Rhyming Life and Death (11 page)

And so on, until the patient in the next bed, who also has tears in his eyes, rings for the nurse and gestures that enough is enough, the patient is getting overexcited, she should gently but firmly usher his visitors out.

*

What about Rochele Reznik? You promised her you'd ring her over the next few days, you'd definitely ring her, soon, absolutely, but you didn't get her number. Because you didn't ask her for it. You forgot to ask. Standing alone in her frugal, simply furnished room, with its clean smell, its light-coloured curtains, wearing a chaste nightdress, by the light of a lamp with a macramé shade, carefully folding her clean underwear, having thrown her dirty nightdress and underwear in the laundry basket, she feels sad as she looks at her flat body in the mirror on the inside of her wardrobe door: If only I had my mother's breasts, or my sister's, my whole life would be different. Why didn't I let him come up? After all, he begged me, in his polite, fatherly way, to ask him in. I could have said, Come in. I could have made him some tea or
hierba mate
or even a snack. I could have told him, seeing that he liked the way I read, that I can also sing. I could even have sung to him. Or put on some music, while we drank tea or Argentinian
hierba mate
. And then the two of us might suddenly—

There can't be a girl in the world who says no to him, but I'm so spoilt—

And now I'll never never—

Now he probably thinks I'm weird. Unwomanly.

Just look, Joselito, look what a fool I am. I'm the biggest fool there's ever been. (She says these last words aloud, grinning but close to tears.)

In her buttoned-up nightdress, the plain cotton nightdress of a boarding-school girl in the old days, she now sits, thin and stiffly upright, on the edge of her bed, under a Peace Now poster, with the cat curled up on her lap, quietly writing the names of towns and countries on her collection of matchboxes from dozens of well-known hotels where she has never stayed, San Moritz, St Tropez, San Marino, Monterrey, San Remo, Lugano.

*

But what was the Author trying to say?

Rochele Reznik is still sitting on her bed, her hair unplaited, with her legs folded underneath her, white knickers visible under her nightdress, but there is no one to see, the curtains are not at the cleaner's, they are tightly drawn against the neighbours. She knows that the Author was definitely talking to her between the lines this evening, that
there were more words underneath the words he spoke, and she didn't understand a thing. She will sit here like this for another hour or an hour and a half, not trying to get to sleep but trying to understand what he was saying. What was behind his story about the pharmacist who revealed the secrets of the poisons to him when he was a child? Or about Trotsky's beautiful secret daughter? Or the mother who wanted her son to meet a real live author? Or the uncle who hit a member of the Knesset? Her glance pauses suddenly on the door handle, which for an instant looks as though it is silently moving, as though a hand is tentatively testing to see if she has forgotten to lock up. Is it the staircase rapist?

For an instant she freezes in terror. But then a warm glow drives away the fear and she almost darts to the locked door, to peer through the peephole and open up to him even before he can knock, Come in, I was waiting for you.

But no, she won't do it. She has already experienced enough disappointments and rebuffs, she has too many old scars. So sits on her bed, staring as if fascinated by the door handle, long after the desperate Author has run headlong down the stairs
and bumped his shoulder on the broken door of the meter cupboard.

Until eventually she collapses on her back, exhausted.

The cat comes and lies on her stomach, purring and rubbing the sides of its face against her fingers. They both have their eyes open, watching a moth fluttering around the Peace Now poster with the slogan ‘Our sons' lives matter more than the patriarchs' graves!'.

She draws the sheet over herself and goes on trying to understand, while Joselito continues to watch the moth. The air conditioning hums and blows warm, damp air at her, and she has difficulty sleeping. Occasionally she dozes off briefly, but it is more like fainting than sleeping. During one of these spells she fancies for a moment that she has understood, it was really very simple, but then she wakes, sits up in bed, swats at a mosquito, and once again doesn't know what was expected of her this evening. Why did he ask her to go for that walk after the literary event? What was the meaning of his arm on her shoulder, and then – his arm round her waist? And all those stories of
his, and the furtive cuddles in that dark backyard? Was she just imagining, a couple of hours ago, that a timid hand tried her door handle, and then that he changed his mind and ran downstairs, before she even had time to make up her mind whether or not to open the door?

