Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz Read Free Book Online Page A

mind I’ll just stand here in the entrance until I hear your door open and close, so I know that you’ve made it safely back to your Joselito without meeting any dragons on the way.
    With a twisted smile, close to tears, she mutters: I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me. I’m a bit confused this evening.
    The Author, too, smiles as he says to her in the dark: But so charming, too.
    *
    Nine or ten years have passed since someone, a boy, not a particularly attractive one, said something similar to her. He was a fast talker, and she didn’t believe him. But now, this man, suddenly—
    The blood once more flushes her ears and neck, and she feels as though her knees are melting and she has no choice, she must either lean on him or collapse.
    Her knuckles show white as she clutches his book, in its brown paper and rubber bands, to her belly. Like a chastity belt. At that instant she almost summons up the courage to invite him upstairs, whynot, what do the bra and the cat hairs matter, he must have seen the insides of a thousand girls’ rooms in his time, she’ll make him some tea, or coffee, she even has some Argentinian
hierba mate
, if he’s not feeling too tired? Or isn’t in a hurry to go somewhere?
    But her lips can’t help trembling in the darkness. Eventually, almost in a mumble, she reveals to him that she has a collection of matchboxes from two hundred hotels all round the world, well, maybe only a hundred and eighty, but why should a man like him be interested in a collection of matchboxes?
    The Author lights another cigarette, pushes the light button again, and thinks it over. For an instant he has a mental image of the exciting asymmetry he spotted earlier in the evening, through her skirt, between the two sides of Ricky’s (the waitress’s) knickers: the left side was a little higher than the right. Like a wink promising an Aladdin’s cave of secret thrills.
    For a moment he weighs up the pros and cons in his mind: is it worth his while to be invited upstairs now to Rochele Reznik’s rooftop room? Actually, why not? After all, her shy presence gives him pleasure, and he finds her tremulous praise quite enjoyable, and her fear is as sweet as the shiveringof a little chick in the palm of one’s hand: so why not? She won’t eat him alive up there. On the other hand, even though she is almost stunned and even submissive she isn’t that attractive. Either way, it’ll end up being embarrassing: she is in a panic and he doesn’t really fancy her. First he’ll have to allay her fears, calm her down, like a patient family doctor with a girl who refuses to have an injection. And all the way he’ll have to be so careful, so paternal that even the small amount of desire that he’s been trying his hardest to boost with images of Ricky the waitress’s knickers will fade. Either way, he’ll have to pretend. He’ll have to put on a performance for her, one way or another. Or make up an excuse. And he’ll have to stroke her cat and say what lovely fur it has. He’s had enough of showmanship for one night. And one way or another she, Rochele Reznik, will end up being hurt by him. Or worse still, she’ll start nursing all sorts of hopes for a sequel. Which is totally out of the question.
    Besides, she has no curtains and no shutters, and God knows who her neighbours are, and he is quite a well-known personality.
    And so the Author entertains doubts, and thefirst question, Why not, is replaced in his mind by other questions. Why? Why the hell? What for? Is it just the old cliché of that wretched rhyme, You’ll always find them side by side: / never a groom without a bride?
    He reflects that Chekhov has already mapped out the route by which one can approach a strange lady by paying court to her lapdog. But even Chekhov did not explain to us how, once you have established acquaintance and got into