The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories by Etgar Keret Read Free Book Online Page A

no point in telling her and making her even sadder.
    I thanked her again and kissed her on the cheek and said I was going to play ball. “You will be careful, eh?” my dad called, laughing from his armchair in the front room. “Don’t wear out the soles right away.” I looked again at the pale hide covering my feet. I looked at them and remembered everything the old man who had strangled said we should remember. I touched the blue stripes of the Adidas and remembered my cardboard grandfather. “Are the shoes comfortable?” my mother asked. “Sure they’re comfortable,” my brother answered for me. “These are not cheap Israeli sneakers. These are the same sneakers that the great Cruiff wears.” I tiptoed slowly toward the door, trying to put as little weight as I could on the shoes. And so I made my way gingerly to the “Monkeys Park.” Outside the kids from Borochov neighborhood had formed three teams: Holland, Argentina, and Brazil. It so happened that Holland needed a player, so they agreed to let me join, although they never accept anyone who’s not from Borochov.
    At the beginning of the game I still remembered not to kick with the tip of my shoe, so as not to hurt Grandpa, but after a while I forgot, just as the old man at Volhynia House said people tend to do, and I even managed to kick a tie-breaking goal. But when the game was over I remembered and looked at the shoes. All of a sudden they became socomfortable, much bouncier than when they were in the box. “Some goal, eh?” I reminded Grandpa on the way home. “The goalie didn’t know what hit him.” Grandpa said nothing, but judging by the tread I could tell that he, too, waspleased.

Missing Kissinger
    S he says I don’t really love her. I say I do, I think I do, but I don’t. I’ve heard of people who say they don’t love somebody—but to decide for somebody else if they love them? That’s a new one on me. True, I had it coming. If you go to bed with a skunk you shouldn’t cry when your kids stink. For six months already she’s been driving me nuts, sticking her fingers into her cunt after fucking to see if I really came, and instead of telling her off, all I say is, “It’s OK, honey, we’re all a little insecure.” So now she wants to split up, because she’s decided I don’t love her. What can I tell her? If I yell at her not to be so stupid and to stop fucking with my head, she’ll only take it as proof. “Do something to prove to me that you love me,” she says. What does she want me to do? What? All she has to do is tell me.But she won’t. Because if I really loved her I would know by myself. What she is prepared to do, is to give me a clue, or to say what not. Either or, I can choose. So I told her to say what not, then I’d know something, at least. I wouldn’t understand a thing from her clues, that’s for sure. “What it’s not,” she says, “is it’s not anything connected to mutilating yourself, like poking out your eye or cutting off your ear, because then you’d be harming someone I love, and indirectly me too. Harming someone close is definitely not a proof of love.” The truth is, I would never touch myself even if she didn’t say so. What’s poking your eye out got to do with love anyway? And what yes? That she’s not prepared to say, only that doing it to my father or my brothers and sisters is no good either. I give up, and say to myself that it’s no use, nothing will help me. Or her either. If you ask stoned blacks riddles you’ll wake up with your bones broken. But later on, when we’re fucking and she stares deep into my eyes with a concentrated look—(she never closes her eyes when we fuck, so I won’t push somebody else’s tongue into her mouth)—I suddenly understand, it comes to me in a flash. “Is it my