No Quarter

by John Jantunen

  It must still be in the pocket of your jacket.

  His jacket was hanging on the hook by the door and sure enough The Stray was there. He was just slipping it back onto the shelf when he reconsidered and returned to bed. He read it all through the morning and into the afternoon. When he reached its end, he returned it to its place and ran his finger along the spines of the others until he came to A Bad Man’s Son.

  It was the only book in his collection that wasn’t identical to the ones on his father’s shelf, it being a reprint after it had been adapted to the screen. On its cover there was a reproduction of the movie’s poster. It made it appear to be nothing more than a trashy piece of pulp, with its mean-faced desperado set against a backdrop of a mother, father, and young boy standing huddled on the porch of a one-room shack, watching him walk away. His father’s copy, along with George’s other eleven novels, had been boxed up while Deacon was in the hospital. Later, Deacon had asked about them and George had sworn he’d stashed the box under the stairs in the barn but when they’d looked it wasn’t there. They’d mounted a search but it never turned up, George finally conceding that they must have been shipped off with the rest of his parents’ things, sent god-knows-where, the Sally Ann or Goodwill most likely. Deacon had bought his copy on eBay along with its translation into German, which George had once told him had outsold the ones in English by a factor of fifty to one, its appeal there predicated on the success of Der Wüstling, what a German producer had renamed A Bad Man’s Son when he’d made it into a movie.

  The way Grover told the story of how this came to be would have made a pretty good book unto itself, bound as it was with coincidences so unlikely that they couldn’t help but point to fate, startling reversals of fortune, and finally a simple act of generosity by a kind-hearted producer in a business otherwise known for the ruthless zeal with which the moneymen took delight in screwing anyone foolish enough to call themselves a writer. It was so unbelievable, Deacon had his doubts even half of what Grover told him was true, but there were several unassailable facts.

  In 1971, said producer did find a tattered copy of A Bad Man’s Son on a bench at a train station in Munich, one of only five hundred copies then extant. Something about the picture on its cover must have impressed him enough to pick it up. It was a charcoal sketch of a man with a cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes, sleeping against the trunk of a spindly old tree. A noose was draped from its lone branch as if the man was sitting there waiting for the hangman to arrive. The synopsis on its back described it as a retelling of Hamlet set between the American and Canadian Midwests just after the Civil War. It was an era that, for some reason, German readers seemed to have no end of an appetite for, and maybe because of that or simply because the producer had neglected to bring something else to read on the eight-hour train ride ahead, he’d pocketed the book.

  The story goes that he was travelling to Berlin to hand a director a cheque for an entirely different film. By the time he’d finished A Bad Man’s Son he’d changed his mind and a short while later he’d changed the director’s mind as well. He’d contacted Leonard Ruby, George’s publisher, who’d sold him the rights for five hundred dollars and a 10 percent share of its revenue. Certain that he’d never hear from them again, he hadn’t even bothered to tell George who, at the time, was barely making enough at the Toronto Star’s city desk to keep his newborn son in diapers and, with another on the way, could have sorely used his cut of the option. So it was a great surprise when, a little under two years later, George had opened a letter postmarked from Germany and found within a plane ticket and an invitation to the world premiere of Der Wüstling, to be held on September 19, 1973, at the Zoo Palast Theatre, Hardenstraβe 29a, Berlin.

  He’d immediately called Leonard to see if he knew anything about it. Leonard wasn’t so much a bad guy as someone whose own literary aspirations exceeded his grasp and was ever in the red because of it. He’d answered that he did, apologizing profusely for “the misunderstanding” and blaming his secretary who was supposed to have sent him a cheque last year, but what can you do, good help is so hard to find, and of course he’d send him a cheque right away so he’d have some spending money for his trip. With a new baby at home, George was nervous about leaving his wife alone, but Adele, convinced that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, packed his bags and even went so far as to call a taxi to drive him to the airport, leaving him no choice but to acquiesce.

  He arrived in Berlin five hours before the premiere and was treated to a hearty dinner of schnitzel and sauerkraut at the producer’s house. It was, in George’s own words, “a wonderful time,” and he was in fine spirits when he’d finally settled down to watch what they’d done with his book.

  And that’s when things got a little strange.

  Perhaps it was because he wasn’t used to kirsch, which had been flowing freely during the dinner and also on the limo ride to the theatre, or that he didn’t understand enough German to follow the dialogue, but as he watched the screen it became increasingly apparent that he and everyone else in the audience were watching two entirely different films. While he was watching what appeared to be a fairly faithful adaptation of his work—though, for sure, it was quite a lot less violent and almost entirely devoid of the sexual depravities that had led his only reviewer to call the book “morally repugnant”—the other audience members seemed to be watching a slapstick comedy.

  With every new bout of laughter, George sunk ever more into his seat, embarrassed not so much for himself but for the director and the producer, who he had found to be warm, intelligent, and of a disarmingly gracious nature. He was practically sitting on the floor by the time the credits rolled, the audience bursting to their feet in spontaneous applause as the director’s name flashed over the screen. George was the only one left in his seat and growing more and more confused by the moment. He waited until the audience was on its way out before standing and joining the throng in the hope that, hidden within the crowd, he might slip into a taxi without suffering through the uncomfortable moment sure to take place should he run into the producer and/or director.

