Solomon Gursky Was Here

by Mordecai Richler

  Standing on the dock, acknowledging cheers, the Reverend Horn called out, “We are bound for the land of milk and honey,” and then disappeared into his cabin, Miss Litton following after.

  The settlers were far out to sea, sliding in vomit, before they grasped that there was no bread and that the potatoes were rotten and the meat crawling with maggots and the walls of the hold they were crammed into thick with manure, the pitching deck awash with overflow from the bilges, rats everywhere.

  In two weeks at sea the Reverend Horn, secure in his cabin, was seen below decks only twice. On the fourth day out a miner had his arm broken in a drunken brawl and it was the Reverend Horn who set the bone and fixed it with a splint. He was seen again after another fight, this one with knives, come to stitch the men’s wounds. But a certain Mrs. Bishop swore she had seen him striding up and down the bridge the night of the gale, the puny Excelsior scaling twenty-foot waves before plunging into a trough, sliding trunks smashing into walls, splinters flying, the ship’s fracturing surely imminent. Barechested he was, drunken, howling into the lashing wind and rain. “Face to face, I want to see you face to face just once.”

  Finally they docked at Halifax and were promptly bundled into a train for the endless journey to Saskatoon, from where they were supposed to trek by ox-cart a hundred and fifty miles to Gloriana. Saskatoon, a smudge on the prairie, had no common or shade trees or hedgerows or high street or vicarage or public house. Instead there were mosquitoes and mud, rude shacks, two hotels, a general store, a grain elevator, and a railroad station.

  The Reverend Horn had promised them that all manner of necessities would be waiting for them at the station: oxen and wagons, tents, farming tools, seed bags, and provisions. They saw little enough of that and beyond, not a knoll, not a tree, but a flat empty land extending to the horizon. The women sat down on their scattered belongings, kitbags eaten by salt water, trunks split and leaking cutlery, and wept for the warrens they had left behind. The men, armed with clubs and knives, a few of them with shotguns, demanded an audience with the Reverend Horn. And when he appeared, mounting an ox-cart and calling for silence, they surged forward, jeering, shaking their fists. The Reverend Horn, unconcerned, paced up and down the ox-cart, searching the skies, some sort of sad clacking noise, an inhuman call, coming from the back of his throat. A raven flew out of the clouds, swooped, and lighted on his shoulder, which silenced the mob. The Reverend Horn, his eyes hot, reminded them of the ingratitude the children of Israel had shown Moses, their deliverer, rebelling against him. “‘Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat down by the flesh pots and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’” Then the reverend said, “If any of you are so fainthearted as to want to turn back after all you have endured, board the train. I will stand your return fare to England. But rest assured that those who stay with me are visionaries, the first of the millions who will settle these rich fertile plains. I cannot provide you with manna. But within the hour those among you who are bound with me for Gloriana will be served hot soup and freshly baked bread. There will also be a keg of rum to celebrate our safe passage over stormy seas. Then it’s westward ho to Gloriana, my good fellows!”

  The Smiths survived but one year in Gloriana, fighting grass fires in the heat of summer and the bitter cold in winter, their only commercial crop buffalo bones for which they were paid six dollars a ton.

  Following their flight from the colony, the Smiths moved back to Saskatoon, a town prone to drought and grasshopper plagues and early frost, founded by a group of liquor-hating Methodists out of Ontario intent on establishing a settlement where temperance would be the unbroken rule. Then the Smiths retreated to an even smaller railroad town. Archie found employment in a butchershop, stuffing sausages for a Galician; and Nancy as a dishwasher in McGraw’s Queen Victoria Hotel, until she discovered exactly what was going on there and fled, taking another job, this one as a waitress in Mrs. Kukulowicz’s Regal Perogie House.

