A Choice of Enemies

by Mordecai Richler

  “I’ve put in for a job at one of the provincial universities,” he said. “If I don’t get it I think I’ll take a grammar school job.”

  Norman exuded so distinct an odour of failure that Zelda was momentarily alarmed. I know now why he came here, she thought.

  “Do you people ever hear anything from Sally?” Norman asked. “Is she in London, I mean?”

  Bob glanced quickly at his wristwatch. “Last we heard she was working in Paris,” he said. “With UNESCO, I think.” But Bob was amazed. He had thought that Zelda was the only one who didn’t know that he was keeping Sally in a flat off Baker Street.

  “Oh, I must tell you,” Zelda said with a smile. “Bob bought his parents a house in Connecticut last week. It’s lovely, you know, but it’s left us absolutely flat broke.”

  “I didn’t come here to borrow money, Zelda.”

  Embarrassed, anxious to create a diversion, Bob swiftly took a letter from Charlie out of his inside pocket and pulled out a snapshot and handed it to Norman. The snapshot showed Charlie holding a baby in the air. Joey sat in the background on a garden chair. Norman returned the snapshot to Bob. “A very nice kid,” he said. “Whose is it?”

  “I keep forgetting you’ve been out of circulation for so long,” Bob said. “They adopted him last year. That’s why they went back to Toronto.”

  Zelda rose.

  “I’d better be going,” Norman said, getting up. “I mean, if you’re expecting guests I think.…”

  “As a matter of fact,” Zelda said, “we were just going out for dinner. Please call us soon. We must get together some time.”

  “Well,” Norman said. “God bless.”

  “Wait. Have one for the road.”

  “I don’t think we have time,” Zelda said.

  “She’s right. Another time maybe.”

  Bob eyed Norman drunkenly. Norman, he thought, had used to be so proper. Glancing apprehensively at Zelda, he wondered how long Norman must have wandered up and down the street – hoping to run into him accidentally perhaps – before he had dared to come without an invitation. Bob glanced at his watch. She isn’t expecting me for three-quarters of an hour, he thought. So I’ll be a little late. Just this once. “I’ll tell you what,” he said gaily, “why don’t you come out and eat with us. We’re just going to the Chinese restaurant at Swiss Cottage, aren’t we, dear?”

  Zelda turned very pale.

  “Well, I’m expected somewhere a little later this evening, but –”

  Bob clapped Norman on the back. “Come on.” He turned triumphantly to Zelda. “Would you like me to get your coat, dear?”

  “No thanks.”

  They got into the car and drove to the restaurant on Finchley Road. Bob told a lot of jokes on the way over. As Norman got out of the car first Zelda pressed Bob’s arm angrily. “If I live to be a hundred,” she said, “I’ll never forgive you for this stupid prank.”

  Bob laughed; he slapped his knees. “You should have asked him to stay,” he said.

  “Oh, you rotten bastard.”

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s eat.”

  Inside, Bob ordered two double whiskies. “Excuse me a minute,” he said. “I’ve got to make a phone call.”

  Norman smiled uneasily at Zelda. “Shall we pretend we like each other,” he asked, “and talk?”

  But Bob was back before she could reply. “Line’s busy,” he said. They ordered an assortment of dishes to be shared. “The trouble with Norman,” Bob said, “is that he was a premature anti-Stalinist.”

  Zelda didn’t laugh.

  “How is everyone taking it?” Norman asked.

  “You may not believe this,” Bob said, “I wouldn’t have myself, but when Winkleman heard what had happened to the Yiddish writers he broke down and wept. It was anti-semitism, you know, that first drew him to the Party. It was supposed to have been, quote, outlawed, unquote, in Russia, or hadn’t you heard?”

  “And what about you,” Norman asked, “what do you think?”

  “If it’s true,” Bob said, “then that crime and any other must certainly be exposed. But look here, Norman, I joined the Party twenty years ago because I thought that human life was sacred and that the capitalist system was brutal. I still think so. If Stalin made errors, if he was a tyrant, then I think it’s a bloody shame, but I also think that it may have been a necessary stage for socialism to go through.” Bob got up. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”

  Norman watched as Bob weaved his way unsurely between the maze of tables to the phone. “You’re not eating,” he said to Zelda.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  They sat in silence until Bob returned. “Goddamed line’s still busy.” Actually, nobody had answered the phone. He wondered where Sally was. “The hell with it,” he said. Bob ordered more whisky. “Where was I?” he asked.

