5/12/97

The Supermarket, A Love Story

Albert asks Mazal if she would have dinner with him, and she accepts. They push their carts to the packaged-soups department, where a lady is offering samples.

    The woman walks into the supermarket and is immediately rammed by a cart being pushed by a couple of wild boys. She howls in pain and dozens of shoppers rush over to say "tsk-tsk, kids these days." She hobbles over to the long train of carts, pulls a 5-shekel coin out of her pocket and inserts it in the mechanism to free a cart.
    "Cut!" the director says, and glares at the woman, famous actress Michal Pfeifferkorn. "This movie is supposed to be realistic. Did you ever see anybody fish out a 5-shekel coin, just like that? Read the script, Michal: you're supposed to rummage through your purse for 45 seconds, fumble with your wallet, drop a few coins on the floor, crawl around picking them up and then go to the head cashier to ask for a fiver. Right, then; take it from the top, where Michal gets run over. And ... action!"
    Michal steers her empty cart to the bored guard, who checks her purse for hand grenades. She quickly falls in with a crowd of shoppers at the 2-for-the-price-of-1 display, grabbing an armful of Turkish jellies at a once-in-a-lifetime price. The camera zooms in for a closeup as Michal affixes an expression of brimming satifaction.
    She continues on past the open display of nuts. "Cut!" roars the director.
    Michal stops. "Now what?"
    The director marches up to her and, his voice dripping with sarcasm, says: "Nuts. Did you see the nuts? And you didn't feel the urge to fill your mouth? You're supposed to be Mazal Cohen, Mrs. Israeli Shopper, so steal the goddam nuts." He stalks off in a huff.
    Michal crams her mouth with cashews. She looks like a chipmunk.
    At the fruits and vegetables, she spots her neighbor (played by Golda Hahn) at the other end by the potatoes. "Sima, allo SIMA!" Sima shouts back at her: "Mazal! Yoohoo, Mazal! Did you ever see such potatoes? Feh." They push their carts toward each other and, barricading the aisle, carry on a good yack.
    Suddenly, a dramatic announcement is heard over the intercom: "Attention shoppers: don't miss today's special, poppyseeds, 10 percent off." Michal is off like a shot.
    (Here, the director will use special effects to create a sense of pulsating frenzy, artistically depicting the desperate quest: Michal, perspiring, fear-stricken, claustrophobic, plunges along the ever-narrowing aisles as looming, teetering displays of breakfast cereals whiz by and engulf her in a cyclonic whirl. She is seeking not poppyseeds but her lost youth, a carefree joie de vivre neatly symbolized by a fade-out to a pig-tailed girl prancing among the poppies of the kibbutz where she grew up. A fade-in brings us back to the bedlam of the supermarket, where...)
    "Are you OK, miss?"
    Albert, a tall, dashing heartthrob (played by Amnon Schwartz-Nagar) grasps her elbow. Woozily, she steadies herself, gazes dreamily into his hazel eyes and smiles demurely. "Thank you," she whispers, "I -- I lost my way. Must find the poppyseeds."
    "Let me help you," he says gently. (Clearly, it is love at first sight.) They glide off together. Daringly, she steals a furtive glance at his cart. Cognac, rib steaks, potatoes, Paul Newman's spaghetti sauce and a giant bag of dogfood with a picture of a ferocious doberman on it. She is feeling aroused, and tenderly grazes her cart against his.
    Suddenly, she gasps: "Look! Over there!" It is a clerk. He is loading a few cases of detergent on the shelf, strategically scattering the cases across a wide area, effectively shutting off a third of the supermarket.
     Joyously, they race over to him. In disbelief, she says: "Do you work here?"
    "Nu?" the clerk responds.
    "We're looking for poppyseeds," she says.
    The clerk trudges off and in no time locates the item.
    "Cut, dammit, cut!" The director bellows.
    "Now what?" Pfeifferkorn demands petulantly.
    Seething, the director waves the script over his head. "This you call 'comic relief'? A Russian aeronautics professor on his second day working at an Israeli supermarket can tell you where the next galaxy is but in a million years ain't never gonna find a bloody bag of poppyseeds. The clerk is supposed to take you on a jaunty, hilarious though hopeless trek from one end of the store to the other, winding up at the bread department, where he scrapes the seeds off a halla into a plastic bag for you. Right; take it from the top -- shrug, and ... action!"
