~
These are from Suddenly, A Knock on the Door: Stories by Etgar Keret, translated into English by Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston, and Nathan Englander and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2012. The collection was originally published in Hebrew as Pit'om Defikah Ba-Delet by Zmora-Bitan in 2010.
Two people were standing at the door. A second lieutenant wearing a knitted yarmulke, and behind him, a thin officer with sparse, light-colored hair and captain's bars on her shoulders. Orit waited a minute, and when she saw that they still weren't saying anything, she asked if she could help them. "Druckman," the captain tossed the word, part command, part reprimand, at the soldier. "It's about your husband," the religious soldier mumbled at Orit. "Can we come in?" Orit smiled and said that this must be some kind of mistake because she wasn't married.
--From "Simyon" by Etgar Keret, pp. 25-30, translated by Sondra Silverston.
I know a guy who fantasizes all the time. I mean, this guy even walks down the street with his eyes shut. One day, I'm sitting in the passenger seat of his car and I look over to the left and see him with both his hands on the wheel and his eyes shut. No kidding, he was driving like that on a main street.
--From "Shut" by Etgar Keret, pp. 31-33, translated by Sondra Silverston.
Then one Thursday a fat, sweaty guy walked into the cafe and smiled at him. Miron was caught off guard. The last person to give him a smile was Maayan, just before she left him, five months earlier, and her smile had been unmistakably sarcastic, whereas this one was soft, almost apologetic. The fat guy gestured something, apparently a signal that he'd like to sit down, and Miron nodded almost without thinking.
--From "Healthy Start" by Etgar Keret, pp. 34-39, translated by Miriam Shlesinger. "Healthy Start" is available online in Tin House.
The man who knew what I was about to say sat next to me on the plane, a stupid smile plastered across his face. That's what was so nerve-racking about him, the fact that he wasn't smart or even sensitive, and yet he knew the lines and managed to say them--all the lines I meant to say--three seconds before me. "D'you sell Guerlain Mystique?" he asked the flight attendant a minute before I could, and she gave him an orthodontic smile and said there was just one last bottle left.
--From "Mystique"by Etgar Keret, pp. 58-59, translated by Miriam Shlesinger.
The first story Maya wrote was about a world in which people split themselves in two instead of reproducing.
--From "Creative Writing" by Etgar Keret, pp. 60-65, translated by Sondra Silverston.
When the new great depression began, NW was hardest hit. Its merchandise was meant for the affluent class, but after the Chicago riots, even the wealthy stopped ordering, some of them because of the unstable economic situation, but most of them because they just couldn't face their neighbors.
--From "September All Year Long" by Etgar Keret, pp. 142-145, translated by Sondra Silverston.
There are conversations that can change a person's life.
--From "Joseph" by Etgar Keret, pp. 146-148, translated by Sondra Silverston.
There's a theory that says there are billions of other universes, parallel to the one we live in, and that each of them is slightly different. There are the ones where you were never born, and the ones where you wouldn't want to be born.
--"Parallel Universes" by Etgar Keret, pp. 153-154, translated by Miriam Shlesinger.
Sunday, August 21, 2016
Sunday, August 7, 2016
Short fiction by Haruki Murakami
~
A mother and her son, Americans, were staying in the unit next door to my wife and me. They seemed to have settled in long before we arrived. The mother was around sixty, the son close to our age, twenty-eight or twenty-nine. They resembled each other more than any mother and son I'd ever seen--both with identical long, narrow faces, broad foreheads, tightly set lips. The mother was tall, her posture erect, her movements always alert and brisk. The son seemed tall, too, but you really couldn't say for sure, as he was confined to a wheelchair. Invariably, his mother was behind him, pushing the chair.
--From "Hunting Knife," a short story by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories (Vintage, 2007), pp. 84-99. First published in The New Yorker (November 17, 2003).
Taking the occasional sip of bitter coffee, I slowly read the article. I'd read a few lines to myself, mull over how to put it into Japanese, then translate aloud. A few bees popped up from somewhere to lick the jam that a previous customer had spilled on the table. They spent a moment lapping it up, then, as if suddenly remembering something, flew into the air with a ceremonious buzz, circled the table a couple of times, and then--again as if something had jogged their memory--settled once more on the tabletop. After I had finished reading the whole article, Izumi sat there, unmoving, elbows resting on the table. She tented the tips of the fingers of her right hand with the tips of her fingers of her left.
--From "Man-Eating Cats," a short story by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories (Vintage, 2007), pp. 112-130. First published in The New Yorker (December 4, 2000).
Every morning, [my roommate] was up at six on the dot, the national anthem his alarm clock. So I guess the flag-raising wasn't a complete waste. He dressed and went to wash up, taking an incredibly long time to finish. Made me wonder sometimes if he wasn't taking each tooth out and brushing them individually. Back in the room he smoothed out his towel, hung it on a hanger, and put his toothbrush and soap back on the shelf. Then he'd switch on the radio and start exercising to the morning exercise program.
I was pretty much a night owl, and a heavy sleeper, so when he started up I was usually dead to the world. When he got to the part where he began to leap up and down, I'd bolt out of bed. Every time he jumped up--and believe me he jumped really high--my head would bounce three inches off the pillow. Try sleeping through that.