Was it him or wasn't it? And why?

No answers come, but she feels sadder and sadder, because only a few moments ago, when she was dozing, she understood it all, completely, and now she is awake she has forgotten what it was she understood.

The night drags on and on, as if time is standing still. Joselito is restless: he treads softly all over her body, suddenly nipping her big toe, lies in ambush, his body flattened like a stretched spring, his rippling fur heralding an imminent leap – and then he leaps, scratches the sheet, leaps again, and is suddenly clinging to the curtain with his claws as though he means to rip it to shreds and thus dispose once and for all of her lie to the Author.

*

So the poet Tsefania Beit-Halachmi, Uncle Bumek, was wrong when he wrote in his book
Rhyming Life
and Death
that ‘You'll always find them side by side: never a groom without a bride'. And Rabbi Alter Druyanov was also mistaken in including in his
Book of Jokes and Witticisms
the story about the
shlemiel
of a circumciser who was late for the circumcision. If you think about it, being late is never funny. It is always irreparable. Actually the angry teacher or deputy head of department Dr Pessach Yikhat was quite right when he stood up at the end of the evening and declared furiously that one of the roles of literature is to distil from misery and suffering at least a drop of comfort or human kindness. How to put it: to lick our wounds, if not to dress them. At the very least literature should not preen itself on mocking us and picking at our wounds, as modern writers in our days do ad nauseam. All they can write is satire, irony, parody (including self-parody), vicious sarcasm, all steeped in malice. In Dr Pessach Yikhat's view they should have this fact pointed out to them and they should be reminded of their responsibilities.

Rochele showers in lukewarm water and changes her nightdress. Like the other one, it has two buttons, and she does them both up.

*

Ten past midnight. The gangster's henchman Mr Leon and his assistant Shlomo Hougi are sitting under the air con, in front of the TV, in the Hougis' newly done-up living room. Second floor back, two small flats knocked together to make one big one in a housing development in Yad Eliyahu. Sitting at a table covered with a flowery oilcloth, they are nibbling peanuts, mixed nuts, salted almonds and sunflower seeds and watching a thriller. (Their wives have been relegated to the kitchen or the other room because this film is not for the faint-hearted.)

Mr Leon, thickset, bald, his eyes a dirty grey, his nose ridiculously small, like a button lost in the
middle of the moon, is remonstrating with his host during a commercial break. Believe me, Hougi, you better take back what you said, look, there's a hundred shekels on the table here says it's not the black guy did it, the dentist killed the three of them, did them in one at a time with that what's-its-name of his, the thing he puts you to sleep with before he pulls your teeth out, that's what he killed 'em with. You'll see for yourself in a minute how wrong you are, you an' your black guy, you're making a big mistake, an' it's gonna cost you a straight hundred, and just be glad we didn't make it five hundred.

Shlomo Hougi hesitates uncomfortably. Well, I'm not saying, maybe it really is the dentist who did them in, not the black, I might have misjudged him, we'll find out soon enough. What I was saying before, it was just my personal opinion of the matter. Nothing more.

A few moments later he adds in a contrite tone: Look, in Judaism it says somewhere, I think it's in Tractate Ta'anit, it says ‘God has many killers'. I heard Rabbi Janah commenting on this, he said maybe it's true that God respected Abel and his
offering, but he really preferred Cain. The proof is that Abel died young, before he had time to marry even, so it's a plain fact that the whole human race, including us, I mean the Jewish people, is descended from Cain not from Abel. No offence meant to anyone personally, of course.

Mr Leon munches a few cashews while he thinks this over, and then he asks: So what? What are you getting at?

