Son of a Smaller Hero (21 page)

“Itzik, listen, we’ve got a long day ahead of us so …”

The Ford pulled up across the street and Noah brushed Itzik aside and walked over to it.

“I thought you were back in Ste. Adele,” Noah said.

Miriam and Noah watched as the shovel opened like a mouth, dumped another load into the mud, and then clamped shut again.

“When do they expect to …”

“Not until noon, anyway,” Noah said.

They watched the shovel dig into the rubbish again.

“You look tired,” she said.

“I haven’t slept yet.”

She stared at his hand. “What’s that?” she asked.

“A skull-cap,” he said. “You’re supposed to …”

Melech was watching them from the Cadillac.

“Darling,” she said.

He was staring at the shovel.

“I’m sorry about last night, Noah. I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Last night? Was it last night? Christ.” He smiled briefly. “I … Of course, darling.”

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours. All right?”

“Bring me a small flask of rye.”

He turned away from her and rejoined Lou and Nat.

“Listen,” Nat said. “Why look for trouble?” He plucked the cigar from his mouth. Noah stared. “Me, I’m Dorothy Dix with a ceegar, eh? Look … Tell her to stay away.”

“She’s got feelings, too.”

“Me, I’m Nehru. Neutral-shmootral. But Itzik, you know, he …”

“I know that.”

A lachrymose man wearing white linen leaned against the ambulance and chatted with that girl who had the long swift black hair. More and more children began to appear. Several of them must have had it in for Art. They chanted:

The grocery store across the street ran out of Cokes around 11:30. As the heat became more intense the older people in the crowd faltered and retreated to shadier spots. Of all, they alone seemed reconciled to what had happened. “Lucky it wasn’t two. Or three. A whole family even.” Others were also suffering from the heat, but stayed more enthusiastic. “If they should find him, call me – call quick.” Many women and sometimes whole families leaned bulkily out of windows that looked out on to the coal yard. From time to time a banana peel or an apple core fell to the pavement. Soot-soiled curtains occasionally flapped against their faces and were brushed away impatiently. A few babies bawled. A sing-song of comment rolled to and fro from window to window. Passing cars slowed down. Somebody, usually Mort Shub, would walk up to the driver and
explain the proceedings importantly. “I knew him. Used to see him every day. A prince of a fellow.” Sometimes the car passed on, but more often the driver parked around the corner and returned to join the crowd. Several of the drivers were from Outremont and were in the district on a rent-collecting tour. They carried important briefcases. One of them engaged Mort in an earnest conversation. “Haven’t these people any decency? Why don’t they go home? Think of the children.” He looked like the kind of man who did not take his employer’s name in vain and who had honoured his father and his mother ever since they had died. Mort made a feverish rebuttal. “We’re all neighbours. Wolf and me were like this. We …”

The crane shovel continued to dig into the rubbish, swing right, and drop a load at the feet of Nat and Lou. Then back into the heap again. There was a brief outburst of anxious laughter when a pair of bloomers got caught in the teeth of the shovel. Itzik rushed up to the shovel pink-faced, and Paquette waited while he freed the offending bloomers. Three cops arrived around noon and the crowd was bullied back a reasonable distance from the heap of rubbish. Noah was red-eyed and dizzy. Sweltering faces swirled before him. A pit of sorts had been dug into the rubbish, and Noah climbed up on to the rim and searched the wreckage intently. Dust clogged his nostrils. Noon came, and Paquette was allowed to break off for a half-hour.

A sign went up in the window of the grocery store.

A bushy-haired man in a rumpled suit addressed a group of sceptical, jacketless men. “You see what I mean? Accidents like this happen every day. A man with a family,” he said, smacking the wet palm of his open hand once for every word, “should have a policy. You’ve got to …”

“How many commas in a bottle of ink?”

“Yeah, sure. But listen, you’ve got to …”

“Moishe, hold on to your calories on such a hot day. Me, I got an agreement wid Prudential. They don’t deal in kosher meat and I don’t sell policies by me in the shop.”

“…  got to protect.
PROTECT.”

A stooping man with dust on his boots stopped Noah. He patted his hand tenderly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I knew your grandfather, the Zaddik. Say a word to your Maw.”

