The Incomparable Atuk

by Mordecai Richler

  She was not the biggest TV star in the country, our only beauty queen or foremost swimmer; neither was she the first Canadian girl to make a film. But Bette Dolan, while in the same tradition as such diverse Canadian talents as, say, Deanna Durbin, Marilyn Bell, Barbara Ann Scott, and Joyce Davidson, surpassed all of them in appeal. Bette Dolan was a legendary figure. A Canadian heroine.

  Bette’s beginnings were humble. She came from a small town in southern Ontario, the neighbourly sort of place where retired people live. Her fierce father, Gord Dolan, was a body-building enthusiast, a devotee of the teachings of Doc Burt Parks. Once Mr Best Developed Biceps of Eastern Canada he still retained the title of Mr Niagara Fruit Belt Sr. His wife, May, was a long thin woman with a severe mouth. Formerly a school teacher, she was still active in the church choir. The Dolans would have ended their days predictably; he, enjoying an afternoon of manly gossip in the barbers and his sessions in the gym; and she, planning the next meeting of the Supper-of-the-Month Club, if only their surprisingly lovely daughter had not lifted them out of decent obscurity with one superhuman stroke.

  Bette Dolan was the first woman to swim Lake Ontario in less than twenty hours.

  As if that weren’t sufficiently remarkable, she was only eighteen at the time, an amateur, and she beat three others, all professionals, while she was at it: an American, an Egyptian, and a celebrated Australian marathon swimmer. The American and the Egyptian woman gave up early on and even the much heralded Australian was pulled out of the lake and rushed to the hospital after only fourteen hours in the black icy water. But the incredibly young, luscious, then unknown Canadian girl, coached by her own father, swam on and on and on. True, she had sobbed, puked, and pleaded to be pulled out of the water, but, the very first time that happened, Gord Dolan, ever-watchful in the launch ahead, spurred his daughter on by holding up a blackboard on which he had written,

  DADDY DON’T LIKE QUITTERS

  The young girl’s effort in the face of seemingly invincible odds caught the imagination of Toronto as nothing had before. It’s true the much-admired Marilyn Bell had already swum the lake, but it had taken her twenty hours and fifty-one minutes, and it was much as if her accomplishment, remarkable as it was, redoubled interest in Bette Dolan’s attempt to better it. Anyway, the fact is that by six o’clock in the morning a crowd, maybe the largest, certainly the most enthusiastic, ever known in the history of Toronto, had gathered on the opposite shore to wait for Bette. They lit bonfires and sang hymns and cheered each half mile gained by the girl. Television technicians set up searchlights and cameras. Motor-cycle policemen and finally an ambulance arrived.

  Back in Toronto, as morning came and radio and television newscasters spoke feverishly of twelve-foot waves, some people prayed, others hastily organized office pools or phoned their bookies, and still more leaped into their cars and added to the largest known traffic jam in Toronto’s history. Sunny Jim Woodcock, The People’s Prayer For Mayor, spoke on Station CKTO. ‘I told you when I was elected that I would put Toronto on the map. Bette Dolan is setting an example here for youth all over the free world. More power to your elbows, kid!’ The Standard, never a newspaper to be caught off the mark, printed two sets of their late morning edition. One with a headline, SHE MAKES IT! wow!, the other, TOUGH LUCK, SWEETHEART!

  On the launch, Gord Dolan watched anxiously, he prayed, kissed his rabbit’s foot, and spat twice over his left shoulder, as his daughter struggled against the oncoming waves.

  ‘Please pull me in,’ she called. ‘Please … I can’t make it …’

  He scrawled something hurriedly on the blackboard and held it up for Bette to see again.

  THE OTHER BROADS HAVE QUIT. PARK AVE. SWIMWEAR OFFERS $2,500, IF YOU FINISH. DON’T DROWN NOW. DADDY

  But Bette had already been in the lake for sixteen hours. The plucky girl had come thirty-four miles. Thrashing about groggily, her eyes glazed, she began to weep. ‘… can’t feel my legs any more … can’t … think … going to drown …’

  ‘All right,’ Dolan said, gesturing his girl towards the launch, ‘we’ll pull you in now, kid.’

  But as Bette, making an enormous effort, swam to within inches of the launch Gord Dolan pulled ahead a few more yards.

