So I decided to infiltrate the Jewish establishment, set on qualifying as a pillar or at least a cornice. For openers, I volunteered to work as a fund-raiser for United Jewish Appeal, which explains how late one afternoon I actually found myself sitting in the office of a suspicious but hot-to-trot clothing manufacturer. Certainly I had come to the right place. A Man-of-the-Year plaque hung on the wall behind tubby, good-natured Irv Nussbaum’s desk. So did a pair of bronzed baby shoes. There was an inscribed photograph of Golda Meir. In another photograph Irv was shown presenting a Doctor of Letters scroll to Mr. Bernard Gursky on behalf of the Friends of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. A model of an eighteen-foot yacht that Irv maintained in Florida was mounted on a pedestal: the good ship Queen Esther, after Irv’s wife, not the biblical Miss Persia. And photographs of Irv’s obnoxious children were here, there, and everywhere. “You’re kind of young for this,” said Irv. “Usually our fund-raisers are, well, you know, more mature men.”
“A guy can’t be too young to want to do his bit for Israel.”
“Care for a drink?”
“A Coke would be nice. Or a soda water.”
“How about a Scotch?”
“Darn it. It’s too early in the day for me, but you go right ahead, please.”
Irv grinned. Obviously, contrary to reports, I wasn’t a boozer. I had passed a test. So now I submitted to a crash course of dos and don’ts.
“I’m going to trust you with just a few cards to begin with,” said Irv. “But listen up. Rules of the game. You must never visit your target in his office, where he is king shit and you’re just another shmuck looking for a handout. If you run into him in the synagogue, you can butter him up with Israel’s needs, but it’s no good putting the touch on him there. Bad taste. Money-changers in the temple. Use the phone to schedule a meeting, but the time of day you get together is of the utmost importance. Breakfasts are out, because maybe his wife wouldn’t let him bang her last night, or he didn’t sleep because of heartburn. The ideal time is lunch. Pick a small restaurant. Tables far apart. Some place you don’t have to shout. Make it eyeball to eyeball. Shit. We’ve got a problem this year. There’s been a decline in the number of anti-Semitic outrages.”
“Yeah. Isn’t that a shame,” I said.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m against anti-Semitism. But every time some asshole daubs a swastika on a synagogue wall or knocks over a stone in one of our cemeteries, our guys get so nervous they phone me with pledges. So, things being how they are this year, what you’ve got to do is slam-dunk your target about the Holocaust. Shove Auschwitz at him. Buchenwald. War criminals thriving in Canada to this day. Tell him, ‘Can you be sure it won’t happen again, even here, and then where will you go?’ Israel is your insurance policy, you say.
“We will provide you with the inside info on your target’s annual income, and if he starts to cry, saying he’s had a bad year, you say bullshit and read him numbers. Not the numbers on his tax returns. The real numbers. You tell him now that we’ve got that fucker Nasser to contend with, his pledge has to be bigger this year. And if he turns out to be a hard nut, a kvetcher, you slip in that everybody at Elmridge, or whatever country club he belongs to, will know exactly how much he pledged, and that his order books could suffer if he turns out a piker. Hey, I understand you’ve gone into television production. You need help with casting, Irv’s your man.”
Help with casting? A babe in the show-biz woods that swarmed with ferrets, conmen, and poisonous snakes, I even needed help tying my shoelaces in those days. I was bleeding, no, haemorrhaging money. My first pilot, the idea sold to me by a hustler who claimed he had a co-credit on a Perry Mason episode, was for a projected series about a private eye “with his own code of honour.” A sort of Canadian son of Sam Spade. The pilot, directed by a National Film Board hack, starred a Toronto actor (our Olivier, his agent said, who turned down Hollywood offers on principle) who could be counted on to be drunk before breakfast, while the woman cast as his Girl Friday was, unbeknownst to me, a former mistress of his who broke into sobs whenever they had to do a scene together. The result was so unbelievably awful I didn’t dare show it to anybody, but I’ve got it on a cassette now and play it back for laughs whenever I’m feeling depressed.
