Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories (10 page)

Read Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories Online

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

BOOK: Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories
2.51Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
 
The night before his flight to New York, Gershon’s wife had a dream. “It was so real,” she told him as he packed. “The curbs were red and white and the electric poles had those apartments-for-sale ads posted on them—you know? The kind with those tabs you can pull off, just like in real life. There was even a man scooping his dog’s shit off the sidewalk with a piece of newspaper. It was all so
ordinary
, so everyday.” Gershon was attempting to cram more and more clothing and brochures into his small suitcase. His wife usually helped him pack, but this morning she was so engrossed in this so-real, so-detailed dream of hers that helping hadn’t even occurred to her. The dream itself probably hadn’t lasted more than ten seconds in the real world, but the way she managed to drag it out was making Gershon so angry that he was on the verge of tears. In three hours’ time he’d be on a plane to New York, on his way to meet the largest toy manufacturer in the world, and when we say
largest in the world
, that’s not just another tired cliché, but a fact based on a large number of balance sheets and sales figures, and if Gershon played his cards right, that manufacturer might buy the Stop—Police board game Gershon had developed and turn it into no less than the twenty-first-century Monopoly. And while none of that is exactly a red-and-white curb or a piece of dog shit being picked up with a wrinkled financial supplement, the idea that such monumental success might be on the horizon is the kind of thing you’d like to see your wife react to with a little more enthusiasm. “ … And then my dad suddenly appears right in front of me with a baby carriage and says to me, ‘Watch her.’ Just like that. Leaves the carriage next to me and walks off like it’s the most natural thing in the world,” his wife continued as Gershon tried unsuccessfully to zip up his suitcase. “And the baby girl in the carriage looked so sad and alone, like an old woman, that I just wanted to take her in my arms and hug her. And it was all so real that when I woke up it took me a minute to figure out how I’d gone from the middle of the street to our bedroom. You know that feeling?”
 
The albino sitting next to him tried to start a conversation. Gershon answered politely but didn’t open up. He’d flown enough times to know the dynamic. There are some people who are just open and pleasant, and there are others who try to develop a little intimacy with you just so that, after takeoff, when they take over the armrest you share, you’ll feel embarrassed enough to let them have it. “My first time in America,” the albino said. “I’ve heard that the police there are completely crazy. They’ll throw you in jail just for jaywalking.” “It’ll be fine,” Gershon answered curtly, and closed his eyes. He pictured himself entering the office of the Global Toys CEO, giving the silver-haired man standing in front of him a warm, firm handshake, and saying, “You have grandkids, Mr. Lipskar? Let me tell you what they’ll be playing this summer.” His left leg kept banging against the side of the plane. He had to remember not to jiggle his legs during the meeting, he told himself, it projects a lack of confidence.
He didn’t touch the meal they served on the plane. The albino devoured the chicken and the salad as if they were gourmet food. Gershon glanced at his tray again. It all looked bad. The cellophane-wrapped chocolate cake reminded him of the dog shit in his wife’s dream. But the apple looked relatively okay. He wrapped it in a napkin and put it in his completely empty attaché case. I should have put a few brochures in there, he thought, what if my suitcase doesn’t arrive?
 
It didn’t. All the passengers, including the albino, had already gone. The empty luggage carousel revolved for another few minutes, then got tired and stopped. A Continental ground-service employee said that she was very sorry and wrote down his hotel address. “It’s very rare,” she said, “but mistakes do happen. We’re all human, you know.” Maybe. Even though there were moments when Gershon felt he wasn’t. For instance, when Eran died in his arms in Laniado Hospital. If Gershon had been human, he probably would have cried or collapsed. People close to him told him that he just hadn’t taken it in yet, he needed time; that it wouldn’t hit him till he understood it with his heart, not just his brain. But ten years had passed since then and nothing had hit him. In the army, when they wouldn’t let him go into officer training, he’d cried like a girl. He remembered how the company’s sergeant major had stared at him in helpless shock, but when his best friend died, nothing.
“We will of course compensate you with one hundred and twenty dollars against a bill for clothes and personal items,” the ground employee said.
“Personal items,” Gershon repeated.
She took the repetition as a question. “You know, a toothbrush, shaving cream. It’s all spelled out on the back of the form.” She pointed to the right place on the page and added, “I am really and truly sorry.”
 
