Solomon Gursky Was Here (49 page)

Come summer Mr. Bernard was on the boil. It was rumoured that the prime minister intended to put the Gursky brothers in jail and throw away the key. The government case against them pending, the Gurskys bound to be charged with, among other things, avoiding
customs duty on smuggled liquor, Mr. Bernard huddled with his lawyers every night, enraged with Solomon who sat silent throughout the sessions, seemingly indifferent to their fate. And now it was Mr. Bernard who flitted between Montreal and Ottawa once, sometimes twice, a week, lugging large sums of cash in his attaché case and returning with paintings by Jean-Jacques Martineau, which he threw into a cupboard. Such was the state of his nerves that a month passed before he noticed Morrie's absence.

Charging into their original Montreal offices on Sherbrooke Street one morning, kicking open office doors, searching toilets, he demanded, “Where's my brother?”

“Take it easy, Mr. Bernard,” Tim Callaghan said.

Irish drunk. Christ-lover. “Oh yeah. Why?”

“Because the way you're carrying on these days, you're asking for an ulcer.”

“I don't get ulcers. I give them. Where in the fuck is Morrie?”

Solomon was sent for.

“Did you actually hit him with an ashtray?” Solomon asked.

“Only a fool wouldn't have ducked.”

“Morrie's had enough of you. He's tired of bringing up his breakfast every morning. He's retired to the country with Ida and the kids.”

Mr. Bernard descended on Morrie's secretary. Terrified, she drew a map that would enable him to find Morrie's place in the Laurentians. Threatened, she told him about Morrie's workshop. Cursed, spat at, she snitched about the furniture-making. Mr. Bernard fired her. “Take your handbag and that nail file, the sound drives me crazy, and take your ten-cents-a-gallon perfume from Kresge's and your Kotex box and get the hell out of here.” Then he called for his limousine and sped out to Ste.-Adèle.

Morrie, forewarned, waited in the living room, his head resting on Ida's lap. Then he roused himself and stood by the window, cracking his knuckles. When Mr. Bernard finally pulled into the long driveway and pounced out of his limousine, he did not start immediately for the large renovated farmhouse on the hill overlooking the lake. Instead, a startled Morrie watched him make straight for the vegetable garden. Yanking out tomato plants. Trampling on lettuce
beds. Kicking over cabbages. Jumping up and down on eggplants, popping them. Pulling a pitchfork free of a manure pile and swinging away at corn stalks. Then he rushed to the front door, pounding on it with his fists. “Look at my suit! Look at my shoes! I'm covered in farm shit.”

He squirted right into the dining room, pulling a linen cloth off the table, sending a vase of roses crashing to the pine floor, and wiping his hands and then his shoes clean of eggplant pulp.

“Tell him that you're not going back!” Ida shrieked.

“What was your father? A little Jew in a grocery store with a scale that gave fourteen ounces to the pound, living in a shack that didn't even have an inside toilet. You went into the outhouse for a crap, you had to guard your balls against bumblebees. Now you wear diamonds and mink I risked life and limb to pay for. Go to your room at once. I have to talk to my brother.”

Ida fled, pausing at the top of the stairs to shout “Hitler!” before slamming the bedroom door and locking it from the inside.

“If God forbid she was my wife I'd teach her some manners let me tell you. What did you pay for this dump?”

Morrie told him.

“How many acres?”

“Thirty.”

“Big deal. If I wanted a place in the country, I'd have a hundred acres at least and I'd be on the sunny side of the lake in a bigger house, where the floors didn't creak.” He shook with laughter. “They must have seen you coming, you
putz
.”

“I suppose so.”

Mr. Bernard went to the window. “Is that,” he asked, pointing at an obviously new clapboard building, “the workshop where you make the furniture?”

“Yes.”

“I'm told that you accept orders for bookshelves and that you actually sell the stuff through a shop in Ste.-Adèle.” Mr. Bernard scooped up a delicate side table. “You made this itsy-bitsy fuckshit table?”

“Yes.”

“How much are you asking for it?”

“Ten dollars.”

