Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz Page B

decline in the status of workers to the general infantilisation of culture in Israel and worldwide, there is a constantly gushing geyser of jollity, a Gulf Stream of cheery warmth and kind-heartedness. Even when he tries to raise his voice threateningly and burst into a wounded roar, his face still beams optimistically with a tireless enthusiasm.
    Yerucham Shdemati always greets his brother’s granddaughter with a fixed riddle or joke: Tell me, my little
krasavitsa
, what is it that goes around with its baby in its pocket? Is it a
kan
garoo? Or is it a
can’t
garoo? Or maybe it’s a
shan’t
garoo? Which is it? Hee-hee! (He completely overlooks the fact that his great-niece is no longer a small child, in fact she’s fourteen and a half.) So as to maintain this outward appearance of being jolly, dynamic and positive (in the trade-unionist sense of the term), Yerucham Shdemati hides both from his great-niece and from Miriam Nehorait the fact that he is suffering from a blood disease from which, according to his brother the doctor, his chances of recovery are remote.
    *
    By now it is three o’clock in the morning. And there may be another correction to make, the Author says to himself as he crosses an empty street on the red light, peering to left and right and seeing that there is no one around and that the single street lamp is flickering as though wondering if there is any point. I could, for example (let’s say, at nine o’clock tomorrow morning) bring Charlie – Charlie who was once the reserve goalkeeper of Bnei-Yehuda football team, he was the boyfriend of Lucy, the runner-up in the Queen of the Waves contest, then he was the boyfriend of Ricky, the waitress, then he was Lucy’s boyfriend again, and he spent a delicious week with each of them at his uncle’s hotel in Eilat, and now he has a family and a factory in Holon manufacturing solar water heaters that he even exports to Cyprus – at nine o’clock tomorrow morning I could bring him to Ichilov Hospital for a surprise visit to Ovadya Hazzam.
    But why should he come alone? He’ll be scared to come on his own. The phrase ‘terminally ill’ terrifies him. Better for him to come with his wife. No, not his wife: let him come with Lucy, his friend from the good old days, the one he used to call affectionately Gogog.
    Not with Lucy. With Ricky. This morning you can see through her summer blouse that she isn’t wearing a bra, and you can see two dark puppy dogs that nuzzle her blouse with every step. Charlie used to call her Gogog, too.
    In fact, why doesn’t Charlie come with both of them?
    Ovadya Hazzam opens his eyes suddenly and tries to wave his hand. He is too weak, and the skeletal hand falls back on the sheet, and he murmurs, Why have you come, honestly, you didn’t have to. Then he murmurs something else but so faintly that Charlie and the girls can’t understand. The patient in the next bed has to translate for them: He wants you to bring some chairs from over there by the window. He just wants you to sit down.
    Charlie is suddenly smitten with fear mixed with pity and a slight disgust and shame for the disgust, and he tries to talk cheerfully, too loudly, as though the man who is dying of cancer is also suffering from partial deafness. Well, it’s like this. He’s come with the two girls to get Ovadya out of here.
Yallah
, Charlie shouts kind-heartedly, come on, you old poseur, you’ve been cooped up here long enough,come out for a bit, we’ll show you off out there like a young lion, we’ll have the party to end all parties. Here, lean on these two cuties I’ve brought you, and off we go. What were you thinking, that we’d just come to visit? Nah, we didn’t come to visit, we came to get you outta here. The girls will dress you and you’ll soon be out, and meantime you can decide which one of the two you prefer, compliments of Charlie, or maybe