Solomon Gursky Was Here

by Mordecai Richler

  Spring it was, the earth moist and fragrant, rhododendrons and azaleas in blossom.

  Ephraim never saw Mrs. Nicholson again, or laid eyes on his son, the first of what would become twenty-seven unacknowledged offspring, not all of them the same colour.

  Eight

  “What did you think, Olive?”

  “I’m not saying, because you’ll just point out a boo-boo and spoil this movie for me too.”

  As usual, they went to The Downtowner for a treat. Mrs. Jenkins gave him what she hoped was a piercing look. “I’ll bet you’ve had a wife stashed away somewhere all these years, Bert, with grown kids, and she’s finally tracked you down for back alimony payments.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “The shyster from Denby, Denby, Harrison and Latham who came to see you, what is it a month now? You still haven’t told me what he wanted.”

  “It was a case of mistaken identity.”

  “Don’t look now, Pinocchio, but your nose just grew another three inches.”

  “Mr. Hughes was looking for another Smith.”

  “Then how come you get all that mail from those lawyers and suddenly you keep a locked strongbox under your bed?”

  “You’ve been snooping.”

  “What are you going to do about it? Move out. Go ahead. Make my day. For all I know your name isn’t even Smith. Bert,” she said, covering his hand with her own, sticky with chocolate sauce, “if you’re wanted by the cops you can count on Olive, your only pal in this vale of tears.”

  “I’ve never broken a law in my life,” he said, sliding his hand free before anybody saw.

  “Hey,” she said, giggling, “what’s the difference between a lawyer and a rooster?”

  He didn’t want to know.

  “A rooster clucks defiance.”

  He didn’t even chuckle.

  “It’s a play on words, Bert. I’ll explain it to you, if you want.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Said the farmer’s daughter to the preacher.”

  Rattled, Smith paid both their bills for once and left a sixty-five cent tip in the saucer.

  “I think somebody’s ship has come in and he’s not telling.”

  Pleading a headache, Smith did not join her in the parlour that night to watch “Kojak”.

  “Somebody saw you come home in a taxi last Tuesday, but you got out at the corner so that Olive couldn’t see from her window.”

  “I was feeling dizzy.”

  “Bert, whenever you’re ready to spill the beans, I’ll be waiting. Meanwhile,” she sang, “I’ll tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Loyalty is my middle name. Let’s just hope it’s yours too, old buddy of mine.”

  The legacy, which Smith was told had been left to him by his late Uncle Arnold, who had died childless in Hove, had come to $228,725.00.

  “But I thought it was fifty thousand pounds,” Smith had said.

  “That was in 1948. It was invested on your behalf.” Trudging through the driving snow, Smith had taken the certified cheque right to the Royal Bank. Deposited it. Started home. Panicked. Hurried to the Westmount post office to rent a box. Then back to the bank to tell them no statements were to be mailed to his home address any more, but only to his P.O. number. He was back first thing in the morning to test things, drawing two hundred dollars in cash.

  Smith decided that he was too old to have his teeth fixed. He considered buying a Harris tweed jacket, some shirts that weren’t drip-dry, a pair of wingtip shoes, but Mrs. Jenkins would demand to know where the money had come from. Strolling through Eaton’s, he saw a small refrigerator that would do nicely for his room. He came across an electric kettle that would be a blessing. He could fix himself a cuppa whenever he felt the urge. Not Salada tea bags, either, but Twinings Darjeeling. No, he didn’t dare. Olive never missed a trick.

  “What do you make of Murph Heeney in number five, Bert?”

  Heeney, the new roomer next door to him, was a big bear of a man, hirsute, a carpenter, never without a bottle of Molson Export in his paw.

  “He’s not my type.”

  “Guessy guessy what I found under his bed? A stack of Playboys. Certain pages stuck together with his spunk.”

  Olive Jenkins turned Smith’s shirt collars. If he was feeling poorly she climbed the stairs to his room with beef tea made from an OXO cube. During the longest week of the month, the week before his pension cheque came, she had fed him bangers and mash or toad in the hole for supper. Well, now he could buy her a new colour TV or treat her to a movie and Murray’s for supper once a week. No. She’d smell a rat. “Where did you get the do re me, Bert?”

