lesmots, lesimages, lesmadness, lesexoticaccents, lesartokay
The puppy wakes up ecstatic, tap dancing on the wooden floors like there's no tomorrow. She has nil memory of having been attacked and nearly dying from Ginger's sharp teeth puncture wounds, 100% finished with trauma. Forever. I was convinced, and so completely sadly, that her enthusiastic illusion of a life to look forward to, had been cruely stolen from her in that one shocking moment, so fragile and young - but I was stupid, stupid me, forgetting what young is in my own now boring dispute with it. She is beside herself with abandoned love (for us!) and the frisky breeze that goes up her behind like bright mischief.
Flower is drinking my tea, dipping her whole cat face inside the mug, lapping away loudly with a long tongue, and her sister, the most indolent of beauties, the one you like, Piaf, chases last night's red fizzpop wrapper around on the carpet, a bright crinkly insect, a silliness for her unguarded smouldering pose. Their big brother, my big Romeo, is lolling like a lazy fire on the deck in this shining sun, utterly disinterested, licking himself clean and staring me out with fierce eyes. What does he care for #slutwalks and the corridors of power? Good.
Last night I found this 'learn Yiddish free online course' and thought I could do it with a view to becoming the heroine at the simcha table for Rosh Hashana in September. So I download it. Turns out to be a few family-style videos by this hell of a character old lady called Millie who is having big nachas being filmed and telling stories. In one of them, she tells a legendary joke which I bet my whole family over 70 knows already:
There's these two women and the one asks the other if she remembers some guy and the other says no, remind me. So she says you know that guy with the weird arm and she says nah I don’t remember. So the first one says you know he had a crippled arm and a squiff leg? But the second one still says nah she does not recall. Finally the women telling the story says you know him man: he had that funny arm and a messed up leg and his nose was always running.
Oh! of course exclaims the second. I remember him very well - he was so good looking.
I’m liable to learn more Yiddish from my mom. We started off this mission of one word a day a while back and a few have made their way onto #lesfolies place of outburst. Ferblunjit means all mixed up. The picture btw is an x-ray of my boy Chili's four giant wisdom teeth. Impacted. I like the picture. It's a smiling ferblunjit.
1. Chinese Year of Ox (Full Title: Inevitable Serendipitious)
2. Up against Age of No You Can't Take A Photograph Here I Have to Call My Boss
3. Perpetual Fine (Traffic, State of Mind, Weather Influence)
4. Hitting Head On as above (Source Wikimedia.org Author: viZZZual.com + God)
5. I am so sorry for your mistake (lifetime habit) relates to African customs and traditions, see also:
6. Uskies baas (Req. Balaclava in hand)
7. Smoked Salmon in times of Hardship & Famine
8. Damp Walls (House, Facebook, Stomach Lining)
9. No (Dreams)
10. Why not? (Dreams II)
11. Unfortunately your lotto results did not match (Surreal Dreams III)
12. Blessing in Heavy Disguise
13. The Obfuscators (Name of Motley Band of Financial Consultants, Acapella)
14. Pigmentation (Birthmark, Available Palette)
15. $USD1bn and climbing in spam bucket, incl. complimentary Large Member Ship
16. Obsessive Compulsive Procrastination
17. Dread Locks
18. Not Enough (Ever & Form to Complete)
19. Could you repeat the question please? (Are you Iron Deficient?)
20. Yid Leaning
21. Lunatic unhappy woman who will not let her children see their sane and very nice father.
באַשערט
Bashert is a Yiddish word for destiny. My basherter is my soulmate. I am his basherte.
Yesterday we, my ma, Bee and me, went to see my uncle who has so far survived five general anaesthetics, a tracheotomy, constant dialysis and pneumonia over four weeks - and he is 81. I do not go in to the intensive care unit to see Danny because his situation is, to me, private, but my mom tells me he smiled and cracked a silent joke. Only Danny could, under these circumstances, make sure everyone still knows he finds value in making his lovely sisters laugh, and it is no wonder then that they make sure to keep their hair flaming red and their clothing and way of being so stylish. My ma tells him I am there - I ask her to do that while I go see his wife who takes me up to my waist and who once asked me if I believed in marriage, and their daugher, the redhead who is my age and looks just like my mother, to hug them and be warm.
