Barney's Version (31 page)

Then, even as Izzy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and was about to embark on another for instance, I was driven to take a desperate measure. I started to whistle. But this time, in deference to my future mother-in-law, something cultural, the “La donna è mobile” aria from
Rigoletto
. That succeeded in clearing the house of both my future in-laws and my bride. Following their hasty departure, Izzy said, “Hey, congrats. They're very nice people. Warm. Intelligent. I enjoyed talking to them. How'd I do?”

“I think you made an unforgettable impression.”

“I'm glad you brought me here to look them over. I'm not a cop all these years for nothing. They're loaded. I could tell. Demand a dowry, kid.”

Hey, nonny-nonny, here's a hot one, plucked from this morning's
Globe and Mail
:

The poor dear was placed on probation for two years after she admitted that she had suffocated her husband with a pillow in their home last June before trying to commit suicide with a drug overdose.
The court heard that she and her husband had been a “devoted and loving couple” for forty-nine years. But after hubbie, that inconsiderate boor, suffered a massive heart attack and had chronic kidney failure, the burden of nursing him had become too much for his wife, and made her suffer from depression. Tch-tch. The lawyer
⁴²
said that caring for her husband had become “an increasingly intolerable burden.” The night of the killing, he said, the husband had been getting out of bed and she ordered him to return to it, but he refused. She slapped him and, after he fell, put the pillow over his face and smothered him. The Lord Justice Clerk said he was satisfied it would not be appropriate to impose a prison sentence. “This is a truly tragic case,” he said. “You find yourself facing a situation with which you could not cope. It is clear that you committed this crime at a time when you were suffering from the mental illness of depression under considerable strain.”

This poignant tale of true love gone awry among the seniorboppers put me in mind of one of my few surviving septuagenarian buddies, and so that afternoon I bought a box of handmade Belgian chocolates in Westmount Square, and went to visit Irv Nussbaum, now seventy-nine years old, yet frisky as ever, and still active in community affairs. Irv, bless him, was angst-ridden about the fate of our people, but uppermost in his mind was the coming referendum. Only yesterday The Weasel's most rabid pointman had warned
les autres
that if we voted No massively we would be punished. “That's good news,” said Irv, “because that prick must have started at least another thousand nervy Jews packing. I'm grateful. Now if only they'd opt for Tel Aviv rather than Toronto or Vancouver.”

“Irv, what's to be done with you, you're a terrible old man.”

“Remember how when we were young the pepsis
⁴³
marched down the Main chanting ‘Death to the Jews,' and
Le Devoir
read like it got its ideas from Julius Streicher? Do you recall how in those days there
were all those restricted hotels in the Laurentians, and a Jew couldn't even get a job as a cashier in one of the banks here, never mind marry out. Like damn fools we complained about it. We fought discrimination bitterly. But, with hindsight, it was a blessing, anti-Semitism, if you feel as deeply as I do about Israel and Jewish survival.”

“Do you think we ought to bring back pogroms?”

“Ho ho ho. I kid you not. Now we're accepted, even welcomed just about everywhere, and the young think nothing of marrying a
shiksa
. Look around, will you. These days there are Jews serving on the boards of banks, and on the Supreme Court, and even in the cabinet in Ottawa. That Gursky suck-hole Harvey Schwartz sits in the Senate. The lasting problem with the Holocaust is that it made anti-Semitism unfashionable. Ah, the whole world's gone topsy-turvy. I mean you're a drunk today, what is it? A disease. You murder your parents, sneaking up behind them with shotguns and blasting their heads off, like those two kids in California, what do you need? Understanding. You slit your wife's throat and you walk because you're black. Excuse me, African-American. You're a homosexual now and you expect to be married by a rabbi. Once that was the love that dared not speak its name, but you know what mustn't show its face today? Anti-Semitism. Listen here, my old friend, we didn't survive Hitler so that our children could assimilate and the Jewish people disappear. Tell me something. Do you think Duddy Kravitz will beat the charges this time?”

“Insider trading is difficult to prove.”

The last time I ran into Duddy, attended by a bimbo of a secretary, was at the airport in Toronto. “Hey, Panofsky, you going to London, let's sit together.”

“Actually, I'm flying to New York, where I'm going to pick up the Concorde,” I said, hastily adding that it was not me, but
MCA
, that was paying for the ticket.