  And he would have made it too, had he not flagged down such an irascible and, possibly, psychotic cab driver. He had been standing in front of the theatre with his arm raised to signal the taxi he could see parked at a red light at the end of the block. The taxi flashed its lights to signal him in return and he lowered his arm, casting a furtive glance at the cinema’s doors to make sure he was in the clear. Finding no sign of the producer or director amongst the theatregoers spilling onto the sidewalk, he turned back to the road just as the light was changing.

  That’s when he heard a squeal of tires.

  Another taxi, he saw, was doing a high-velocity U-turn, or, rather, an r-turn, for it was just then racing on a collision course with the unsuspecting throng on the sidewalk, of which George was standing as its vanguard. At the last possible moment before impact, the driver simultaneously spun the steering wheel and jammed on the brakes, sending the car into a sideways slide that brought its rear door to within an arm’s length of the curb.

  The other taxi driver, possibly as amazed as George was at the temerity and downright impertinence of his competitor, was a split second too late applying his own brakes and slammed into the back of the cab with a resounding crash. The door to the first cab flung open. The driver was a small man such that he had to stand on his tippy-toes to see over the roof of his car, and even then all George could see of him were two beady eyes beneath a mad frizz of white curls. He held up one finger, advising, “Einen Moment, bitte.”

  He then stormed off towards the other taxi. Its driver was concealed by the bright lights of the theatre’s marquee reflecting Der Wüstling off his windshield. All George knew of him was a pudgy hand clenching the top of his door as he stepped from his own cab, an action he reconsidered immediately after catching sight of the tire iron wielded in the right hand of his frizzy-haired com
petitor. The second taxi spun into reverse. Its driver’s side door flapped open and its tail end swerved into traffic on a direct line for a bus just now passing through the intersection. George watched in muted horror as the taxi veered into the oncoming lane. The bus driver was quick enough to avoid a head-on collision but a fraction too slow to avoid catching the taxi’s open driver’s side door. It wrenched backwards with a horrendous grating of metal. Sparks tore along the side of the bus. The instant it had screeched to a halt its driver charged out of the front door, screaming at the cab, the tone of his voice and the spittle flying from his lips telling George that scant few of the words he was using were likely to have been found in the German phrase book he’d bought, on a whim, at the Toronto International Airport.

  For his part, the frizzy-haired driver seemed not to have noticed the calamity he’d caused and was just then opening his car’s rear passenger side door.

  “Wohin möchten Sie?” he asked.

  It was one of the phrases that George had memorized on the flight, thinking it might come in handy, and he answered, “The airport.” And when that elicited only a confused look from the man standing before him, he corrected himself.

  “The uh, Flughafen,” he said.

  “Gut, Gut. Steigen Sie doch ein, worauf warten Sie? Machen Sie mal los!”

  And though George didn’t understand what he’d said, the way the taxi driver was grabbing at his arm made his meaning clear enough. If George had simply given himself over to the man’s will, letting himself be ushered into the back seat, he would have indeed accomplished his goal of getting out of Berlin without ever again seeing the director or the producer, both of whom had just spotted George standing at the curb and were fighting their way through the crowd before their writer could slip into a taxi, something he seemed rather reluctant to do.

  “Uh, I uh, I think—” George was stammering when he felt a hand slapping onto his shoulder.

  Spinning, he came face to face with the producer, the director standing a short ways behind. The both of them were breathing heavily, and the latter, who had patterned his career, and his appetites, after his hero, the Great Alfred Hitchcock, was dabbing at the sweat draining in rivulets down his brow with a handkerchief.

  “Zer you are,” the producer exclaimed. “Vee haf been looking for you everyvhere.”

  “I—” George stammered again, glancing back at the street.

  It was filling up with passengers pouring from the bus, joining the masses on the crowded sidewalk, their stream dampened to a trickle by those who’d stopped to watch the bus driver dragging the stunned taxi driver out of his car.

  The latter, George could now see, bore a striking resemblance to a character in the film he’d just watched. In his book he’d simply called him The Butcher, though in the movie he was known as Herr Metzger. He’d described him as being the son of a pig farmer who so much resembled his father’s prized sow that when he was in school his classmates had often teased him that he’d been birthed by her and not his mother. He was clean-shaven in the book but the director had taken the liberty of giving him a small square moustache above his top lip that had made him not so much resemble Germany’s former dictator as it did Oliver Hardy. In both the book and the adaptation, The Butcher/Herr Metzger’s daughter was the prettiest girl in town, a specimen of such rarefied beauty that more than once Father Rabe, the parish priest, had used her as proof that any theory suggesting it was science, and not God’s will, which made a person what he or she was amounted to nothing more than the insane ravings of a diseased mind.

  She’d fallen in love with the titular bad man’s son, and her father had chanced upon them while they were consummating their teenage lust in the smokehouse behind his shop.

