Free Kicking Tomorrow by Daniel Richler Page B

close it, and when you come back you can check the level to see if he – aum – skimmed his percentage.”
    “If Elijah was really real and was a ghost,” Barnabus said, “he could pass
through
the mosquito screen.”
    “Oy,” Grandma Bethel said, pinching his cheek hard, “you kids are so
smart.”
    Dinner was served, and the talk turned to politics, which wasn’t Robbie’s thing, exactly. He’d tried to keep up by flipping through magazines, opening them just wide enough to see the colour and type riffle by, but never wide enough to read them. And listening to the parents talk was the same; as if the conversation were being riffled too. “PLO,” Dad was saying, “recognize aum right Israel exist conflict ideological political Jerusalem last year aum.”
    “Solving problems,” Mom interrupted, “Middle East political settlement Gaza ideological conciliation diaspora Arabs Jews war Holy Land.”
    “I think Ghadaffi’s lost some weight,” Rosie said. “He’s looking great these days, for a mad tyrant.”
    “Abby,” Dad said, “when the Knesset –”
    “Darling, don’t talk to me of the
Knesset!”
    “No, darling, let me finish. When the Gush Emunim –”
    “Wait!” Rosie said. “Let’s ask Bob what
he
thinks!”
    Robbie, who had, until this conversation, been under the impression that the Gaza Strip was a place where girls in the Middle East like Rosie worked, held his knife and fork upright, grease sliding down onto his thumb.
    “Ha!” Mom snorted, “I’ll give you
Bob’s
political analysis of the last five years: February ’72, SALT signed – the Alpha Jerks play the Montreal Forum. November ’72, Nixon re-elected – the Big Racket wows ’em at the Concert Bowl –”
    “Actually…” Robbie said as mildly as possible (the flooded house still weighing heaviest on his mind), “it was the Paisley Noses at the Concert Bowl.”
    “June ’75, the Watergate hearings underway – Pink Phlegm zonks ’em at Place des Nations…”
    “Aum, kids, did you – I read that Ringo was the real brains behind the Beatles.”
    Robbie’s ears burned red. Did she have to needle him so hard? Plus it wasn’t fair using her professional TV technique on him like that. He felt small, the same way the victims on
Hello World!
appeared: looked down upon by the camera and miniaturized, while the shots of her lent her imperial authority. He put a gun to his head and fired.
    “I think Bob has a wait-and-see policy,” Rosie said. “I admire that.”
    “Yeah,” Robbie said. “Zackly.”
    “My eye,” Mom said. “But all right. If you want. Robbie tell me, what is this
Knesset
we were referring to?”
    Thinking hard about this one. And regretting having drunk so greedily. His forehead was wet. He burrowed into the meat, carving aside the fat. And ventured, “It’s a, um, potato dumpling, right?”
    “That,” Dad said softly, “is a
knish
you’re, aum –”
    Robbie’s lips gnarled up all sad and ugly, and everybody looked at their plates and made like nothing remotely funny or ridiculous had been said at all.
    “Anyway children,” Mom continued, coolly changing the channel, and Robbie went under again. “What you must understand is that Passover is not just about olden times. When it talks about the trials of our forefathers we should also take it to mean the ones in the twentieth century. I’m talking, of course, about the Holocaust.”
    Robbie Bookbinder, ten years old, standing on the back of an old armchair in the living room in town
(an old armchair that he more recently found just about floating down the front path),
his head close to the ceiling. Reaching up to tip down a fat book with a yellow star on its binding, and wondering if his fingers will leave prints in the dust. The late afternoon light is closing in around him, buzzing like flies. Against angry grey skies, the naked women with broad black smudges of pubic hair standing in the mud. And this is the first time he saw that