St. Urbain's Horseman (48 page)

“I remember,” Jake said, and he drifted onto the balcony where Irwin towered over a brood of younger cousins, a transistor clapped to his ear.

“Mays just homered,” he said. “They're going to walk McCovey,” and seeing Jake, he gulped, and turned his back to him.

Jake decided to seek out Fanny before he had drunk himself into incoherence. She was in the small bedroom.

“Anything I can do for you?” Jake asked.

“Sit.”

So he sat.

“You know, one night – after we were married, you understand – your father and I, well …” She blushed. “… We were fooling around, you know. You know what I mean?”

“You were what?”

“Well, you know. I got pregnant. But he made me see somebody.”

“Why?”

“He thought his brothers would laugh at him. At his age, a baby.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You're a very thoughtful person. I'd come to visit you in London, if I could afford it.”

Which drove Jake back into the hall, where he could see Irwin, alone on the balcony now, waddling over to the railing. He thrust a finger into his nostril, dug fiercely, and slowly, slowly, extracted a winding worm of snot. Irwin contemplated it, sleepy-eyed, before he wiped it on the railing.

Uncle Jack was holding forth, dribbling cigar ash.

“Hey, did you hear the one about the two Australian fairies? One of them went back to Sydney.”

Herky clapped Jake on the back. “Got to talk to you.” He ushered Jake into the toilet ahead of him. “How are you fixed money-wise, kid?”

“I'd love to help you, Herky,” Jake replied, swaying, “but it's all tied up.”

“You don't understand. I don't need your money. You've got kids now. I'm sure you want to invest for the future. You're my one and only brother-in-law and … well, I'd like to put you on to something good.”

“I read you.”

Herky lit up, exuding self-satisfaction. “What do you think is the most valuable thing in the world today?”

“The Jewish tradition.”

“Where will boozing get you? Nowhere.” Herky plucked Jake's glass out of his hand. “I'm serious, for Chrissake.”

“All right, then. Not having cancer.”

“I mean a natural resource.”

“Gold?”

“Guess again.”

“Oil?”

Herky spilled over with secret knowledge. “Give up?”

Don't you know you're going to die, Herky? But he didn't say it.

“Water.”

“What?”

“H
₂
O. Watch this.” With a flick of the wrist, Herky flushed the toilet. “It's going on everywhere, day and night. Now you take the Fraser River, for instance. More than once a day the untreated contents of one hundred thousand toilet bowls empty into it.”

“That's a lot of shit, Herky.”

“Flush, flush, flush. Canada's got more clean water than any other country in the Free World, but even so, there's a limit, you know.”

Jake retrieved his drink.

“You project ten years ahead and there will be container tankers, fleets of them, carrying not oil or iron ore, but pure Canadian water, to polluted American cities.”

“So?”

“Watch closely now.” Herky flushed the toilet again. “All over the city, people are doing the same, but – but – this toilet, like any other,
flushes the same amount of water no matter what the need
. You read me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“I call them mindless, these toilets, I mean.”

“I'm tired, Herky. Come to the point.”

“The average person urinates maybe four times a day, but defecates only once, yet this toilet is mindless, it is adjusted to provide enough power to flush a stool down the drain each time. Millions of gallons daily are being wasted in the Montreal area alone. Which is where I come in. We are developing a cistern that will give you all the zoom you need for defecation, but will release only what's necessary to wash urine away. In other words, a toilet with a mind. The biggest breakthrough since Thomas Crapper's Niagara. Once we get costs down and go into production, I expect our unit to become
mandatory equipment in all new buildings. I'm offering you a chance to come in on the ground floor. Well?”

“You certainly are thinking big, Herky.”

“You've got to move with the times.”

“Let me sleep on it, O.K.?”

“O.K., but meanwhile, mum's the word.”

A half hour before the first evening star, the rabbis trooped into the insufferably hot apartment in shiny black frock coats. The local yeshiva's Mafia. Ranging from tall spade-bearded men in broad-brimmed black hats to pimply, wispy-bearded boys in oversize Homburgs. Finally, there came the leader, the fragile Rabbi Polsky himself, who led the men in the evening prayer.

