Missing Kissinger by Etgar Keret

Author:Etgar Keret [Etgar Keret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2008-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

RAISING THE BAR

WHEN NANDY SCHWARTZ, the German pole-vaulter, cleared the six-sixty mark on the second try, he wasn’t thinking of anything. There was a lump in his throat the size of a billiard ball, and as his eyes followed his outstretched feet passing over the bar without touching it, he struggled hard to keep from crying. He sank into the mattress below and was surprised at the enormous tears that were choking him as the announcer compared his record to that of the legendary Bob Beamon. ‘Everyone here today has just seen a piece of history,’ the megaphones crooned, and Nandy Schwartz, the only person in the stadium who hadn’t really seen it, waved his arm high for the cameras.

Nandy’s answering machine didn’t say a thing. It just beeped with laconic arrogance – which didn’t stop the Kellogg’s people from leaving three messages.

‘Raising the bar’, was their suggestion for the new sales campaign, starring Nandy. ‘Eight vitamins instead of six!’

Ninety thousand dollars in the bank. Nandy didn’t hear the messages. He happened to be in the shower, curled up in the fetal position on the tiled floor, allowing the hot water to scald his back. The steam was seeping out of Nandy’s singed pores like out of a rusty kettle, as he lay there with his thumb in his mouth, urinating into the stream of water, watching the yellow piss swirl towards the drain. Those ninety thousand dollars could fix him up, except that unfortunately he was already fixed up in his split-level five-room apartment in northern Bonn. Down on the tiled floor a piece of history was cooking away, sucking the memory of the many achievements out of a thumb. Apart from money, fame and health, he also had sixty-three girls, each with her own story, some with more than one. If he wanted to raise the bar any higher, his next lay would have to be a professor over fifty-three, and if he wanted to lower it, he’d have to find a retard under the age of sixteen.

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