Traditional Jokes and Anecdotes, Part 2

Opera Manent.

This is a very old joke, told often in a very abbreviated manner, so now I will expand it a bit, but imagine you are listening and not just reading.  Reading and listening are not the same, but listen anyway. 

Once more than a hundred years ago there was a nice Jewish businessman from Warsaw who took a trip on a boat to visit his relatives in America.  On the way, crossing the Ocean there comes a storm, the sky turns black, the thunder roars, and then the ship goes off course, no one knows where, and eventually after a long time wandering around in the water, somewhere the fancy boat wrecks and sinks.  Almost everybody drowns.

By good luck, however, this nice person whose name let us say was Robinson Krusowitz, swims ashore on a small island, the only survivor.  For him it is hard work, since he is no spring chicken or even a duck.  He falls asleep, wakes up, decides to live and so he does. If you can’t be master of all you purvey, the next best thing is to master all you survey.  For him this becomes a motto.

Well, nebech, the years start to pass, and they pass and they pass, and they even go by more than the nice man can count any more.  You know how it is, tempus fuget, time flies.  But one day, unexpectedly, though never without hope, on the horizon, there is the outline of a ship, with first smoke and then smoke stacks, and then the rest of the boat, a long ocean liner, and then finally near the end of the day it comes up right to the beach.  By then, Robinson is waving a flag he makes from a shirt on a stick, and the sailors on the deck see it and what do you know, they wave back.  Ahoy!

           

The next morning Mr Krusowitz watches a little boat with sailors rowing coming to land on his island.  He is so happy he does a little dance.  Then the sailors jump out of the boat, walk the last few feet through the surf, and stand on the sand.

“Welcome to my island,” he says.

“Nu,” says the captain of the ship who is wearing a white suit with fancy buttons, “this is a surprise.  And so how long have you been here?”

“More years than a person can count,” answers the rescued man.  “Just look at my beard.  You think it grows like this in a couple of weeks maybe?”

The captain and the sailors listen and stare in wonder.  They look at one another in amazement.  Then they invite Robinson to come into their rowboat and return to the ship with them, so they can take him home, wherever that might be. A special price can be negotiated, they say.

“Heh, is this the way to greet a shipwrecked traveller after so many years so many years he is marooned?” Robinson says. 

The sailors look sheepish.  The captain looks down at his feet.

Robinson goes on: “You want to talk, we talk, but let me tell you, Mr Big Shot Captain, my little island is not such a small thing.  You should take by you a look around.  I don’t have to go back if you are going to be all snooty and rude.  I am a respectable businessman.”

The captain then says he is sorry, and then slaps himself on the forehead:  “Wait a minute.  You’ve been here all alone for so long, so what did you do?  Me, I would go crazy.  You can give a person a tour maybe?”

“Funny that you should ask,” answers Robinson Krusowitz.  “How about I take you for a little tour absolutely free, you should see, and also I can pick up a few things to take home, if you are still willing, we can make an arrangement.”

Everyone agrees this is a good idea because what the shipwrecked man this sounds very interesting.  After all, it’s not every day you pick up a nice man from an island in the middle of the ocean.

They walk a little bit further inland from the beach, and Robinson starts to point out and to explain they should understand what a person does all alone for so many years he shouldn’t go crazy from all the silence and the lack of customers.

He comes to a nice little hut near the edge of the forest.

“Here is my house where I sleep.  Also look in here, there are shelves for a library if I had any books.  Over there is the kitchen where I cook and eat.  But over there, behind those trees, that little building is the place a person has to get rid of what he eats.”

So they walk on and on and enter into the forest and come by a clearing.   

“In that place over there is a synagogue,” says Robinson.  “And here in this other building is an office where I work when I have things to think about and write down with a scratch on some pieces of wood.  And over here, you should observe, please, is a shop where I sell myself the clothes I make from leaves and bark and the old rags in my suitcase.”

The captain and the sailors observe, nod their heads, and follow further the nice man from Warsaw.

“Over there, look where I am pointing, is another special building to store the fish I catch in the stream nearby.  And here, on the corner, is another synagogue.  Nearby here, please walk with me, you see, is a platform I can climb up with a rope in a tree so I can look out to see if maybe someday boats come by.  Then right there—”

“Wait.  Hold on,” says the captain, interrupting his host on the island.  “You told us a minute ago you have been a long time and you are all alone by yourself with no one else at all?”

“Absolutely,” says Robinson. “One person on this island, namely, me.  You don’t see nobody else, right?”

“But I don’t understand,” says the captain, “and neither do my men I can assure you.”

All the other sailors nod their heads in agreement.

“What don’t you understand, if it is possible for a person to ask?”

“Well,” says the captain.  “Over there you showed us a synagogue and then over here you showed us another one.”

“Of course,” came the reply. “And by this you mean what?”

The captain looked at the other sailors and the other sailors looked at the captain.  Their foreheads all wrinkled up with puzzlement.

Everybody is silent for a few moments.

They waited for Robinson Krusowitz to answer their question.

“What’s the problem?” he answers.

The captain and the sailors wave their arms in a few wavy circles, as though to say: Please explain.

“It’s very simple.  That is the synagogue I go to and this is the one I wouldn’t be caught dead in.”