Immediately behind Jake, prayerbook in hand, stood flat-footed Irwin, breathing with effort. As Jake stumbled self-consciously through the prayer for the dead, Irwin's troubled breathing quickened – it raced – stopped – and suddenly he sneezed, and sneezed again, pelting Jake's neck with what seemed like shrapnel. As Jake whirled around, Irwin seemed to draw his neck into his body. Bulging eyes and a sweaty red face rising over a succession of chins were all that confronted Jake. But as he resumed his prayers, he was conscious of Irwin, biting back his laughter, threatening to explode. The moment prayers were over, Irwin shot out onto the balcony, heaving, a soggy hand clamped to his nose.

Rabbi Polsky, holy man to the Hershes, was thin and round-shouldered, his skin gray as gum, with watery blue eyes and a scraggly yellow beard. He padded on slippered feet to a place on the sofa. A cunning field mouse. Accusingly impecunious amid Hersh affluence. His shirt collar curling and soiled, his cuffs frayed, Rabbi Polsky came nightly, wiped his mouth with an enormous damp handkerchief, and preached to the Hershes, all of whom virtually glowed in his presence.

“There came to me once a man to ask me to go to the Rebbe in New York to ask him what he should do for his father who was dying.
He paid for me the air ticket, I went to Brooklyn, I spoke with the Rebbe, and I came back and said to the man the Rebbe says pray, you must pray every morning. Pray, the man asked? Every morning. So he went away and every morning before going to the office he said his prayers after years of not doing it. Then one morning he had an appointment with a goy, a financier, from out of town, at the Mount Royal Hotel. He had to see the
goy
to make a loan for his business. The
goy
said you be here nine o'clock sharp, I'll try to fit you in, I'm very busy. All right. But the man overslept and in the morning he realized if he takes time to say his prayers he will be late. He will lose his loan. All the same he prayed, and when he got to the Mount Royal Hotel and went to the man's room, the
goy
was in a rage, shouting, hollering,
you
keep
me
waiting. You need me and you keep me waiting? So the man said his father was dying and his rabbi had told him he must pray every morning, and that's why he was late. You mean to say, the
goy
asked, even though if I deny you this loan your business is ruined, you were late so as not to miss one morning's prayers for your father? Yes. In that case, the
goy
said, let me shake your hand, put it there, you are a fella I can trust. To lend money to such a man will be a genuine pleasure.”

Euphoria filled the Hershes. Only Jake protested, nudging Uncle Lou. “We now know that praying is good for credit, but what happened to the man's father?”

“You know what your trouble is? You don't believe in anything.”

Rabbi Polsky, possibly with Jake in mind, continued:

“Sometimes young people question the law. There's no reason for this … that's a superstition … You know the type, I'm sure. Why, for example, they ask, should we not eat seafood?”

Uncle Lou poked Jake. “Your sister Rifka is on a seafood diet.”

“What?”

“Every time she sees food she wants it.”

“Why,” the rabbi asked, “shouldn't we eat crab or lobster? To which I would answer you with the question why is there such madness
among the
goyim
, they run to the psychiatrist every morning? Why? It is now scientifically revealed in an article in
Time
magazine that eating seafood can drive you crazy. It promotes insanity.”

“Jake, it's for you,” Uncle Jack said, holding out the kitchen phone.

“Who is it?”

“The boss,” he replied with a big wink.

“Would you mind shutting the door after you, please?” Jake asked, before taking the call.

It was Nancy, enormously concerned for his sake. “I thought you would phone last night.”

“Honestly, I'm all right.”

“There's no need to pretend.”

“The embarrassing thing is,” Jake said, “it's like a family party. I'm not grieving. I'm having a wonderful time.”

