The Same Sea by Amos Oz

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.

Passing through
    Sit down Albert Take off your coat.
Let's draw the curtain. Light the light.
I was asleep. What never mind,
    don't worry. It was time I woke.
I'll put some water on for coffee
and throw a bedspread over the mess.
    I'll make us both some cheese on toast.
Thanks for the heater. And the nightie.
Your wife's. And what a pretty blue.
    It may suit me some years from now.
Just wait there while I have a shower.
Or come with me. Take off your shoes.
    And take that off, while I undress.
Now come with me. No, don't be shy.
There is a custom in Ladakh,
    perhaps an ancient marriage law:
they marry three or four brothers
together to a single bride.
    Three brothers. And a single bride.
Stop shivering, and touch me here.
Touch, it's not me, it's only cloth.
    Its only cotton: touch me here.
Think that its happening in a dream
high in the hills of Chandartal.
    My fingers are like alleyways,
my palm's a square. You cross it, then
you stop. My arm is like a curving road,
    my shoulder is a river bed and then
the neck's a bridge. Then you can choose
to go this way, or that To wait. To wait.
    In a dream in a cloud in passion
and wonder. Just listen to the thunder.

Then he walks around for a while and returns to Rothschild Boulevard
    When he left, the rain had stopped. The boulevard was a girl
stripped naked and beaten up by a gang, and left lying there on her back
ripped and drenched. Now she hears trees,
promising her a kind of second silence, which belongs
at the end of shame and degradation, a still, small silence,
a kind of birth: I shall no longer raise my eyes to the hills
but lie quietly now in a puddle
of muddy still waters. Here is the breeze. Here are rumors
of birds' wings, stitching the damp air, unstitching,
restitching, unstitching again. Everything now is grey
and tender. Rest. In peace. Smelling sweetly
of good rain and earth. Everything is past.

Squirrel
    Eyes. Eyes. Eyes in the water eyes in the branches eyes in the curtains eyes in the jug and eyes in the pillow. Nadia remembers Nadia as a little girl in an organdie frock or a pleated skirt, with ribbons in her plaits, Sabbath eve silver candlesticks warm hallah raisin wine blessings and table songs sit up straight please and stop squinting. She remembers gleaming white lace-trimmed napkins, porcelain bowls the color of the sea, a woven wall rug, little baskets, sauce boats, the smell of basil, lavender and ginger, and candied fruit Eyes, eyes, and Nadia remembers squirrels in the branches of the deserted garden milky-white mist in the hills snow blossoming on a darkening meadow the poignant tolling of a bell at dusk, dark woods that whispered rumors when the wind blew, the howl of a wolf on a winters night beyond the garden fence, the dovecote and the cockerel and the billy goat that frightened her in the dusk when she was sent out to fetch wood from the shed in the yard. Eyes in the