The Seven Good Years
Read The Seven Good Years Online
Authors: Etgar Keret
ALSO BY ETGAR KERET
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door
The Girl on the Fridge
Missing Kissinger
The Nimrod Flipout
The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 by Etgar Keret
Translation copyright © 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 by Etgar Keret
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
This book is published by arrangement with the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. Most of the essays first appeared, some under different titles, in the following:
Granta
,
Jewish Quarterly
,
The New York Times
,
The New York Times Magazine
,
The New Yorker
,
Tablet
,
The Wall Street Journal
. “Shit Happens” was originally titled “My First Story,” as presented on The Moth.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keret, Etgar, date.
The seven good years : a memoir / Etgar Keret ; translated by Sondra Silverston, Miriam Shlesinger, Jessica Cohen, Anthony Berris.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-698-16600-4
1. Keret, Etgar, date. 2. Authors, IsraeliâBiography. I. Silverston, Sondra, translator. II. Shlesinger, Miriam, translator. III. Cohen, Jessica, translator. IV. Berris, Anthony, translator. V. Title.
PJ5054.K375Z4613 2015 2015004283
892.48'603âdc23
[B]
ILLUSTRATIONS © BY JASON POLAN
Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author's alone.
Version_1
To my mother
I
just hate terrorist attacks,” the thin nurse says to the older one. “Want some gum?”
The older nurse takes a piece and nods. “What can you do?” she says. “I also hate emergencies.”
“It's not the emergencies,” the thin one insists. “I have no problem with accidents and things. It's the terrorist attacks, I'm telling you. They put a damper on everything.”
Sitting on the bench outside the maternity ward, I think to myself, She's got a point. I got here just an hour ago, all excited, with my wife and a neat-freak taxi driver who, when my wife's water broke, was afraid it would ruin his upholstery. And now I'm sitting in the hallway, feeling glum, waiting for the staff to come back from the ER. Everyone but the two nurses has gone to help treat the people injured in the attack. My wife's contractions have slowed down, too. Probably even the baby feels this whole getting-born thing isn't that urgent anymore. As I'm on my way to the cafeteria, a few of the injured roll past on squeaking gurneys. In the taxi on the way to the hospital, my wife was screaming like a madwoman, but all these people are quiet.
“Are you Etgar Keret?” a guy wearing a checked shirt asks me. “The writer?” I nod reluctantly. “Well, what do you know?” he says, pulling a tiny tape recorder out of his bag. “Where were you when it happened?” he asks. When I hesitate for a second, he says in a show of empathy: “Take your time. Don't feel pressured. You've been through a trauma.”
“I wasn't in the attack,” I explain. “I just happen to be here today. My wife's giving birth.”
“Oh,” he says, not trying to hide his disappointment, and presses the stop button on his tape recorder.
“Mazal tov.”
Now he sits down next to me and lights himself a cigarette.
“Maybe you should try talking to someone else,” I suggest as an attempt to get the Lucky Strike smoke out of my face. “A minute ago, I saw them take two people into neurology.”
“Russians,” he says with a sigh, “don't know a word of Hebrew. Besides, they don't let you into neurology anyway. This is my seventh attack in this hospital, and I know all their shtick by now.” We sit there a minute without talking. He's about ten years younger than I am but starting to go bald. When he catches me looking at him, he smiles and says, “Too bad you weren't there. A reaction from a writer would've been good for my article. Someone original, someone with a little vision. After every attack, I always get the same reactions: âSuddenly I heard a boom,' âI don't know what happened,' âEverything was covered in blood.' How much of that can you take?”
“It's not their fault,” I say. “It's just that the attacks are always the same. What kind of original thing can you say about an explosion and senseless death?”
“Beats me,” he says with a shrug. “You're the writer.”
Some people in white jackets are starting to come back from the ER on their way to the maternity ward. “You're from Tel Aviv,” the reporter says to me, “so why'd you come all the way to this dump to give birth?”
“We wanted a natural birth. Their department hereâ”
“Natural?” he interrupts, sniggering. “What's natural about a midget with a cable hanging from his belly button popping out of your wife's vagina?” I don't even try to respond. “I told my wife,” he continues, “âIf you ever give birth, only by Caesarean section, like in America. I don't want some baby stretching you out of shape for me.' Nowadays, it's only in primitive countries like this that women give birth like animals.
