Welbywife has me reading English translations of Russian authors. After reading Heart of a Dog and The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov she set me on The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov. All excellent reading by the way.
In The Twelve Chairs a joke is told that goes like this:
"A Jew comes home and gets into bed beside his wife. Suddenly he hears a scratching noise under the bed. The Jew reaches his hand under the bed and say 'Is that you, Fido?'and Fido licks his hand and says ‘Yes, it’s me.’
The passengers collapse with laughter. . ."
I included the last line there about the passengers to give an idea of context, but that’s apprently the whole joke. Other than the dog talking, which doesn’t seem all that funny, there’s apparently soemthing hilarious there. What am I missing? Maybe it’s a mistranslation?
Note: I haven’t asked Welbywife about it yet because I keep forgetting to.
I assume that the joke is that since dogs don’t talk, there’s a person under the bed pretending to be the dog. Which of course means that before he got there, there was a man in bed with his wife who had to hide under the bed when he arrived, ha ha ha.
I didn’t get it either, but looking at it in retrospect after reading what it meant, it seems SO very obvious. I guess it’s like one of those things where the answer is so blatant, that you can’t help but look for a more hidden meaning ("…it can’t be that simple…".
The first thing I thought of was the “People Lick Too” urban legend the joke seems to be related to. You know the one about the girl left home alone when her parents go out of town and she only has her dog to protect and keep her company. She locks all the doors and windows but there’s that one window in the basement she can’t shut all the way. She goes to sleep, comforted by her dog snoozing on the floor next to her bed. In the middle of the night she’s awakened by a dripping sound coming from the shower. Although she’s frightened, she comes to the conclusion she left the tap on, and drops her hand down by the side of the bed by the dog who licks her hand comfortingly. The next morning she wakes up, and goes to the bathroom. Hanging from the shower is the eviscerated body of her dog, dripping blood onto the tiles. Scrawled on the mirror in dog blood are the words: “Humans can lick too.”
Welby, you had two perfectly good excuses you could have used but then you had to go and ruin it by admitting the truth.
Of the two other books you mention, who’s the lead character of Heart of a Dog? Yes, that’s right. It’s a talking dog. Who’s the right hand man of Woland in The Master and Margarita? Yes, that’s right, it’s a talking cat.
So clearly, you were just used to the fact that pets can talk in Russian lit and thus weren’t surprised by the Vox Rexo in the joke.
See how much easier things are when you lie like a dog?
There’s lots of jokes that work on the same basic theme. I remember one where three guys were hiding in sacks, and a policemen/customs officer/border guard/whatever prodded the first sack. The man said “meow meow” and the policemen figured it was just a cat. The second man, when prodded, said “woof woof” to convince the officer there was a dog in the sack. When the third sack was prodded, the man said “potato potato”. :rolleyes:
I had to read the OP twice before I got the joke, and I had to think about it for a while. I think it is cultural, in that a lot of American jokes start out like “A duck walks into a bar and says. ‘Got any grapes?’ and the bartender says…” We just expect a talking dog/duck/chicken/ferret/badger to show up in the joke somewhere.
It’s as if the joke is 180 degrees out of phase with our expectations, which are based on the jokes we’ve heard all our lives.
It’s become evident that welby and I have somewhat congruent senses of humor, and I’m happy to report that I was just as nonplussed as he was for a while.
Plus, I’m happy that I got to use the words “congruent” and “nonplussed.” Now I feel smart.
