St. Urbain's Horseman (14 page)

“What's all this about?”

“We have reason to believe you might be an undesirable person.”

“What reason?”

“I can't tell you.”

“How long will the trial take?”

“It's not a trial.”

“How long will
it
take?”

“As long as it does.”

“The only reason why I ask, sir, is today is Friday. I'm, well, Jewish … Our sabbath begins at sundown and then it would be against the articles of my faith to travel.”

The immigration officer peered at him with fresh and, Jake dared to hope, benevolent interest.

“If there's anything political in this, sir, I think it would be less than honest of me, if I didn't admit that at the university I was secretary of the Young Conservative Club.”

“We arrive in St. Albans in ten minutes. I'll meet you at the exitway to your coach.”

A dense downpour started just as the train was rounding into St. Albans. The immigration officer pointed at a three-story building at the crest of a hill and started to climb toward it. Jake followed behind, his two suitcases bouncing off each other and his legs. He finally made it to the stone building, panting and drenched. Over the main entrance he recognized the insignia of the U.S. Department of Justice, which he remembered from
T-Men
with Dennis O'Keefe.
The immigration officer led Jake to the second-floor landing and left him there, dripping on the brown lino, while he conferred briefly with another man. Then they continued to the third floor, where all the corridors, as far as Jake could see, were choked with filing cabinets of the small-card variety. The officer asked Jake to step inside for a minute, politely holding the door open for him. It looked like a hospital ward. Three neatly made up double bunks and, off to the left, a bathroom. Suddenly Jake heard the clang of metal behind him and whirled around to discover he was imprisoned. The officer went away without a word.

Rain, rain, rain. A window, the bars greasy, looked out on a grubby inner courtyard. Jake lay down, deflated, on a lower bunk. “H.W. was here” and other initials had been cut into the brown metal bedpost, and on the underside of the upper bunk an earlier prisoner had scratched
“baise mon cul, oncle sam.”
The radio transmitter in the room next to his crackled and squawked as the operator rasped our messages to border agents. “Watch out for Anafukobroplis, Anafuko – A as in Able, N as in – Yeah, he's a Greek. He's expected to try to enter from Montreal in a party of forty roller skaters.”

Outside Jake's room, male and female clerks passed again and again, forever opening and kneeing shut metal files. Whirr, pause, clang. Whirr, pause, clang.

“Hear this,” the radio operator said. “We expect those baby smugglers to make another crossing in two days. So this time let's get with it, eh, fellas?”

At noon the immigration officer returned, unlocked the door, and pointed his chewed-out pencil at Jake's head. “No
chapeau,”
he said.

“What?”

“I know about orthodox Jews. Read up on them in
Life
magazine once. No hat. So you'd travel after sundown too, wouldn't you, fella?”

“You're very observant. I'm sure one day Edgar Hoover will take notice.”

The immigration officer led Jake out of the building and across town to a rambling, boxcar brown, clapboard unit that had been set up alongside the tracks. Jake followed the officer's shiny trouser seat up the wooden stairs to an office with four desks and a pot-bellied stove, where the interrogator sat. Hair parted straight down the middle, dead eyes, almost no lips, and a slightly soiled shirt collar curling at the edges. One heart-sinking glance and Jake knew he was done for.

Full name, the round-shouldered interrogator asked. Age?

“Twenty.”

Father's full name? Place of birth? Religion?

“Jewish.”

“Employer?”

“None.”

“Uh-huh. Have you ever belonged to any of the following organizations? I'll read them over slowly. The Young Communist League?”

“I should say not.”

Friends of the Spanish Civil War Refugees? The League of Canadian Consumers? Students For Peace?

“I'd like to make a statement.”

The interrogator leaned back in his swivel chair and waited.

“One of my enemies at the university used to sign my name to left-wing petitions.”

“What's his name?”

“It was a joke. He thought it was a funny thing to do.”

“I see. The Progressive Book Club?”

