St. Urbain's Horseman (19 page)

Luke grinned.

“I don't have to put up with this sort of crap from a couple of kids.”

“Don't, then.”

As Doug bore down on them, smiling, Luke slid away. Jake did not catch up with him again until he retreated to the garden, where he was delighted to discover Hanna drinking beer and laughing with him.

“Yankel,” she exclaimed, and they embraced.

The years had turned Hanna to mahogany; her hair was white.

“Meet my boyfriend, Luke Scott. He takes me to all the hockey games. And the wrestling matches.”

Jake and Luke shook hands.

“Jenny tells me you may be staying in town,” Luke said. “I've got an apartment. I'd be glad to put you up, while you look around. We could share expenses.”

“Are you sure?” Jake asked.

“He's sure,” Hanna said, and she made a place for Jake beside them on the bench. “Do you know what it is a week tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Yom Kippur. Do you fast?”

“Sorry, Hanna. No.”

“Last year she wouldn't let me.”

“At her age, Hanna's not taking any chances.”

“Shettup, Luke. She stood over me, shouting, you eat non-kosher food all year and today you want to fast? Not in this house. O.K., so next week I'm pretending to visit a sick friend. Well, what do you think of him, Yankel?”

“Who?”

“Her little shmock of a husband.”

“Our Ibsen,” Luke pitched in.

“Come on, Hanna. Jenny's looked after you all these years, hasn't she?”

“Well, at least we don't fight any more. We've made a truce. I pretend to Mr. Nothing and Nobody she's out with me when she's really banging somebody else, she was born with round heels, that one, and she gives me movie money. My reward.”

Jenny's little shmock was holding forth in the living room, explaining his play-in-progress,
Accident
. “I've been doing research on the subject with a doctor, we checked the records of bus and truck companies and two hundred ordinary motorists, and you'd be amazed at the things we uncovered. There is a small minority of drivers who are extremely susceptible to accidents, and these accident repeaters seem to suffer from the same problem.
An inability to adjust to the codes of society.”

Descending on the group, Jake slapped his cheek, he whistled.

“But it's all based on fact, Jake. We made a study of forty taxi drivers, twenty of them with long-standing safety records and the other half of the sampling clearly accident prone. The safe drivers tended to be quiet, reserved men, almost a bit dull. They came from stable family backgrounds, were faithful to their wives, didn't gamble much, and were courteous to passengers. But the accident repeaters tended to be social misfits. Thirteen had drinking fathers or domineering mothers. Twelve were school dropouts with frequent appearances at juvenile court. Eight owned up to sexual promiscuity. Thirteen drifted in and out of jobs. Fourteen bootlegged liquor. We
classify these accident repeaters as ‘mild psychopathic' personalities.”

“I see,” Jake said, rubbing his chin. “I see.”

“Interestingly enough they share certain characteristics. They tend to be intelligent, but impulsive, they hate discipline, abhor routine, and want to be their own boss. They are good conversationalists, but bad listeners. They don't relate. They always want to be the center of the stage. Furthermore, we have noted that the rash drivers have one trait in common.
An underlying aggressiveness directed against authority
. While the safe driver deals with frustration in a socially acceptable form, the accident repeater uses his car as a means of acting out hostility. Our studies have satisfied us that accident repeaters are directing animosity against authority figures – the police or their employers. Then they blame other drivers, particularly women. You can narrow down the focus of their anger to their wives and ultimately the mothers who have dominated them. In extreme cases it would be fair to say they were using their cars … to prove their manhood. Trying to assert their masculinity, they climb into souped-up cars and wreak vengeance on the whole female sex.”

“But the child they knock down,” Jake said, “could be yours.”

“Right you are, Jake. You see, in our culture, it is a major problem that a man is too often measured by his risk-taking.”

Which was when Jake finally managed to corner Doug alone.

“I'm sure you've heard this often before, but I did want to tell you how very much I've always admired your work.”

“Well thanks, Jake. Glad to have you in the fan club.”

Prick. “There's always real red meat in your stuff. It's challenging.”

“Now you tell me where
you're
going. What are
your
dreams?”