Noah walked over to the Ford and Miriam handed him a towel. He wiped his face and neck. She poured him a drink and he gulped it down wordlessly.

“You’re covered with dirt,” she said.

He held out the paper cup again and she refilled it.

“Do you want me to get you anything to eat?”

“No. I’m not hungry. Did you bring the flask?”

“Darling. Oh, Darling.”

Noah noticed that Nat and Itzik were quarrelling. Itzik, pink-faced, was pointing at them. Noah lit a cigarette. She handed him the flask and he slipped it into his pocket. “Would you wait around the corner?” he asked. “Part of the desk has been uncovered. It won’t be long now.”

“There’s no place to park.”

“I know. We could charge half a buck a head. But they don’t mean bad. They … Go to the Bar Vendôme. I’ll be around later.”

“I think you should eat. I …”

“I’m going to phone my mother.”

She watched him walk away. Itzik started towards her and Miriam, who wanted to avoid a scene, put the car into gear quickly.

Voices were lowered when Noah entered the grocery store. There was a dark, damp smell to the place. Noah stared at a sweating hunk of cottage cheese. The sign over the cash said:
“MEXICAN MONEY IS
ACCEPTED IN MEXICO. HERE, CASH WILL DO FINE.”
The phone was on the counter.

“Hello, Maw?” A pause. “No. Not yet.” Another pause. “I know. Yes. I know. But …” Noah put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to the crowd. “You tell me if I’m not talking loud enough for the people in the back.” Several men turned away, embarrassed. Noah turned away too. Also embarrassed. “This is a public place,” a woman said. Noah uncovered the mouthpiece. “Quiet for once in your life,” a man said. “He’s the son.” “No,” Noah said.
“No
. You stay home. I’ll phone as soon as I have news.”

Outside, Panofsky stood in the sun. He gripped Noah’s hand firmly. “It’s terrible,” he said. “I just got here and I ain’t staying. I …”

“I understand.”

“If you need anything. If there’s anything I …”

“The women are with my mother. They must be driving her crazy. Why don’t you go up there and talk to her?”

“I’ll take a taxi.”

Paquette climbed back into the cab. The boom creaked.

“Art!
HEY, ART
! They’re starting again.”

Nat and Lou resumed their positions. Nat pulled a framed picture of Weizmann out of the heap. The glass had been shattered.

Noah walked over to the cab and motioned for Paquette to stop the motor. He handed Paquette the flask of rye and Paquette slipped it into his pocket surreptitiously. “Itzik is watching,” he said.

Noah nodded. “When I wave,” he said, “please stop digging. That means I’ve seen him. I don’t want the shovel – the teeth to …”

“Sure. I understand. Your father and me were good friends. Remember? I used to come to make the fire in your house on Saturday mornings. You were so high then.…”

“I remember.”

“That Itzik, he was always full of … If you like I’ll bash him in the teeth.”

“I would like. You don’t know how much. But you need your job.”

Noah climbed back on to the rim of the rubbish heap. Paquette waved and started up the motor again. The shovel moved towards the pile.

Itzik yanked at Noah’s trouser leg. “What did you say to him?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! Listen, be reasonable, you must have said
something.”

“He told me that he used to light the fire for us on
shabus.”

“You handed him something.”

Suddenly Noah realized that Itzik’s jaw was level with his foot. That was tempting, but he turned away. Itzik tugged at his trouser leg again. Noah ignored him.

Around two in the afternoon the weather turned again and the sun was reduced to a widening yellow stain in a swirl of grey cloud; but the heat, if anything, got worse. Everything you touched was burning or wet or blistering. Noah tasted the salt on his lips. He kept staring down into that pit that was getting bigger and bigger, but from time to time things started to spin and he had to look away and walk around for a bit. All his nerves sparked like exposed wires. Max’s plane had been delayed. The crowd slimmed out. The kids started up a game of kick-the-can down the street, but kept a spotter watching the crane. Several rumours made the rounds. One said that they had caught the man who had set fire to the office, and another that Wolf had not plunged into the fire but had walked away from it, obviously suffering from amnesia. But Moore, who had seen Wolf rush into the flames, had already been questioned by the police, and as far as Noah knew there was still no proof that the fire had not been an accident.

