15

A GLASS OF WATER, WITH A SWAB OF ABSORBENT COTTON resting on the rim, was perched on top of the faulty, whirring air conditioner. Jake’s grandmother freshened the water each morning. It was there to slake her first-born son’s soul, in the event that it returned thirsty or feverish. The late Issy Hersh’s small, modest apartment was stifling. Overflowing. It reeked of Hersh sweat, decaying Hersh bodies, the rumpled men received visitors in the little box of a living room. While Jake’s grandmother, Fanny, his sister Rifka, his aunts, accepted mourners like dues in the master bedroom, where cancer, lodging in Issy Hersh’s kidney, had taken root and spread tentacles throughout his body.

Earlier, when Jake had emerged from the airplane at Dorval, the worse for six hours of gin, he had discovered Herky pacing up and down in front of the customs barrier.

“Good flight?” Herky barked.

Jake shrugged.

“How’s the family?”

“Well.”

“And the wife, keeping her looks?”

Fuck you.

“He died peacefully. I want you to know that.” Once inside his air-conditioned Buick, Herky demanded, “That a good tie?”

“What?”

“We’re going straight to Paperman’s.” The funeral parlor. “They’ll have to cut it with a razor blade. That’s the law, you know.” Go to hell, Herky.

Jake’s big-booted, leathery-faced grandmother, the belly that had swelled for fourteen children hanging useless now, an empty pouch – foolish Fanny determined to outquake Rifka – his dour girdled aunts – all combined to send up a counterpoint of sobs and moans throughout the rabbi’s eulogy at the funeral parlor. The solemn menfolk, the brothers and cousins next in line, glared at the coffin, this one tolerating what he had been assured was a stomach ulcer and another awaiting the results of a biopsy.

All his life Issy Hersh had worn forced-to-clear suits and fire sale shoes and now even his casket seemed too large. His last bargain.

The rabbi was brief.

“Words fail me to adequately express the sorrow I share with you. Even as Jewish law limits the topics of discussion for those who mourn, I find my speech curtailed because I mourn with you for Isaac Hersh, who all his years exuded and emanated Jewishness, real yiddishkeit, affluent in the rich symbolism of his people, which he readily spread amongst us. May the fond memories we have of a fine, outpouring Jewish soul inspire us to emulate all that was good in him …”

The women, subsiding into limousines, caught their second wind at the cemetery and began to lament anew, wailing with abandon. Poor Fanny, whose perch within the family hierarchy was exceedingly rocky now, the tolerated second wife of an under-insured, all but penniless husband, with a stepdaughter who abominated her and a stranger for a stepson, necessarily outbid all the others. Even Aunt Sophie, over whom her son, twenty-two-year-old Irwin, obese, his face florid, held a parasol. Irwin, who wore a straw hat with a tartan band, was staring at Jake. Jake shot him a piercing look, and Irwin, flushing a deeper red, wiggled his eyebrows pleadingly and averted his eyes.

The older generation of Hersh menfolk, brothers and cousins to Issy, filed past the grave dutifully but truculent, appealingly truculent, each taking up the workman’s spade in turn to shovel wet clay onto the coffin. Smack, smack. The Hershes, all of them, seemingly one cherished decomposing body to Jake now. Like him, susceptible to germs. Wasting. Shivering together in spite of the blistering heat. Diminished by one.

Suddenly, the enveloping black birds began to twitter. All manner of rabbis, young and old, blackbearded and cleanshaven, rocked in prayer, heads bobbing, competing in piety. For each Hersh buried paid dividends above ground. Every expired Hersh was bound to be commemorated by a rabbi’s study or additional classroom for the yeshiva, a sefer torah donated here or an ark paid for there, a parochial-school library or a fully equipped kindergarten. In Everlasting Memory of …

“Oy, oy,” Rifka wailed.

“Issy! My Issy!” Fanny put in, outreaching her.

Jake couldn’t even coax a tear out of himself; he felt altogether too drained and fearful of the wailing to come.

But once back in the widow’s apartment, a veritable oven that day, their hands washed and stomachs biting with hunger, the men shed their jackets and loosened their ties and belts, the women unbuckled and unzipped. Everybody was talking at once, positioning themselves by the table, as plates of hardboiled eggs, bagels, and onion rolls were followed by platters of lox, roast chicken, and steaming potato varenikes, apple cake and chocolate chip cookies, peaches and plums, bottles of Tab and diet Pepsi. Once more Jake sensed the immense Irwin gaping at him. Caught out, Irwin wiggled his eyebrows again, blushed, and spit a plum pit into his hand.

Uncle Sam switched on his transistor radio and the sated Hershes gathered around to hear the ram’s horn blown at the wailing wall in Jerusalem.

“If only Issy could have lived,” Jake’s grandmother said, crumpling, “to hear the shofar blown in Jerusalem.”

An interloping rabbi squeezed the old lady’s mottled hand. “You mustn’t question the Almighty,” he cautioned her, “or He might call you up for an answer.”

Exactly what Rabbi Meltzer had told the Horseman. Did they subscribe, Jake wondered, to the same chief rabbi of platitudes? Had they been issued with similar condolence kits on graduation from yeshiva?

Now the men, slippered and unshaven (except for Jake, who scorned that ritual), staked claims, according to their need, to a place on the sofa or a chair by the balcony door, the seat handiest to the kitchen or the one nearest the toilet. As Uncle Jack emerged from the toilet, Irwin asked, “Everything come out all right?” his shoulders heaving with laughter. Then he caught Jake’s reproving glance, shrugged, and retreated.

