The Incomparable Atuk

by Mordecai Richler

  ‘Atuk,’ Rory began doubtfully. ‘Atuk, I’ve never interfered before, have I?’

  Atuk waited. He knew he and Rory would have to have it out about Goldie one of these days. Why not now?

  ‘Is it true that you agreed with Twentyman earlier this morning to be the first contestant on STICK OUT YOUR NECK?’

  ‘Like that’s the story I hear told,’ Atuk said, grinning.

  ‘But do you know the rules?’

  ‘I sure do. I also know the prize money that’s being offered.’

  ‘But, Atuk, what if—’

  ‘I can’t lose. Keep this under your hat, Rory, but the whole thing is an elaborate tax dodge. I’m helping Buck over a spot, that’s all.’

  Rory didn’t comment.

  ‘Give,’ Atuk said.

  ‘Are you sure you can trust Twentyman?’

  ‘Of course I can’t. But come next week he’s going to need me more than I need him. In fact he can’t do without me, man.’

  ‘He’s shrewd. I’d watch him.’

  ‘You watch me. I’m shrewder. Anything else?’

  ‘I understand,’ Rory said evenly, ‘that you are taking my sister to Professor Gore’s for dinner tonight.’

  ‘What if I am?’

  ‘It’s hardly a secret,’ Rory said, ‘that I don’t approve.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Miss Stainsby said, fleeing.

  ‘Rory, it’s time we had this out, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  ‘You busy for lunch?’

  Rory was speaking at a Zionist fund-raising lunch.

  ‘All right, then,’ Atuk said. ‘Why don’t you, Goldie, the Old One and I, meet at the Roof Garden immediately afterwards?’

  ‘If you like,’ Rory said, ‘but my mind’s made up. You must break with my sister.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ Atuk said.

  Atuk, held up by a quarrel with the Old One, was late. Yet Goldie was still alone when he finally reached the Roof Garden.

  ‘Hi,’ Atuk said, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Where’s Mr Peel?’

  ‘Like he phoned. He’s going to be late.’

  ‘Don’t look so worried. We’re partners, you know.’

  ‘This is one scene you don’t dig. Like he feels it’s one thing to do business with you, but another for you to marry his sister.’

  ‘I can handle this.’

  ‘I wish you weren’t wearing that suit. Rory’s the conservative type.’

  ‘Are you ashamed of me?’

  ‘Certainly not. Sh. Here he comes.’

  Atuk jumped up to greet Rory.

  ‘Sorry to be late, but I was tied up at the fund-raising lunch.’

  Goldie explained, needlessly, that Rory was one of the most active, dedicated Zionists in Toronto.

  ‘I try to do my bit,’ Rory said, ‘that’s all.’

  Atuk ordered drinks all around as the conversation dwindled into a fitful exchange of pleasantries. Goldie laughed too loud at the most inane jokes and Rory was evasive. Nobody dared to be the first to mention what was pressing on all their minds – the question of Rory’s approval of their wedding. Atuk began to drink heavily; his manner morose.

  Finally, Rory said, ‘Where’s the, em, Old One?’

  ‘Atuk’s had a terrible fight with him,’ Goldie said quickly. ‘The Old One feels Atuk has turned against his people.’

  ‘There’s something to be said for sticking to your own.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Rory. I turned against my religion at an early age. Like I’m no shmock, you know.’

  Rory looked around anxiously to see if anyone had heard a Yiddish word being spoken at his table.

  ‘I’m teaching him the language,’ Goldie said.

  ‘Of course, of course. But there’s more to a people’s tradition than religion. Look at the Hebrews. We took a desert and made a garden out of it.’

  ‘Oh, I admire your people enormously for that. But, speaking for myself, I couldn’t swallow that bit about the land being ours by right.’

  ‘Ours,’ Rory said charitably, ‘but you’re not—’

  ‘No. I mean Canada.’

  ‘Canada? Oh,’ Rory said. He chuckled, amused. ‘You mean to say the Eskimos believe Canada belongs to them?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Atuk said, laughing. ‘And now there’s this group of militant young cats that would like to have it all back. They’d put all you foreigners—’

  ‘I’m Canadian-born. I haven’t the least trace of an accent.’