Standing in the lobby of the Global Toys building was a young guy in a cheap suit. A pencil mustache rested not quite naturally above his open mouth, as if his upper lip were embarrassed about something and had decided to wear a toupee. Gershon wanted to ask him where the elevator was but, a second later, spotted it himself. He knew that Mr. Lipskar would consider him unprofessional because he had no brochures. He should have thought about that in advance and at least packed the presentation in his carry-on luggage. He probably would have if that annoying dream of his wife’s hadn’t been bouncing around in the space of his skull while he was packing. “I.D., please,” Mustache said, and Gershon replied, surprised, “Excuse me?” “An I.D.,” Mustache repeated, and said to the bald black guy in the gray jacket standing next to him, “You see the kind of characters we get here?”
Gershon went through his pockets slowly. In Israel he was used to always showing identification, but this was the first time someone outside the country had asked him for anything like that, and somehow, Mustache’s tough New York accent made it sound as if, in another second, he’d cuff him and read him his rights. “They take their time, don’t they?” Mustache said to the black guy in the jacket. “Why not?” Jacket smiled a soft, yellow smile. “We’re here anyway.” “What can I tell you, Patrick,” Mustache said, glancing at the passport Gershon handed him, “your mother didn’t name you Patrick for nothing. You’re a saint.” He handed the passport back to Gershon and mumbled something. Gershon nodded and started walking toward the elevator. “Hold on,” Mustache said, “where are you running to? Hey, you, don’t you understand English?” “Actually, I do understand English,” Gershon answered impatiently, “and if you don’t mind, I’m in a hurry to get to a meeting.” “I asked you to open your briefcase, Mr. Actually-I-Do-Understand-English,” Mustache said, imitating Gershon’s Israeli accent. “Will you do that for me?” And he said to Jacket, who was standing next to him, having the time of his life, trying not to smile, “I’m telling you, it’s a zoo in here.” Gershon thought about the half-eaten apple in his empty attaché case. He tried to imagine Mustache’s wiseass reaction when he saw it, and Jacket next to him losing the battle to control himself and bursting out laughing. “Well, open it already,” Mustache continued. “You know what
open
means, sir?” And he quickly spelled the word. “I know what
open
means,” Gershon replied, clutching the attaché case to his chest with both hands. “I also know what
closed
means, and
nominal yield
, and
oxymoron
. I even know the second law of thermodynamics and what Wittgenstein’s tractatus is. I know lots of things you’ll never know, you arrogant little nothing. And one of those amazing secrets you’ll never get to host under the very thin skin of your brain is what I have in my attaché case. Do you even know who I am? Why I came here today? Do you even know anything about existence? The world? Anything beyond the number of the bus that takes you here and home every day, beyond the names of the neighbors in that dark, crummy building you live in? “Sir …” Jacket tried to stop the flow with pragmatic politeness, but it was too late. “I look at you,” Gershon went on, “and in a second I see your whole life story. Everything’s written right there, on that receding hairline of yours. Everything. The best day of your life will be when the basketball team you root for wins the championship. The worst day will be when your fat wife dies of cancer because your medical insurance doesn’t cover the treatment. And everything that comes between those two moments will pass like a weak fart so that at the end of your life, when you try to look back, you won’t even be able to remember what it smells like …”
Gershon didn’t even have time to feel the fist connect with his face. When he came to, he found himself on the lobby’s elegant marble floor. What revived him was a series of kicks to the ribs and a deep, pleasant voice echoing in the space of the lobby that reminded him a little of a late-night radio announcer’s voice. “Let it go,” the voice repeated, “let it go, Jesus, he’s not worth it.”
He noticed now that embedded in the floor were small gold stones forming the letter G—the first letter of his first name. He could have chalked it up to coincidence, but Gershon chose to imagine that the construction workers who built this skyscraper knew that he’d come here one day and wanted to make some kind of gesture in his honor so he wouldn’t feel so alone and unwanted in this evil city. The kicks didn’t stop and they felt so real, just like his wife’s dream. Maybe the baby girl her father left in the carriage was actually her. Could be. After all, her father was kind of a shit. Maybe that’s why the dream was so important to her. And if she’d needed a hug in the dream, he could have hugged her. He could have taken a second’s break from his fucking struggle with the traitorous suitcase, which at this very moment was probably sniffing strangers’ ankles on a carousel in some tiny airport on the West Coast, hold her tightly in his arms, and tell her, “I’m here, sweetheart, I may be flying today but I’ll be back soon.”
The black guy in the gray jacket helped him up. “You okay, sir?” he asked, and he handed him his attaché case and a tissue. “You’re bleeding a little.” He said
a little
in a gentle, muted voice, as if he were trying to shrink it to the size of a drop. Mustache was sitting on a chair near the elevator, crying. “I apologize for him,” Jacket said, “he’s going through a tough time right now.” The word
tough
he enlarged. Almost shouted. “Don’t apologize,” Mustache said through his tears, “don’t say you’re sorry to that bastard.” Jacket began shrugging and sniffling helplessly. “His mother …” he tried to whisper to Gershon. “Don’t tell him,” Mustache wept, “don’t you say a word about my mother, you hear? Or I’ll let you have a good one too.”
 
