A Choice of Enemies

by Mordecai Richler

  V

  At Waterloo Air Terminal Norman spotted the balloon at once. It had moved a little to the right, but outside of that there was no change.

  Norman sat down beside a square, chubby American, who was reading Look, and told him the story of the balloon.

  “A damn shame,” the man said, studying the trapped balloon.

  “How do you think they’ll get it down?”

  “A ladder would do the trick.”

  “Maybe,” Norman said. “They’ll just leave it there.”

  The square, chubby man returned to Norman Vincent Peale’s column.

  “Aren’t you interested?” Norman asked.

  “Sure thing.”

  “Did you notice the balloon before I sat down to tell you about it?”

  “Nope.”

  “What do you think they ought to do about it?”

  “I don’t want to sound unneighbourly, but frankly speaking, son, I’ve got bigger worries.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Look,” the man said, “why not be a good fellow and let me read my magazine in peace?”

  Norman rose and walked out of the air terminal.

  VI

  After all these years of waiting and broken half-promises, tomorrows, maybes, nearly sold scripts and knowing the people who knew the right people, Charlie felt the doors beginning to creak open.

  Charlie was going to get work.

  Charlie knew, he was sure, that the phone was going to ring. There had been nothing in the morning mail, no bills and no rejection slips, and that was a sign. Sure it was. Somebody, Charlie felt sure, was going to ring this morning: and he would make a sale.

  The phone was poised blackly inscrutable on the little table under the window in the living room. Outside, the buses passed one after another. The clock over the electrician’s shop across the street read 3.12. Charlie, standing by the window, bet himself a double whisky that the phone would ring before three more 31s passed.

  I never once said that Norman was an informer, he thought. I didn’t say that he was mentally unstable either. That was Karp. I was quoting him, that’s all.

  Charlie usually took the phone off the hook when he went to the toilet, but the Chairlady of the Bitcher’s Club would soon be back and if she found the receiver off the hook with him in the toilet again she would be furious. The fifth 31 bus passed. Maybe, he thought, I’ll fake a chance and go. No. Better wait.

  When Charlie had finished college and told the old man that he didn’t want to go into the business the old man had been hurt, but, all the same, he had said, “O.K., it’s your life. Live it any way you want.” So Charlie had told him that he wanted to be a writer and the old man, who read Dickens and Balzac for his own amusement, had asked to see what his son had written. Afterwards he had said, “You’re not good enough, Charlie. I think you ought to try something easier.”

  He had sat in the first row when Charlie’s play, Factory, had opened off Broadway in ‘48. When he came round to see him the next morning he had said, “You’re never going to be famous, Charlie.”

  “I’m a progressive. That’s why the critics panned me.”

  “You’re no longer a boy, Charlie. You haven’t got it in you. Don’t kill yourself.”

  “Did you identify yourself with the capitalist in Factory?”

  “A man as stupid as the one in your play could never have run a business. I do. Does that answer your question?”

  “The director made me change certain scenes, I –”

  “I’m an old man, Charlie. I’d like to have a grandchild.”

  “Every time you come to see me I’m not famous and you want a grandchild. She can’t have children.”

  Charlie cracked his knuckles. The phone, black on the table, was silent. He wanted to call Landis, maybe Jeremy, Plotnick perhaps, he wanted somebody, anybody, to talk to – he wanted to say that Norman was O.K. but he was afraid to keep the line engaged.

  Factory had run for two weeks. For two weeks, every night, Charlie had sat in the balcony of the cold and all but empty theatre and watched the spiritless actors misquote his lines. One night thirty-five people and the next twenty-two. Eighteen, forty-three, thirty-seven. Every night for two weeks Charlie had come to watch his play. And little by little whatever it was in him that had been sensitive, hopeful, resilient, and generous had hardened and cracked like clay in a too quickly heated kiln.

  As soon as the clock across the street read 4.05 Charlie lifted the receiver off the hook and rushed down three flights of stairs to see if there was any mail. The postman hadn’t passed yet. Charlie climbed the stairs back to the flat two at a time and replaced the receiver on the hook before he collapsed, breathlessly, in his armchair. I could have been to the toilet four times, he thought. But Charlie knew, he was sure, that the phone was going to ring: and he would make a sale.