Yallah
, I'm going to work.” Starting to get up, he tries one more time. “Maybe you have something to say about the attack anyway?” he asks. “Did it change anything for you? Like what you're going to name the baby or something, I don't know.” I smile apologetically. “Never mind,” he says with a wink. “I hope it goes easy, man.”
Six hours later, a midget with a cable hanging from his belly button comes popping out of my wife's vagina and immediately starts to cry. I try to calm him down, to convince him that there's nothing to worry about. That by the time he grows up, everything here in the Middle East will be settled: peace will come, there won't be any more terrorist attacks, and even if once in a blue moon there is one, there will always be someone original, someone with a little vision, around to describe it perfectly. He quiets down and then considers his next move. He's supposed to be naiveâseeing as how he's a newbornâbut even he doesn't buy it, and after a second's hesitation and a small hiccup, he goes back to crying.
W
hen I was a kid, my parents took me to Europe. The high point of the trip wasn't Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower but the flight from Israel to Londonâspecifically, the meal. There on the tray were a tiny can of Coca-Cola and, next to it, a box of cornflakes not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes.
My surprise at the miniature packages didn't turn into genuine excitement until I opened them and discovered that the Coke tasted like the Coke in regular-size cans and the cornflakes were real, too. It's hard to explain where that excitement actually came from. All we're talking about is a soft drink and a breakfast cereal in much smaller packages, but when I was seven, I was sure I was witnessing a miracle.
Today, thirty years later, sitting in my living room in Tel Aviv and looking at my two-week-old son, I have exactly the same feeling: Here's a man who weighs no more than ten poundsâbut inside he's angry, bored, frightened, and serene, just like any other man on this planet. Put a three-piece suit and a Rolex on him, stick a tiny attaché case in his hand, and send him out into the world, and he'll negotiate, do battle, and close deals without even blinking. He doesn't talk, that's true. And he soils himself as if there were no tomorrow. I'm the first to admit he has a thing or two to learn before he can be shot into space or allowed to fly an F-16. But in principle, he's a complete person wrapped in a nineteen-inch package, and not just any person, but one who's very extreme, an eccentric, a character. The kind you respect but may not completely understand. Because, like all complex people, regardless of their height or weight, he has many sides.
My son, the enlightened one:
As someone who has read a lot about Buddhism and has listened to two or three lectures given by gurus and even once had diarrhea in India, I have to say that my baby son is the first enlightened person I have ever met. He truly lives in the present: He never bears a grudge, never fears the future. He's totally ego-free. He never tries to defend his honor or take credit. His grandparents, by the way, have already opened a savings account for him, and every time they rock him in his cradle, Grandpa tells him about the excellent interest rate he managed to get for him and how much money, at an anticipated single-digit average inflation rate, he'll have in twenty-one years, when the account comes due. The little one makes no reply. But then Grandpa calculates the percentages against the prime interest rate, and I notice a few wrinkles appearing on my son's foreheadâthe first cracks in the wall of his nirvana.
My son, the junkie:
I'd like to apologize to all the addicts and reformed addicts reading this, but with all due respect to them and their suffering, nobody's jones can touch my son's. Like every true addict, he doesn't have the same options others do when it comes to spending leisure timeâthose familiar choices of a good book, an evening stroll, or the NBA play-offs. For him, there are only two possibilities: a breast or hell. “Soon you'll discover the worldâgirls, alcohol, illegal online gambling,” I say, trying to soothe him. But until that happens, we both know that only the breast will exist. Lucky for him, and for us, he has a mother equipped with two. In the worst-case scenario, if one breaks down, there's always a spare.
My son, the psychopath:
Sometimes when I wake up at night and see his little figure shaking next to me in the bed like a toy burning through its batteries, producing strange guttural noises, I can't help comparing him in my imagination to Chucky in the horror movie
Child's Play
. They're the same height, they have the same temperament, and neither holds anything sacred. That's the truly unnerving thing about my two-week-old son: he doesn't have a drop of morality, not an ounce. Racism, inequality, insensitivity, globalizationâhe couldn't care less. He has no interest in anything beyond his immediate drives and desires. As far as he's concerned, other people can go to hell or join Greenpeace. All he wants now is some fresh milk or relief for his diaper rash, and if the world has to be destroyed for him to get it, just show him the button. He'll press it without a second thought.
My son, the self-hating Jew . . .
“Don't you think that's enough?” my wife says, cutting in. “Instead of dreaming up hysterical accusations against your adorable son, maybe you could do something useful and change him?”
“OK,” I tell her. “OK, I was just finishing up.”