Barney's Version

by Mordecai Richler

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re unfortunate enough to be his wife?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Please,” said Miriam.

  “Leave her out of this, if you don’t mind?”

  “He used to mock my stutter, and I would tear my hair out in bed, and my mother had to literally drag me kicking and screaming to school. Why did you do it?”

  “I didn’t, Miriam.”

  “What pleasure did it give you?”

  “I’m not sure I even remember who in the hell you are.”

  “For years I used to dream I would be in my car, you would be crossing the street, and I would run you over. I put in eight years with an analyst before I decided you weren’t worth it. You’re filth, Barney,” he said and, taking one last drag of his cigarette, he dropped it into my lobster bisque and strode off.

  “Christ,” I said.

  “I thought you were going to hit him.”

  “Not with you here, Miriam.”

  “I’m told you have a vile temper, and that when you’ve had far too much to drink, like now, which is hardly flattering, you start looking for a fight.”

  “McIver?”

  “I’m not saying.”

  “Don’t feel well. Going to be sick.”

  “Can you make it to the toilet?”

  “So embarrassed.”

  “Can you —”

  “Got to lie down.”

  She helped me to my room, where I immediately fell to my knees, retching over the toilet bowl, farting resoundingly. I wished myself buried alive. Or drawn and quartered. Pulled apart by horses. Anything. She wet a towel and wiped my face and finally led me to my bed.

  “This is so humiliating.”

  “Sh,” she said.

  “You hate me and never want to see me again.”

  “Oh, shettup,” she said, and she sponged me with that wet towel again, and made me drink a glass of water, supporting the back of my head with her cool hand. I resolved never to wash my hair again. Lying back, I closed my eyes, hoping to shut out the spinning room. “I’ll be all right in five minutes. Please don’t go.”

  “Try to sleep.”

  “I love you.”

  “Yes. Certainly.”

  “We’re going to get married and have ten children,” I said.

  When I wakened, maybe a couple of hours later, she was sitting in the easy chair, her long legs crossed just so, reading Rabbit, Run. I didn’t speak out immediately, but took advantage of her being so absorbed to feast on the sight of such beauty seated there. Tears slid down my cheeks. My heart ached. If time stopped now, forever, I thought, I would not complain. Finally, I said, “I know you never want to see me again. I don’t blame you.”

  “I’m going to order some dry toast and coffee for you,” she said, “and, if you don’t mind, a tuna sandwich for me. I’m hungry.”

  “I must stink something awful. Will you not go if I have a quick shower?”

  “I take it you find me predictable.”

  “How can you say such a thing?”

  “You were expecting me to come to your room.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Then who were the champagne and roses for?”

  “Where?”

  She pointed.

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. Oh.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing today. I’m not myself. I’m a mess. I’ll phone room service and have them take it away.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Now what shall we talk about? Psycho, or Ben-Gurion’s meeting with Adenauer?”

  “Miriam, I couldn’t lie to you. Not now, or ever. Yankel was telling the truth.”

  “Yankel?”

  “The man who came to our table. I would block his path on the playground and say, ‘D-d-do you p-p-piss in b-b-bed, p-p-prick-face?’ And if he stood up, terrified, obliged to answer a question in class, I would begin to giggle before he could get a word out, and he would collapse in tears. ‘N-n-nice going, Y-y-yankel,’ I’d say. Why did I do such dreadful things?”

  “Surely you don’t expect me to be able to answer that?”

  “Oh, Miriam, if you only knew how I’m counting on you.”

  Then, all at once, I endured — no, enjoyed — something like the spring breakup of the ice crushing my soul. I began to jabber, incoherently, I fear, mixing misadventures of my childhood with tales of Paris. From an account of Boogie negotiating a heroin purchase, I doubled back into a story of my mother’s indifference to me. I told her how Yossel Pinsky had survived Auschwitz and now passed his days cutting deals in a bar on Trumpeldor Street in Tel Aviv. I had once dealt in stolen Egyptian artifacts, I thought she should know that. I tap-danced. From a yarn about Izzy Panofsky’s days on morality, I segued into the evening McIver had read in George Whitman’s bookshop, and then slid into a riff on Hymie Mintzbaum. I told her about the pneumatique that had reached me too late, and how Clara had gone to an early grave unnecessarily, and that I still dreamt about her rotting in her coffin.

