St. Urbain's Horseman (46 page)

Night after night, he returned to his house to drink alone in his attic aerie, waiting for the phone call that would say his father was dead.
RITA HAYWORTH LEAVES ALY KAHN FOR ISSY HERSH
no more. He missed Luke, and wished they were still intimates. Jenny wrote to tell him about Expo, and the possibility of a National Film Development Corporation being formed. “Exciting things are beginning to happen here …” Hanna, she added, had begun to suffer dizzy spells. Joey's last postcard, actually the first they'd had in two years, had come from Buenos Aires. Where, Jake noted, consulting his atlas, the Paraná River empties into the Atlantic.

Joey Hersh, Jesse Hope, Yosef ben Baruch, Joseph de la Hirsch, St. Urbain's one and only Horseman, where are you now?

Contemplating the Horseman's journal and his newly acquired effects, the riding habit made for him by Joseph Monaghan, Ltd., Exclusive Tailors to Gentlemen, Dublin, and the Barnaby “International” saddle, Jake tried to grasp how the Horseman could ever have become involved with a woman quite so vacuous as Ruthy. Money, the readiest explanation, was unacceptable to him. And Chava, on reflection, was exceedingly ordinary too. Unlike those elegant girls who had once festooned the backyard on St. Urbain so incongruously, sipping Manhattans as they watched Joey attack the punching bag. Joey, Joey, his back splattered with uneven cuts and holes. Shrapnel? And who, if anybody, had informed on him, and was responsible for the fire-engine red
MG
turned over and gutted in the woods alongside the highway? Uncle Abe?

Again and again, Jake drifted off to sleep, sliding into dreams of the Horseman, demanding on the kibbutz of Gesher Haaziv as he once had on St. Urbain, “What are you going to do about it?” Sitting in the courthouse in Frankfurt.

Mengele cannot have been there all the time
.

In my opinion, always. Night and day
.

Dimly, Jake recalled having said to Waterman, “The Golem, for your information, is the body without a soul. He was made out of clay by Rabbi Judah Ben Bezalel in the sixteenth century to defend the Jews of Prague from a pogrom and, to my mind, still wanders the world, turning up whenever a defender is most needed.”

Out there, riding even now. St. Urbain's Horseman. Galloping, thundering. Look sharp, Mengele,
Die Juden kommen!
He will extract the gold fillings from the triangular cleft between the upper front teeth with pliers. Slowly, slowly.

Surfacing from a dream of the Horseman, easing himself out of bed, legs leaden and throat raw on Friday morning, June 2, Jake fumbled into his dressing gown and stopped only once to brace himself against a chair and fart, sighing with relief, before he reached
the front door, where he stooped, instantly overcome by vertigo, to retrieve the morning newspapers. The
Times
headline danced before him. Squinting, Jake deciphered it:

The Egyptian Commander-in-Chief, General Mortagi, had issued an order of the day to his soldiers in Sinai, saying, “The results of this unique moment are of historic importance for our Arab nation and for the Holy War through which you will restore the rights of the Arabs which have been stolen in Palestine and reconquer the plundered soil of Palestine …” and yet – and yet – he discovered, reading further, the Israeli forces had been sent on leave and were disporting themselves on the beaches.

No fighting yet, Jake grasped, baffled, dropping the newspaper to the floor and starting upstairs again. Where there was more cheering news to sustain him. Peeing, he scrutinized the stream, as was his morning habit, hopefully but with critical objectivity. With
cojones
, he liked to think, as well as a prayer. This morning's urine was a rich bubbly yellow, nice and fleecy with mucous membrane deposits. Spared again. Once more there was no telltale pink, which would have signified kidney congestion, stones, or malignancy – his father's fate. Neither was there any green detectable, which would have meant bile. Or, God help you, Jake,
black
, signaling intestinal stasis or melanotic sarcoma.

Relieved, almost happy enough to whistle, Jake curled up on the bed again and began to breathe, heavily, drifting. Wait, wait. Something was ringing. No, something not in his head this time. Something outside him. The telephone.

