Grab the Cuckoo by the Tail by Etgar Keret / Fiction / Untitled Books

"His mobile tells him he's simply the best, but he doesn't even glance at the screen to see how much the stock has gone up, he just moves his face right up to mine and stares at me from an inch away like a doctor examining a patient."

Photograph: © Mark Reynolds

Grab the Cuckoo by the Tail by Etgar Keret

It's hardest at night. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not saying I miss her most at night - because I don't miss her, full stop. But at night, when I'm alone in bed, I do think about her. Not warm, fuzzy thoughts about all the good times we had. More like a picture of her in knickers and a T-shirt, sleeping with her mouth open, breathing heavily, leaving a circle of saliva on the pillow, and of myself watching her. What did I actually feel then when I was watching her? First of all, amazement that I wasn't turned off, and after that, a sort of affection. Not love. Affection. The kind you feel towards an animal or a baby more than towards a wife. Then I cry. Almost every night. And not out of regret. I have nothing to regret. She's the one who left. And looking back, our splitting up was good, not just for her, for both of us. And it's even better that we did it before there were kids in the middle to make everything more complicated. So why do I cry? Because that's just how it is. When something gets taken away from you, even if it's shit, it hurts. When a tumour is removed, you're left with a scar. And the best time to scratch it seems to be at night.

Uzi has a new mobile phone, the kind that gets real-time updates from the stock market. When the stocks of his computer company go up, his phone plays 'Simply the Best', and when they go down, it plays 'Hard Rain is Going to Fall'. He's been walking around with that phone for a month now, and it makes him laugh every time. 'Simply the Best' makes him laugh more than 'Hard Rain is Going to Fall' because, after all, it's easier to laugh when money is pouring down on you than when someone is snatching it out of your wallet. And today, Uzi tells me, is a big day because he's planning to invest a packet in NASDAQ options. Those options are called QQQQ, but Uzi thinks it's funnier to call them 'cuckoo'. If the NASDAQ goes up, so do they. And since the NASDAQ, according to Uzi, is going to fly through the ceiling any minute, all we have to do is grab the cuckoo by the tail and fly with it to the sky.

It takes Uzi twenty minutes to explain this, and when he's finished, he checks his mobile phone display again. When he began his explanation, the cuckoo was 1.3, and now it's already 1.55. 'We're pathetic,' Uzi laments as he chews his almond croissant, spraying crumbs all over the place. 'Do you realise that in just this last half-hour, we could have made more than 10 per cent on our money?'

'Why do you keep saying "we"?' I ask. 'And what money are you talking about? Do you think I have money to put into this thing?'

'You don't have to put in a lot,' Uzi says. 'If we'd put in five thousand, we'd be five hundred ahead. But we didn't. You know what? Forget it, why am I making you a part of this? I didn't. And that's even though, deep down, I knew for an absolute fact - the way a baby knows that his mother will always love him - that NASDAQ would break 1.5.'

'There are mothers who abandon their babies,' I say.

'Maybe,' Uzi mumbles, 'but not the cuckoo's mother. I'm telling you, I should have put all my money on it, but I decided to wait. And you know why? Because I'm a loser.'
'You're not . . .' I try, but Uzi's too far into it to stop. 'Look at me, I'm thirty-five and I don't even have a million.'

'But just a week ago you told me you invested more than a million in the market,' I say.
'Shekels,' Uzi snorts contemptuously, 'what's a million shekels? I'm talking dollars here.' Uzi swallows the last piece of croissant sadly and washes it down with a swig of Diet Coke. 'Look around,' he says. 'Pimple-faced teenagers who served me coffee in styrofoam cups at start-ups created by me are driving BMWs while I drive a Peugeot 205 like some dental hygienist.'

'Stop moaning,' I tell him. 'Believe me, a lot of people would kill to swap places with you.'

'A lot of people?' Uzi laughs to himself, half maliciously. 'A lot of which people? A lot of the jobless in Sderot? A lot of lepers in India? What's got into you, Dedi? Have you turned Amish on me now? Looks to me like that divorce fucked you up completely.'

Uzi and I have known each other since we were about three. A lot of time has passed since then, but not a lot has changed. Uzi says that even then I felt sorry for myself all the time. When we were in our last year at school, I fantasized about having a girlfriend while Uzi was already trying to make a killing. He started a summer camp for kids. His business plan was simple: the money he got from the parents he split fifty-fifty with the kids, and in return, the kids didn't tell on him for not organising any activities except for tossing a ratty football on the grass for them to kick around and letting them drink from the water fountain once every two hours. Today Uzi has his own flat, a wife who was once a secretary in some dot com company he worked for, and a chubby little daughter who looks just like him. 'If we get divorced now,' Uzi says, 'she gets half. Of everything. And it's all because I was a pussy before the wedding and didn't make her sign a pre-nup.'

I've already paid for breakfast and now we're waiting for the change. 'You, on the other hand,' Uzi continues, 'came out of your divorce like a champ. She didn't take a shekel.'

'That's because there was nothing to take.' I try to put the compliment into perspective.

For the time being,' Uzi pats me on the back, 'for the time being. And now that the whole business between the two of you is signed and sealed, this is the perfect time to strike and be the only winner, like in the one-winner sweepstakes, without partners.'

'Without partners,' I repeat automatically and swallow the last, sweetest drops of my coffee.

