Solomon Gursky Was Here

by Mordecai Richler

  Fat Charley Lin rode to the funeral in a rented Rolls-Royce, passing out scented cards for his trendy Toronto restaurant, the House of Lin, to all comers. Stu MacIntyre, the former minister of justice, was also there, amused to see the son of the late Judge Gaston Leclerc in attendance. André Leclerc, who was in charge of public relations for McTavish in Europe, was rooted in Paris, but also, appropriately enough, maintained a château on the Loire. And just as Callaghan had anticipated, Bert Smith showed up to see Mr. Bernard buried.

  “Mr. Smith?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Tim Callaghan. Remember me?”

  “I remember you.”

  “Yes. I thought you would. Well, he’s dead. It’s over now.”

  “Over? It’s not over. It’s just begun. Now he will have to face a Judge that he can’t subvert.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

  “It’s the only way of looking at it.”

  “I would like to talk to you, Bert.”

  “Call my secretary for an appointment.”

  “We’re old men now, Bert, both of us. I would be grateful if we could go somewhere and talk.”

  “About the good old days?”

  “I know how you feel, Bert.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Let’s talk.”

  The newspapers noted that Mr. Bernard, who began his life with nothing, was born in a sod hut on the prairie. The son of a peddler, Aaron Gursky , he owned his first hotel at the age of twenty-one and lived to preside over a distillery with estimated annual sales of more than a billion in fifteen different countries. Reporters observed that some two thousand mourners filed past Mr. Bernard’s coffin. Among them were federal and provincial cabinet ministers, American senators, the Israeli ambassador, and numerous business leaders. The rabbi, in his eulogy, ventured “that Mr. Bernard Gursky’s deeds would survive him locally, nationally and internationally at home and abroad. He was as good at giving away money as he was at making it. Though he supped with kings and presidents, he could also walk humbly with ordinary people, regardless of race, colour or creed. His sense of compassion was personal. We have lost a legend in our time, a man of world renown.”

  Obituaries the world over emphasized Mr. Bernard’s generosity, his legitimate claim to being a latter-day philanthropist. They made no mention of his brother Solomon, the notorious Solomon, and mercifully downplayed the Prohibition years.

  Harvey, his mood expansive, his shoes new, handled his own interviews with surprising élan. He was grateful that no embittered employee—say old Tim Callaghan—surfaced with the most compromising story of his long tenure with Mr. Bernard. The day the merchant bankers of London were flown in for lunch in the Gursky boardroom to celebrate their underwriting of a five-hundredmillion-dollar line of credit that would enable Mr. Bernard to acquire the McEwen Bros. & Ross Distillery in the Scottish highlands. The day that lived in infamy in Harvey’s head, still polluting his dreams.

  Mr. Bernard, intimidated for once, was determined that those establishment bankers, including one lord and two knights, would not wink at each other behind his back, putting him down for a reformed ghetto thug. He had gone over the menu endlessly and put on and discarded three suits before he settled on the charcoal grey, with the surprising help of a charming, disconcertingly pretty new receptionist. The young lady actually whistled as he passed, obliging a startled Mr. Bernard to stop and stare.

  “It makes you look very distingué,” she said. “Like you were on your way to Windsor Castle.”

  “What’s your name, young lady?”

  “Why it’s Kathleen O’Brien, Mr. B.”

  Nobody called him that. He enjoyed the mischief in it. He chuckled. “Can you type?” he asked.

  “Like the wind,” she said. “I can also take shorthand, speak French fluently, and shoot a mean game of snooker.”

  “But do you know enough not to repeat what you hear?”

  “Try me, Mr. B.”

  Transferred to his office for a trial run a week before the bankers’ lunch she teased him into exchanging his diamond-studded, initialled cuff-links for something more subdued, and even managed to talk him out of his black silk socks. “Only for Hungarians of questionable origin,” she said.

  Rehearsing him for lunch, Miss O’Brien slapped his hand when he picked up a fork in his accustomed manner. “No, no, Mr. B. Like this.”

  “But you’d have to be a real horse’s ass to hold your fork upside down.”

  “Ours is not to reason why, Mr. B. It’s comme il faut.”

