Fly Already: Stories

Praise for Fly Already

"Reading Fly Already is like settling down for a ride in a luxurious car with a world-class driver who has an extremely crazy worldview that doesn’t interfere with his amazing driving. Is there any better way to see the world?"

—Elif Batuman

Etgar Keret, the writer of absurd, sad, funny and very short stories, grows up. . . . These are absurd stories your stoned friend might unfold while giggling, but the best of them land at some insight into the human condition, all economy and charm. This new collection, though, plumbs darker depths.

—Gal Beckerman, The New York Times

It’s Keret’s particular brand of brilliance that can simultaneously hold tragedy and comedy, and in such compact packages.

—Financial Times

"An Israeli writer is making short stories fun again. Etgar Keret doesn’t avoid a punch line. The fiction writer and This American Life regular tackles Big Important Subjects in his work—death, family, war, etc.—but he does so in a way that’s not, well, a bummer. . . . By embracing the comic and the absurd, Keret achieves something rare among modern short-story writers: He’s actually worth reading."

—Men’s Journal

These stories—swervy, thrillingly funny, honest, and almost shockingly alert—disarm a reader in abundant ways. Keret will look at any situation and any type of character with an open eye to all defenses, and slowly (or really quickly) peel these away.

—Aimee Bender

"Read Etgar Keret’s short stories in Fly Already, not only for their brilliant language and imagination, but [for] the depth of Keret’s craft."

—Elif Shafak, The Guardian

As a reader, you’re so immersed in Keretworld that the twist in the tale is particularly more outrageous and unexpected than usual. Fantastical, heartbreaking, laughter-inducing, fabulist, and sometimes just downright wacky, Keret’s writing is palpably imbued with a distinct element of intimacy, as though the author has just invited you into his local café or pub to chat about the state of the world—of our world—over your drink of choice. Keret’s stories shimmer with an energizing, evocative amalgam of comedy, both dark and light, and a high-level tolerance for the absurd. And always—always—even when it feels as though he’s finessing his pages with a giant shrug about the ridiculous vagaries of the universe, inherent in Keret’s writing is a resolute insistence on adhering to life, as well as to the ineluctable joys of wordplay. . . . If you’re already familiar with Keret’s work, this is a welcome addition to his canon; if you haven’t read him yet, this collection is a terrific place to start.

—Daneet Steffens, The Boston Globe

When you read an Etgar Keret story, it’s hard not to go straight to ‘genius.’ The stories in this collection are wide-ranging, and many have that fantastical, highly imaginative Keret element. There is dark humor, wry humor, really-fucking-funny humor. There’s depth and sadness. And mostly there’s life: people falling into and out of relationships with themselves and others.

—goop

I am in awe of Keret’s ability to simultaneously make me laugh while crying, explore the joy and horror of everyday life with precision, brevity, and great psychological depth. His recognition of and engagement with the absurd are profound, and he never loses his humanity, his heart, along the way.

—A. M. Homes

Razor-sharp, satiric wit and genre-shifting style.

—BBC

Keret at his best—tender and inventive, not giving too much away . . . Keret shines when he’s gentle and when he gives himself room to explore his characters. . . . [‘Pineapple Crush’ is] a lovely, understated story about the human need for connection, and Keret approaches it subtly, portraying the narrator’s loneliness without resorting to pity. He doesn’t overplay his hand or feel the need to wax whimsical; he’s content to consider the human condition in a compassionate, unshowy way. The story is nearly perfect.

—Michael Schaub, NPR

Like Lydia Davis, Etgar Keret has written stories of such singular diminutive style it took the culture a few years to realize: This is not a novelty act. This is the work of a genius, and he can pack more comedy and heartache into a single tale than just about any writer alive. A new book is cause for celebration.

—John Freeman, Literary Hub

Keret continues his streak of writing short stories that are mordantly funny and bizarre, in his latest collection. . . . Threaded through his sense of humor, you feel a little less lonely, a little more light.

—Tomi Obaro, BuzzFeed

Sly and subversive collection . . . full of modern-day fables about family, angels, UFOs, cloning and other weirdness.

—Chicago Tribune

Once again [Keret] displays his knack for comic, absurd, occasionally dystopian observations. . . . Saunders-esque speculative stories . . . Every piece demonstrates Keret’s admirable effort to play with structure and gleefully refuse to be polite about family, faith, and country. An irreverent storyteller who has yet to run out of social norms to skewer.

