“Tell me a story,” the bearded
man sitting on my living-room sofa commands. The situation, I must admit, is
anything but pleasant. I’m someone who writes stories, not someone who tells
them. And even that isn’t something I do on demand. The last time anyone asked
me to tell him a story, it was my son. That was a year ago. I told him
something about a fairy and a ferret—I don’t even remember what exactly—and
within two minutes he was fast asleep. But here the situation is fundamentally
different. Because my son doesn’t have a beard, or a pistol. Because my son
asked for the story nicely, and this man is simply trying to rob me of it.
I try to explain to the bearded
man that if he puts his pistol away it will only work in his favor, in our
favor. It’s hard to think up a story with the barrel of a loaded pistol pointed
at your head. But the guy insists. “In this country,” he explains, “if you want
something, you have to use force.” He just got here from Sweden, and in Sweden
it’s completely different. Over there, if you want something, you ask politely,
and most of the time you get it. But not in the stifling, sultry Middle East.
All it takes is a single week around here to figure out how things work—or
rather, how things don’t work. The Palestinians asked for a state, nicely. Did
they get one? The hell they did. So they switched to blowing up kids on buses,
and people started listening. The settlers wanted a dialogue. Did anyone pick
up on it? No way. So they started getting physical, pouring hot oil on the border
patrolmen, and suddenly they had an audience. In this country, might makes
right, and it doesn’t matter if it’s about politics or economics or a parking
space. Brute force is the only language we understand.
Sweden, the place the bearded guy
made aliya from, is progressive, and is way up there in quite a few areas.
Sweden isn’t just ABBA or IKEA or the Nobel Prize. Sweden is a world unto
itself, and whatever they have, they got by peaceful means. In Sweden, if he’d
gone to the Ace of Base soloist, knocked on her door and asked her to sing for
him, she’d invite him in and make him a cup of tea. Then she’d have pulled out
her acoustic guitar from under the bed and and play for him. And all this, with
a smile. But here? I mean, if he hadn’t been flashing a pistol I’d have thrown
him right out. Look, I try to reason. “Look yourself,” the bearded guy
grumbles, and cocks his pistol. “It’s either a story or a bullet between the
eyes.” I see my choices are limited. The guy means business. “Two people are
sitting in a room,” I begin. “Suddenly there’s a knock on the door.” The
bearded guy stiffens, and for a moment there, I think maybe the story’s getting
to him, but it isn’t. He’s listening to something else. There’s a knock on the
door. “Open it,” he tells me, “and don’t try anything. Get rid of whoever it
is, and do it fast, or this is going to end badly.” The young man at the door
is doing a survey. He has a few questions. Short ones. About the high humidity
here in summer, and how it affects my disposition. I tell him I’m not
interested in answering his questionnaire but he pushes his way inside anyway.
“Who’s that?” he asks me,
pointing at the bearded guy. “That’s my nephew from Sweden,” I lie. “His father
died in an avalanche and he’s here for the funeral. We’re just going over the
will. Could you please respect our privacy and leave?” “C’mon Man,” the
pollster says and pats me on the shoulder. “It’s just a few questions. Give a
guy a chance to earn a few bucks. They pay me per respondent.” He flops down on
the sofa clutching his binder. The Swede takes a seat next to him. I’m still
standing, trying to sound like I mean it. “I’m asking you to leave,” I tell
him. “Your timing is way off.” “Way off, eh?” He opens the plastic binder and
pulls out a big revolver. “Why’s my timing off? Cause I’m darker? Cause I’m not
good enough? When it comes to Swedes, you’ve got all the time in the world. But
for a Moroccan, for a war veteran who left pieces of his spleen behind, in
Lebanon, you can’t spare a fucking minute.” I try to reason with him, to tell
him it’s not that way at all. That he simply caught me at a delicate point in
my conversation with the Swede. But the pollster raises his revolver to his
lips and signals me to shut up. “Vamos,” he says. “Stop making excuses. Sit
down over there, and out with it.” “Out with what?” I ask. The truth is I’m
pretty uptight by now. The Swede has a pistol too. Things might get out of
hand. East is east and west is west, and all that. Different mentalities. Or
else he could lose it, simply because he wants the story all to himself. Solo.