  All that money in the bank. He could visit the Old Country, see where his parents had come from. Lightheaded, he ventured into Thomas Cook & Sons and inquired about ships to England, astonished to discover that now only Polish or Russian liners sailed from Canada, which would never do. But the insolent young clerk, his look saying you just stepped in here to get warm, you old fart, still stood before him, reeking of pansy aftershave, brandishing ship plans with cabin locations, quoting fares.

  “Would that include meals?” Smith asked.

  The clerk, cupping a hand to his mouth, failed to squelch his laughter.

  “I suppose you own this establishment,” Smith said, fleeing.

  Smith continued to draw two hundred dollars a week from his account. He stashed what he didn’t spend, which was most of it, in a hiding place that he had prepared by sawing through a floorboard one night. He took to treating himself to solitary lunches at Murray’s, requesting a table in the rear, but even so he started whenever the door swung open. Most afternoons he stopped at Laura Secord’s for a half-pound of cashews or chocolates, and then he would move on to the lobby of the Mount Royal Hotel or Central Station, never going home until he had finished every last bit.

  “Where have you been all day, old buddy of mine?”

  “Looking at magazines in the library.”

  “What did you do for lunch?”

  “Did without.”

  Not according to her information.

  “As the vicar said to the rabbi’s wife, I think we ought to have a little chat.”

  She made tea. And when he sat down she spotted his new socks at once. Argyle. Knee length.

  “Bert, I want to know if you’re shop-lifting.”

  He was stunned.

  “If you’re short, Olive will see you through, but you must tell me if you’re in trouble.”

  He shook his head no, and started for his room. Mrs. Jenkins followed him to the foot of the stairs. “You never used to hold out on good old Olive.”

  “Maybe I’m not the only one who’s changed.”

  Once Smith had been the only one favoured with a special place in Mrs. Jenkins’s refrigerator, but now the shelf below his was crammed with bottles of Molson that rattled whenever the door opened or the engine started up. Saturday night TV with Olive, the two of them resting their tootsies, as she liked to say, sharing Kool-Aid and Twinkies, watching the Channel 12 movie, was now also a thing of the past. Olive no longer wore any old housecoat on Saturday nights, her hair in curlers. Now she was perfumed and girdled, Shirley Temple curls tumbling over her cheeks, wearing a candy-floss pink angora sweater a size too small and a green miniskirt, her fat legs sheathed in black fishnet stockings and her feet pinched into fluffy white slippers with baby-blue pom-poms. And it was “Hockey Night in Canada” on TV, the parlour stinking of spilt beer and pizza and White Owl cigars, Murph Heeney in attendance.

  “Hey, Olive, how am I gonna concentrate on the power play when you’re making me feel so horny?”

  Olive shrieked with laughter, squirting beer. “You’d better clean up your act, buddy, because after these messages.… Here comes Johnny! Whoops, I mean Bert, my loyalist pal in this tear of vales.”

  “Am I intruding?”

  “Naw,” Heene
y said. “Come on in and haunt the room for a while, Smitty, you old turkey you. Canadiens 3, Chicago 4, with eight minutes to go. Time is becoming a factor.”

  Smith fled to his room, scandalized, and the next morning he slipped out early for an Egg McMuffin breakfast at McDonald’s. Then, stepping out into the slush, he searched for a taxi. He waved off the first to slow down, because it was driven by a black man, but got into the next one.

  “Central Station, please.”

  “Hey, you know who once warmed their arses right where you’re sitting right now, mister? Nathan Gursky and his wife. Big bucks that. So I asked him for his philosophy of life. I collect them, you know. He says his old man taught him all men are brothers and his wife laughs so hard he turns red in the face. Guess where he’s going? Old Montreal. His shrink. How do I know? His wife says, ‘At those prices please don’t sit there for an hour saying nothing but um, ah, and er to Dr. Weinberg. Tell him the truth. Now it’s Lionel you’re afraid of.’ Imagine that. All those millions and he’s a sicko.”

  Smith bought yesterday’s Gazette at the newsstand and sought out a bench that wasn’t already laden with drug addicts. He dozed and then ate lunch at the Peking Gardens, indulging his one daring taste, an appetite for Chinese food. Then he wandered over to the Mount Royal Hotel and rested in the lobby. Next he drifted through Alexis Nihon Plaza, stopping for a Tab, and snoozing on a bench. Later he splurged on an early dinner at Curly Joe’s. Steak and french fried potatoes. Apple pie. Bloated, more than somewhat flatulent, he was back at Mrs. Jenkins’s house before eight, resolved to announce that he was moving out, but not before giving the two of them a piece of his mind.

