Perfect Family Tales And Other Trivia

The art of the short-story writer is that of the cartoonist. It is the magical craft of creating entire worlds with a few simple strokes of a pen. Tales told by an idiot? Maybe! But my tales are also a mix of reality and fantasy; truth and lies; some based on my own family; others, not. Readers must guess which characters are real; who are inventions - and who are an amalgam of both. Please draw the boundaries for yourself.

Monday 23 April 2012

‘Hideous Laughter’

Lydia had suffered another sleepless night.

“Sorry, I can’t face another day at work.”

“Don’t then,” said Ralph.  “We’ll manage.  Go in, clear your desk and leave.”

But when she arrived at Birnam Wood Bathrooms, Lydia almost  dissolved in tears.

Mac, the recently, most mysteriously promoted office manager in ‘Taps and Tiles’ and his deputy, Beth were moving her desk out of the office.

“Lydia, ” he said  as though he were continuing a conversation. “Birnam is about to restructure and management is offering you a new role at Dunsinane.”

“Is that it, Mac? Perhaps I don’t want to move; maybe, if I’d arrived five minutes later  I wouldn’t have known about this until I opened my next pay slip.”

Mac and Beth exchanged glances and grinned.

Three.Witches.Macbeth

“It doesn’t matter now,” added Lydia. “I’m leaving anyway. I was warned before I started here that Birnam’s a ‘hire’n’fire’ outfit but it’s been absolute hell.

“Never before have I met so many  unpleasant people gathered in one place. At home we call this site ‘the blasted heath’.”

“So why did you stay?”, demanded  Beth. “You’ve told us you don’t like our company and Lord knows, the feeling’s mutual.”

“Don’t think I’ve not looked for other work but I need modern skills as well as the money. I’d barely seen or used a computer until I came here. Remember, I was taken on because I can use a manual typewriter; something now considered a lost art.”

Mac and Beth thought this was a hoot. They  began  to laugh. It started as a low, simmering snigger which stirred, popped and thickened into a guffaw before climaxing in a cackle that almost knocked Lydia over.

“It’s O.K. I’ll leave now. No more recriminations.  Oh, Beth – Mac, just one thing:  I noticed a digital voice recorder lying on my old desk. It’s been left running. So if you don’t mind I’ll take it on a long-term loan,” said Lydia chucking it in her handbag.

“You never know, it may come in useful when we three meet again - at an employment tribunal. Good-bye!”

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 23 April 2012)

* This story and the other below were inspired by Calum Kerr of National Flash Fiction Day. I was too tardy to meet his deadline so I instead offer two  contributions here. N.I.W.

 

 

 

 

 

‘On Will’s Birthday’

“Does anyone have a birthday (yom holedet)  today?”, asked Annie.

She was greeted by the customary deafening silence.

“I ask especially because this week we also celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut  - the birthday of the modern State of Israel and its independence.

“My birthday February,” piped up Tzivia.

“That’s great. But today is 23 April when there are two important events in England. Does anyone know what they are?”

More silence.

As an immigrant from Britain with minimal Hebrew, Annie Ilan posed the same question whenever she began an English class at the old folks’ club in Nesher, Haifa.

“It’s a good ice-breaker. It might cheer your students up a bit.” Yoel, the office manager, had advised.

“O.K.,” continued Annie beginning to wish the lesson was almost over.

“Today in England it is ‘St George’s Day’ which is named after the famous Roman soldier who killed a dragon. He  is also remembered as a Christian who was executed by the Romans for his faith.

“It is interesting that this non-Jewish hero is buried here in Lod, near Tel Aviv.

“What else happens in England today?”

“Maybe big football match,” offered Shmulie. “I like Manchester United!”

The rest of the class roared with laughter.

“You must like Maccabi Haifa,” scolded Evie. “You Israeli now!”

Shmulie, originally from Munich,   boasted that he had been a talented soccer player as a boy who could have become professional if  Hitler hadn’t intervened.

Annie waited for the giggles to subside.

William.Shakespeare

“In England today we also say ‘happy birthday’ to a famous writer. Who knows William Shakespeare?”

Every hand shot up.

“I like Shakespeare,” beamed Bennie. “I did Romeo and Juliet  with my girlfriend on balcony back in Poland.”

“You very bad boy. You get smack!”, grinned Penina.

“Me,” she added, her voice fading, “I lost boyfriend to Nazis in Ukraine. To be, wasn’t to be. My Moishe’s curtain came down far too quick.”

