Jokes are our friends that accompany us through life—at
least he good ones are. They made us laugh when we first heard or read them,
and they make us smile as we summon them up from our memory. That, at any rate,
is my experience at age 92. They come in certain groups according to
nationality and such, and though they tend to involve others, they may
implicitly affect us as much.
French jokes.
Pierre and Maurice, two entrepreneurs (note the French-derived word), meet on a
Paris street. Pierre exudes wealth, whereas Maurice reeks of poverty. M.: How
did you make it so rich? P.: I knew that Frenchmen go down on their women and
read that their favorite fruit is oranges. So I devised a cream for
orange-flavored pussies.” They meet again years later and now Maurice looks
rich and Pierre poor. How come? M.: I devised pussy-flavored oranges.”
Again. Pierre and Maurice meet on a Paris Street (it’s an
old joke with old names, nowadays it might be Yves and Thierry). Impoverished
Pierre asks wealthy-looking Maurice how come? M.: I invented nightingale-tongue
pate. P. : How is that possible? Nightingales are so small and their tongues
even more so. M.: Well, we mix them with horse. But it’s very equitable,
fifty-fifty. One nightingale’s tongue to one horse.”
Romanian jokes. In the Ceausescu dictatorship era, Antonescu
meets Joanescu on a Bucharest street. A.: How are you doing in these parlous
times? J.: I turned spy for the government. A.: Funny, so did I. And what do
you think of the government. J. : Exactly what you do. A.: Sorry to hear that.
Now I shall have to turn you in.
Again, An American comes to Bucharest and stays with a
Romanian friend. He wants to meet one of the fabled Romanian beauties. R. takes
him to a nightclub and the women are indeed great. A.: How do I get one of
those? R.: Easy. They are just hundred-Lei whores. [Note currency that sounds
like “lay.”] A.: Hell! Take me somewhere with better women. R. does, and here
the women are gorgeous. A.: I really want one of those. R.: Simple; They are
just three-hundred Lei whores. A.: Christ! Take me to a better place. R, takes
him to the best nightclub in Bucharest with fabulous women in haute couture dresses.
A.: There, it’s one of those that I want. R.: No problem. They are just
five-hundred Lei whores. A: Damn! Are there no respectable women in Bucharest?
R.: Of course. But they will cost
you a thousand Lei.
Italian joke. Two business friends are vacationing seaside,
and when they return to the hotel restaurant late, all that is left are two
fishes, one big and one small. First friend takes the big one. Second friend
grouses: “Some people are real swine.” “Why?” asks the first. “What would you
have done? “ Answers the second, “I would have taken the small one.” “Then why
do you grouse? That’s the one you’ve got.”
Greek jokes I have already quoted the Serbian saying, After
shaking hands with a Greek, count your fingers. Also the true story told by
Frank Harris of a high diplomatic meeting in Athens, where a proud Greek was
showing off his gold pocket watch. It was making the rounds of the table when
it suddenly disappeared. Said the host: “I will extinguish the light, and
whoever pocketed the watch as a joke can discreetly return it next to the clock
on the mantel.” When the lights went on. No watch, and the clock too was gone.
Scottish joke. Alleged inscription on a public toilet wall:
“Here I’m dying brokenhearted,/ Paid a penny, only farted.” Scots are supposed
to be miserly, but actually are, I’m told, extremely generous.
Jewish jokes. Abraham and Sara are in their bed, when a
robber breaks in and rapes Sara, then leaves. Abraham slaps his wife hard.
Sara, plaintively: “But Abraham, I was forced.” Abraham: “It’s not for being
raped. It’s for having so clearly enjoyed it.”
Again. Two Jewish immigrants meet on a New York street. Asks
one: “Where have you been all this long time?” Answers the other: “I was at
home, polishing my English.” Responds the first: “You should have been
Englishing your Polish.”
German jokes. A somewhat butch German woman doesn’t have a
private bathroom and so uses a public one. How does she avoid being seen in the
total nude? “I just wash my top half down as far as possible. Next, I wash my
bottom half up as far as possible.” “Yes,” says her interlocutor. “But how do
you wash your possible?”
Again. (I have used this one before.) The new maid is told
that the dog’s name is Hercules. Says she: “I’ll just call him Kules. I’ll be
damned if I’ll call a dog Herr [Mister].”
Hungarian jokes. From the works of F. Karinthy. An admiral
is proud of the admirable names of the Navy’s ships. They are called things
like the Unsinkable or the Indomitable. Yes, says the vice admiral, but won’t
it delight our enemies to have sunk the Unsinkable? So, says the admiral, let’s
call them the Unnecessary and the Disposable. Yes, says the vice admiral, but
what will it look like on maneuvers in the Mediterranean when all our ships are
called things like the Useless and the You Can Have That One? Admiral Well,
we’ll install a device that
changes the name from Unsinkable to Useless the moment the ship goes under.
A man has
seen Garbo in “Anna Karenina” a hundred times. Why? his friend asks. It’s
because she is stripping for her suicide by train as she takes off her clothes,
and is in her undies as the train arrives. I keep hoping, says the man, that
one day the train will be late.
A different
type of joke is the epigram. A serious insight tersely expressed would be a
maxim. When a maxim is clever, it becomes an aphorism. When an aphorism is truly
witty, even outright funny, it is an epigram. Typical aphorisms are Stevenson’s
“The cruelest lies are often told in silence.” Or Mark Twain’s “Good breeding
consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think
of other persons.” An aphorism is Wilde’s “A man cannot be too careful in
choosing his enemies.” An epigram is this of Wilde’s about Dickens: “One must
have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.” Or this:
“The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for
three hundred years.” Or again his: “To love oneself is the beginning of a
life-long romance.” Now here is Dorothy Parker upon the news of the death of
taciturn Calvin Coolidge: “How do they know?” Or herewith Sydney Smith on
Macaulay: “He has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation
perfectly delightful.” Or this, from a famous French courtesan, la Belle Otero:
“God made women beautiful so that men would love them, and he made them stupid
so that they could love men.”
I could go
on forever, but let me conclude with one of my own modest contributions. The
history of art stretches from Anonymous to Untitled--from when only the work
mattered to where only the signature does.