  Enraged at the sight of his little lamb rutting with some no account half-breed, he reached for the cleaver he always kept tucked into the strap of his apron. Raising it on high, he charged at the couple with a bestial roar. The young man ducked the slash of the blade and snatched up a meat hook hanging from a chain, driving its sharp point up and into The Butcher’s billowing chin. Blood flowed like from a stuck pig, showering him with its sticky effluence as he cranked the lever of the hoist to which the chain was attached, lifting the madly flailing man off his feet.

  In the book, the bad man’s son then returned to the horror-­struck girl, intending to finish what he’d started. Seeing her father strung up like that had soured her mood though, and she fought him off. Not taking no for an answer, he grabbed her around the throat and forced himself upon her, the chapter ending with her lifeless body thrashing in wild palsy at mercy to the young man’s ecstasy.

  In the film though, he let her live. She ran to the sheriff, bursting through his door and exclaiming, “Da ist ein Unfall!” The rough translation of this being, “There’s been an accident!” and that was also the only thing George could think to say when he turned back to the director and the producer.

  “An accident?” This from the producer. “I hope you ver not hurt.”

  “No, I, uh— It was—”

  Before he could explain further, the director, who had finally caught his breath, interrupted him by blurting out, “But vhat did you sink of za film?”

  “I uh,” George stuttered again. “I mean, the audience, they thought they were watching a . . . comedy.”

  “Ja, ja. It is very funny. Just like your book. What is the English? Hilarious. Ja, ja. Zer hilarious. The first time I read it, I could not stop laughing. Tell him, Dieter.”

  “I thought I vould haff to call a doctor.”

  “I could not catch my breath, I vas laughing so hard.”

  The look that flashed over George’s face must have alerted the director to the consternation he was feeling just then, and his own expression turned suddenly dour.

  “It vas not meant to be funny?” he asked.

  Before George could answer, the cab driver was once again grabbing at his arm.

  He could hear the distant wail of sirens now and they went a good way to explaining the urgency in the taxi driver’s voice as he said, “Wir müssen los! Schnell!”

  “You are leaving so soon!” the producer exclaimed as George let himself be ushered into the open back seat, his earlier apprehension about getting into the crazy little man’s cab evaporating, seeing it now as his only hope of getting out of the conversation.

  “I guess I am,” he said.

  “But—” was all the producer could get out before the taxi driver slammed the door shut.

  A police car was screeching around the corner at the end of the block and that hastened him towards the driver’s seat.

  And that was the last George expected to hear from either the producer or the director.

  Two years later though, the former sent him his cut of the film’s box office, along with the suitcase that he’d left, tucked under the bed in his guest room so that it had remained hidden there until the producer, flush with profits from Der Wüstling, had sold the house, deciding to try his luck in Hollywood. George’s share was considerably more than he’d made in the five years he’d spent at the Toronto Star’s city desk and, like the producer, he made plans to use the money as a means of pursuing his own dream.

  While he’d been raised in the city, George was a country boy at heart and the social upheaval that had marked the previous decade had long since convinced him that Toronto was no place to raise kids. Recalling an advertisement he’d happened upon in the Star’s classified section several months previous, he searched the archives until he’d found what he was looking for. “Newspaper for Sale,” the ad had read, the copy below promising “a guaranteed circulation and a state-of-the-art printing press.” When he called the number included, he’d learned that it was still for sale and three days later he signed the papers, making him the new owner of what was then called The Tildon Examiner. There was enough money left over to put a down paymen
t on the house on Baker Street and to give Grover Parks a six-month advance on his salary, which had been his condition on agreeing to become the newly rechristened Chronicle’s managing editor.

  “I had plenty of doubts that I’d even last that long,” Grover would say at this point in the telling. “But I’d been a copy boy for five years by then. In that time, I’d seen a dozen others promoted through the ranks above me, the only thing they had to their advantage being that they were white and I was not, so I figured it was at least worth a shot.”

  He’d had to work twice as hard as anyone at the Star just to keep his job and it was because of Grover’s propensity for coming into work early that he had come to know George, who was always in his chair at the city desk by five a.m., three hours before his real job began. Adele was prone to migraines, and the clackety-clack of his typewriter at their kitchen table made it seem like each keystroke was driving a nail into her head, so it was the only time he had to work on his Fictions.

  It was Grover who had taken the photo that graced the back cover of every one of George’s books. One morning, he’d been tinkering with a camera that one of the reporters had dropped in a puddle and needed a test subject to see if he’d managed to fix it. He’d come up behind George at his desk saying, “Smile,” so that when he turned around, startled by the harsh glare of a flashbulb, there was a surprised grin on his face to accompany the droop of the hand-rolled cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his fingers still poised on the keys of his typewriter and the ashtray beside it trailing butts over the rim—that is to say, the classic pose of a writer at work, circa 1966. The picture would be the start of a somewhat unlikely friendship, the only real friend either of them had until then. Lubricated with coffee liberally spiced from the flask of Canadian Club George kept in his top drawer, Grover became George’s first reader, and, in return, George would offer a sympathetic ear as Grover vented his frustrations about what it was like to be a poor young black man whose dreams seemed to always be fleeing just beyond his grasp.