Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz

being upset or repelled, as though her solitary dreams have prepared her for this moment, she holds him tight and squeezes her body to his, sending delightful sailing boats tacking to and fro across the ocean of his back. With her fingertips she sends foam-flecked waves scurrying over his skin.
    Standing beside her single bed, it is not difficult for them to move from the vertical to the horizontal and soon they find themselves lying together on their sides (because the bed is so narrow). Just then something indescribable happens, a simple movement intended to make them more comfortable, a movement that they both happen to make at the very same moment, that they both happen to make inperfect harmony, like a pair of dancers bringing off a precisely synchronised move after a hundred rehearsals, and this wonderful, unimaginably perfect movement makes them both giggle and thus removes any lingering embarrassment or tension from their path while heightening their excitement. And because the bed is so narrow they have to go on lying on their sides holding each other tight and they somehow have to coordinate each move, like a
pas de deux
. And apart from a single meeting between an elbow and a shoulder the dance is perfectly fluid, which amazes him because he imagined that she was not particularly experienced and he does not consider himself exactly a virtuoso. When his hand moves down to her thigh she whispers: Just a moment, let me go and shut Joselito in the shower, he makes me feel awkward. And he whispers back: Let him watch us, who cares if he gets jealous? He may pick up a trick or two.
    He hears her talking to the cat in a warm, affectionate voice, before she shuts the bathroom door. Then she is back in bed, lying on her side, holding and stroking him, neither of them sure what to do next, until his fingers stray over her breasts throughthe cotton nightdress, and she enfolds his hand in hers and guides it away from her small breasts that have always caused her embarrassment, and as though to compensate him she moves it down to rest on her belly.
    Recovering the urge to speak he says in a muffled voice, Listen, Rochele, but he gives up when she stops his lips. Instead he kisses her forehead, her temples, the corners of her eyes, beneath her ears, in the hollows of her neck, where it curves down to meet her shoulders, and where the touch of his lips tickles her slightly. These kisses are designed to bribe her or distract her attention from the slow, stealthy progress of his hand, which does not rest on her belly where it has been placed but is creeping steadily southwards. But Rochele stops him: Wait for me a moment, she says, I’m still a bit scared. And he stops obediently and whispers: You’ll be surprised, little squirrel, but I’m a bit scared myself. It’s not just you.
    And even though he does not consider that there is the slightest resemblance between her shy apprehension and his own fear of failure, in fact the two fears are rather similar. She probably sees him as an experienced lover who is bound to find whatever heruntaught body can offer him disappointingly bland, while he, as usual, is afraid that his desire will abandon him without prior warning, as has already happened to him several times, and then what will she think of him? Or of herself? What will she make of him bursting into her home at midnight, full of passion, only for it to turn out that his ardour was no more than posturing and deception? What will she think when she finds out that the man she imagined to be skilled and practised is actually no more virile than an overexcited youngster liable to shrivel up completely?
    And indeed, no sooner does this fear enter his mind than it becomes a reality. After holding her tightly to him now he has to ease her body away to prevent her noticing what is missing.
    Just a moment ago he was worried that she might become aware of his erection; now he has the opposite anxiety, that she may become