I proved to be such an adroit fund-raiser that Irv invited me to his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party, a dinner dance for the quality held in private rooms at Ruby Foo’s, black tie, everybody there except me good for a minimum twenty-thousand-dollars-a-year UJA bite, never mind the bond drive, and other community appeals for vigorish. And that’s where I met the virago who would become my second wife. Damn damn damn. Here I am, sixty-seven years old, a shrinking man with a cock that trickles, and I still don’t know how to account for my second marriage, which now sets me back ten thousand dollars a month before adjustments for inflation, and to think that her father, that pompous old bore, once feared me as the fortune-hunter. Looking back, in search of anything that would justify my idiocy, pardon my sins, I must say I was not the real me in those days but an impersonator. Pretending to be the go-getter Clara had damned. Guilt-ridden. Drinking alone in the early-morning hours, fearful of sleep, which was invaded by visions of Clara in her coffin. The coffin, as ordained by Jewish law, was made of pine, holes drilled into it, so that the worms might fatten on that too-young corpse as soon as possible. Six feet under. Her breasts rotting. “ … you’ll be able to entertain guys at the United Jewish Appeal dinner with stories about the days you lived with the outrageous Clara.” Bingeing on respectability, I was now determined to prove to Clara’s ghost that I could play the nice middle-class Jewish boy better than she had ever dreamed. Hey, I used to stand back, observing myself, as it were, sometimes tempted to burst into applause in celebration of my own hypocrisy. There was the night, for instance, when I was still caught up in the lightning one-month courtship of the time-bomb who would become The Second Mrs. Panofsky, taking her to dinner at the Ritz, drinking far too much as she continued to yammer about how she would do up my Hampstead respectability trap with the help of an interior decorator she knew. “Will you be able to drive me home,” she asked, “ … in your condition?”
“Why,” I said, bussing her on the cheek, and improvising on a script that could only have been produced by Totally Unnecessary Productions Ltd., “I could never forgive myself if you were hurt in an accident, because of my ‘condition.’ You’re far too precious to me. We’ll leave my car here and take a taxi.”
“Oh, Barney,” she gushed.
I shouldn’t have written “ ‘Oh, Barney,’ she gushed.” That was rotten of me. A lie. The truth is I was an emotional cripple when I met her, drunk more often than not, punishing myself for doing things that went against my nature, but The Second Mrs. Panofsky had sufficient vitality for the two of us, and a comedic flair, or sparkle, all her own. Like that old whore Hymie Mintzbaum of blessed memory, she possessed that quality I most admire in other people — an appetite for life. No, more. In those days a determination to devour all matters cultural, even as she could now wolf her way through the counter in the Brown Derby without pause. The Second Mrs. Panofsky didn’t read for pleasure, but to keep up. Sunday mornings she sat down to The New York Times Book Review, as though to an exam that had been set for her, noting only those books likely to be discussed at dinner parties, ordering them promptly, and careering through them at breakneck speed: Dr. Zhivago, The Affluent Society, The Assistant, By Love Possessed. The deadliest sin, so far as she was concerned, was time-wasting, and I was accused of it again and again, squandering hours on nobodys encountered in bars. Shooting the breeze with superannuated hockey players, boozy sports columnists, and smalltime conmen.
On a three-day junket to New York we stayed at the Algonquin, booked into separate bedrooms, which I insisted on, eager to play by what I took to be the rules. I could have happily passed that interlude wandering aimlessly, drifting in and out of bookshops and bars, but she was locked into a schedule tha
t would have required a fortnight for a normal person to fill. Plays to be monitored afternoon and evening: Two for the Seesaw, Sunrise at Campobello, The World of Suzie Wong, The Entertainer. Between times her check-list included forced marches to out-of-the-way craft shops and jewellery designers recommended by Vogue. Footsore, she was still among the first through the doors of Bergdorf Goodman when it opened in the morning, hurrying on to Saks, and those places on Canal Street, known only to the cognoscenti, where Givenchy’s new “bag” dresses could be bought on the cheap. Flying down to New York, she wore an old outfit that could be dumped into her hotel-room wastepaper basket as soon as she acquired her first new one. Then, on the morning of our scheduled flight home, she tore up incriminating sales receipts, retaining only those that obliging salesladies had fabricated for her, say a bill for $39.99 for a $150 sweater. Boarding the plane, she wore only God knows how many sets of underwear, and one blouse over another, and then she clowned her passage past the Montreal customs inspector, flirting with him en français.