And Shlomo Hougi replies sadly: Who? Me? What do I know? There must be loads more about this in Judaism, but personally I'm just on the bottom rung, as they say. I don't know much. Nothing at all, really. Tell me, don't you think it a pity he preferred Cain? Don't you think it would have been better for us if he'd preferred Abel? But he must have had a reason. There's nothing in the whole world that doesn't have a reason. Nothing at all. Even this moth. Even a hair in your soup. Everything there is, without exception, doesn't just testify to itself, it testifies to something else as well. Something big and terrible. In Judaism this is known as ‘mysteries'. Nobody understands them, except the great saints, in the high places among the holy and pure.

Mr Leon chortles, It's true you're a little cracked, Hougi. More than a little, in fact. Those God-merchants of yours have really messed up your head. What you're saying, it doesn't make much sense. It's not that new either. But since you've fallen into their clutches nothing you say makes any damn sense. Maybe you can explain to me the connection between Cain and Abel and a moth. Or between a hair in the soup and the great saints. You'd be better off shutting your face. That's enough now. Let's watch. The commercials have finished.

Shlomo Hougi thinks this over, and finally, with a guilty, chastened air, he admits almost in a whisper: The truth is, I don't understand either. In fact, I understand less and less. Maybe you're right, the best thing for me to do is to shut up.

*

Yuval Dahan goes out on the balcony and without turning on the light sprawls in his mother's hammock, ignoring the bats that nest in the ficus tree and the shrill note of the mosquitoes, mentally composing a letter to the Author after the literary evening at the Shunia Shor and the Seven Victims
of the Quarry Attack Cultural Centre. In his letter the youth will express disgust at the sterile show of erudition displayed by the literary critic in his talk, attempt to express in a few sentences the various emotions he has felt on reading the Author's books, and explain why he senses that the Author is more likely than anyone else in the world to understand his poems, a few of which he makes so bold as to enclose in case the Author can find half an hour to look at them and perhaps even write him a few lines.

For a few minutes he indulges in a fantasy about the Author. After all, the Author probably has sufferings of his own, not as ignoble as mine but just as painful. You can read it between the lines in all his books. Maybe, like me, he has trouble sleeping at night. Perhaps at this very minute he is roaming the streets, all alone, unable to sleep, not wanting to sleep, wandering aimlessly from street to street, struggling like me with the black hole in his chest, and asking himself if there is any point and if there isn't then why on earth?

Soon his wanderings may chance to bring him here, to Reines Street, or rather not chance,
because nothing happens by chance. And I'll go out to post this letter, and at the corner of Gordon Street we'll meet, and we'll both be very surprised at this nocturnal meeting, and he may invite me to keep him company so we can chat on the way, and so we'll talk as we walk, maybe down to the seafront and then left towards Jaffa, and he won't be in a hurry to take his leave, we'll both of us forget what time it is, because he'll discover something in me that reminds him of himself when he was young, and so we'll go on walking through the empty streets towards the Florentin Quarter or maybe to the area around Bialik Street, and we'll go on talking till morning about his books and also a bit about my poems, and also about life and death and all sorts of secret things that I could only talk about to him, not to anyone else, and about suffering in general, because I will be able to explain to him, because he'll be able to understand, he'll understand me at once, even before I've finished explaining he'll have understood everything, and maybe from tonight on there'll be some kind of personal bond between the two of us, we might become like two friends,
or like a teacher and a pupil, and so from tonight on everything in my life might be a bit different because of this meeting that's going to happen soon by chance down there, by the postbox.

*

Two or three weeks later the Author will reply briefly to Yuval Dahan or Dotan's letter.

I read your poems with interest and found them serious, original, linguistically fresh, but first of all you must learn to curb your excess of emotion and write with more distance. As if you the person writing the poems and you the suffering young man are two different people, and as though the former observes the latter coolly, distantly, even with a measure of amusement. Maybe you should try writing as though the two of you were separated by a hundred years, that is as though there were a gap of a century between the young man in the poem and the poet, between the pain he feels and the time you are writing.