Solomon Gursky Was Here

by Mordecai Richler

  “Oh, so that’s it,” Bunk said, relieved, “and I thought it was she was angry with me. She’s sure been awful quiet since yesterday.”

  The bar was crowded, most of the regulars celebrating the arrival of their welfare cheques, but Legion Hall and Sneaker were nowhere to be seen. “They’re hiding somewhere in the hills,” Strawberry said.

  Only a week earlier Legion Hall and Sneaker had set up a stall on the 243 piled high with quart cans, ostensibly filled with maple syrup. A placard nailed to the stall read:

  HELP ANGLO FARMIRS

  LAST OF A DYING BREDE.

  They moved two hundred cans and skedaddled before any of their customers could discover that the cans were actually filled with a mixture of used motor oil and water, and now the provincial police were out making inquiries.

  Moses sat staring at the salmon fly he had set out on the table. His Silver Doctor. After all his years on the rivers it finally struck him that he wasn’t the angler but the salmon. A teasing, gleeful Solomon casting the flies over his head, getting him to roll, rise, and dance on his tail at will. Sea-bright Moses was when he first took the hook, but no more than a black salmon now, ice-bound in a dark river, the open sea closed to him.

  Retrieving the fly, Moses returned to his cabin. Once dead by air, once by water, and now, Moses assumed, pacing, a shot of Macallan in hand, and now truly dead. If Solomon were still alive, he would be eighty-four years old, hardly impossible. But since he had last surfaced in Nairobi, Moses had heard from him only once. A telegram sent from Hanoi, in 1978, in response to a memoir Moses had published in Encounter about the group that had once gathered round the table with the crocheted tablecloth.

  LOOK AT IT THIS WAY. THE SYSTEM WAS INSPIRED, BUT IT IS MAN THAT IS VILE. IT WON’T WORK. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. THE MANIFESTO. THE WORLD CONTINUES TO PAY A PUNISHING TOLL FOR OUR JEWISH DREAMERS.

  Solomon, Moses suspected, didn’t die of old age, but in the Gulag or a stadium in Latin America. Wherever, the ravens would have gathered.

  Dead, Moses. Extinct. You knew that back in 1980, the first year masses of red roses did not bedeck the grave of Diana McClure on the anniversary of her death. So the black salmon is now obliged to sit down, sort things out, and write Solomon’s tale or what he knew of it. Or to risk the open sea, swimming out of his Gursky mausoleum never to return.

  Problems.

  “Hello there, Beatrice. Guess who? Yes. It’s your favourite barrel of fun, Moses Berger. If you’ll give up that oaf, I’ll swear off drinking for life and take you to London myself.”

  Moses glanced at the portrait of L.B., contemplating the cosmos, enduring its weight, and turned away, surprised by tears. He freshened his drink. Then, badly in need of distraction, flicked on the TV, knowing it was time for Sam Burns to pronounce on PBS. Worrying about Lech Walesa. Disgusted by the massacre of the Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila. Instead there was an interview with the selfsatisfied thug himself. Defence Minister Arik Sharon, and Moses switched off the TV impatiently.

  Happily Henry hadn’t lived to learn of the raids on the refugee camps, winked at by the party in power in the country that was to be a beacon unto the nations. Neither did he live to see the end of the world or to discover that if God did intend to punish us for our transgressions, we would fry rather than freeze, victims of the greenhouse effect. Once more he resolved to visit Nialie in the spring, possibly for Passover, and pardoned himself for not contacting Isaac, an abomination to him.

  Moses lit a Monte Cristo, broke open a fresh bottle of Macallan, thrust Solomon’s journals aside, and turned to his latest file of Gursky clippings. The family battle for control of Mr. Bernard’s little cabbage patch was heating up, growing increasingly acrimonious. Competing appeals to shareholders appeared in full page ads in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal among other places.

  Savvy investment analysts had long predicted that McTavish, given its under-valued assets but uninspired management, its vulnerability through sometimes ill-conceived diversification, was ripe for a hostile takeover bid that would wrest control from the family. What they had not anticipated was that it would be the Gurskys themselves who would be locked in a quarrel over the spoils. A dispute that became public knowledge after Isaac Gursky reached the age of majority, acquiring the shares that had been left in trust for him by his father. While these shares of themselves were not of intimidating consequence, and Isaac was considered a mere scratch player in the unfolding struggle, he began to attract attention once it was discovered that he was a protégé of the shy, self-effacing man the press had dubbed the Gursky jackdaw. The surprising Mr. Morrie who had been surreptitiously accumulating McTavish shares for years, parking them as far away as Tokyo.