“Yes,” Jake said, “who is it?” His voice, thickened by his stuffed nose, sounded like somebody else's to him.

“If you're going to Cornwall tonight,” Harry said, “I was wondering if I could have the use of your place?”

Cornwall? Oh, yes. Nancy was there. With the kids. “What's today?”

“Friday.”

“Today is Friday. A
guten shabbus
then, Hershel.”

“Seen the newspapers yet?”

Yes; and Jake allowed he was extremely concerned about the Israeli situation.

“Take it from me. There's not a thing to worry about.”

“Oh,” Jake said, tightening. “Why?”

“Oil.”

“Knock it off, comrade. I'm in no mood.”

“The American Sixth Fleet isn't there for nothing, you know.”

“Neither are the Russians.”

“Not to worry, the Americans won't let anybody rock the boat. The fixed capital investment necessary to extract one barrel of crude oil daily is a hundred and ninety dollars in the Middle East compared with seven hundred and thirty in Venezuela and fifteen hundred in the United States.”

“So what, Hershel?”

“So the CIA, Feisal, and Standard Oil. The –”

“Harry, they've declared a
jihad
–”

“The Middle East is an effing gold mine. The cost of producing a barrel of oil there is only fifteen cents against a dollar sixty-three in the United States.”

“– they're planning to exterminate the Jews.”

“Not bloody likely. Israel's not a colony suppressed by imperialism, you know, but a
colon
. A settler's citadel. So the Yanks will take care of them. Now can I use your place or not? I wouldn't make a mess or drink your liquor. I'll bring my own.”

“Oh, screw off, Harry. I'll call you later. As of now, I don't even see how I can leave for Cornwall earlier than Tuesday morning.”

In the bathroom again, Jake removed his bridge, plunked it into a tumbler, added hot water and a Polydent tablet, and bared his teeth
to the mirror. More tartar. Increasing drift. Worsening animal erosion. The ravages of
PYORRHEA ALVEOLARIS
(or Rigg's Disease), now usually known as Periodontal Disease, characterized in the final stages by the promotion of pockets of purulent material around the teeth and loosening of the affected teeth.

Jake brushed his teeth vigorously, spitting pink.

Then he poured himself a shot of Fernet-Branca bitters.

Then he sank to the bed again, raised his knees, spread his legs, peeled the silver foil from a hateful suppository, dipped it in vaseline, and groped for his anus, shoving the pellet home (“Take that, you bitch.”), his greasy fingers glancing against a cherry-size hemorrhoid.

Then Jake washed again before inserting the bridge in his mouth.

Then he drank two cups of instant coffee, giving the
Times
a cursory look. A full-page ad followed the editorial page.

Jake swept the
Times
off the table and called Nancy in Cornwall. Sammy answered the phone.

“This is the chief of police speaking,” Jake said. “We have a report that there's a flying saucer in your garden.”

“It's Daddy. Do you wish to speak with Mommy?”

Ben howled as Nancy set him down.

“Hullo.”

“Oh, my God, Jake, you sound awful.”

“I'm going to quit smoking.”

“Where were you so late?”

“I went to dinner with Jimmy Blair and a producer, but I don't want to say anything more at this point because it could all collapse on Monday.”

“Was Harry with you?”

Startled, he said, “No,” the lie only technical. “Why should you think that?”

“Are you letting him use our house when you come here?”

“No. Yes. What's the difference?”

“I don't want him in our house.”

“O.K. O.K., the car's waiting. I'm late. Phone you later from the studio.”

Actually, after Jake had parted with Blair and the others at the restaurant, more or less obliged to join them later at C. Bernard Farber's mews flat in Belgravia, he had impulsively made a detour to Regent's Park, having decided that only Harry's malevolent presence could make Farber's brawl tolerable. Harry had to be drummed out of bed.

“Come on, Hershel. I'm taking you to a party. Girls, champers, you name it. We live in swinging London, don't we?”

“You do, maybe.”

“Me?” Jake laughed. “Nancy and I read in bed. We hardly ever go to this sort of thing.”

