by Amos Oz
Mikhail Andreitch wriggled quickly on the camel-hair rug by the side of the low divan, raised his flat head toward Comrade Fedoseyeva, bared his teeth, sharpening yet further his habitual expression of perpetual thirst, and defended himself palely:
"What is Palestine, Comrade Fedoseyeva? Palestine is nothing. Nothing at all. A few small colonies. A few oranges. A few holy ruins. Foreign capital. Immigration. A bit of shooting once or twice a week. The whole thing on a Lilliputian scale. No bigger than your little finger. Palestine is nothing, Comrade Fedoseyeva."
Stefa:
"But they're always making new discoveries, formulae, inventions, a wonder cure for cancer they say they've found there only they're keeping it secret from the outside world so as to raise the price, and there have been some atomic rumors, secret weapons they're developing there by night, and as for you, Andreitch, you're just like the mujik who looked through the telescope and said, It's nothing, it's nothing. Your kind were no ordinary people, your kind were barons once, generals, governors of big towns, they used to go whish through the air with their whips in those days. Now concentrate, Andreitch dear, think hard, try to make amends and tell Mother sensibly and intelligently what they've got in Palestine."
Mikhail Andreitch, with a look of stupid panic on his thirsty face, his grin broadening to that of a terrified cat, his teeth short and white:
"Don't, Comrade Fedoseyeva, please don't, you know that kind of talk won't help either of us, the past is all behind us now and our faces are turned to the future. Look, I am thinking, I'm thinking quickly and thoroughly. I'm thinking full steam ahead, if there is such an expression."
"And your conclusion, my dear Stakhanovich?"
"Conclusion. Yes, conclusion. Where could we be without conclusions. Well, yes. Palestine it is, Comrade Fedoseyeva: I'm ready to pack my bags and go, if those are your orders. I'll go anywhere you like without a murmur. But still, Palestine is a rather unimportant spot. And tiny. A kind of temporary refugee camp that our Jews have set up among the sand dunes and holy ruins. They're still trying to get their bearings, everything there is still in a confused, experimental stage."
Fedoseyeva:
'That will do, Andreitch. It's not for theoretical arguments that I've been raising you here. Shut up, my peerless Andreitch. Shut up in Russian. Just make yourself a note: Palestine. You ought to be glad; I was certain you'd be writhing with joy. Palestine is full of nuns of every shape and size. But just you keep your hands off them. You can feast your eyes on them to your heart's content, but kindly keep your filthy paws to yourself. By the way. I suppose you've got some good men there who know a thing or two?"
"Yes, Comrade Fedoseyeva, I have indeed. And they're always complaining. They complain about the climate, they complain about the boredom, the language, and the flies. After all, it—how should I say—it isn't a very big place."
"That's enough, Andreitch, you've said quite enough already. Now go and change, pack your overnight bag, and off you fly. Wait a minute."
"Yes. Right away."
"Stand still and stop jumping up and down. Now listen carefully. Apart from the nuns, the music there, I hear, is of the highest quality. Concerts, symphonies, Jews playing and singing with gusto-you won't be at a loss in Palestine. Prick your ears up, Andreitch. There's something in the air. You know better than anyone my sudden flashes of intuition. So don't fall asleep, Mikhail Andreitch. Things happen in Palestine."
20
Elisha Pomeranz led a quiet life.
Sometimes in the evenings he fell prey to hesitations, and he, in his usual patient way, almost loved this moment. The burial of the last light of day. Noman and silence upon the broad lawns. Noman in the gardens. Among the lilacs. The woods empty and shadow-soaked. A faint breeze blowing off the hills, touching the pines with its fingertips, coaxing them, spreading amazing rumors, whispering high limpid forgiveness. The breeze inspired the pines with a powerful quiet hallucination which was almost more than they could bear. Then, holding his breath, he could see with his own eyes the pine trees in the darkness stretching upward to the very bounds of music.
