The Same Sea Read Online Free Page B

a piss, his eyelids still gummed together, then
turned on the tap and washed in cold water. He thought about shaving.
Couldn't be bothered. Put on a rancid shirt from yesterday, and clumsily
groped his way to the kitchen to make some coffee. When he went
to the rack for a clean cup a spider ran away. Why? What's the matter?
What have I done? I'd never harm you, so why are you running away from me?
Barefoot, tired, he sat down to wait for the water to boil and remembered
Nirit's Love,
that script by Dita Inbar. And the money. True, it wasn't exactly
honest what I did, but she had only herself to blame, and why did she have to
show me, right to my face, that she found me disgusting, like some lower kind
of scum? Surely even a repulsive man has a right to be attracted to
a woman, has a right to finer feelings which a woman can choose to
ignore, but why must she rub salt in the wound? Why did she have to
show me how disgusted she was? And just when I was thinking that she
was different from all the rest, that she had a higher tolerance.
My fatal mistake was that like an idiot apparently I identified her
with her screenplay, where this Nirit takes pity on a real dog of a man. As for
the money, no one has ever given anything back to me. Everyone has always
taken from me. All I've ever had back has been insults.

A Psalm of David
    In a hanged mans house one must not mention that the rope follows
the pail. It is not in vain that a woman is bewitched by a nocturnal shade,
and gives her body to a wandering minstrel in Adullam, or here on the plains
of Bhutan. At your age David of the beautiful eyes did not play the harp,
only with his reed pipe did he make the hinds to dance. And this was the
instrument that drew Michal and Ahinoam and the woman of Carmel to him
like a rope. Such a plain, homely instrument, but maidens were beguiled by
its strange, mournful sound, the ruddy-faced rascal who leaped and danced
and grazed his flocks among the lilies, chasing the wind and deflowering
women whose storm-racked flesh bristled under his hand that was soaked in
the fat of the mighty and their blood, skilled with the sling. So he roamed,
slew, loved, smote his tens of thousands, and so he became king. After many
years, on that great oak tree, the rope followed the pail.
Then came mourning. The house of a hanged man. Then came the harp
of the psalms. Finally came the dagger. How the day has faded. Passed.
Now all is dust.

David according to Dita
    How the day has faded. When were we talking about King David,
how did we get to talking about him? Do you remember, Dita? One Friday
night at Giggy Ben-Gal's in Melchett Street. You dragged me out of the party
onto the balcony and at the window opposite a beefy man wearing nothing
but an undershirt and his loneliness was polishing his glasses
against the light, he put them on, saw us watching and shut
his shutters. And then because of him you told me what it is
about a man that attracts you: the Charles Aznavour type, or Yevgeny
Yevtushenko. From them you went on to King David. It attracts
you when there is a needy side, a rascally side and a side
that plays the fool. And you also showed me from the balcony that night
what a ragged sexy city this Tel Aviv is.
You don't see a sunset or a star, you see how the plaster
peels from an excess of adrenaline smells of sweat and diesel fuel a tired
city that doesn't want to sleep at the end of the day it wants to go out wants it
to happen wants it to end and then wants more. But David, you said,
reigned for thirty years in Jerusalem the ultra-Orthodox City of David
which he could not stand and which could not stand him
with his leaping and dancing and his one-night stands.
It would have been more fitting for him to reign in Tel Aviv,
to roam the city like a General (Retd.) who is both a grieving parent
and a well-known philanderer, a loaded high-liver and a king
who composes music and writes poetry and sometimes gives a recital,
"The Sweet Psalmist," in a trendy