St. Urbain's Horseman (42 page)
Read St. Urbain's Horseman Online
Authors: Mordecai Richler
Tags: #Fiction, #Performing Arts, #Canadian, #Cousins, #General, #Literary, #Canadian Fiction, #Individual Director, #Literary Criticism
“Which's
Best Buy. We've also got a housekeeper.”
“Nice. Very nice.”
“I think so. Well,” Jake said, looking at his watch.
“Is that your final word, then? You won't honor your cousin's debt?”
Jake nodded.
“You don't remember having met me before, do you?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Not to worry. Very few people notice me. I'm used to it, don't you know?”
But even then Harry hesitated at the door.
“You say you haven't got the money, Mr. Hersh, and that even if you so desired you couldn't spare it. A pity, that. For is it not a fact that at the moment you are being paid more monthly not to work than I take home in a year?”
“Who told you that?”
“I put it to you that you have lied to me.”
“Where have we met before, Harry?”
“I take it you are implying that we couldn't possibly move in the same circles.”
“Inferring.”
Harry's cheeks bled red.
“Now tell me how come you know â or think you know â about my private affairs?”
“If you lied to me about that, I say you are prevaricating about your cousin. You know the present abode of Joseph Hersh. Or de la Hirsch. And you are protecting him.”
“You don't know what you're talking about.”
It was only after Harry had left that Jake noticed the large round hole burned into the fabric of the new winged armchair from Heal's. Why, the bastard, Jake thought, with sneaking admiration, he did it on purpose.
T
HE NEXT MORNING'S MAIL BROUGHT A LONG AND
abusive letter.
LBJ
, the war in Vietnam, Barry Goldwater, the
CIA
, the murder of Malcolm X, and the John Birch Society were all evoked, as well as earlier, if not more vile, examples of American obloquy. Jake passed the letter to Nancy and opened the
Times
.
MONTHLY TESTS FOR CANCER
Every woman over the age of twenty-four, the Health Council enjoined, should carry out two simple tests for breast cancer each month, as nearly thirty women die from breast cancer every day â a fifth of all cancer deaths.
A few minutes a month â that's all the time needed to check that nothing is going wrong. We hope that every woman over 24 will make it routine, like turning over the mattress.
Nancy, eight months pregnant, went to bed early. So did Jake. The telephone wakened him at three a.m.
My father
, he thought. But when he said hello, nobody replied. Hello, hello. He could hear breathing at the other end of the line, nothing more.
“Harry, you prick!”
Jake knew better than to try to sleep again. He lit a cigarillo, pulled Johnson's
Lives of the Poets
out from between the magazines and scripts stacked on his bedside table, and waited. Twenty minutes later the phone rang again.
“Aren't you going to answer it?” Nancy asked.
“No. Please go to sleep, dear.”
In the morning, Jake received a pamphlet about political conditions in present-day Spain, Vicky having drawn the cartoon for the cover. It compared unfavorably with the material he had picked up at the Spanish tourist office about the delights of Torremolinos, and he suggested half-heartedly to Nancy that maybe they ought to consider the Câte d'Azur instead, once the baby came.
Why? He was worried about the milk there, maybe it wouldn't agree with the baby. But she was going to nurse this baby, just like the others. Well, there was olive oil with everything, and the kids wouldn't like it. But the south of France was far too expensive. Yes, yes, but Spain was only cheap because the workers were on starvation wages. Furthermore, tourism helped to prop up a corrupt dictatorship. Oh, really, and wasn't it a little bit late in the day for him to develop the sort of hypersensitive social conscience he mocked in others. The hell it was.
Nancy quit the kitchen for her bedroom and Jake went out for a walk, Sammy trailing after.
“Hey,” Jake said. “Across the street. There's a kid in your school uniform.”
Sammy didn't deign to look. “Is he leading an elephant?” he asked.
“Um, no.”
“Then it isn't Rogers.”
After dinner, Jake settled in for an evening's television. News for the Deaf, which he watched weekly, so that should his hearing fail he would not have to learn lip-reading from scratch, was followed by
BORN TO LIVE
.
The walls of Denise Legrix's Paris studio are covered with her paintings; paintings of such power that few would credit the artist was born without arms or legs.
Denise Legrix is in her early fifties. She has a ready smile and a quick wit, but it is in her eyes that one catches a hint of her strength. As we talked, she telephoned for a taxi, dialing the number with a paper knife held between her shoulder and neck. I met her when I was preparing tonight's program. I had framed several questions to bridge my anticipated embarrassment. I need not have bothered. With a knife held under her right armpit and a fork balanced on her left stump, she ate her food with no more fuss â¦
Harry didn't phone until two in the morning.
“Don't answer it,” Nancy said.
But Jake had already grabbed the receiver. “Harry, if you call here once more I'm going to come around to knock your fucking brains out.”
No answer. Only breathing.
“What if it isn't him?” Nancy asked.
“Don't be absurd.”
Jake dialed Harry's number. The phone rang. Rang and rang. Finally Harry said, “Hullo,” his voice thick with sleep.
“Harry, it's Hersh. Jake Hersh.”
“Wha ⦔
“If you don't stop calling here at all hours of the night I'm going to report you to the police.”
“What's that?”
“You heard me, Harry.”
“This is an outrage.”