Sitting with the Hershes, day and night, a bottle of Remy Martin parked between his feet, such was Jake's astonishment, commingled with pleasure, in their responses, that he could not properly mourn for his father. He felt cradled, not deprived. He also felt like Rip Van Winkle returned to an innocent and ordered world he had mistakenly believed long extinct. Where God watched over all, doing His sums. Where everything fit. Even the holocaust which, after all, had yielded the state of Israel. Where to say, “Gentlemen, the Queen,” was to offer the obligatory toast to Elizabeth II at an affair, not to begin a discussion on Andy Warhol. Where smack was not habit-forming, but what a disrespectful child deserved; pot was what you simmered the chicken soup in; and camp was where you sent the boys for the summer. It was astounding, Jake was incredulous, that after so many years and fevers, after Dachau, after Hiroshima, revolution, rockets in Space, DNA, bestiality in the streets, assassinations in and out of season, there were still brides with shining faces who were married in white gowns, posing for the
Star
social pages with their prizes, pear-shaped boys in evening clothes. There were aunts who
sold raffles and uncles who swore by the
Reader's Digest
. French Canadians, like overflying airplanes distorting the TV picture, were only tolerated.
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET, THE TROUBLE IS TEMPORARY
. Aunts still phoned each other every morning to say what sort of cake they were baking. Who had passed this exam, who had survived that operation. A scandal was when a first cousin was invited to the bar mitzvah
kiddush
, but not the dinner. Eloquence was the rabbi's sermon. They were ignorant of the arts, they were overdressed, they were overstuffed, and their taste was appallingly bad. But within their self-contained world, there was order. It worked.

As nobody bothered to honor them, they very sensibly celebrated each other at fund-raising synagogue dinners, taking turns at being Man-of-the-Year, awarding each other ornate plaques to hang over the bar in the rumpus room. Furthermore, God was interested in the fate of the Hershes, with time and consideration for each one. To pray was to be heard. There was not even death, only an interlude below ground. For one day, as Rabbi Polsky assured them, the Messiah would blow his horn, they would rise as one and return to Zion. Buried with twigs in their coffins, as Baruch had once said, to dig their way to him before the neighbors.

Phoning Hanna, in Toronto, Jake had to cope with Jenny first.

“Sitting
shiva
with the hypocrites, are you?”

Oh, God.

“I suppose whenever my name's mentioned they cross themselves, so to speak,” she said, giggling at her own joke.

He hadn't the heart to say her name had not been mentioned once, and next thing he knew Doug was on the line.

“I want you to know why I didn't send flowers.”

“You're not supposed to,” Jake said wearily.

“It's not that. You know I'm beyond such ethnic taboos. Instead of flowers, I've sent a check in memory of your dad to
SUPPORT
in Hanoi.”

“You did?”

“It goes toward buying artificial limbs for children maimed in the air raids.”

“I knew you'd always come through in a crunch, Doug. Now may I please speak to Hanna?”

“So, Yankel?”

“Hanna, how are you?”

“I'm sorry. You know we were never friendly in the old days, but, after all, he's your paw, and I'm sorry.” She inquired about Nancy and the baby and demanded photographs of Sammy and Molly. “I wanted to come to Montreal, but you know how Jenny feels about the Hershes. She wouldn't give me the fare. Big deal. I'll hitchhike, I said, like the hippies …”

“I'd send you the fare, Hanna, you know that, but …” He feared the family would treat her shabbily.

“I know. Don't explain. Couldn't you come here for a day?”

“There's the new baby, Hanna. Really, I …”

“It's O.K. Next time, yes?”

“We'll go to a hockey game together.”

“Hey, Red Kelly's in parliament. He's an M.P.”

“Who?”

“What do you mean, who? The Maple Leafs' defenseman. You remember, Imlach traded with Detroit for him.”

“And he's in parliament now?”

“Aquí está nada.”

“Aquí está
Hanna.”

“Yes, sir. Alive and kicking. A living testimonial to Carling's beer. How's Luke?”

“The same.”

“You two; you give me a royal pain in the ass. When will you make it up?”

His mother made Jake lunch in her apartment. She said how sad she was his father had died. He was not to blame if he had not been intelligent enough for her and she was certain he would have been a
good husband for a simple woman. And that done, she asked, “How's my new baby?”

“Nancy's baby is fine,” Jake replied.