Rhyming Life and Death

by Amos Oz

  *

  Well, well, well, welcome, my young friend, welcome, we’ve been waiting for you here like a bridegroom, hee-hee, you are, how can I put it, a little on the late side. What? You were held up in a cafe? Well, it’s not the end of the world, everyone’s always late here. Maybe you’ve heard the joke about the circumciser who was late for a circumcision? No. I’ll tell you. Later. It’s rather a long story, which by the way you can also find in Druyanov, you must be familiar with Druyanov? No? How so? And you a Jewish writer! Druyanov, Rabbi Alter Druyanov, the author of The Book of Jokes and Witticisms! But it’s a veritable gold mine for any Jewish writer! Well, never mind. They’re all out there waiting impatiently for us. We’ll talk about Druyanov later. Definitely. But don’t forget to remind me, I have a little thought of my own about the essential difference between a joke and a witticism. All right then, later. After all, you were a little late, my friend, never mind, it’s not the end of the world, only we’d begun to fear that the muses had driven us out of your mind. But we didn’t give up hope! No indeed, my dear friend! We are made of sterner stuff!

  The Author, in his turn, apologises for his lateness and murmurs a little witticism of his own: You could always have started without me. Hee-hee-hee. Without you! That’s funny! The old culture-monger bursts out laughing, and his body odour is like the smell of fruit that is past its sell-by date. But, with all due respect, you could have started without us, too, in some other place. And by the way (both are out of breath as they climb the stairs), what do you think those American foxes will get out of their Arab friends? Will they manage to buy us a little peace and quiet at last? At least for a year or two?

  He answers his own question: They won’t get anything out of it. They’ll only bring us more troubles. As if the old ones weren’t bad enough! Some juice? Lemonade? Maybe something fizzy? Be quick, though. Here, I’ll choose for you – now, let’s hope you’ll give us a fizzy evening.

  Drink up, in your own time, and then we’ll go out there and take on our audience. They could do with shaking up, in my humble opinion. You can be as provocative as you like, my dear. Don’t spare them! Right, if you’ve finished your drink, let’s be getting out there. They must be cursing us by now.

  And so the two of them, the Author and the old culture-merchant, step out of the wings in Indian file and walk towards the front of the stage, looking as solemn and serious as a pair of bailiffs. A rapid flurry of whispers runs round the hall, perhaps because the Author is wearing a summer shirt, khaki shorts and sandals, and looks less like an artist than a kibbutznik who’s been sent into town to organise a peace rally, or like a reserve army officer in mufti. They say that in his private life he’s actually quite a simple guy, on a personal level, I mean, someone like you and me, and look what complicated books he comes up with. He probably had a difficult childhood. It would be interesting to know what he’s like to live with. Not that easy, to judge by his books. They say he’s divorced? Isn’t he? Not just once but twice? You can tell from his books: there’s no smoke without fire. Anyway, he looks completely different in his pictures. He’s aged quite a bit. How old do you think he is? He must be forty-five or so, don’t you think? Forty-five at the outside. You want to know the truth, I would have sworn, literally sworn, that he was taller than he is.

  *

  They put the Author in the middle, between the professional reader, who will read passages aloud from the Author’s work, and the literary critic. They shake hands. They nod. Rochele Reznik withdraws her fingers from his clasp quickly, as though she’s been burnt. The Author makes a mental note that the handshake made her slim neck blush more than her cheeks.

  The cultural organiser gets to his feet heavily, tries out the microphone, and clears his throat. He starts by welcoming the very mixed and multi-generational audience gathered here this evening, he apologises for the air conditioning not working, quipping that every cloud has a silver lining – the breakdown means that for once we don’t have to put up with its infernal humming and so this time we will not miss one word.

  Then he lists the programme for this evening, promising the event will conclude with questions and answers, in the form of a no-holds-barred discussion with our guest whom, he declares gleefully, it is truly superfluous to introduce, despite which, to justify his presence, he spends the next ten minutes relating the Author’s life story and listing all his books (erroneously attributing to his paternity a famous novel by another writer), and concludes his introductory remarks by repeating to the audience in his high-spirited way the Author’s witticism on the staircase just now: our bridegroom of this evening was surprised to learn we had waited for him and not begun the programme without him, hee-hee! Apropos of which it is not inappropriate to quote the well-known lines of the veteran poet Tsefania Beit-Halachmi, from his book Rhyming Life and Death, which goes something like this:

  You’ll always find them side by side:

  never a groom without a bride.

  Yes. And now, with your permission, we shall proceed to this evening’s programme. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the monthly meeting of the Good Book Club at the refurbished Shunia Shor and the Seven Victims of the Quarry Attack Cultural Centre. I am very pleased to be able to say that the Good Book Club has been meeting here on a regular basis every month for the past eleven and a half years.

  *

  The Author, listening to this, decides not to smile. He appears thoughtful, faintly sad. The audience’s eyes are on him, but he, apparently paying no attention, deliberately fixes his gaze on the picture of the Labour leader Berl Katznelson on the wall to the right of the dais. Katznelson looks crafty but kindly, as though he has just pulled off a coup by devious means known only to himself. For now he is a king. A lord, even. And so, belatedly, the Author smiles that faint smile the audience has been waiting for since the cultural commissar’s opening speech.