  ‘He didn’t mean anything personal.’

  ‘What I meant is that to the Eskimo, to the militants anyway, you’re all greenhorns. They’d relocate you all in one province. A sort of national park.’

  ‘But that would be inhuman. Many families have been settled in this country for generations.’

  ‘It’s crazy. Like I said. But the land is ours by right, you know.’

  ‘Why talk politics,’ Goldie said. ‘Like—’

  ‘It belonged to our ancestors and—’

  ‘But that was thousands of years ago.’

  ‘Maybe so. But our people have suffered terrible persecutions out on the Bay and—’

  ‘Not from me. I never did harm to an Eskimo—’

  ‘Sure you haven’t. It’s only the fur hunters and the RCMP. And don’t say it, I know. They’re good fathers and husbands and the good people of Toronto have no idea what’s going on up there. But the fact remains the land is ours and we’d like it back. Some people would, anyway.’

  ‘How amusing. You come back after thousands of years and would like me and my family to move out. Your people sound very aggressive to me.’

  ‘With reason, but. Conditions—’

  ‘One persecution does not excuse another. Just because your people have suffered—’

  ‘It’s more than that. The land was promised to us by our gods.’

  ‘Pardon me while I laugh.’

  ‘We have a book. It’s all written out there.’

  ‘Look, everybody has a book. This is our country. You can’t drive us out like – like Arabs. We’re Canadians.’

  ‘To us, you’re all Arabs.’

  Rory leaped up, knocking over his drink. ‘Are you trying to bait me?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not. Sit down, man.’

  ‘Atuk, I’m pleased to have you as a business associate. But you’re not … well, fit to marry into a Jewish family.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Jewish, Protestant, you’re all white to me.’

  Rory gaped. Tears came to his eyes. White. He, Rory Peel, was being called white. This was the compliment, the state of grace, he had striven for all his life. But today, coming from Atuk’s mouth, it was delivered as an insult.

  ‘In my opinion, Atuk, you’re just a loud, aggressive Eskimo.’

  And Rory walked right out of the bar.

  ‘Well, congrats. You said you could handle him and you did. The man from Charmsville.’

  ‘Sorry, baby. But I’ve been getting it from all sides today.’

  ‘I’ll be getting it too. Once Rory gets on the phone to Paw.’

  ‘To hell with it. I will not apologize for what I am. He could have called me anything but an “aggressive Eskimo”.’ Atuk blew his nose. ‘When I used to ski to school as a kid the white boys used to knock me over and beat me up and call me a dirty Eskimo.’

  ‘Oh, my poor darling.’

  ‘I have feelings too, you know. If you prick me, do I not bleed?’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ Goldie said. ‘Me too, man.’

  ‘I’m a success. A somebody. What do I have to do to prove myself to all the Rorys of this world?’

  ‘I don’t care. We’ll marry without him.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He’ll come round. We’re still partners, you know. What time is it?’

  ‘Five o’clock.’

  ‘Damn it, we’re due at Gore’s at six. I’d better go home to change.’ Suddenly Atuk laughed. ‘Have you ever met his wife?’
/>   ‘No.’

  ‘She kills me. Nancy goes in for the nose-rubbing bit. Oh, what a night we’ve got ahead of us.’

  13

  Once he had changed into his native costume Atuk went down to the basement to dip into the rejects bin for a piece of sculpture he could take to the Gores. He dreaded the polite, goysy evening ahead of him. But there had been a time when he would have been immensely pleased to be invited to the Gores. Atuk, after all, had once been the political hope of his tribe, and Gore had been his mentor in those early days in Toronto.

  Ah, when I look back, Atuk thought, lifting his slippered feet on to a hassock and swishing his cigar around in his snifter of Remy Martin. There’s nothing to stop me now, is there? No.

  Maybe tonight it won’t be so bad at Gore’s place.

  Everybody, but everybody, was going to the buffet dinner at the beloved Professor Gore’s. The guest list was so intellectually impressive that one columnist, already invited, observed, ‘If the house was hit by a bomb it would blow out the brains of Canada.’