—Kirkus Reviews

It’s difficult to characterize the work of a writer as prodigiously talented as Keret . . . for whom nothing seems off limits. . . . Smart, strange, completely enthralling . . . Readers new to Keret will be dazzled.

—Booklist

Quirky, funny, touching, immensely readable, pure pleasure—and though most [stories] are very short, they are tightly scripted and satisfyingly complete. Originally written in Hebrew, the pieces in this fine collection lose nothing in translation; the wit and humanity of each tale survive intact. Ideal reading for short bursts of time or short attention spans.

—Library Journal

ALSO BY ETGAR KERET

The Seven Good Years

Suddenly, a Knock on the Door

The Girl on the Fridge

The Nimrod Flipout

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories

Riverhead Books

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright © 2018 by Etgar Keret

Translation copyright © 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019 by Etgar Keret

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Originally published, in Hebrew and in somewhat different form, as A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy, by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, 2018 First American edition published by Riverhead Books, 2019 Published by arrangement with the author and the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature

The following stories were previously published in English: Fly Already, One Gram Short, and To the Moon and Back in The New Yorker; Todd on Electric Literature; Tabula Rasa (as A: Only Through Death Will You Learn Your True Identity) on Wired; Car Concentrate in Granta; At Night, GooDeed, and Crumb Cake in McSweeney’s; Windows in Playboy; Dad with Mashed Potatoes in Zoetrope: All-Story; Arctic Lizard on BuzzFeed; Ladder in Tin House; Allergies in Tel Aviv Noir, edited by Etgar Keret and Assaf Gavron (Akashic Books); and Chips on Nerve. Evolution of a Breakup was read on the internet version of an episode of This American Life on National Public Radio. Yad Vashem is published in English for the first time in this volume.

All stories in this volume were translated by Sondra Silverston, except for One Gram Short, Car Concentrate, translated by Nathan Englander; Arctic Lizard, Pineapple Crush, Evolution of a Breakup, translated by Jessica Cohen; Yad Vashem, translated by Miriam Shlesinger; Allergies, translated by Yardenne Greenspan.

Riverhead and the R colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Riverhead hardcover edition as follows:

Names: Keret, Etgar, 1967– author. | Silverston, Sondra, translator. | Englander, Nathan, translator. | Cohen, Jessica, translator. | Shlesinger, Miriam, 1947– translator. | Greenspan, Yardenne, translator.

Title: Fly already / Etgar Keret; translated by Sondra Silverston, Nathan Englander, Jessica Cohen, Miriam Shlesinger, Yardenne Greenspan.

Description: New York: Riverhead Books, 2019

Identifiers: LCCN 2018040497 (print) | LCCN 2018042215 (ebook) | ISBN 9780698166110 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594633270 (hardcover)

Classification: LCC PJ5054.K375 (ebook) | LCC PJ5054.K375 A2 2019 (print) | DDC 892.43/6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040497

First Riverhead hardcover edition: September 2019

First Riverhead trade paperback edition: September 2020

Riverhead trade paperback ISBN: 9780399573026

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover illustration: Sabina Hahn

Cover lettering: Stephen Brayda

btb_ppg_c0_r1

For Eli and Guy

CONTENTS

Fly Already

One Gram Short

The Next-to-Last Time I Was Shot out of a Cannon

Todd

Tabula Rasa

Car Concentrate

At Night

Windows

To the Moon and Back

GooDeed

Crumb Cake

Dad with Mashed Potatoes

Arctic Lizard

Ladder

Yad Vashem

The Birthday of a Failed Revolutionary

Allergies

Fungus

Chips

Home

Pineapple Crush

Evolution of a Breakup

FLY ALREADY

P.T. sees him first. We’re on our way to the park to play ball when he suddenly says, Daddy, look! His head is tilted back and he’s squinting hard to see something far above me, and before I can even begin to imagine an alien spaceship or a piano about to fall on our heads, my gut tells me that something really bad is happening here. But when I turn to see what P.T. is looking at, all I notice is an ugly, four-story building covered in plaster and air conditioners, as if it has some kind of skin disease. The sun is sitting directly on it, slightly blinding me, and as I’m trying to get a better angle, I hear P.T. say, He wants to fly. Now I can see a guy in a white button-down shirt standing on the roof railing looking straight at me, and behind me, P.T. whispers, Is he a superhero? But instead of answering him, I shout at the guy, Don’t do it!

