Cocksure

by Mordecai Richler

  Shalinsky stepped between the two men. “I brought you,” he said to Mortimer, “some back issues of Jewish Thought. A representative selection.”

  Flipping through the magazines, Mortimer was astonished to find, side by side with the outlandish, contributions by major Jewish writers and by international figures on the Jewish question. “It’s all very impressive,” he said.

  “The hammer looms over us. Jewish Thought is on the verge of bankruptcy, Griffin. Unless there is a miracle our next issue -the Annual Arts & Artists number – may very well be our last to appear.”

  “You said that last year, Jake. And the year before.”

  “But this year I’m in deadly earnest. Advertising no longer brings in the revenue it used to and printing costs are constantly on the rise. Mr. Rothstein –” Shalinsky hesitated, he turned to Mortimer. “Rothstein’s Clothing; he’s our angel … is growing weary of pouring hard-earned money –”

  “Tax deductible.”

  “– into a stagnant venture. His sons, both of them philistines, are against our magazine. Now I happen to believe, Griffin, that the uses of Jewish Thought cannot be measured in shillings and pence. It has to do with our psyche, and it must not perish in this shallow I’m-all-right-Jack society.”

  “Gut gezagt. Agreed. But we’re an isolated group – Golders Green cares only about money and status and the young.” I. M. Sinclair asked, turning fiercely on Mortimer, “Are they worried our culture might perish? No. Being gear, that’s what they worry about.”

  “Possibly,” Mortimer began, “they are no different –”

  “I will speak plainly,” I. M. Sinclair said. “What motivates the big Jewish givers in this country?”

  “Well, I –”

  “What motivates them,” Sinclair continued, “is the hope of a knighthood or at least an M.B.E.”

  “Let’s face it,” Shalinsky said, “there are no titles in Yiddishkeit.”

  “The Queen cares our culture may perish? She married a German.”

  “To put the problem more concretely,” Shalinsky said mournfully, “if we could only reach a circulation of two thousand – and our present circulation is less than half that – Mr. Rothstein has promised to support us for another year at least.”

  “Mr. Shalinsky,” Mortimer said, “I’d like to take out a subscription to Jewish Thought. I’ll send you a check tomorrow. Maybe I can even interest some of my friends.”

  “If you can, I won’t forget the commission.”

  “Thanks. And now I really must go.”

  “Won’t you stay and have another drink with us?”

  “Sorry, but my wife’s waiting up for me.”

  Shalinsky walked to the pub door with Mortimer. “And now,” he said, “I must thank you once more for your essay. I am honored to print you, Griffin. Merci mille fois.”

  “It’s you I ought to thank. I, um, enjoyed speaking with you and Dr. Sinclair immensely.”

  “I knew it. You see,” Shalinsky said, squeezing his elbow, “it’s good to be with your own sometimes.”

  Mortimer broke rudely free of him. “Just what do you mean by that?”

  Shalinsky shrugged; he looked at the floor. “Shalinsky, will you please get it through your head that I’m not Jewish.”

  “But Griffin, Griffin, darling boy, what greater pleasure can there be than being a Jew?”

  “Good night, Shalinsky.”

  15

  “NOW COME ON, DOUG. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH,” SHE called out.

  But he absolutely refused to get out of the bath. “Can’t I play just a little bit longer?” he pleaded.

  The water, Joyce saw, was up to his chin. Plastic boats floated in the tub. So did a beach ball.

  “Have you any idea why you want to stay longer in the tub –”

  “Because it’s jolly good fun.”

  “– with the water up to your chin?”

  “Because it’s jolly good fan.”

  “No. That’s only the superficial reason. The real reason is because it makes you feel secure. Like,” Joyce said, puffing out her stomach, “you were still floating in the waters inside me.”

  Doug’s hand flashed out to pull the plug.

  “Don’t twitch.”

  “I’m not twitching.”

  “If you remember the picture book I showed you –”

  “Y-y-y-es I do! Honestly!”

  “The bag you floated in is called the membrane and you fed off a placenta.” Suddenly Joyce bared her teeth. “See?”

