Rhyming Life and Death (7 page)

*

Walking down an unfamiliar back street in the dark the Author collides with some barbed wire that has apparently been stretched across the pavement by children, between a No Parking sign and the railings of a fence. The wire was positioned at chest height and the Author, who has been walking briskly, lets out a short but angry cry of surprise, pain and above all of outrage: it is as though someone has slapped his face in the dark. Yet somehow he feels that the slap was not unexpected, that it was definitely deserved and has even made him feel a little better.

Surely Arnold Bartok, the gaunt, bespectacled man who lost his part-time job sorting parcels in a private courier firm a few days ago, could be found some work in the accountants' office where the Author is a partner: even something quite menial, in the postroom or in maintenance. He could enjoy a small monthly wage, and in time, who knows, it may turn out that he is equipped for some other work, in accountancy or records. The Author himself is in
charge of the tax affairs of four or five middle- to large-size export companies, particularly relating to their foreign-currency earnings. Arnold Bartok would surely turn out to be an obedient, grateful and unobtrusive worker. But he wouldn't be able to curb his irritating tendency to make sarcastic remarks.

But what does Arnold Bartok do all day, now that he has lost his part-time job? How does he occupy himself in the long hours while his aged mother is snoring or reading novels in Hungarian?

Maybe he sits in a corner of the old laundry, at what used to be his father's ironing table, writing some private work about the possibility or otherwise of eternal life. One might say, he argues, that life and death came into the world together, as a dialectical pair whose members are indissolubly interdependent: say life and you've said death as well. And vice versa. The day life appeared on Earth, death appeared with it.

But this is a completely false supposition, Arnold Bartok reasons. For millions of years trillions of organisms flourished on Earth without any of them ever experiencing death. These single-cell organisms did not die, they divided themselves endlessly, one
became two, two four, four eight, and so on. Death did not exist. Only in the present age, when a different form of reproduction, sexual reproduction, appeared, did ageing and death occur.

It follows that it is not life and death that came into the world as a pair but sex and death. And since death appeared later, aeons later than life, it is surely possible to hope that it will vanish one day without life disappearing too. Hence eternal life is a logical possibility. We simply have to find a way of eliminating sex, so as to rid our world of the inevitability of death, and of so much suffering as well.

On a small piece of paper Arnold Bartok draws a vertical line. To the right of it he writes the words: ‘Eternal life. Without suffering or humiliation.' To the left of the line he writes: ‘Sex. Suffering. Decay. Ageing. Death.' Then he writes underneath the two columns: ‘But the chances are very remote.' And under these words he adds: ‘When was time created? What was there before time, what will there be afterwards? What good is time to us?' And right at the bottom: ‘The present condition is very bad.'

The Author wonders whether he would have been capable of looking after his own mother, if she were
still alive, as Arnold Bartok looks after old, paralysed Ophelia who never stops ordering him around. The details of the physical relationship between mother and son – the sweat, the chamber pot, her bare, flabby buttocks, the wiping, the incontinence pad – fascinate the Author so powerfully that he screws up his face and feels the first waves of nausea. Hastily he moves his thoughts away from Arnold Bartok's invalid mother, from his own mother, and from eternal life, and resumes his meditation on Rochele Reznik's shyness.

*

After looking around and making sure there is no one in the street, the Author selects a narrow passage between two hedges and takes a long, leisurely piss. As he does so he thinks about Ovadya Hazzam who is dying of cancer in Ichilov Hospital, with a catheter fitted back into his urethra, slowly draining a cloudy fluid into a plastic container hanging by his bed and almost overflowing, but the night nurse is not at her station, she popped out a quarter of an hour ago to get herself a decaf from the adjoining ward, just on the other side of the lifts, but she is still there because she happened to bump into the cutest of the junior
house doctors and she's chatting to him. Ovadya Hazzam, whose Buick these last few years has always been full of laughing blondes and who spent money left and right on good causes, politics and having a good time, and even though he wore a little skullcap on his head that didn't stop him going away sometimes for the weekend to a casino in Turkey with a couple of Russian divorcees or maybe three, now has nobody to hear his groans. He calls out feebly several times to the nurse, who popped out for a moment twenty minutes ago. There is no one to respond to the emergency call button, but a hoarse voice shouts at him from the next bed, Yallah, cut it out, will you, people are trying to sleep here.