  The arts would be represented by Harry Snipes; Bette Dolan could speak for the body beautiful. Either Panofsky or Rabbi Glenn Seigal could account for the Jews, Atuk, for the Eskimo. Jean-Paul McEwen was coming and, all the way from Quebec City, an angry young priest, Father Anatole Forget. Seymour Bone would be there and so would Father Greg ‘Touchdown’ McKendrick, Derm Gabbard, and many, many more.

  For years Norman Gore’s annual buffet dinner had been an intellectual occasion unmatched on Toronto’s cultural calendar. Invitations were as prized and hard come by for the tastemakers as a ticket to the Stanley Cup play-offs was among the hoi-poloi. Then, from one year to the next, the annual occasion suffered a near eclipse.

  Television was responsible.

  Needless to say, it wasn’t that Gore’s guests were the mindless sort who sat stupefied before their sets night after night. On the contrary. They were the ones who appeared on most of the programmes and that, as a matter of fact, was where the trouble lay. For traditionally it was the wittiest, the most charming, successful and intellectually formidable people who came to dine at the Gores. With the coming of television they found themselves in demand. From one week to the next, it seemed, small social graces were transformed into large earning potential. Lucy Trueman’s ability to put strangers at ease and Derm Gabbard’s capacity for being the life of the party both became marketable commodities. If you enjoyed having them in your living-room it followed that Canada, so to speak, wanted them in its national living-room. So for behaving only a little larger than they had all their lives, without thought of financial return, Lucy Trueman and Derm Gabbard were suddenly offered fabulous fees. Similarly, the man who was traditionally the most outspoken at Gore’s dinners signed a whacking contract to be daring on a national network. And the story was the same with the rudest, the most handsome, and the funniest. Why even the best-read, Terry Stewart, was now a feared literary critic, and could no longer read a book unless he was paid for it.

  To be fair to Gore’s guests they did not cut him off completely with the advent of television. A loyal bunch, they continued to come to the house, but with one crucial difference: nobody’s conversation sparkled unless he happened to be seated next to a producer. The wittiest tabletalk in Toronto was reduced, overnight as it were, to a tense exchange of monosyllables. Bone, for instance, had signed a contract promising to be offensive on Crossed Swords exclusively. And the truth was that bouncy, smiling Derm Gabbard was bad-tempered after a day of spreading joy through the land professionally and Lucy Trueman avoided strangers on a closed circuit. You simply couldn’t expect Terry Stewart to tell you what he thought of a book for nothing. Father Greg ‘Touchdown’ McKendrick and Rabbi Glenn Seigal, a delightful, stimulating team in former years, did not see the point in bantering amiably about God and Man without benefit of a sponsor or a studio audience. And nobody, needless to say, would answer a question put to them by Jean-Paul McEwen unless she promised to publish the reply in full.

  ‘They just don’t act natural any more,’ Gore said to his wife.

  ‘Mm. I think it’s that they’re too inhibited or nervous to talk in a private room now,’ Nancy said. ‘A sort of inverted stage fright.’

  That’s when Norman Gore got his remarkable idea.

  ‘I’ve got it. Why don’t we put our dinners on TV?’

  It was a stroke of genius. The cameras zooming in and out not only relaxed the guests, but an invitation to Gore’s became an even more enviable thing: everybody collected a fee.

  Each year Gore hit on a pertinent theme for his dinner. One year, as his guests were all drawn from the artistic and intellectual life, that is to say they were the most thoughtful and socially concerned citizens in Toronto, the theme was ‘How to Withstand Commercialism in our Society’. (This, it must be said, proved to be such a stimulating ninety minutes that there were two summer re-runs of the show followed by a paperback publication by McFarlane & Renfrew.) Another year the group turned to the theme of the Dying Art of Conversation and the Deadening Effect of TV. (Harry Snipes had some slashing comments to make about US-imported Westerns.) But this year Professor Gore decided to open the floor to, well, just plain good talk. The dinner was without a predetermined theme.

  Dinner with the Tastemakers was presented by the CBC’s cultural showcase, Fiesta.

  Though the CBC had not once come back to Gore about ratings, the Professor was somewhat anxious about this year’s production. Last year he had been knocked by both Variety and the Toronto University Quarterly.

  Gore sat down to a long-awaited pleasure, Panofsky’s thesis. He hoped that reading it would calm his nerves. But if he was edgy to begin with, Norman Gore was in a state of alarm once he had skimmed through the manuscript.