Afterward, by the light of mathematical theory or astronomical calculations: the intricate powers of circularity, radiating bodies in dark space, the opposing energies coursing between the bodies in curves which cannot be perceived by the senses, only by an abstract intention, until the intention suddenly casts doubt, almost ridicule, on the material objects round about. The shelf and its shadow. The desk. The lamp and its pool of yellow light. The paper. The pen. The rustling of the paper. His writing hand. The smell of his body. His body. His breath. The absurd connection between his calculations and the network of white threads, gray fluids, moisture, what a ridiculous connection. And so humiliating.
In short, the dreamy son of a watchmaker rendered unto the kibbutz those things which belonged to the kibbutz, and when he had completed all his labors he always closed himself up in his room and his silence.
The kibbutz, however, went on living its rhythmical life: day succeeded day, and the intervening nights were suppressed, because night always seems to be full of malign intentions and so it must be uncompromisingly shut out or cautiously circumvented. No alternative. Indeed, here among the rocky Galilean hills, where thorns flourished even on bare rocks, the nights certainly betrayed a threatening, simian quality.
Day succeeded day, and by seven o'clock white non-light already beat down on roofs and treetops, scorching concrete paths, dominating deserted lawns, blazing on tiles and corrugated iron. The tyrannical light painted sharp clear circles round every enclave of shadow. Just so far. The frontiers of shade. Blue light. Line. White light. Line. Blue-white light. Square-cut hedges, neat rows of trees, tidy lawns, all speaking an unambiguous language. Climb the mountains, crush the plain, All you see—possess it. The tractor shed here, the dining hall there, and the recreation hall plugging the valley with its low, broad bulk. We are here. Guarding order. Darkness to expel.
Various suspicions were leveled at Pomeranz:
His peculiar indifference to the customary ideals.
His avoidance of all organized activities.
His lackadaisical attitude toward the betterment of Society and the Individual.
He doesn't read the evening paper even when you ram it under his nose.
He never makes suggestions.
Never criticizes.
You can never tell, with him.
Thinking. Who knows what.
So withdrawn.
How come?
The pupils he coached in the evenings said:
"His room is always clean and spotless. It's a mania with him, tidiness. Whenever you try to sit down, he adjusts the angle of the chair to the table. If you accidentally kick up the corner of the rug, he goes down on all fours at once, like a long thin dog, and straightens it under your feet."
"He keeps the lights dim, and there's always coffee and flowers in the room, and also a sort of faint smell everywhere which isn't the smell of the flowers or the smell of the coffee and you really can't tell what it is. Perhaps not a smell at all. Something. The air is different in his room."
"As if he's always expecting a special visitor."
"And that silence. Even when he talks to you, it's as if he's talking in silence."
"He's not all there. A bit gaga."
"It can't go on. There's something strange about him, something lonely, how to put it, weird, it might be dangerous or something. Almost. Something might happen one day, all of a sudden. We ought to do something about him. Before it's too late."
"And that dog. It's not a dog-it's a ghost."
"It's frightening."
So too, each evening, sitting on green benches under the lilac trees ot on the edge of the lawn on deck chairs, the old women knitted Pomeranz. Wondering. Comparing. Remembering things that had happened and phrases from lectures or from the newspapers. Exchanging views and rumors. Pausing on a significant detail. Energetically well-meaning. Muttering
a special salvation for him. A solution. Something.
Moreover, his name was included on the agenda of one of the kibbutz committees, a discreet item. Nothing urgent, though, nothing that couldn't be postponed.
Among themselves the other sheep farmers sometimes nicknamed Elisha Pomeranz "the Wizard." But the sheep, as ever, as in bygone days, since time immemorial, silently went on dreaming.
21
Soon or late, one clear pale night, Elisha Pomeranz arose and went down to the faraway waters to the thicket and the reeds to Emanuel Zaicek's hiding place. He barely touched the ground as he went. He wore his pointed hat and his red boots, and his ax was tucked in his broad sash.