'Without partners,' Uzi repeats, 'just me and you. I have a feeling that the cuckoo is going to drop a bit again, not really low, to maybe 1.35, and then we buy. We buy the socks off it.' The waitress doesn't come back with the change. The owner walks over instead. 'Excuse me,' he says, 'I'm very sorry to bother you, but the hundred shekel note you gave the waitress is counterfeit. Look.' He holds the note up to the light. 'It's not real.' I take the note and look at the watermark. Instead of a drawing of former President ben Zvi, a scribbled smiley face looks out at me.

'Counterfeit?' Uzi snatches the note out of my hand. 'Let me see,' he says, and tosses the owner a different note, which he examines against the light too. Meanwhile, I apologise. 'I took a taxi here and paid the driver with a two-hundred shekel note,' I tell the owner. 'He must have palmed the fake note off on me as change.'

'This note, it's so cool,' Uzi says. 'Will you sell it to me? For a hundred?'

'What are you so excited about?' I ask Uzi. 'It's counterfeit.'

'That's why, you idiot,' Uzi says and takes a wad of notes out of his wallet. 'Non-counterfeits I already have. But counterfeit is classy. I'll dump it on anyone who gives me crap service.'

'OK,' I say, 'have it. A counterfeit hundred as a gift from me.'

Now we're in Uzi's car. We just got in. I don't know why I told him that I cry at night. Uzi is not exactly the person to share stuff like that with. 'And it's not because of her,' I stress, 'I don't want her to come back.'

'Yeah, I know,' Uzi mumbles, 'I know her.' His mobile tells him he's simply the best, but he doesn't even glance at the screen to see how much the stock has gone up, he just moves his face right up to mine and stares at me from an inch away like a doctor examining a patient.

'You know what you need, and right now?' he says. 'An Ethiopian sandwich at 56 Matalon Street.'

'We've just eaten,' I protest.

'A sandwich isn't food,' Uzi says, fiddling with the steering-wheel lock, 'a sandwich is one Ethiopian chick under you and another one on top of you, pressing her tits into your back. I have to tell you that when I first heard about it, it didn't turn me on either, but it really is amazing.'

'What's 56 Matalon Street?' I ask. 'A brothel?'

'Let's not change the subject,' Uzi says, turning on the ignition, 'we're talking about you now. You haven't fucked even once since you and Ofra split up, have you?'

I nod and say, 'And I don't feel like it either.'

'In life,' Uzi releases the handbrake, 'you don't always do what you feel like.'

'If you're trying to tell me that I cry because I'm not fucking, then you're wrong,' I object.

'I'm not saying that.' Uzi drums the wheel with his fingers. 'I'm saying that you cry because your life is empty. Because it has no meaning. And when you're empty inside . . .' he touches himself on the chest slightly to the right of his heart, 'if there's meaning around you, you put some of it inside yourself, and if there isn't, you shove in a plug. Just for the time being, till the manufacturer sends along the meaning. And in cases like that, an Ethiopian sandwich is a great plug.'

'Take me home,' I say. 'My life is pathetic enough without going to whores.' But Uzi isn't with me any more. His phone is ringing again with an unfamiliar, boring ringtone programmed for incoming calls. It's someone from the bank. Uzi tells him to buy $20,000 of the QQQQ, which has gone down again. 'Ten thousand for me and another ten thousand for a friend.'

I shake my head at him, but Uzi ignores me. And when he hangs up he says, 'Get used to it, Dedi, you and me, we're gonna grab the cuckoo by the tail.'

Through the thin wall I can hear Uzi's phone sing to him that he's simply the best and a woman roaring with laughter. There were no Ethiopians at 56 Matalon Street today, so Uzi went into a room with a big-boobed girl who said in English that she was Czech, and I have a bottle blonde, probably Russian. On the other side of the wall, Uzi is laughing out loud now too - I guess a Czech open sandwich isn't a bad plug either. The blonde's name is Maria and she asks me if I want her to help me get undressed. I tell her that won't be necessary, that I'm only there because of my crazy friend and that as far as I'm concerned, we can just sit there together till Uzi finishes and then leave, without fucking. 'No fuck?' Maria tries to understand. 'Suck?' On the other side of the wall, Uzi's mobile keeps telling him he's simply the best. Something good is happening in there. Maria unbuttons my trousers and I tell myself that if I ask her to stop, she'll be insulted. I know that isn't true, but I make an effort to believe it. Maybe Uzi is right and all I need now is a plug. While she's doing it, I try to invent a life for her, a happy one that brought her to prostitution out of choice. I once saw a film like that, about a cheerful, bighearted French whore. Maybe Maria's that way too, only Russian. When I look down, all I can see is her hair. Every once in a while she raises her head and asks, 'Is good?' and I nod in embarrassment. Soon it'll be over.

During the half-hour we spend at 56 Matalon Street, the cuckoo flies right through the ceiling. By the time we're back on the sun-baked street, it has already reached 1.75, which, according to Uzi, gives us a hundred per cent on our money. And so the cuckoo continues to slice through the blue sky like a kite, with us right behind it, clutching its tail tightly, trying not to fall.

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Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, the new collection of short stories by Etgar Keret, is published by Chatto & Windus.

Etgar Keret interview.
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Wednesday, 8 February, 2012

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Issue 44 / May 2012

"His mobile tells him he's simply the best, but he doesn't even glance at the screen to see how much the stock has gone up, he just moves his face right up to mine and stares at me from an inch away like a doctor examining a patient."