Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories (11 page)

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Authors: Etgar Keret,Nathan Englander,Miriam Shlesinger,Sondra Silverston

BOOK: Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories

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Three of the guys she dated tried to commit suicide. She said that sadly but with a little bit of pride too. One of them even succeeded, jumped off the roof of the university humanities building and smashed his insides into thousands of pieces. On the outside he looked whole, even serene. She didn’t get to the university that day but friends told her. Sometimes, when she’s home alone, she can actually feel him there in the living room with her, looking at her, and when that happens, it’s scary for a minute, but it makes her happy too. Because she knows she’s not completely alone. As for me, she really likes me. Likes but isn’t attracted. And that makes her sad, as sad as it makes me, maybe even more. Because she’d really like to be attracted to someone like me. Someone smart, someone gentle, someone who really loves her. She’s been having an affair for a year with an older art dealer. He’s married, doesn’t plan to leave his wife, it’s not even an option. He’s someone she’s actually attracted to. It’s cruel. Cruel for me and cruel for her. Life would be much simpler is she were attracted to me.

She lets me touch her. Sometimes, when her back hurts, she even asks me to. When I massage her muscles she closes her eyes and smiles. “That feels good,” she says, “really good.” Once we even had sex. In retrospect, it was a mistake, she says. Some part of her wanted so much for it to work that she ignored her senses. My smell, my body, something between us, just didn’t click. She’s been a psych major for four years now and she still can’t explain it. How her mind wants to so much but her body just won’t go along with it. Thinking about that night we went to bed together makes her sad. Lots of things make her sad. She’s an only child. She spent a large part of her childhood alone. Her dad got sick, then was dying, then died. There was no brother to understand her, to console her. I’m the closest thing she has to a brother. Me and Kuti, that’s the name of the guy who jumped off the roof of Humanities. She can sit and talk to me for hours about anything. She can sleep in the same bed with me, see me naked, be naked around me. Nothing between us embarrasses her. Not even when I masturbate next to her. Even though it stains the sheets and makes her sad. Makes her sad that she can’t love me, but if it takes the edge off it for me, then she has no problem washing out the stains.

She and her dad were close before he died. She and Kuti were close too: He was in love with her. I’m the only guy close to her who’s still alive. In the end, I’ll start going out with another girl and she’ll remain alone. It’s bound to happen, she knows. And when it does, she’ll be sad. Sad for herself, but also happy for me, that I found love. After I come, she strokes my face and says that even though it’s sad, it’s also flattering to her. Flattering that of all the girls in the world, she’s the only one I think about when I masturbate. That art dealer she’s sleeping with, he’s hairy and shorter than me, but is he ever sexy. He served under Netanyahu in the army, and they’ve been in touch ever since. Real friends. Sometimes, when the art dealer comes to see her, he tells his wife he’s going to Bibi’s. Once she bumped into him and his wife in the mall. They were standing a few feet away from each other; she gave him a small, secret smile and he ignored her. His eyes were on her but they were completely blank, as if she were nothing. As if she were empty air. And she understood that he couldn’t smile back with his wife standing right there, or say anything to her, but even so, there was something very hurtful about it. She stood there by herself next to the pay phones and started to cry. That was the same night she slept with me. In retrospect, it was a mistake.

Four of the guys she dated tried to commit suicide. Two even succeeded. And they were the ones she cared about most. They were close to her, very close, like real brothers. Sometimes when she’s home alone she can actually feel us, Kuti and me, in the living room with her, looking at her. And when that happens, it’s scary but it makes her happy too. Because she knows she’s not completely alone.

ONE STEP BEYOND

Killers for hire, they’re like wildflowers. They pop up in more species than you can name. I used to know one who called himself Maximillian Sherman, though I’m sure he had other aliases too. Max was one of those top-tier, high-end sorts of killers. Classy. The type that seals a deal maybe once or twice a year. And with the price he got per scalp, he didn’t need to sign on for more.

My man Maximillian had gone vegetarian at the age of fourteen. He told me it was for reasons of conscience. He’d also adopted a kid from Darfur—a boy called Nuri. Max never once met the kid, but he’d write him long letters, and then Nuri would write him back and shove some photos in the envelope for good measure. What I’m trying to say is, Maximillian was a compassionate killer. He wouldn’t murder children. Also, he had a problem with old ladies. That kind of high-mindedness cost him a lot of money over the course of his career. A whole lot of money.