“Don’t get me started,” the pollster warns. “I have a short fuse. Out with the
story – and make it quick.” “Yeah,” the Swede blends in, and pulls out his
piece too. I clear my throat, and start all over again. “Three people are
sitting in a room.” “And no ‘Suddenly there’s a knock on the door’” the Swede
announces. The pollster doesn’t quite get this point, but plays along with him.
“Get going,” he says. “And no knocking on the door. Tell us something else.
Surprise us.”
I stop short, and take a deep
breath. Both of them are staring at me. How do I always get myself into these
situations? I bet things like this never happen to Amos Oz or David Grossman.
Suddenly there’s a knock on the door. Their gaze turns menacing. I shrug. It’s
not about me. There’s nothing in my story to connect it to that knock. “Get rid
of him,” the pollster orders me. “Get rid of him, whoever it is.” I open the
door just a crack. It’s a pizza delivery guy. “Are you Keret?” he asks. “Yes,”
I say, “but I didn’t order a pizza.” “It says here 14 Zamenhoff Street,” he
snaps, pointing at the printed delivery slip and pushing his way inside. “So
what,” I say, “I didn’t order a pizza.” “Family size,” he insists. “Half
pineapple, half anchovy. Pre-paid. Credit card. Just gimme my tip and I’m outta
here.” “Are you here for a story too?” the Swede interrogates. “What story?”
the pizza guy asks, but it’s obvious he’s lying. He’s not very good at it.
“Pull it out,” the pollster prods. “C’mon, out with the pistol already.” “I
don’t have a pistol,” the pizza guy admits awkwardly, and draws a cleaver out
from under his cardboard tray. “But I’ll cut him into julienne strips unless he
coughs up a good one, on the double.”
The three of them are on the sofa—the
Swede on the right, then the pizza guy, then the pollster. “I can’t do it like
this,” I tell them. “I can’t get a story going with the three of you here and
your weapons and all that. Go take a walk around the block, and by the time you
get back, I’ll have something for you.” “The asshole’s gonna call the cops,”
the pollster tells the Swede. “What’s he thinking, that we were born
yesterday?” “C’mon, give us one and we’ll be on our way,” the pizza guy begs.
“A short one. Don’t be so anal. Things are tough, you know. Unemployment,
suicide bombings, Iranians. People are hungry for something else. What do you
think brought law-abiding guys like us this far? We’re desperate, Man,
desperate.”
I clear my throat and start
again. “Four people are sitting in a room. It’s hot. They’re bored. The air
conditioner’s on the blink. One of them asks for a story. The second one joins
in, then the third . . .” “That’s not a story,” the pollster protests. “That’s
an eye-witness report. It’s exactly what’s happening here right now. Exactly
what we’re trying to run away from. Don’t you go and dump reality on us like
some garbage truck. Use your imagination, Man, create, invent, take it all the
way.”
I nod and start again. A man is
sitting in a room, all by himself. He’s lonely. He’s a writer. He wants to
write a story. It’s been a long time since he wrote his last story, and he
misses it. He misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s
right—something out of something. Because something out of nothing is when you
make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can
do that. But when it’s something out of something, that means it was really
there the whole time, inside you, and you discover it as part of something new,
that’s never happened before. The man decides to write a story about the
situation. Not the political situation and not the social situation either. He
decides to write a story about the human situation, the human condition. The
human condition the way he’s experiencing it right now. But he draws a blank.
No story presents itself. Because the human condition the way he’s experiencing
it right now doesn’t seem to be worth a story, and he’s just about to give up
when suddenly . . .” “I warned you already,” the Swede interrupts me. “No knock
on the door.” “I’ve got to,” I insist. “Without a knock on the door there’s no
story.” “Let him,” the pizza guy says softly. “Give him some slack. You want a
knock on the door? Okay, have your knock on the door. Just so long as it brings
us a story.”