Obadiah and I doing our part, watering the desert.
“Teacher Kaplansk?”
“Yes?”
“I should like to know your candid opinion of Woodrow Wilson. It’s my contention that despite his having a horse-like face, he had a certain fastidious decorum. And I do not doubt his sincerity. And yet, I must tell you straight out, and you must pardon any offense: Your man Woodrow was a cabbage. Not only was he ultimately responsible for fascism, he also left us, our dear insignificant country, in the lurch for seventy years. And South-West Africa shall be a sacred trust of civilization. Sacred trust of whom?”
“He wore a top hat,” I said.
“I wonder why. To make himself taller? Napoleon did that.”
“I think he was tall to begin with.”
“Hmm. Interesting. A tall man in a tall hat. May I ask you another question? Apropos perhaps of nothing?”
“Sure.”
“Your quite un-Wilsonian surname. What sort of name is Kaplansk? It seems highly original.”
“It was Jewish Polish until the principal lopped off an —”
“Polish! I should have known! How many names under the sun rhyme with Gdansk? Ah, and a Semite? But your hair —”
“What?”
“It’s orange.”
“Yes.”
He leaned toward me and examined my face. I breathed in his sweet, malty breath. “Hmm. Yes, well, Hosanna! My first Jew! I’ve waited a long time.”
“You’re my first Damara.”
“Half. My father came from Angola.”
“First half-Angolan also.”
“My father’s dead. Yours?”
“No.”
“Jewish as well?”
“Yes.”
“A rebbe?”
“No.”
“A scholar?”
“Not really.”
“A dealer in ancient manuscripts and maps? A cabbalist? A loan officer? Pardon any offense.”
“He’s a dentist.”
Obadiah thought a moment, a bit dejected, but after he zipped up, he brightened. “Ah yes, a most basic and elemental human need fulfilled, no doubt honorably, by your Hebrew father.”
“He left my mother. Ran off to Memphis with a hygienist named Brenda.”
“I see, nonetheless, teeth…”