Keys
by Avital Gad-Cykman
Imagine taking the key for the family apartment in Vienna, the one located in a building already destroyed and rebuilt.
Imagine inserting the key into the locked door of the family apartment in Bialystok, to step in and find generations of indifferent neighbors in residence.
Imagine someone turning the key at the keyhole of your door in Jerusalem and opening the door before you block it shut. Her face is yellowed like old newspaper.
Nobody says anything in any apartment.
I don’t disturb the woman sitting on an unfamiliar couch in Vienna, watching a World War II film. I stand still, taking in history, until her adolescent grandson pushes me back out to the hallway and onto the staircase, then closes the door. In a different turn of events, I live inside and they don’t. My key drops on the floor like a tiny bell.
I also refrain from interrupting the old couple, with their sons and daughters sitting around a modern table in an ancient living room in Bialystok. They stare at me, then return to their card game. A boy and a girl run in circles around me until I’m caught between their arms and they hurl me back to the cold night. The children can’t speak to me, nor can I hear them. We don’t share a common language.
The yellowed old woman enters the kitchen in Jerusalem and sniffs the air. I keep cooking dinner. The smell of her life is long gone from here and her body scent must have changed, but the dog doesn’t bark. Dogs have respect for the people of the house. The woman stands firmly, as if she won’t leave ever again.
My children ask who she is. I don’t know what to say. Should she be here? Must we make room? I don’t know, kids.
Nobody speaks the same language.
Avital Gad-Cykman, the author of Life In, Life Out (Matter Press), and the upcoming Light Reflection Over Blues (Ravenna Press) has published stories in Iron Horse, Prairie Schooner, Ambit, CALYX Journal, Glimmer Train and McSweeney’s Quarterly among others. Her work has been anthologized in W.W. Norton’s International Flash Fiction, Best Small Fiction (Sonder Press) and elsewhere. She lives in Brazil.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Keys”? The origin of “Keys” is in my visit in Vienna, where my mother was born, and my somewhat shaky sense of belonging. My experience as a refugee’s descendant made me think about refugees from other peoples and the people who expelled them or are simply living in the abandoned homes. We belong with our parents’ abandoned homes, as well as with our new homes and, because wars go on, we may find ourselves on the other side.
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