     Albert and Mazal, their romance deepening, drive up to the yogurt display, but a lovers' quarrel develops over which one to buy. Other shoppers come running to offer their opinions. Mazal, narrowing the choice to two, peels back the foil of one brand, pokes in a finger, tastes it and selects the second, returning the first one to the shelf.
    Albert asks Mazal if she would have dinner with him, and she accepts. They push their carts over to the packaged soups department, where a lady is offering samples. She stirs her pot and dips in two plastic cups. They drink it down, agree it's delicious, and move on to the deli counter. She asks to taste the herring in cream, he opts for the chopped liver. Both go for the hot Moroccan carrots. For the main course, they head for the processed-meats department, where various sample-ladies offer them a choice of spinach-filled schnitzel, grilled hotdogs a la room temperature, or fake shrimp on a toothpick. They indulge. Practically bursting by now, they round out the meal with a slurp of sample botz, and a delectable selection of dried fruits and chocolates they filch from the open display.
    Resuming their shopping, their relationship almost founders at the corn flakes. He insists the economy-size box is a sensible buy, according to cost-per-gram, but she is determined to buy the smaller family-size box, because it fits upright in her kitchen cupboard. They compromise: she agrees to buy the bigger box, and then move in with him.
    Finally, the sex scene (the movie won't make any money without it). She takes a jar of marmalade off the shelf, but it's sticky. He licks her fingers. She steps on a large clot of spilled marshmallow cream and slithers to the floor, which causes her clothes to fall off. He rubs a packet of Blue Band margarine on her belly. She moans. She's so hot you could fry a No. 3 egg on her. He does. He plops a dollop of imported salad dressing into her bellybutton. She is writhing rhythmically. She grabs a pickle, he squeezes a pair of hamburger buns, and as the music hits a crescendo, an institutional-size bucket of Telma mayonnaise falls off the top shelf, sloshing all over them. (Telma paid a fortune for the plug.)
    Satiated, he lights up a cigarette.
    "CUT!! This is realism, dammit, do real people smoke in a supermarket?"
    He stubs out the cigarette.
    The next thing you know, they are inexplicably cleaned off and dressed, and strolling hand-in-hand toward the checkout counter.
    They get in line. He reaches over to nuzzle her but, pushing him away, she exclaims, "Oy! I forgot the fish." She darts off while he holds her place in line.
    Before she can return, an old woman, a dishevelled man and a family of eight all push their carts in front of him, explaining that they were actually in line before him, but that they hadn't finished their shopping. The old woman and the dishevelled man get into a screeching brawl over who was, in fact, ahead of whom. 
    Albert is beginning to wonder if perhaps Mazal has left him, but finally she returns, lugging a gigantic perch. "Sorry," she says, "the perch was mixed together with the pike, and I couldn't tell which was which or how much each was, because the bar codes were covering the price labels, which are printed in invisible ink."
    When they finally reach the conveyor belt, the cashier insists that the fish looks like a mullet but according to the bar-code it's really a mouthwash.
    The cashier shoves their purchases down the ramp and in among a mountain of food which the old woman, dishevelled man and family of eight had not yet managed to bag. A fearsome fracas breaks out over who owns the deodorant twin-pack.
    The cashier demands NIS 362.91 and Mazal reaches for her credit card, but Albert suavely stops her. "This one's on me," he says swashbucklingly, and, making sure Mazal sees he's got a gold credit card, he boldly instructs the cashier: "Just one payment, please." Everyone gasps and stares, and Mazal flushes with pride.
    Arm-in-arm, they push their carts out the store and, as the setting sun sprinkles shards of luminescent orange across the parking lot, they drive off.
    "Cut!" shouts the director, as the lovers race off through the mist. "Dammit, you forgot to get your 5 shekels back!"