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 23 April 2012)

* This story and another which follows were inspired by Calum Kerr of  National Flash Fiction Day. I was too tardy to meet his deadline so I offer my humble  contributions here. N.I.W.

Sunday 22 April 2012

‘Bloody Kids’

“Dear Howie

“So you’re reading this note and  discovered that I’ve packed and gone.

“There’s no blood on the carpet. No corpse; perhaps a skeleton in the closet. Otherwise, this Step-Mother Hubbard has left things bare.

“There’ll be no books written or gory films produced about our domestic drama.

“It’s been too ordinary. So many people like us long for happiness but shuffle along, waiting for it to appear. They forget you have to work at it although everyone knows there’s no magic formula.

“What went wrong? O.K., I’m not a ‘natural’ mother and never wanted kids. But I gladly  took on yours as part of the package-deal.

“And you? The original ‘Mr Softie’ who has the makings of a great dad but prefers peace, quiet and a good round of golf.

“Do you remember our first row? ‘I’m really upset!’, you said when I supposedly reduced Carl to tears but had caught a gleam of triumph in his four-year-old eyes.

‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’

“It’s called ‘playing-off’, Howie and children are born knowing how to blackmail adults into gaining their affection.

“You said over and over how disconcerting you found the film, We Need To Talk About Kevin, blithely forgetting Carl’s infant behaviour and your description of putting every nearby  noise-making device on full volume in order to drown his incessant cries.

“Perhaps someone should advise Lionel Shriver that it’s not rare and  not always the early mark of psychosis. More often, it’s just an over-lively, maybe angry kid seeking ever more attention.

“You told me how  Carl had declared between Lucy leaving and my arriving that ‘Dad, you need a new wife’. Oh, c’mon! He wanted a new slave.

“Someone who not only picked him up from school but took his school-bag and lunch-box from him and carried them the few yards  home. This brings me to the time  the school office wrote demanding payment for a  dinner although I know he’d left home that day with his usual packed meal . It was clear that he didn’t want to eat what I had provided and had thrown my food away.

“I still believe we should have made the staff investigate. I said – huh! – it wasn’t the few pence but the principle. You retorted – ha! – it was the principal who wanted the money and that you didn’t want to make a fuss! I was not amused.

“I’m sure Carl’s never forgiven me for once refusing to clean him up after he’d used the toilet. For crying out loud, Howie, he was already at school and almost six-years old. Shriver was spot-on there!

“Yes, your little precious has demanded that we breathe and eat for him. Thus  ‘Daddy the Dustbin’ was born and I’ve watched  ‘Mr Softie’  morph into ‘Michelin Man’ and a weekly presence at Weightwatchers.

“Then came that awful  Mothers Day. You know I wasn’t interested and could have arranged for Carl to visit Lucy. But you insisted on our playing ‘happy families’ which scenario soon dissolved into a public screaming match at a smart restaurant where other diners  gawped at us in rapt distaste.

“Despite his vile behaviour, what Carl yelled was one-hundred per cent right. He has two mothers but none. There’s nothing I can - or indeed want to do about this, which is something  that you and Lucy must resolve without me.

“I could go on but I’m sure you’ve got the message. You’ve asked me not to make you choose between Carl and me, so  I’ve made the decision for you.

“Don’t tell anyone I’ve deserted you. I’ve not left you, only the situation.

“Love always.

“Your Sandra.

“P.S.  My cupboards are empty. So is the joint bank-account. If you want to get in touch, just call. – S.”

 

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 21 April 2012)

 

 

Friday 13 April 2012

‘On The Road With Mo, Aaron and Josh’

The wicked son what does he say?

‘What does this service mean to you?’ Wicked.Son

 

“Therefore, you should blunt his teeth and say: ‘Because of that which God did for me when I came out of Egypt’. For me and not for him. (From The Passover Haggada).

---------

Josh was absorbed by something on his lap.

“What are you doing?” demanded his father.

“Nothing. Just reading a commentary.”

 

“Extra  commentaries can wait until tomorrow afternoon, after synagogue. Tonight we concentrate on our seder,” said Avi Zimmerman. “Put your Haggadah  – Passover service book - on the table where I can see it and read the next verse.”

Avi and Rosa Zimmerman liked entertaining a large crowd for the family’s annual Passover meal so twenty-three pairs of eyes were now fixed on Josh. But still he did not respond.

Finally, Mr Zimmerman heaved his huge bulk from the armchair into which it had been squeezed and lumbered half-way down the room to where his second son was seated.

