Joshua Then and Now (21 page)

Joshua began to luxuriate in the sun and in his new friends, studying maps of Spain in his hotel room before he went to bed, inking in old battle lines, planning forays onto the peninsula, trips he would finance by rewriting more
Collier’s
stories with a twist in their tail for the Toronto
Star Weekly
. Then something happened.

One balmy evening, as he sat on the terrace of the waterfront with Juanito, watching the ship from Valencia ease into the harbor, he was
struck by the appearance of a tall sorrowful man leaning against the deck railing, biting into an ivory cigarette holder, his long angular face seared by sun and wind. He wore a white linen suit. Only after all the other passengers had disembarked did he condescend to come striding down the gangplank, followed by four sailors struggling with two steamer trunks. Then still more luggage heaped on a cart. Suitcases, a saddle, a rifle in a canvas case, and what appeared to be a furled teepee. Porters hastened to his side without being summoned, but he ignored them, as he did the two trucks that awaited his pleasure. He paced up and down until the hold doors squealed open, and then he sauntered into the bowels of the ship, and when he emerged ten minutes later he was leading a handsome brown stallion. He coaxed the stallion right onto the back of one of the trucks, secured his reins, and fed him apples out of his pockets until all his luggage had been loaded onto the other truck. Then both trucks rattled off toward San Antonio.

“Now who in the hell was that?” Joshua asked.

Juanito conferred with one of the porters and returned to say, “He’s a German, I think. His name is Dr. Dr. Mueller.”

A
YEAR AFTER THE END OF WORLD WAR II, PRIME
Minister Mackenzie King said, “For the Jewish people the recent war had an especial significance. The way of life of all free peoples was threatened by Nazi and Fascist aggression. In addition, the Jewish people had the even sterner realization that for them it was not only a way of life, but life itself that was at stake.”

His mood playful, Joshua once reminded his father-in-law of that typically prescient pronouncement by Wee Willie. The venerable senator was amused, but still considered the Mackenzie King Memorial Society – an organization Joshua had invented, and served as secretary – just this side of disreputable, and he adamantly refused to address it. A great loss, Joshua felt, for his father-in-law had been a member of King’s wartime cabinet.

The senator was seventy-nine years old now, incredibly lean, wobbly, and arthritic. Weary of burying old colleagues, he had been, until Reuben took him in hand, increasingly inclined toward melancholy. For all his faults and the asperity
of
his manner, Joshua had come to adore the old man, if only because whenever Susy bounced into his stuffy Rockcliffe living room, her hair flying, he had the touching courtesy to rise out of his armchair, leaning on his malacca cane, to greet her. The senator had not enjoyed a happy life. The bride he took in his middle years, Madeleine de Gaspé Benoit, a
legendary beauty in her day, was notoriously unfaithful to him and slid into drunkenness in her declining years. She died in a nursing home, in a state of delirium, even as he held her hand, and she called out another man’s name. Stephen Andrew Hornby had also been disappointed in his political hopes, betrayed by Mackenzie King, whose memory he still honored. He would not allow the name of his only son, Kevin, to be mentioned in his presence. His daughter, Pauline, had also been trouble from the moment she was born. His only grandchildren, her and Joshua’s lot, were half-breeds. Joshua was a prize-fighter’s son, a Jew. Even so, the senator invited him to lunch at the Rideau Club when he learned that Joshua was to marry his daughter.

That was in 1959, shortly before Pauline’s divorce from Colin Fraser had become final, and Joshua and Pauline were already planning their eventual return to Montreal, from which he could travel in both the United States and Canada, continuing to interview survivors of the International Brigades in order to complete his long-overdue book. September it was, and flying from London to New York, on a magazine assignment, Joshua had elected to stop off in Ottawa for a hastily called Annual Day of the Mackenzie King Memorial Society and to pay his respects to the senator, whom he had never met.

Ottawa, Ottawa.