“Harry, I've been thinking. Maybe I live in a house like this, possibly I make so much more money than you do, because I'm intelligent and talented and you're just a mindless little fart.”
There was a long and excruciating pause. Finally, Harry said: “I dispute that.”
“But it happens to be true all the same,” Jake hollered. Then he hung up, agitated and ashamed.
“I don't think you should have said that to him,” Nancy said.
“All right. O.K. I already did say it.”
The phone began to ring again.
“You see, it's a crank. Somebody who doesn't even know us.”
Nancy took the phone off the hook, buried it under a pillow, and said, “Let's go to sleep now.”
A policeman, fortunately not Sergeant Hoare, came to call at breakfast time. A Mr. Harry Stein had complained that he had been wakened in the middle of the night by phone calls of a threatening nature. Flushed and overeager, Jake explained that, on the contrary, sir, he had been troubled by nuisance calls at all hours of the night and he had merely warned Mr. Stein to desist.
How did Mr. Hersh know the party in question was Mr. Stein?
I'm glad you asked me that question. Because, Jake said, before meeting Mr. Stein, he had never been troubled with such calls.
Did Mr. Hersh have any further proof?
Certainly. But he would only divulge it at the proper time.
Be that as it may, would Mr. Hersh, in the meantime, promise not to bother Mr. Stein any more.
Yes.
Immediately the bobby had gone, Jake climbed to his attic and phoned Harry.
“Well, now. I say, I say. Aren't you the clever little bastard?”
“Oh. But I thought, in your opinion, I was, quote â a mindless little fart â unquote.”
Choke to death on Kotex.
“For your information, Mr. Hersh, I belong, intellectually,
if not materially
, to the top two percent of the population of this country.”
“Ha, ha. That's rich.
Says who?”
“Mensa.”
“What's that?”
“You don't know Latin, then?”
“It's a dead language.”
“Mensa is Latin for table. It's the name of a round-table society I belong to, the only qualification being that your native intelligence places you in the top two percent.”
“After all that sobbing about Spain, you're an elitist. A squalid little fascist.”
“Mensa has no political or religious affiliations. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or social class. If we are an élite, it is not by birth, background, or wealth, but on the sole basis of innate intelligence.”
“Now hold on there. Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me, little man, that
you're
one of the intellectual élite?”
“I'm saying it is a scientifically proven fact.”
“You're being taken for a ride, Harry.”
“Am I?”
“What did you pay to join this nut club? How much did they take you for?”
“I passed a test proving my qualifications.”
“If you could, so could my son Sammy. Blindfolded.”
“Would you be prepared to submit to the test, then?”
“Well, um, sure. But who has time for such nonsense?”
“I see.”
“You see. O.K. Where do I get it?”
“I'll have the test sent to you.”
“Right. And I'm willing to put down ten quid to your one that I score higher than you ever did. Intellectual élite, my ass.”
“We have a bet then, Mr. Hersh.”
“Indeed we do. And meanwhile, no more phone calls in the middle of the night, you understand?”
“I refute such a charge.”
“Just remember what I said.”
“Have you had any further thoughts about your cousin's debt to Ruthy?”
“No. Goodbye.”
At the breakfast table, Nancy decided to say nothing. She poured him more coffee.
“What is it with me,” he demanded. “Wherever I put my foot down, it's quicksand.”
U
NDERLINE WHICH OF THE FOUR NUMBERED
figures fits into the empty space.
Insert the missing number.
Complete the following.
SCOTLAND
27186453
LOTS
7293
LOAN
8367
AND
Underline the odd-man-out.
AZEETRIULOS
OHEELORRUMAELUS
NIVOERINNIURIS
REALOPPOOSILILOO
It's ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.
While John was at work on the repapering of the hall, Billy and Tony had strict instructions that they should remain in the garden.
Having tired of playing cricket, the boys looked around for something to do. In the course of their wanderings, they came across a pair of snails, so they decided to have a snail-race. The snails were of somewhat different types, and the boys recognized that one of them was a type which preferred climbing, whereas the other was more of a walker. Consequently, some care had to be taken in order to give them both an equal chance.
Both snails were the same size and shape â in fact, the only difference between them was that one preferred to climb rather than to go along the level. The climber found that during his twelve waking hours he could only climb three feet, and during his twelve sleeping hours he slid down a foot. The walker found that he had no bother with sliding, of course, although he slept the same length of time as the other snail.
In consequence, the boys found a wall, and placed both snails at the foot of it. Four feet away from the other side of the wall was the finishing-post, a luscious shrub. If the wall was seven feet in height, and the two snails had sufficient ambition to aim directly for the shrub, how many feet away from the shrub would the walker have to be placed in order to give each snail a fair chance?
A children's game.
Insert the word in the brackets which can be prefixed by any of the letters on the left.
Although he is known to posterity on account of his engravings, Albrecht Dürer, who worked during the sixteenth century, would also seem to have had a certain interest in things mathematical.
In his famous picture âmelancolia,' for instance, astronomy, architecture, and solid geometry all have their place â together with an example of a fourth-order Magic Square, the numbers in the centre of the bottom line of which are reputed to date the picture.
Although, in actual fact, the numbers in the Magic Square are quite clear, consisting of the numbers 1â16 inclusive, suppose that some of them were not, and that the Square gave the appearance shown in
Fig. 10
.
Fig. 10
In what year did Dürer engrave his masterpiece?