“Did you notice that Sugarman, the chazer, wasn’t even at Paperman’s?”

“It wasn’t overcrowded with your in-laws either.”

Uncle Abe rubbed his unshaven chin and complained of the first day’s stiffness.

“After a few days it gets soft,” he was assured.

“That’s my trouble too,” Uncle Lou said.

Uncle Sam figured the rabbi’s speech was a washout, but Uncle Morrie didn’t agree. “A rabbi’s speech,” he said, “should be like a miniskirt. Eh, Yankele?”

Jake saluted the reference to London.

“Long enough to cover the subject, short enough to make it interesting.”

Herky, encouraged, pitched in with a convoluted story about a cracker, a Jew, and a Negro, all delivered in an Amos ’n’ Andy accent, and culminating with the Negro saying, “I’ve got foah inches. Is that all? the hebe asks. Foah inches from the ground, baby.”

Uncle Morrie laughed and wiped the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief. “You guys,” he said.

Jake’s ponderous silence was taken for disapprobation.

“Listen here, Yankele,” Uncle Lou said, clapping him on the back. “If it was your Uncle Morrie here we had just buried –”

Which earned him a poisonous look.

“– and your father, may he rest in peace, was still with us, he would be leading with the jokes.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Jake said, sorry that they had misunderstood him.

“Then here’s one for you, by jove, with a Limey twist. ’Ow do you get six elephants into a Vauxhall?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Blimey, old thing. Three in the front, three in the back.”

Jake mustered a smile and raised his glass to Uncle Lou. “And ’ow would you get six giraffes into the same car?” A pause. “You remove the elephants,” Lou exploded.

“Clever.”

“Yankel, you should never lose your stench of humor. That’s a philosophy that’s never failed me.”

“I remember,” Jake said, and he drifted onto the balcony where Irwin towered over a brood of younger cousins, a transistor clapped to his ear.

“Mays just homered,” he said. “They’re going to walk McCovey,” and seeing Jake, he gulped, and turned his back to him.

Jake decided to seek out Fanny before he had drunk himself into incoherence. She was in the small bedroom.

“Anything I can do for you?” Jake asked.

“Sit.”

So he sat.

“You know, one night – after we were married, you understand – your father and I, well …” She blushed. “… We were fooling around, you know. You know what I mean?”

“You were what?”

“Well, you know. I got pregnant. But he made me see somebody.”

“Why?”

“He thought his brothers would laugh at him. At his age, a baby.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re a very thoughtful person. I’d come to visit you in London, if I could afford it.”

Which drove Jake back into the hall, where he could see Irwin, alone on the balcony now, waddling over to the railing. He thrust a finger into his nostril, dug fiercely, and slowly, slowly, extracted a winding worm of snot. Irwin contemplated it, sleepy-eyed, before he wiped it on the railing.

Uncle Jack was holding forth, dribbling cigar ash.

“Hey, did you hear the one about the two Australian fairies? One of them went back to Sydney.”

Herky clapped Jake on the back. “Got to talk to you.” He ushered Jake into the toilet ahead of him. “How are you fixed money-wise, kid?”

“I’d love to help you, Herky,” Jake replied, swaying, “but it’s all tied up.”

“You don’t understand. I don’t need your money. You’ve got kids now. I’m sure you want to invest for the future. You’re my one and only brother-in-law and … well, I’d like to put you on to something good.”

“I read you.”

Herky lit up, exuding self-satisfaction. “What do you think is the most valuable thing in the world today?”

“The Jewish tradition.”

“Where will boozing get you? Nowhere.” Herky plucked Jake’s glass out of his hand. “I’m serious, for Chrissake.”

“All right, then. Not having cancer.”

“I mean a natural resource.”

“Gold?”

“Guess again.”

“Oil?”

Herky spilled over with secret knowledge. “Give up?”

Don’t you know you’re going to die, Herky? But he didn’t say it.

“Water.”

“What?”

“H₂O. Watch this.” With a flick of the wrist, Herky flushed the toilet. “It’s going on everywhere, day and night. Now you take the Fraser River, for instance. More than once a day the untreated contents of one hundred thousand toilet bowls empty into it.”

“That’s a lot of shit, Herky.”

“Flush, flush, flush. Canada’s got more clean water than any other country in the Free World, but even so, there’s a limit, you know.”

Jake retrieved his drink.

“You project ten years ahead and there will be container tankers, fleets of them, carrying not oil or iron ore, but pure Canadian water, to polluted American cities.”

“So?”

“Watch closely now.” Herky flushed the toilet again. “All over the city, people are doing the same, but – but – this toilet, like any other, flushes the same amount of water no matter what the need. You read me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“I call them mindless, these toilets, I mean.”

“I’m tired, Herky. Come to the point.”

“The average person urinates maybe four times a day, but defecates only once, yet this toilet is mindless, it is adjusted to provide enough power to flush a stool down the drain each time. Millions of gallons daily are being wasted in the Montreal area alone. Which is where I come in. We are developing a cistern that will give you all the zoom you need for defecation, but will release only what’s necessary to wash urine away. In other words, a toilet with a mind. The biggest breakthrough since Thomas Crapper’s Niagara. Once we get costs down and go into production, I expect our unit to become mandatory equipment in all new buildings. I’m offering you a chance to come in on the ground floor. Well?”

“You certainly are thinking big, Herky.”

“You’ve got to move with the times.”

“Let me sleep on it, O.K.?”

“O.K., but meanwhile, mum’s the word.”