  With the bankers’ lunch only two days away, Mr. Bernard began to pace his office frantically, his sinuses blocked, his stomach knotted, wishing that he had just a fraction of Solomon’s style, Solomon’s wit. The day of the luncheon he hollered at his underlings all morning, throwing ashtrays, kicking wastepaper baskets, chasing secretaries down the hall, lashing them with obscenities. Morrie, a born nosepicker, was banned from the building. In fact with the exception of Mr. Bernard’s own sons and Harvey, whom he needed, only the gentile executives of McTavish were invited to meet the bankers. Even at that Mr. Bernard agonized over the invitation list into the early hours of the morning, crossing out a name, reinstating it, crossing it out again.

  To begin with, everything had gone amazingly well, the bankers drawn to the compelling drawing of a radiant Ephraim Gursky that hung in a gold frame over the fireplace. “Of course you know,” Mr. Bernard said, “we are hardly newcomers to this great land of opportunity. My grandfather first set foot in Canada in 1846. That’s the young fellow you’re looking at. Ephraim Gursky at age twentynine. He came over looking for the Northwest Passage. Shall we dine now, gentlemen.”

  Only a grieving Harvey Schwartz could tell that Mr. Bernard—his speech numbingly formal, Emily Post perfect—was under a terrible strain; and he knew from experience what kind of eruption that could lead to. Then, just as the bankers were sitting down to the table, Harvey pulling out Mr. Bernard’s chair for him, Mr. Bernard relaxed prematurely. He let out a fart. A thundering fart. In the ensuing silence which seemed to last a decade for Harvey, but was actually a matter of seconds, Mr. Bernard, his eyes bulging, glared at Harvey.

  “I’m—I’m—so sorry,” an ashen-faced Harvey stammered. “Been up all night—upset stomach—something I ate—sorry sorry—excuse me, gentlemen.” And he rushed off to his own toilet, where he slid to the floor, blinded by tears, quaking and raging and banging his head against the wall, trying to assuage his humiliation by quickly calculating the street value of his shares in Acorn and his McTavish stock options.

  Harvey had not returned to the boardroom, but had fled the Gursky Tower, retreating to his bed for three days, pleading a migraine.

  Now there was trouble of another kind. Only a day after Mr. Bernard was buried in the Temple Mount Sinai cemetery, his grave was desecrated. Fortunately, it was not the immediate family but Harvey who was contacted at once and hastened to the cemetery, uncomprehending but charged with concern by what he found there. A raven skewered and harpooned to the grave.

  Harvey, his stomach churning, pressed a hundred-dollar bill into the cemetery custodian’s hand. He swore the old man to secrecy, established an immediate twenty-four-hour vigil at the graveside, and took his discovery to Walter Osgood, the former museum curator who ran the Gursky Art Foundation.

  Osgood, a portly Englishman, troubled by dandruff and halitosis, sported a bushy moustache; he had mocking blue eyes and a manner that Harvey found decidedly condescending for—as he put it— somebody who would never be anything more than a fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year prick. Aside from guiding the Gurskys in the acquisition of masters traditional and modern on the world market, Osgood also pronounced on literary matters in the Saturday edition of the Montreal Star. His widely read column, “The Bookworm’s Turn,” was larded with Latin quotations as were his frequent lectures to the St. James’s Literary Society and the Pen Club, some of which were delivered
in his apartment or atelier as he preferred, which was on the second floor of a converted warehouse in Old Montreal. He shared his atelier with a lady whom he was fond of introducing as his inamorata. “Seulement,” he once confided to Becky, “pour épater les bourgeois.”

  “Good for you,” she had replied, squeezing his hand.

  Osgood, bulging out of his safari suit, suppressed amazement when Harvey burst into his office and slammed his burden down on his desk. The raven, Osgood said unequivocally, was rara avis indeed in Montreal, its natural habitat being the north. It was, of course, the royal bird. A raven croaked the warning of a royal death in Macbeth. The raven, he added, was consecrated to the Danish war god. Then, scrutinizing the harpoon, the shaft fashioned of caribou antler, the head made entirely of bear bone, the thong of bearded sealskin, he declared it to be clearly an Eskimo artifact, probably Netsilik in origin, but of a type that hadn’t been in use for a good many years. “Bloody valuable I should think. Where did you get it, old boy?”

