St. Urbain's Horseman (49 page)

Again and again he was driven back to St. Urbain to linger before the dilapidated flat that had once held Hanna, Arty, Jenny, and, briefly, the Horseman. More than once he strolled around the corner and into the lane. To look up at the rear bedroom window, Jenny's window, that had used to be lit into the small hours as she applied herself with such ardor to her studies, the books that were to liberate her from St. Urbain, the offices of Laurel Knitwear, and all the oppressive Hershes.

“You know what she's plugging away at in there?” Issy Hersh had said. “Latin. A dead language.”

Through a hole in the fence, Jake contemplated the backyard where the Horseman had once set up a makeshift gym, doing his stuff for admiring girls, high-quality girls. He and Arty, Jake recalled, had used to watch from the bedroom window and once they had seen Joey, his eyes shooting hatred, strike a stranger ferociously in the stomach.

Suddenly, a dark-eyed, olive-skinned boy appeared in the yard, ran to the fence, and confronted Jake. “Fuck off, mister.”

Duddy, he remembered, Arty, Gas, find me.

Everything happened so quickly. One day Arty, Duddy, Stan, Gas, and Jake were collecting salvage, practicing aircraft recognition, and the next, it seemed, the war was over. Neighbors' sons came home.

“What was it like over there?”

“An education.”

IS HITLER REALLY DEAD?
was what concerned everybody. That, and an end to wartime shortages and ration books. One stingingly cold Saturday afternoon a man came to the door. Leather cap, rheumy eyes, an intricately veined nose. Battle ribbons riding his lapel. One arm was no more than a butt, the sleeve clasped by a giant safety pin, and with the other arm, the good arm, the man offered a
Veteran's calendar, the Karsh portrait of Churchill encased in a gold foil V. “They're only fifty cents each.”

“No, thanks,” Mr. Hersh said.

Reproachfully, the man's bloodshot gaze fastened on his battle ribbons. “Ever hear of Dieppe?” he growled, flapping his butt.

Jake looked up at his father imploringly.

“And did you ever hear of the Better Business Bureau,” Mr. Hersh demanded, “because it so happens they have broadcast a warning for law-abiding citizens not to buy combs from cripples
who just claim to be war veterans.”

“Jew bastard.”

Mr. Hersh slammed the door. “You see what they're like, all of them, underneath. You see, Jake.”

“But did you see his arm? He lost it at Dieppe maybe.”

“And did
you
see his schnozz? He's a boozer. The only battle he ever fought was with Johnny Walker. You've got to get up early in the morning to put one over on Issy Hersh.”

Or, Jake thought – remembering Tom the gardener with a chill of shame, Sammy watching, all eyes – or his first-born son Jacob.

The old friends Jake sought out, were, to his dismay, churlish or resentful.

“What's the famous director doing here, back on the farm?” Ginsburg demanded. Arty's enthusiasm for Jake's film iced over with three drinks. “If you had asked me when we were kids, I never would have picked you to make it. Stan maybe.” Witty, corrosive Stan Tannenbaum, with whom Jake had sat in Room Forty-one, at Fletcher's Field High. Stan was a professor now, his long greasy hair bound by a Cree headband, a pendant riding his barrel belly. “I'm the leading authority on Shakespeare in this country and I adore teaching it, but it humbles a man, you know. I don't flatter myself into thinking I have anything to add. There's so much crap being written today. Take your buddy, Luke Scott, for instance.”

Gordie Rothman, another old schoolmate, who had forsaken teaching for corporation law, insisted they meet for a drink at Bourgatel's. “The truth is the money's rolling in …” He was happily married with two children, a house in Westmount, and what he called a shack in Vermont, just in case the French Canadian business got out of hand. “There's only one thing.” Gordie slid a plastic-covered, leather-bound folio out of his attaché case. “I'd like to get my screenplay produced.”

“You mean to say you've written a …”

“What the fuck, don't come on with me. Before you were well known who ever heard of you?”

“Nobody.”

“I've sent the script to agents in New York and even London, but naturally they couldn't care less about anything set in Canada. You've got to have connections in this game, I realize that, and somebody like you …”

“I'll read it, Gordie. But I've got high standards, you know.”