  “What?” he asked, shivering.

  “The fillings. The decay.”

  “Yes.”

  “While you were growing inside me, you took the best part of my calcium.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You mustn’t be. It’s a natural thing. Neither should you apologize for feeling very, very safe in deep warm water. Many grown men feel the same way.”

  “Daddy too?”

  “Daddy more than many. It’s called a retreat to Mother’s womb.”

  “I see,” Doug said, drying himself.

  “You’re so lucky, Doug. I was brought up on lies, you know. My father – and he was a doctor, you know – told me that the stork had brought me.”

  Doug managed a deprecating laugh.

  “He never told me I came out of my mother’s vagina, just like you came out of mine. I had to learn about orgasms all by myself.”

  “He told you lots of lies, didn’t he?”

  “Too many,” she said, following him into his bedroom. “Remember the lie about Christmas?”

  “Which one?”

  “How he used to buy you smashing presents with money taken from poor patients and then pretend that Santa Claus had come down the chimney with them? How you and your brothers used to crawl out of bed at dawn to see what Santa had brought … and your father would be sitting there, waiting for you, drinking White Russian vodka and smoking non-union cigarettes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you tell me that lie tonight? With all the details?”

  “Not again. We’re going to read another chapter from our book instead.”

  The bedtime book was Hiroshima. An illustrated edition. They had already finished reading Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews.

  Both volumes had become mandatory once Joyce had discovered that Doug had a cowboy gun hidden under his pillow. She wanted him to understand clearly where gunplay led to.

  “Well now,” Joyce said, shutting the book at last, “that’s enough for tonight. Good night, Doug.”

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  “Lecturing. He’ll be home late. Good night.”

  “Good night, Mother.”

  Two hours later Joyce was startled to see Doug standing at the door of her bedroom. He was red-eyed and shivering.

  “What is it now?” Joyce asked.

  “I had a scary dream.”

  Joyce slipped into her dressing gown, got out of bed, and turned off the television. Meanwhile, Doug slid into her bed.

  “And what, may I ask, do you think you’re doing?”

  “Could I just lie here with you for a minute?” Doug asked, his teeth chattering.

  “Only if you fully face up to why you want to lie in bed with me.”

  “It’s because I’m scared, Mother.”

  “Balls. It’s because you desire to make physical love to me. You wish to supplant your father.”

  “I do not!”

  “But it’s perfectly natural, Doug. All sons are secretly in love with their mothers. I just want you to be truthful with me, as I am with you. Now, why do you want to get into bed with me … when your father’s out?”

  Doug looked at the floor.

  “A straight question deserves a straight answer, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Well, then?”

  “I think,” Doug said, leaping off the bed as soon as she sat down beside him, “I’ll go back to my own room now.”


  “That’s being a very mature boy, Doug. I’m proud of you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this way you will suffer no psychological damage. When you’re a grown-up you’ll never need an analyst. Like I did. Good night, Doug.”

  “Good night, Mother.”

  Doug had only just gone back to his room when Mortimer came in.

  “Well, well,” Joyce said snidely, “Malcolm Muggeridge returns.”

  “What’s eating you?”

  “Doug’s had another nightmare. Mortimer, why must they show those dreadful canned American TV shows here? The violence does children irreparable harm, I think.”

  Mortimer failed to respond.

  “How did the lecture go tonight?” she asked.

  “Skip it.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, that’s all.”

  “You’ve left a cigarette burning on the bureau.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake! It would be nice not to have all my filthy little habits pointed out to me for once. I know there’s a cigarette burning on the bureau.”

  Retreating into the bathroom, Mortimer closed the door softly behind him. He lit another cigarette and lingered in the tub. The water up to his chin.

  “What on earth are you doing in there?” Joyce called out.

  “Next time you use my razor on your blessed armpits, darling, I’ll thank you to wash it and replace the blade.”

  “Now who’s pointing out whose filthy habits?”

  Mortimer didn’t like mirrors. He made a point of never sitting opposite one in a restaurant, but tonight he had an urgent reason for studying his face. His conventionally handsome, suburban face.

