Authors: Amos Oz
The Same Sea
Amos Oz
Table of Contents
The miracle of the loaves and the fishes
Back in Bat Yam his father upbraids him
No butterflies and no tortoise
And what is hiding behind the story?
She comes to him hut he is busy
He isn't lost and even if he is
Like a miser who has sniffed a rumor of gold
The Narrator copies from the dictionary of idioms
And when the shadows overwhelmed him
Rico considers bis father's defeat
Rico reconsiders a text he has heard from his father
He hesitates, nods and lays out
In the middle of the hottest day in August
The riddle of the good carpenter who had a deep bass voice
The well-fed dog and the hungry dog
Rico thinks about the mysterious snowman
A wandering merchant from Russia who was on his way to China
It's only because of me that it came back to her
My hand on the latch of the window
Then he walks around for a while and returns to Rothschild Boulevard
He adds sugar and stirs then adds more sugar
Meanwhile, in Bengal, the woman Maria
From out there, from one of the islands
There is definitely every reason to hope
The Narrator drops in for a glass of tea and Albert says to him
In Bangladesh in the rain Rico understands for a moment
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
Then, in the kitchen, Albert and Dita
A tale from before the last elections
Half-remembering, you have forgotten
Like a well where you wait to hear
He closes his eyes to keep watch
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.
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 catA 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
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.
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.
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.
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.