The Girl on the Fridge: Stories [FK8]
Etgar Keret
Language: English
Pages: 179
ISBN: 2:00097668
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A birthday-party magician whose hat tricks end in horror and gore; a girl parented by a major household appliance; the possessor of the lowest IQ in the Mossad—such are the denizens of Etgar Keret’s dark and fertile mind. The Girl on the Fridge contains the best of Keret’s first collections, the ones that made him a household name in Israel and the major discovery of this last decade.
in Jerusalem. They could barely talk. They just sat there facing the open mike and sniffling, and all the viewers at home, who didn’t know the quanta very well, thought they were avoiding the question and didn’t realize the quanta were crying. What’s sad is that even if the quanta were to write dozens of letters to the editors of all the scientific journals in the world and prove beyond a doubt that when it came to the atom bomb they had simply been used, and that people had taken advantage of
our loquat tree one more time, you’ll throw them in the calabouse and shoot them, or something, just so they stop coming into our yard…” Grandma’s faded eyes were moist now, and bloodshot. She really hated those kids. The old lady wasn’t all there, but out of respect I said okay. That evening, I heard them in the tree. I put on a pair of shorts and a sleeveless undershirt and told Grandma I was going out to talk to them. “No,” she said, blocking my way to the door, holding my ironed dress
finishing my degree—I said fuck it. The date itself doesn’t mean much to me anyway, though it’s an easy one to remember: December 12, the twelfth day of the twelfth month. Ronen’s sister is a doctor at Beilinson Hospital, and she was on duty the moment your heart stopped. I heard Ronen tell Yizhar that you died at the stroke of noon. Like, on the dot. Ronen got all worked up about it: “On the twelfth of the twelfth at twelve. Do you realize what the odds are?” he whispered so loud that everyone
around. “Everywhere I went I found trekkers, like me, each convinced he was on his way to discovering a new continent.” He shook his head as if in disbelief. “Every hostel, every waterfall, every palm tree was teeming with tourists: Swedes, Germans, Israelis. Especially Israelis. All looking for virgin territory, and making do in the end with a game of cards and a few rounds of gin and orange juice. The Far East, it’s one big campground.” The scout paused, raised his hand to his neck, and froze.
used to shake. “Don’t be a pig,” I’d tell him, and he’d laugh. I went to bed, but it was hard to fall asleep without a man, even harder without the quilt on such a cold night. When I finally did, I dreamed they dragged us out of the house in the middle of the night and shot me like a dog, and for once, he was the one who got stuck with the slap and the “we won’t rape you” and the grave and the myth milk, and it got me so excited that I woke up all wet, the way only a woman can. The Night the