St. Urbain's Horseman (31 page)

What a reproach the first wives were. How steadfast! How unchanging! Still Waiting For Lefty after all these years. Today maybe hair had grayed and chins doubled, necks had gone pruney, breasts drooped and stomachs dropped, but let no man say these crones had aged in spirit. Where once they had petitioned for the Scotsboro Boys, broken with their families over mixed marriages, sent their boy friends off to defend Madrid, split with old comrades over the Stalin-Hitler Pact, fought for Henry Wallace, demonstrated for the Rosenbergs, and never, never yielded to McCarthy … today they clapped hands at China Friendship Clubs, petitioned for others to keep hands off Cuba and Vietnam, and made their sons chopped liver sandwiches and sent them off to march to Aldermaston.

The wives, alimonied but abandoned, had known the early struggling years with their husbands, the self-doubts, the humiliations, the rejections, the cold-water flats, and the blacklist, but they had always remained loyal. They hadn't altered, their husbands had.

Each marriage had shattered in the eye of its own self-made hurricane, but essentially the men felt, as Ziggy Alter had once put it so succinctly at the poker table, “Right, wrong, don't be silly, it's really a question of who wants to grow old with Anna Pauker when there are so many juicy little things we can now afford.”

So there they were, out on the grass chasing fly balls on a Sunday morning, short men, overpaid and unprincipled, all well within the coronary and lung cancer belt, allowing themselves to look ridiculous in the hope of pleasing their new young wives and girlfriends. There was Ziggy Alter, who had once written a play “with content” for the Group Theater. Here was Al Levine, who had used to throw marbles under horses' legs at demonstrations and now raced two horses of his own at Epsom. On the pitcher's mound stood Gordie Kaufman, who had once carried a banner that read
No Pasarán
through the streets of Manhattan and now employed a man especially to keep Spaniards off the beach at his villa on Mallorca. And sweating under a catcher's mask there was Moey Hanover, who had studied at a yeshiva, stood up to the committee, and was now on a sabbatical from Desilu.

Usually the husbands were able to avoid their used-up wives. They didn't see them in the gaming rooms at the White Elephant or in the Mirabelle or Les Ambassadeurs. But come Brecht to Shaftesbury Avenue and without looking up from the second row center they could feel them squatting in their cotton bloomers in the second balcony, burning holes in their necks.

And count on them to turn up on a Sunday morning in summer on Hampstead Heath just to ruin a game of fun baseball. Even homering, as Al Levine did, was no answer to the drones.

“It's nice for him, I suppose,” a voice behind Levine on the bench observed, “that on the playing field, with an audience, if you know what I mean, he actually appears virile.”

The game dragged on. In the eighth inning Jack Monroe had to retire to his Mercedes-Benz for his insulin injection and Jake Hersh, until now an embarrassed sub, finally trotted onto the field. Hersh, thirty-three, one-time relief pitcher for Room 41, Fletcher's Field High (2–7), moved into right field, mindful of his disc condition and hoping he would not be called on to make a tricksy catch. He
assumed a loose-limbed stance on the grass, waving at his wife, grinning at his children, when without warning a sizzling line drive came right at him. Jake, startled, did the only sensible thing: he ducked. Outraged shouts and moans from the bench reminded Jake where he was, in a softball game, and he started after the ball.

“Fishfingers.”

“Putz!”

Runners on first and third started for home as Jake, breathless, finally caught up with the ball. It had rolled to a stop under a bench where a nanny sat watching over an elegant perambulator.

“Excuse me,” Jake said.

“Americans,” the nurse said.

“I'm a Canadian,” Jake protested automatically, fishing the ball out from under the bench.

Three runs scored. Jake caught a glimpse of Nancy, unable to contain her laughter. The children looked ashamed of him.

In the ninth inning with the score tied again, II-II, Sol Peters, another sub, stepped cautiously to the plate for Lou Caplan's Bunch. The go-ahead run was on second and there was only one out. Gordie Kaufman, trying to prevent a bunt, threw right at him and Sol, forgetting he was wearing his contact lenses, held the bat in front of him to protect his glasses. The ball hit the bat and rebounded for a perfectly laid down bunt.

“Run, you shmock.”

“Go, man.”

Sol, terrified, ran, carrying the bat with him.