“I'm glad you asked me that. You see, I'm dying to get into TV, now that it's finally starting in Canada. I'd like to direct, but, you know, I lack your connections. I'm sure nobody at the
CBC
would even have time to see me.”

“When you say ‘direct,' do you see it as a job or a vocation?”

“A vocation, naturally. No riding the American money mill for this boy. I want to stay in Canada and make my statement here. One day, maybe, I could direct plays as good as yours.”

“With content?”

“Yessiree. It's getting started that's got me stymied.”

“Mnn. I'm dead set against nepotism, you know.”

“Me too, Doug.”

“Take Yugoslavia, for instance. It can even corrupt a socialist-structured society.”

“I couldn't agree more. But I'm a working-class boy, you know. I'm not seeking favors. I'd be willing to start as a stage hand, if only somebody could get the door opened for me – just a crack.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Don't put yourself out, Doug. The important thing for you is to write. Your time is valuable, but – well, I certainly would appreciate your expert help.”

Jenny caught up with Jake in the hall.

“Do you hate me?”

“Oh, Jenny, please.”

“You love me, then?”

“Yes. Sure.”

“I tried so hard. I applied myself to learning and literature with a kind of hatred for it, so that if I ever fell in with what I think of as the blessed, talented people, I could fit in. I would understand the references … And so what happens? You know how I can tell the people of real quality who come to this house? The few who aren't phonies? They spend all their time talking to Hanna. Hanna, that bitch, what did she ever do to deserve such attention? They avoid me. And they poke fun at Doug. Unless they're on the make.”

“Is that so?” Jake said stiffly.

“Your fly buttons are done up, kid, but your ambition is showing. You never used to be calculating.”

“I'm growing up,” Jake said, and he led Jenny upstairs to her bedroom. “Now tell me about Joey. Was he a communist or not?”

“Who knows what he was, or is, he was such a liar.”

The first phone bill to come after Joey's return was for a staggering sum. Long-distance calls to New York, San Francisco, and Hollywood, some of them lasting twenty minutes. “He paid the phone bill with cash,” Jenny said.

“Didn't you ask him what he did in those six years away from home?”

“O.K. One night – he was pissed at the time, mind you – one night he told me that he was in Spain in 1938. Madrid.”

“Oh, my God, the scars on his back.”

“Sure. Only they could have been made by lots of things.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“From Spain he went to Mexico. Coyocán.”

Where Trotsky was living. Jake's heart hammered. He told Jenny how he had been mistaken for Joey and stopped at the American border.

“So. Does that have to be political? You think he fought in Spain. I'm convinced he was running away from trouble with gangsters. He came home to lick his wounds, then he found he was attracted to me, and left again for my sake.”

“Oh, come off it, Jenny.”

“Come off it. You think I'm telling you everything?”

There was a sudden upshot of laughter from downstairs. Shrieks of delight. “There she goes again,” Jenny said, pounding her fist against the arm of her chair, rising abruptly, Jake trailing after.

“Gzet! Gzet!” Hanna, her old Canadiens sweater pulled over her head, loped drunkenly from group to group. “Gzet! Gzet!”

Luke Scott, looking perturbed, bore down on Hanna, but Jenny intercepted him, seizing his arm. All at once her manner softened. “Meet Luke Scott,” she said to Jake, nuzzling his cheek, “a would-be writer in need of succor.”

“Pardon?” Jake pleaded over the party din.

“You heard me right the first time,” Jenny called back, “and you're still too young for me anyway.”

Jake watched them whirl off together, Luke obviously embarrassed, keeping an eye out for Hanna.

Over a group of bobbing heads Jake caught Hanna accosting another bunch.

“In Yellowknife,” she said, “you couldn't bury people in the winter. The ground freezes hard as rock. And so every autumn, the undertaker, Formaldehyde Smith, used to size us up before he figured out how many graves to dig in advance. He looked at my Joey, my four-year-old Joey, nobody expected him to live, he was so sickly, and he dug a pint-size grave for him. With my own eyes, I saw it. His momma. Mr. Smith, I said, you fill that hole in immediately or I'll cut your balls off and fry them for dog food …”

D
UDDY KRAVITZ DESCENDED ON TORONTO WITHIN A
month and, by way of establishing his name, was soon having himself paged at the cocktail hour in those bars that were most frequented by ad agency and
CBC
types, including those insufferable scoffers, Jake Hersh and Luke Scott.

