Look, Ma!: Stories with Points to Ponder

By Joseph Wechsler

What the stories in this collection have in common is insight into the scheme of things, with emphasis on beginnings, adorned with a fairy tale aura that keeps the smiling overtones from turning into smirks, It also induced me to name the entire collection by an invocation of parental blessings for tentative steps in unexplored realms.

The selection of contributor names reflects my mixed Romanian Israeli heritage, and will be appreciated by connoisseurs of local idioms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 23, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469111988

Joseph Wechsler

Born in Romania in a home that once was an insane asylum, he lived there until age 18 when, because Jews were not accepted at the University in Bucharest, he went to study chemistry at the ULB in Belgium. Still hoping for a musical career he also studied piano at the Conservatoire Royale de Bruxelles, where he met accomplished musicians two and three years younger than him, which convinced him that chemistry was the right career choice. Home for summer vacation in 1939, he was prevented from returning to Brussels by illness. In September the Nazis invaded Poland starting World War Two, so it can be said that his life was saved by typhoid fever. Early in 1940 his family moved to Palestine where he witnessed the birth of a nation. He lived in Israel doing chemical research, which he continued when he moved to the US in 1955. He started writing as a hobby, but made it his profession after retiring from his chemical career. He already has three books in print.

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Overview

Pen names of imaginary contributors who share a touch of levity

ELI BENISHA: astronomer estimating the abundance of matter in space, and the dearth of evidence for the existence of divinity.

BOGDAN SIHASTRU: physicist probing superconductivity and other strange phenomena, looking for class in snobbery.

ALI BODED: prominent surgeon seeking solace in solitude.

TOTO OIDER: literary critic, collector of twisted stories.

PAMFIL TUMULTU: historian, focused on Etruscan legacy in Western civilization.

MORDECHAI IPARON: economist, specialized in weirdness in business transactions.

JEAN FILTASSEUR: herpetologist bent on finding reptilian traits in fellow humans, and on inventing names with double meaning.

ARISTIDE PLAIVAZ: sociologist studying intrigue in human relationship.

AGLAIA ANTIM: anatomist interested in the origins of sexual reproduction, and whatever lets her forget it.

ABOUKA MATTIBEN: inorganic chemist who never forgave organic chemists their usurped predominance in chemical literature.

FU LAO LI: grammarian involved in comparative language structure.

VASILE PROSOP: nutritionist trying to please everybody.

FICU ADANCU: organic chemist aspiring to wider horizons.

YIGAL RATUVU: sociologist studying problems of upmanship.

MIHAI MAIDAN: parasitologist interested in human experiments with parasitic existence.

ADAM MATARA: expert in the chemistry of essential oils, glad to dip into miasmas of a different nature.

SARAH NEANDER: musicologist, expert in songs written for movies.

SHELLI TODRUDI: anatomist studying inter-species communication.

YITZHAK SHAKIRI: grammarian interested in the physics of laughter.

MARCU OBRAZ: animal psychologist studying spontaneity.

THOMAS ZEMER: writer focused on World War Two.

VICTOR SKRAELING: historian, whose pen name is Icelandic for Wild Man; it’s what Vikings called native Americans when they visited these shores in the tenth century.

LOOK, MA!

Important Moments in Mankind’s Childhood

by Eli Benisha

Like all flights of stairs, no matter how long, mankind’s ascent from smart ape to dumb human, if ascent that was, started with a first step. That step was articulate speech. It was what separated man from beast, the first qualitative difference. And, sad to say, it has remained the only qualitative difference.

But that wasn’t the only first step. Every upswing in man’s development had a sudden beginning, a sharp discontinuity in its routine. We still have a long way to go before we can honestly call ourselves sapiens, and it behooves us to keep an eye on those first steps to remind us of our humble beginnings, and to let us see how much, if at all, the quality of our mind has improved.

