St. Urbain's Horseman (2 page)

“Exciting things.”

“And Montreal?”

“It's changing.”

Tomorrow country then, tomorrow country now. And yet – and yet – he felt increasingly claimed by it, especially in the autumn, the Laurentian season, and the last time he had sailed the tranquil St. Lawrence into swells and the sea, it was with a sense of loss, even deprivation, and melancholy, that he had watched the clifftop towns drift past. Each one unknown to him.

Circles completed, he thought.

As a St. Urbain Street boy he had, God forgive him, been ashamed of his parents' Yiddish accent. Now that he lived in Hampstead, Sammy (and soon Molly and Ben too, he supposed) mocked his immigrant's twang. Such, such are the trendy's dues, Jake thought, as he added a couple of pieces to Sammy's unfinished Popeye jigsaw puzzle on the table, found the cards, and sat down to play solitaire. If I win, he thought, I'll be acquitted. If I lose, it's the nick for me.

With a shiver of fear, his hands trembling, actually trembling in
BCU
(like a lesser director's overstatement, he thought, something he would never countenance in a shooting script), Jake recalled how the portly, avuncular Mr. Pound had opened for the prosecution yesterday in Number One Court at the Old Bailey.

ZOOM
in on Number One Court for
MCU MR. POUND
.

“My Lord, there is a letter and some pages of film script which I think I shall have to refer to in my opening address. Would it be convenient if they were handed up now and for them to be proven at the proper time?”

“Yes, Mr. Pound.”

“May it please your lordship, members of the jury,” he began, peering over his bifocals as he calmly outlined the case for the Crown, going on to explain that Hersh, “as you will hear, is affluent by any standards, sophisticated, rather a ‘swinger' in current parlance,
with a library that runs to the Marquis de Sade and a taste that includes gunmanship. A successful film director, he moves freely in the glamorous world of glittering first nights, opulent restaurants, and gaming tables. His attic-study walls are plastered with photographs of wartime Nazi leaders and their survivors. There is also a portrait, intentionally garish, of Field Marshal Montgomery. No equestrian himself, he keeps a saddle and a riding crop in a cupboard. But now I'm anticipating. We shall hear much about these artifacts later. For the moment, I would ask you to consider the letter and pages of script the clerk of the court has distributed among you. The letter reads as follows:

“The scenes I shall now read you presuppose, as I understand it, that these islands, which welcomed Hersh to their shores, were defeated in World War
II;
and that the Nazis were indeed victorious. The scenes are from a projected film called
The Good Britons
. They read as follows:

S
AMMY'S SCHOOLBAG TRAILED FROM THE KITCHEN
doorknob. Inside Jake found his homework book, a wizened apple, two pennies, a Puffin Book Club badge, and a
Man from U.N.C.L.E
. cameragun. Comes his bar mitzvah, he thought, no fountain pens. Instead his first nickel bag. “Today you are a man,
bubele
. Turn on.” Or a syringe maybe. Jake got a fresh sheet of paper and wrote,

He inserted the sheet in Sammy's notebook and then, enraged with himself, he suddenly, savagely, retrieved it. Leave the kid alone, don't bug him. Jake crushed the sheet into a ball, swerved to avoid the onrushing Wilt Chamberlain, and backhanded it into the dustbin.

Another basket.

In the sitting room again, the bookshelves filled him with weariness. Books bought in Montreal. Books bought in Toronto. Books bought in London. Hideously expensive art books bought for Nancy while he was pursuing her and never opened since.

“Marriage is a rotten bourgeois institution. It stinks. I keep up with the times, you know. But, Nancy, ours would be something special. A rock.”

Books lugged from country to country, flat to flat, across the ocean, crated and uncrated, and still largely unread. There was a letter on Nancy's desk, from Mill Hill, Sammy's school. Next term he would require a cricket outfit. In three generations, from foxy Jews to fox-hunting ones. What next? Lord Hersh of St. Urbain?

Turning to the bookshelves again, Jake reached for Hugo's
Spanish Self-Taught
, an egg-soiled copy, and then with an ache he remembered his villa on Ibiza. That would be all of ten years ago, he realized, alarmed. Ten years ago, when time had not yet begun to count, all ambitions were to be realized, and somewhere past midnight Guillermo retrieved him from the bar at the Bristol Hotel.
“Vamonos,”
he said.

They fetched the girls from Rosita's brothel, rounded up some of the fishermen, and continued to Guillermo's apartment, which was on the top floor of the tallest building on the waterfront. While the others waited there, Guillermo drove Jake to his clinic, they tiptoed past sleeping patients, pried open a case of champagne, and returned to the apartment, laden with bottles. Most of the others had already shed their clothes. A nude guitarist with a dampsoiled pink brassiere tied to his head like a bonnet danced on the table. A couple was screwing on the floor. Jake turned apprehensively to Guillermo, but he wasn't at all disconcerted. He began to rip off his shirt, buttons flying.

Next thing Jake knew everybody was on the floor. Rolling, heaving. A wriggling smelly creaming tangle of legs, arms, breasts, and tongues. Girls moaned, they shrieked ai-aii-aii and called for their mothers; the men laughed and pounded buttocks openhanded and shouted imprecations. Jake was dizzy from drink. Flushed and embarrassed. Then it struck him that this is what they called an orgy, he was taking part, and his spirits soared. This is living, Yankel. Liberated rebel-without-a-cause living. He undressed and made a
sporting half-hearted grab for the body next to him when a moist stinky leg hit him on the cheek. One leg, then another, locking his neck. Arms driving his head toward a churning vagina, mossy and glistening. Suppressing nausea, Jake broke free, slid into his trousers, and sat down on a stool by the bar. He drank slowly, his head throbbing, as on the floor below they continued to thrash, roll, and writhe. Kiss, suck, gobble, penetrate. What is it with me? Jake thought. What ails me? If I saw this in an how-empty-is-the-life-of-the-rich movie or read it in a lowdown-on-suburbia novel, I'd burn with envy, but now that it's happening to me – Jake scooped up a bottle of champagne and stepped on the terrace to watch the sun come up. The Mediterranean sun. Spain. Grubby fishing boats were beginning to chug into the harbor. Gulls swooped hungrily overhead or bobbed on the shimmering green water alongside. Remember this, Jake thought, cherish it, and he felt very ghetto-liberated, very Hemingway, as he raised a bottle to his lips, drained it, and flung it into the sea. A moment later he was sick to his stomach.

Listen, your lordship. They're twisting everything in this courtroom. Jacob Hersh is no sex nut. I'm a respecter of institutions. An all-around good chap. A big talker, but a chicken. Even in Paris, I remained a Canadian. I puffed hashish, but I didn't inhale
.

Mr. Justice Beal is a fart. He would say, quite, Mr. Hersh. Quite.

5:30. Jake slumped in his chair and dipped into a stack of magazines, coming up with an old copy of
Time
.

Jake skipped breathlessly to the bottom of the page.

Son-of-a-bitch. When Jake had been to Dr. O'Brien about his own rectal bleeding he had been told not to worry, old boy, it was hemorrhoids. Sure, old boy, only probably while Jake was hoisting his trousers up again inside that freezer of a surgery, O'Brien was saying to his nurse, “You know that nice Mr. Hersh?”