Son of a Smaller Hero (27 page)

“I’m sorry about last night,” Noah said.

Sheila put down the tray and beat her chest solemnly. “A spectre is haunting Outremont.” She giggled. “I could have just killed you last night but you were terribly funny in the end, Noah, and I like you a lot.” She sat down on the foot of the bed. “Why do you hate us?”

“I don’t hate you,” Noah said.

“Is it because Daddy wants to give you Harvey’s old clothes?” She cocked her head as though she meant to catch Noah’s answer like a ball. “Daddy would like me to introduce you to some
decent
girls and that kind of thing, but I won’t if you don’t want me to.…”

“Are they angry about last night?”

“Mother’s blazing. Daddy’ll get her a new dress or a box of chocolates and everything’ll be dandy. Is it true that you were living with a married woman – a Gentile – in Ste. Adele?”

“Yes, I …”

“Skip it. I won’t pry,” she said. “But isn’t it awful about all the publicity they got up about your poor father?”

“Yes. It was.”

“That was your Uncle Max’s fault. Daddy says Max wants the Liberal nomination. He hasn’t got enough education to be an
M.P.
He’d shame us in Ottawa. Daddy says Max is too ambitious.”

“That’s what my father used to say. But I like Max.”

“Drink your coffee. Would you like to play tennis this afternoon? I’ve got the day off.”

“I don’t know how to play tennis.”

“Would you like to go riding?”

“I’m afraid that I …”

“Oh, then we can just go for a walk or something.”

“All right. But it’ll have to be today. I owe Panof … a friend money. I must get back to Montreal and get a job.”

Winter came swiftly that year. One day it was hot, and the next a hard wind swept in from the north and wiped the city clean of the clouds. The grey financial houses of St. James Street reached higher into the sky, as if they meant to rend holes in it. A shortage of coal was rumoured. At night the stars glittered like bolts twisted into a steel roof and a copper moon gleamed coldly. Heartier Montrealers armed with rugs and rum cheered the McGill Redmen to a few victories in Molson’s Stadium. A man got up in the Recorder’s Court and promised the end of the world within six days. Gus “Pell” Mell announced from Griffintown that he was planning a comeback. I’ll kill Greco, he said. Palmer wrote in the
Herald
that he’d take Montreal over any city in the world. The uranium market wobbled. A twelve-year-old boy was stabbed to death on Mount Royal and the police rounded up nearly all the likely suspects. A
Gazette
editorial pleaded for protection against perversion. An
M.P.
got up in the House of Commons and said that the best civil defence plan for Canada was to paint big white signs on the highways saying this way to Detroit, that way to Pittsburgh. Then the snows came floating down joyfully. Day after day of it. St. Catherine Street was transformed into a white, fluffy wonderland. An early-bird of a Presbyterian minister denounced the commercialism of Montreal Christmas. A big department store came back with a full-page advertisement saying
WE’RE PROUD TO SELL. EVERYBODY BENEFITS FROM MORE SALES
.

Noah and his mother watched the winter coming from an apartment in Outremont.

Leah had many visitors. A lady at last, she was asked to join the Shaar Zion Synagogue. Her father had been a Zaddik, and her husband had died for the Torah. The colour returned to her skin.
Her slouch, a posture that had formerly suggested defeat, was replaced by a new animation. A hard, intense light burned in her eyes. She did not mention Miriam to him. She knew better than that. But she made febrile plans for him.

“You’ll go to McGill. You’ve got much more brains than Harvey. You can do whatever you want.”

“Maybe next year, Maw.”

“Or, if you like, I’ll speak to Max. He’d do anything for me.”

“Don’t push me with Max, Maw. I don’t mind driving the cab.”

“I’d like to see you married and on your way before I die. Is that too much to ask?”

“No, Maw.”

“You don’t need to drink so much.”

“Yes, Maw.”

“I’m glad you get along so well with Sheila. She’s a good girl. She can introduce you to …”

“Maw, did he ever speak to you about the box?”

“Who? What box?”

“Daddy.”

“Before you go on,
boyele
, please get me my pills. Sometimes my breath comes short. I can’t … Thank you … ah … thanks.… Now what was it you were saying?”

“Nothing.”

One evening soon after that Noah had a night off and decided to go through the crate that contained his father’s papers. Most of the stuff had come from the bottom drawer of Wolf’s desk – from the drawer with the false bottom.

Leah was entertaining Mrs. Greenspon in the living-room. Noah could hear them.

“The Ethel Gordon Chapter of Hadassah would like to send a fully equipped ambulance to Israel in memory of your husband,
Mrs. Adler. We were wondering if we could count on your help.…”

Wolf’s diary filled an enormous ledger of the type that was used by bookkeepers. The title-page read:

Each letter had its ornate share of curls and dots and wiggly lines. It was necessary to hold the next page – a sample of Wolf’s signature – up to the mirror in order to read the elaborately formed letters. Following that, came several pages of dates. Births, weddings, deaths. Noah flipped through the diary impatiently. Pages and pages in code. Each letter had been printed.

There was the rattle of tea-cups in the next room.

“My husband had his faults, Mrs. Greenspon. But he never, for a minute, forgot our heritage. You remember my father, don’t you? Wolf wasn’t one to push himself. He was content with his small lot. He …”

Each page had the sub-title: “Da Yqnh Cfngt.” Noah guessed that that meant “by Wolf Adler.”

The code, as a matter of fact, was pathetically easy to decipher. A was represented by C, and W was represented by Y. Each letter, in fact, was represented by the second letter that came after it in the alphabet.