“Show me what you’re reading,” he demanded and seizing Josh’s arm, he sent him and his chair spinning to the floor – along with two books the boy had been resting on his knee.

“What? I’ve never before heard of this scholar or his work.”

As Josh struggled to his feet, his father had picked up the Haggadah in one hand while scrutinising   the cover of the second book as it lay on the floor.

He then grabbed it and tried to pronounce the author’s name, which had been transliterated from English into Hebrew.

On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Who is this person? A modern Torah scholar? Perhaps he works with Adin Steinsaltz”?

“No, Abba. Jack Kerouac has been dead for a long-time. Actually he wasn’t Jewish although one of his close friends was a Jewish poet, Allen Ginsberg who wrote Kaddish and  …”

 

Mr Zimmerman contained his bewildered rage no longer. 

Non-Jews? Kaddish? Go upstairs. Your sisters will send you  your meal later and meanwhile you may ponder the consequences of hiding a secular book inside a Haggadah. You have brought great shame on our family this night.”

------------------

It was past 2.00 a.m. when Mr Zimmerman made his way into the room Josh  shared with his brothers, but they had never appeared after the seder’s conclusion.

 

“Do you realise what you’ve done, you  sheigetz? You and your arrogant self-hatred may have ruined Levi’s match to Leah Gremholtz along with any hope that the younger children will be accepted in kosher society later on.”

But as he spoke, Mr Zimmerman realised he barely recognised his son. Josh was sitting bare-headed, with the light from a street lamp behind him, the better to see as   he snipped the last of the side-curls from about his face.

“This is the trouble, Abba,” he said. “You never think of me as an individual; only as another channel through which to continue what you see as Jewish tradition. I’m sure there’s more than one way and I’m going to explore it.

“I don’t hate myself. Actually I love being Jewish and I’m a very proud Israeli. It’s you I hate. You’re a bully, Abba and you’ve turned Eema into one too!

“There, I’ve said it. My first big truth! Now I’ll tell you more. I’ve been planning on leaving home for months and secretly bought secular clothes in preparation. But if you look in my backpack you’ll see that I’m going to lead my sort of a kosher life.

“No, don’t try to hit me,” he urged, backing away as his father raised his hand. “You know that I’m taller – and much fitter than you. I’m not going to let you touch me.

“I’m going now and will wait as long as necessary  for the IDF Induction Centre, here in Tiberius at Nazareth Street, to re-open after Passover.

“I’d like to join an elite brigade or even become an air pilot before enrolling at university. I want to taste real life; not just feel it somehow third-hand via Torah studies.

  “Silly boy!”, scoffed his father, but softening a little. “With your eyesight you’ll be lucky if any recruiting officer allows you to do more than scrub the latrines with a toothbrush. I predict that you’ll be back before Shavuot – Pentecost – begging your ‘bully’ of a mother to make you a decent kosher meal.”

But Josh had gone - banging the front door triumphantly behind him. He was unaware of his father now sitting on the low stool he had just vacated; tearing his shirt with the scissors he had used on his hair and beginning to chant Kaddish – not the poem but the traditional Jewish mourner’s prayer.

----

His father was right. Josh was back home long before Shavuot.

“What happened?” asked Rosa’s close friend, Rochel Levin.

“Our darling boy got no further than the end of Fig Street,” she sobbed. “With a head full of air and his woefully weak eyes, he could not have seen the car which hit him and was killed outright.

“A car driven in our neighbourhood on a festive night?”

“It had been hired by a  British Christian Zionist couple. They were visiting Tiberius for ‘Easter’, but had somehow lost their way as they returned to their hotel after a late night out on the lake shore.

“I met Mrs Johnston at her request. A very nice woman. She and her husband were deeply distressed by the incident and have offered us some compensation.

“But y’know how it is,” added Rosa. “I suggested a donation to the yeshiva – Talmudic Academy -  in Josh’s name. But I could tell she didn’t understand. A real shame – about her, I mean. In another world  she’d make a really good Jew.”

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 12 April 2012)

Monday 9 April 2012

‘Much Ado About Israel’

“I want to share a secret with you,” said Rabbi Grynspan.

“It’s more of a professional  than a personal confidence. The truth is – and please don’t laugh too hard - I’m a closet thespian manqué who fantasises about appearing at the Olivier Theatre in a one-man show. The thought – even  of giving a sermon there – fairly invades my dreams.”

The guests seated around the table with Michael Grynspan for their customary Passover seder meal were more amazed than amused.

