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Mandelbaum Memorabilia By Jack Goodstein How that particular relic of Mandelbaum, celebrated ‘auteur de silence,’ came into the possession of Herschel Goniff a sleazy dealer in used furniture he preferred to call antiques, previously uncollectible collectibles and all but forgotten memorabilia in McKeesport, Pennsylvania is a question mired in some dispute. That it was currently the object of a spirited auction on eBay is undisputed fact. Two days after it had arrived at his shop in a peanut butter jar filled with formaldehyde, Goniff had gone to Ladro’s Den of Pizza for a slice, a diet Coke and a consultation with the eponymous owner, a man more interested in taking numbers than making sauce, and a man Goniff considered a friend and mentor. "You heard of Mandelbaum?" "Mandelberg?" "Mandelbaum. Baum. The actor. The one that makes the movies and never says anything." "What do I know from movies." Ladro turned to his betting slips. "I got his putz." Goniff figured that for a subject such as this, direct was the best approach. Ladro looked up: "You got his--." "Putz. His unit. His--" "I know what a putz is, schmuck." "I got Mandelbaum--the actor--I got his putz in the shop." "Right and I got Enzo Stuarti’s balls in the back freezer." "I’m serious. This guy comes in, and he tells me that. . .never mind. I’ll tell you another time. The point is I got it and it’s got to be worth a fortune to the right. . . .well you know, somebody collects that kind of shit." "So sell it. Me? I got one of my own, I don’t use that much. I ain’t interested." "I ain’t asking you to buy it." "So, what the hell are you asking me?" Ladro turned to the oven for Goniff’s warming slice. "You got connections. Maybe you know somebody that--." "You nuts! You want me to try and sell somebody’s schlong to one of my -- You get a TV you want to unload, a little warm jewelry, come see me." Ladro put the slice on a paper plate in front of Herschel. "A putz. Why don’t you take it, and shove it up--." Goniff picked up his slice and shoved it in his mouth. "Who the hell is Enzo Stuarti?" he mumbled through the cheese. Chickie Courver giggled when he mentioned his latest acquisition to her. She knew of Mandelbaum, but as for the particular article of his equipment in Herschel Goniff’s possession she thought it had only limited uses depending on the state in which it had been preserved. "If you know what I mean," she winked. Mezzano, the barber, suggested he put an ad in the classified: "For sale. One putz. Used only by a little old lady on Sundays." The undertaker Voleur offered to bury it: "I got a nice Dutch Masters box for it, silk lined. The whole thing’ll cost you a grand." "Go ahead, joke," Goniff told them, "You’ll laugh out of the other side of your mouth when I make a fortune from it. "Rub it. See if it gets bigger," Chickie said. "A five year warranty," Mezzano added. "For you nine-fifty," Voleur laughed. Another week the peanut butter jar sat under the counter in Goniff’s shop, and still he hadn’t figured what to do with it. "I mean what do you do, go up to someone on the street and tell them if they’re looking for a famous putz, I got one for sale?" Though he spoke to himself under his breath, not wishing to get a reputation as a lunatic who sat in his shop and talked to himself, he must have been speaking louder than he imagined. Loud enough for the Gates kid who was sweeping the floor to ask, "What’s a putz, Mr. Goniff?" "What?" Herschel roused from his thoughts. "A putz? You said putz. What’s a putz? "It’s a Yiddish word. It means," Goniff paused, Gates was a kid. Maybe. . .what the hell, he thought, when I was that age not only did I know what a putz was, I knew damn well how to use it. It’ll be a good deed; help the kid get rid of his pimples. "Oh," Gates shrugged when Goniff explained. "What do you mean you got one for sale?” Goniff explained some more. "eBay," said Gates. "eBay?" Now it was Gate’s turn to explain: "It’s an on-line --." "Computers?" "Computers. It’s --." "From computers I don’t know --." "It’s nothing. Anyone can do it. They have auctions online. You write up what you want to sell. People bid." "They’ll bid on --." "Anything." "Anything?" Goniff indicated that there was anything, and then there was anything. "Don’t you read the papers? They were bidding thousands for that ballplayer’s chewed up gum. Thousands. You can imagine what they’d pay for something like this putz," he beamed proudly as he carefully used his new vocabulary word in his first sentence, "of an actor like--." "This place, they’ll let you auction off anything, an arm, a tooth, a piece of the anatomy? This is legal?" "Well, not exactly legal --." "So what are we talking about?" Goniff interrupted. "Why are you wasting my time with silliness?" "No, Mr. Goniff, I heard. . . ." "It works like this," Goniff told Ladro the next day. "From the kid, Gates, the kid? This is who you got your great idea from?" "What difference does it make where it came from? If it works, it works. Twenty thousand for a piece of gum. Chewed-up gum." "Who the hell pays twenty thousand for a chewed up piece of gum?" "That, my friend, is exactly the point. No one pays twenty thousand for a piece of gum." Goniff’s face lit with excitement. "It’s a goddamn code. You think you know everything because you take numbers in a shithole in McKeesport Pennsylvania? It’s a code: a rhyming code. Online they don’t let you sell body parts. There are laws in this country. So they got this code. You want to sell Streisand’s nose. You don’t say Streisand’s nose. You say Streisand’s hose. Streisand’s rose." "They’re selling Streisand’s--.?" "It’s just an example. Sinatra’s blue ties are --." "Sinatra’s blue -- ? They selling those? I wouldn’t mind --." "It’s an example, for crying out loud. Don’t be a jerk." "I’ll give you jerk." "Anyway, Gates, he knows about all this computer crap. He put it up for me yesterday." "So what are you selling?" "The bidding is open for," Goniff beamed and did his best imitation of a trumpet, "ta , da, da , da. Mandelbaum’s sock."
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