“Stop—Police,” Gershon went on, “might be the first board game in history that doesn’t impose solutions on the child playing it but stimulates him to find his own solutions. You can think of the game as a sort of path of Rorschach blots that encourage you to use your imagination as you progress toward your goal—to win.” “A path of Rorschach blots.” Mr. Lipskar gave a crooked smile. “Amazing. I like it, Mr. Arazi. But are you sure you’re really all right?” “I’m fine.” Gershon nodded. “With your permission, could we perform a small simulation of the game now?” “Simulation,” Mr. Lipskar repeated. He was a lot younger than Gershon had imagined, not a trace of gray in his shiny black hair. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is the right time for that. Your eye. And your nose. My God, so much blood! Who did this to you?”
 
Yonatan had a brilliant idea for a documentary. He’d knock on doors. Just him. No camera crew, no nonsense. Just Yonatan, on his own, a small camera in hand, asking, “If you found a talking goldfish that granted you three wishes, what would you wish for?”
Folks would give their answers, and Yoni would edit them down and make clips of the more surprising responses. Before every set of answers, you’d see the person standing stock-still in the entrance to his house. Onto this shot he’d superimpose the subject’s name, family situation, monthly income, and maybe even the party he’d voted for in the last election. All that, combined with the three wishes, and maybe he’d end up with a poignant piece of social commentary, a testament to the massive rift between our dreams and the often compromised reality in which we live.
It was genius, Yoni was sure. And, if not, at least it was cheap. All he needed was a door to knock on and a heart beating on the other side. With a little decent footage, he was sure he’d be able to sell it to Channel 8 or Discovery in a flash, either as a film or as a bunch of vignettes, little cinematic corners, each with that singular soul standing in a doorway, followed by three killer wishes, precious, every one.
Even better, maybe he’d cash out, package it with a slogan and sell it to a bank or cellular phone company. Maybe tag it with something like “Different dreams, different wishes, one bank.” Or “The bank that makes dreams come true.”
No prep, no plotting, natural as can be, Yoni grabbed his camera and went out knocking on doors. In the first neighborhood he went to, the kindly folk that took part generally requested the foreseeable things: health, money, bigger apartments, either to shave off a couple of years or a couple of pounds. But there were also powerful moments. One drawn, wizened old lady asked simply for a child. A Holocaust survivor with a number on his arm asked very slowly, in a quiet voice—as if he’d been waiting for Yoni to come, as if it weren’t an exercise at all—he’d been wondering (if this fish didn’t mind), would it be possible for all the Nazis left living in the world to be held accountable for their crimes? A cocky, broad-shouldered lady-killer put out his cigarette and, as if the camera wasn’t there, wished he were a girl. “Just for a night,” he added, holding a single finger right up to the lens.
And these were wishes from just one short block in one small, sleepy suburb of Tel Aviv. Yonatan could hardly imagine what people were dreaming of in the development towns and the collectives along the northern border, in the West Bank settlements and Arab villages, the immigrant absorption centers full of broken trailers and tired people left to broil out in the desert sun.
Yonatan knew that if the project was going to have any weight, he’d have to get to everyone, to the unemployed, to the ultrareligious, to the Arabs and Ethiopians and American expats. He began to plan a shooting schedule for the coming days: Jaffa, Dimona, Ashdod, Sderot, Taibe, Talpiot. Maybe Hebron, even. If he could sneak past the wall, Hebron would be great. Maybe somewhere in that city some beleaguered Arab man would stand in his doorway and, looking through Yonatan and his camera, looking out into nothingness, just pause for a minute, nod his head, and wish for peace—that would be something to see.