The founder of their nation’s capital, appropriately enough, was an enterprising Yankee colonizer, Philemon Wright of Woburn, Massachusetts. In the winter of 1806, seven years after he had first surveyed the wilderness on the Ottawa River, he was cutting white pine and assembling the “sticks” into rafts and cribs below Chaudière Falls. The timber was bound for Britannia’s fleet, temporarily deprived of its traditional supplies from the Baltic by Napoleon’s blockade. The Battle of Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but the Battle of Trafalgar was fought on a bed of Canadian pine. Which is to say, long before Canada achieved nationhood the country was already cast in its role as hewers of wood, typically
organized by an American with his eye on the main chance. For in order to deliver the timber, Wright had to undertake something that had never been done before – he was obliged to negotiate the Carillon, the Long Sault, and the Lachine, the daunting chain of rapids between him and Quebec City. Why not by-pass Lachine, he thought, taking the timber via the north shore? “The habitants who had been settled there nearly two hundred years told me it was impossible to get timber to Quebec by the route on the north side of the Isle of Montreal, but I said I would not believe it until I had tried it.” Wright tried it and succeeded brilliantly in the spring of 1807.

It was the existence of a flourishing lumber-and-logging trade that inspired a certain Colonel By to found a town near Chaudière Falls in 1826. Bytown became the City of Ottawa in 1855.

And then another Yankee, this time an indigent Vermonter, Ezra Butler Eddy, came to town, opened a sawmill, and with the help of his wife began making safety matches. Within two decades he was a millionaire, soon to be the leading match manufacturer in the world.

Ottawa did not become the capital of the United Provinces of Canada until Queen Victoria selected it from among a number of nondescript but ambitious colonial towns in 1857. Seven years later, the Fathers of Confederation grudgingly chose it a second time to serve as the capital of a dominion that was to sprawl from sea to sea. “The Westminster in the wilderness,” scoffed an Oxford don, “a subarctic lumber-village converted by royal mandate into a political cockpit.” The Americans were no kinder. Caustically observing that Ottawa had been chosen over Montreal or Toronto because it was less vulnerable to American attack, they agreed the town was safe, allowing that American troops would soon get lost looking for it. All the same, an American editor offered a formula for finding it: “Start from the North Pole; strike a bead for Lake Ontario, and the first spot where the glacier ceases and vegetation begins – that’s Ottawa!”

The sulfurous stench from the E. B. Eddy plant was still stinging the streets of Ottawa when Joshua first arrived there, woozy from a
transatlantic flight, to join Senator Hornby for lunch. No time was wasted on an exchange of pleasantries.

“As you know, I am opposed to this marriage,” the senator said.

“Aha.”

“But if it lasts any longer than the other, which I strongly doubt, I will pay for the education of any children.”

“That’s awfully white of you, Senator, but I will pay for the education of our children.”

“I would like to see them go to proper schools.”

“Pauline and I will be the judge of what’s proper.”

“The Hornbys have been educated at Bishop’s for generations.”

“You’re forgetting something, Senator. Our children will be called Shapiro.”

“Where were you educated?”

“Do you mind if I have another?”

“Please do.”

“Make it a double.”

“Certainly.”

“I was educated at Fletcher’s Field High, and from there I went on to do a stint at The Boys’ Farm in Shawbridge.”

“Why?”

“I got caught stealing a car.”

“No university?” he asked without flinching.

“I’m afraid not.”

“But you’re a writer?”

“Of sorts.”

“Where’s your family from?”

“The
shtetl.”

“Ah,” he said, “the Pale of Settlement.”

Joshua had underestimated him.

“Your parents alive?”

“Mn hm.”

“And what do they think of this marriage?”

“My mother has never given a damn what I do, and so far as my father’s concerned, anything that makes me happy is fine with him.”

“What does your father do?”

“If you don’t mind, Senator, I think I’ll have just one more.”

“A double?”

“Yes, please.”

He signaled for the waiter.

“My father was a prizefighter. He once went eight rounds with Sammy Angott.”

“And was this Mr. Angott a pugilist of some note?”

“Indeed he was.”

“And what did your father do upon his retirement?”

“Oh, many things, Senator. A good many things. A little something in the restaurant and nightclub line. Some bill-collecting. I ought to tell you that he has a prison record.”

The waiter arrived with Joshua’s drink.

“Oh, on second thought, Desmond, I think I’ll join my guest. The same for me, please.”