A half hour before the first evening star, the rabbis trooped into the insufferably hot apartment in shiny black frock coats. The local yeshiva’s Mafia. Ranging from tall spade-bearded men in broad-brimmed black hats to pimply, wispy-bearded boys in oversize Homburgs. Finally, there came the leader, the fragile Rabbi Polsky himself, who led the men in the evening prayer.

Immediately behind Jake, prayerbook in hand, stood flat-footed Irwin, breathing with effort. As Jake stumbled self-consciously through the prayer for the dead, Irwin’s troubled breathing quickened – it raced – stopped – and suddenly he sneezed, and sneezed again, pelting Jake’s neck with what seemed like shrapnel. As Jake whirled around, Irwin seemed to draw his neck into his body. Bulging eyes and a sweaty red face rising over a succession of chins were all that confronted Jake. But as he resumed his prayers, he was conscious of Irwin, biting back his laughter, threatening to explode. The moment prayers were over, Irwin shot out onto the balcony, heaving, a soggy hand clamped to his nose.

Rabbi Polsky, holy man to the Hershes, was thin and round-shouldered, his skin gray as gum, with watery blue eyes and a scraggly yellow beard. He padded on slippered feet to a place on the sofa. A cunning field mouse. Accusingly impecunious amid Hersh affluence. His shirt collar curling and soiled, his cuffs frayed, Rabbi Polsky came nightly, wiped his mouth with an enormous damp handkerchief, and preached to the Hershes, all of whom virtually glowed in his presence.

“There came to me once a man to ask me to go to the Rebbe in New York to ask him what he should do for his father who was dying. He paid for me the air ticket, I went to Brooklyn, I spoke with the Rebbe, and I came back and said to the man the Rebbe says pray, you must pray every morning. Pray, the man asked? Every morning. So he went away and every morning before going to the office he said his prayers after years of not doing it. Then one morning he had an appointment with a goy, a financier, from out of town, at the Mount Royal Hotel. He had to see the goy to make a loan for his business. The goy said you be here nine o’clock sharp, I’ll try to fit you in, I’m very busy. All right. But the man overslept and in the morning he realized if he takes time to say his prayers he will be late. He will lose his loan. All the same he prayed, and when he got to the Mount Royal Hotel and went to the man’s room, the goy was in a rage, shouting, hollering, you keep me waiting. You need me and you keep me waiting? So the man said his father was dying and his rabbi had told him he must pray every morning, and that’s why he was late. You mean to say, the goy asked, even though if I deny you this loan your business is ruined, you were late so as not to miss one morning’s prayers for your father? Yes. In that case, the goy said, let me shake your hand, put it there, you are a fella I can trust. To lend money to such a man will be a genuine pleasure.”

Euphoria filled the Hershes. Only Jake protested, nudging Uncle Lou. “We now know that praying is good for credit, but what happened to the man’s father?”

“You know what your trouble is? You don’t believe in anything.”

Rabbi Polsky, possibly with Jake in mind, continued:

“Sometimes young people question the law. There’s no reason for this … that’s a superstition … You know the type, I’m sure. Why, for example, they ask, should we not eat seafood?”

Uncle Lou poked Jake. “Your sister Rifka is on a seafood diet.”

“What?”

“Every time she sees food she wants it.”

“Why,” the rabbi asked, “shouldn’t we eat crab or lobster? To which I would answer you with the question why is there such madness among the goyim, they run to the psychiatrist every morning? Why? It is now scientifically revealed in an article in Time magazine that eating seafood can drive you crazy. It promotes insanity.”

“Jake, it’s for you,” Uncle Jack said, holding out the kitchen phone.

“Who is it?”

“The boss,” he replied with a big wink.

“Would you mind shutting the door after you, please?” Jake asked, before taking the call.

It was Nancy, enormously concerned for his sake. “I thought you would phone last night.”

“Honestly, I’m all right.”

“There’s no need to pretend.”

“The embarrassing thing is,” Jake said, “it’s like a family party. I’m not grieving. I’m having a wonderful time.”

Sitting with the Hershes, day and night, a bottle of Remy Martin parked between his feet, such was Jake’s astonishment, commingled with pleasure, in their responses, that he could not properly mourn for his father. He felt cradled, not deprived. He also felt like Rip Van Winkle returned to an innocent and ordered world he had mistakenly believed long extinct. Where God watched over all, doing His sums. Where everything fit. Even the holocaust which, after all, had yielded the state of Israel. Where to say, “Gentlemen, the Queen,” was to offer the obligatory toast to Elizabeth II at an affair, not to begin a discussion on Andy Warhol. Where smack was not habit-forming, but what a disrespectful child deserved; pot was what you simmered the chicken soup in; and camp was where you sent the boys for the summer. It was astounding, Jake was incredulous, that after so many years and fevers, after Dachau, after Hiroshima, revolution, rockets in Space, DNA, bestiality in the streets, assassinations in and out of season, there were still brides with shining faces who were married in white gowns, posing for the Star social pages with their prizes, pear-shaped boys in evening clothes. There were aunts who sold raffles and uncles who swore by the Reader’s Digest. French Canadians, like overflying airplanes distorting the TV picture, were only tolerated. DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET, THE TROUBLE IS TEMPORARY. Aunts still phoned each other every morning to say what sort of cake they were baking. Who had passed this exam, who had survived that operation. A scandal was when a first cousin was invited to the bar mitzvah kiddush, but not the dinner. Eloquence was the rabbi’s sermon. They were ignorant of the arts, they were overdressed, they were overstuffed, and their taste was appallingly bad. But within their self-contained world, there was order. It worked.