  ‘Come on, honey. Come to Daddy.’

  Again she started for the launch and again Gord Dolan pulled away. ‘You see,’ he shouted to her. ‘You can do it.’

  (When Gord Dolan spoke on television several weeks later, after accepting the Canadian-Father-of-the-Year Award, he said, ‘That was the psychology-bit. I’ve made a study of people, you know.’)

  Initially, the prize money being offered was five thousand dollars, but once the last of the foreign competitors pulled out, as soon as it became obvious that Toronto had taken the surviving Canadian youngster to its heart and, what’s more, that she was on the brink of collapse, Buck Twentyman made a phone call. Minutes later a helicopter idled over Gord Dolan’s battered launch, a uniformed man descended a rope ladder, and Dolan was able to chalk up on his board,

  TWENTYMAN HISSELF OFFERS TEN MORE GRAND – IF YOU MAKE IT. DADDY IS MIGHTY PROUD. GO, BABY.

  When Bette Dolan finally stumbled ashore at seven p.m., after nineteen hours and forty-two minutes in the lake, she was greeted by a frenzied crowd. Newsreel cameramen, reporters, advertising agents, some who had prayed and others who had won bets at long odds, swarmed around her. Souvenir-crazed teenagers pulled eels off Bette’s thighs and back. The youngster collapsed and was carried off to a waiting ambulance. When she woke the next afternoon it was to discover that her life had been irredeemably altered. Bette Dolan was a national heroine.

  As was to be expected, she was immediately inundated with offers to endorse bathing suits, health foods, beauty lotions, chocolate bars, and so forth, but Bette turned down everything. ‘I did not swim the lake for personal gain,’ she told reporters. ‘I wanted to show the world what a Canadian girl could do.’

  SHE SWAM THE LAKE – BECAUSE IT WAS THERE, was the title of Jean-Paul McEwen’s prize-winning column. Seymour Bone’s approach, in his column on the next page, was considerably more intellectual. Quoting Frazer, Jung, Hemingway, and himself from a previous column, he elaborated on man’s historical-psychological need to best nature. While he was able to accept Bette as a symbol, Bone reserved judgement on the girl and her motives. He needn’t have bothered. The rest is part of the Dolan legend. Surely everybody now knows how she turned the bulk of her prize money over to her town council to build a fantastically well-equipped gym as a challenge to the crippled children; how the Red Feather, the United Appeal, the White Cane, and innumerable other worthy organizations all profited from Bette’s television, film, and public appearances. Bette Dolan was incorruptible.

  Harry Snipes wrote in Metro, The Girl With All The Curves Has No Angles.

  She has a heart, Jean-Paul McEwen observed in her column, bigger than Alberta.

  Bette was also lovely, unspoilt, radiant, and the most sought-after public personage in the dominion. In earlier times she would have come forth to bless churches, but in Canada, things being what they were, she pulled the switch on new power projects and opened shopping centres here, there, and everywhere.

  Wherever Bette went she was instantly recognized. Ordinary people felt better just for having seen her. But if Canada loved Bette Dolan it was also true that she so loved the country that she felt it would be unfair, sort of favouritism, for her to give herself to any one man. So although many, including cabinet ministers, actors, millionaires, and playboys, had tried, Bette remained, in her mother’s words, a clean girl. Until, that is, she met Atuk.

  Bette first met Atuk at the party for him at the Park Plaza Hotel and saw him again at another party a couple of months later. Atuk was enthralled and promptly asked if he could meet Bette again. To his amazement, she said yes. Actually, Bette was more grateful than he knew because, by this time, nobody bothered to ask her for a date any more. Bette made dinner for Atuk at her apartmen
t. Carrot juice, followed by herb soup and raw horse steak with boiled wild rice. Atuk, thoughtful as ever, had scraped together some money and brought along a bottle of gin. Bette, lithe and relaxed in her leotards, told Atuk about her father and how his life had been changed by the teachings of Doc Burt Parks. She sensed Atuk felt depressed, maybe even defeated by Toronto, and tried her best to encourage him. ‘You’ll be a success here yet,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know. It is so difficult.’

  ‘But success doesn’t depend on the size of your brain,’ she assured him.

  Atuk hastily added some gin to the carrot juice.