  Mr. Morrie, ensconced in a suite in the Sherry-Netherlands, was quickly established as a sentimental favourite of the press. He was, after all, the last survivor of the founding brothers. An observant reporter from Money noted the moist eyes and trembling hands when Mr. Morrie, whom he described as the Gursky leprechaun, read a statement aloud:

  “It pains me, in my old age, to see the children and grandchildren fighting tooth and nail over the business my genius of a brother Bernard built with a little help from me and Solomon who died so young. There is more than enough money for all concerned. Nothing would delight me more than to have everybody meet with me to settle this embarrassing family feud in private. After all, we are a family. All I am asking for is seats on the board for my son Barney and my nephew Isaac. Lionel, bless him, is welcome to stay on at McTavish, though not necessarily as CEO. It is my fondest hope that he will come to realize that blood is thicker than water.”

  Lionel would have none of it. Heavily favoured in the betting if only because he was the CEO in place, he held the bulk of his late father’s shares and was supported by his brother, Nathan, his sister, Anita, and, he claimed, his cousin Lucy, the Broadway producer. Lucy, barricaded in her apartment in the Dakota, refused to talk to reporters, but, according to informed reports, she so detested her nephew Isaac that she was willing to overlook an old family feud and throw in her lot with Lionel. Her shares, it was rumoured, might be sufficient to tip the balance either way.

  Then an imponderable factor came into play. The shadowy Corvus Trust of Zurich. A spokesman for Corvus, custodians of 4.2 percent of the McTavish shares, only aroused suspicions by declaring that they were “friendly buyers, potential white knights, not hostile bidders.”

  Moses, following the struggle from his cabin, read of platoons of fabulously expensive lawyers, who were pelting the courts with charges and counter-charges; merchant bankers and brokerage houses at risk on both sides; and uncommitted raiders and greenmail enthusiasts circling the fray, ready to pounce.

  Journalists rejoiced in what was undoubtedly the juiciest family feud in years, billions at stake.

  Isaac babbled to one and all about his movie-making plans and Barney was turning up on talk-shows everywhere, gabbing about his future plans for McTavish, including a bid for a major league baseball franchise and a scheme to tow icebergs from the Arctic to the Middle East.

  Responding to a tip, a New York Post reporter located a selfproclaimed former mistress of Barney’s, the now disconcertingly plump, even matronly Darlene. This led to titillating photographs and a full-blown interview in Penthouse. Darlene wore her ankh ring for the occasion. “It’s Egyptian,” she explained, “and symbolizes life. Most Wiccans wear it with the point facing out to protect themselves against negative forces, but I’ve got a strong psychic shield. I wear it with the point inward.” She said that she had been a witch since Camelot. “You know, King Arthur’s time. I’m reincarnated every seven generations. I’m part Jew, part Mohawk, and part Seventh Day Adventurer. And did I tell you that I was once a good Jewish mother, you know, when I saw the Crucifixion? It was very, very moving.”

  The interviewer pointed out that Barney had denied that they had ever been lovers.

  “Uh huh,” she said, unsnapping the locke
t lying against her throat, “then how come I still got this?”

  Purportedly a lock of Barney’s pubic hair.

  “In those bygone days he was very romantic and one night in the Ramada Inn we exchanged locks of pubic hair as a symbol of our enduring love ha, ha, ha. If you doubt my word I challenge you to have these hairs scientifically tested.”

  The cover of New York showed Isaac flying through the air over the McTavish building on Fifth Avenue in a red and blue Captain Al Cohol uniform, a yarmulke fastened to his hair with a paperclip.

  Predictably even the National Enquirer got into the act, stung with a $200-million libel suit as a consequence. The Enquirer featured a front-page photograph of Isaac emerging from the rescue helicopter at Yellowknife airport.

  THE CANNIBAL WHO WOULD BE A CROWN PRINCE.

  Other, more fastidious publications obviously decided to eschew the Gursky family feud. An indignant Lionel discovered that Art & Antiques had temporarily postponed a photo essay on his collection of early North American banknotes. His wife took to her bed, seething, when Town & Country cancelled its piece on “Those Glittering Gurskys”, which was to include a double-page Avedon photograph of Cheryl in her music room. “Dress: Arnold Scaasi. At Saks Fifth Avenue; Sara Fredericks, Palm Beach. Hosiery, Geoffrey Beene. Shoes, Stuart Weitzman. Makeup by Antonio Da Costa Rocha, New York. Asprey of London jewels.”

  An ailing Libby summoned Lionel to the family mansion in Westmount.

  “Your father once told me that on Solomon’s last night in Montreal, just before he flew off in that Gypsy Moth, he warned him that if anybody tried to diddle Henry or Lucy out of their shares he would come back from the grave if necessary and my Bernie was finished. A dead man.”

  “Daddy died of cancer, remember?” Lionel asked, dismissing his mother’s foolish apprehensions.

  “I remember it like yesterday. But who put that dead raven on his grave is what I’d like to know.”

  Back in New York, Lionel sent for Harvey Schwartz.

  “There’s a story I want to read in the columns, but it wouldn’t look good coming from me. I have it on the most reliable authority that Isaac suffers from delusions about being the Messiah. Moses plus one or some shit like that. Maybe the little prick was zonked out of his head, but that’s what he told a bunch he took to dinner at the Odeon last night. I want to scare all the little guys out there who are wondering what to do with their proxies. I want to read about this in Liz Smith tomorrow. Understand?”