* * *

(1)

The First Spoken Word

by Eli Benisha

Late summer dusk, 51,201 years ago. That not-too-mighty hunter stomps angrily down a dusty trail in the steppe. He has no name—people have adequate squawk boxes in their throats, but there are no speech therapists around to teach them how to use them—so let’s call him Grool. There is nothing to distinguish him from other men in his group. He is not particularly burly, nor particularly astute. He is in fact on the lower level of the pecking order. The only ability that sets him apart is a way to use his tongue to make a rattling sound against his palate that can frighten children and people becalmed or asleep. He found no use for that sound other than having fun scaring children and women at work in the field. Soon he’ll find another use.

Grool is following a wounded gnu whose footprints he could see in the dust. He wants to bag that antelope all by himself. His fellow hunters had short-changed him once too often on the day of yester. I’ll show them, he fumes in image-speak, for he has no other way to express himself. I’ll bring that meat home without anyone’s help. I don’t need them. They shall need me when they see me bring that meat home all by myself. Big meat. By myself.

And so Grool is stomping stolidly on the gnu’s footsteps. There are plenty footsteps, but no gnu. No other predators either. He has him all to himself.

That gnu. Where is that gnu. Where.

From time to time he stops to sniff the air, but the wind has shifted and scrambled the odors. Suddenly he catches the miasma that spells gnu. It comes from thataway. Grool is nobody’s fool. He goes thataway. And there it is, his gnu, limping into a thicket off the dusty trail.

Grool, who is nobody’s fool, keeps his cool. He makes no sound as he follows his prey into the thorny bush in which it tries to prolong its life a few more minutes. The thorns draw blood from Grool’s face and elbows, but he doesn’t notice. He’s too intent on what he is doing. He marches on silently, even more determined to show them, those nasty men who keep all the best meat to themselves. The blood blinds him for a few seconds and he loses sight of the gnu, but his nostrils are a good substitute. They pick up the scent, and Grool follows it with great determination.

Suddenly there is a commotion in the bush and what he sees there makes him furious: the gnu is struggling to get away from a couple of hyenas hanging on to its hind quarters. Aiiiaha! he shouts swinging his club, Aaiiahah! He manages to divert the hyenas’ attention from the gnu long enough for their victim to escape, and for one of the beasts to show its disapproval by biting Grool’s leg. So now he too is limping, but he doesn’t appreciate the humor of the situation. He tries to grab the gnu, but the animal somehow gets a second wind and leaps back into the thorny thicket where it had reason to feel safe. Not this time, though, for it lands in a snake pit, and the startled reptiles empty their venom into its flesh, thus killing it instantly.

Grool, who is nobody’s fool, feels the pain of defeat. He stops at a safe distance from the writhing snakes and stares at his dinner being made inedible, for he had learned early in life never to eat what a snake had bitten. He stares, and stares, and wipes the blood off his face, and stares some more, feeling terribly sorry for himself. The thought of offering the poisoned meat to his competitors does not occur to him, for he is not yet skilled in the art of fair play in competitive sports.

But he is burned up by the unfairness of it all. He knows that he can do it all by himself. He knows. But the whole world gangs up on him and he can’t prove it. The wind messing up the scents, the thorns messing up his vision, the hyenas messing up his legs, the snakes messing up his dinner—all that to show that he can’t do it alone.

But he can! Why don’t they let me show? The bitterness in his heart swells up to a mighty wave, which grows into an even mightier tsunami which cannot be expressed with a growl and a cry and a roar. His whole being becomes an enormous exclamation mark in search of proper expression. He straightens up to his full height, opens his mouth wide, and belts his opinion of fate into posterity:

Aiiiiihuuuu! KAKKARHHKAKKKA!!!

That was the first spoken word. Since then no one has ever been able to put so much meaning into one word. That word, roughly translated, means SHIT!

