Girlfriends

By Meir Levin

Translation by Shaul Gorgel

Immediately upon my arrival into Israel and to my utter astonishment, I got a job as a chess coach in several Israeli schools. In one of them, pupils were quite grown-up. About chess they couldn't care less. There was a boy in the class who spoke Russian. He helped me interprete myself into Hebrew when necessary. However, much to my discomfiture, the headmaster would walk in wearing shorts, not to mention her rather low neckline...

In the other, things were more complicated. The kids were small and dutifully out of control. As soon as they filed into a class room, they would pair off and beat each other up. One of the girls was really extraordinary as she would smash her boy counterpart's face against her knee. When I finally managed with some effort to rescue the little brat from her hands, he broke to me: "This ain't no Russia! I'm calling the police". So I had to come up with all kinds of ploys. Buy them chewing gum. Lie to them that I was going to teach them how to play chess and then we'd all together go to America. At first, they believed me, but soon enough I had to make up new fairy tales.

One girl started nudgering me saying that my fellow teacher Gregory gave out choveret (periodicals) to the girls and that she wanted them too. I didn't know what choveret is. On the break, Gregory explained to me that he'd received old and disused chess periodicals and gave them to the kids. Those were happy, although not for long. I stayed in the school for as long as two months. Then, they sacked me, and I was actually very glad they did. They had really bled me white. And I lacked imagination either.

Soon, Aryeh Rosenberg, the man who got me that job, rung up inquiring if I was receiving the periodical of the Israeli Chess Federation. I said I wasn't. Aryeh gave me the number to call. I gathered courage and called. I must say that even if I have some command of Hebrew, it is exclusively thanks to the nerve that I have. From my first days here, I boldly went to work in the Israeli school. I was speaking Hebrew with everyone not bothering whether I was understood or not. The yeshiva staff complained I was asking them questions in an incrypted language.

So, this time round too, I dialled up and started off upbeat:

- Aryeh Rosenberg paid up. Everybody got chaverot (girlfriends) and they're using them, and I haven't got any.

No reply came.

- I can't go on without them, - I went on to make a point of just how bad it was for me without them and how much I needed them. Suddenly I heard my wife and daughter giggling. Realising I was saying something wrong, I pulled myself together quickly: "Sorry. I made a mistake, I need chaverim (mates).

Such a rapid overturn in my sexual tastes totally drove the woman at the other end into indignation:

- This is not a brothel! This is Chess Federation, mind you! Now, what do you want?

- A magazine, - I said in Russian.

- Tell me the address. We'll send you one.

Choveret I got. I prepared for the competition on behalf of the Elitzur chess society. I took the second place. Job offers from Israeli secular schools were flowing in. But by that time, I already feared "headmasters in shorts". I didn't want something funny rubbing off on me. I said no. Soon I got a job offer in a Russian language religious girl school, where I have been working since. I'm fine there.