  “Stalin,” Norman said, “that’s where.”

  Bob studied Norman with glazed eyes. He’s a bachelor, he thought. He might know of a safe abortionist. I must ask him. “Look at it this way,” Bob said, “if one generation was sacrificed then at least this time they died for a purpose. They died so their children could look forward to a better life.”

  “You look at it this way,” Norman said. “It seems to me, that aside from our political virtues, people like us never had anything else. That’s a very hard fact to face at forty.”

  “I didn’t think you cared about these things any more,” Zelda said.

  “Shettup!” Bob said.

  “He showed his true political colours long ago, Bob. He –”

  “Quiet! You don’t know what you’re talking about. Look,” Bob said thickly, “I’m a humanist, Norman. I believe that human life is sacred. That was and still is my position.” Bob staggered to his feet. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

  Zelda squashed her cigarette in a plate of fried rice. “We’re having a party tonight,” she said. “Would you like to come?”

  “I’d love to,” Norman said, “but I’m busy.”

  “Will you please tell Bob that I asked you to come tonight and that you’re busy?”

  “No. I won’t.”

  Bob returned. “Where was I?” he asked.

  “Human life is sacred,” Norman said.

  “I’m going,” Zelda said.

  “See you in church,” Bob said.

  “I said I was going.”

  “And I said I’ll see you in church.”

  Zelda poked Norman. “Tell him,” she said.

  “Uh?”

  “Tell me a story.” Bob half-rose, pretending to conduct an orchestra. “Tell me a story, tell me a story.”

  “Tell him.”

  “You tell him.”

  “Is she still here?” Bob asked.

  Norman nodded.

  “I asked Norman to come to the party. He’s busy.”

  “Party,” Bob said. “Where’s the party?”

  “It’s true. She asked me to come.”

  “Be a smarty. Join the party.”

  “He said he was busy,” Zelda said. “Now, will you please come with me?”

  “I’m busy too,” Bob said. “These are busy times.”

  “Your guests will soon be arriving.”

  Bob glanced at his watch, 7.40. “I have to make a phone call,” he said. “Look, Zelda, I’ll be there in an hour. I have to see somebody first.”

  Zelda hesitated.

  “I’ll get him back to your place by eight-thirty,” Norman said. “That’s a promise.”

  As Zelda left Bob rose shakily again. “Be right back,” he said. But he was gone five minutes. “Can’t understand it,” he said when he got back. “No answer.…” He grinned broadly. “Where was I?”

  Norman told him where.

  “Yeah,” Bob said, “have you any idea what the infant mortality rate was in Russia before the revolution? Has there been a pogrom in Poland,” he asked with feeling, “since the communists came to power?”

 
They talked and drank for another half hour and then Norman helped Bob out of the restaurant. “Here,” Bob said, handing him his car keys. “Will you be a good chap and drive?” They stumbled into the car together. “Take me to –” he gave him Sally’s address “– first, wilyu?”

  “I promised Zelda to deliver you at eight-thirty,” Norman said. “It’s now a quarter to nine.”

  “Oh,” Bob said, “is it?”

  Norman assured him it was.

  “A quarter to nine, huh?” Bob tried hard to think. Why doesn’t she answer the phone? She’s angry, he thought. She’s gone out. I’ll call her in the morning. “All right,” he said. “Home, Trotsky.”

  Norman drove Bob home. The party didn’t break up until four and Bob slept in the next morning. So Sally died.

  IV

  “What time are they expected?”

  “Not for another hour,” Miss Greenberg said.

  Except for the rasping of the old man in the room opposite his and the occasional tap of a nurse’s heels as she hastened down the corridor, this ward of the Montreal Jewish General Hospital was quiet. His leg, which had been broken in three places, was suspended by an elaborate system of pulleys. “There will be no photographers,” he said. “You promised.”

  “No,” she said. “There will be no photographers. Would you like me to turn on the T.V.?”