Monty Talman phoned home.

“Who won?” his wife asked.

“We did. 13–12. But that's not the point. We had lots of fun.”

“How many you bringing back for lunch?”

“Eight.”

“Eight?”

“I couldn't get out of inviting Johnny Roper. He knows Jack Monroe is coming.”

“I see.”

“A little warning. Don't, for Chrissake, ask Cy how Marsha is. They're separating. And I'm afraid Manny Gordon is coming with a girl. I want you to be nice to her.”

“Anything else?”

“If Gershon phones from Rome while the guys are there please remember I'm taking the call upstairs. And please don't start collecting glasses and emptying ashtrays at four o'clock. It's embarrassing. Bloody Jake Hersh is coming and it's just the sort of incident he'd pick on and joke about for months.”

“I never coll –”

“All right, all right. Oh, shit, something else. Tom Hunt is coming.”

“The actor?”

“Yeah. Now listen, he's very touchy, so will you please put away Sheila's doll.”

“Sheila's doll?”

“If she comes in carrying that bloody golliwog I'll die. Hide it. Burn it. Hunt gets script approval these days, you know.”

“All right, dear.”

“See you soon.”

L
ou
CAPLAN, WHO HAD A THREE-PICTURE DEAL WITH
Twentieth Century-Fox, beckoned to Jake at Talman's house, and led him out into the garden. “You know what all these fucking flowers are called?” he demanded, irritated, his gesture sweeping.

“Certainly.”

“Ptsssh,” Caplan hissed, appreciative, and he suddenly thrust his finger out. “This one, then.”

“Why, that's a tea rose. Unmistakably an Ena Harkness.”

“And this?”

“Phlox.”

“Bluffers I don't care for. Sit down here. Why haven't you made a picture yet? I caught your last play on TV. You're a genius, Jake.”

“What?”

“That's exactly how I would have directed it.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.”

“You've got style. You're fast. You're good with cameras. But I also hear you're poison ivy with actors. A real
grobber yung
. There's something I want you to read. If it excites you, I'll talk to your agent. If not, who needs him. Right?”

So yet again Jake read until two o'clock in the morning, cogitating, running through the novel twice.

“It's only a thriller, Nancy. But I could do things with it. I'm going to say yes.”

“Where's it set?”

“Israel.” Then, sensing Nancy's concern, he smiled and added, “I won't get overexcited, don't worry. For all I know five other directors are considering the project right now. At best, I'm third choice.”

But, unbelievably, Caplan had lunch with his agent on Wednesday and they agreed on terms immediately. Naturally, Caplan would not allow him casting approval, but he said he could hire his own writer. “Maybe,” he ventured, “your hotshot friend Luke Scott wouldn't ask for a million dollars to do the script if he knew you were directing it …”

“No,” Jake said sharply. “Luke's absolutely out.”

A letter of agreement was signed and delivered by hand on Monday, just as Caplan had promised. Only one hitch remained, Twentieth Century-Fox, but after ten endless, nerve-wracking days, Jake was approved by their New York office.

“That does it,” Jake said to Nancy, “now we celebrate,” which they did, and, afterwards, lying in bed together, he confessed, “I had begun to believe I'd never get my chance.”

A fortnight later, still incredulous, Jake flew to Israel to search for locations and, he hoped, find out more about the Horseman, maybe even unearth his Israeli wife, who was supposed to be on a kibbutz somewhere.

On arrival, it was balmy, marvelously bright and blue; and what with London's wet gummy skies only six hours behind him, Jake began to feel elated. After all, this was Eretz Yisroel. Zion. He checked into the Garden Hotel, in Ramat-Aviv, stopping by a poolside table for a drink. Foot-weary, middle-aged tourists were sunning themselves everywhere. Among them, Mr. Cooper. Shooing flies away with a rolled newspaper, pondering his toes as he curled and uncurled them, the portly, bronzed Mr. Cooper, his eyes shaded by a
baseball cap, basked in a deck chair, his manner proprietorial. “And where are you from?” he asked Jake.

Jake told him.

“Ah ha. And how long you here for?”

“A week. Ten days maybe.”

“Longer you couldn't stay. This is Israel, it's a miracle. So, Mr. Hersh, what line of business you in?”

