1. At the beginning of the week, in the morning, I walk thoughtfully on Weizmann Street on my way to the HMO on Barry Street, to pick up my regular dose of medication, which has been growing over the years. As I turn to Barry, a lady walks in front of me with a dazzling blonde, lots of lips, a generous cleavage and a cruel miniskirt, which barely covers the place she was meant to cover.
In the quick glance I give her, the lady seems familiar to me from somewhere. Then she surprises me when she makes an annoying voice out of her throat and tells me “I wish you were unemployed all your life and had nothing to eat, you stinky leftist bastard”. Shocked by the morning attack I suffered, I look at the back of the blasphemer, who continues to walk as she mantles her lush buttocks and tries to remember where I know her from.
It takes me a few seconds. I remember the lady was a 15-minute TV host at the time, starring in gossip columns as a paid guest at launches of perfumes, tampons, skin creams and fashionable bras. Since in most of my stupidity I read all the sections in all the newspapers, I also remembered with which model exactly she went out, when they broke up, who the rest of her exes were and also in all the variety of her exploits in front of the paparazzi photographers.
Now, as I recalled the honorable history of the Cursing Lady, the elaborate computer nestled in my ears let me know that the lady had joined a band of socialite women who for a few shekels give their names and pictures to a campaign to glorify Judaism, observance, Sabbath observance, kosher and all the wonderful chores.
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The magnificent blonde, for all the accessories and corrections given to her by the well-known plastic surgeon Dr. Siegfried Schultz, was photographed praying near the Western Wall, kissing the stones, and on her way from the holy wall passed the Reformed and Conservative slate You will be ashamed, you will be burned in hell. “
2. This week is probably not my best week. When I left the pharmacy with the medicine bag and walked down Barry Street on Weizmann Street, someone patted me on the shoulder in an unfriendly way. I turned around and saw before my eyes his “screaming” attempt.
“Bring a cigarette and 40 shekels,” he shouts at me. “You’re a communist, are you?”, He screamed at me, spraying disgusting shards of rock and waving his hands, as if it were a Dutch windmill. “If you are a communist, share your property with me… Karl Marx… lol… Ashkenazi stingy garbage.” I try to think how I deftly evade this snooze, which for decades has surprised me with the same demands and the same text. Then the “screaming” tried to pull a gun out of his back pocket, pointing at me and screaming hysterically “If you want to shoot, don’t shoot.” For a moment I think it went over me, but then I notice that it’s a toy gun that at first glance looks like two drops of Smarak to a real gun.
Several people gather around the scene. One of them takes the gun out of his hand, grabs it, drags it towards a nearby public bench and seats it on it. Out of the corner of my eye I see the foam coming out of Nisso’s mouth and all sorts of scary convulsions, which I see in him over the years, every time I come across him. At the time, I ordered an ambulance for him several times, until I got tired of him. When I realized he was sick with epilepsy, all I had to do was take pity on him. But his attacks on me are always unpleasant.
Many years ago, when it was still possible to have a conversation with him, he told me that he grew up in an orphanage and in foster families. He managed to get to university, studied philosophy and history of ancient Greece and at what point he fell in love, was betrayed and began using drugs and alcohol in amounts that could have killed an elephant. His health deteriorated and he rolled on the streets, snorting money, attacking the “bourgeoisie,” he said. “I attack people I love,” he told me then, and that’s the worst thing he’s ever told me.
An ambulance with dedicated staff stops near the bench. They try to lay Nisso on the stretcher, but he resists and shouts at me “Golden, tell them I’m okay”. I told them he was fine. He asked for a cigarette, I gave it to him. He could not ignite it, I ignited it. He asked for NIS 40 again. “If I give you 40 shekels, will you let me?” I asked. “I swear to you in everything dear to me, but you will know that I have nothing precious.” I laughed.
Before I left, I asked him why he asked for 40 shekels instead of 50. “I’m not a bastard, Mr. Karl Marx. 35 shekels for cigarettes and 5 shekels for a lighter.” Everyone present laughed. The shouting man tried to walk calmly towards the blast to buy cigarettes and a lighter, singing in his hoarse voice “I Chat the Sheriff”.
3. Every time my name appears in the media for one reason or another, people on the street turn to me. Some are praiseworthy, some are cursing, some are trying to create an argument and some are just nice people, like that lady who seemed to me like a 70-plus-minus, who asked if I could devote two minutes to her and not because of news matters.
The lady introduced herself as Naomi, and asked in a gentle and polite voice if I remembered the piano teacher, Mr. Sigmund. It took me a second to make a flashback and bring to mind the neighbor who lived in the house next door, dressed in colorful clothes and a bow tie in the style of Benny Zipper. “Of course I remember,” I reply to the refined lady. “When we were kids we used to peek at him at the window. He would live on the first floor and respectable ladies would always come to him. He would pour them wine or something like that, play the piano and sing them funny songs, which I later realized were songs from operas.”
Mrs. Naomi’s eyes stared at me eagerly as if asking me to continue. “I do not like to tell you, but one of the reasons we would peek at him was that Mr. Sigmund used to stop playing the piano, put a record on a large turntable he had in the living room and then he would dance with the lady who was staying with him. Sometimes he would kiss her and sometimes lie with her on the couch “They would do what we called him then.
Mrs. Naomi looked a little confused. I calmed her down. “Even though he would yell at us and kick us out between two and four, when we were playing in the yard and he wanted to sleep, he was a good man. Strange man, “I tell her and smile. “He was kind of like Mr. Sigmund.”
“Did he tell you where he came from and what he went through in his life?”, Naomi asks, and I remember once showing us the number he had on hand. “This is the blue number that if you see it next to an adult, you will know he had a very difficult life,” he told us.
I tell this to Naomi and she sheds a tear. “Yes, yes,” she mutters, “he was an Auschwitz graduate. I am the sister of his sister Gittel. Mother told me about the children who would bother him, but he loved them very much because it was dark children. Mother told me he loved one bandit in particular who was called Nathan “Even though he was the biggest brat, he was also the biggest curious and interested and asked and listened.” I shook her outstretched hand warmly. She kissed me on the forehead and said to me “this is a kiss from Mr. Sigmund in his memory for blessing”. I turned my back so she would not notice the tears and filtered upwards “Inel the world”.
Some of the characters that appear in this column are the fruit of the writer’s prolific imagination.