  “Mortimer!”

  Mortimer. Morty. Mort. “Joyce,” he said, coming out of the bathroom, “would you say I had a – a” – he almost said “Jewy,” but bit it back – “a Jewish face?”

  Joyce laughed.

  “I’m serious.”

  “And what if you had? Would it be so awful?”

  “Will you please just answer my question.”

  “As far as I’m concerned there’s no such thing as a Jewish face.”

  “Let me put it to you this way, then. If there was such a thing as a Jewish –”

  “There are no ifs about it.”

  “Why do you assume it is necessarily pejorative?”

  “What?”

  “A Jewish –”

  “There is no –”

  “There is no such thing as a Jewish face. Okay, okay.”

  “Now, will you please explain why you are in such a state?” Mortimer told her about his meeting with Shalinsky at the pub. “If you want my opinion,” she said, “you wouldn’t mind his notion in the least if you weren’t a sublimated anti-Semite.”

  “Thank you,” he said, switching off the light, “and good night.”

  But he was far too disturbed to sleep.

  “I’ve been thinking, darling,” Joyce said, “if you were Jewish –”

  “What?”

  “I mean if you’ve got Jewish blood, I’d love you just as –”

  “Of all the stupid nonsense. What do you mean if I’m Jewish? You’ve met my parents, haven’t you?”

  “All I’m saying is that if –”

  “All right. I confess. My father’s real name is Granofsky. He’s a goddamned defrocked rabbi. Not only that, you know, but my mother’s really a coon. She –”

  “Don’t you dare use that word.”

  “Look, for the tenth time. If I had Jewish blood I wouldn’t try to conceal it. Whatever made you think …”

  “Well, you know.”

  “I told you long ago that was done for hygienic reasons. My mother insisted on it. Since I was only about two weeks old at the time, I wasn’t consulted.”

  “Okay, I just wanted you to know where I would stand if –”

  “Let’s go to sleep. I’ve had enough for one day.”

  Still, sleep wouldn’t come. Stealthily, careful not to wake Joyce, Mortimer retreated to the living room, poured himself a drink, and leaned back in his favorite easy chair.

  Herzog sat on the coffee table. Herzog, which he had tried to read but which made him feel like an intruder, a Gentile peeper. And stuffy as well. Yes, yes, Mortimer thought, a good credit risk, that’s me. Loyal. Hardworking. Honest. Liberal. The well-dressed fellow on the bench in Zoo Story. The virtues I was raised to believe in have become pernicious. Contemporary writing, he thought, is clawing at my balls, making me repugnant to myself. An eyesore. “Protestant,” he said aloud. “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant filth, that’s what you are.”

  Ugly. Ziggy Spicehandler, to whom Mortimer owed so much, once told him about a Korean folk singer who said that during World War II, when the Japanese had occupied Korea, they had shown films they had taken of American POW’s. Nobody in the village, the Korean said, had ever seen a white man in the flesh and they could not believe what they saw in the film. “They thought the Japs were putting them on. They couldn’t dig,” Ziggy said, “that any cat could be born so ugly. You know, the white skin with the purple veins showing right through. The big feet. Eyelids. The elders in the village thought the film was Japanese propaganda. Nobody could be that ugly.”

  Ugly.

  Mortimer’s ugliness, first revealed to him by Ziggy Spicehandler, had come home most directly the night he had gone to see the first Cassius Clay-Henry Cooper fight. How justified Clay had been to say, “I’m the most beautiful.” The glossy ebony body. The sensual face. The graceful manner of moving. All this pitted against – against, Mortimer thought, one of ours. Gray, doughy, fart-filled Henry Cooper. A body that was the lumpy sum of sausages and mash. Cooper absorbed one punch and instantly the flesh bruised, flooding red. Cooper’s flesh, like Mortimer’s, was Protestant: not made for the sun. On the beach it burns and blisters and peels.

  Murder him, Mortimer had thought – identifying, to his astonishment, with Clay – destroy the ugly pink blob. Then the eye split, gushing hot thick blood, and Clay, ever fastidious, stepped back, appalled.