“I'll give you seven,” Mr. Bernard said, counting out the bills, “because if you sell direct to me, you don't have to cut in the goy shopkeeper in Ste.-Adèle.” Then he kicked over the table and jumped up and down on it. “You are my brother, you cuntlapper, and if the rich anti-Semites in Ste.-Adèle are buying your shit, it's only because they can say, hey, you know who made that crappy lopsided little table for me for ten dollars? Mr. Bernard's brother. You can't do this to me. I want you back in the office eight o'clock tomorrow morning, or I'll take an axe to that woodshop.”

Morrie gathered together the remains of his table and set them down beside the fireplace.

Out of breath, Mr. Bernard subsided to the sofa. He wiped his face with a handkerchief. “What have you got for dinner?” he asked.

“Veal chops.”

“What with?”

“Roast potatoes.”

“I had that last night. Would she make me some
kasha
instead?”

“I could ask.”

“Better say it's for you. Hey, remember Mama's
kishka?
She always had the biggest piece for me. But I was her favourite, eh?”

“Yes.”

“What have you got for a starter?”

“There's some
borscht
from last night.”

Mr. Bernard yawned. He stretched. He raised a buttock and farted. “Eddie Cantor's on tonight. You got a radio here?”

“The reception is not very good in the mountains.”

“I suppose we could play some gin. Aw, forget it. I can eat better at my place. But a Popsicle would hit the spot. You wouldn't have any in the ice-box, would you?”

“Didn't I know you were coming?”

Morrie brought out a couple of Popsicles, crumpling the wrappers.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Mr. Bernard asked, retrieving the wrappers and flattening them out. “You fill out the coupon in back you can win a two-wheel bicycle. What time can I expect you back in the office tomorrow morning?”

Morrie began to crack his knuckles again.

“Morrie, be sensible for once. Without you, how am I going to settle my quarrels with Solomon? I need your vote so that I can beat him fair and square.”

“I'm tired of being pressed in a vice between the two of you.”

“Good. Tell him!” shrieked a voice from the top of the stairs.

An outraged Mr. Bernard shot out of the sofa, his arms extended, his fingers curled. Ready to scratch.

“If I ever made you
kasha,
you
oysvorf,
it would be sprinkled with arsenic,” Ida shouted, scooting back into her room and this time shoving her dresser against the door.

“You have no idea what Solomon's like now,” Mr. Bernard said, sinking back into the sofa, “our crazy brother. We were better off when he was chasing nooky. Now he stays overnight in the office, sometimes with Callaghan, the two of them knocking back a quart each, and he listens to the shortwave radio, fiddling with the dial all night. Hitler makes a speech, he never misses it.”

“I'm not coming back to the office any more.”

“I'll give you until Monday morning out here, but that's it.”

Mr. Bernard got home after dark, but he knew better than to telephone Solomon at his place. There was no point. He was never there. And in the morning Mr. Bernard discovered that Solomon was in Ottawa again, stirring things up, at a time when the last thing the Gurskys needed was more enemies in high places.

Solomon told MacIntyre, “I have acquired two thousand acres of farmland in the Laurentians as well as—”

“Where in the Laurentians?” MacIntyre demanded.

“Not far from Ste.-Agathe. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, Ste.-Agathe,” MacIntyre said, relieved. “For years now I've taken my holidays winter and summer at Chalet Antoine in Ste.-Adèle. Do you know it?”

“No. I've acquired two thousand acres, as well as a large herd of beef and dairy cattle, and I have a list of people who promise to settle there.”

“Mr. Gursky , are you seriously asking me to consider placing more Jews in the province of Quebec?”

“And why not?”

MacIntyre sent for a file. “Look at this, will you?” It was an editorial page clipping from
Le Devoir
. “The Jewish shopkeeper on St. Lawrence Boulevard does nothing to increase our natural resources.” Then he passed him a copy of a petition that had been delivered to parliament by Wilfred Lacroix, a Liberal MP. The petition, signed by more than 120,000 members of the St. Jean Baptiste Society opposed “all immigration and especially Jewish immigration” to Quebec.

“If it would facilitate matters, I could buy land in Ontario or the Maritimes.”

