Free Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz

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 ofbullets 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 reachesthe 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?
    Many a wise man lacks for sense,
    Etc., etc., etc.
    *
    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