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PEN America 8:
Making Histories
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| Etgar Keret: Myth Milk |
Translated by Sondra Silverston
They shot him like a dog, and me they slapped. That’s how it always
is—they shoot the men like dogs and the women get slapped. “I don’t
have the heart to kill you even though you deserve it,” said their
leader who, oddly enough, was the shortest one. “We won’t even rape
you,” he added, and from the look in his eyes I could tell that he
considered himself a prince, but instead of thanking him for his
courtesy, I started to cry. It’s tough being a woman, what with all
those slaps and all the men you lose. When you’re a man, they take you
out of bed in the middle of the night once, drag you into the street
and bam, it’s over. But when you’re a woman, it never ends. “It’s
natural to cry,” he said, stroking my head, “it’s the shock.” And then
he said again, “We won’t even rape you. Even though you deserve it.”
Then they went away. It wasn’t because they were afraid, men aren’t
afraid of anything. Maybe I wasn’t grateful enough. I took the shovel
out of the tool chest and dug a hole where the ground was soft. It took
me three hours and I got calluses on my hands. It’s hard to dig a hole
big enough for a person, especially a huge one like my man. I lugged
his body to the hole, but I didn’t have the strength left to cover him
with sand, so I covered him with our flowered quilt and put the
espresso machine we got from the kids for our last anniversary on top
so the quilt wouldn't blow away. It’s an old trick; my mother did the
same when my father died. Then I went into the kitchen and took a
carton of myth milk out of the refrigerator, drank two glasses and gave
a little hiccup, a woman’s hiccup. When he hiccupped, the whole house
used to shake. “Don't be a pig,” I’d tell him, and he’d laugh. I went
to bed, but it was hard to fall asleep without a man, even harder
without the quilt on such a cold night. When I finally fell asleep, I
dreamed they dragged us out of the house in the middle of the night and
shot me like a dog, and for once, he was the one who got stuck with the
slap and the “we won’t rape you” and the grave and the milk, and it got
me so excited that I woke up all wet, the way only a woman can.
“Myth Milk” by Etgar Keret from The Girl on the Fridge, to be published in May 2008 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2008 by Etgar Keret. All rights reserved.
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