  “So you’re the Calibanovitch in that verse.”

  “Yes I am.”

  I explained that I had stumbled into marriage with The Second Mrs. Panofsky out of spite — no, guilt about Clara — no, out of anger at her judgment of me. But I swore that I had never been in love until I had espied Miriam at my wedding. Then I saw that it was dusk outside and that our bottle of champagne was empty. “Shall we go somewhere for dinner?” I asked.

  “Why don’t we go for a walk first?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Self-satisfied Toronto is not a city I’ve ever warmed to. It’s this country’s counting house. But plunging into the rush-hour din on Avenue Road that warm evening in early May, a spring in my step, I was in a forgiving, happy-to-be-alive mood. After all, the trees were plump with buds. If the clusters of daisies on display in buckets outside fruit stores were spray-painted orange or purple, they were redeemed by pristine bunches of daffodils. Some of the office girls passing in pairs in their summer dresses were undeniably pretty. Such was my rapture that I guess I smiled too broadly at the young mother coming toward us, wheeling a toddler in a stroller, because in response she frowned and quickened her pace. For once, I didn’t mind a sweaty jogger in shorts, running in place as he waited for a traffic light to change. “Wonderful evening, isn’t it?” I sang out, and he immediately patted his back pocket to ensure that his wallet was still there. Possibly I shouldn’t have paused to admire a brand-new Alfa Romeo parked in front of an antique shop, as this propelled its owner to the front door, glaring at us. Somewhere, higher up, we came upon a small park and I thought we might rest a while on one of its benches, but the gate was padlocked, and a sign screwed into the railing read:

  NO EATING

  NO DRINKING

  NO MUSIC

  NO DOGS

  Squeezing Miriam’s hand, I said, “Sometimes I think what inspires this city, its very mainspring, is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

  “Oh, shame on you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re quoting Mencken on puritanism. Unacknowledged.”

  “Am I?”

  “Pretending it was yours. I thought you promised never to lie to me.”

  “Yes. Sorry. Starting now.”

  “I was brought up on lies, and I’ll never put up with it again.”

  And then, a suddenly impassioned Miriam told me about her father, the cutter, and union organizer. She had adored him, such an idealist, until she discovered that he was a compulsive womanizer. Having it off with factory girls in the can. Trolling sleazy dance halls and downtown bars on Saturday nights. It broke her mother’s heart.

  “Why do you put up with him?” Miriam had asked.

  “What should I do?” she had answered, bent over her sewing machine, sobbing.

  Miriam’s mother died a lingering death. Bowel canc
er. “He gave it to her,” said Miriam.

  “That’s a bit strong,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t. And no man will ever do that to me.”

  I can’t remember where or what we ate, somewhere on Yonge Street, seated side by side in a booth, thighs touching. “I had never seen anybody look so miserable at his own wedding. Every time I looked up you were staring at me.”

  “What if I had stayed on that train?”

  “If you only knew how much I wanted you to.”

  “You did?”

  “I had my hair done this morning, and I bought this outfit especially for our lunch, and you never once said that I looked nice.”

  “No. Yes. Honestly, you look wonderful.”

  It was getting on to two a.m. when we reached her apartment building on Eglinton Avenue. “Now I suppose you’re going to pretend you don’t want to come in,” she said.

  “No. Yes. Help, Miriam.”

  “I have to be up at seven.”

  “Oh. Well. I guess in that case …”

  “Oh, come on,” she said, tugging me by the hand.