The guy stares at me and doesn’t answer. I shout at him again, Don’t do it, please! Whatever brought you up there must seem like something you’ll never get over, but believe me, you will. If you jump now, you’ll leave this world with that dead-end feeling. That’ll be your last memory of life. Not family, not love—only defeat. But if you stay, I swear to you by everything I hold dear that your pain will start to fade, and in a few years, the only thing left will be a weird story you tell people over a beer. A story about how you once wanted to jump off a roof and some guy standing below shouted at you . . .

What? the guy on the roof yells back at me, pointing at his ear. He probably can’t hear me because of the noise coming from the road. Or maybe it isn’t the noise, because I heard his What? perfectly well. Maybe he’s just hard of hearing. P.T., who’s hugging my thighs without being able to encircle them completely, as if I were some kind of giant baobab tree, yells at the guy, Do you have superpowers? but the guy points at his ear again as if to say he can’t hear, and shouts, I’m sick of it! Enough! How much can I take? P.T. shouts back at him, as if they were having the most ordinary conversation in the world, Come on, fly already! And I’m starting to feel that stress, the stress that comes with knowing that it’s all on you.

I have it a lot at work. With the family too, but not as much. Like what happened on the way to Lake Kinneret, when I tried to brake and the tires locked. The car started to skid along the road and I said to myself, Either you fix this or it’s all over. That time, driving to the Dead Sea, I didn’t fix it, and Liat, the only one not buckled in, died, and I was left alone with the kids. P.T. was two and barely knew how to speak, but Amit never stopped asking me, When is Mommy coming back? When is Mommy coming back? and I’m talking about after the funeral. He was eight then, an age when you’re supposed to understand what it means when someone dies, but he kept asking. And even without the constant, annoying questions, I knew that everything was my fault and wanted to end it all. Just like the guy on the roof. But here I am today, walking without crutches, living with Simona, a good dad. I want to tell the guy on the roof all about it, I want to tell him that I know exactly how he feels right now, and that if he doesn’t flatten himself like a pizza on the sidewalk, it’ll pass. I know what I’m talking about, because no one on this blue planet was as miserable as I was. He just has to get down from there and give himself a week. A month. Even a year, if necessary.

But how can you say all that to a guy who’s half deaf? Meanwhile, P.T. pulls my hand and says, He’s not going to fly today anyway, Daddy, let’s go to the park before it gets dark. But I stay where I am and shout as loudly as I can, People die like flies all the time, even without killing themselves. Don’t do it! Please don’t do it! The guy on the roof nods—it looks like this time, he heard something—and shouts back at me, How did you know? How did you know she died? Someone always dies, I want to yell back at him. Always. If not her, then someone else. But that won’t get him down from there, so instead I shout, There’s a kid here, and point at P.T., he doesn’t need to see this. Then P.T. yells, Yes I do! Yes I do! Come on and fly already, before it gets dark! It’s December, and it really does get dark early.

If he jumps, that’ll be on my conscience, too. Irena the psychologist at the clinic will give me that After you I’m going home look of hers and say, You’re not responsible for everyone. You have to get that into your head. And I’ll nod, because I know that the session ends in two minutes and she has to pick up her daughter from day care, but it won’t change anything because I’ll have to carry that half-deaf guy on my back, along with Liat and Amit’s glass eye. I have to save him. Wait there for me! I scream as loudly as I can. I’m coming up to talk to you!

I can’t go on without her. I can’t! he shouts. Wait a minute, I yell, and say to P.T., Come on, sweetie, let’s go up to the roof. P.T. gives an adorable shake of his head, the way he always does right before he sticks the knife in, and says, If he flies, we can see better from here.

He won’t fly, I say, not today. Let’s go up there just for a minute. Daddy has to tell the man something. But P.T. persists. So yell from here. His arm slips out of my grasp and he throws himself down on the ground, the way he likes to do to Simona and me at the mall. Let’s race to the roof, I say. If we get there without stopping, P.T. and Daddy get ice cream as a prize.

Ice cream now, P.T. wails, rolling around on the sidewalk, ice cream now! I have no time for this crap. I pick him up. He squirms and screams, but I ignore it and start running toward the building.

What happened to the kid? I hear the guy shout from the roof. I don’t answer, and race into the building. Maybe his curiosity will stop him for now. Maybe it’ll keep him from jumping long enough for me to get up to the roof.

The kid is heavy. It’s hard to climb all those stairs when you’re holding a five-and-a-half-year-old kid in your arms, especially one who doesn’t want to go up the stairs. By the third floor, I’m completely out of breath. A fat redhead who must have