So there’s Maximillian, and then there’s me. And that’s what’s lovely about this world of ours, that it’s such a rich tapestry. I don’t sound all polished like Maximillian. And you won’t ever catch me with my nose buried in some scientific paper about toxins that can’t be traced in the blood. But, in contrast to Mr. Sherman, I
am
willing to butcher an old lady. I’ll kill children by the pound. And I’ll do it without stuttering or blinking, and at no extra charge.

My lawyer says that’s exactly why they stuck me with the death penalty. Today, he says, it’s not like it used to be. In the old days folks preferred a public hanging over a good meal. These days people have lost their taste for killing murderers. It makes them sick to their stomachs, makes them feel bad about themselves. But child-killers? Those they still go after with gusto. Maybe you can make sense of it. As far as I can tell, a life is a life. And Maximillian Sherman and my righteous jurors can twist up their faces until the cows come home, but taking the life of a bulimic twenty-six-year-old student majoring in gender studies, or a sixty-eight-year-old limousine driver who fancies a bit of poetry on the side, that’s no more or less all right than snuffing out the life of a runny-nosed three-year-old. Prosecutors love to split hairs over this. They love to mess with your head, talking about purity and helplessness. But a life is a life. And as a guy who’s stood over plenty of corrupt lawyers and dirty politicians in his day, I’ve got to stress that at the appointed moment, the instant that the body gives a flutter and the eyes flip in their holes—right then, everyone is innocent and everyone helpless, not a lick of difference. But go and explain that to some half-deaf retired jurist from Miami whose experience of loss—apart from a husband she couldn’t much stand—was nursing a pet hamster named Charlie as he succumbed to a case of cancer in his tiny-tiny colon.

In court they alleged that I am a hater of children. Maybe there’s something to that. They dug up an old incident wherein I murdered a set of twins that weren’t in the contract. It wasn’t pro bono or anything, they just got caught up in the mix. And it’s not that I’ve got any problem with kids when it comes to, say, their outward appearance. Because kids—in appearance—are actually pretty sweet. Like people, but small. They remind me of those mini cans of soda and eensy-weensy boxes of cereal that they used to hand out on planes. But behaviorwise? I’m sorry. I’m not exactly a fan of their little tantrums and breakdowns, the hysterics on the floor in the middle of the shopping mall. All that screeching, with the Daddy-should-go and I-don’t-love-Mommy—and all because of some shitty two-dollar toy that, even if you buy it for them, won’t get played with for more than a minute. I even hate the whole bedtime-story bit. It’s not just the awkward situation where you’re forced to lie next to them in their little uncomfortable beds, or that emotional blackmail of theirs. And, trust me, they don’t hold back, they’ll roll you over a barrel to get another story out of you; but, for me, the worst part is the stories themselves. Always precious, with sweet woodsy creatures stripped of their fangs and claws; illustrated lies about worlds without evil, places more boring than death. And if we’re back on the subject of death: my lawyer thinks we can appeal the sentence. Not that it’ll help. But making sure this whole performance reaches a higher court would buy us some time. I told him I’m not interested. Between us, what would I get from that little slice of living? More push-ups in a six-by-nine cell? More college basketball and crappy reality TV? If the only thing I’ve got coming down the pipeline is a needle full of poison, let them stick me now and move on. Let’s not drag our feet.