  “That’s of no importance,” Harvey replied brusquely, “but you see this here,” he said, indicating a symbol carved into the shank of the weapon, “that’s a ‘gimel’.”

  Osgood, his slack facial skin splotchy at the best of times, reddened perceptibly. “I do beg your pardon,” he said, rising slowly, “but I must micturate.”

  “What?”

  “Pee pee.”

  Osgood rested briefly on the toilet seat, his head bobbing between his knees. Then he splashed his face with cold water and reached into the medicine cabinet for the little packet and his tiny silver spoon, snorting deeply before he confronted Harvey again. “You were saying …”

  “This is a ‘gimel’. A Hebrew letter, Walt,” Harvey added, as he knew Osgood found the diminutive offensive.

  “Yes, yes, the third letter of the Hebraic alphabet. But that’s impossible, old boy. It’s simply not on. It may appear to be a ‘gimel’ to the uninformed eye, but it’s the maker’s sign, actually. And the maker, beyond a doubt, was an Eskimo or, more properly, an Inuit. Eskimo, don’t you know, is an Indian word that means ‘eater of raw meat’. It’s pejorative.” Osgood grinned. “Like kike, to take a random example,” he said, reaching for the harpoon.

  Harvey snatched it back from him. “I think I’ll hold on to this, if you don’t mind?”

  “Oh, Harvey, just a minute. I’ve had my amanuensis transcribe my notes for the up-and-coming souk in London. The Sotheby auction. Would you care for a copy?”

  “Yes. You do that.”

  “Harvey, um, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but you’ve changed. You seem taller now that—”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Walt.”

  Once back on the forty-first floor of the Bernard Gursky Tower, Harvey, all things considered, was not surprised to find Miss O’Brien lying in wait for him in Mr. Bernard’s office. Into the Scotch again, the bottle open on the desk. Loch Edmond’s Mist, Gursky’s twelveyear-old malt. The best. She was drinking it neat.

  “Will you join me in a farewell salute, Mr. Schwartz?”

  Years ago he had asked her to please call him Harvey, but she had turned him down. “I prefer to call you Mr. Schwartz.” Years ago she had only to sail down the hall on those long slender legs, auburn hair flowing, a crucifix nestled maddeningly between her breasts, for every man’s head to turn. Just about everybody in the office, but certainly not Harvey, had tried it on with her at least once, learning no more than that she was an expensive tease. She would drink with them at The Lantern, her manner silky, and sometimes even agree to an intimate dinner at the Café Martin, but nobody ever got into her apartment on Mountain Street.

  Miss O’Brien, Harvey had to allow, had certainly kept her figure, but she no longer turned any heads. Look at her neck. Her hands. “Why ‘farewell’?” he asked, relieved.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “You’re family, Miss O’Brien.”

  “Neither of us is family. I never made that mistake, Mr. Schwartz. Don’t you.”

  Bristling because she had the effrontery, that whore, to suggest that they had ever been in the same boat, he smiled tightly and said, “I’d expect you to take a computer course. We all have to keep up with the times. But you’re always welcome here. A lady with your proven talents.”

  “He used to say I’ll bet Harvey is peeking through the keyhole. Did you, Mr. Schwartz?”

  “Meanwhile I have some good news for you. You were remembered in Mr. Bernard’s will. A bequest. Twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Let’s not drag this out unnecessarily, Mr. Schwartz. I’ve come for the envelope he left in the safe.”

  Harvey opened Mr. Bernard’s top desk drawer, plucked a file from it, and thrust it at her. “Here, if you are interested, is a list of the complete contents of his safe, properly notarized.”

  “And were you there when the safe was opened, Mr. Schwartz?”

  “There was no envelope addressed to you.”

  “Mr. Bernard wouldn’t lie to me about a thing like that. I’m fifty-three years old now, Mr. Schwartz.”

  “Time flies.”

  “Mr. Bernard was right about you. You are a little runt. Goodbye for now.”