Sergei Goralick doesn’t much like strangers banging on his door. Especially when those strangers are asking him questions. In Russia, when Sergei was young, it happened plenty. The KGB felt right at home knocking on his door. His father had been a Zionist, which was pretty much an invitation for them to drop by any old time.
When Sergei got to Israel and then moved to Jaffa, his family couldn’t wrap their heads around it. They’d ask him, “What are you looking to find in a place like that? There’s no one there but addicts and Arabs and pensioners.” But what is most excellent about addicts and Arabs and pensioners is that they don’t come around knocking on Sergei’s door. That way Sergei can get his sleep, and get up when it’s still dark. He can take his little boat out into the sea and fish until he’s done fishing. By himself. In silence. The way it should be. The way it was.
Until one day some kid with a ring in his ear, looking a little bit homosexual, comes knocking. Hard like that—rapping at his door. Just the way Sergei doesn’t like. And he says, this kid, that he has some questions he wants to put on the TV.
Sergei tells the boy, tells him in what he thinks is a straightforward manner, that he doesn’t want it. Not interested. Sergei gives the camera a shove, to help make it clear. But the earring boy is stubborn. He says all kinds of things, fast things. And it’s hard for Sergei to follow; his Hebrew isn’t so good.
The boy slows down, tells Sergei he has a strong face, a nice face, and that he simply has to have him for this movie picture. Sergei can also slow down, he can also make clear. He tells the kid to fuck off. But the kid is slippery, and somehow between saying no and pushing the door closed, Sergei finds that the kid is in his house. He’s already making his movie, running his camera without any permission, and from behind the camera he’s still telling Sergei about his face, that it’s full of feeling, that it’s tender. Suddenly the kid spots Sergei’s goldfish flitting around in its big glass jar in his kitchen.
The kid with the earring starts screaming, “Goldfish, goldfish!” he’s so excited. And this, this really pressures Sergei, who tells the kid, “It’s nothing, just a regular goldfish, stop filming it. Just a goldfish,” Sergei tells him, just something he found flapping around in the net, a deep-sea goldfish. But the boy isn’t listening. He’s still filming and getting closer and saying something about talking and fish and a magic wish.
Sergei doesn’t like this, doesn’t like that the boy is almost at it, already reaching for the jar. In this instant Sergei understands the boy didn’t come for television, what he came for, specifically, is to snatch Sergei’s fish, to steal it away. Before the mind of Sergei Goralick really understands what it is his body has done, he seems to have taken the burner off the stove and hit the boy in the head. The boy falls. The camera falls with him. The camera breaks open on the floor, along with the boy’s skull. There’s a lot of blood coming out of the head, and Sergei really doesn’t know what to do.
That is, he knows exactly what to do, but it really would complicate things. Because if he takes this kid to the hospital, people are going to ask what happened, and it would take things in a direction Sergei doesn’t want to go.
“No reason to take him to the hospital anyway,” says the goldfish, in Russian. “That one’s already dead.”
“He can’t be dead,” Sergei says, with a moan. “I barely touched him. It’s only a burner. Only a little thing.” Sergei holds it up to the fish, taps it against his own skull to prove it. “It’s not even that hard.”
“Maybe not,” says the fish. “But, apparently, it’s harder than that kid’s head.”
“He wanted to take you from me,” Sergei says, almost crying.
“Nonsense,” the fish says. “He was only here to make a little something for TV.”
“But he said—”
“He said,” says the fish, interrupting, “exactly what he was doing. But you didn’t get it. Honestly, your Hebrew, it’s terrible.”