When I was a kid, my father was always yammering on about heaven. He talked about it so much that he completely lost sight of who, in this world, my mother was fucking behind his back. If my father’s take on the world to come is right, then it’ll be anything but boring to be there. He was Jewish, my father. But in prison, when they ask me, I request a priest. Somehow, those Christians just seem a little less abstract to me. And in my situation, the philosophical angle isn’t exactly relevant. What’s important right now is the practical. That I’ll end up in hell is a given, and the more information I manage to draw out of the priest, the better prepared I’ll be when I get there. I’m speaking from experience when I tell you there’s no place where crushing a kneecap or caving in a skull won’t increase your social standing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a reform school in Georgia, basic training in the Marines, or a closed prison wing in Bangkok. The wisdom is in being able to identify on who, exactly, to crush what. And this is precisely where the priest was supposed to help. In retrospect, I see I could’ve requested a rabbi or a qadi or even a mute Hindu baba, because that chatterbox priest hasn’t helped at all. He looks exactly like a Japanese tourist and must know it, because the first thing he rushes to tell me is that he’s already a fourth-generation American, which is more than you can say for me. The priest says that hell is completely personal. Exactly like heaven. And in the end, everyone gets the hell or the heaven he deserves. Still, I won’t give up. Who’s in charge there? I ask him. How does it work? Is there any history of people that manage to escape? But he won’t answer, just nods his head up and down like those dogs you stick on the dashboard. By the third time he asks me to take confession, I can’t stand it anymore and I pop him real good. My hands and my legs are restrained when I do it, so I’ve got to use my head. The noggin is more than enough. I don’t know what materials they use to build Japanese priests nowadays, but mine came apart in an instant.

The guards that separate us beat me something serious: kicking, and clubbing, landing punches to the head. They act as if they’re trying to subdue me, but they’re just beating me silly for the hell of it. I understand them. It’s fun to hit. The truth? I enjoyed that head butt to the priest more than the steak and fries they gave me for my last meal, and that prison steak wasn’t half-bad. It’s great fun to hit—and I can only imagine what violence awaits me on the far side of my shot of poison. I promise you that as much as it will be unpleasant for me in hell, it’ll be worse for the son of a bitch standing within reach. And it won’t matter to me if the guy’s a run-of-the-mill sinner, or a demon, or Satan himself. That bleeding Japanese priest got my appetite going.

The needle hurts. They definitely could’ve found one that didn’t, those self-righteous puritans, but they chose one with sting. They do it to punish.

While I’m dying, I remember everyone I killed. I see the expressions that spread over their faces right before their souls escaped through their ears. It’s possible that they’ll all be waiting there, seething, on the other side. Right then I feel one final, massive spasm take over my body, like someone’s just closed a fist tight around my heart. My victims? Let them wait for me. I hope they’re there! It’ll be a pleasure to kill them all again.

I open my eyes. There’s high green grass around me, like in the jungle. Somehow I imagined a hell more basement-like, all dark and dungeony. But here everything’s green and the sun is high in the sky and dazzling. I forge a path forward, searching the ground for something I can use as a weapon: a stick, a stone, a sharpened branch. There’s nothing. Nothing around me but tall grass and damp ground. That’s when I notice a pair of giant human legs nearby. Whoever he is, he’s eight times my size—and with me completely unarmed. I’ll need to find his weak spots: knee, nuts, windpipe. I’ll need to hit hard and hit fast and pray that it works. That’s when the giant bends down. He’s more agile than I expected. He plucks me into the air with force, and his mouth opens. Here you are, he says, and he holds me against his chest. Here you are, my sweet little bear. You know I love you more than anything in the world! I try to take advantage of our proximity, try to bite him on the neck, to shove a finger in his eye. I want to, but my body doesn’t listen. It moves against my wishes, and there I am, hugging him back. Then it’s the lips moving, beyond my control. They part and they whisper, I love you too, Christopher Robin. I love you more than anyone in the world.

BIG BLUE BUS

Some children throw themselves on the floor and have a tantrum. They cry and flail their arms and squirm till their faces turn red and sweaty and the saliva and mucus that drip out of their mouths and their noses start to stain the gray asphalt of the sidewalk. Be grateful he’s not one of those.

Gilad clung to that thought in an attempt to calm himself. That thought and slow breathing. And it helped. On the sidewalk beside him was little Hillel, his fists clenched, his forehead wrinkled, his eyes shut tight, and his mouth whispering over and over again the same words, like a mantra: “I want to I want to I want to.”

Gilad decides to smile before he starts talking. He knows Hillel can’t actually see the smile, but hopes that, somehow, something of the smile will carry over in his voice. “Hillel, my sweet,” he says through the smile, “Hillel, my precious, let’s start walking before it’s too late. They’re having pancakes for breakfast in kindergarten today and unless we get there on time the other children will finish everything and won’t leave you any.”