  Panofsky arrived early to discuss his thesis with the Professor.

  ‘So?’ Panofsky asked.

  Gore couldn’t cope.

  ‘Yes, well, no, Mr Panofsky. Actually, what I mean to say is, no, I haven’t read the entire thesis yet, but I have read, em, re-read your preliminary argument and I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say, say at once, that it has upset me enormously.

  ‘But it was supposed to,’ Panofsky said warmly.

  ‘Be that as it may, but – well, you correct me if I’m wrong – but I take it your hypothesis runs that contrary to what we liberals have worked so very hard and selflessly to instil in the prejudiced populace for years, you believe that Jews are different from other people?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And that in your opinion Gentiles, well Protestants, anyway, are all similar. In fact, one Protestant is so like another that their children are interchangeable.’

  ‘Not “in my opinion”. My son and I have proven the fact scientifically. Years of research have—’ ‘But …’

  Gore had always looked on tubby, grey-haired Panofsky as a gentle seeker after truth and beauty, a Jew who was a living refutation of the anti-Semitic caricature. Gore had often visualized Panofsky at his chessboard or spreading crumbs in the snow for birds. A sweet, colourful man who was in need of Gore’s protection. Like Negroes. Indeed, the Professor adored Jews and Negroes so much that he felt put out when they exhibited human traits. If a Jew cheated on his income tax, for instance, or a Negro wore flashy clothes, Gore felt personally affronted. They ought not, he thought, to do that to him and other liberals after they had tried so hard to be helpful. Last year Wharton, the Negro, such a promising and ingratiating young man, had got a freshette into trouble and now there was Panofsky and his perverse thesis. Panofsky was obviously insane, certifiable, just like Gore’s Uncle Jim, and this made Gore livid. They have no right to behave like us, he thought.

  But before Gore could even communicate his displeasure to Panofsky the others began to arrive. Jean-Paul McEwen, Atuk and Goldie, Jersey Joe Marchette, Father McKendrick, Snipes, Rabbi Seigal, and the next thing Gore knew they were all on camera.

  The first to make trouble w
as Father Anatole Forget. ‘I will not toast the Queen,’ he said to Gore.

  ‘But we had no intention of drinking a toast.’

  Father Forget could not be deceived. He knew his Ontario. ‘I refuse to drink a toast to her so-called majesty whatever your plans are,’ he said.

  Father Forget was French Canada’s leading philosopher and aesthete. Fortunately, he was soon deep in conversation with Derm Gabbard. ‘Life,’ he said, speaking in English, ‘she is happy and life she is sad. Art is the music of the soul.’

  ‘Oh, oui, oui,’ Gabbard said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully.

  ‘Art makes out of colours the picture. Even more remarkable,’ he said as camera 2 dollied in for a close-up, ‘it takes the prosaic tree and makes out of it paper and on this paper prints words. Et voilà, la poésie. And herewith, one has the poetry! Some poetry is long and some poetry is short …’

  Gore stared at Jersey Joe Marchette, puzzled. ‘Haven’t we met before?’ he asked.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Funny …’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Jersey Joe said sharply, ‘it’s that we all look alike to you.’

  Gore flushed.

  Atuk rubbed noses with Nancy Gore, gave her the statue, and hurried to join Goldie at the buffet.

  ‘Hey! Easy,’ Goldie said, ‘the whole platter isn’t for you. Like you grab a little and put it on a plate.’

  Bette Dolan saw them together and began to sob. Derm Gabbard patted her gently on the back. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s Atuk; he won’t even talk to me. What can he see in that fat ugly bitch?’

  ‘We hear a lot these days,’ Harry Snipes shouted, ‘about Canadian artists leaving the country for Europe or the other place, where they earn a mint for writing insulting articles about their homeland. Well, I have no time for these self-haters myself. Why do they leave in the first place? Do foreign attists settle here?’

  As soon as the camera zoomed in on Snipes, he pulled a little pill bottle out of his pocket – the label clearly read Morphine – and popped a couple of tablets into his mouth.

  ‘Take away from her the crown,’ Father Forget said, ‘and what have you got? A woman.’