Yesterday I told you about the Caricature Jew I met in Johannesburg. That article ended with this line:
“I enjoyed the hell out of him, and I think he got a kick out of it too.”
“I am willing to bet that he is still saying to people, ‘You think Goldfarb is hard to deal with? Well, let me tell you about this American goy …'”
That makes it sound like I outbargained him.
No way. He got his money, he just felt like he had done a bad job of one deal, and The Deal is his big game in life.
But I am willing to bet he is telling cousin Irving that this American goy walked into his store and left him naked and poor. Let me tell you why he says that.
One thing Americans who are going to “exotic places” simply cannot understand is that we are exotic to them. When I see a University of California tee shirt on a Russian in Moscow, it is routine home stuff to me, but to him it is written in that funny alphabet Americans use and it is from the other side of the world.
I remember a line from a Russian novel, “I will go ANYWHERE. I will go to AMERICA if I have to!”
In Africa I was very often the first American the person I was talking to had ever met. They had heard about us, seen our movies, read our books, but here was an actual American, up front and personal.
I am not just talking about Africans in the bush. I am talking about educated city people who had been to Europe.
So I was the only American this Caricature Jew had ever met. I believe he told me that. So many people told me that I have forgotten.
Now if you meet the only Mongolian you ever saw in your life and you tell somebody about it, which would you prefer to say, “He was just like anybody else” or “You could see how Inscrutable and Oriental he was”?
The big reputation of Americans is go-getters and money-makers. I think the old gent would rather tell his cousin Irving that this American goy took him for everything he had. By now, he probably believes it.
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