Read Online Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories by Etgar Keret, Nathan Englander, Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston - Free Book Online Page A

bookstore near Aviad’s office told him. The novel was very thick, 624 pages. Aviad bought the book of short stories. He kept it in his desk and tried to read a little during lunch breaks. Each story in the collection took place in a different country. It was a kind of gimmick. The blurb on the back cover said that the writer had worked for years as a tour guide and had traveled in Cuba and Africa and that his travels had influenced his writing. There was also a small black-and-white photograph of him. In it, he had the kind of smug smile of someone who feels lucky to be who he is. The writer had told Maya, she said to Aviad, that when the workshop was over, he’d send her stories to his editor. And, although she shouldn’t get her hopes up, publishers these days were desperate for new talent.
    Her third story started out funny. It was about a pregnant woman who gave birth to a cat. The hero of the story was the husband, who suspected that the cat wasn’t his. A fat ginger tomcat that slept on the lid of the dumpster right below the window of the couple’s bedroom gave the husband a condescending look every time he went downstairs to throw out the garbage. In the end, there was a violent clash between the husband and the cat. The husband threw a stone at the cat, who countered with bites and scratches. The injured husband, his wife, and the kitten she was breastfeeding went to the clinic for him to get a rabies shot. He was humiliated and in pain, but tried not to cry while they were waiting. The kitten, sensing his suffering, curled itself from its mother’s embrace, went over to him, and licked his face tenderly, offering a consoling “Meow.”
    “Did you hear that?” the mother asked emotionally. “He said ‘Daddy.’”
    At that point, the husband could no longer hold back his tears. And when Aviad read that passage, he had to try hard not to cry too. Maya said that she’d started writing the story even before she knew she was pregnant again. “Isn’t it weird,” she asked, “how my brain didn’t know yet, but my subconscious did?”
    The next Tuesday, when Aviad was supposed to pick her up after the workshop, he arrived half an hour early, parked his car in the lot, and went to find her. Maya was surprised to see him in the classroom, and he insisted that she introduce him to the writer. The writer reeked of body lotion. He shook Aviad’s hand limply and told him that if Maya had chosen him for a husband, he must be a very special person.
    Three weeks later, Aviad signed up for a beginner’s creative writing class. He didn’t say anything about it to Maya, and to be on the safe side, he told his secretary that if he had any calls from home, she should say that he was in an important meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. The other members of the class were elderly women, who gave him dirty looks. The thin, young instructor wore a headscarf, and the women in the class gossiped about her, saying that she lived in a settlement in the occupied territories and had cancer. She asked everyone to do an exercise in automatic writing. “Write whatever comes into your head,” she said. “Don’t think, just write.” Aviad tried to stop thinking. It was very hard. The old women around him wrote with nervous speed, like students racing to finish an exam before the teacher tells them to put their pens down, and after a few minutes, he began writing too.
    The story he wrote was about a fish that was swimming happily along in the sea when a wicked witch turned it into a man. The fish couldn’t come to terms with his transformation and decided to chase down the wicked witch and make her turn him back into a fish. Since he was an especially quick and enterprising fish, he managed to get married while he was pursuing her, and even to establish a small company that imported plastic products from the Far East. With the help of the enormous knowledge he had gained as a fish that had crossed the seven seas, the company