  2

  Now that I’m beginning to run out of it, time has begun to click past me fast as a hot taxi meter. I’m soon going to be sixty-eight, and Betty, who keeps track of these things, will want to arrange a lunch-time party at Dink’s. Betty, a sentimental type, wants Zack, Hughes-McNoughton, me, and some of the others cremated when we die so that she can mount us in urns over the bar to keep her company. Possibly, I shouldn’t have told her what Flora Charnofsky has done. After Norman hit that power pole in his Mercedes-Benz sports car, dying instantly, she had him cremated and divvied up his ashes. The larger portion went into an hour-glass she had made, and the rest into an egg-timer. “Norm is always with me,” she said.

  I’m not going to Betty’s party. There’s nothing to celebrate. Besides, I’m now such an irascible old bastard, I don’t trust myself. Yesterday afternoon I went to Downtown Video to return The Bank Dick, a W. C. Fields favourite of mine, and the young pony-tailed lout behind the counter, who now also wore a nose-ring, said, “Oh oh. There will be an additional three-dollar charge for us to do the rewind.”

  “Have you got a pen?”

  Baffled, he handed me one, and I took the point and began to rewind the spool clockwise,71 ignoring the five customers waiting behind me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Rewinding.”

  “It will take ages.”

  “It’s only three o’clock, sonnyboy, and this isn’t due back until five.”

  “Give it to me, pops, and you can forget about the three bucks.”

  Ate breakfast late this morning, and then flicked on the radio, having decided to listen to Miriam live for a change. Hallelujah. I caught her just as she was reading a letter that purported to be from a listener in Calgary:

  Dear Ms. Greenberg,

  I’m one of those old codgers you read about, a guy who gave the best years of his life to a woman he loved, who then ran off with a younger man. I hope you can make out my handwriting, which ain’t the same since I suffered my last little stroke. As you can surely tell I haven’t had much education. Not compared to the listeners whose letters you usually read aloud. I’m a retired garbage collector or recycler ha! ha! ha! But I sure hope my grammar is good enough to get me on the airwaves. I still miss my wife and keep her photograph by my bedside in the Winnebago I live in out here. Today is Marylou’s birthday and I’d like you to play a ditty that was playing in the dining room of The Highlander Inn, in Calgary, which I took her to when we were celebrating her thirtieth back in 1975.

  I can remember a few words to the ditty (which fits my present condition like a glove), but not the title or the background music. The lyrics went:

  Full moon and empty arms,

  something something your charms …

  And the music, as I recall, was mostly on the piano, and was written, she said, by a famous Polack. Wait. I think there was once a film about him, starring Cornel Wilde, and that he suffered from TB, the piano player, not Cornel. I’d like you to play this number and dedicate it to Marylou, who I bear no grudge. Thanks a million.

  Yours sincerely,

  WALLY TEMPLE

  P.S. I really enjoy classical music and I’m a big fan of your show. One of my favourite tapes, which I recommend highly to you, maybe to play another morning, is Mozart’s Greatest Hits.

  Miriam paused, and then went on to say, “This letter comes from the same prankster who has also pretended to be Doreen Willis, among others.”

  Shit.

  “I have read it aloud just to let the listener in question know that he hasn’t fooled me. And, in appreciation of his efforts, I will now play a recording by Louis Lortie, of Chopin’s Études 1–12, Opus 10. This Chandos Record was produced in Suffolk, England, in April 1988.”

  The family bush telegraph, or disinformation highway, has recently gone into overload, and I’ve been able to piece together the following tidbits. Mike phoned Saul. “Hold on to your hat, Daddy is writing his memoirs.”

  “I knew he was up to something. Excuse me a minute. Nancy, you are putting that book on the wrong shelf. It has to go back precisely where it came from. … Sorry about that, Mike. His memoirs. Damn, what if he can’t find a publisher? It would break his heart.”

  “There’s a market for anything about Clara Charnofsky these days, and don’t forget he knew a lot of other famous people.”