  Murph Heeney was wearing a crêpe-paper party hat. “Surprise, surprise! We thought you’d never get here.”

  “Said the curate to the go-go dancer,” Olive shrieked, blowing on a noisemaker.

  Hooking him under the arms, they danced a shaken Smith into the parlour, where the table had been set for three.

  “For horse-doovers we got devilled eggs and then Yankee pot roast and chocolate cake with ice cream,” Heeney said, shoving a chalky-faced Smith into a chair.

  Smith managed to force an acceptable share of food down his gullet while Olive entertained Heeney.

  “This guy goes to the doctor he’s told he has to have his—his—” She stopped, censoring herself in deference to Smith, and continued, “—his penis amputated, he hits the roof …”

  Smith begged off coffee and struggled upstairs to his room. He wakened, his stomach churning, at three A.M., and raced to the toilet down the hall only to run into that hairy ape emerging in his BVDs. Heeney grabbed him by the arm, possibly to sustain his own uncertain balance. “I’d wait a while I was you,” he said, holding his nose.

  “Can’t,” Smith said, breaking free of Heeney’s grip.

  Four

  One

  1973. September. Pulling out of Wardour Street, gearing down with a gratifying roar, Terry tucked his battered MG into the carpark. Then he walked swiftly back to the Duke of Wellington, mindful of the plump grey skies for he was wearing his new suit, jacket nipped in just so at the waist, patch pockets, trousers slightly flared. They were all at the bar, waiting. Des, Nick, Bobby.

  “Hello, hello, hello.”

  “Saucy.”

  “Ta-ra, ta-ra!”

  A grinning Terry, dimples displayed to advantage, lifted the corners of his jacket and twirled about.

  “Oh, my dear,” Bobby exclaimed, quaking with pleasure, “the wonders wrought by Cecil Gee.”

  “Not bloody likely. Three hundred nicker it was. From Doug Hayward,” Terry announced, “tailor to the stars.”

  Des reached over to stroke the fabric; then, abruptly, his hand dropped to Terry’s groin, fat fingers fondling. “And what have we here?”

  “Forbidden fruit,” Terry said, slapping Des’s hand away as he leaped free.

  “Bespoke, you mean.”

  “Piss off, son.”

  Nick, anticipating trouble, slid between them.

  “Anybody seen Mother Foley?” Terry asked.

  “Not to worry, Terry. Foley will be here. Got time for a nosh?”

  “Not tonight, dear, I’ve got a headache.” Cunningly lifting a jacket sleeve, Terry revealed his magnificent bulky black wristwatch. The face showing absolutely nothing until he flicked a tiny knob and 7:31 lit up in computer-type numerals. “Ta-ra, ta-ra!”

  “Where’d you nick it?”

  “It’s not even on sale here yet. Lucy got it for me in New York.”

  Suddenly Foley loomed over them. Grey curls leaking out from under a broad-brimmed safari hat, wine turtleneck sweater, tie-dyed jeans. Terry slipped into the Gents’ after him.

  “You bring the bread, mon?”

  “Mañana. No fear.”

  Foley rubbed his purple jaw pensively.

  “Oh, come off it, luv. When have I ever let you down?”

  Foley handed it over. Terry, blowing him a kiss, danced back into the bar. “I’ve got time for one more.”

  “And where are you off to tonight?” Des asked. “Pray tell.”

  “Oh, maybe Annabel’s for a bit of the old filet mignon and some Dom P. Or possibly Les A. for a spot of chemmy.” Actually she had yet to take him anywhere that she might be recognized. Infuriating, that.

  “Shame on you, Terry, selling your body beautiful for such ephemeral trifles.”

  He reclaimed his MG, shooting into Hyde Park, emerging at the top of Sloane Street and cutting into Belgravia. He knew, without looking, that she would be waiting by the window of her mews flat, chain-smoking. So he took his own sweet time getting out of the car.

  Wearing a black silk shift, the sleeves necessarily long, Lucy opened the door before he could ring the bell. The thumb on her right hand was wrinkled as a walnut, all the moisture sucked out of it. She had tried bandaging it at night, but it didn’t work. She tore the bandage off in her sleep.