“I am overwhelmed by the prodigality of your purse, Mr. Gursky, but there is a problem. Yours is a race apart with—how shall I put it?—an exasperating penchant for organizing their affairs better than other people. This endless agitation to flood this country with relatives and friends or so-called farmers must stop. My hands are tied. I'm sorry.”

When Solomon returned to the old McTavish building the next morning, he discovered Mr. Bernard lying in wait for him.

“How did you make out?” Solomon asked.

“Morrie wouldn't listen to reason.”

“Let him be, Bernie.”

“Listen, there's a trial coming up. Bert Smith is spilling the beans everywhere. I get on the witness stand, prejudiced people think I haven't got an honest face. You get on the stand you will be so fucken arrogant the judge will hate you. Morrie's a sweetheart. Everybody loves him. But he's got to be coached. So pull yourself together and bring him back here.”

“I have business in Ste.-Adèle a week Wednesday. I'll look in on Morrie, but I'm not making any promises.”

Solomon's business was at the Chalet Antoine, the most elegant resort in Ste.-Adèle, rising from a hilltop thick with pine and cedar and silver birch, commanding a view of Lac Renault that the travel brochures described as ravishing. A notice posted on the gate read:

RESTRICTED CLIENTELE ONLY

It was late on a fine summer's afternoon when Solomon got there. He made right for the bar that was tastefully done in natural
pine with a low beamed ceiling. There was a painting of Howie Morenz cutting in on the net. There were also photographs of Red Grange, Walter Hagen, and Bill Tilden. French doors opened on to a flagstone terrace bordered by beds of gladioli, overlooking the tennis courts and the lake. There were six guests in the bar. A stout middle-aged couple at one table, obviously just back from the golf course. She wore a tartan skirt and he was in knickerbockers. A man, alone, pondering the stock market pages in the
Star
. A man and woman at another table. He, staring stonily into the middle distance; she, intent on her copy of
Anthony Adverse
. And then a lovely young lady seated alone, sipping white wine, writing a letter on rice-paper stationery, the sort that could only be ordered from abroad. Honey-coloured hair caught in an ivory clasp. Red painted mouth full but severe. She wore a striped beach shirt, a pleated navy blue skirt and tennis shoes. Magazines littered her table top.
Vanity Fair, Vogue
. When Solomon sailed in, she looked up—squinting just a little, obviously near-sighted—and then returned to her letter. Interloper dismissed.

Solomon sat down, unfolded a Yiddish newspaper, and summoned the waiter.
“Du whisky, s'il vous plaît. Glenlivet.”

The man who had been staring into the middle distance leaned over to say something to his wife. She set down her book and reached for her handbag, securing it on her lap. Distress darkened the golfers' table like the wind before a violent rain. But the young lady who was seated alone continued to write her letter.

Paul, the burly, hirsute waiter, went to fetch the manager and led him to Solomon's table. M. Raymond Morin. A capon with a handlebar moustache.

“Ah,” Solomon said,
“le patron.”
And he repeated his order.

“I must ask you to leave.”

“Oh, don't be so fatuous, Raymond,” the young lady seated alone called out, “serve him his drink and be done with it.”

“There are other bars …”

“Dépêches-toi mon vieux,”
Solomon said.

Then the man who had been pondering the
Star
's stock market pages said, “I can appreciate your finding this hotel's policy offensive,
but I can't grasp why anybody would want to drink where they are not welcome.”

“Your argument is not without merit,” Solomon said.

“Paul, call the police.”

“You needn't bother, M. Morin. They're on their way,” Solomon said, and then he repeated his order.

“It's against our policy to serve your kind.”

“You tell him, Ray,” the golfer's wife said.

“I bought this hotel yesterday afternoon.”

“Don't make me laugh.”

“And, as for these two,” Solomon said, indicating the golfer and his wife, “I want them out of here before dinner.”

“Cheek.”

The young lady seated alone put down her pen. “Ah well then, in that case the hotel's policy hasn't changed, only the nature of the clientele prohibited.” Then she gathered her things together and retreated to the terrace.

The reader of the stock market pages smiled.

“Are you a lawyer?” Solomon asked.

“I'm afraid I'm already committed to representing the other side, Mr. Gursky.”

“The law was an ass.”

“But it's all we've got. And there's still a body or two unaccounted for.”