*

Thinking about Ovadya Hazzam, dying there in hospital between two other dying men, both at least twenty years his senior, the Author zips up, returns to the avenue, taking care to avoid the barbed wire, and retraces his steps impatiently to the Shunia Shor and the Seven Victims of the Quarry Attack Cultural Centre.

He thinks for a moment he can make out a shadowy form sitting on the steps of the cultural
centre, waiting for him, maybe that of Yuval Dahan or Dotan, the miserable young poet who apparently has not yet given up hope of the Author and is sitting, huddled and shivering, waiting for him to return, in the middle of the night, and sit beside him on the steps, and read at least four or five of his poems by the light of the street lamp, and then the two of them can have a heart-to-heart talk, till daybreak if need be, a totally open emotional and artistic exchange between a mature, experienced writer and a struggling novice beset by suffering and humiliation to the point of suicidal thoughts, and there is not a single soul in the whole wide world who can understand him except this Author, who has so often described such suffering in his books, and even though he is a famous celebrity I can read between the lines of his books enough to know that behind the well-known public persona there lurks someone shy and lonely and even possibly sad. Just like me. In fact, he and I are twin souls and that is why he is the only person who can understand me and maybe even help me because if he can't who can?

*

The building is locked and in darkness and in the entrance there are still notices announcing the literary event that concluded about two hours ago. The cultural administrator Yerucham Shdemati has left the light on in the ground-floor office to deter burglars.

But you would have to be a very naive burglar, a real beginner, the Author says to himself with a smile, to be put off by this light that is on night after night from evening to morning in an office that you can see into from the street to satisfy yourself that there is no one there. There is not a soul in the entire Shunia Shor and the Seven Victims of the Quarry Attack Cultural Centre, apart perhaps from the shadowy figure of the boy poet shivering at the bottom of the steps, having given up all hope of your reading his poems or sitting and talking to him and asking nothing more of you than that you should notice his forlorn shadow, which may in fact be no more than the shadow of an empty packing case or a couple of broken benches. And remember his eyes, ridiculously enlarged behind his pebble glasses, and know that at this very moment, in the middle of the night, in the darkness of his bedroom which is not a real room but just a kitchen balcony closed off with plasterboard and some glass
bricks in his parents' flat in Reines Street, he is lying wide awake in the dark in his underwear, in a state of despair, thinking only of you.

*

Just across the road from the cultural centre, in Rochele Reznik's rooftop room, if that is really the room she pointed out to him when they were standing here an hour or so ago, if he hasn't got confused, between her drawn curtains, a crack of light shows.

So, apparently she sent her curtains to some cleaning company that specialises in cleaning curtains after sunset and returning them to their owners beautifully washed and ironed before the stroke of midnight.

Unless you are mistaken, and her room is the other one up there? And in fact, the whole story of her curtains going to the cleaner's may just have been meant as a hint to you. A hint that you missed, that you shouldn't go up with her? Or the contrary, that you should? And you understood nothing and missed something that might have— or maybe you didn't miss it after all? After all, her light is still on.

And suddenly the Author enters the building,
without asking himself why. He feels for the light button, taking great care this time in the dark, since one of his ribs still reminds him of the slap he got from the barbed wire earlier, and touching the place he finds that his shirt is torn in several places and that he is bleeding, and the blood on his fingers reminds him of forgotten schoolboy scraps.

Once he has managed to turn the light on in the stairwell, the Author pauses for a moment, as he always does, to examine the letter boxes at the foot of the stairs. Bilha and Shimon Perechodnik. The Arnon Family. Dr Alphonse Valero, Structural Engineer. Yaniv Schlossberg. Rami & Tami Bentolila. Caplan, Accountants. Rochele and Joey Reznik. (In careful, rounded handwriting. Is Joey Joselito? Or has she got some lodger up there? Or even a partner? Perhaps?)

