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

whose name was Oshri too. The sister and the fat guy thought he was a friend of the parents. But after everyone had finished placing little stones on the grave and the mother started asking around, he explained that he was the one that Nattie, that was the guy’s name, had landed on when he jumped out the window. As soon as the mother heard this, she started saying how sorry she was, and couldn’t stop crying. The father tried to calm her down, and kept giving Oshri suspicious looks. After five minutes of her hysterical sobbing, the father told Oshri stiffly how sorry he was for everything that had happened to him and that he was sure that Nattie, too, if he were still alive, would be sorry, but that now it would be better for everyone if Oshri left. Oshri agreed at once and quickly added that he was almost fine by now and that when all was said and done it hadn’t been so terrible—certainly not when you compared it with what Nattie’s parents had been through. The father cut him short in mid-sentence: “Are you planning to sue us? Because if you are, you’re wasting your time. Ziva and I haven’t got a penny to our names, you hear me? Not a penny.” The words only made the mother cry harder, and Oshri mumbled something that was supposed to reassure them, about how he had no hard feelings against anyone, and after that, he left. As he was putting the cardboard yarmulke back in the wooden box at the entrance to the cemetery, Nattie’s sister caught up with him and apologized for her father. She didn’t exactly apologize, actually, just said that he was an idiot and that Nattie had always hated him. His father, it turned out, had always been sure everyone was out to get him, and in the end that was what really happened, when his partner ran off with his money. “If Nattie could see how things here turned out, he’d be laughing hysterically,” the sister said, and she introduced herself by name. Her name was Maayan. Out of habit, Oshri didn’t take the hand she held out to him. After a year of pretending with clients that his arm was utterly paralyzed, it had got to the point where even when he was home alone he sometimes forgot he could use it. When Maayan saw that he wasn’t taking her outstretched hand, she shifted the handshake ever so naturally and touched him on the shoulder—which, it turned out, made both of them a little uneasy. “It’s strange having you here,” she said after they had both been silent for a moment. “What is Nattie to you? You didn’t even know him, after all.” “That’s a shame,” Oshri said, not sure how to respond. “That I didn’t know him, I mean. He sounds like somebody who was definitely worth knowing.” Oshri wanted to tell her that his coming there wasn’t strange at all. That he and her brother had some unfinished business between them. There had been so many people at the café that day, and of all the people there, he was the one that Nattie had dropped on top of. And that was why he’d come today, to try to understand why. But even before he had a chance to say it, he realized it would sound stupid, so he asked her instead why Nattie had killed himself—so young and all. Maayan shrugged. He wasn’t the first person to ask her that. Before they went their separate ways, he gave her his business card and said that if she needed any help, no matter what it was, she should call. And she smiled and thanked him but said she was someone who managed very well on her own. After taking another look at the card, she said, “You’re an insurance agent? That’s really strange. Nattie always hated insurance, said it was bad karma. That taking out a policy was like the opposite of believing things would go well.” Oshri got defensive. Lots of young people think that way, he said, but once you have children you look at things differently. And even if you want to believe things will go well, you can never be too careful. “Still, if you need anything,” he told her