As nobody bothered to honor them, they very sensibly celebrated each other at fund-raising synagogue dinners, taking turns at being Man-of-the-Year, awarding each other ornate plaques to hang over the bar in the rumpus room. Furthermore, God was interested in the fate of the Hershes, with time and consideration for each one. To pray was to be heard. There was not even death, only an interlude below ground. For one day, as Rabbi Polsky assured them, the Messiah would blow his horn, they would rise as one and return to Zion. Buried with twigs in their coffins, as Baruch had once said, to dig their way to him before the neighbors.

Phoning Hanna, in Toronto, Jake had to cope with Jenny first.

“Sitting shiva with the hypocrites, are you?”

Oh, God.

“I suppose whenever my name’s mentioned they cross themselves, so to speak,” she said, giggling at her own joke.

He hadn’t the heart to say her name had not been mentioned once, and next thing he knew Doug was on the line.

“I want you to know why I didn’t send flowers.”

“You’re not supposed to,” Jake said wearily.

“It’s not that. You know I’m beyond such ethnic taboos. Instead of flowers, I’ve sent a check in memory of your dad to SUPPORT in Hanoi.”

“You did?”

“It goes toward buying artificial limbs for children maimed in the air raids.”

“I knew you’d always come through in a crunch, Doug. Now may I please speak to Hanna?”

“So, Yankel?”

“Hanna, how are you?”

“I’m sorry. You know we were never friendly in the old days, but, after all, he’s your paw, and I’m sorry.” She inquired about Nancy and the baby and demanded photographs of Sammy and Molly. “I wanted to come to Montreal, but you know how Jenny feels about the Hershes. She wouldn’t give me the fare. Big deal. I’ll hitchhike, I said, like the hippies …”

“I’d send you the fare, Hanna, you know that, but …” He feared the family would treat her shabbily.

“I know. Don’t explain. Couldn’t you come here for a day?”

“There’s the new baby, Hanna. Really, I …”

“It’s O.K. Next time, yes?”

“We’ll go to a hockey game together.”

“Hey, Red Kelly’s in parliament. He’s an M.P.”

“Who?”

“What do you mean, who? The Maple Leafs’ defenseman. You remember, Imlach traded with Detroit for him.”

“And he’s in parliament now?”

“Aquí está nada.”

“Aquí está Hanna.”

“Yes, sir. Alive and kicking. A living testimonial to Carling’s beer. How’s Luke?”

“The same.”

“You two; you give me a royal pain in the ass. When will you make it up?”

His mother made Jake lunch in her apartment. She said how sad she was his father had died. He was not to blame if he had not been intelligent enough for her and she was certain he would have been a good husband for a simple woman. And that done, she asked, “How’s my new baby?”

“Nancy’s baby is fine,” Jake replied.

Again and again he was driven back to St. Urbain to linger before the dilapidated flat that had once held Hanna, Arty, Jenny, and, briefly, the Horseman. More than once he strolled around the corner and into the lane. To look up at the rear bedroom window, Jenny’s window, that had used to be lit into the small hours as she applied herself with such ardor to her studies, the books that were to liberate her from St. Urbain, the offices of Laurel Knitwear, and all the oppressive Hershes.

“You know what she’s plugging away at in there?” Issy Hersh had said. “Latin. A dead language.”

Through a hole in the fence, Jake contemplated the backyard where the Horseman had once set up a makeshift gym, doing his stuff for admiring girls, high-quality girls. He and Arty, Jake recalled, had used to watch from the bedroom window and once they had seen Joey, his eyes shooting hatred, strike a stranger ferociously in the stomach.

Suddenly, a dark-eyed, olive-skinned boy appeared in the yard, ran to the fence, and confronted Jake. “Fuck off, mister.”

Duddy, he remembered, Arty, Gas, find me.

Everything happened so quickly. One day Arty, Duddy, Stan, Gas, and Jake were collecting salvage, practicing aircraft recognition, and the next, it seemed, the war was over. Neighbors’ sons came home.

“What was it like over there?”

“An education.”

IS HITLER REALLY DEAD? was what concerned everybody. That, and an end to wartime shortages and ration books. One stingingly cold Saturday afternoon a man came to the door. Leather cap, rheumy eyes, an intricately veined nose. Battle ribbons riding his lapel. One arm was no more than a butt, the sleeve clasped by a giant safety pin, and with the other arm, the good arm, the man offered a Veteran’s calendar, the Karsh portrait of Churchill encased in a gold foil V. “They’re only fifty cents each.”

“No, thanks,” Mr. Hersh said.

Reproachfully, the man’s bloodshot gaze fastened on his battle ribbons. “Ever hear of Dieppe?” he growled, flapping his butt.

Jake looked up at his father imploringly.

“And did you ever hear of the Better Business Bureau,” Mr. Hersh demanded, “because it so happens they have broadcast a warning for law-abiding citizens not to buy combs from cripples who just claim to be war veterans.”

“Jew bastard.”

Mr. Hersh slammed the door. “You see what they’re like, all of them, underneath. You see, Jake.”

“But did you see his arm? He lost it at Dieppe maybe.”

“And did you see his schnozz? He’s a boozer. The only battle he ever fought was with Johnny Walker. You’ve got to get up early in the morning to put one over on Issy Hersh.”

Or, Jake thought – remembering Tom the gardener with a chill of shame, Sammy watching, all eyes – or his first-born son Jacob.

The old friends Jake sought out, were, to his dismay, churlish or resentful.