Those who still remained on the scene around four o’clock began to grumble quite openly. Several of the windows that looked out on the yard were banged shut like a reproach. Would they continue to
dig if they didn’t find the body before dark? Why couldn’t the crane work quicker? A few women brought chairs down from their kitchens and began to gossip and knit in the shade. Discussion groups formed. Louis Berger the bookie said that it was always ten degrees hotter in the ghetto than it was anywhere else in the city. “The weather observatory,” he said, “is on a ritzy lake ten miles out of Montreal. And the building – air-conditioned! Why? Because the
Goy
who runs the joint – a third cousin eighteen times removed of the Mayor – can’t stand the heat.”

Rimstein the rag pedlar, three soiled moth-eaten suits slung over his narrow shoulders, his sorry face worn from the heat and his beard protruding from his chin like a tangle of rusting cord, shook his head sadly. “In such a heat,” he said, “Our People wandered forty years over a desert.”

“And there was no
shmaltz
herring and wine waiting for them in the synagogue after, eh?”

Melech Adler stared inscrutably out of the window of the Cadillac. Itzik came up to him.

“If when you find him,” Melech said, “and there should be a box, I want it. Nobody should look in the box.”

“A box?”

“Listen what I tell you and no questions. Noah shouldn’t … I want the box. Nobody should see.”

A stillness prevailed. “Not even a leaf is moving,” an elderly woman said.

Rimstein turned to Louis. “We are short one man for the evening service,” he said. “So you come to the synagogue tonight. Maybe it’ll bring you luck with the horses.”

“What does God know about Daily Doubles?”

“It is written: ‘I would rather be called a fool all my days than sin one hour before God.’ ”

“Written! Everything’s gotta be written for us Jewboys! When Rabbi Herman comes around trying to scare up some
gelt
for his holy
shakers everything’s gotta be signed in three million carbon copies. Still, he doesn’t do so bad for himself, the old
goniff.”

A few minutes after four Noah saw his father’s feet protruding from under a slab of charred wood. The toes pointed inwards. He waved and Paquette stopped the shovel in mid-air. Noah scrambled down into the pit.

“Art!
ART
! Hey, guys! Quick!”

A roar went up from the crowd.

Windows banged open one after another like shots being fired into the heat. Black policemen made a circle around the heap of rubbish and held back the surging crowd with threats. Several men cursed. The two men who were dressed in white linen opened up the doors to the ambulance and got the stretcher out. About twenty people detached themselves from the crowd and assembled at the back of the ambulance. A few of them had cameras.

“Art!
HEY, ART!”

Noah crouched in the pit and cleared slab after slab of charred wood off his father’s body. He looked up and saw Nat and Lou and Itzik standing on the rim of the pit. They spun around him like figures on a top. Noah stared at the body. Wolf was huddled up and held an iron box to his stomach. A charred wooden beam pressed against his back. His face was distorted. The eyes were opened, the mouth was slack. The clothes were burned but his body was intact. One hand was in the box. The other held on to it grimly. Noah swayed and bit his lips and opened the box. There were several rolls of parchment. Hebrew letters had been meticulously drawn on all of them.

“Paw says you let that stuff alone,” Itzik yelled hoarsely.

Noah didn’t even look up. He found a yellow stack of letters that were written in Russian or Polish. There were also several faded snapshots of a plump girl that had been frayed by too much handling. One of the snapshots, probably taken at a village fair, showed a strong young man with his arms around the girl. Melech had had no beard then. Noah discovered other letters on fresher paper. He
slipped the snapshots and several receipts and a bundle of letters into his pocket and examined one of the scrolls again.

Each letter had been laboriously formed. But the hand that had created them had been shaky. Itzik scrambled down into the pit. Behind him came the two men with the stretcher. Noah dumped the scrolls back into the box and climbed up the other side. His head was whirling. He had not yet grasped the significance of his find. Clearing the pit, he felt Itzik tugging at his trouser leg again. Noah pushed through the crowd and across the street to the Cadillac. He handed Melech the box. “That’s why he ran into the flames,” he said.