“But this is a double, Senator.”

“I’m quite aware of that, Desmond.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why was he in prison?”

“You are asking a great many questions.”

“Yes. I suppose I am. And I’m looking for some straight answers.”

“Why was he in prison?”

“Yes,” the senator said. “Why?”

“Which time were you thinking of, Senator?”

“Good Lord, are you having me on?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Please don’t take offense. But the Jews are usually such a law-abiding people.”

“My father’s something special.”

“Well, that’s something to be grateful for, isn’t it?”

“Cheers,” Joshua said.

“Cheers,” the senator said, raising his glass unsmilingly.

“Any more questions?”

“Young man, I hardly dare.”

“I should tell you that I love your daughter and I intend to make her very happy.”

“I’m afraid Pauline’s not much disposed to happiness. Neither was her mother.”

Startled, Joshua drained his glass.

“Would you care for some wine with your lunch?”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just have another one of these.”

“Mr. Shapiro,” the senator asked, calling for the waiter again, “as a matter of interest, do you usually imbibe as much before lunch?”

“Only when I’m obliged to endure so many personal questions from somebody I’ve met for the first time.”

“Is that how you are going to report our little meeting to Pauline?”

“Senator, as you have already made abundantly clear, you do not approve of this marriage. Even though you’ve never met me before. Well, that’s your prerogative. But I think you are being unfair.”

“That’s your prerogative.”

“I did not come here to ask for a damn thing. Not for a blessing or for money for our children’s education. I came as a courtesy.”

“But not necessarily to be courteous.”

“The Shapiros have not been going to Bishop’s for generations, but we are not without our own family traditions.”

“Such as?”

“We do not take shit from anybody.”

“I can do nothing to stop Pauline’s allowance. The bequest was made by her grandmother.”

“What makes you think I’m in need of her allowance?”

“Surely, as a writer of sorts, you must earn a most precarious living?”

“I stopped off here on my way to New York. I’ve been asked to write a piece for
Life
magazine. They will be paying me three thousand dollars and expenses.”

“When Mackenzie King became our first minister of labour, his starting salary was seven thousand dollars a year; he used to take the streetcar to work.”

Flushing, all Joshua could manage was, “I was never an admirer of Mr. King.”

“Fortunately, he was unaware of any disapprobation on your part. Will you be expecting Pauline to convert to your faith?”

“No.”

“How will your children be brought up?”

“Not to get caught stealing cars. And to jab on the move. Stick, stick, and away you go.”

They repaired to another room for coffee and cognac, and there, to his future father-in-law’s obvious discomfort, they were joined by Senator Pronovost. An avuncular man, his face wispy with red veins. Joshua remembered Pronovost. He had been one of Montreal’s Liberal MP’s.

“Gilles,” Senator Hornby said, “I’d like you to meet my prospective son-in-law, Mr. Joshua Shapiro.”

“Shapiro?” Pronovost asked.

“This is indeed a pleasure,” Joshua said. “My father once worked for your party machine.”

“Shapiro?”

“You wouldn’t remember him by name. But he was one of many you hired. I think in the election of ‘forty-eight he must have voted for you thirty times, maybe more.”

“Shapiro, Shapiro. Wasn’t there a trial?”

“Yes. You see, Senator, if you were bagman for Colucci’s organization and you got nabbed, it meant three years in the slammer. But I can now see if you were bagman for the Liberal Party, you end up
with a seat in the Senate. Obviously, my father collected for the wrong people.”

Senator Hornby slapped his knee and laughed out loud.

“Young man,” Pronovost said, “you obviously have no respect for my office.”

“If you only knew,” Senator Hornby said.

“I have nothing to be ashamed of,” Pronovost said, glowering at Joshua.

“If that’s the case,” Joshua said, “then you really have a problem.”

But Pronovost had already turned his back on Joshua, drifting toward another table.

“Did your father really vote for him thirty times?”

“At two dollars a crack, if memory serves.”

“Oh dear, oh dear.”

“Well, Senator,” Joshua said, rising, “I would like to say that this has been a pleasure …”

His pale blue eyes watered. And suddenly he looked old, vulnerable. “Take care of Pauline. I love her.”