"I'm really sorry," I said on the fourth day of this, "but I wonder if you could do your exercises on the roof or something. It wakes me up."
"I can't," he replied. "If I do it there, the people on the third floor will complain. This is the first floor, so there isn't anyone below us."
"Well, how about doing it in the courtyard?"
"No way. I don't have a transistor radio so I wouldn't be able to hear the music. You can't expect me to do my exercises without music."
His radio was the kind you had to plug in. I could have lent him my transistor, but it only picked up FM stations.
"Well, at least could you turn the music down and stop jumping? The whole room shakes. I don't want to complain or anything, but . . ."
"Jumping?" He seemed surprised. "What do you mean, j-jumping?"
"You know, that part where you bounce up and down."
"What are you talking about?"
I could feel a headache coming on.
--From "Firefly," a short story by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories (Vintage, 2007), pp. 226-248. First published in the novel Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (Vintage, 2012).
Junpei left the house at eighteen when he went to college in Tokyo, and he became involved with several women, one of whom "had real meaning" for him. He knew this with absolute certainty at the time, and he is just as certain of it now. Before he could express his feelings in concrete form, however (by nature, it took him longer than most people to put things into concrete form), she married his best friend, and since then she has become a mother. For the time being, therefore, she had to be eliminated from the list of possibilities that life had to offer Junpei. He had to harden his heart and sweep her from his mind, as a result of which the number of women remaining who could have "real meaning" in his life--if he was going to accept his father's theory at face value--was reduced to two.
--From "The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day," a short story by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin, published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories (Vintage, 2007), pp. 312-332. First published in The New Yorker (September 26, 2005).
A mother and her son, Americans, were staying in the unit next door to my wife and me. They seemed to have settled in long before we arrived. The mother was around sixty, the son close to our age, twenty-eight or twenty-nine. They resembled each other more than any mother and son I'd ever seen--both with identical long, narrow faces, broad foreheads, tightly set lips. The mother was tall, her posture erect, her movements always alert and brisk. The son seemed tall, too, but you really couldn't say for sure, as he was confined to a wheelchair. Invariably, his mother was behind him, pushing the chair.
--From "Hunting Knife," a short story by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories (Vintage, 2007), pp. 84-99. First published in The New Yorker (November 17, 2003).
Taking the occasional sip of bitter coffee, I slowly read the article. I'd read a few lines to myself, mull over how to put it into Japanese, then translate aloud. A few bees popped up from somewhere to lick the jam that a previous customer had spilled on the table. They spent a moment lapping it up, then, as if suddenly remembering something, flew into the air with a ceremonious buzz, circled the table a couple of times, and then--again as if something had jogged their memory--settled once more on the tabletop. After I had finished reading the whole article, Izumi sat there, unmoving, elbows resting on the table. She tented the tips of the fingers of her right hand with the tips of her fingers of her left.
--From "Man-Eating Cats," a short story by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories (Vintage, 2007), pp. 112-130. First published in The New Yorker (December 4, 2000).
Every morning, [my roommate] was up at six on the dot, the national anthem his alarm clock. So I guess the flag-raising wasn't a complete waste. He dressed and went to wash up, taking an incredibly long time to finish. Made me wonder sometimes if he wasn't taking each tooth out and brushing them individually. Back in the room he smoothed out his towel, hung it on a hanger, and put his toothbrush and soap back on the shelf. Then he'd switch on the radio and start exercising to the morning exercise program.
I was pretty much a night owl, and a heavy sleeper, so when he started up I was usually dead to the world. When he got to the part where he began to leap up and down, I'd bolt out of bed. Every time he jumped up--and believe me he jumped really high--my head would bounce three inches off the pillow. Try sleeping through that.
"I'm really sorry," I said on the fourth day of this, "but I wonder if you could do your exercises on the roof or something. It wakes me up."
"I can't," he replied. "If I do it there, the people on the third floor will complain. This is the first floor, so there isn't anyone below us."
"Well, how about doing it in the courtyard?"
"No way. I don't have a transistor radio so I wouldn't be able to hear the music. You can't expect me to do my exercises without music."
His radio was the kind you had to plug in. I could have lent him my transistor, but it only picked up FM stations.
"Well, at least could you turn the music down and stop jumping? The whole room shakes. I don't want to complain or anything, but . . ."
"Jumping?" He seemed surprised. "What do you mean, j-jumping?"
"You know, that part where you bounce up and down."
"What are you talking about?"
I could feel a headache coming on.
--From "Firefly," a short story by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories (Vintage, 2007), pp. 226-248. First published in the novel Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (Vintage, 2012).
Junpei left the house at eighteen when he went to college in Tokyo, and he became involved with several women, one of whom "had real meaning" for him. He knew this with absolute certainty at the time, and he is just as certain of it now. Before he could express his feelings in concrete form, however (by nature, it took him longer than most people to put things into concrete form), she married his best friend, and since then she has become a mother. For the time being, therefore, she had to be eliminated from the list of possibilities that life had to offer Junpei. He had to harden his heart and sweep her from his mind, as a result of which the number of women remaining who could have "real meaning" in his life--if he was going to accept his father's theory at face value--was reduced to two.
--From "The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day," a short story by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin, published in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories (Vintage, 2007), pp. 312-332. First published in The New Yorker (September 26, 2005).
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