“Um, one minute. Let me think … I'm not sure. The Progressive Book Club?”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Next the interrogator read out a seemingly endless list of newspapers and magazines, and asked Jake if he had ever subscribed to any
of them. All of Jake's replies were typed out in quintuplet and then he was asked to check his answers for inaccuracies and misspellings before he signed each copy.

“It says here … religion ‘Hebrew.' I clearly remember saying ‘Jewish.' ”

“So what?”

“He's a fresh guy,” the immigration officer said. “I warned you.”

“I'm sure you wouldn't want me to sign a false statement.”

“Christ Almighty, but you believe in making things tough for yourself; O.K., I'll write in Jewish over Hebrew. You initial each copy where I've done that.”

“Roger,” Jake said, winking.

“Now listen here, kid. You cut that out.”

Jake signed the copies. Then he was fingerprinted and brought back to the office. “This hearing is now closed,” the interrogator said, “because you are considered undesirable to the United States. Your application for admission has been refused and you are temporarily excluded under the provisions of Section 235 (c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. You will be returned to Montreal this evening at 7:30.”

“You still haven't given me a reason.”

“We are not authorized to divulge information on which we pass exclusion.”

Jake was driven back to his place of detention and found there was now a thin old man with a sunken pot belly perched on the edge of the upper bunk opposite him, spindly legs dangling in mid-air. The man was wearing a natty straw hat and a checked shirt at least two sizes too large for him and split running shoes. He had enormous pop eyes, opened, it seemed, in an attitude of perpetual amazement; and he held a walking stick over his head. “Don't move,” he said, shaking his stick at Jake. “Not an inch closer.”

“Jesus Christ. Who are you?”

“As if you didn't know.”

Jake sat down tentatively.

“I knew they'd send somebody. Cockroach. Vermin. That's you.”

“Would you mind telling me what this is all about?”

“Admit it. Feigelbaum's paying. Or is it Shapiro?”

“Nobody's paying. Nobody sent me here. I'm a prisoner. I'm being sent back to Montreal tonight.”

“To keep tabs on me. Well, I'm on to you. Human trash. If you so much as reach into your pocket for a weapon, I'll scream for the guards.”

“I'll stand up with my arms over my head and you search me.”

“Oh, no you don't. No sirree. That's when I get the judo chop.”

“Why would I want to kill you?”

“For the money. Five million.” Jake whistled.

“Didn't they tell you that much?”

“I'm not completely trusted.”

“They'd stop at nothing to put me out of the way and you know it. My case is before the Supreme Court in Manhattan right now. Calendar number 33451/1953.”

“I wish you luck.”

“It's my father's money. It belongs to me. I know where Feigelbaum is and I've located Shapiro, but I still have to find Czucker and Leon Feigelbaum.”

The man's eyes, to Jake's astonishment, appeared to open even wider. They might actually pop, he thought.

“I'm willing to share the money with anyone who helps me recover it and brings the criminals to justice.”

“Cigarette?”

“Not one of yours, thank you. Are you crazy?”

“Surely you don't think my cigarettes are poisoned?”

“Last time Feigelbaum tried to murder me it was with supersonic rays. They paralyze and destroy the bodily organs. They're not
trying to kill me themselves. No sirree. Instead they hire people to try for them. Human excrement, like you.”

Suddenly a metal clipboard was banged against the door and a man peered in the barred window. “What did you say your mother's maiden name was?” he asked Jake.

“I already told you in quintuplet.”

The old man leaped down from the bed and threw himself against the door. “You've got to get me out of here. I'm not like him.”

“We want the name again.”

“He was put in here to murder me. He's a hired killer.”

“The name, please.”

“It's on the form. You've got it right there.”

“Spell it for me, will you?”

“Belloff.
B-E-L-L
. Off. Like in fuck off.”

“You'd better watch it, buddy.” But he opened the door for Jake all the same. “You can go now. Train time.”

“Don't put me on the same train,” the man whined, retreating.

“Don't worry, grandpa. Somebody's coming for you.”

Somebody's coming. The man slid to the floor, holding his head in his hands, and began to sob.

“Can't you do anything for him?” Jake asked, exasperated.

“Got any ideas?”