  No more cigarettes. Mortimer went off in search of his jacket, dipped into a pocket, and came up with a small package. Rapani’s. God damn it. Mortimer found his keys, unlocked the hall cupboard, and –

  “Mortimer?”

  – stowed away the package, but didn’t have time to lock the cupboard again.

  Joyce found him back in the easy chair, eyes shut. “Mortimer?”

  “Mn?”

  “There’s a lit cigarette in your hand. You’ll burn a hole in the chair.”

  “Oh.”

  “What are you doing in here anyway?”

  “Thinking.”

  Joyce waited.

  “Would you allow,” he asked, “that there was such a thing as a Negro face?”

  “Some of your jokes are in the worst possible taste.”

  “Yes, I know. I happen to be cursed with what Hy calls a Gentile sense of humor.”

  “Let’s go to sleep.”

  “Sure.” Mortimer let Joyce lead the way back to the bedroom, swinging the offending cupboard door shut with a kick. It locked.

  16

  IT HAD BEEN INSTIGATED BY THE WIDE BOYS AT The Eight Bells, Mortimer’s office local – no, no, that’s not fair – the real reason behind the locked cupboard was Mortimer’s increasingly obsessive fear that he didn’t have a big one.

  At last stocktaking, the embarrassing hoard in Mortimer’s locked cupboard had included more than a dozen tubes of vaginal jelly, a number of diaphragms (running from small to super large), a plentiful supply of Durex prophylactics and contraceptive pills, and bottle upon bottle of varied and perfidious sexual stimulants and erection-promising powders and herbs. The jelly wouldn’t burn with the autumn leaves and Mortimer was too ashamed to leave unused tubes for the dustmen. Oxfam, possibly, would have accepted the prophylactics, but when he had once been intrepid enough to try them with a phone call, he was pa
ssed from one party to another until a severe voice, unmistakably Pakistani, had asked him for his name and phone number, which he had refused. Even so, Mortimer might have mailed a parcel to Oxfam anonymously, if he hadn’t feared that Scotland Yard, which had its methods, might trace the parcel to him. From time to time, he lightened his stock of pills, dissolving some in the toilet bowl. Other days, his pockets bulging with packets of Durex, he’d gone to Hampstead Heath, strewing French letters here, there and everywhere. Still, the stuff tended to accumulate.

  A sex maniac’s hoard, he thought, and what about the cost? The same money invested in National Development Bonds or Scot-Bits rather than Rapani’s astonishing variety of aphrodisiacs – but that’s neither here nor there. The truth was Mortimer had been driven to stockpiling the stuff because of his mounting anxieties about the size of his thingee. Yes, yes, he knew size wasn’t everything. Owing to vasocongestion, that is to say, swelling of the veins, it had been scientifically proved that a thin and puny one was bound to enlarge to a relatively greater degree than a whopping one. All the same, mate, it’s still smaller, isn’t it?

  Mortimer hadn’t been born with this feeling of inadequacy. Neither had it bothered him much in adolescence. If he ever overcame his shyness sufficiently in the showers after a basketball game to glance at somebody else’s rod, it never struck him as being outlandishly bigger than his. On the other hand, all men suffered shrinkage in the showers and so that may have been a faulty proving ground.

  Digging even deeper into his Caribou, Ontario, boyhood, to Motke Shapiro, the only Jewish boy at Caribou High, he could remember him saying, “Do you know why Queen Elizabeth is disappointed in George VI?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because she’s found out not every ruler has twelve inches.”

  Twelve. Did anybody actually have twelve inches, he thought, or, conversely, did everybody but me –?

  Motke Shapiro was the only boy Mortimer remembered as being singularly well-endowed and consequently, perhaps, a show-off. He was forever entreating the other boys to join him in a communal pee. “See this,” he’d say, shaking it at them. “This is a Jew’s harmonica.”

  Or,

  “Tell your sisters what you saw here. And if they don’t believe it,” he’d add, zipping up, “well, here I am, eh, guys?”