  “Say, didn’t you say that Caroline’s brother-in-law was a top orthopaedic surgeon?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “Nancy, no, that’s not precisely where it came from. Shit shit shit. … Sorry, Mike. I’d like a second opinion on something. If I mailed you my X-rays, would you pass them on to him?”

  “It’s bound to revive all that old business about the death, or what our Kate still calls the disappearance, of Bernard Moscovitch.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Yes. Sure. If you insist.”

  Then Saul phoned Kate. “Have you heard? Daddy’s going to make us famous.”

  “What made you think you were the only writer in the family?”

  “Has he shown you any of it?”

  “Saul, you should hear him on the phone. Cracking up over old stories. Remembering hockey stars he saw in their prime. Daddy had an affair with his schoolteacher when he was only fourteen years old.”

  “Aw, he was having us on. I never believed that one.”

  “Remember how he used to lecture us about the dangers of drugs? Well, he smoked hashish day and night when he was in Paris. When he talks about the past he sheds years. The past is the only thing he’s enthusiastic about these days.”

  Then Mike phoned me. “Daddy, you can write anything you like about me, but you are to please spare Caroline.”

  “Would you talk that way to Samuel Pepys or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, not that you’ve ever read either one?”

  “I’m not joking, Daddy.”

  “You have nothing to worry about. How are the kids?”

  “Jeremy has done brilliantly in his A-levels. Harold is writing you a letter even as we speak.”

  Saul rang at ten the next morning. “What are you doing up so early?” I asked.

  “I’ve got an eleven o’clock with my dermatologist.”

  “Oh, my God. Leprosy. Hang up immediately.”

  “Are you really writing your memoirs?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’d better have a look. Please, Daddy.”

  “Eventually, maybe. How’s Nancy?”

  “Oh, that one. She’d leave my CDs out to gather dust and she dogeared my copy of The Neo-Conservative Reader. I sent you a copy, remember? Nancy’s gone back to her husband.”

  The call that really unnerved me came from Miriam, whom I hadn’t spoken to in some eighteen months. The sound of that voice speaking to me directly was sufficient to set my heart thundering.

  “Barney, how are you?”

 
; “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

  “People do when they haven’t spoken to each other in such a long time.”

  “Right. Yeah. And you?”

  “I’m fine, too.”

  “Well, I guess that just about covers it, doesn’t it?”

  “Barney, please.”

  “I hear your voice, you say my name, and my hands start to tremble, so don’t please me no Barney pleases.”

  “We were together for more than thirty years —”

  “Thirty-one.”

  “— Most of them wonderful. Shouldn’t we be able to talk?”

  “I want you to come home.”

  “I am home.”

  “You always prided yourself on being direct. So come to the point of this call, please.”

  “Solange phoned me.”

  “There’s nothing between us. We’re good friends, that’s all.”

  “Barney, you don’t owe me any explanations.”

  “Damn right I don’t.”

  “You’re no longer thirty —”

  “Neither are —”

  “— and you can’t carry on drinking the way you do. She wants you to see a specialist. Please do as she says, Barney.”

  “Aw.”

  “I still care, you know. I think about you often. Saul says you’re writing your memoirs.”

  “Oh, so that’s it. Well now, I’ve decided to leave some footprints on the sands of time.”

  That earned me a throaty chuckle.

  “You mustn’t say anything hurtful about the children. Especially —”

  “You know what Early Wynn once said?”

  “Early Wynn?”

  “Baseball pitcher. Hall-of-Famer. He was once asked if he would throw at his mother. ‘It would depend on how well she was hitting,’ he said.”72

  “Especially Saul. He’s so damn sensitive.”

  “Or Professor Hopper, right, whom I made welcome in my home. Oh, excuse me. How is Blair?”

  “He’s taking early retirement. We’re going to spend a year in London, where he can finally finish his biography of Keats.”

  “There have already been about six. What in the hell has he got to say that’s new?”