“Listen here, me too. But not everybody is James Joyce. I mean I'm sure you'd like to be able to direct as well as Hitchcock or … or Fellini …” Suddenly agitated, he glared at Jake. “I knew you when you were nothing. Nobody ever thought that much of you here. How in the hell did you ever get into films?”

“Sleeping with the right people,” Jake said, winking.

After prayers each evening, the comforters streamed into the apartment. Dimly remembered second cousins, old neighbors, business associates. They compared Miami hotels for price and rabbis for oomph, but, above all, they marveled at the miracle of the Six-Day War and followed, with apprehension, the debate over the ceasefire continuing at the U.N. One rabbi, a suburban mod, wanted the Israeli victory enshrined by a new holiday, a latter-day Passover.

Uncle Lou accosted each visitor with the same question. “What kind of tanks were the Egyptians using in Sinai?”

“Russian.”

“Wrong. Not rushin'. Standin' still.”

Whenever guests celebrated the feats of the Israeli air force, Lou taunted them with the impending Bond drive. “Never before in the history of man,” he was fond of saying, “will so few owe so much to so many.”

Jack assured all comers that the Egyptians had used gas in Yemen only to test it for the Jews.

“But the Israelis were using napalm,” Jake protested.

“By Jake here, whatever we do is rotten. Whatever they do is A-1. Do you know they had ovens ready in Cairo for our people?”

Only Uncle Sam was not surprised by the Israeli victory. He reminded everybody that it was the Jews who had turned the tide against the Nazis in World War II. At Tobruk.

“They stood against five Arab nations,” Uncle Abe said again and again, “all alone. It has to be the fulfillment of divine intervention, even the most skeptical man must accept it was God's fulfillment to Abraham …”

One evening Max Kravitz drifted in, holding his taxi cap in his gnarled hands. Max's hair was white, his face grizzly. “Do you remember me,” he demanded, driving Jake against a wall.

“Yes.”

“What? You mean to say you remember me after all these years?”

“Yes. Of course I do.”

“Well, I don't remember you,” Max replied triumphantly.

Arty, long established as a dentist, came to pay his respects. Arty had become a joker. Such a joker, they said. He told wonderful stories; then, as you laughed, Arty's head would shoot forward to within inches of your gaping mouth, his eyes scrutinizing, his nose sniffing tentatively, appalled by what they perceived and smelled, his smile abruptly transformed into a pitying headshake. The next morning you found yourself sprawled, gagging and struggling, in his chair. Joking, cunning Arty had drilled his way through Hersh
family molars, shoving in an upper plate here and striking a buck-tooth bonanza there, working his passage into a split-level in Ville St. Laurent.

They mourned the passing of Issy Hersh for a week, the truculent rabbis surging in nightly to be followed by prayers and more guests. The sweetest time for Jake was the early afternoon, when, riding a leaden lunch, the drooping Hershes wrestled sleep by reminiscing about their shared childhood and schools, their first jobs, all on a French Canadian street.

“They're so dumb,” Aunt Malka said, shaking her head with wonder. “There's one I used to tell a joke to on Friday and on Sunday in the middle of church service she would finally get it and begin to laugh.”

What about the Separatists?

For them, birth control would be a better policy. They breed like rabbits.

Suddenly, the apartment darkened. Irwin's body filled the screen door to the balcony to overflowing, the transistor held to his ear. “Arnie's just shot a birdie on the fifteenth. That puts him only two down on Casper.”

“That Arnie. Wow!”

“Where's Nicklaus?”

“Hold it.”

Artfully, Jake brought the conversation around to Cousin Joey and Baruch.

“When they brought Baruch over, you know, the nut, he had never seen a banana before. Paw gave him a banana and he ate it with the peel.”

Uncle Abe, chuckling with fond remembrance, said, “On the ship that gangster came over on, another Jew was robbed of his wallet. They searched high and low and couldn't find it. Two special cops were waiting at the foot of the gangway, looking into all the hand luggage. Baruch comes sailing down the gangway with his satchel
already open for inspection. He is eating an apple and whistling. Inside the apple is the money from the wallet.”

“That Baruch. Boy!”