“What’s the famous director doing here, back on the farm?” Ginsburg demanded. Arty’s enthusiasm for Jake’s film iced over with three drinks. “If you had asked me when we were kids, I never would have picked you to make it. Stan maybe.” Witty, corrosive Stan Tannenbaum, with whom Jake had sat in Room Forty-one, at Fletcher’s Field High. Stan was a professor now, his long greasy hair bound by a Cree headband, a pendant riding his barrel belly. “I’m the leading authority on Shakespeare in this country and I adore teaching it, but it humbles a man, you know. I don’t flatter myself into thinking I have anything to add. There’s so much crap being written today. Take your buddy, Luke Scott, for instance.”

Gordie Rothman, another old schoolmate, who had forsaken teaching for corporation law, insisted they meet for a drink at Bourgatel’s. “The truth is the money’s rolling in …” He was happily married with two children, a house in Westmount, and what he called a shack in Vermont, just in case the French Canadian business got out of hand. “There’s only one thing.” Gordie slid a plastic-covered, leather-bound folio out of his attaché case. “I’d like to get my screenplay produced.”

“You mean to say you’ve written a …”

“What the fuck, don’t come on with me. Before you were well known who ever heard of you?”

“Nobody.”

“I’ve sent the script to agents in New York and even London, but naturally they couldn’t care less about anything set in Canada. You’ve got to have connections in this game, I realize that, and somebody like you …”

“I’ll read it, Gordie. But I’ve got high standards, you know.”

“Listen here, me too. But not everybody is James Joyce. I mean I’m sure you’d like to be able to direct as well as Hitchcock or … or Fellini …” Suddenly agitated, he glared at Jake. “I knew you when you were nothing. Nobody ever thought that much of you here. How in the hell did you ever get into films?”

“Sleeping with the right people,” Jake said, winking.

After prayers each evening, the comforters streamed into the apartment. Dimly remembered second cousins, old neighbors, business associates. They compared Miami hotels for price and rabbis for oomph, but, above all, they marveled at the miracle of the Six-Day War and followed, with apprehension, the debate over the ceasefire continuing at the U.N. One rabbi, a suburban mod, wanted the Israeli victory enshrined by a new holiday, a latter-day Passover.

Uncle Lou accosted each visitor with the same question. “What kind of tanks were the Egyptians using in Sinai?”

“Russian.”

“Wrong. Not rushin’. Standin’ still.”

Whenever guests celebrated the feats of the Israeli air force, Lou taunted them with the impending Bond drive. “Never before in the history of man,” he was fond of saying, “will so few owe so much to so many.”

Jack assured all comers that the Egyptians had used gas in Yemen only to test it for the Jews.

“But the Israelis were using napalm,” Jake protested.

“By Jake here, whatever we do is rotten. Whatever they do is A-1. Do you know they had ovens ready in Cairo for our people?”

Only Uncle Sam was not surprised by the Israeli victory. He reminded everybody that it was the Jews who had turned the tide against the Nazis in World War II. At Tobruk.

“They stood against five Arab nations,” Uncle Abe said again and again, “all alone. It has to be the fulfillment of divine intervention, even the most skeptical man must accept it was God’s fulfillment to Abraham …”

One evening Max Kravitz drifted in, holding his taxi cap in his gnarled hands. Max’s hair was white, his face grizzly. “Do you remember me,” he demanded, driving Jake against a wall.

“Yes.”

“What? You mean to say you remember me after all these years?”

“Yes. Of course I do.”

“Well, I don’t remember you,” Max replied triumphantly.

Arty, long established as a dentist, came to pay his respects. Arty had become a joker. Such a joker, they said. He told wonderful stories; then, as you laughed, Arty’s head would shoot forward to within inches of your gaping mouth, his eyes scrutinizing, his nose sniffing tentatively, appalled by what they perceived and smelled, his smile abruptly transformed into a pitying headshake. The next morning you found yourself sprawled, gagging and struggling, in his chair. Joking, cunning Arty had drilled his way through Hersh family molars, shoving in an upper plate here and striking a buck-tooth bonanza there, working his passage into a split-level in Ville St. Laurent.

They mourned the passing of Issy Hersh for a week, the truculent rabbis surging in nightly to be followed by prayers and more guests. The sweetest time for Jake was the early afternoon, when, riding a leaden lunch, the drooping Hershes wrestled sleep by reminiscing about their shared childhood and schools, their first jobs, all on a French Canadian street.

“They’re so dumb,” Aunt Malka said, shaking her head with wonder. “There’s one I used to tell a joke to on Friday and on Sunday in the middle of church service she would finally get it and begin to laugh.”

What about the Separatists?

For them, birth control would be a better policy. They breed like rabbits.

Suddenly, the apartment darkened. Irwin’s body filled the screen door to the balcony to overflowing, the transistor held to his ear. “Arnie’s just shot a birdie on the fifteenth. That puts him only two down on Casper.”

“That Arnie. Wow!”

“Where’s Nicklaus?”

“Hold it.”

Artfully, Jake brought the conversation around to Cousin Joey and Baruch.

“When they brought Baruch over, you know, the nut, he had never seen a banana before. Paw gave him a banana and he ate it with the peel.”

Uncle Abe, chuckling with fond remembrance, said, “On the ship that gangster came over on, another Jew was robbed of his wallet. They searched high and low and couldn’t find it. Two special cops were waiting at the foot of the gangway, looking into all the hand luggage. Baruch comes sailing down the gangway with his satchel already open for inspection. He is eating an apple and whistling. Inside the apple is the money from the wallet.”

“That Baruch. Boy!”