White.House.Seder

But before anyone could respond, he explained: “Some of you know I’m – Heaven forbid – an almost idolatrous Shakespearian. Yet none of you is aware that when my beloved Maisie was alive, we teasingly called one another ‘Benedick and Beatrice’ and would quote  huge quantities of favourite texts at each other, especially when performing onerous household tasks.”

“Like washing-up or cleaning the house for Passover?” suggested Maureen Lipman.

“But what’s brought this on now?” asked Sir  Arnold  Wesker.

“Everyone here sincerely appreciates the time and effort you devote each year to sharing your love of Judaism,  Israel - indeed Passover with professionals in The Arts. But  I’m sure I speak for us all when I say I had no idea you had a hankering to join us.”

“Yes, why the revelation tonight?” demanded Steven Berkoff.

“I’ll tell you. The current, most unedifying row about Israel’s Habimah  Theatre participating in the forthcoming ‘Globe to Globe’ Shakespeare Festival is the last straw.

“I feel I must write – say - something  important without confining myself to a Sabbath morning homily in synagogue.”

“Please go on,” urged Simon Callow, who while non-Jewish had accepted the open-house invitation to the seder  to express his support for the beleaguered Israeli company.

“I blush to tell you, but as I have stage-managed an open confidence I suppose I mustn’t bring the curtain down too soon.

“It began when I read a most perceptive comment on The Times of Israel website posted by a former Mancunian  living in The Galilee.”

“Who was it?”, asked Howard Jacobson, now acutely interested.

“Oh,” chuckled the rabbi, “you’ll like this. He signed himself as  ‘Berel Fink’ and  I wondered if his family name had somehow inspired your book.”

“Yes, I do remember a Fink family in North Manchester. Their matriarch, Sophie, was the sort of character you couldn’t invent – only describe. Tell you what,  Jenny,” added Jacobson turning to his wife. “Next time we visit Mum I’ll show you Sophie’s old shop which now sells Asian women’s wear.”

“Anyway, continued the rabbi, “Mr Fink noted that the festival will showcase the plays in Turkish, Russian, Chinese, Farsi and Arabic despite the many human rights abuses in the countries where those languages are spoken. Indeed, he ended by asking: ‘Is it a case of 'if it isn't Jewish, then it doesn't count?’

“This stirred my own creative juices and I began to write something to read aloud tonight while we digest our dinner and before we began the second half of the evening.”

“What changed your mind?,” asked Sir Arnold.

“You did! I’d penned barely a phrase in the manner of Shylock’s ‘Hath not a Jew?’ soliloquy when I reflected  first, how well you’ve twice handled that marvellous if disquieting work and second that of course  The Merchant of Venice is the very play which Habimah intends to perform in Hebrew. 

“So, if you’ll allow me the floor to orate rather than to daven (lead the prayers), I would like to read Howard’s moving, erudite exposition of the matter which appeared in The Observer on Sunday.

The rabbi cleared his throat and began:

If there is one justification for art – for its creation and its performance – it is that art proceeds from and addresses our unaligned humanity. Whoever would go to art with a mind already made up, on any subject, misses what art is for. So to censor it in the name of a political or religious conviction, no matter how sincerely held, is to tear out its very heart.

“For artists themselves to do such a thing to art is not only treasonable; it is an act of self-harm. One could almost laugh about it, so Kafkaesque is the reasoning: The Merchant of Venice, acted in Hebrew, a troubling work of great moral complexity (and therefore one that we should welcome every new interpretation of), to be banned not by virtue of itself, but because of where the theatre company performing it had also performed.

But the laughter dies in our throats. With last week's letter to the Guardian, McCarthyism came to Britain. You could hear the minds of people in whom we vest our sense of creative freedom snapping shut. And now we might all be guilty by association: of being in the wrong place or talking to the wrong people or reading the wrong book. Thus does an idée fixe make dangerous fools of the best of us.”

A fine ‘actorly’ performance, more than worthy of the surprise we have for you,” said  Lipman as he concluded. Then kissing his cheek, she handed him a square, flat package.

“Not more matza, please!” quipped the rabbi as he struggled with the wrapping. But as he saw the contents his eyes glazed with tears.

Inside was a framed certificate marking an honorary membership of the actors’ union, Equity.

Exeunt omnes?” asked Callow.

“Not yet,” rejoined the rabbi. “Berkoff is clutching the afikomen – the symbolic dessert – and we’ve got a lot of singing to do.”

  Natalie Wood

  (Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 08 April 2012)