When we arrived, there was some unusual excitment (strange you can get used to the sterile corridor outside the intensive care unit) about a nice Jewish man who had slept all night at the hospital and prayed for my uncle because at some time long ago Danny had helped his dad, or something like that. We went and sat with this man and he talked with the old bright ladies that came to see my uncle and aunt. He was a comfort to them and I listened while he and Bee exchanged history about Russia and Belarus and who went where, the pogroms, and how she was two when she came to South Africa, and that old tale we all know about her grandfather dying here at 23 (of appendicitis on a bicycle in Kimberley).
None of the women touched him when they said hello, because you are not allowed to touch such a man, but his eyes lit up when they walked in and he welcomed them to sit in the room as if it was his study. By then it felt like it was.
He had a book in front of him at a table, maybe Torah studies of some kind what do I know, and his few belongings and Jewish things he needs for prayers in an old Skip washing powder ziplock bag that he had packed away at his feet. There was a bottle of water on the table and he must have had some food wrapped in tinfoil somewhere. His skin was pallid, creamy and soft, with hardly any wrinkles, though he looked about my age, perhaps a little younger with sweet brown curls around his ears and quiet eyes with crinkles, but you could see he lives in a room with books. He is not going for a run or a tan or anything liked that. He lives, most likely always, in that same black suit with the white shirt and the black cap he was wearing, a Dutch cap, though he may also have one of those other taller flat-topped hats with wide brims, called a Kneitsch, for walking to and from places with other men.
More than once, over the hour of visiting time, I heard them talking about Bashert and the women were wishing for him that he would get his. I was quiet and felt shy, almost as required. They were on and on about the Bashert and there he was and there I was. He had been praying the night long for our Danny and so I did not want to read the newspaper in front of him, because it was Saturday yersterday, and I was relieved I had not worn anything that showed skin. I do not like the way, no I am even offended by the way some people interpret what it means to be a good Jew, but the man had prayed the cold night through for a man whose heart stole mine long ago and I had no need to argue.
I think the women conspired to leave us alone and immediately we were he looked straight in my eyes. I saw his were light and hazel and strong and he asked me directly, and with not a trace of concealment, if I was married. I said no. He asked me where I lived. I said Troyeville. He asked where that was. I told him it is on the eastern edge of the inner city of Joburg. He said, "Really? I did not know any one lived there anymore." I said, "Do you mean you did not know that any one white lived there anymore?" Because that is what he meant. Or perhaps, or probably, he meant white and Jewish. Then he said, "But I thought the ANC took over the whole city." I said, "No, they took over the whole country." We could have had quite a fight. He knew his books. I was quite interested in him.
Once, long ago, I did have a husband. I was his third wife. When we were about to marry, he was instructed to present divorce papers to the rabbi to prove he was not a bigamist, but he was unable to find the documents for his second divorce. The rabbi said it did not matter because she was not Jewish. When we were divorced I was supposed to go to a group of religious men to receive something called a Get and I was forewarned that they would spit on me.
I never went to that nice ceremony though the hazel-eyed man's response reminded me of how I felt about that time. And then he said he would like to give me a telephone number of a woman, he said her name but I missed it, who could help me with marriage. I was surprised. I told him it was okay. I said "I have a life." He said, "Yes, but it goes fast."
I knew what he meant. I know what he means. I did the mouth shrug thing but I had no heart still for anything but to say thank you for coming to pray for my uncle it was kind of you.
Afterwards, I told my mom and Bee over a delicious lunch at Moemas, and we imagined me wearing a sheitl in Israel, making simchas with big packets of disgusting kosher Flings and 2litre bottles of Fanta Orange stamped by the Chevra, learning the prayers and walking around with his mother and his sisters and prams.
Today I went to the wedding of lifelong friends, one a Jew, one not, who have lived together for 32 years. They have seen good and hard times. They have loved and most likely loathed each other and they have come through, shining. A pastor they found on the Internet came and married them and did not say even one word about God. They are Beshert. After the wedding, the groom did the dishes, smiling, and the bride tweeted a picture of that. It was a beautiful marriage day, perhaps one of the best I will ever witness. And here, in my bedroom where I am a writing, on the wall is a photograph of my great grandmother. After her young husband died in Kimberley at 23, she came to South Africa anyway to be in the land to which he had travelled to find a place for them to settle and make a life together.
The image was found on WikiMedia Commons. It is the front page illustration from the1912 edition of Sergei Nilus' book that contained ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion''.