  “Lionel, this is difficult for me to say, but I have decided it doesn’t behoove me to take any further part in what is essentially a family quarrel.”

  “How much did Morrie offer you for your piddly pile of shares, you little runt?”

  “Mr. Morrie is a great human being. I say that not because he has been kind to me since I was a youngster, but from the heart. However, I will not take his side in this matter either.”

  Then things began to crumble.

  A spokesman for Corvus Trust declared that they had decided to cast their lot with a new management for McTavish, the next CEO, possibly an outsider, to be selected by a triad of three generations of Gurskys: Morrie, Barney, and Isaac.

  Next Mr. Morrie went to the Dakota to talk to Lucy, who was irrevocably opposed to his takeover, according to most observers. That afternoon Lucy’s Broadway office released a surprising statement. Barney and Isaac Gursky would be joining her board. In the future, LG Productions, shortly to become a division of McTavish Industries, would be mounting film as well as stage productions. Lucy, who had taken to her bed, was unavailable to answer questions herself.

  Mr. Bernard’s portrait was removed from the outer office of the McTavish building on Fifth Avenue and in its place went the drawing of Ephraim Gursky, all coiled muscle, obviously ready to spring out of the frame and wrestle anybody to the ground. Ephraim was drawn alongside a blow-hole, with both feet planted in the pack ice, his expression defiant, his head hooded, his body covered with layers of sealskin, not so much to keep out the cold, it seemed, as to lock in the animal heat lest it melt the surrounding ice. He held a harpoon in his fist, the shaft made of caribou antler. There was a seal lying at his feet, the three masts of the doomed Erebus and jagged icebergs rising in the background, the black Arctic sky lit by paraselanae, the mock-moons of the north.

  An uncommonly serene Mr. Morrie announced his retirement from his estate in Ste.-Adèle.

  “Barney and Isaac don’t need any old fogies in the office, but if they want some bad advice they always know where to find me, those two outstanding young men.”

  Asking the reporters to wait, Mr. Morrie slipped into the house, opened his wall safe, and removed a set of keys that lay on a large brown envelope, addressed to MISS O., PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL. Then he invited the reporters into his wood workshop.

  “This is my new office, ladies and gentlemen. Anybody needs a nicely made table, a bookcase maybe, I’m accepting orders starting right now. Free estimates on request.”

  AUTUMN. The season of the sodden partridges, drunk from pecking at fallen, fermented crab apples. Moses, in need of fresh air, dropped his empty Macallan bottle into a wastepaper basket and drifted outside. Raking leaves, he wondered what Solomon would have made of all of it.

  One of the journals Solomon had sent Moses some years back had come with a typically irritating note:

  “I once told you that you were no more than a figment of my imagination. Therefore, if you continued to exist, so must I.”

  But he’s dead, Moses thought, even as the sky above was filled with a sudden roaring, Moses ducking involuntarily, an airplane passing low enough overhead to clip the treetops. Straightening up, his balance uncertain, Moses couldn’t find the airplane anywhere. Then it was back. A black Gypsy Moth wagging its wings at him. It made another pass at the cabin, wagging its wings again. Then, as Moses watched, it began to climb. He knew where it was going.

  North.

  Where north?

  Far.

  Watching the Gypsy Moth climb, Moses believed that he saw it turn into a big menacing black bird, the likes of which hadn’t been seen over Lake Memphremagog since the record cold spell of 1851. A raven with flapping wings. A raven with an unquenchable itch to meddle and provoke things, to play tricks on the world and its creatures. He watched the bird soar higher and higher, until he lost it in the sun.

  Author’s Note

  Years ago, following the publication of another novel, a television interviewer asked me, “Is this book based on fact, or did you just make it up out of your own head?”

  I made the Gurskys up out of my own head, but I did not invent everything in Solomon Gursky Was Here. I dug deeply into Franklin, M’Clure, Back, Richardson and the rest on the doomed expedition to circumnavigate the globe through the Northwest Passage, putting my own spin on events. Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition, by Owen Beattie and John Geiger, struck me as the most original of recent studies. I am indebted to The Raven Steals the Light, by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst, for the Haida myths. I found The Victorian Underworld, by Kellow Chesney, indispensable in my attempt to recreate nineteenth-century London. I have leaned heavily on James H. Gray’s Red Lights on the Prairie and Booze for western history, and on Bernard Epps’ More Tales of the Townships. I am also grateful to Christopher Dafoe, editor of The Beaver, for going through his files for me.

  I should also come clean and admit that Captain Al Cohol is not my invention. He was conceived by Art Sorensen, then with the NWT Alcohol Education Program, and the radio scripts I have quoted from are by E.G. Perrault.

  Finally, I would like to acknowledge the help of my wife. Over the years, Florence had to endure this novel in many drafts. Without her encouragement, not to mention crucial editorial suggestions, I would have given up on Solomon Gursky Was Here long ago.

  Mordecai Richler