* * *

(2)

The First Tame Sheep

by Eli Benisha

It is late afternoon, and the sun is yawning its last rays of the day into the cave in which a family of hunters are having a noisy spat over their next meal. Five little kids, naked and dirty, are hanging on to the front legs of a lamb, howling and shouting their resolve to keep it, while an emaciated woman is pulling it in the opposite direction, screaming her resolve to have her way with it. The noise is intensified by a couple of mangy dogs yapping at the commotion, and by an old woman who is screeching at no one in particular. An old man of 35 with a filthy beard sits on a rock scratching his chest with an air of disgust, and four youngsters are asleep in a corner. They do not look well fed.

Then a pregnant woman, who had been roasting roots over a fire, gets up and tells the other woman to let go of the lamb. She does, and the kids fall on their backs, one of them cradling the lamb to his chest and sobbing bitterly. The pregnant woman picks him up, lamb and all, and carries him out of the cave towards some wild sheep grazing nearby.

As soon as she approaches, the sheep run away. She puts her son down gently, tells him something, and watches him waddling unsteadily to the sheep with the lamb in his arms.

This time the wild sheep don’t run away. They just look at the boy wearily and go on munching grass, ready to bolt at the slightest sign of danger. The boy advances hesitantly, then stops and looks back as if for instructions. The pregnant woman points to an ewe she knows is the lamb’s mother.

The boy takes the lamb to that ewe and sees it run straight to the udder. He stands there sucking his thumb, then comes to a decision. He walks up to the ewe, sits down next to his pet, and starts drinking fresh milk from its mother’s udder in great, hungry gulps. And the ewe treats him like a mother whose son had brought a friend home to dinner.

Suddenly it is quiet in the cave as the people come out one by one to have a look. Even the four unlucky hunters wake up and step outside to watch their little brother doing what they thought was not possible.

But the old man is displeased. Look at ME! he growls, I am the one who found this cave!

The pregnant woman turns to look at her man. She says nothing. She turns her attention back to the little boy and watches him commune with a wild animal on its own turf. One of the dogs comes to sit by her. She pats its head gently, then looks at it in wonder as if it reminded her of something. She looks back at the boy. And then she does something no one remembers ever seeing her do.

She smiles.

* * *

(3)

The First Written Word

by Eli Benisha

Pedro Azada was furious. He had good reason to be. He was a paleoanthropologist, not an archeologist, although his name, which means spade or hoe, fits both professions. It was rumored that it had been a nickname that caught on, although Pedro claimed it was in his family for generations.

He had come to the Gobi desert to trace the spread of animal husbandry, which seems to have started somewhere in the Near East, not to excavate the ruins of ancient cities. Yet that’s what he found at the spot described as husbandry pregnant by his friends at Columbia University.

Know how I feel? he confided to Raul Ramirez, his student and companion, who came from the Department of Antiquities in Mexico City to study under his world-famous compatriot, now head of Anthropology at Northwestern. I feel like an astronaut sent to the wrong planet!

I’m not so sure, Pedro, better take another look at those ruins, you may get to feel like that poor Mexican peasant digging for water on his property and complaining that he’s hitting nothing but oil.

Why do you say that?

Those ruins are older than any known city. It is in a region where no such city ought to be. You may find here some real goodies, and they’re all yours.

What makes you think so? said Pedro with a marked hesitation, and Raul knew that he was no longer feeling sorry for himself.

Pottery. It’s unlike any we have seen. But it does remind me of the Hassuna pottery in Mesopotamia. Only this must be much older.

Pedro nodded. Actually it’s more like the Samarra pottery. You know, the elite of Halafian culture. That’s long before the Hassuna. We always wondered where those sIobs had come from. Maybe they came from here. But that’s speculation. No documents. Writing was invented thousands of years later.

I thought you were a paleoanthropologist!

I am. Remind me to tell you why I hate archaeology. Get on that cellular shoutbox and alert Evanston. We need reinforcements and funds and a new schedule and . . .