And when the two watchmakers' sons met on the bank of the stream they did not speak words or compare ideas or try to formulate a letter or a manifesto. For a while they both played the same Jewish melody on two different instruments; then they exchanged instruments and tried another similar melody. There was no breeze. The night was silent.
So they exchanged melodies.
Eventually Pomeranz reached up to the sky with a long bony arm and a transparent hand, pushed the moon aside and scattered a handful of stars over the darkening disc. Then he turned and went his way in peace into the clasp of the distant cricket song into the heart of the jackals' howling in the mountains.
22
Ernst, the Secretary of the Kibbutz Council, occasionally used to say:
"There's no smoke without a fire—the proverb presumably knows what it's talking about and who am I to pick a quarrel with an ancient proverb, but on the other hand the proverb doesn't say that whenever there's a fire the smoke has to appear at once or indeed at any stage whatever."
(Ernst was in the habit of saying this or something like it whenever in the course of a meeting or debate anyone was carried away and resorted to excessively emotional arguments.)
Then something happened.
Elisha Pomeranz, a modest, retiring shepherd living in a kibbutz in the north of the country, has unexpectedly published an important article in a leading foreign scientific periodical. The article is by no means modest or insignificant: according to the headlines in the evening newspapers he has succeeded in solving one of the most baffling paradoxes connected with the mathematical concept of infinity.
It was a sensational event. The newspapers even told of the storm of excitement in the most remote centers of learning. Generations upon generations of scholars had broken their heads against the paradoxes of mathematical infinity, had muttered about the limitations of the human mind, had trembled as their thoughts tentatively probed the utmost limits of knowledge and encountered the frosty depths of the universe, adopted a tone of resignation in the face of the silence of eternal mysteries, and had always concluded: thus far and no farther. No one could ever cross this final line without collapsing into contradiction, absurdity, mysticism, ecstasy, or madness. This line marked the final limit of reason and the threshold of silence.
And now, to universal astonishment, a simple amateur, an outsider, working alone in a remote, out-of-the-way village, with the aid of nothing but pencil, paper, and solitude, had probed and hunted and suddenly come up with—
—an astounding theorem.
—a simple solution.
—a crystal-clear answer.
—breathtaking.
Not long afterward a gleaming black car drew up outside the hut which housed the kibbutz office. From it emerged a pair of elegantly dressed men. They were sinisterly alert. They inquired where they could find Pomeranz, if indeed such a man existed and he was not merely a trick or a delusion.
Ernst told them that at that time of day he was generally to be found in the pastures, and to the pastures they both disappeared at once in their black car. They were both well groomed, ostentatiously fresh looking, with wide American ties held in place by fine silver clips, and at the same time there was something daring about the cut of their suits, they wore cowboy-style belts or something of the sort and here and there there was a faint touch of the bohemian about them.
The determined visitors searched around for Pomeranz but they did not find him, because he was sometimes in the habit of taking his flocks across the wadi into the tangle of shallow gulleys, or up the rocky slopes among the boulders into the shady recesses of the olive plantation. The entire landscape, hills and valleys, the bluish mountains on the horizon, the hayfields in the plain, everything was veiled in a slight mist, and there was not a soul to be seen.
Alert man A said to alert man B:
"He's set the whole world buzzing and now he's lost some where in this goddam silence."
Alert man B displayed a cautious smile, replaced it and answered:
"As soon as you said silence, goddam silence, I could hear the sound of an animal, a barking perhaps, and there's a rhythmic throbbing noise on the other side of this hill."
