This is the third of the short stories. I really enjoyed the story, although it was sad and had a certain dark and disturbing humor to it. In the story, there's a man named Udi and a hole in the wall where an ATM used to be. Someone told Udi, a lonely man, that if you screamed a wish in the hole then the wish would come true. One day, when he was alone, he screamed into the hole that he wished for Ruthie Rimalt to fall in love with him, but nothing happened. Another time, he wished for an angel as a friend. This wish came true. The angel would stay with him at all times, and really was a friend. He let Udi talk to him about anything, and let Udi help him with anything he needed, but never returned the favor. He didn't lift a hand Udi at all, and lied to him about everything. One day, the two were sitting on a roof together talking about life. Udi told him that as a child, he used to throw water bombs off the roof and the people below couldn't see because of the awning on the building. He asked the angel to fly, and the angel said no because he didn't want anyone to see him. Udi accused him of not being able to fly, but the angel swore he could. When the angel wasn't looking, Udi shoved him off the roof. He didn't mean to hurt him, but he just wanted to see him fly. The angel fell five stories down, and lay still on the ground with his twitching wings, and died. It turned out that everything the angel told Udi about his powers and his life wasn't true, and all that he was just a lying man with wings.
I really enjoyed this story. I think there's a lot to it, and if you analyze it deep enough you can uncover some really powerful messages. Although it was so short, it had so much to it. You can see how lonely Udi is and how desperate he is to have a friend; literally desperate enough to scream into a hole in the wall. In my interpretation, the angel is just as lonely. I think there are plenty of reasons that the angel doesn't reciprocate Udi's kindness towards him, first and foremost being that he's taking advantage of the lonely man. It's hard to read the angel's character because it's from Udi's point of view, but you can tell that all the stories he tells Udi are lies. This is proof of the angel's loneliness, showing that he wants to keep Udi interested. Udi keeps good intentions throughout the story, all the way to the end when he kills the angel. The characters and plot of the short story was powerful and interesting and provoked a lot of thought.
This story seems to be a statement about the Israeli government after the Six Day War. After the war, there was a renewed sense of Israeli pride and trust in the government. However, when Israel was caught off guard in the Yom Kippur War, the perception of an angelic government was shattered and replaced by the image of "a liar with wings", as Keret so aptly put it. Keret's stories to me, rather than being simply commentaries on Israeli society, often seem to be blatant criticisms of the government and what have come to be known as "inherent" Israeli traits.
ReplyDeleteThe "man with wings" kind of reminds me of Shabbtai Tzvi. He put on a façade that he was the Messiah, and everyone was ready to up and leave their homes to go and meet him and live where he would live. He, like the "man with wings", was thought of as a miraculous figure until it actually came time for their powers to be manifested. When "the man with wings" was expected to fly, he ended up falling. When Shabbtai Tzvi was expected to stick to his religion no matter what, he ended up denouncing Judaism, and falling from the Jews' graces.
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