Rhyming Life and Death Read Online Free PDF

he is amazed at everything: that he agreed to take part in this event, that he has not prepared for it properly, amazed at the words that are coming out of his mouth, even though as he pronounces them it is totally clear to him that he does not agree with what he is saying, and worse thanthat, the truth is he does not have the faintest shadow of an answer to the real, central questions, and he has no intrinsic interest in the things that his mouth is pouring forth, independently of him.
    Nor does he have any idea as yet why Arnold Bartok bothered to come. Was it really just so as to sit at the back of the hall, stretch out his lizard’s neck towards you and mock you with stifled sniggers? Isn’t he quite right though to scoff? the Author says to himself, as, with his warm, gushing words, he continues to captivate his audience, especially the women.
    *
    He pauses for a moment and runs his fingers through his hair, remembering the waitress, Ricky, and her first love, Charlie, the reserve goalkeeper of Bnei-Yehuda football team who used to part her lips slowly with the tip of his nose, melting her until she almost fainted, and whispered Gogog to her, and even bought her, in Eilat, a dress with sparkling silvery sequins, an evening dress like a singer’s from a hotel on the Riviera, before dumping her and taking up again with a girl called Lucy who was runner-up in the Queen of the Waves contest: men can’t help themselves, that’sjust the way they are made, but women, in Ricky’s view, are actually not much better, definitely not, women often have this thing where they act like lying cats that need to be petted, so the truth is that in any relationship there’s not much to choose between the man and the woman, they’re both pretty worthless. It’s like this: if there’s no electricity there, how on earth can they start to make a relationship? But if there is electricity then they end up getting burnt. And that’s the reason why, Ricky thinks, one way or another love affairs always end in despair. But maybe with a bit of luck I’ll manage to meet up with that Lucy? We’ll have plenty to talk about, replay some juicy episodes, have a laugh together over things that were so painful all those years ago. I ought to try to find out where she’s ended up, that Lucy, after being runner-up in the Queen of the Waves competition. Assuming she’s still alive. And assuming she’s living on her own, too. Like me. And assuming she doesn’t mind meeting up with me.
    *
    With an expression that combines loneliness, cultural sensitivity and sadness, the Author piles lie upon lie.To the questions from the audience, Why do you write etc.? he gives answers he’s already used more than once before, some of them clever, some witty or evasive. Tricks he learned from his father, the minor diplomat. By way of conclusion, he amusingly throws the ball back to the cultural administrator, Yerucham Shdemati, and repays him in his own coin with some lines from
Rhyming Life and Death
:
    Many a wise man lacks for sense,
    Many a fool has a heart of gold,
    Happiness often ends in tears,
    But what’s inside can never be told.
    Then he is surrounded by his readers. Nonchalantly he signs copies of his latest book, accepts praise with an air of pensive modesty, occasionally smiling a smile that looks like a stifled yawn, while attempting to assuage the ire of Dr Pessach Yikhat, the broad-jawed, cantankerous educator with bushy grey eyebrows and hair sprouting out of his ears and nostrils, assuring him that contemporary literature does not all negate the State: condemning the injustices of the occupation, satirising corruption andwidespread brutishness, exposing decadence and stupidity, these things do not amount to negating the State, often, in fact, they come from a broken heart. Even if the enemies of Israel sometimes exploit things that are written here for their own ends, that definitely