“You think I can't afford the Concorde?
Shmuck
. I've done it and I don't like it. You fly the Concorde everybody on it is worth millions. D.K. likes to go first class on a 747 flying out of Montreal, so that I can stroll back through club and economy and all those
shits who used to look down their nose at me can see how well I'm doing and choke on it.”

Irv went on to say, “I even hope their fucken Parti Québécois wins the referendum this time and scares the hell out of the Jews who still remain here. Only I want them going to Tel Aviv, Haifa, or Jerusalem this time. Yes. Before Israel is overwhelmed by Ethiopian blacks or those new Russian immigrants, most of whom are not even Jewish. How about that? Seven hundred and fifty thousand Russian immigrants. Israel itself could soon become just another goyishe country. But, for all that, the Israelis are now the only anti-Semites we can still count on. Let's face it, they hate diaspora Jews. You speak a word of Yiddish there, they want to flush you down the toilet. ‘Oh, you must be one of those ghetto Jews.' After all these years of fund-raising, and I must be personally responsible for at least fifty million squeezed out of here over the years, and I go over there and they tell me I'm a bad Jew because my children haven't settled there and don't serve on the front lines.”

Entry in Panofsky's Ledger of Ironies:

My first wife, Clara, had no time for other women and is enjoying an afterlife as a feminist icon, but it is The Second Mrs. Panofsky, that
yenta
still bent on my imprisonment for murder, who is now the militant feminist. I keep tabs on her, and I have learned that every Passover she joins six other rejected wives, latter-day Boadiceas, for a women's Seder. They begin by toasting the Shekhinah, which is the female aspect of God, according to the Cabbala. Lifting the plate with the matzohs, they chant:

According to the women warriors who composed this travesty of the Haggadah, Miriam, the sister of Moses, never got a fair shake. Where in Exodus, for instance, was the story of Miriam's well? On the cutting-room floor, that's where. But, according to rabbinical legend, it was in Miriam's honour that a well of sweet water followed the children of Israel through the desert. And when Miriam died, the well dried up and disappeared.

The daughter of Rabbi Gamaliel said: “There is anger in our heritage. In the desert Miriam and Aaron asked, ‘Is Moses the only one with whom the Lord has spoken? Has he not spoken with us as well?' The Lord passed among them and left Miriam white with leprosy but Aaron unharmed. Miriam was treated like the wicked daughter whose father spat in her face and sent her from the tent for seven days until she was forgiven.”

Miriam, Miriam, my heart's desire. I spit in Blair's face, never yours.

Miriam's birthday today. Her sixtieth. Were she still with me, she would have been served breakfast in bed. Roederer Crystal champagne, Beluga caviar, not to mention sixty long-stemmed roses, and gifts of silk lingerie, elegant but naughty. Maybe that overpriced pearl choker I saw at Birk's. Instead, I imagine Herr Doktor Professor Hopper would splurge on an air-pollution testing kit. Or perhaps a pair of sensible shoes with no animal leather content. No, I've got it. He's giving her a record of whale music. Har, har, har.

I was supposed to be meeting somebody for lunch, but I couldn't remember where or with whom, and I didn't dare phone Chantal to check it out as she was already sufficiently suspicious of my occasional memory lapses, which are nothing to worry about. It's common to people of my age. So I phoned Le Mas des Oliviers to find out if I had a reservation there. No. Neither had I booked L'Express or the Ritz.
Then Chantal phoned. “I'm calling to remind you that you have a date for lunch today. Do you remember where?”

“Of course I do. Don't be impertinent.”

“Or with whom?”

“Chantal, I could fire you just like that.”

“It's with Norman Freedman and you're supposed to meet him at Moishe's at one. Or I could be lying, and it's with my mother at Chez Gauthier. But since you remember anyway, no problem. Bye-bye now.”

Norman Freedman had been among the more than two hundred guests who came to my wedding at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Black tie, evening gowns. Boogie stoned and me blasted, my mood vile, as I longed to be in my seat in the reds in the Forum. Damn damn damn. The Canadiens could clinch their fourth Stanley Cup in a row in my absence. But there was nothing to be done, because by the time I had discovered that I was double-booked it was too late to postpone the wedding. And, remember, the 1959
Club de hockey canadien
was one of the greatest teams of all time. Consider the line-up: Jacques Plante in the nets, Doug Harvey, Tom Johnson, and Jean-Guy Talbot minding the blue line, and, up front, Maurice and Henri Richard, Bernie Geoffrion, Dickie Moore, Phil Goyette, Ab McDonald, and Ralph Backstrom. But, alas, the Canadiens were without their best playmaker for the cup finals. Big Jean Beliveau had taken a bad fall in the third game against Chicago in the semifinals, and was out for the rest of the season.