And all at once, Jake, come to sit with the Hershes in mourning for his father, feeling closer to them than he had in years, felt obliged to honor the Horseman in his absence. Without preamble, he turned on Uncle Abe, reminding him of Joey’s last visit to Montreal, the men waiting in the car outside the house on St. Urbain, the gutted MG in the woods, and Jenny’s abiding hatred. “You turned him in, didn’t you, Uncle Abe?”

Uncle Abe’s face flamed red. “What are you talking about, you drunken fool?”

“All I want is a straight answer.”

“Here it is, then,” and he slapped Jake hard across the cheek, stomping out of the living room.

“Well,” Jake said, startled, trying to smile into hostile faces, faces all saying you deserved it.

The room was choked in silence.

“Hey,” Uncle Lou said, “have you heard the one about the girl who wouldn’t wear a diaphragm because she didn’t want a picture window in her play room?”

“I’ve had enough of your puerile jokes, Uncle Lou.”

“Well, pip pip, old bloke. And up yours with a pineapple.”

Rifka shook a fist at him. “You come here once a year maybe and you booze from morning until night and stir up trouble. Then you fly off again. Who needs you anyway?”

Herky, roused, demanded, “What ever happened to that James Bond film you were supposed to direct? Big shot.”

“Flush, flush, flush,” was the most dazzling retort Jake could come up with before he fled indignantly to the balcony, lugging his brandy bottle with him.

Unfortunately Cousin Irwin was already there. Mountainous Irwin, huffing, as he clipped his fingernails. Irwin, having once peered into Jake’s hot indignant face, retreated, wiggling his eyebrows ingratiatingly.

“Say something, you prick. Say something to me.”

“Can do.”

“Well. Go ahead.”

Irwin pondered, he screwed his eyes. Briefly, he contemplated a gasoline pool in the Esso service station opposite. He scratched his head and studied his fingernails. Finally, as if pouncing on the words, he demanded, “Got many irons in the fire?”

Oh, my God, Jake thought, and he bounded back into the living room, where heads bent together to whisper leaped apart.

“Look here,” Jake pleaded, “we’re all going to die –”

“What have you got?” Sam asked.

“– sit down, you fool, it’s not contagious. Oh, hell, what am I sitting shiva for anyway. I don’t believe in it. Why should I try to please any of you?”

“Out of respect for your father.”

“I never respected my father.”

“Whoa, boy.”

I loved him, Jake added to himself, unwilling to say as much to them.

“He’s not dead a week,” Rifka howled, “and he doesn’t respect him. You hear, do you all hear?”

“He didn’t leave any money, dear. There’s no need to come on.”

“Rotten thing. Animal. The day you married that shiksa you broke his heart.”

Uncle Abe was back, his slippers flapping.

“I shouldn’t have slapped you. I’m sorry, Jake.”

“No. You bloody well shouldn’t have slapped me. You should have given me a straight answer to my question.”

“Can you not,” Abe asked wearily, “take an apology like a gentleman?”

“Did you tell them where they could find Joey?”

Sighing, Uncle Abe led him into the kitchen, shutting the door after them.

“Do you see Joey in London?”

“I think he’s in South America now. I haven’t seen him since I was a boy.”

Uncle Abe’s eyes flickered with relief. Or so it seemed to Jake.

“You’re lucky, then. Because he’s rotten.”

“Tell me why.”

“You think the world of your cousin. Is that right?”

“Maybe.”

“Joey did fight in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, I’ll grant him that –”

“And in Israel in forty-eight. He rode in the last convoy into Jerusalem.”

“Good. Fine,” Uncle Abe said, his smile dubious. “And if that’s enough to make him a hero for you, let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

“No. Let’s not.”

“Tough guy. O.K. He came crawling back to us, in 1943, with his tail between his legs, because he was in trouble with gangsters. He drove all the way from Las Vegas, without daring to look back.”

“What sort of trouble was he in?”

“Nothing grand, Jake, nothing stylish. Squalid trouble. With bookmakers, mostly. He gambled, O.K., so do a lot of people. He didn’t pay his debts. O.K., he’s not the first. But he was also a gigolo. He was a blackmailer. He squeezed women for money, sometimes even marrying them. Do you remember the women who used to come to the house on St. Urbain?”

Jack nodded.

“Well, to begin with they were fast types, bar flies, with husbands overseas in the army. Then there was a young Westmount girl, he met her at a horse show, I think, and that led to more society types, looking for kicks. After all, Joey was a colorful fellow. He’d been a stuntman in the movies. He’d played professional baseball. And when it came to horses, he could ride with the best of them. But he was also a roughneck, you know. No education. He got too ambitious for his own good, he got beyond himself. He began to hang out at the Maritime Bar, in the Ritz, you know, making time with married women. They bought him clothes, they gave him money, and when he didn’t have enough he signed for credit, using me as a reference. I must have settled more than two thousand dollars in debts after he skipped town.”

“You put the men on to him after the trouble at the Palais d’Or. You betrayed him.”

“Cock-and-bull, that’s what you’re talking. It wasn’t like that, Jake. Your cousin suffered from a swelled head. He got involved with the wife of somebody important here, a man of real quality and position, with an influential family. The wife had a drinking problem and hot pants for Joey. She was most indiscreet, to say the least. When the husband was out of town, Joey stayed in the house. Right on top of the hill. He didn’t leave with empty pockets. Jewels disappeared, so did some of the family plate. The husband came to see Joey. He offered him money, but it wasn’t enough. They quarreled. Joey hit him. Then your hero got cold feet, but it was too late to run. The woman’s husband wanted him taught a lesson. What could he do, he had become a laughingstock. So he hired some ruffians to give Joey what for.”