  “O.K. ”

  But Mr. Gordon got there first. Fat, shaggy-haired Hyman Gordon came every afternoon to sit with him. Miss Greenberg wished that he would go. His inscrutable smile vexed her.

  “A moment,” he said. “Would you brush my hair a little?”

  “Certainly.”

  She went to it gently, with pleasure. “You need a haircut. Don’t you, Joseph?”

  “Yes,” Ernst said. “I suppose so.”

  “Are you excited?”

  “No.”

  “This is a great honour, you know. We’re all proud of you here.”

  “Thank you, Miss Greenberg.”

  “Trudy,” she said.

  “Trudy.”

  The television set went briefly wavy, then it cleared. A short squat bearded man with a worm-like bit of moustache filled the screen and smiled at Ernst, Trudy, and Hyman Gordon.

  “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Thomas Hale. Every Friday we have the pleasure of bringing you Controversy, a three-way discussion of a topical subject. Tonight’s guests are –” the camera drew back “– to my left, Miss Lucy Morgan, critic, poet, and travel writer.” Hale paused; he smiled. “I understand, Miss Morgan, that you have a new collection of poems coming out later this autumn in Boyd & McEwen’s Folio Series. Is that right?”

  Miss Morgan smiled, a thin alarmed smile. A frail, bony creature with fierce black eyes, a remarkably wide mouth, and a huge quantity of black fuzzy hair, she gave the impression that she was propped up on pillows or a couple of telephone directories. Her deep gravel voice came as a shock.

  “Yes. The Traffic of the Fire will be out on November the nineteenth. It costs a dollar ninety-eight a copy.”

  In reply to Mr. Hale’s next question Miss Morgan said that she counted Dylan Thomas, Mallarmé and Fraser’s The Golden Bough as her primary influences.

  “And to my right,” Mr. Hale said, “we have Charles Lawson, television playwright and film writer. I understand, Mr. Lawson, that your latest film, All About Mary, will have its première at the Shea’s tomorrow night. Is that right?”

  “It must be. Otherwise how could I afford this suit?”

  In reply to Mr. Hale’s next question Mr. Lawson said that his most significant influences were his analyst, his wife, and money, in that order.

  Thomas Hale’s glad face filled the screen again. “Tonight’s controversial question,” he said, “is do you think Canadian artists must leave the country in order to develop?” Hale paused; he smiled. “We ought to be in for some truly partisan discussion tonight as Miss Morgan is sailing for England next week. I believe she hopes to settle there. While Charles Lawson, an expatriate for years, has recently returned to settle here.”

  “Would you like me to try another channel?” Trudy asked.

  “No,” Ernst said. “I want to see this.”

  “Charles Lawson is a good man,” Hyman Gordon said.

  “I saw one of his plays last week,” Trudy said. “What corn!”

  “Charles Lawson,” Hyman Gordon said reverently, “could have been a big man in Hollywood, but he stood up for freedom of speech. That counts for something.”

  “Is Lawson a commie?” Trudy asked.

  “Quiet,” Ernst said.

  “To stand for freedom these days,” Hyman Gordon said, “that counts for something.”

  “Quiet,” Trudy said. “Joseph is trying to listen.”

  “… that Canada is starved for culture,” Miss Morgan concluded.

  “I’m not trying to say that Toronto rivals London as a theatrical or literary city yet,” Mr. Lawson said. “But – and this is a big but, mind you – Canadian artists cease to have value to their own country once they become expatriates. I’ve lived in London. I’ve seen too many highly promising talents end up at the bottom of a bottle of Johnny Walker.”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m liable to become a dipsomaniac once I’ve moved to London?”

  “Mr. Lawson, I’m sure, was only speaking metaphorically.”

  “I’m a Canadian,” Mr. Lawson said, “and proud to be one. Miss Morgan has a point. This is no cultural paradise yet, but,” he said angrily, “if our gifted poets continue to run off to safer – and I use that word advisedly – to safer climates, then we will never develop culturally.” He leaned forward. “England is dead, Miss Morgan. Finished.”

  “Maybe so,” Miss Morgan said, “but at least there are people who read poetry there.”

  Thomas Hale leaned back in his chair. “That’s a very disputatious remark, Miss Morgan. I’m a Canadian. I read poetry.”

  “An old maid,” Hyman Gordon said. “Phooey.”