Immediately we were pronounced man and wife, I kissed the bride, and made straight for the bar. “What's the score?”

“Mahovlich went off for cross-checking a couple of minutes ago and Backstrom
⁴⁴
scored. So it's one–zip, but it's still early in the first period. They're missing Beliveau bad,” said the bartender.

Ill at ease among so many strangers at the Ritz, my mood unspeakable until everything changed. Then and forever. Across the crowded room, as Howard Keel once belted out,
⁴⁵
there stood the most
enchanting woman I had ever seen. Long hair black as a raven's wing, striking blue eyes, ivory skin, slender, wearing a layered blue chiffon cocktail dress, and moving about with the most astonishing grace. Oh, that face of incomparable beauty. Those bare shoulders. My heart ached at the sight of her. “Who is that woman being talked at by Myer Cohen?” I asked Irv.

“Shame on you. Don't tell me you've only been married for an hour and you've already got eyes for another woman.”

“Don't be ridiculous. I'm curious, that's all.”

“I forget her first name,” said Irv, “but I do know that Harry Kastner tried it on with her, maybe a half-hour ago, and whatever she said, it made him turn pale. She's got a sharp tongue, that one. She lives in Toronto since her parents died.”

Absolutely exquisite, she stood alone but alert now. Myer Cohen dismissed, another suitor had gone to fetch her a glass of champagne. When she caught me staring, and saw me starting toward her, she averted those blue eyes to die for, retreating, turning her back to join a group that included that bastard Terry McIver. I wasn't the only one watching. Skinny bony-backed and girdled butterball wives were looking her up and down disapprovingly. Then The Second Mrs. Panofsky was with me, having just finished a dance with Boogie. “Your friend is such a melancholy man, so vulnerable,” she said. “I wish we could do something for him.”

“There's nothing to be done.”

“I think you should go over and talk to your friend McIver. He seems lost here.”

“Fuck him.”

“Sh.
That's my grandfather at the table right behind us
. Didn't you invite McIver?”

“Terry comes to all my weddings.”

“Oh, nice. Very nice. Why don't you have another drink? Your father has already had too much, and if he starts on one of his stories my mother will die of shame.”

“Now tell me who is that woman bloody Gordon Lipschitz is coming on to?”

“Oh, that one. Forget it, Mr. Love Bucket. You're not good enough for her. Now will you please do something about your father. Slip this into your pocket.”

“What is it?”

“A cheque for five hundred dollars from Lou Singer. I hate to nag, but I think you've already had enough to drink.”

“What do you mean, I'm not good enough for her?”

“Because if I knew she was going to honour us with her presence, I would have laid out a red carpet. Don't tell me you find her attractive?”

“Certainly not, my darling.”

“I'll bet she wears a size nine-and-a-half shoe, and even at that it squeezes her toes. Her name's Miriam Greenberg. We were at McGill together, she had a scholarship, a good thing too because the fees would have been difficult. Her father was a cutter and her mother took in sewing from a dressmaker. She comes on so grand, tell me about it, but she was brought up in one of those cold-water flats on Rachel. My uncle Fred used to own a bunch of them and he said it would have been easier to draw water from a stone than collect the rent from some of those types. They could do a flit in the middle of the night. Sue? There was no point. Uncle Fred adored me. I'm going to kidnap you, he used to say. The fraternity guys wanted Miriam Greenberg to be Winter Carnival Queen. God knows she's not that attractive, those feet, but it would have been the first time for a Jewish girl. She said no. Miss America was good enough for Bess Myerson, but of course Bess wasn't, ahem ahem, an intellectual. She didn't
shlep Partisan Review
or the
New Republic
with her to classes, so that everybody could see what she was reading. Yeah, sure. I'll bet if you checked out her room she also took
Cosmopolitan
. Some young pianist, nobody ever heard of him, would be making his debut at Moyse Hall, and she would stand there on stage in that same black dress, it couldn't have cost more than $29.99 off the rack at Eaton's, turning the pages for him. Big deal. Now she's moved to Toronto to look for work in radio. Some hope with that voice. Your father's back at the bar again. He's talking to Dr. Mendelsohn.
Do something
.”