“I’ve been to see Joey’s wife in Israel,” Jake said, hoping to startle him.

“Joey’s wife. One of them, you mean. There are others.”

“He told her the family was responsible for his father’s death and his, almost.”

“His words. Golden words. The man is a congenital liar.”

Jake told Uncle Abe about the Mengele papers he had discovered on the kibbutz. He told him about Deir Yassin, the Kastner trial, and how, after seeking the Horseman in Munich and Frankfurt, he had become convinced that Joey was trying to track down Josef Mengele in South America. To his immediate regret, he also told him about Ruthy.

Uncle Abe shook his head, amazed. He guffawed. “De la Hirsch,” he said, “that’s a hot one.”

“I am not amused. Neither am I convinced by your tales of Joey’s philandering. You turned him in, Uncle Abe.”

“I wish I had. I could have done it without batting an eyelash.”

“In God’s name, why?”

“You have no idea how close we were to a race riot here. Those days weren’t these days. Those days they were painting À bas les juifs on the highways, the young men were hiding in the woods, they weren’t going to fight in the Jews’ war. We could all be shoveled into a furnace, as far as they were concerned. And now, they have the chutzpah to say how much they admire the Zionists. The Separatists say they are no more than Zionists in their own country and the Jews should support them. Over my dead body, Yankel. They get their independence today and tomorrow there’s a run on the banks. Why? Because of the Jews; and it will be hot for us here again. Listen, you don’t live here. In your rarefied world, film people, writers, directors, actors, it hardly matters this one’s a Jew, that one’s black. God help me, I almost said Negro. You lead a sheltered life, my young friend. We live here in the real world, and let me tell you it’s a lot better today than it was when I was a youngster. I rejoice, I celebrate it, but I remember. And how, I remember. And I’m on guard. Your zeyda, my father, came here steerage to be a peddler. He couldn’t speak English and trod in fear of the goyim. I was an exception, one of the first of my generation to go to McGill, and it was no pleasure to be a Jew-boy on campus in my time. Those days weren’t these days. In my time we were afraid too, you know. We couldn’t buy property in the town of Mount Royal, we smelled bad. Hotels were restricted, country clubs, and there were quotas on Jews at the universities. I can remember to this day driving to the mountains with Sophie, she was four months pregnant, a young bride, I got a flat tire on the road and walked two miles to a hotel to phone a garage. No Jews, No Dogs, it said on the fence. I close my eyes, Yankel, and I can see the sign before me now. But today, I’m a Q.C. I serve on the school board. The mayor has come to an anniversary dinner at our synagogue, he wore a skullcap. Ministers from Ottawa, the same. There are Jews sitting on the bench. Why, today we even have Jews who are actually members of the University Club. Three members already.”

“And you’re flattered, are you?”

“Flattered, no, pleased, yes. My Irwin hardly knows anything of anti-semitism. He’s a fine boy, you know, you should have a chat with him. He’s serious, and he’s got respect for his elders, not like some of them, his age, they’re on drugs now. I lectured at McGill, you know. The peddler’s boy, how about that? I spoke on Talmudic law, and those kids, my God, my God, Jewish children, I see them, they’re taller than we were, big, healthy, the girls a pleasure to look at, dressed like American princesses, the boys with cars, and I think to myself, we’ve got reason to be proud, we’ve done a fine job here. The struggle was worth it. And what do they want, our Jewish children? They want to be black. LeRoi Jones, or whatever his name is, and this Cleaver nut tell them the Jews are rotten to the core, and they clap hands. It’s a mechaieh. Not that they know a Yiddish word; French, that’s what’s groovy. Their hearts are breaking for the downtrodden French Canadians. Well, only two generations earlier, these same French Canadians wanted only to break their heads. And if it’s not the blacks, or the French Canadians, it’s the Eskimos. They can’t sleep, they feel guilty about the Indians. So there they are, our Jewish children, wearing Indian headbands. Smoking pot. It’s the burden of being white, it bugs them. How long have we even been white? Only two generations ago, who was white? We were kikes, that’s all.

“Some bunch. What’s Israel to them? An imperialist outpost. And World War II; that’s when we wiped out Hiroshima, and the beautiful city of Dresden, we poor old sinners. We Philistines. You know I saw a Jewish kid on a motorcycle, Bernstein’s boy, wearing his hair Ritz Brothers style and on his head there’s a German soldier’s helmet. Shame, I said, shame. ‘It’s campy,’ the girls squeal. ‘Why are you so uptight, Mr. Hersh?’ And they lay into me about Harlem, the tzoris of the Eskimos, Indian braves without hope. Vietnam. Cuba. Look here, I said, this is Abraham Hersh you’re looking at. I am a reasonably good fellow. I am responsible for none of the world’s ills. Whatever I got, I earned. Napalm’s not my invention. I never lynched anybody. I’m sorry you’re not black and beautiful, but only a Jewish child. For me, it’s the thoughts of Rabbi Akiba, not Chairman Mao. And this pisherke pipes up, he says, they’re the love generation, they’re for peace, they give each other flowers. Big news, eh, Yankel? What am I, I say, the hate generation? A war-monger? When I was chasing after girls, did I hand out poison ivy, I said it with flowers too. No, no, I don’t dig it. This kid says when they have a rock concert, thousands of them from miles around, there’s no rough stuff. I answered him, listen here, shmock, if I go to an affair at the synagogue, or a Mozart concert, we don’t pour out of the halls with clubs, splitting heads. Why should you be amazed that your concerts don’t end in a riot? What’s so special? But he’s not finished yet, this latter-day savant. After all, I don’t strut down Sherbrooke Street with FUCK painted on my forehead. If I jerked off, I’d feel guilty. I wouldn’t kiss another man. Feh, I said. Their bodies are beautiful, he tells me. When they swim nude, the sun shines out of their asses. Listen here, you little prick, you think I was born fat and bald, with a heart condition. Wasn’t I young once, and aren’t you going to grow old too? Aren’t we all made of flesh?