I’ve done that already. I’m told the University of Chicago is upset about having been upstaged by a suburban college.

Splendid. Tomorrow we get to work to upstage them some more.

Tell me, something, Pedro. I’ve always wondered what makes you tick. You are the miracle kid of the 21st century, the discoverer of homo mirabilis, the darling of academe all over the world. You’ve got it made. Yet you still go on digging in miserable places like this. Why? Can you explain in one word or less?

Pedro stared into the starry night without blinking. He always did that when he couldn’t come up with an answer right away.

Let me rephrase my question, it does seem-

GIVE.

How’s that?

Give. That’s what makes me tick. Give all you have to give. I found that word of advice on an amulet buried with a big chief in Mohenjo Daro. That’s in Pakistan, for crying out loud. He must have gotten it from Elam. His people had no script.

And soon they had nothing to give. Look at India now. Do you still have that amulet?

Hell, no, it’s in the British Museum. They lost it, I’m told.

A couple of weeks later they had dug out one room that was full of pieces of pottery, and started the painstaking task of sorting them out. Beset by the glaring sun, dust in mouth and nose, insects settling on any uncovered patch of skin, and scorpions under the shards they lifted ever so gingerly, they cursed the builders of that city for having chosen that spot, and their own misfortune of having stumbled upon it while looking for something else. Then something happened that broke the monotony.

Hey, look at that! said Raul, showing Pedro a faded shard of pottery. I thought writing was invented one thousand years later.

Pedro stared open-mouthed. The markings on that piece of vase or urn or whatever were obviously cuneiform indentations.

Well, said Pedro, well! I’ll be damned!

You will be if you can’t explain this!

Can YOU?

Raul shook his head. Can you read it?

Pedro shook his head. I can read Elamite, and Sumerian, and Eblaite, but not this.

What is cuneiform script doing in Mongolia?

Beats me. Perhaps these Proto-Mongols got it from Elam, like my dead mentor in the Indus Valley.

Or perhaps Elam got it from here. These shards do seem to be much older . . .

But Pedro wasn’t listening. He was again staring at the horizon without blinking. Then he shook himself back to here and now.

Listen, Raul, you and I are going on a trip. I have a friend in Ulaanbaator who knows all about proper dating of ceramics and about cuneiform scripts. Call Evanston and tell them we’ll be back in a couple of weeks. And tell them to reserve two pages in Nature.

No one gets two pages in Nature!

I do.

The shard’s age was worse than they feared: it was 8000 years old—that’s two thousand years before writing appeared in Sumer. They checked it again and again with the latest methods—eight thousand years, give or take 300 years. This was without a doubt the oldest specimen of writing in the world.

Woo Wan Hsie, the cuneiform expert, was as baffled as they were. Chinese pride in their cultural self-sufficiency had suffered severe blows lately. First those blond mummies with Caucasian features in Western China; then the findings of linguistic similarities between some Mongol dialects and proto-Indo-European; and now this.

Nevertheless Wan Hsie, always the scientist, fed the mysterious script to his decoder, a program he had written himself. It took a while for the computer to respond, it wasn’t exactly the latest model. They sat around munching yak meat and biting fingernails.

After humming for two days and one night the computer finally spat out some paper. It was written in Chinese. Wan Hsie took one look, and burst out laughing.

What’s so funny?

It’s in a language that seems to be ancestral to Mongolian and proto-Sumerian.

That’s not funny!

No. It’s a serious matter. I don’t know how to publish this. I must ask authorities in Beijing. They will not like it.

But what does it say?

They’ll confiscate it and keep it hidden for years.

But what does it say?

Or maybe my own boss in Ulaanbaator may have other ideas. He may want to embarrass . . . no . . . I don’t think so . . .

But what does it say?

The text? Oh, You won’t believe this: it’s a recipe for making beer! The man who invented writing found THAT to be the most important bit of information to leave to posterity.

