I'll write this here because I don't know what else to do with it. It's the strangest thing I can remember happening to me. Maybe people reading this will think my life so far hasn't been that strange then. But I'll leave that.
So I was at the 100 Club on a Monday night and the band was into their second set and couples were dancing lindy hop, some well, some not very well. And this guy comes in and starts watching at the back, which happens sometimes when people stumble across the 100 Club when they are wandering round London in the evening and have no particular place to go. Although this guy did have something of a different look about him.
He was dressed as a hassidic Jew. With a thin black coat and a black hat. And he was small and slight but very vertical with a thin beard and if you looked you could see the fringes of his tallith hanging down below the hem of his coat. And he was propping up the back wall of the 100 Club, watching the scene. I couldn't tell if he was smiling slightly.
After a while I realised I was curious to know what he thought. When I've been at the 100 Club I've always had the idea that God would enjoy hearing the live music and seeing the dancers doing their astonishing moves. But I realised that the scene might look decadent and licentious with its crude music and men and women dancing together, mostly not married and even if they were then certainly not dancing with their own spouses. I hesitated a bit, thinking the guy might not be enthusiastic about being treated as token Jew. Or maybe he wasn't supposed to be there and was hoping to remain incognito, relying on the fact that it was unlikely there'd be many other hassidic Jews around the place. And even if there were, they'd probably be wanting to be incognito too. Anyway, eventually I did go up and stand beside him and asked him what he thought of it.
Well, it turned out he didn't know any English. None at all. He wasn't one of the north London hassidic Jews but was over from Israel. And I only had a few words of Hebrew left and they were buried below all the other languages I knew a few words of and couldn't speak. So I'd be saying "yes" in italian and "because" in french and it was a struggle to get any kind of opinion communicated. But eventually we established that he thought what he saw was "good", that maybe it wasn't a problem having the men and women dance together because they weren't Jewish. And that I was Jewish and even though I tried to explain that I was only a little bit Jewish or that I was a bad Jew, once he knew my mother was Jewish that settled the matter and I was Jewish and that was it. And then I went off and danced for a bit and when I came back he said I was "beautiful" and we worked out he was in London for a week "to see" and that I had a wife who wasn't Jewish and my sons had converted and he asked if he could stay at my house. And I told him no and he asked me why not and I tried to explain that we didn't do things that way in England. Later I realised I could have said my house wasn't kosher but the real reason was that he couldn't stay and that was that. I said there would be hotels in Stamford Hill. He wanted my phone number too and again I said he couldn't have it and again he asked why. I never give people my phone number. Nobody phones me. I said I'd give him my email and he didn't understand at first but I started writing it on the little scrap of a shop receipt which was all he had to write on and he seemed pleased enough. And I spelled it out after I wrote it but I didn't think he'd get it to work. Half of it was on one side of the paper but the second half I had to write on the back. He wanted to talk some more but then some good music came on and I saw a girl I wanted to dance with and I left him and when I came back two or three dances later he was gone.
***
I stayed pretty much to the end - there were a few fun numbers came on and a few people I danced with and when I left there was only a handful of people remaining. On the way out I tried a couple of times to wave to someone I knew but both times they didn't see me. Outside I strapped my rollerblade wheels on and skated off down Oxford Street towards the tube. Singing Chatanooga-choo-choo to myself, as I usually do in that situation. And then I saw him again.
He was standing on the pavement half-way down Oxford Street. I skated past him then back and stopped. I hadn't had a chance to give him my idea that he could get in a black cab and ask to be taken to a kosher hotel in Stamford Hill. Once again, we struggled to make ourselves understood to each other but after lots of repetition I became pretty sure that he was telling me that he already had a hotel. I tried asking several different ways and I couldn't make anything else out from what he was saying. And when I said about getting a cab he said no, a bus. And from different pockets he pulled out all the money he had and showed it to me. Maybe three or four pounds in change. He kept saying his hotel was in "Gondas Hill" but of course I knew there was no such place and that he really meant Gants Hill and while we were talking the Big Issue seller joined in and said that he could get a bus from that stop all the way to Gants Hill, though I'd been thinking he could get the Central Line from Tottenham Court Road tube, which was where I was heading anyway. And while we talked I saw something I wouldn't have seen otherwise. One of the threads of his tallith was blue. I kept asking him the address of his hotel. I couldn't believe he didn't know it. I couldn't remember the hebrew for address but I managed to ask him the road and he looked pretty pleased and told me "drive". Well I tried to tell him there were like 100 drives in Gants Hill but he didn't seem to understand. So I tried to get him to write it down and he said he couldn't but when I said he could write it in Hebrew he did it on some little scrap of paper, maybe the same one, and although I couldn't properly make out the cursive letters he used he read them as he wrote it and it turns out they said Golders Green. So he wasn't staying in Gants Hill at all, but Golders Green. Only fifteen miles apart at the ends of two different tube lines. He was staying at a hotel in a "drive" in Golders Green. And he wanted a bus which would take him there.
Well, I was getting the Northern Line from Tottenham Court Road station and the Edgware branch went up to Golders Green so I said he should get the train, underground (mimed), and he agreed. I took him down into the station and on the way to get the ticket stopped at the map and started showing him where we were and where Golders Green was and this Israeli girl heard us talking Hebrew and came over and found out what was going on and clarified it all and she was going up the Edgware branch and though she wasn't getting off at Golders Green I asked her to make sure he did. And apparently he really did have a hotel there and apparently he didn't know its name and apparently it was on a "drive". And she told me he was pleased I was Jewish and I said only a little but he said I was really and I said I couldn't believe this was happening. I said I couldn't believe he'd pitched up without knowing his hotel and the whole thing made no sense. She said he didn't need to worry and that God would look after him and I said He had so far.
I still don't really get it. It seems like this guy came over to London for a week with no English, that he pitched up in a jazz club in the middle of town with only a few pounds in change and nothing on him but a scrap of paper not large enough for an email address and no idea of where he was staying except it was a hotel in Gondas Hill in a street called drive. And I don't know what would have happened to him if I hadn't asked him in the club what he thought of it and if I hadn't run into him later as he was standing on the pavement in Oxford Street so I could ask him where he lived. He never looked the slightest bit worried about any of it, or put out, or anything except pleased to have met me.
So, I wonder, what would have happened to him if I hadn't met him? How on earth would things have turned out OK for him that night? It makes no sense. But then, I get to wondering something else. The whole episode seems so strange. So the question I start asking myself is this. Is there something which would have happened to me that evening if he hadn't met me?
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