While they were talking in the open country, waiting, leaning on their magnificent car, pink and clean-shaven, exuding an air of infinite prospects and possibilities, bursting with arrogant, energetic enthusiasm, shattering the calm of the hills and plains by their very presence, devising their strategy and rehearsing the division of roles in the forthcoming conversation, while they lay in wait for Elisha—at that moment the telephone in the kibbutz office began ringing repeatedly and incessantly. Excited voices inquired indefatigably who he was and what he was like, what his weaknesses and his hobbies were, what his timetable was, when could they meet him, get to know him, make friends with him, interview him, chat with him, et cetera. Some of them were confident and blustering, some were honey-sweet, some were foreign, there were the skinny, bitter women of the international press, and wheedling women, a vast multitude. Nor was there any end to the flood of letters asking for advice, ideas, autographs, solutions, engagements, special tiny favors, and above all for usable photographs of Elisha Pomeranz against a background of fields or vineyards, llrgently: the whole world was standing and holding its breath, and time was of the essence.
23
In the thickly wooded basin of the Black Country to the north of the town of M——there stands a tiny hamlet. It appears as though it can only exist by favor of the dense forest which seems to have made a momentary concession, to have opened up slightly to yield a small patch of plainland and a winding length of stream, an old wooden bridge, and once again closed in round about.
At the foot of this hamlet spreads a green meadow where cows graze in everlasting peace. Hay wains groan their way like pregnant women up the hill, struggling in the black mire. Beside them walk peasants carrying pitchforks, and they lend a shoulder as the need occurs.
In the middle of the hamlet among the dingy crooked hovels runs a mild, hesitant stream. The time is mid-afternoon: three o'clock or perhaps four. By the side of the stream sits a lean angler, bent forward. He has been sitting here since early morning, since before sunrise. His rod has fallen asleep in his hand, he has a hat made of folded newspaper on his head, his blue eyes stare blankly at the water, the hills, the forest opposite. His pose expresses idiocy, as does his fixed stare; his mouth gapes, a drop hangs from the tip of his nose, his lower jaw sags. The old man is as blank as a wall, but the plains the forest the stream all flow fearlessly all day long into his eyes and find room enough within.
On the opposite bank dusty peasant women with headscarves and spreading skirts chew endlessly on mint leaves or quids of tobacco and shoot out jets of yellow juice. They move on all fours, scratching potatoes out of the ground. And all the time, without the slightest whisper, the low gray sky arches oppressively over the hamlet and meadow. The small church reaches up on tiptoe toward the sky with its two towers, one ruined, the other unfinished. The church is entirely built of thick, blackening boards, and since it leans toward the south on account of the strong northerly winds it is propped up with four roughhewn slanting logs. The nails which once held them in place have long since rusted away, and the church is supported by inertia, equilibrium, exhaustion.
In front of the church there extends a small, rough-paved square, sagging toward the middle. When the building finally falls the square will enfold the remains and weeds will sprout up between the flagstones to consume everything in oblivion.
On the edge of the square a pair of ancient horses stands motionless, like statues from an equestrian group whose riders have been hacked off in the course of some political unheaval or change of heart. But the two horses, however old, are still alive. And motionless.
And now:
A girl, in the distance, almost a child, running, her hair struggling in the wind, perhaps crying silently, yes crying silently, running, clutching something, the distance and the gray light make it impossible to tell what, she trips, stumbles, falls flat, springs up again at once, surely panting, running, surely desperate, running toward the glimmering hills on the farthest horizon, too late, hopeless, running—
The whole scene is ruthlessly dominated by the reek of wet hay, the stench of rotting fish, and a damp noxious vapor rising from the stream.
In a pool of mire stands a thin man leaning on one crutch, and Stefa watches wide-eyed as he brandishes the other furiously at the forest, at the sky, curses, describes intricate arabesques in the air, crosses himself fervently, wheels round, drops both crutches, and collapses into the mire.
Finally the rain comes:
Fine and piercing, whispering on damp hovels, scratching at their roofs, gently lashed by the northerly wind. Gradually the hills darken, straining wearily toward the water. A distant train lets out a shriek of honor. There is no bird here. Not even a raven.
And the Polish forest all around, ceaselessly hissing.
24