  ‘Dr Parks has always said,’ Bette continued, too absorbed to protest, ‘that if you want to succeed you must always shoot for the bull’s-eye.’

  Atuk promised to try.

  ‘You’re as good as the next fellow. You simply must believe that, Atuk. You see, the most successful men have the same eyes, brain, arms, and legs as you have.’

  ‘I drink now. You too.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ she said, narrowing her eyes, ‘that you envy some people.’

  ‘Many, many people.’

  ‘But still more people envy you.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Sure. Some are bald-you have a head full of hair. Some are blind – you can see. Everybody envies somebody else. You must learn to have faith in yourself.’

  Soon they were sipping gin and carrot juice together nightly and Bette continued to do her utmost to fill Atuk with confidence.

  ‘Why go to so much trouble?’ he once asked her.

  ‘Because I have to help people. That’s me.’ Her long, powerful, Lloyd-insured legs curled under her on the sofa, a lock of blonde hair falling over her forehead, Bette smiled and said, ‘Do you realize you’re just about the only male who has never – never tried the funny stuff with me?’

  ‘Don’t you admire me for it?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Yes. Certainly I do.’ She got down on the floor and began a lightning series of chin-ups. A sure sign she was troubled. ‘But don’t you love me?’ She rolled over on her back, supporting her buttocks with her hands and revolving her legs swiftly. ‘Everybody loves Bette Dolan,’ she insisted.

  ‘And so do I. Oh, so do I!’

  So Atuk told her his dreadful secret. ‘I lack confidence,’ he said, ‘because I am unable to make love. All that stands between me and hitting the bull’s-eye is a woman who can … well, encourage me over the hump.’ He lowered his head. ‘I need help, Miss Dolan.’

  A plea for help was something Bette Dolan had never taken lightly. She sprang to her feet, bouncing upright. Her lovely face filled with determination. After a long and solemn pause, she said, ‘I will help you, Atuk.’

  ‘Would you? Honest?’

  To prove it she stepped right up to him, her eyes squeezed shut against anticipated distaste, and kissed him on the mouth. ‘It’s the very first time for me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m so afraid,’ Atuk said, his voice quavering, ‘of failing.’

  Bette kissed him again, forcing his mouth open. When she was done, Atuk cleared his throat and poured himself a rather strong gin and carrot juice.

  ‘Aren’t you even … don’t you feel …?’

  ‘It’s no use,’ he said.

  Bette pulled him down to the rug with her and led his hand to her breast. ‘This should be very stimulating for you,’ she said. She kissed him even more passionately, rolled over on him, tried a couple of other sure-fire things, and then pulled back to look at him quizzically.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I do feel a certain …’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I think my pulse-beat has quickened.’

  ‘That’s progress, isn’t it?’

  But it seemed to Atuk there was a sour edge to her voice now.

  ‘That’s all for tonight,’ she said.

  At the door, however, she suddenly clung to him. ‘I hope you realize,’ she said, ‘that no man has ever even held me in his arms before. I couldn’t you see. Because I belong to the nation. Like Jasper Park or Niagara Falls.’

  ‘I do understand.’

  ‘I’m trying to help, that’s all.’

  She had Atuk back early the next afternoon for a lecture.

  ‘I think your trouble may be mental,’ she said.

  ‘Very likely. Many times the Old One has said—’

  ‘Well,’ she interrupted, taking a deep breath, ‘the first thing you must understand is that every human being from the beginning of time has possessed sex organs and was produced as a result of sexual intercourse. Does that shock you?’

  Atuk whistled.

  ‘I thought it would. You must learn to think of your sex organ,’ she said, drawing a sketch on the blackboard, ‘as being just as common as your hands, your heart, or your pectoral muscles. If you analyse the penis as you analyse the function of any other part of your body you will find that it’s made up of essentially the same kind of materials.’

  ‘I’m going to love it in Toronto,’ Atuk said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, hastily pouring himself another gin and carrot juice.

  ‘Then, to quote Dr Parks, if you analyse the sex act itself in the same clear-thinking way, you will see that this simple function is no more mysterious or filthy than eating, breathing, or urinating.’