Yes, The Second Mrs. Panofsky was an exemplar of that much-maligned phenomenon, the Jewish-American Princess, but she succeeded in fanning my then-dying embers into something resembling life. When we met she had already served a season on a kibbutz and graduated from McGill, majoring in psychology, and was working with disturbed children at the Jewish General Hospital. They adored her. She made them laugh. The Second Mrs. Panofsky was not a bad person. Had she not fallen into my hands but instead married a real, rather than a pretend, straight arrow, she would be a model wife and mother today. She would not be an embittered, grossly overweight hag, given to diddling with New Age crystals and consulting trance-channellers. Miriam once said to me, Krishna was licensed to destroy, but not you, Barney. Okay, okay. The truth, then.
“You’re far too precious to me,” I gushed. “We’ll leave my car here and take a taxi.”
“Oh, Barney,” she said, “are you ever full of shit tonight.”
Oh, Barney, you bastard. When I try to reconstruct those days, failing memory is an enormous blessing. Vignettes wash over me. Embarrassing incidents. Twinges of regret. Boogie flew in from Las Vegas, moderately successful at the tables for once, to be my best man. He met my bride a couple of days before the ceremony was to take place and the two of us went out to dinner, on a night I should have been at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, watching the Canadiens beat the Leafs 3–2, taking a 3–1 lead in the Stanley Cup Finals. Some game I missed. Down one–zip going into the third period, the bleu, blanc, et rouge potted three goals in just over six minutes: Backstrom, McDonald, and Geoffrion.
“Don’t go through with it, Barney, please,” said Boogie. “We could drive to the airport as soon as we finish our cognacs and catch the first plane to Mexico or Spain or wherever.”
“Aw, come on,” I said.
“I can see that she’s attractive. A luscious lady. Have an affair. We could be in Madrid tomorrow. Tapas on those narrow streets running off the Plaza Mayor. Cochinillo asado at Casa Botín.”
“Goddamn it, Boogie, I can’t leave town during the Stanley Cup Finals.” And, with a heavy heart, I went on to show him my two tickets in the reds for the next game in Montreal. The game that was being played on my wedding night. If the Canadiens won, it would mean our fourth straight Stanley Cup, and, just this once, I was hoping that they’d lose, so that I could postpone our honeymoon and take in what would surely be the final and winning game. “Do you think she’d mind,” I asked, “if, after the dinner, I slipped out for an hour and maybe caught the third period in the Forum?”
“Brides tend to be touchy about things like that,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess so. My luck, eh?”
Irv Nussbaum had radiated joy at his anniversary-dinner dance.
“Seen this morning’s Gazette? Some guys shat on the front steps of the B’nai Jacob synagogue. My phone’s been ringing all day. Terrific, eh?” This was followed by a wink and an elbow nudge. “You dance any closer with her and I’m going to have to book you a room here.”
Saucy, voluptuous, smelling of everything nice, my future bride did not withdraw from my embrace on the dance floor. Instead, she said, “My father is watching us,” pressing even harder against me.
Seemingly polished bald head. Waxed moustache. Gold-rimmed glasses. Bushy eyebrows. Small beady brown eyes. Jowly. Cummerbund squeezing prosperity belly. Foolish rosebud mouth. And no warmth in that measured smile as he descended on our table. He was a property developer. A builder of biscuit-box office blocks and beehive apartment buildings, owner of an engineering degree from McGill. “We haven’t met,” he said.
“His name’s Barney Panofsky, Daddy.”
I accepted the offer of a damp, limp little hand. “Panofsky? Panofsky? Do I know your father?”
“Not unless you’ve ever been booked for anything, Daddy, and didn’t tell me.”
“My father’s a detective-inspector.”
“I say. Is he, indeed? And how do you earn your daily bread?”
“I’m in television production.”
“You know that commercial for Molson’s beer, it’s such a scream? The one that makes you laugh? Barney produced it.”