“Yours is better?” Sergei says. “Yours is so great?”
“Yes. Mine’s supergreat,” the goldfish says, sounding impatient. “I’m a magic fish. I’m fluent in everything:” All the while the puddle of blood from the earring kid’s head is getting bigger and bigger and Sergei is on his toes, up against the kitchen wall, desperate not to step in it, not to get blood on his feet.
“You do have one wish left,” the fish reminds Sergei. He says it easy like that, as if Sergei doesn’t know—as if either of them ever loses count.
“No,” Sergei says. He’s shaking his head from side to side. “I can’t,” he says. “I’ve been saving it. Saving it for something.”
“For what?” the fish says.
But Sergei won’t answer.
That first wish, Sergei used up when they discovered a cancer in his sister. A lung cancer, the kind you don’t get better from. The fish undid it in an instant—the words barely out of Sergei’s mouth. The second wish Sergei used up five years ago, on Sveta’s boy. The kid was still small then, barely three, but the doctors already knew something in her son’s head wasn’t right. He was going to grow big but not in the brain. Three was about as smart as he’d get. Sveta cried to Sergei in bed all night. Sergei walked home along the beach when the sun came up, and he called to the fish, asked the goldfish to fix it as soon as he’d crossed through the door. He never told Sveta. And a few months later she left him for some cop, a Moroccan with a shiny Honda. In his heart, Sergei kept telling himself it wasn’t for Sveta that he’d done it, that he’d wished his wish purely for the boy. In his mind, he was less sure, and all kinds of thoughts about other things he could have done with that wish continued to gnaw at him, half driving him mad. The third wish, Sergei hadn’t yet wished for.
“I can restore him,” says the goldfish. “I can bring him back to life.”
“No one’s asking,” Sergei says.
“I can bring him back to the moment before,” the goldfish says. “To before he knocks on your door. I can put him back to right there. I can do it. All you need to do is ask.”
“To wish my wish,” Sergei says. “My last.”
The fish swishes his fish tail back and forth in the water, the way he does, Sergei knows, when he’s truly excited. The goldfish can already taste freedom. Sergei can see it on him.
After the last wish, Sergei won’t have a choice. He’ll have to let the goldfish go. His magic goldfish. His friend.
“Fixable,” Sergei says. “I’ll just mop up the blood. A good sponge and it’ll be like it never was.”
That tail just goes back and forth, the fish’s head steady.
Sergei takes a deep breath. He steps out into the middle of the kitchen, out into the puddle. “When I’m fishing, while it’s dark and the world’s asleep,” he says, half to himself and half to the fish, “I’ll tie the kid to a rock and dump him in the sea. Not a chance, not in a million years, will anyone ever find him.”
“You killed him, Sergei,” the goldfish says. “You murdered someone—but you’re not a murderer.” The goldfish stops swishing his tail. “If, on this, you won’t waste a wish, then tell me, Sergei, what is it good for?”
It was in Bethlehem, actually, that Yonatan found his Arab, a handsome man who used his first wish for peace. His name was Munir; he was fat with a big white mustache. Superphotogenic. It was moving, the way he said it. Perfect, the way in which Munir wished his wish. Yoni knew even as he was filming that this guy would be his promo for sure.
Either him or that Russian. The one with the faded tattoos that Yoni had met in Jaffa. The one that looked straight into the camera and said, if he ever found a talking goldfish, he wouldn’t ask of it a single thing. He’d just stick it on a shelf in a big glass jar and talk to him all day, it didn’t matter about what. Maybe sports, maybe politics, whatever a goldfish was interested in chatting about.
Anything, the Russian said, not to be alone.

Other books

Hard Candy by Andrew Vachss
Dance Real Slow by Michael Grant Jaffe
Breaking Laura by J.A. Bailey
Copycat by Erica Spindler
Being Oscar by Oscar Goodman
Try Me On for Size by Stephanie Haefner
In a Flash by Eric Walters