  After the lecture Bette shed her smock and was revealed in the most provocative silk pyjamas. Her work clothes, she called them off-handedly, and she at once engaged Atuk in a series of practical exercises: therapy. Soon there were lectures every afternoon and by the end of the first week there was rather less time spent at the blackboard and more at therapy. She was, Atuk thought, very inventive for a novice. Usually, she was also the acme of patience. A model teacher. Though there were times when the therapy became so real for her that the final, inevitable disappointment made her petulant.

  ‘I want you,’ she ultimately said, ‘to go for broke today.’

  ‘You mean shoot for the bull’s-eye?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, exasperated. ‘I’m not enjoying this, you know. I’m only trying to help. But I’m getting discouraged. You must try to help yourself, you know.’

  ‘I couldn’t. I …’

  Bette sprang up and caught him in a judo hold. ‘You shoot for the bull’s-eye, goddam it,’ she said, ‘or I’ll …’

  So Atuk finally made love to Bette.

  Afterwards Bette lay so still, she seemed so remote, that Atuk wondered if she suspected that she had been seduced.

  But Bette had been lifted into a hitherto unsuspected sphere. It had never occurred to her before that love-making could be anything but nasty. Filthy. Like her father belting her mother into submission in the next room. How utterly wonderful, she thought, that indulging in the funny stuff could be such a generous and Christian thing to do. There was truth, after all, in her mother’s saying time and again, that there was no joy greater than helping others.

  Atuk spiked his carrot juice with more gin.

  ‘I think,’ Bette said, her voice jarringly submissive, ‘that you ought to try again, sweetheart.’

  And so Canada’s Darling, the unobtainable Bette Dolan, became Atuk’s grateful mistress, and Atuk was soon reconciled to phone calls at all hours of the day or night.

  ‘You must come over immediately,’ she’d say. ‘I feel the need to help you.’

  So at a quarter to eight Atuk started out of the rooming house, jumped a bus, and hurried over to Bette’s place.

  Perhaps it was because he was so lonely, maybe he drank too many gin and carrot juices, but that evening Atuk confessed to Bette what he had done on the tundra.

  Bette was certainly horrified by the nature of his crime, but she said, ‘The case is closed. You have nothing to worry about, darling.’

  ‘I didn’t mean any harm. What did I know of such things?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ she said, pulling him to her again.

  ‘You mus
t promise never to repeat what I have told you,’ Atuk said, suddenly realizing that he had revealed his most dreadful secret. ‘You must swear it, Bette.’

  ‘I swear it. Now come here.’

  4

  If he didn’t go directly to Bette’s after his classes at Eglinton, Atuk usually went to the bar around the corner for a bottle of Twentyman’s Ale.

  A sign outside the bar proclaimed the presence of a rock’n’roll group Direct From the Ed Sullivan Show and a Smash Run in Buffalo, and inside Atuk joined the pale released office workers all bent in a curve over bottles of ale at the horseshoe-shaped bar, a row of pencils still in the breast pockets of their jackets. Over toward the door, a pyramid of rubbers and overshoes lay in a steaming puddle. Atuk felt miserable because it seemed to him that after the initial, hardly profitable, success of his book of poems, he had failed at everything in Toronto except Bette Dolan, but his success with Bette was fraudulent and besides she was too slim for his taste. Oh, he thought, for a fat smelly bear of a girl. Damn. Here he was blessed enough to be in Toronto, and what had he made of himself? Nothing. What had he done for his family? A food parcel. His Tribe? The Elders of the Igloo? Some blurred photographs of strategic bridges, the railway station, the airport. Nothing to shout about. The Old One would be disappointed.

  Atuk was bitterly determined to prove to the Old One, Bette, Gore, and Doc Burt Parks, that he was not entirely without vim-and-vigour.

  ‘What you dare to dream,’ Dr Parks had said, ‘dare to do.’

  Bette had introduced Atuk to the great teacher when he had come to Toronto with a group of bodybuilders. Dr Parks introduced a physical culture display in the sports department of Twentyman’s Department Store, where his equipment was for sale. An enormous crowd had turned up for the exhibition, but this was no surprise, for Bette Dolan had promised to appear.

  A magnificently built man of sixty-two, Dr Parks strode masterfully up and down the platform. ‘Well, then,’ he began, ‘I’m sure all you washed-out, weak, worn-out, suffering, sickly men want to renew your youth and delay that trip to the underground bungalow.’