Joshua Then and Now (12 page)

“And then what?”

“Why don’t you read a book on the subject and leave me alone?”

“You’re my father, but.”

“Yeah, right. Well afterwards –”

“Afterwards?”

“Yeah, afterwards, you remember to wash up, using soap and hot water. But if, say, a couple of weeks later it hurts you to piss or it’s coming out the wrong color you go right to the doctor, you don’t wait. Got that?”

“Right.”

“Well, that’s it. Good luck.”

“Aw, come on, Daddy.”

Grudgingly, his father came to a decision. He dipped into his inside jacket pocket and unfolded a sheet obviously torn from a
medical book. “I’ve been to the library on your behalf,” he said, shoving the page at him. “That’s what it looks like close up.”

“What?”

“Her
thing
, that’s what! The snatch.”

Joshua groaned; it looked so uninviting.

“You must understand,” his father said with some tenderness, “that this is merely a scientific diagram. A map, like.”

“Uh huh.”

“Look, if I showed you a relief map of the Rockies, in black and white, you think you’d be impressed?”

His father had once fought in Calgary. Another time at a smoker in the Banff Springs Hotel. He adored the mountains.

“Well,” Joshua began.

“You see this little thing right here?”

He nodded.

“You diddle it with your finger, they really like it, they begin to purr.”

“No shit?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said, grinning fondly. “But afterwards,” he added, turning solemn again, “you wash your hands with soap and hot water before you touch your face.”

“There seems to be an awful lot of washing up involved, Daddy.”

“You can’t be too careful these days.” Then he sighed, relieved, and turned to the Bible. “How many commandments are there?”

“Ten.”

“Yeah, well. Right, right. Now, can you recite them to me?”

“Aw, come on, Daddy.”

“But you could the batting order of the Royals. Or the Dodgers. With the averages.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve got to have these educational talks more often, or you’ll grow up a jerk like me.”

“I don’t think you’re a jerk,” Joshua said, appalled.

“Well, yeah,” his father said, pleased, “but what do you know?”

“I’d certainly like to know more about fucking.”

“Well, it’s a big subject and it’s best to pace yourself, taking it round by round. I mean, we’ve made a good start, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. Now listen to this,” he said, opening the Bible at one of his markers. “Quote, And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, unquote. Now when you read the whole book, which I fully expect you to do, you will understand that the Hebes were in Egypt like for generations. In those olden times they were not yet into the needle trade or scrap or bootlegging or prizefighting or whatever. They were mostly in construction. Bricks. They were working like niggers and they were not being paid a dime. They were like slaves,
in bondage
. Got that?”

“Right.”

“Quote, Thou shalt have no other gods before me, unquote. You see there were lots of contenders, other gods, mostly no-account idols, bums-of-the-month, before our God, Jehovah, took the title outright, and made a covenant with our forefathers who he had helped bust out of Egypt. A covenant is a contract. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, quote, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image …” He got as far as “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” stumbling a little, and then, with a burst of speed, went on to: “Quote, Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness –”

“Can I stop you anywhere?”

“Sure.”

“ ‘Thou shalt not steal’?”

“Listen here,” his father said, “there are ten commandments. Right? Well, it’s like an exam. I mean, you get eight out of ten, you’re just about top of the class, aren’t you? And don’t forget, God was no horse’s ass, and there’s a kicker in the covenant. Like, these are the Days of Awe and all you got to do is repent, even adultery,
sincerely
,
but
, and you start with a clean slate in his book of records. God doesn’t keep a sheet on you.”

“And how does God know if you’re sincere?”

“Look, I’m no fucking rabbi, you know. I don’t pretend to know everything. You repent, you repent sincere. Got it?”

“Right.”

Following the tenth commandment, his father said, “And these being modern times, I would add an eleventh. You interested?”

“Sure.”

“Thou shalt pay thy gambling debts.”

Especially, Joshua thought, if Mr. Colucci was sending Reuben Shapiro round to collect.

