A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [288]
I was so terrified and helpless that I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, so that Orna might imagine that nothing had happened, or that, if it had, it was just in a dream, in which case I was indeed guilty and disgusting, but much less than if I'd done it while I was awake.
Orna said: I've interrupted you. She wasn't laughing when she said it, but she went on to say, I'm sorry, and then she did a complicated kind of dance with her hips and said cheerfully that no, actually she was not exactly sorry, she'd enjoyed watching me, because my face had looked pained and lit up at the same time. Then she did not say anything else, she started to unbutton her dress, from the top button to the waist, and she stood in front of me so I could watch and carry on. But how could I? I closed my eyes hard and then I blinked and then I peeped at her and her happy smile begged me not to be afraid, what's wrong, it's all right, and her firm breasts also seemed to beg me. And then she got down on her knees on the rug to my right and lifted my hand off the mound in my trousers and put her own hand there instead, and then she opened and released and a trail of hard sparks like a thick rain of meteorites ran the whole length of my body, and I closed my eyes again but not before I saw her lift up and stoop, and then she lay on top of me and bent over and took my hands and guided them, there and there, and her lips touched my forehead and they touched my closed eyes, and then she reached down and inserted all of me, and instantly several soft rolls of thunder passed through me followed at once by piercing lightning, and because the hardboard partition was so thin she had to press her hand over my mouth hard and when she thought it was over and took her fingers away to let me breathe, she had to put them back again quickly because it wasn't. And after that she laughed and stroked me like a little boy and she kissed me again on my forehead and wrapped my head in her hair and I with tears in my eyes started to give her shy kisses of gratitude on her face her hair the back of her hand, and I wanted to say something but she didn't let me and covered my mouth again with her hand until I gave up.
After an hour or two she woke me and my body asked her for more, and I was full of shame and embarrassment, but she did not spare me, she whispered to me as though she was smiling, Come, take, and she whispered, Look what a little savage, and her legs were yellowy brown and there was a faint almost invisible golden down on her thighs, and after stifling my spurting cries again with her hand she pulled me to my feet and helped me button up my clothes and poured me some cold water from her earthenware jug with its white muslin cover, and stroked my head and pressed it to her breast and kissed me one last time on the tip of my nose and sent me out into the chill of the thick silence of three o'clock on an autumn morning. But when I came back the next day to say I was sorry, or to pray for a repetition of the miracle, she said: Look at him, he's as white as chalk. What's come over you, here, have a glass of water. And she sat me down on a chair and said something like: Look, there's no harm done, but from now on I want everything to be the way it was before yesterday, OK?
It was hard for me to do what she wanted, and Orna must have felt it too, and so our poetry reading