And all at once, Jake, come to sit with the Hershes in mourning for his father, feeling closer to them than he had in years, felt obliged to honor the Horseman in his absence. Without preamble, he turned on Uncle Abe, reminding him of Joey's last visit to Montreal, the men waiting in the car outside the house on St. Urbain, the gutted
MG
in the woods, and Jenny's abiding hatred. “You turned him in, didn't you, Uncle Abe?”

Uncle Abe's face flamed red. “What are you talking about, you drunken fool?”

“All I want is a straight answer.”

“Here it is, then,” and he slapped Jake hard across the cheek, stomping out of the living room.

“Well,” Jake said, startled, trying to smile into hostile faces, faces all saying you deserved it.

The room was choked in silence.

“Hey,” Uncle Lou said, “have you heard the one about the girl who wouldn't wear a diaphragm because she didn't want a picture window in her play room?”

“I've had enough of your puerile jokes, Uncle Lou.”

“Well, pip pip, old bloke. And up yours with a pineapple.”

Rifka shook a fist at him. “You come here once a year maybe and you booze from morning until night and stir up trouble. Then you fly off again. Who needs you anyway?”

Herky, roused, demanded, “What ever happened to that James Bond film you were supposed to direct? Big shot.”

“Flush, flush, flush,” was the most dazzling retort Jake could come up with before he fled indignantly to the balcony, lugging his brandy bottle with him.

Unfortunately Cousin Irwin was already there. Mountainous Irwin, huffing, as he clipped his fingernails. Irwin, having once
peered into Jake's hot indignant face, retreated, wiggling his eyebrows ingratiatingly.

“Say something, you prick. Say something to me.”

“Can do.”

“Well. Go ahead.”

Irwin pondered, he screwed his eyes. Briefly, he contemplated a gasoline pool in the Esso service station opposite. He scratched his head and studied his fingernails. Finally, as if pouncing on the words, he demanded, “Got many irons in the fire?”

Oh, my God, Jake thought, and he bounded back into the living room, where heads bent together to whisper leaped apart.

“Look here,” Jake pleaded, “we're all going to die –”

“What have you got?” Sam asked.

“– sit down, you fool, it's not contagious. Oh, hell, what am I sitting
shiva
for anyway. I don't believe in it. Why should I try to please any of you?”

“Out of respect for your father.”

“I never respected my father.”

“Whoa, boy.”

I loved him, Jake added to himself, unwilling to say as much to them.

“He's not dead a week,” Rifka howled, “and he doesn't respect him. You hear, do you all hear?”

“He didn't leave any money, dear. There's no need to come on.”

“Rotten thing. Animal. The day you married that
shiksa
you broke his heart.”

Uncle Abe was back, his slippers flapping.

“I shouldn't have slapped you. I'm sorry, Jake.”

“No. You bloody well shouldn't have slapped me. You should have given me a straight answer to my question.”

“Can you not,” Abe asked wearily, “take an apology like a gentleman?”

“Did you tell them where they could find Joey?”

Sighing, Uncle Abe led him into the kitchen, shutting the door after them.

“Do you see Joey in London?”

“I think he's in South America now. I haven't seen him since I was a boy.”

Uncle Abe's eyes flickered with relief. Or so it seemed to Jake.

“You're lucky, then. Because he's rotten.”

“Tell me why.”

“You think the world of your cousin. Is that right?”

“Maybe.”

“Joey did fight in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, I'll grant him that –”

“And in Israel in forty-eight. He rode in the last convoy into Jerusalem.”

“Good. Fine,” Uncle Abe said, his smile dubious. “And if that's enough to make him a hero for you, let's leave it at that, shall we?”

“No. Let's not.”

“Tough guy. O.K. He came crawling back to us, in 1943, with his tail between his legs, because he was in trouble with gangsters. He drove all the way from Las Vegas, without daring to look back.”

“What sort of trouble was he in?”

“Nothing grand, Jake, nothing stylish. Squalid trouble. With bookmakers, mostly. He gambled, O.K., so do a lot of people. He didn't pay his debts. O.K., he's not the first. But he was also a gigolo. He was a blackmailer. He squeezed women for money, sometimes even marrying them. Do you remember the women who used to come to the house on St. Urbain?”