Reactivating an old company of his, Dudley Kane Productions, Duddy sent out letters of introduction. But the going wasn't good. Without connections, an interloper, he had one door after another shut in his face. Only Jenny was helpful. They lunched together once a week and then retired to his apartment on Avenue Road, where he mounted her absently, eliciting an orgasm in time to shower before his next appointment. The
CBC
would not buy Duddy's idea for a television quiz game and no ad agency required his services as a self-styled troubleshooter. On a frenzied trip to New York, he bid for, but failed to win, the Canadian distribution rights for the hula-hoop. Instead he returned with the rights to a reducing pill. Take one a day, eat all you want, and shed twenty pounds within two weeks. But, at the time, Duddy was dubious and also lacked sufficient funds for promotion and advertising. He was stripped down to his last thousand dollars, stacks of unpaid bills, and a bleeding stomach ulcer when he opened the
Star
one afternoon and read that somebody was going to publish a Canadian Social Register and, lo and behold,
according to the newspaper's most outspoken columnist, there would be no Jews in it. Which was what inspired Duddy to break into publishing, simultaneously doing something for his people and laying the cornerstone of his Toronto fortune.

The Canadian Jewish Who's Who (published by Mount Sinai Press, president, Dudley Kane) was, for a year, no more than an obsession, the all-consuming dream Duddy laid himself to bed with in his increasingly squalid apartment, the fervent hope he tramped the winter streets on, driving himself to concoct schemes that would yield a quick turnover. Stake money. Blessed stake money. Where? How? What, he thought, about Jake Hersh, the sentimental prick?

Jake, risen from stagehand to studio floor manager, had little time for him. He had little time for anybody in fact except well-born Luke Scott, who had yet to have a script accepted anywhere. They shared an apartment, competing for girls, their appetite prodigious, but otherwise intensely loyal to each other, inseparable, professional abominators, dragging nutty old Hanna everywhere with them, bursting in on parties only to insult people. Equally disliked, Duddy discovered, by older established directors and writers whom they denigrated without mercy. The small talents for whom, they said, endearing themselves to no one, Canada was a necessary shelter.

Who would never sell out, Luke taunted, because no invitation was likely to be proffered.

For whom integrity was not a virtue, Jake pitched in, but a habit born of necessity. Like his Aunt Sophie not being a courtesan.

Arriving at their apartment, Duddy was relieved to find Jake alone. “You guys live in style here,” Duddy said. “I envy you.”

Tricked out in his shabbiest suit, spitting into a ketchup-stained handkerchief, owning up to an ulcer he couldn't afford to treat, hinting the bailiffs were breathing on his back, Duddy skewered his old schoolmate by reminding him that they had been kids together, St. Urbain's shining morning faces, and even as Jake struggled, anticipating a touch, Duddy nailed him with a sweetener, promising not
to service Jenny any more, and he managed to wring a check for five hundred dollars out of Jake as well as the promise of his signature on a twenty-five hundred dollar bank loan.

None too soon, as it happened, for a moment later Luke whacked open the door, ushering in Hanna ahead of him. “Well,” he exclaimed with appetite, “look who's here.”

Hanna, sensing trouble, disappeared into the kitchen to unload her shopping bag and prepare supper.

“I was just going, Mr. Scott, sir,” Duddy said, fleeing.

Jake was infuriated. “Look here, Luke, there are many of your friends whom I cannot abide, but I don't behave like that.”

“You behave worse.”

Hanna stepped between them. “You know what you sound like, the two of you? A couple of fairies. Jarvis Street rough trade.”

After supper, Hanna, in rare high spirits, her black eyes sparkling, suddenly fell on a deck of cards and shuffled them as Luke had never seen them handled before. Jake shook with laughter as she dealt a hole card to Luke, another to him, and one to herself. Then she turned over hers, revealing an ace. “You know who taught me that?”