  At that moment the Author has a feeling that somebody, somewhere in the furthest recesses of the hall, has sniggered offensively. He scans the hall: nothing. There’s no one who looks as though he has just laughed. His ears must have deceived him. So he rests his elbows on the table and his chin on his fists, and affects a modest, faraway look while the literary critic, his freckled bald pate sparkling under the ceiling lights, stands and stridently draws comparisons and parallels between the Author’s latest book and works by various contemporaries and writers of previous generations, tracing influences, identifying sources of inspiration, revealing hidden textures, indicating various levels and planes, pointing up unexpected connections, plunging to the lowest depths of the story, digging and burrowing in the ocean floor, then rising breathlessly to the surface to display to the world the treasures he has managed to bring up with him, then diving once more and rising to the surface again to disclose concealed messages, to reveal the ploys and devices the Author has used, such as the strategy of the double negative, the snares and delusions he has concealed in the lower layers of his plot, and then on to the problem of credibility and reliability, which raises the fundamental question of narrative authority, and, in turn, the dimension of social irony and the elusive boundary between this and self-irony, which brings us to questions about the limits of legitimacy, the classification of conventions, the intertextual context, from where it is but a short step to the formalist aspects, the pseudo-archaic aspects, and the contemporary political aspects. Are these various latent aspects legitimate? Are they even coherent? Are they synchronic or diachronic? Disharmonic or polyphonic? Eventually the critic weighs anchor and sails away boldly onto the open seas of wide-ranging meanings, but not before impressing his listeners with a nimble detour around the fundamental question, what is the actual meaning of the term ‘meaning’ in relation to artistic creation in general and literary creation in particular, and of course in relation to the work we are considering this evening?

  In vain.

  By this time the Author is totally immersed in his usual tricks. Resting the palms of his ha
nds on his temples (a gesture learned from his father, a minor diplomat), he stops listening and starts looking around the hall, to steal an embittered expression here, a lascivious one there, or a miserable one, to catch a pair of legs just as they uncross and are about to cross themselves again, to seize a mop of unruly white hair, or a passionately expectant face, to spot a rivulet of perspiration running down deep into the crack between a pair of breasts. Over there, in the distance, next to the emergency exit, he can make out a pale, narrow, intelligent-looking face, like that of a student who has dropped out of a yeshiva and become, let us say, an enemy of the established social order. And here, in the third row, a suntanned girl with nice breasts, in a sleeveless green top, is absent-mindedly stroking her shoulder with her long fingers.

  It is as though he were picking their pockets while the audience is immersed in the byways of his writing with the literary expert as their guide.

  *

  In the front, over there, a broad-faced, heavily built woman is sitting with her vein-lined legs wide apart, she has long ago abandoned any attempt at dieting, beauty is a delusion after all, she has given up caring about her appearance and determined to ascend to higher spheres. She does not take her eyes off the speaker, the literary expert, for a moment, her lips are parted with the sweetness of the cultural experience she is undergoing.

  Almost in a straight line behind her a boy of about sixteen is moving restlessly on his chair; he looks unhappy, perhaps he is a budding poet, his face is pimply and his untidy hair looks like dusty steel wool. The torments of his age and the burden of his nightly practices have etched a tearful look on his face, and through his pebble lenses he loves this Author de profundis, secretly and passionately: my suffering is your suffering, your soul is my soul, you are the only one who can understand, for I am the soul that pines in solitude among the pages of your books.

  *

  On the other side of the hall from the boy sits a stocky figure with the distinct look of a trade-union hack, who ten or fifteen years ago was probably still an idealistic teacher in an old school in a working-class suburb now gentrified, perhaps even the retired deputy head of the regional educational department. His jawline looks squashed, his salt-and-pepper eyebrows are wild and bushy, and a cockroach-shaped birthmark nestles on his upper lip, just beneath his right nostril. The Author imagines that before the end of the session we shall have an opportunity to hear from this stout fellow a summary of his views: it is all but certain that he has come here this evening not to broaden his horizons or to enjoy himself but specifically so that he can rise to his feet after the speakers have had their say, thump on the table, and express once and for all his negative opinion of what is called ‘contemporary Hebrew literature’, which contains nothing at all of what is needed at the present time, in the early 1980s, but unfortunately is crammed full of everything that we have no need of whatsoever.

  *

  The Author, for his part, decides to name the old teacher Dr Pessach Yikhat. The waitress at the café he has called Ricky. The gangster’s henchman will continue to be Mr Leon while the name Shlomo Hougi still suits his stooping sidekick. The budding poet will be Yuval Dahan, but when he timidly sends his first poems to a literary editor he will sign himself Yuval Dotan. The culture-thirsty woman will be called Miriam Nehorait (the kids on her estate call her Mira the Horror). The story will be set in an old building with peeling walls, in Reines Street in Tel Aviv. Slowly a frail bond will be established between Miriam Nehorait and the bespectacled boy. One morning he will be sent to her flat on an errand by his mother. He will be treated to a glass of juice and two home-made biscuits but will politely decline a third one and will also refuse an apple. As he leaves he will mumble confusedly that no, he doesn’t play an instrument and that yes, he does sometimes write a bit. Nothing much. Just odd efforts.

