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

mother?” I ask, and she refuses to answer me. “If you really love me then you know for yourself.” And after she tastes the fingers she retrieves from her cunt she blurts out: “And don’t bring me an ear or a finger or anything like that. It’s her heart I want, you hear? Her heart.”
    I travel all the way to Petah-Tikva with the knife, two buses. A meter-and-a-half-long knife, it takes up two seats. I had to buy a ticket for it. What wouldn’t I do for her, whatwouldn’t I do for you, baby? I walked all the way down Stampfer with the knife on my back like some Arab suicide bomber. My mother knew I was coming, so she prepared food for me, with seasoning from hell, like only she knows how to season food. I eat in silence, I haven’t got a bad word to say. If you eat sabras with the thorns on, you shouldn’t complain when you get piles. “And how’s Miri?” asks my mother. “Is she all right, the darling? Still sticking her chubby fingers into her cunt?” “She’s all right,” I say, “she’s fine. She asked for your heart. You know, so as to know if I love her.” “Take her Baruch’s,” my mother laughs, “she’ll never notice.” “Oh, Mother!” I say, annoyed. “We’re not into all those lies. Miri and I are into honesty.” “Good,” my mother sighs, “so take her mine. I don’t want you to fight on my account, which reminds me, what about your proof to your mother who loves you and who you love back a little bit too?” I slap Miri’s heart down on the table in a rage. Why don’t they believe me? Why are they always testing me? And now I’ll have to take two buses back with this knife, and my mother’s heart. And she probably won’t be at home, she’ll go back to her ex again. Not that I’m blaming anyone, only myself.
    There are two kinds of people, the ones who like sleeping next to the wall, and the ones who like sleeping next to the people who push them off thebed.

Rabin’s Dead
    R abin’s dead. It happened last night. He got run over by a scooter with a sidecar. Rabin died on the spot. The guy on the scooter got hurt real bad and passed out, and they took him away in an ambulance. They didn’t even touch Rabin. He was so dead, there was nothing they could do. So me and Tiran picked him up and buried him in my backyard. I cried after that, and Tiran lit up and told me to stop crying ’cause I was getting on his nerves. But I didn’t stop, and pretty soon he started crying too. Because I really loved Rabin a lot, but Tiran loved him even more. Then we went to Tiran’s house, and there was a cop on the front stairs waiting to bag him, because the guy on the scooter came to and squealed to the doctors at the hospital. He told them Tiran had bashed his helmet in with acrowbar. The cop asked Tiran why he was crying and Tiran said, “Who’s crying, you fascist motherfucking pig?” The cop smacked him once, and Tiran’s father came out and wanted to take down the cop’s name and stuff, but the cop wouldn’t tell him, and in less than five minutes, there must’ve been like thirty neighbors standing there. The cop told them to take it easy, and they told him to take it easy himself. There was a lot of shoving, and it looked like someone was going to get clobbered again. Finally the cop left, and Tiran’s dad sat us both down in their living room, and gave us some Sprite. He told Tiran to tell him what happened, and to make it quick, before the cop returned with backup. So Tiran told him he’d hit someone with a crowbar but that it was someone who had it coming, and that the guy’d squealed to the police. Tiran’s dad asked what exactly he had it coming for, and I could see right away that he was pissed off. So I told him it was the guy on the scooter who started it, ’cause first