvation, now, at once, how much more can we stand, the heart is ready to burst.

  She would suddenly touch with her toe the flattened head of Mikhail Andreitch, who lay on the rug at her feet:

  "Andreitch. Pay attention. Listen."

  (Moscow. Melting snow. Soft sunlight at the barred window.)

  "I am listening, Comrade Fedoseyeva. I'm all ears."

  "Listening maybe, Andreitch, but you still can't hear. You don't hear a thing. The air is full and you—nothing. Delicate, amazing things are about to happen. Starting to stir. Turning over. So wake up, Andreitch, if you don't mind, stand on your own two feet, wake up. Stop listening and start hearing at long last."

  The office of the Chairman of the Sixth Bureau was a low-ceilinged but spacious room, furnished in an eccentric style. There was no desk. No shelves or chairs. Comrade Fedoseyeva was in the habit of working while lying on her back, with her knees drawn up, or else propping herself up on her side with her elbow. The principal item of furniture in her office was therefore a low divan in Central Asian style.

  Next to the divan was a camel-hair rug, and it was on this that flat-headed Mikhail Andreitch crouched on guard. Two telephones without dials to his left, two flexible microphones to his right, and in front of him on a stool an ashtray, lighter, three or four packages of Sobranie cigarettes, and some small brightly colored notebooks. On the wall hung a picture of the Bear in marshal's uniform, wearing a sleepy, satisfied smile.

  There was also a samovar and two glasses. And an electric fire.

  At first sight it was not easy to believe that from here invisible wires, nervous quivering piano wires, extended to four continents, with large numbers of men at the other end, different kinds of men, some of them remarkably sensitive and all of them, like all men, in need of urgent salvation. Could Comrade Fedoseyeva, with all her taut wires, her overpowering smile, bring about any illumination? Could she touch with her fingertip and see her fingertip light up?

  She knew not where he was, she had no tears; and her hair was ruthlessly cropped.

  From her window she could see amazing Slavic domes, potbellied domes, reaching up to heaven in a desperate effort to be freed from their bodies, to be touched by a north wind, to be wounded by the wind, to belong to the wind.

  15

  Pomeranz shaved off his thin, lovingly cultivated mustache, and for a time contemplated taking a Hebrew name: Miron Primor. Nonsense.

  While round about him things closed in, even took a turn for the worse. Sometimes when he came home from work it happened that a long, curvaceous motorcar was parked on the corner of the street with some men inside it with their hats pulled down.

  They made no effort to disguise their purpose.

  As if they were certain that he had no possibility, no chance, no inclination to elude them and suddenly vanish. As if they knew the secrets of his own heart.

  A kind of cheap comedy was closing in around him, and in addition to fear and sorrow he also felt disgust.

  At night, as he sat at his desk working at his mathematical researches by the light of a small table lamp, he would suddenly be compelled to turn his head, and he would see shadow upon shadow. The newspaper, too, warned the watchful public to be on the alert against all sorts of dangers: keep an eye open, report anything suspicious at once.

  And rest, if rest indeed it had been, was no longer to be had.

  Even the stone-built house, with its low-vaulted ceiling and its window boxes aflame with geraniums, suddenly began to exude different smells. The arching movement of the ceiling could be sensed at night with ever-increasing force. A solitary tough stem sprouted through a crack in the flagstones near the kitchen alcove, and stood erect and stiff, holding up its lonely gray head. And a woman also appeared.

  Petite, confused, American, a kind of free artist, liberation of style or of line. One Saturday morning she suddenly knocked at Pomeranz's door. Slender, straight as a twig, she smiled, she asked if she might sketch the arches, she was embarrassed yet bold, as she spoke she almost accidentally touched his arm, his shoulder, his cheek, she laughed, looked grave, she thought the walls were so old and expressive, such a simple harmony in the vaulting, and, oh, what an enchanting devil's head carved on the stone lintel, and the view of the palm trees through the arched window, those psychedelic flickers of light on the lake, contrasting with the grimness of the mountains, she wanted to sketch it all, and she promised not to make a mess or a noise, could she, please?

  Yes, of course.

  Audrey. All pink, blooming, full of zeal, full of ideas, touchingly slender, detached from her body, not too clean, perhaps, even—Pomeranz was overcome by an ardent desire to forgive her, forgive her anything. She wore a kind of American Indian dress, and Rosa Luxemburg glasses. Her hair was dusty, unruly, at odds with itself. She was outrageously young. Barefoot. Her resdess toes ceaselessly dug into the stone floor as if trying to burrow through and touch the earth beneath, a movement of curiosity or of orphaned frenzy.

  For four days and five nights Audrey stayed with Pomeranz: he for the flavor of her body and she for the meaning of life. He would writhe, gurgle, struggle, death throes pierced the marrow of his bones every few hours, shimmering delusive spasms, ax blow, virgin birth. In between, Audrey barefoot roamed from window to window, glowing, adapting to captivity, like Adam in Paradise calling everything by a new name, taking up stands, formulating, pointing everything its way to renewal and salvation, expounding, connecting, legislating. All with her fingertips. As if she were dreaming.

  In midstream, somewhere in a sentence that had begun with the death of God and would have led on to existential guilt, the man would pounce and seize her stemlike neck in his dark heavy-veined hands and contemplate for a moment its fragility, desperately inhaling all her odors, his hands two heavy slow cascades running down her back, her waist, he would sink into her hair, clasp her breasts, his preying hands full of spreading mercy.

  Panting. Her silence. And his.

  The widening gap between their silences.

  And, after a few moments, the words again.

  Audrey to Pomeranz:

  National Liberation. International Liberation. Inner Liberation. What do you think. My generation, your generation. And also: Liberation of the body. Liberation from the restraints of the body. The other reality. Liberation through violence. All war is dereliction. The meaning of unfulfilled longing. The natural right to universal gratification. And also: Revolutionizing the Revolution. The Jew as a symbol. Revitalizing decay, uninvolved vitality. And also: Consistency, the modern neurosis. Drugs, a simple remedy. The purifying vigor stored up in the black race. Reason is a cancer. Reality, Audrey said, is a petit-bourgeois escape. The final revolution, Audrey said, will be a fantasy of sounds, an orgy of colors, the abolition of death.

  Pomeranz casually pardoned these venial sins. He bent over her simple innocence, forced an entrance, plunged his red-hot loneliness into her. In between desperate pants he in turn began preaching to Audrey: The absurdity of gravity. The potency of high notes. Bugles. A Polish kingdom in the Aegean Islands. Music, which is audible mathematics.

  And also: Sewing-machine parts. The branch of a chestnut tree which grew into the back of the bronze statue of Slowacki in Sobieski Square. Swiss promissory notes. The silence of the forest and the borderline between it and the silence of the low sky in winter. Village sorceresses, Przywolski the Last, Mieczyslaw the First, anointed in exile with sewing-machine oil. The Princess Magda Isawolska, the Virgin Whore. Her sin and absolution. And also: Vampires. Thoughts like radar beams.
And again: Music, the mysterious link between magnetism and electricity. As opposed to physical relations, the clumsy ephemeral convergence of abstract energies.

  And finally: Vikings. Nibelungs. Pork fat.

  As against: The song of the stars. Release from the body. Levitation. The power of love. The potency of grace.

  In brief, what was there in common. He with his. She with hers. Another night, another day, perhaps another night. Not a line had she sketched here, but she had had an Experience. Now she would be on her way. 'Bye. And he lay back, astounded.

  But he found no rest.

  16