Fly Already by Etgar Keret

Author:Etgar Keret
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

ROBBIE

On the morning of his birthday, Robbie got out of bed and discovered, in the living room next to the colorfully wrapped presents, that his dad had turned into a rabbit. He recognized his dad right away from the limp, but Robbie’s mom, just like ours, didn’t believe him.

Robbie’s father was an officer in the army. His job was to defuse bombs. Robbie always thought that it was the most annoying and thankless job, because if you do it right, nothing happens, and if you do it wrong, not only do people say you did a lousy job but you get blown to bits. But Robbie’s dad loved his job. A few years ago, he couldn’t defuse a mortar shell some kid found in a strawberry field, and when it exploded, Robbie’s dad caught a piece of shrapnel in his leg and has been limping ever since. When he got out of the hospital, his commanders wanted to transfer him to another job, but he insisted on staying. “It’s not like I have to run after the bombs,” he explained to Robbie and his mom, who also wanted him to take a different job. When Robbie’s mom tried to convince his dad, saying that the new job would be just as interesting, Robbie’s dad smiled and said, “Defusing a bomb is like solving a riddle, and you know there’s nothing in the world I love more than solving riddles.”

On the morning of Robbie’s last birthday, there was no cake and no party; nothing but a fat rabbit with a limp in their backyard. That whole day, Robbie’s mom sat next to the phone, talked to people and cried, and that same evening, the police declared Robbie’s dad a missing person. Robbie asked his mom to tell them that his dad had actually turned into a rabbit, but she slapped him, then said she was sorry and hugged him. After the slap, Robbie promised not to say the rabbit was his dad anymore, and in return, she let him raise it in the living room.

“Our mom would never agree to that,” Stella said, “she’s very stubborn.” We were in Robbie’s kitchen now. His mom was still at work and his dad was playing with our dad on the small rug near the heater. They sniffed and circled each other happily, and Stella said that, from the way they were playing, you could see that they’d known each other for many years. It was starting to get dark outside, and Ella said that if we wanted to go home, we should leave now while there was still some light, because the lamp on our three-seater bike was broken.

“We can’t go home,” I explained to Ella. “When Mom sees Dad with us, she’ll hand him right over to the man from the pet store, and Dad will have to live in a small cage and then with a family he might not like and . . .”

“Yes,” Stella said, “you know that there

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