Barney's Version (24 page)

My mood vile after Ms. Morgan had spurned my luncheon invitation and stormed out of my apartment, I attempted to calm my nerves by donning my straw boater, reaching for my silver-topped antique cane, and slipping into my tap-dance shoes. Accompanied by a King Oliver
CD
, I warmed up with some rhythm tap, managed a passable Shim Sham Shimmy and a neat Pulling the Trenches, but it failed to settle me down. I was in a state because the resoundingly silly but delectable Ms. Morgan was the recipient of a grant from The Clara Charnofsky Foundation for Wimyn, having been awarded $2,500 to help her complete her M.A. thesis, “On Wimyn as Victims in the Québécois Novel.”

Mea culpa
yet again.
Mea maxima culpa
.

You see, it was Clara's cousin, the highly thought of
NYU
professor, who would lovingly sort out her manuscripts and drawings and feed them to publishers and art dealers as they increased incrementally in
value over the years. But he first insisted on seeing me in New York, an encounter I agreed to with dread, anticipating a difficult meeting with an academic drudge, prejudging, as I am wont to do. “You do realize,” Hymie Mintzbaum once said, coming off a session with one or another of his shrinks, “that it's a defence mechanism. You're convinced that anybody who meets you for the first time will consider you a shit, so you take preventive action. Relax,
boychick
. When they get to know you better they will realize that they were right. You are a shit.”

Norman Charnofsky turned out to be a gentle if naïve man, and a stranger to avarice. A
gute neshuma
, as my grandmother used to say. A good soul. A clear and present danger to himself and others. Having heard from his abominable uncle Chaim that I was a boozer, Norman thoughtfully suggested we get together in the lobby of the Algonquin, where I was staying, and immediately reinforced my preconceived prejudice against him by ordering a Perrier for himself. An unprepossessing little man he was, with pewter hair, thick glasses, a bulbous nose, his tie gravy-stained, and his corduroy suit salted with dandruff round the shoulders and worn thin at the knees. The ancient schoolboy's satchel he set down beside him was overloaded to the point of bursting. “I should begin,” he said, “by thanking you for taking the time to see me, and apologizing for my uncle Chaim, who had no idea that the child Clara miscarried wasn't yours, while you were too considerate to point that out to him.”

“So you've read her diaries.”

“Indeed I have.”

“Including the last entry about the dinner I failed to attend.”

“My uncle Chaim's surprising visit to your flat couldn't have been easy for either of you.”

I shrugged.

“Please don't misunderstand me. I have an enormous regard for my uncle Chaim. He is an embittered man, yes, but with cause, and many have reason to be grateful to him. Myself foremost. Chaim was the first of the Charnofskys to come to America from Poland, and from the very beginning he denied himself, pinching pennies, and sending for relatives. If not for his devotion my parents would have
remained in Lodz, where I would have been born, and Auschwitz would have been the end of our story, as it was for too many Charnofskys. But the children of many of those whom Chaim brought over here, men and women who have prospered in America, now regard him as an embarrassment. An atavism. A ghetto Jew. And they don't want him putting on his
tallis
and
davening
in their living room in the morning, which makes their children giggle, or sunning that pale body, but wearing his yarmulke, in their gardens out on Long Island, or in Florida, lest he compromise them before their neighbours. Okay. Enough. I talk too much. Ask my wife. And I'd have to agree he is a narrow man, obdurate, intolerant, but you see he is still baffled by what has become of the Jews in America. And from your point of view, I have no doubt, he was unpardonably cruel to Clara. But how could he be expected to comprehend such a precocious and wilful child in his house? She was so difficult. Such a troubled spirit. Oh poor Clara,” he said, biting his lip, “when she was only twelve years old she would lie on the floor of our parlour, surrounded by books, sketching, her skinny legs swinging away, crossed at the ankles. I loved Clara and deeply regret I didn't do more to shelter her from … what? From the world, that's what.”

“Was it you, then, who came to Paris looking for her?”

“It was me. Then she wrote, pleading with me to stay away, not to worry, she had met a good man — you Mr. Panofsky — and he was going to marry her.”

Norman taught a remedial-reading course one night a week in Harlem. He belonged to a group that collected clothes to be mailed to Jews in Russia, he was a blood donor, and had once stood as a Socialist Party candidate for the state legislature. His wife, Flora, had given up her job as a grade-school teacher to care for their only child, a boy who suffered from Down's syndrome. “Flora would be so pleased if you came to dinner one night.”

“Another time, maybe.”

“If Flora were here, she would say stop
kvetching
and come to the point. I brought you here because I have found a publisher for Clara's poetry and a gallery that is interested in her drawings. But let me assure you, even if there was somebody who wanted them, it goes
without saying that Clara's diaries could not be published in the lifetime of my uncle Chaim or aunt Gitel.”

“Or mine?” I asked, my smile tentative.

“But if you read between the lines,” he protested, “she was more than grateful for your devotion. I think she loved you.”

“In her fashion.”

“Look here, this could all come to nothing. But it is my duty to tell you that it could also turn out that her work has substantial financial value, and if that were the case it is you who are entitled to benefit from the income.”

“Oh come on, Norman, you're talking nonsense.”

“I have a proposal to make, which I want you to think over carefully. I'm crazy. Ask anybody. But just in case money should come in, I wish to establish a foundation in her name to help women of artistic or academic bent, because it continues to be exceedingly difficult for them,” and he went on to run numbers at me of how few women at
NYU
or Columbia achieved tenure, or were appointed professors, and how they had to manage on smaller salaries and deal with male condescension. “I have brought some papers for you to look at,” he said, reaching into his bulging satchel. “Waivers. Releases. Take them with you. Consult a lawyer. Consider the matter carefully.”

Instead, eager for Norman's approval, I signed the papers in triplicate right there. Better my right hand should have been cut off. Go know I was setting in motion events that would lead to the ruin of one of the few truly good men I ever met.

I
MISS THE OLD DAYS
at Totally Unnecessary Productions when I could be yanked out of a boring production meeting in our boardroom because Miriam, her visit unexpected, was waiting for me in reception. Balancing Saul on her hip, holding Mike by her other hand. Her shoulder bag weighed down with a baby's bottle, diapers, a colouring book and crayons, at least three matchbox cars, a paperback Yeats or Berryman and the latest issue of
The New York Review of Books
. An apologetic Miriam shepherding a stray she had discovered panhandling on Greene Avenue or shivering in a doorway on Atwater. One morning it was a cadaverous teenager, shoulders hunched against anticipated blows, his smile at once ingratiating and sly. “This is Timothy Hobbs,” she said. “He's from Edmonton.”

“Hi, Tim.”

“'lo.”

“I promised Tim that you had a job for him.”

“Doing what?”

“Tim's been sleeping rough in Central Station, so I'm afraid he's going to need a week's salary in advance.”

I put Tim to work running messages and managing our Xerox machine, even as he wiped his nose with a quick swipe of his sleeve. He was gone by the end of the week, along with our receptionist's handbag, a calculating machine, an
IBM
typewriter, a bottle of Macallan, and my recently filled humidor.