The door shut behind Jake and he was led downstairs and put in the care of another officer, a young plainclothesman with a clean crisp feel about him and a most disarming smile. The young man immediately stooped to relieve Jake of one of his suitcases. It was a small gesture, done without fuss, but the kindness of it all touched Jake, and it occurred to him for the first time that he was sweaty and rumpled, and that in the eyes of this pleasant young man he must seem a small-time con artist or maybe even a nut, like the man Jake had left behind. After such a long day's squalor the young man came as a shock to Jake. He looked so wholesome, such a good credit-risk. As Jake and the young man stepped outside together into the fresh
air he dared to hope that passersby would take them for friends, not a prisoner and his guard, and he was filled with a need to dissociate himself from the day's seediness and make a good impression.

“Pardon my asking,” the young man said, “but you're a political, aren't you?”

“Well, yes, I mean that's the charge.”

“I don't mind the politicals. They're educated and are really, well, idealistic sort of. It's the junkies and faggots that I find so degrading. Or do you think of them as … sick?”

Jake shrugged.

“What were you going to do in New York?”

“Overthrow the government by force.”

“That's rich. That's a good one.”

“Me and my little supersonic ray gun.”

“You were put in with him, then? Now isn't he something?”

“You with the F.B.I.?”

“Hell, no. Nothing like that. Say, I must tell you how much I admire things Canadian. In our house, we always listen to the
CBC
. It doesn't insult your intelligence, if you know what I mean? They allow for nonconformists. Like that, um, Professor McAllister who sometimes debates on foreign affairs.”

McAllister lectured at McGill. A tiresome, literal socialist.

“Would you know McAllister personally? Coming from Montreal?”

“No. They said somebody was coming for the old man. Who?”

“Oh, him. Hell, we've had him three times already. His son, I suppose. He's a very distinguished dentist. Say, did the old boy show you the numbers on his arm?”

The numbers? “No,” Jake said, nausea rising in him.

“The Dodgers are going with Erskine tomorrow. The ole perfesser's going to put in Whitey Ford.”

“Mn.”

“When the train pulls in you just get on ahead of me. No need to embarrass you, is there?”

“What numbers? What are you talking about, you goddam fool?”

“It was something they did to them during the war. In concentration camps. Didn't you know that?”

Jake suppressed an urge to hit him with his suitcase.

“The irony of it is that now some of those same Germans are back in office in Western Germany. Now what do you say to that?”

“Kiss my Royal Canadian ass.”

“Be friendly. Come on. There's nothing personal in this.” He offered Jake a cigarette. “Off the record, I'd even say there was something to it.”

“To what? What are you talking about now? Concentration camps? The World Series? Is everybody crazy in this country?”

The young man stopped, his pleasant face aching with high seriousness. “Would you say that?”

“That? This? What are you talking about?”

“Communism. The original idea. Brotherhood. Well, I buy it. But you can't make it work. It rubs against human nature.”

Jake stared at the tracks, willing the train into the station.

“I suppose some of your buddies were going to meet you in New York.”

“A parade was planned! A big demonstration.”

“Can I phone anybody for you to explain why you didn't turn up?”

“I'm going to be sick. I've got to sit down.”

Jake slumped against a pillar.

“Here comes the train. You just get on ahead of me. We don't need to sit together.”

The young man settled in five seats behind Jake, and when they reached the border he got up and jumped off the train. Jake caught his eye as he stood on the platform, lighting up. The young man waved, his face broke into an infectious grin. Jake's heart thumped
crazily, his head was pounding and, to his own amazement, he spit venomously on the window just as the train lurched backwards, vibrated, and jerked forward again. The young man looked after him, shaking his head, appalled. And Jake, consumed with shame, realized that he had done it again. Shown himself one of the oily ones, an off-white. He had done the wrong and childish thing, made a fool of himself, when hitherto all the right had been on his side. So that when he remembered this day and came to talk about it at dinner parties years later, he would recall with stinging shame his stupid spit on the window, but he would always leave that out of the story, except when he told it to Nancy.