  Lucy’s large black eyes flickered with distress. Not quite forty-one, she looked older, possibly because she was so scrawny now. “The money’s on the hall table,” she said. Like he was the delivery boy from John Baily’s.

  “You haven’t said a word about my suit.”

  “Don’t tease me, Terry. Hand it over.”

  “Do you think the trousers are too snug?”

  “They advertise. Shall we leave it at that?” And she disappeared into the kitchen, slamming the door.

  Terry drifted into the bedroom, idly opening drawers. In the topmost drawer of her bedside table, a priceless antique no doubt, the surface pocked with cigarette burns, he found a half-finished Toblerone bar. More chocolates, these from Bendicks, were in the next drawer, as well as used tissues everywhere, rings he could risk saying the char had nicked. The next drawer yielded a bottle of Quaaludes. Other bottles. Uppers, downers. And a book, many pages dog-eared, passages underlined here and there. The Collected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. The book was inscribed in a tiny scrawl. “July 12,1956: To my darling Lucy, love, Moses.” Terry’s first impulse was to rip out the inscription and tear it into little pieces, but his instinct for self-preservation saved him. There were limits.

  “You’ve got it,” Lucy said, emerging from the kitchen, “haven’t you, and you’re teasing me?”

  “Sorry, luv.”

  “Get me a drink.”

  “Please.”

  “I wouldn’t go too far if I were you.”

  So he fetched her a Scotch. “Drink up. There’s a good girl. Now let’s go out and eat.”

  “I can’t go out like this. I need something right now.”

  “Ta-ra,” he sang out, leaping back as he flashed his envelope at her. “Ta-ra, ta-ra!”

  “Terry, please.”

  “I want to go to Les A.” Fending her off, he held tenaciously to the envelope. “Will you take me to Les A. for dinner?”

  “Yes. Why not?” she said, startling him.

  “Promise?”

  “Yes ye
s yes.”

  “All rightee, then.” Pulling her bodice away from her with a hooked finger, he rammed the envelope between her breasts. Then he stepped back, smirking, but smelling of fear. Lucy, beads of sweat sliding down her forehead, retreated to the bathroom. She trapped the little vein in her neck, pinching it between two fingers—it was either that or her tongue, the other veins had collapsed—and then she reached for the needle. When she came out again her manner was imperious. “Sit down, Terry.”

  He sat.

  “You were never the only hunk of meat dangling on the rack, my dear. If I shop around I daresay I can find a less expensive, more obliging cut.”

  Cunt. But he didn’t say it. He knew from experience that it would soon wear off, she would need more, and then she was the one who would be obliging. So he grinned, making an offering of his dimples. “Can’t you take a joke any more?”

  “A joke, yes. You, no.”

  “Aren’t we going to Les A. together? Like you promised.”

  “We’re not going anywhere together any more.” Relenting a little, she added, “Come on, Terry. Surely you knew it had to end sometime.”

  “All rightee, then. Okay, ducks.”

  Two

  Mr. Bernard died on a Monday, at the age of seventy-five, his body wasted. He lay in state for two days in the lobby of the Bernard Gursky Tower and, as he failed to rise on the third, he was duly buried. The family requested, unavailingly as it turned out, that instead of flowers donations should be sent to the Cancer Society. The flowers, some in the form of wreaths from sympathizers unfamiliar with Jewish ritual, were meticulously screened for compromising cards by a dutiful Harvey Schwartz. Most of them, Harvey was gratified to discover, came from celebrated people, achievers, names recognized beyond Montreal, around the world in fact, and this information he imparted to attendant newspapermen with his customary zeal.

  Happily, there were no embarrassments. Lucky Luciano was dead. So were Al Capone, Waxey Gordon, “Little Farfel” Kavolick, Longy Zwillman and Gurrah Shapiro. Other cronies from the halcyon days did not send flowers or, with the exception of Meyer Lansky, were sufficiently tactful not to comment in the press. Lansky, unforgiving, told the reporter who surprised him in Miami with the news of Mr. Bernard’s death, “Without Solomon that bastard would have ended his days like he started them. Sweeping up in a whorehouse.” But, pressed by the news agencies, Lansky refused to elaborate. He insisted that he had been misquoted.