“What sort?”

“One of our proconsuls, C. Bernard Farber, has won his laurels. He has found favor in the eyes of a new triumvirate. He's returning to Imperial Hollywood. It's a farewell party.”

“What shall I wear?” Harry asked.

“Oh, for Chrissake, anything. As long as you've got dark glasses.”

A sea of cars surrounded Farber's flat, spilling out of the mews into the road and beyond. There was a Rolls-Royce painted in psychedelic
colors, more than one Ferrari, Aston Martins double-parked and too many E-types to count. Jake's Hillman Minx, a shame for the neighbors, had to be abandoned more than a block's distance away.

Luscious girls festooned the wrought-iron stairwell. They sat on the floor. Driven against the wall, their eyes wandered, seeking out celebrities. And there were many there. A bona fide Hollywood star, and more than one famous director, including the first to show pubic hairs in CinemaScope. A Beatle was rumored to be on his way to Farber's flat, drawing nearer all the time. Already there, real enough to touch, was a man who had once lit a cigarette for Jacqueline Kennedy. Somebody who had told Orson Welles he no longer had it. As well as the first British actress to have her bare nipple tweaked in
BCU
.

Jake, his mood ebullient, was not seeking trouble when Frankie Demaine accosted him. “Who's your friend,” he asked, indicating Harry, “is he important?”

Harry, who had heard, flinched. He couldn't cope with such double-edged jokes. It was not his idiom. Jake flared up. “You're goddam right he is. It's Stein. You know, from …” and he succeeded in losing the company's name in the din.

Vindictively, he guided Harry from group to group, introducing him as a producer. He foisted him on girls. “This is Stein,” he'd say. “You know, Stein. He's going to be making pictures here now.”

Harry, once thrust on the girls he longed for, could not stitch together a coherent sentence. He was either gratuitously coarse without any redeeming wit or stunned into silence. Finally, Jake rescued him. “Let's get the hell out of here,” he said.

Outside, Harry protested, “You picked a bad time, mate. I just had a cunt lined up.”

“Oh, Harry, please. I don't like women being talked about like that. It offends me.”

Harry's face burned with rage.

“All right, then,” Jake said, “if you had a girl, where is she?”

“How could I take her back to my place?”

“Go and fetch her. Use my place.”

“A fine time to tell me. It's too late now, isn't it?”

Wearily, his smile contrite, Jake invited Harry back to his place for a nightcap.

“Oh, sure,” he said snidely. “Only I can't sleep in, mate. That would get me home just in time to shave before going to the office.”

“You can stay the night.”

“Maid's room is free this week, is it?”

O.K., Harry. Skip it. After dropping him off near Regent's Park, Jake drove on to the White Elephant, where he lost thirty-five pounds at roulette.

Harry's weekly wage.

Remembering, his head still aching, Jake phoned Nancy again, as soon as he reached the studio, to say he could start out for Newquay at six on Saturday morning, but he had to be back in London by noon Monday, which really meant leaving again on Sunday afternoon. More than a little depressed, even sharp with him on the phone, she agreed it would hardly be worth it; all that driving would exhaust him. Satisfied, Jake hung up and hastened to Harrod's, scooting from counter to counter, loading himself down with all manner of meats, cheeses, delicacies, and toys, stuffing the lot into his car and barreling off into the night, bound to join his family in Newquay for the sabbath, just as years and years ago, his father had descended on them in fly-bitten Shawbridge, the ghetto's summer swimming hole, loaded down with watermelons and cherries, kosher meats, bottles of Kik, and pails and sand shovels.

You know what life is, Yankel?

Tell me, you're so smart.

A circle. A little
kikeleh
.

Arriving early on Saturday morning, Jake pounded on the door of their house in Newquay. “Let me in, let me in! It's your husband! Get that buck nigger out of your bed at once!”

Jake slept in until noon and then spent the afternoon on the beach with Sammy and Molly, mindful of sharks, ever-watchful for the periscopes of German submarines.

Nobody on the beach passed an anti-semitic remark.