They didn’t laugh. After a while Raul said, Now I know why you hate archaeology, Pedro.

About that text—what are the words?

"It says here: ‘Take two pouches of barley meal and . . .’

Pedro Azada, the man who lived up to his name like no other, could listen no more. Silently he walked out of the room.

Woo Wan Hsie was worried. Did I say something to hurt him?

No, sir, not you. The man who wrote that recipe did.

How can a cooking recipe hurt feelings?

It’s not the recipe. It’s that first word in it. That was the first word ever written. It happens to be one that goes against his grain.

Pouch?

No. The first word ever written is TAKE.

* * *

Here Comes The King

by Bogdan Sihastru

These are fables depicting aspects of leadership of which leaders are not proud, including the discrepancy between what people want and what they need.

* * *

(4)

Eustace, The Concerned Lion

by Bogdan Sihastru

Once upon a time, when democracy was more privilege than right, there was a mangy hyena called Humbert the Humble. That poor creature was so thin that his bones were sticking out for all to see and his hide hung loose like a squeezed rag. He was so thin because he never got enough to eat. He never got enough to eat because he was always late at the kill. And he was late at the kill because no one bothered to tell him where it was. And no one cared to talk to him because he was so ugly. And he was so ugly because he never had enough to eat. That’s why they called him Humbert the Humble Hyena.

One day Eustace, king of beasts, decided to visit his less fortunate subjects and walk among them with a suitably concerned mien. What with upcoming elections and all that, he needed to show that he was sensitive to the woes of the underprivileged. So he summoned his retinue, armed himself with an adequate supply of Dr. Flox’s Flabulous Fleakilling Fluid, and descended majestically into the lower stratum of society populated by scavengers, bone peckers, and other carrion eaters.

As he was walking among jackals and hyenas and vultures listening to their complaints, which were, as always, about the gall of inconsiderate predators who eat the best part of their kill and leave almost nothing for those who could not, or would not, hunt for themselves, all of a sudden his roving eye spotted a spotted hyena that was more spotted than ordinary hyenas because, in addition to its natural spots, it also had spots of manginess.

Who is that? asked the Lion.

Never mind him, said the other scavengers, that’s only Humbert the Humble Hyena.

Humbert? Come here, Humbert, he summoned him regally, and Humbert obeyed, groveling in a manner commensurate with his lowly status, wondering what he had done wrong. What have you done wrong, Humbert? came the query from up high.

N-nothing, Sire.

Then why do they refer to you as ‘only’ Humbert?

I guess because they don’t think highly of me, Sire.

And why would that be, my good m . . . ah . . . hyena?

Well, you know, I’m not very bright . . .

Anyone who knows his own limitations, said the Lion raising his voice to oratorical level, is bright enough to know his own limitations! He paused to let the depth of his statement reach the proper level of understanding among his subjects. Then he turned back to the poor creature in front of him with a fatherly smile.

You have nothing to be ashamed of, Humbert. Do you understand what I am saying?

I think so, Sire, you mean that-

Nothing! Except the way you look. No subject of mine should look like that. Why do you look so mangy, Humbert?

Well, Sire, you see, it is like this, I am sort of slow in my mind, and can’t compete on equal footing with fellow scavengers.

And why are you slow in your mind?

Well, Sire, he said with a shrug of resignation, I don’t really know, I guess I was born that way . . .

Nonsense, no one in my kingdom is born this way, all my subjects are born equal. I know what your problem is. Your problem is a lack of democratic spirit. When’s the last time you voted?

I have never voted, Sire . . .

Ahaaa! See? I told you! You have an inalienable right to express your political opinion, and you have never exercised that right! No wonder you feel slow-witted! And why have you never voted, Humbert?

Because, Sire, no one ever asked my opinion.

"In a democracy you don’t wait for people to ask for your opinion, you give it freely of your own will! In a democracy one cannot