  Bert, born in 1903, had a strict upbringing. When he wet his bed, his father clipped a clothespin to his penis, and Bert was soon cured of that habit. His mother, horrified to discover that he was left-handed, tied the offending arm behind his back at mealtimes until he learned to behave properly. If she caught him reading a cowboy novel or daydreaming on the sofa, she immediately set him to doing chores. “Every day, every hour,” she reminded him on his twelfth birthday, “you are drawing closer to the grave and the final judgement. See to it that sloth is not numbered among the sins you must answer for.”

  Ordered to bathe once a week in a galvanized tub, Bert was instructed never to wash his face in the same water in which he had scrubbed his privates, but to do that in untainted water in the sink, a habit that survived into his seventies. Sheets stained during the night required him to lower his trousers and submit to a thrashing from his father.

  Bert Smith’s father refused to chip in with the barbershop layabouts, a bunch of get-rich-quickers, risking his meagre savings when land fever struck the town in 1910, prices soaring. He was proved right when the boom collapsed so suddenly in 1913. “What you want to learn,” he told Bert again and again, “is never to take foolish risks, the devil’s temptations, but to get your schooling right and to qualify for a desk job in government service, the pay regular, the position proof against hard times, a pension guaranteed.”

  WHEN SMITH AND MRS. JENKINS sat down to their Sugar Pops with milk in the morning, he often amused her by reading items aloud from the Gazette. At a time, for instance, when unemployment was running at twelve percent, he came across something interesting in E.J. Gordon’s social column. “‘Pot O’ Gold, a unique wine-andcheese party will be held by the Montreal section of the National Council of Jewish Women on Wednesday, February 4, from six to eight P.M. in Victoria Hall, Westmount. A pot of $10,000 will be won by a lucky ticket holder who paid $100 for a chance to win. Ticket sales are limited to three hundred and fifty.’”

  “Drat it,” Mrs. Jenkins said, “I suppose we’re too late to buy.”

  “‘“The idea originated with our co-president, Mrs. Ida Gursky,” said publicity chairperson Mrs. Jewel Pinsky. “We thought that offering a car as a prize was quite simply too blah. As a gimmick it has been used too often. Then Mrs. Gursky had an inspiration. Why not a bar of gold?”’”

  As soon as she read the funny page and her horoscope, Mrs. Jenkins passed the Gazette on to Smith, who retired to his room with it. There was no respite. No solace. Not even on the sports pages, where he read of a nigger, freaky tall, who was paid better than a million a year for dumping balls into a basket, and of another nigger, earning even more, because he could strike a ball with a stick one time out of three. The latter’s manager said, “Elroy comes to play every day. He always gives 110 percent.”

  Once, watching a baseball game with Mrs. Jenkins, they saw Elroy come to bat. “Look at him,” Mrs. Jenkins said, “he never steps up to the plate he doesn’t fondle his crown jewels. Rocky Colavito came up to bat he used to cross himself. Those were the days, eh, Bert?”

  Whenever he was invited to watch TV with Mrs. Jenkins, her hair done in sausage curls, she provided the Kool-Aid and he contributed the Hostess Twinkies. On occasion Smith found her distressingly coarse. Once, for instance, exploding with mirth at a “Laugh-In” outrage, she shot him a sidelong glance, decidedly coquettish, and asked, “Hey, do you know the definition of an Eskimo with a hard-on?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “A frigid midget with a rigid digit. Whoops. Sorry. I know you don’t enjoy the off-colour.”

  Another night she was watching “Wagon Train” with Smith when a young man came to the door and asked to see the room she had for rent. His hair was blond but his eyebrows were black and he was wearing an earring. So she sent him away. Then she came mincing back into the parlour, her wrists hanging limp, and asked, “Do you know why there won’t
be any homos left after the year 2000?”

  No answer.

  “Because they don’t reproduce and they eat each other.”

  Smith groaned.

  “Oh, come off it, Bert. I think that was very cute.”