His father, gentle as he was at home, had another life, one Joshua learned about from time to time, but always accidentally. He filled many offices in that life away from home, and in all of them he was not only respected, he was also feared. Among other ventures, his father collected from recalcitrant gamblers on behalf of Sonny Colucci, and it was this, only two weeks earlier, that had inadvertently led to the undoing of Joshua’s first date with an Outremont girl. At fifteen, he was already a washout in the Golden Gloves qualifying bouts but a better-than-average snooker player and, taking his father as his model, a spiffy dresser. The girl’s name was Bessie Orbach and he met her at a “Y” dance. He asked her if she would like to go to a movie on Saturday night, she accepted, and, tricked out in his one-button roll, a hand-painted tie he had borrowed from his father (a full moon shines over Miami Beach, its beams caressing the palms and dappling the water), and trousers that were more than somewhat zoot, he went round to her fieldstone house on Pratt Avenue, only to be greeted by a sniveling, red-eyed Bessie. “I can’t go out with you,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I can’t. Go away.”

All at once, her father was there. Dr. Orbach. A big, swarthy man
with a reddening face. His right hand was in a cast. He wore a sling. “How dare you come to this house,” he said.

“Why?”

“Aren’t you the criminal’s son?”

“Hey, there. You talking about my father?”

“You come around here again and I’ll break your head open, and you can tell your father that I’m not finished with him. I’ll soon see him back behind bars where he belongs. Now beat it, you little street arab.”

He did not run into Bessie again for a couple of years, and only then did he find out what had happened.

Dr. Orbach, it seemed, was not only a gifted dentist but also a reckless gambler. Horses, baseball, and Sonny Colucci’s barbotte tables. He had run up a debt, a big debt, and not only had fallen behind with his monthly payments, but had taken his account elsewhere, running up markers there as well. Sonny Colucci was offended, and sent his father to see Dr. Orbach in his office after the last patient had gone. “Dr. Orbach,” Reuben said, “I’m surprised at you. You are a very respectable man.”

“I’m not paying out another penny to you.”

“But Doctor, you still owe us eleven thousand dollars, not counting interest.”

“You’ve had as much money as you’re going to get from me.”

“But you agreed to terms with Mr. Colucci. You shook hands with him.”

“I’m broke. The well is dry.”

“Possibly you would prefer to settle on somewhat easier terms.”

“The matter is closed. Finished. You’ll get more joy pulling your mutt than bargaining with me.”

“You are referring, I suppose,” Reuben said with dignity, “to the sin of Onan?”

“Oh, a Bible reader, are you?” he asked, amused.

“Say, seven-fifty a month. We could live with that.”

Dr. Orbach mistook Reuben’s offer for a show of weakness. “Your activities are absolutely illegal,” he said. “You can’t take your claim to any court.”

“What we are suggesting is that you make some effort to settle. Say, six hundred a month.”

“You know how much money that bloodsucker has had from me over the years?”

“Didn’t you ever win?”

Dr. Orbach made no reply.

“And then did Mr. Colucci say the well is dry or you have no proof, no witnesses, only a phone call, or did he send a runner round with an envelope the next morning?”

“Colucci belongs in jail, and that’s exactly where Pax Plante is going to put him now that this town is being cleaned up at last.”

“My instructions are not to leave this office without any money. Please be reasonable, Doctor. Even five hundred dollars a –”

“Fuck you and your instructions,” Dr. Orbach said, emboldened. “And now you get the hell out of here, you little creep, before I call the police.”

“Well, yeah. Right. Dr. Orbach, please understand, I really hate doing this.”

“Doing what, you little prick?”

“My job.”

“I don’t blame you. A Bible-reading Jew collecting for
goyishe
mobsters. Shame on you, Shapiro.”

“I have no education, but.”

“Bernard Gursky could have said the same, and just look at him today.”

“You think I wouldn’t have liked to make millions out of bootlegging?”

“You haven’t got the brains.”

“I wouldn’t even mind being a dentist.”

“And what in the hell do you mean by that?”

“It’s good, steady work, isn’t it?”

Orbach had to laugh. “Look, I’d like to sit here and shoot the breeze with you, but I’m a busy man.”

“I appreciate that, Dr. Orbach. But I can’t go just yet. First I have to break the fingers of your right hand. It’s my job.”

“Idle threats will get you absolutely nowhere.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Orbach, finally grasping what was about to happen, turned chalky.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m sorry. I have to.”

“Oh, please,” Dr. Orbach said. “Please give me a chance.”

“I’m sorry,” his father said, “really I am,” and he reached across the desk, seized the screaming Orbach’s right hand, and began to squeeze.

His father, to be fair, was indebted to Colucci. He had been working for him on and off ever since he had been a boy, beginning as a runner. Colucci had bankrolled Reuben when he turned pro, and taken him in again when his fighting days were finished.