“The junk business.”

Early the next morning a bellboy rapped on Jake's bungalow door; a Colonel Elan, Lou Caplan's Israeli partner, was waiting for him. Squat and sinewy, his solemn face hardened by the wind, Elan was casually dressed.
“Shalom,”
he said.

Mr. Cooper passed with his wife, who was wearing flower-print pedal pushers. “So, Mr. Hersh, have you decided to settle here yet?”

“What about you?”

“Me, I'm too old. So I come here to spend.”

Elan shrugged, his gray eyes scornful. No sooner had Jake climbed into his Ford station wagon than Elan said, “I wonder what that man's name was before it was Cooper?”

“And what,” Jake asked, surprised at his own indignation, “was yours before it was Elan?”

“You'll find that we're a new kind of Jew here. We have restored Jewish pride.”

The other side of Ramla, the car began the slow winding rise and fall, rise and fall, through the bony, densely cultivated mountains. Arab villages jutted natural and ravaged as rock out of the hills. The gutted shells of armored trucks lay overturned around the bends in the narrow steepening road. Here a dried wreath hung on a charred chassis; elsewhere mounds of stone marked where a driver, trapped in the cab of his burning truck, had died an excruciating death. These ruins, spilled along the roadside, were a memorial to those who had died running the blockade into Jerusalem during the Arab-Israeli War, at a time when the Arab Legion had held the vital heights of Bab
el Wad and Kastel, an ancient Roman encampment and crusaders' castle which dominate the closest approaches to the city.

“Look here, Elan,” Jake said, suddenly uncomfortable, his embarrassment rising, “have you read the thriller the film is to be based on?”

“Yes.”

“The script's not going to be like that at all. I want you to know I'm not coming all this way to make a vulgar film.”

“We need the foreign currency,” Elan said ambiguously.

Jake told Elan that a cousin of his, Joey Hersh, sometimes known as Jesse Hope, had fought in the first Arab-Israeli War, and might even be in Israel again now, but Jake did not know where.

“It's a small country, but I don't know everybody. Try the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel.”

But Jake couldn't get anywhere with the man at the Association.

“Half the Anglo-Saxon Jews who come here,” he said, “leave after two or three years. Why do they quit? Let's face it, most of them come from middle-class homes and settling here means a big drop in their standard of living. Many others miss their close family ties. Momma.”

That, Jake replied pointedly, would not have been the problem with Joey Hersh, but the Association had no record of him. Or a wife.

On Tuesday Jake drove to Acre with Elan, to look at possible locations. Old sacks had been stretched across the narrow stinking streets of the Arab marketplace, offering shade to vendors and buyers alike. Donkeys, chickens, and goats wandered somnolently through the maze of stalls. The wares on display were pathetic. Rusty keys for ancient locks, faded cotton dresses, split boots. Barefoot boys scampered through the muck. Flies were everywhere. “They don't have to live like that,” Elan said, anticipating Jake. “A lot of them own property. They bury their money in jars. Actually, there's no such thing as an ‘Arab.' What, for instance, has an Arab in Cairo in common with a Bedouin from Iraq?”

“Jerusalem?” Jake dared.

“All the Arabs have in common is the fact that they're Moslem. We must teach them that it is not such a bad thing to be an Arab in Israel.”

“Possibly,” Jake said, “the trouble is they have loyalties outside their own country. Like my friend Mr. Cooper.”

The Canadian Embassy had no knowledge of Joseph Hersh.

Wednesday morning Jake drove to Beersheba with Elan to look at the Arabian Nights Hotel, then still under construction. About a half hour out of Tel Aviv, the station wagon wheeled into a lush cultivated belt. Then, quite suddenly, they were streaking across the desert. “We are seventy miles wide here,” Elan said. “One day this will be our bread basket.”

Finally, the station wagon rocked to a stop on the outskirts of Beersheba. Squinting against the windblown sand, Jake saw an enormous roadhouse rising abruptly out of the desert. The proprietor, a Mr. Hod, hurried toward them. “I'm putting up the finest hotel in Israel,” he said. “We're going to have a golf course, hot springs – the works. Soon we'll have the biggest neon sign in the country.
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS HOTEL
. I'm even organizing a society to be called Sons of the Arabian Nights.”