“Well, well, well. Mr. Bernard’s son is sitting with us, and he would like to dance with you, precious, but he’s too shy to ask,” he said, taking her firmly by the arm. “Do you know the Gurskys, Mr. … ?”
“Panofsky.”
“We’re good friends of theirs. Come, my sweet.”
“No,” she said, yanking her arm free, tugging me out of my chair, and leading me back onto the dance floor.
You’ve heard of mock turtle soup? Well, the father of the bride turned out to be the ultimate mock WASP Jew. From the points of his waxed moustache to the toes of his Oxford wingtip shoes. Most days he fancied a pinstripe suit, his canary-yellow waistcoat enhanced by a gold pocket-watch chain and fob. For sojourns in the countryside, he carried a malacca walking stick and, out for an afternoon of golf with Harvey Schwartz, he wore plus-fours. But for dinner parties at his Westmount manse, he favoured a magenta velvet smoking-jacket with matching slippers, and was forever stroking his wet lips with his forefinger, as if lost in contemplation of weighty philosophical problems. His insufferable wife, who wore pince-nez, jiggled a tiny bell each time the company was ready for another course. The first time I dined there, she corrected the way I wielded my soup spoon. Demonstrating the proper manner, she said, “Ships sail out to sea.”
Naturally the ladies took their coffee in the living room, while the chaps, lingering at the table, were offered port, the decanter passed to the left, as Mr. Mock WASP announced a subject worthy of debate: “George Bernard Shaw once said …” or “H. G. Wells would have us believe … Now what do you say to that, gentlemen?”
The old fool objected to me, of course. But, to be fair, he was one of those possessive fathers who would have been outraged by the thought of even a Gursky screwing Daddy’s girl, not that we had gone that far yet. Complaining to her, he said, “He talks with his hands.” An attribute he considered compromising. Très Jewy. “I don’t want you to see him again.”
“Oh, yeah? Well in that case I’m moving out. I’m going to rent an apartment.”
Where, in his mind’s eye, the poor man visualized his precious one being ravished morning, noon, and night. “No,” he protested. “You will not move out. I won’t stop you seeing him. But it is my fatherly duty to warn you that you are making a bad mistake. He comes from another monde.”
As things turned out, he was right to object to his daughter marrying such a scamp, but he did not intervene, for fear of losing her entirely. Summoning me into his library, he said, “I can’t pretend this match delights me. You come from no family, you have no education, and you are engaged in a vulgar business. But once the two of you are wed it will be contingent upon my good wife and me to accept you as one of our own, if only for the sake of our beloved daughter.”
“Why, you couldn’t have pu
t it more graciously,” I said.
“Be that as it may, I do have one request. My good wife, as you know, was one of the first Jewish women to graduate from McGill. Class of ’22. She is a past president of Hadassah and has had her name entered in the mayor’s Golden Book. She has been commended by our prime minister for the work she did with British children who were evacuated here during the last global conflict —”
Yes, but only after he had written to the prime minister’s office, pleading for that letter of appreciation, which was now framed and hung in their living room.
“— She is a most fastidious lady, and I would be grateful if, in the future, you would refrain from garnishing your conversation with expletives at our dining-room table. Surely this is not too large an imposition to impose on your good self.”
With hindsight, there were things to be said in the old boy’s favour. He had served in the Tank Corps during the Second World War, a captain twice mentioned in dispatches. Look at it this way. The sour truth is that many people whom liberals like me poke fun at — army colonels, dim private-school boys, suburban golfers, banal-tongued mediocrities, tiresome stuffed shirts — were the ones who went to war in 1939 and saved Western civilization, while Auden, ostensibly an anti-Fascist commando, fled to America when the barbarians were at the gate.40
My father-in-law’s business reputation was impeccable. He was a constant husband, and a loving father to The Second Mrs. Panofsky. Stricken with cancer only a year after we married, he behaved with dignity during his last wasting months, as stoic as any of the G. A. Henty heroes he so admired. Unfortunately, my relationship with both Mr. and Mrs. Mock WASP got off to a rocky start. There was, for instance, my first meeting with my future mother-in-law, a lunch à trois in the Ritz Gardens, arranged by my apprehensive bride who coached me for hours the night before. “You are not to order more than one drink at the table before lunch.”
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