The Building
Published in Issue #17 Translated from Hebrew by Dalya Bilu(Excerpt from a Novel)
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This time of day there’s no one home, I thought. Only old people and the children playing hooky from school, if there were any left in the building. I could start with the Greenbergs, I thought. They lived a floor and a half below us and always had a spare key in a kitchen drawer. My mother reminded me of this every morning, in case I forgot my satchel in the bus again and when I got home from school I’d find myself in front of a locked door. Of course I never forgot. Not after the first time it happened and we had to call in a locksmith to change the cylinder. I wrote my name and family name on all my copybooks, and then the street number, the neighborhood, the town, the country, the continent and so on. All the kids wrote the same: the Milky Way, the Universe. There we stopped. We didn’t think of the time, but on my arithmetic copybook I added the floor and the apartment number. ‘Do you understand what a stupid thing you did, Omer?!’ my father said angrily. ‘Now anyone can come with the key and simply walk in. Imagine if it happens when your mother is alone at home. Or you.’ From then on I was careful.
Greenberg, announced the plastic letters stuck onto the wooden plaque years ago. Definitely before we left the building. Maybe even before we came to live there. No first names, no ‘Family’. Just plain Greenberg....
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