There is also a big box belonging to the tenants' council (ABSOLUTELY no circulars or handbills!!!). The stairwell is rather shabby, with peeling plaster and pencil scribbles, the banisters are rusting, the door of one of the meter cupboards hangs miraculously from a single bent hinge. Passing a door marked ‘Yaniv Schlossberg lives it up here', he hears a long salvo of
bullets accompanied by whoops and cheers, and then the sound of breaking glass from the TV.

It's nearly midnight.

And you? What, may we ask, are you looking for here at this time of night? Are you entirely sane?

*

At this moment, hearing the sounds of shooting coming from Yaniv Schlossberg's flat on the first floor, the Author decides that he ought to get out of here. His feet lead him of their own accord to the cafe where he sat earlier in the evening, the cafe with Ricky the waitress, the outline of whose knickers showed through her skirt.

Is the cafe still open? Is she perhaps sitting there all alone, at a corner table, sipping a last cup of hot chocolate before locking up? She's just about to go to the toilets and change from her skirt to jeans and a blouse and slip into some comfortable sandals, and when she leaves one could offer, for example, to walk her home to protect her from the kind of men who pester pretty, attractive girls like you in the empty streets at night?

Or maybe the Author does not leave when he reaches
the first floor but persists in climbing up two more flights to Rochele Reznik's door. There he hesitates for a few moments, while the light on the stairs goes out, is relit by someone on a lower landing, and goes out again. The Author presses his ear to the door: is she still awake, or was the light he saw through the curtains merely a night light that she keeps on when she is asleep? Is she alone with her cat? Or is there a hefty young lover sleeping by her side? Which would be profoundly embarrassing. How exactly do you see yourself right now, if you don't mind my asking? As the embodiment of the nocturnal desires of a lonely woman who is almost young, a nice, pleasant girl only not particularly attractive? Or do you cast yourself as the staircase rapist they've been searching for round here for more than eighteen months? Or simply as a confused and feverish man, like Yuval Dahan the young poet, who goes out looking for inspiration for a story in the middle of the night in dark stairwells?

*

The devil now tempts our feverish Author to try the door gently. It's locked, of course.

So, what about your shy reader?

She went to sleep long ago, leaving her night light on to attract muddled moths like you.

But there is another possibility. While he quietly lowers the door handle there is a sound from inside the flat. At once he reconsiders and flees, too nervous to turn on the light on the stairs, taking them two at a time, losing his footing on the last bend, and bumping his shoulder violently on the door of the meter cupboard that was hanging miraculously by a single hinge and has now come loose and hits the banister railings with a tremendous crash, a door opens, probably that of ‘Yaniv Schlossberg lives it up here', Excuse me, would you mind telling me who you are looking for at this time of night?

Maybe he will recognise him? From pictures in the papers, or from chat shows on TV? And how can he explain? I'm sorry, I'm Mr Hyde, would you mind letting me ring Dr Jekyll urgently?

*

But it is also possible that the Author does not run away when he hears the sound inside the flat but stays rooted to the spot, in paralysed silence, outside Rochele Reznik's door. After a few moments he decides to leave a note for her, tucked between the door and the door post (or would it be better to leave it downstairs, in the letter box she shares with Joselito?). This is what the note will say: You were magnificent this evening, Rochele, and I came back later on to thank you and also to be certain that you got back safely to your ivory tower and did not fall into the hands of any witch or dragon. And, if you'll permit me, this note is also to give you a goodnight kiss. (He will sign the note only with his initial. Or better still, he won't sign it at all – what's the point?)

Or perhaps this: just at the moment when the Author turns to flee, Rochele opens the door because she was not asleep, she was sitting on her bed, deep in thought, and she noticed the slight movement of the door handle in the middle of the night, and despite her panic she hurried over to look through the peephole, and when she saw who was there she did not hesitate or wait for him to knock but opened the door at once.