  Trying to make amends the next morning she passed him, along with the Gazette, the only hardback book she had ever bought: Rod McKuen’s Listen to the Warm. Smith didn’t bother with it, but he did look at the Gazette. Mr. Bernard was going to be seventy-five. A huge banquet in his honour would be held in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. An indignant Smith crumpled the newspaper, dropped it to the floor, and reached for his bedside Bible.

  Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?

  Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes.

  Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.

  Two

  One

  1973 it was. Out there on the rim of the world, in Tulugaqtitut, hard by the shore of the Beaufort Sea, midnight had come and gone, the fierce summer sun still riding high in the sky. Henry Gursky set his book aside—Pirke Aboth, Sayings of the Fathers—to glance out of the window. Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.

  Obviously the Otter was going to be late again, but it would turn up eventually, unless the pilot out of Yellowknife had been diverted by an emergency call. Or he’s drunk again, Henry thought. Tomorrow’s flight wouldn’t do, it would be too late. Henry sighed and reached out to stroke his son’s sleek black hair. “Aleph,” he said.

  “Aleph.”

  “Beth.”

  “Not now,” Isaac pleaded, “it’s time.”

  “Oh yes, sorry.” Remembering, Henry reached out to flick the dial of his radio. Isaac’s eyes shone with pleasure as the familiar sounds reverberated through the living room of the pre-fab.

  A gale-force wind raging across the barrens. The distant howl of a wolf. Electronic music, something from another world. “Into every life some rain must fall,” the narrator began solemnly. “In Captain Al Cohol’s case, catastrophe cascades upon his great blond head in a steady downpour.”

  Henry clacked his tongue; he slapped his cheek, simulating fear. Isaac, burrowing more deeply into the sofa, tugged absently at the ritual fringes of his undershirt. Four fringes there were, each fringe comprised of twelve silken strands.

  “Once the good-hearted defender of the people of Fish Fiord against the monstrous Raven Men, Captain Al Cohol had descended into the gutter, deposited there by the poisonous effects of booze. First a beer parlour brawl, then a night in jail, and now an interview with the welfare people in Inuvik.”

  Fading in, the welfare worker said, “Now then, let’s fill in the necessary forms, shall we? Your name is?”

  “Captain Al Cohol, Intergalactic 80321.”

  “Yes … and your last address?”

  “737 Twelve Moon Avenue, province of Lutania, planet Barkelda.” Oy vey, Henry thought, giving his son a gleeful poke. Isaac responded with a giggle.

  “Fine, just fine. Now then, your profession?”

  “Intergalactic space commander, with degrees in antigravity science and ionic transmutation.”

  “That’s a problem of course. We don’t have much call for that kind of thing around Inuvik. Unfortunately a person can be too highly qualified. What happened to your clothes? Were you forced to sell them?”

  “Sir, these are my clothes. This is the fashion of the day on Barkelda.”

  “Not all that practical in the north. You’ll never get a job anywhere around here wearing yellow, red, and blue underwear. We’ve got to get you into something decent and warm. And your hair! Shoulderlength hair just isn’t in in Inuvik.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to cut it for centuries.”

  “You can have it now. Captain Al Cohol, you have been highly recommended to us by the RCMP who state that Nurse Alley has given you the highest character references. Here is fifty dollars. Go and buy warm, decent clothing and a respectable haircut.”

  “I can’t do this. I’ve never accepted charity in my life.”

  “False pride. We’re here to help you, if you are prepared to help yourself. But stay away from alcohol, captain.”

  “I promise you by all the galaxies! Thank you and goodbye.”

  Henry, hearing an engine, leaned forward to peer out of the window, but it wasn’t the Otter. It was a charter, a DC-3. On the radio, a door opened and closed. Street noises were heard. The narrator faded in, saying, “Out in the cold, inclement streets of Inuvik, Captain Al Cohol’s heart was still laden over the loss of the lovely Lois. Somehow he must regain his pride and prove himself worthy of the brave little nurse of the north. But meanwhile he has the nagging need for nutriment and a place to sleep for the night. He finds a transient centre where he can bunk down with the other lost souls like himself.”

