Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz Page B

one moan from another, in his skin rather than in his ears he feels the minute variations in her breathing, he feels the ripples in her skin, as though he has been transformed into a delicate seismograph that intercepts and instantly deciphers her body’s reactions, translating what he has discovered into skilful, precise navigation, anticipating and cautiously avoiding every sandbank, steering clear of each underwater reef, smoothing any roughness except that slow roughness that comes and goes and comes and turns and goes and comes and strokes and goes and makes her whole body quiver. Meanwhile her moaning has turned into little sobs and sighs and cries of surprise, and suddenly his lips tell him that her cheeks are covered in tears. Every sound, every breath or shudder, every wave passing over her skin, helps his fingers on their artful way to steer her home.
    And the higher the waves of her pleasure, the more his own pride swells, and the more he enjoys postponing his own satisfaction, delaying it untilher stifled sobs are all released – until the rising flood sweeps her like a paper boat over the rapids. (Despite his noble aspirations, and for all his devotion to duty, from time to time he does snatch a hasty earnest of pleasures to come by rubbing his tense body along her thigh with a friction that slakes and yet sharpens his lust – before focusing once more on his precise and self-imposed steering.)
    *
    Like a musician now, totally absorbed in the movement of his fingertips over the keys, he no longer recalls how just a few hours earlier he found this shy squirrel pleasant and almost pretty but not attractive. His hands are drawn to discover her breasts, the breasts of a twelve-year-old girl, under her night dress, and this time she does not stop him, immersed as she is in her own pleasure; and when he cups them in his hands he is filled with compassion and desire and brings his tongue to her nipples and takes each nipple in turn between his lips, delicately courting them with his tongue, while his fingers play on her labia and the secret petals around a bud so full and firm it almost resembles a thirdnipple. His lips and tongue follow his fingers’ lead. And she, like a baby, suddenly thrusts her thumb into her mouth and begins sucking on it loudly, until her back suddenly arches like a stretched bow, and a moment later, when she has sunk back onto the mattress, a long, soft cry bursts as though from the bottom of the sea, expressing not only pleasure but astonishment, as though it were the first time in her life she had reached that landing stage, as if even in her wildest dreams she never imagined what was waiting for her here.
    And suddenly she starts to weep aloud, and says to him, Look, I’m crying. And this girlish weeping makes her bury her little rodent’s face in his shoulder and whisper: I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m still a little bit shy with you.
    She starts stroking him on his cheek and his brow, long, slow caresses that silence her weeping and calm her down. But two or three minutes later she suddenly sits up in bed and raises her arms in the air as she pulls her cotton nightdress, which was rolled up round her hips, over her head, now hidden from view for a moment, and she says, Now I don’t care if you see me. And she lies down on her backagain, open and waiting for him. But he merely lies on his side, in a foetal position, so as to hide the failure that overtook him the moment she relaxed after her own pleasure. He fears she may be upset by it, or that she may blame herself.
    But she, summoning up courage she had no idea she was capable of, surprises herself and him by wetting her fingers and reaching out hesitantly to his penis. To and fro she slides her fingers in a moist caress such as she never dared administer either to her first boyfriend when she was young, twelve years ago, or to the married man five and a half years later.
    This caress reveals to