  For now. After she had gone, Harvey brooded over the implied threat, weighing the possible consequences, when he was startled by the ghostly clack of snooker balls. The door to the billiards room was open. Harvey approached it cautiously, but smiled broadly when it turned out that it was only the pathetic Morrie in there. Mr. Morrie in a mood to reminisce.

  “Did you know, Harvey, that I was shot at twice? I’m talking about the old days when hijacking was our biggest headache. The second time I was shot I soiled my pants. Bernie used to tease me about it something awful until Solomon found out. He grabbed Bernie and shoved him into the cab of the first truck in the next convoy out and that, boychick, was when ‘Nigger Joe’ Lebovitz and Hymie Paul, the Little Navy guys, were really catching it from the Purple Gang. Bernie was shaking like a leaf. A truck backfired and he hit the floor. So he never mentioned my embarrassment to me again.” Mr. Morrie paused to chalk his cue and then lined up a tricky shot. He failed to make it. “Hey, you know what I wanted when I was a young fella? To own a bar. Morrie’s. A nice, classy joint in a refined neighbourhood. Panelled walls. Old wood. Local artists could hang their pictures I wouldn’t charge a cent commission. I wouldn’t put pretzels or driedout peanuts on the bar, but at six o’clock, bowls of freshly chopped liver. Devilled eggs. Spicy little sausages. I would cash personal cheques. You had a problem I’d be a good listener. That Morrie, they’d say, he’s some sweet guy. He pours you a drink it’s a drink.”

  “Of course you realize,” Harvey said, trying not to show his distress, “that you couldn’t do that now.”

  “It wouldn’t be dignified.”

  “No.”

  “I’m Bernard Gursky’s sole surviving brother.”

  “So, boychick, how do you think you will rate with the new generation? The homogenized Gurskys. My brother’s children.”

  So that was it. Morrie must have heard that he was to be dismissed from the board, the first decision of the new CEO at McTavish. “Lionel and I couldn’t be closer if we were brothers. Ask anybody.”

  “You know what my poor brother really wanted he never got. What he wanted was to be accepted, really really accepted by them. Maybe to be appointed an ambassador. Like Joe Kennedy. Come to think of it, we didn’t do any worse. How do you figure it, Harvey?”

  “By any standard you can think of Mr. Bernard was a great human being. A giant.”

  “You’re such a smart fella, Harvey. Really you are. I’ve always admired you for that.”

  “I sincerely appreciate the compliment.”

  “But what did you do with the envelope?”

  “There was no envelope. I can bring witnesses to support that statement.”

  “Bernie assured me that he was making provision for Miss O.”

  “I swear there was no envelope. E
ither he forgot or he was lying to her. With all due respect, he could be hard, you know. Look how he was to you for so many years.”

  “You think he didn’t talk to me for all that time? Oy Harvey, when we were alone you know what? Some afternoons those last weeks he was still coming into the office he would lock the door to this room, raid the fridge for Popsicles, take out the cards, and we would get down on our hands and knees, playing nearest-to-the-wall, just like when we were kids. Tears came easily to him, you must know that, but in the last months there was no turning off the tap. Solomon, forgive me, Solomon. The truth is only Bernie could have made us so incredibly rich. I was obviously too dumb and Solomon would have destroyed McTavish just like he destroyed everything and everybody he touched. Lansky shouldn’t have said what he did. Solomon was a bandit. Guns. Whores. Runs across the river. Prohibition was made for him. Only Bernie could have built what we are sitting on now. But, you know, toward the end it was the early days that obsessed him. He told Miss O. plenty.”

  “Who would listen to such an embittered old maid?”

  Mr. Morrie chalked up his cue again and sank a red ball in a side pocket. “Moses Berger, maybe.”

  Harvey began to pace. Should he ask Morrie about the harpoon, the raven? Naw, Morrie was teetering on the cliff edge of senility. Popsicles. Nearest-to-the-wall. Imagine. “There was no envelope.” Harvey’s eyes filled with tears. “But maybe I should find an envelope and fill it with plenty.”

  “You’re such a clever fellow, Harvey. You think of everything.”

  The next morning Harvey asked his secretary to find out where that flunk Moses Berger was hiding out these days. There was no answer in his cabin in the Townships. Harvey supplied his secretary with a list of bars.