  Henry glanced out of the window again, unavailingly, and the next thing he knew Captain Al Cohol had fallen in with the ruffians in the transient centre, joining them in a poker game.

  “This is a friendly game, stranger, and to make it friendlier I got a treat for all of us, a jug of moose milk. You ever tasted moose milk?”

  “Never, but it sounds nutritious. I haven’t eaten in some time.” “Good. Let’s pour a round before we deal a game.”

  Glug, glug, glug.

  “Drink up, stranger.”

  The narrator intervened, alarmed. “DON’T DO IT, CAPTAIN AL COHOL! YOU’LL BE RIGHT BACK WHERE YOU STARTED—IN THE GUTTER AGAIN!”

  Glug, glug, glug.

  “The valiant wanderer from outer space may have stepped out of the frying pan into the fire. Keep your fingers crossed and wait ’til the next episode in the ordeals of Captain Al Cohol, the hapless nomad of the high north.”

  The episode was followed by the usual warning that alcohol can make you a different man, and that once hooked on liquor it was a hard habit to break. Like God, Henry thought, surprised by his own irreverence.

  “So if you can’t help yourself, call on someone who can, Alcohol Education, Government of the Northwest Territories, NWT.”

  Henry switched off the radio but continued to sit by the window, searching the heavens from time to time, a Bible open on his lap.

  By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

  We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

  For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

  How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

  It was past one A.M. when he saw a dot in the distance. Gradually it sprouted wings, it grew a tail, both with blinking red lights attached. Lowering, it bounced in the wind, the wings fluttering. The Otter finally circled the bay—swinging out—banking—seemingly consumed by the blazing sun before it was miraculously there again, sinking, settling into the freezing water, kicking up skirts of spray.

  Henry Gursky slipped into his parka and mukluks and started for the dock, wheeling a porter’s cart before him. Henry, in his early forties, was a sinewy man with an inky black beard and long dancing sidecurls; he was knobby, with a gleeful face. Solomon’s face. A knitted yarmulke was fastened like a stopper to his thin black hair. He waved at the settlement children and the hunters who had already gathered in the bay, happy for a diversion. Two grey seals, freshly killed, lay gleaming on the rocks, their eyeballs torn out, the sockets bleeding, festooned with black flies already feasting there.

  The pilot, new to North of Sixty, had heard enough gossip in The Gold Range Bar in Yellowknife to inquire after the settlement nurse. “Tell her I have a surprise for her,” he said.

  Henry greeted the pilot with a smile. “Baroch ha’bo,” he called out.

  Squinting, suspicious, the pilot demanded, “What’s that mean?”

  “Translated loosely it means ‘blessed be the
arrival.’”

  “You must be Gursky.”

  “Indeed I am. Did you bring it?”

  “You bet.”

  It was the familiar zinc half-trunk, battered, but the locks intact.

  When the oil drillers of Inuvik, largely southern flotsam, had begun to move marijuana and even more lethal stuff through the territory, an alert RCMP corporal, unfamiliar with Henry, had asked him, his manner correct but firm, to unlock the half-trunk right there. Henry had obliged and the corporal, probing the contents, peering quizzically at the bill of lading, had shaken his head, incredulous.

  “I never expected to find a Jew in such rough country,” the pilot said.

  “We’re an astonishing people. Dandelions, my father used to say. Dig us out here and riding the wind and the rain we take root there. Any mail for me?”

  There was a copy of Newsweek, a pensive John Dean filling the cover; two back issues of The Beaver; a quarterly report from James McTavish Distillers Ltd. and a cheque for $2,114,626.17; a gun catalogue from Abercrombie & Fitch; a copy of The Moshiach (or Messiah) Times for Isaac; a letter from the Rebbe at 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn; another letter from the Crédit-Suisse; a parcel of books from Hatchards, but not a word from his sister Lucy in London nor from Moses Berger.