“Did you know that there’s now a scholarship at Baron Byng in everlasting memory of my late husband?”

“No, I didn’t know that, Mrs. Adler.”

Noah started on a comparatively easy page and deciphered it quickly.

How much do I walk per day?

How long does it take me to walk the equivalent of the circumference of the earth?

one step – one yard

one mile – 1760 yards

“My father, may he rest in peace, used to say that this match was made in heaven. Now don’t think I’m old-fashioned, Mrs. Greenspon. Superstitious, but …”

“I’ll tell you something, Mrs. Adler. You don’t know how the congregations are swelling again. So many of our people are coming back to God.”

Noah deciphered another page.

“You must meet my boy, Mrs. Greenspon. He’s going to go to McGill. I don’t know what I’d do without him, I tell you. Ever since I’ve been ill he takes such good care of me. He takes after my father, you know. When my father, may he rest in peace, died …”

Noah began to feel queasy.

There was a project to build a bridge across the Atlantic. An ideal society, with secret signals, had been planned. Another page listed Wolf’s weight before and after eating, before and after defecation, for a period of two weeks. On an average day Wolf accounted for three pints of urine: but Paquette, who was a beer drinker, did much better than that. The dates of all his quarrels with Leah had been entered. Average over a twenty-year period – 2.2 quarrels per day. There was a long and recent essay titled
THE INGRATITUDE OF CHILDREN
.

“Noah!”

“Yes?”

“Come,
boyele
, Mrs. Greenspon is anxious to meet you.”

He replaced the diary in the box.

Noah began to work overtime. He didn’t cruise much, but waited for calls at the stand. That was quite peaceful and he got a lot of reading done. Then, because the garage was beginning to make sour comments about his earning capacities he began to meet the out of town trains. He spent most of his free time with the Goldenbergs and their friends. Ste. Agathe had been a revelation. A shock. The people, the laws, that he had rebelled against had been replaced by other, less conspicuously false, laws and people while he had been away. That shifting of the ghetto sands seemed terribly unfair to him. If the standard man can be defined by his possessions, then rob his house and you steal his identity. Noah had supposed himself not to be a standard man. But his house had been robbed and his identity had been lost. He was shaken. Not only because he felt a need to redefine himself, but because he realized, at last, that all this time he had only been defining himself Against. Even death was something that he did Not Want. He avoided Panofsky. That man knew what he wanted. What he wanted was positive and required a bigger reply than No.

Noah avoided Max and Melech as well as Panofsky. He wanted to have something to say when he saw them. Meanwhile he carried the letters, receipts, and photographs about with him like his sins. He often awakened in the middle of the night to reach out for Miriam. Instead there was his father’s body. Toes turned inward. He was too disturbed to get much out of drinking. But he drank with the other drivers. He drank until he realized that he was doing so only because it horrified his mother. Knowing that, he drank less.

Noah wanted some knowledge of himself that was independent of others.

He envied the Goldenbergs their convivial home and he wandered among them a masked, carnivorous man. He adored Sheila and hungered for her approval. He wanted his uncle to think that he had ambition and his aunt to think that he had good manners. He wanted Harvey to think that he was an upstanding, conservative man who was speeding towards Canadian mediocrity, towards an identity that would allow him to pass unrecognized, as fast as the best of them. If they would believe all that of him then perhaps he was not diseased and perhaps some of their happiness would rub off on him. So he agreed to everything. Next year, he agreed, he would go to McGill. Harry Goldenberg felt that the St. Lawrence Street Jews should be helped, like the underdeveloped countries. A faithful husband and considerate father, he appeared to be collecting points, as though he expected his documents to be questioned at the gates of heaven. His wife, Rachel, beyond being loyal and a good mother, seemed to be no more than a part of the house, not as pretty as the Wedgwood but more useful than the Bendix. Harvey took her to ballets. The two of them were extremely devoted. Harvey was tall and dark with black curly hair and a wide, intense mouth. He alone avoided Noah. He was well-read, but he did not like to be questioned about his reading. He even denied that he owned a volume of poetry. Noah went out on double dates with Sheila and
Larry. And when it became necessary he got himself a “steady.” Marsha Feldman. Noah agreed with Mr. Feldman that communism was against all the laws of human nature and with Mrs. Feldman that men, after all, were men. He discussed premarital relations with Marsha. She felt that one shouldn’t give oneself prior to the ceremony unless there was going to be a ceremony, but Noah balked at the idea of an engagement.

Oh, he was a miserable flop.

Noah was so intent on conforming that he conformed too much, and was suspected as an eccentric, a non-believer, by all. He finally realized that the secret of their humanity was that each one had a tiny deviation all his and/or her own. None conformed completely. Marsha, the little bitch, had love being made to her by a McGill quarterback whilst she was trying to hook Noah. (That finally endeared her to him.) His Aunt Rachel obeyed in all things except that she secretly read the most blatantly pornographic literature, and Mrs. Feldman beat her French poodle with a whip. Terror lurked behind their happiness. In fact, they weren’t happy at all: they were composed. Truth was adroitly side-stepped, like a dog’s excrement on the footpath. Harvey was obviously a repressed homosexual. Everybody knew, nobody agreed to see. That lie was the strength that held the Goldenbergs together. Harvey was being helped, damned, to go through life without realizing his sexuality. That made Noah sad and inadvertently led to his estrangement with the Goldenbergs. He spoke to Harvey. He thought it important for Harvey to know that there were people who agreed to see completely, and could still love. He wanted him to know that his being a homosexual did not horrify Noah. But it did horrify Harvey. He denied everything. The family was scandalized.