“Oh, it was exasperating. Beyond belief. But my Irwin’s got a head on his shoulders,” Uncle Abe said, knocking wood, “and both feet planted on terra firma. I must remind you once more, Yankel, this is our home. We live here, you don’t. I am a respected citizen. My daughter has married well, she doesn’t lack for comforts. She phones her mother every day, she calls me at the office. We adore our grandchildren. One day Irwin will marry a good girl, God willing, and there will be more grandchildren. I brought them up, Irwin and Doris, and when the day comes they will bury me. I wear my father’s talith in shul, next Irwin will wear it, and then his son and his son’s son. It’s a good life. I enjoy it. I am not one of your bitten Hershes, a wanderer, coming home only to poke snide fun and stir up trouble. A shit-disturber.”

“Like Joey,” Jake asked, “or me?”

“I do not compare you with him. You’re a good Jewish boy. Look inside your heart, Yankel, and there’s yiddishkeit.”

“Don’t claim me, please. At least not in that fashion. Because as amusing as you are, and plausible, the Hersh family honor rides on Joey’s back, not your complacent shoulders, and my heart belongs to him.”

“In Paraguay?”

“Yes.”

“Putz. Let me ask you this, as I’m the villain in your books. What has Joey ever done for his wife? Or Hanna? Or Jenny? Or Arty? Me, the complacent one, I took them all in when they were in rags, Arty’s head crawling with lice. I paid the rent and the doctor’s bills. I put Arty through dentistry school, and I’m not sorry, let me tell you, because he’s turned out a respectable man, highly thought of in the community.”

“Don’t you community me any communities. Because you, my dear, the peddler’s number one son, were one of the community leaders who signed an obsequious letter to the Star saying no stone would be left unturned to find whoever had beaten up the French Canadian student.”

“Yes, I’m the guilty one. All he did was beat up an innocent boy and leave him lying unconscious in an alley.”

“When Jenny left town she said no more money from Uncle Abe, sweet fucking Uncle Abe. Why?”

“Because she’s a foul-mouthed whore and she hates us. Don’t you even know that much?”

“You had Joey beaten up and ridden out of town, Uncle Abe. You know it and I know it.”

“I sleep with a good conscience. The only thing that ever keeps me awake is heartburn.”

“Oh, what’s the use?”

“Yankel, let’s get something straight here. We are talking about a blackmailer. About a gambler and a bigamist and a liar. You and I are discussing a gigolo. A man who moves from country to country under assumed names, certainly with good reason. De la Hirsch,” he said, snickering. “Josef Mengele yet. Paraguay. O.K., no more burning looks from you, please. Joey is the Golem. He’s Bar-Kochba. A one-man Maccabee band. He is searching the jungles for Mengele. After all, somebody caught Eichmann. But if he finds him, what then? How old would this obscenity be? Sixty? Seventy? Joey finds him, he slits his throat. Does that balance any books? No, sir. It makes trouble for the Jews in Asunción, that’s all.”

“Like Joey made trouble for you here?”

“All right, then. Chew on this, my young friend. From what I know of your cousin, if he is actually searching for Mengele, which I don’t believe for a minute, if he is hunting this Nazi down and finds him,” Uncle Abe shouted, pounding the table, “he won’t kill him, he’ll blackmail him.”

Outside, it was still stifling. But it looked like rain. Cousin Irwin was leaning against the family Cadillac, umbrella in hand, waiting to drive his parents home. Irwin was licking a triple-scoop, double-coned ice cream. Strawberry, chocolate, and pistachio. A baseball cap (Go, METS, Go!) hooded his eyes. His arms had been boiled lobsterred by the sun. Instead of elbows, dimples. He wore a yellow jersey, his nipples showing through. His enormous belly spilled over his tartan Bermuda shorts.

Jake bore down on him, glowering.

“Want a lick?” Irwin asked, heaving with laughter.

Jake knocked the ice cream out of his hand. It spattered against the Cadillac, sliding to the pavement. “How many states in the Union?” he demanded.

“Forty-eight.”

“Fifty,” Jake shot back.

“Fifty, then.”

“Name them.”

“What?”

Jake raised his foot and brought his heel down as hard as he could on Irwin’s toes.

“Oregon, Idaho, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Illinois, Michigan, New York, North Dakota –”

Jake let him have an elbow in the stomach. “You said North Dakota.”

“– South Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Texas, Nevada. How many does that make?”

Jake whacked him across the face with the flat of his hand.

“Arizona, California, Utah, New Mexico, Missouri, Miami, Georgia, Florida, Alabama.” Driven back against the hood of the car, his balance precarious, his eyes bulging, Irwin began to quiver. “Kansas, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alaska –”

Aunt Sophie, emerging from the apartment building, shrieked.

“What’s going on here?” Uncle Abe asked, aghast.

“My grandfather didn’t come here steerage, Baruch didn’t die in penury, Joey wasn’t driven out of town, so that this jelly, this nose-picker, this sports nut, this lump of shit, your son, should inherit the earth,” and Jake turned to stride down the street, fighting his rising stomach, praying that he would not be sick until he had turned the corner.