Joshua had never seen his father fight – he had been only three years old when Reuben had had to quit; but there were photographs of him in his ring days that he had come to cherish. In one of them, taken for one of the few advertising endorsements that Reuben ever got, he was portrayed in his ring stance, a Star of David sewn into his Everlast trunks. Superimposed, in a corner of the photograph, there was a head shot of Reuben wearing a fedora, with the tag line “ ‘For every round of the day, I wear an ADAM HAT.’ Ruby Shapiro, Lightweight Champion of Canada.” Another photograph, taken in Stillman’s gym, showed his father grinning shyly in the company of Lou Ambers, Henry Armstrong, and Whitey Bimstein. And Joshua owned a snapshot of him, taken at the Tic Toe, where the group at the table included Al Weill, Frankie Carbo, the young Johnny Greco, and a couple of showgirls.

Joshua also kept an album of newspaper clippings that dated back to his father’s so-called amateur days. “So-called” because when he
was still only seventeen, his father was already fighting professionally, under assumed names, in northern Ontario mining towns, as well as Peoria and Albany, for $20 a bout. His first important amateur fight, a title fight, was at the Griffintown A.C. “For once, the Emerald Isle barracking brigade will have to choose between the lesser of ‘two evils,’ when Ruby Shapiro and Solly ‘The Ghetto Kid’ Bergman, a pair of Hebes, slug it out for Canada’s Amateur Featherweight Title at the …” He went on to fight Mick Sullivan for the Canadian Amateur Lightweight Title in Toronto. “A grudge fight between a Son of Moses and a Son of Erin is a promoter’s dream of heaven! And Pete ‘Side-Door’ O’Hara put on a real corker of a grudge fight at the Arena Gardens last night between Mick Sullivan and Ruby Shapiro, both of whom are being groomed for the pro ranks. One glance at Shapiro’s schnozz and you didn’t have to ask which one was the Hebe! Anyway, there were 4,952 delirious fans at the fight, 4,620 of whom talked turkey at the box office.… It was a fiercely fought contest from the first bell. Right off Shapiro sent over a haymaker with the Celt’s name on it and nearly had Sullivan crying for his momma. But when he raced in to finish him, the Celt countered with a left-hander that had the aggressive little Jewboy dreaming of chicken soup.…”

His father, pulling another marker free of his Bible, told him about Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his only son, Isaac, to God, which apparently pleased Jehovah enormously. “Quote, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore, blah blah blah, unquote. Now we’ve got this covenant with God, time-honored, and going on forever and ever. Those are the terms and they’re very stiff, I don’t mind telling you. But – and not a word to your Uncle Harvey about this, you understand – but if I had to sign on the dotted line today, I don’t know that I would. God’s always needling, testing, his wrath waxing hot. He’s a real blowhard.
Back in Egypt, for instance, when we were in bondage, he could’ve got the Hebes paroled with only one plague, but no, after each one he hardened Pharaoh’s heart so he could display his whole bag of tricks. And afterwards, once we were sprung, he never once talks to Moses that he doesn’t remind him” – and here his father sought out another marker – “quote, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, unquote. Now in your life if hard times come and you have to borrow money, never take it from anybody like that, they drive you crazy reminding you every day what they did for you. I don’t care for such types.”

His father also preferred Esau to Jacob.

“Esau was one fine fella, a hunter, and he used to bring his dad venison to eat. But his brother Jacob was a cunning little bastard, a momma’s boy, a jealous type. Anyway, one day Esau comes in from the hunt, fainting with hunger, and asks his brother for something to eat. And Jacob, a real Outremont kid, always looking for angles, a way to get ahead, he says you want to nosh, sell me your birthright. And poor Esau, on the point of dying, sells him his birthright for some bread and soup. And later Jacob does even worse, the tricky bastard, with the help of his bitch of a mother. The old man is dying, he still prefers Esau, a hairy man, to Mr. Peaches-and-Cream. And Jacob comes to him, the old man is blind, and lies, pretending to be Esau, in order to steal his blessing. But, what the hell, Jacob’s one of our holy fathers and not Esau, and he’s tricked in turn by this guy Laban, a real con, when he comes sniffing around, looking for a wife. In those days, incidently, a Hebe could have more than one wife, and concubines, those are whores, and if one of the wives couldn’t give him kids, they would offer him the maid to screw, just like that.”