  He turns up again a couple of days later, as she has invited him to show her his poems, which she finds not in the least immature, on the contrary, they have an emotional depth, a richness of language, an aesthetic refinement, and an immense love of humanity and of nature. And this time the boy does accept an apple, which she peels for him, as well as three biscuits and some juice.

  A week later Yuval knocks on her door again. The following days too. Miriam Nehorait makes her sweet, sticky fruit compote for him, and he shyly hands her a gift he has bought, a fossilised snail imprisoned in a lump of pale blue glass. On the following evenings she occasionally touches his arm or his shoulder lightly while they talk. From surprise or else maternal tenderness she overlooks his hand that once – and once only – climbs awkwardly, almost by accident, up her dress to rest for the space of three or four breaths, as though fainting, on her breast. It is at that very moment that a neighbour, Lisaveta Kunitsin, happens to look through her kitchen window, and so malicious gossip snuffs out something that hardly happened, and it all ends in disgrace. Miriam Nehorait goes on stewing her fruit compote for him, as sweet as jam and as sticky as glue, she lets it cool and keeps it in the refrigerator for him, but the young Yuval Dotan never returns to her flat, except in his poems and his dreams, and in his murky nocturnal fantasies, on account of which he makes up his mind that there is no reason to go on living, but he postpones the act until after this literary evening because he pins some vague hope on a meeting with the Author who will understand his affliction and will surely want to stretch out a friendly hand, and, who knows, may even invite him to his home, will be impressed by his poems, and after a while, when acquaintance has ripened into friendship and friendship has become a spiritual bond – at this point the fantasy becomes almost more miraculous and pleasurable than the boy can bear – the Author may open the doors of the world of literature to him. A wonderful, glittering world, a world that will eventually offer a dizzying recompense for the poet’s suffering, rapt applause and the admiration of daintily swooning girls and the love of mature women burning to lavish on you everything you have touched in your dreams and things that even in your dreams you have not seen.

  *

  It might make sense to tell the story in the first person, from the point of view of one of the neighbours, Yerucham Shdemati, for example, the rotund cultural administrator who introduced you this evening and quoted the couplet from Rhyming Life and Death by Tsefania Beit-Halachmi.

  You’ll always find them side by side:

  never a groom without a bride.

  It’s an airless summer evening, and Yerucham is relaxing in the dark, tired and sweaty, his ruddy face criss-crossed unhealthily by blue veins, sitting on a shabby easy chair on the balcony of his two-roomed flat in a workers’ housing development, with his swollen feet soaking in a bowl of cold water, casting his mind over the few memories he has left of his mother, who died in Kharkov sixty-six years ago, when he was only six (her name, like that of the gossipy neighbour, was Lisaveta). Right underneath his balcony a whispered conversation is going on. He ought to get up and go indoors at once, he has no right, no business, to eavesdrop on what they are saying to each other, but it is too late, because if he gets up now he will disturb the couple and embarrass himself. With no decent way out, Yerucham Shdemati goes on sitting uncomfortably on his balcony, but decides for the sake of decency to cover his ears with his thick hands. However, before doing so, he leans over the balcony and recognises the silhouette of Yuval Dahan, his neighbours’ shy teenage son, and the whispered lilt of Miriam Nehorait, which he cannot mistake because once, many years ago, on the night the Soviets sent the first sputnik into space, et cetera.

  *

  It might be possible to invest in the figure of the veteran cultural administrator one or two traits taken from the literary critic (who right now is expounding the paradox of changing points of view in the work): for example, he could contribute the semicircle of white hair that, Ben-Gurion fashion, adorns the latter’s freckled head; his buzzing, rebarbative presence, like a swarm of angry bees; perhaps even his triumphal delivery, like someone whose argument has just been conc
lusively rebutted but who, politely reining in his anger, does not give an inch but stuns his assailants with a doubly decisive riposte sealed with a courteous sting in its tail. The Author is inclined to give the lecturer twenty years as a widower and an only daughter, named Aya, who after perversely finding religion has married a settler from Elon Moreh in the West Bank. The name that suits him best is Yakir Bar-Orian (Zhitomirski). Such are the Author’s peccadillos while Bar-Orian reaches his peroration, in which he presents the work before us as a trap, as a hermetically sealed chamber of mirrors with no door or window. Just at this point a snigger is heard again in some corner of the hall, a strangled laugh full of mockery and despair, disturbing the Author and causing him to lose the thread of his subversive thoughts. Suddenly he is dying for a cigarette.

  *

  How about the poet Tsefania Beit-Halachmi, from whose book Rhyming Life and Death the cultural administrator in his opening remarks cited the couplet ‘You’ll always find them side by side: / never a groom without a bride’? Is he still alive? It is years now since his verse stopped appearing in literary supplements and magazines. His very name is forgotten, except perhaps by a few residents of old people’s homes. Yet once, when the Author was young, his poems were quoted at every ceremony, every celebration or public meeting.