The Same Sea by Amos Oz Page A

water eyes in the night eyes eyes in my back, in my breasts, Nadia remembers old secrets, aged ten and a half in the morning, her father stripped to the waist up a ladder retiling the roof, and herself handing him up tiles one by one, inhaling the scent of his sweat and the sight of his nipples concealed in the steelwork of his chest bringing a secret trickle to her own ungrown nipples, she remembers the sudden flutter in her tummy and how the sun shone on his bare stooping back, as her father laid tile after tile and his muscles eyes eyes seemed to burrow between his shoulderblades. And once she watched her brother Michael hiding crouched in the back of the woodshed milking the dogs erection a blood-red butchers-shop udder protruding horribly from the covering fur and the two of them, Michael and the dog, thirstily panting and lolling and then soft thunder rolled in her tummy and turning she ran from die woodshed and that same night the first blood appeared on her nightdress with her terrified tears and the pain as though a maggot had wriggled inside her. In a whisper her mother taught her how to and how not to and when, and how women hide their impurity from menfolk's eyes and how to smother the smell, and she also said that this was the curse of Eve: every woman is punished and sullied with blood, recompense for the serpent and apple, in sorrow shalt thou bring forth thy children and there is no way back and only in pregnancy and in old age do we get some relief Eyes in the back eyes on the roof eyes on disgrace eyes on the festivals, Nadia remembers her handkerchiefs lace-edged brassieres satin ribbons suspender belts translucent silk embroidered blouses corsets and headscarves, schemes and intrigues of virtuous women a cesspit concealed under layers of velvet, muffled laughter and sneers of old women leering aunts winking caressing deriding and gradually covering her with a silky cobweb of the spidery order of women, catching and trussing her in a network of transparent threads, initiating her by degrees into the mysteries of the sect, labyrinthine lies filigrees of guile a subversive sisterhood in the face of the male sex intrigues of ancient stratagems delicate perfumes, jewellery, cosmetics, eyes, eyes, evil eye. Nadia remembers a baby imprisoned in the underground lair of the priestesses of an all-female cult, rules of modesty, rules of menstrual impurity, rules of prudence, qualities of innocent cunning, powders and creams, eyeblack and rouge, the masculine nature you have to learn to arouse and to repel, grace is false and beauty is vain, but without them beware that you do not end up unwanted and dusty on the shelf) heaven forbid. Give them an inch and they take a mile, give them two inches and they 11 cast you aside like an empty vessel, a woman is a pot filled to the brim with honey and shame, a locked garden and a reserved spring, a delight concealed until her redeemer cometh, no male stranger may approach, but neither should he be kept far
off,
keep him hungry and thirsty but occasionally feed him a crumb, cautiously always as if unawares lest you become a byword and a disgrace. Eyes, eyes, evil eye, amulets, giggles, whispers, intrigues, feminine plots and laws of womanhood, how to arouse love while preserving your modesty,
dizzying
incense, enchanting repulsion, she wanted to flee and she wanted to die, she wanted to run to the world of the squirrels to be for all time neither woman nor man but a tiny timorous creature which is all eyes and almost no body.

Never mind
    But there, on the road to Patna, in the night train coming down from
the mountains, winding at a snails pace into the valley, a shabby old train,
ancient carriages, wooden benches, and the engine fed on
sliced tree trunks, sparks flying by the window, swallowed up in
the depth of the darkness, faint lights in the distance, wretched villages,
mud huts, he thinks of writing a postcard to his father, and another
to Dita Inbar, to say to them both