  Trudy Greenberg stiffened.

  “Gogol,” Hyman Gordon said. “There was a poet for you.”

  “Please,” Trudy said, “Joseph is trying to listen.”

  “Byron,” Hyman Gordon said, “that’s what I call a poet.”

  “… just because of class distinctions?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Lawson said, “but we didn’t want to bring up our child in a mesh of prejudice, privilege, and pomposity. We certainly weren’t going to send David to a public school.”

  “I fail to see what that has to do with the subject at hand,” Miss Morgan said.

  “A point well taken,” Thomas Hale said. “The problem of how you choose to educate your children is not germane –”

  “Sure, sure,” Mr. Lawson said, “but I’d like to discuss this problem of expatriates with Miss Morgan again after she’s lived in London for a bit.”

  “I repeat,” Miss Morgan said, “Canada is a provincial country. My going to London is not going to change that.”

  “A provincial country,” Mr. Lawson said, “but a very exciting one. Sensational things are beginning to happen right here in Toronto. Take the Stratford Festival, for instance –”

  “You’re not going to claim Shakespeare as a Canadian writer. Are you?”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” Mr. Hale said.

  “You interrupted –”

  “You called the London theatre decadent. Am I right in saying that you failed to get any of your plays presented in –”

  “Look here, when you observe that Canadians don’t read poetry what you really mean to say is that they don’t read your –”

  Poing, poing, poing, went the bell before Thomas Hale. Music crept in. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “you have been watching.…”

  “Turn it off,” Ernst said.

  Hyman Gordon switched off the set.

  “Are you all right?” Trudy asked.

  Ernst’s forehead was sweaty.

  “C
ome on, hero. Give us a smile.”

  “I would like to sleep for a while,” Ernst said.

  “Certainly.” Trudy turned expectantly to Hyman Gordon.

  “After you, Miss Greenberg.”

  Trudy joined Hyman Gordon at the door.

  “A moment,” Ernst said. “How soon are they expected?”

  “In about a half hour,” Trudy said. “I’ll come to wake you first.”

  Outside the studio in Toronto, Joey waited in the Buick. Charlie kissed her warmly. And then Joey showed him the clippings that had come with Karp’s letter from Israel.

  “Why, the poor girl.” Charlie stared at a rather bad newspaper photograph of Sally. “The poor, silly girl.” They drove in silence for a while before he asked, “How’s David?”

  “Sleeping like a lamb.”

  “The poor girl.” Charlie lit two cigarettes and passed one to Joey. “What does Karp write?”

  “He’s not liked over there. He’s having trouble. People suspect him because he survived.”

  “Poor Karp.”

  And suddenly all Charlie could think of were the friends he had lost and the friends who had died and the friends who had turned into enemies and how everyone, himself included, tried and tried and tried and only ended up hurting each other worse. He could think only that here he was at last with a wife and child and something like celebrity and yet inside him, deep inside, was sourness and a sense of having been cheated. There was fear of discovery not of an act, but of an attitude. He thought of Norman and wondered whether he had it any better. I doubt it, he thought. “Any mail?” he asked.

  “An invitation to Eckberg’s for dinner Saturday night. You’ve been invited to speak at Carleton College on the twenty-fifth.”

  “The twenty-fifth, eh?”

  “And the Y.M.H.A. would like you to act as judge in a playwriting contest.”

  “The poor, silly girl.”

  “Seymour wants us to come round for drinks tomorrow night. I – what did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you O.K.?”

  “Maybe,” Charlie said, “David will grow up to be somebody big. An artist, maybe.”

  Ernst’s journey from Munich, Paris, London, to the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal had been a long and circuitous one. Stowing away at Liverpool had been easy, and once in Montreal Ernst ate where Sally had used to eat and walked where she had walked before. He went to the bars she had described as fun and, in the telephone directory, he looked up the names of people she had mentioned and went to stand in front of their houses until they appeared. At least once a day he walked by her house in N.D.G. The second time, Ernst recognized her father from a photograph she had shown him. A thin, greying man with calm blue eyes, Mr. MacPherson, his pipe turned upside down against the rain, seemed the epitome of the Scots schoolmaster. Ernst watched him pass with longing and much regret and then followed him like a supplicant for a few blocks.