  The door opened. It was Joey. “Have you heard about Norman?” she asked.

  “One minute,” he said, “I’ve got to go to the – I’ll be right back.”

  Joey was waiting for him when he returned. “Norman has disappeared,” she said. “I think he’s suffering from amnesia.”

  “Oh, no,” Charlie said. “That would be dreadful.”

  “It’s happened before, you know. He –”

  “Oh, no. To think that I –”

  “I don’t think you have any reason to feel guilty, Charlie.”

  “But I’m his friend. He seemed so sick when he left here. I should have made him stay.”

  “You had no way of knowing.”

  “He could be lying dead in a ditch now or –”

  “Stop it, Charlie. I thought you had decided that Norman had proven himself to be something other than a friend.”

  “Sure, sure. But all those years together. I’m worried about him. I – What have you got there?”

  She had two letters. The first one was from home.

  “How much do they need this time?” Charlie asked.

  “Dr. Schwartz says Dad must go to Arizona again this winter or he will not hold himself responsible for the consequences.”

  “Me,” Charlie said, “I am not holding Dr. Schwartz responsible.”

  “Selma is doing fine. She sends her love.”

  “For that I’m mighty grateful, Mrs. Browning. You can quote me.”

  “What’s got into you?”

  “I’m worried about Norman.”

  “Norman will be O.K. This has happened before.”

  “What else have you got there? A bill?”

  “It’s an invitation to dinner at Winkleman’s,” Joey said.

  “Jeepers-creepers, where’d you get those peepers?”

  “Are you ill?”

  “I want to adopt a child,” Charlie said.

  “Can we afford it?”

  “If we can afford Arizona we can afford a child.”

  “It seems to me we can afford neither. What’s ailing you?”

  “Age,” Charlie said. “I want a son.”

  “Even an adopted one?”

  “Yup.”

  “Charlie – Charlie, I –”

  “Charlie, Charlie, somebody callin’ Charlie? HEY CHARLIE!”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Here it comes; the Joey Wallace haymaker.…”

  “Charlie, what is it?”

  “Remember the first night we spent together in this flat? You burnt a letter. What was in it?”

  “I told you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but today I want the truth.”

  “Do you?” Joey’s voice shrivelled like burnt paper. “Really?”

  “That’s what the man said. The man said that.”

  “I wanted to run away with Norman in New York. I wrote him love letters.”

  Charlie made a fist and bit it. His eyes filled. He coughed.

  “You wanted the truth,” Joey said. “That’s what you said.”

  A long time later he said, “I know what I said.”
<
br />   “I was infatuated with Norman,” Joey said in a constricted voice. “It was silly, I know, but it was a long time ago.”

  “Long ago,” he sang, “and far away – He wouldn’t have you?”

  “He wouldn’t have me,” she said.

  Charlie got up and began to walk up and down the room. “What a life.” He read and re-read Winkleman’s invitation. “Charlie,” he mumbled, “Charles Lawson, you’re a success. People want your company.” He tore up the invitation. “The world is such a filthy place,” he whispered, “such a dirty, filthy place.”

  “Are you going to leave me?”

  “For months and months I’ve been dying for this lousy little card,” he said, “and now –” Charlie had the sensation that his heart like a match had burned, curled, and died. “– and now,” he faltered, “Now is the hour when we.…”

  “I would understand if you left me. I wouldn’t blame you.”

  Charlie turned to her sorrowfully. “You poor kid,” he said. “Norman wouldn’t have you. Nobody would have me either.”

  “We could make a fresh start,” Joey said.

  “That’s supposed to be my line. Then you’re supposed to look into my eyes deeply as we walk off together into the technicolour sunset.…” He laughed. “But I’m fat and forty, darling, and, I’ve got news for you, you’re nobody’s dreamboat yourself any more.”

  “I’m serious. We could make a fresh start.”

  “It never works.”

  “We have a lot in common,” she said emptily.

  “Misery, failure, and lies. Don’t tell me. I know.” Charlie smacked one hand into the other. “Such a dirty place,” he said. “The world is such a dirty place.”

  “Remember,” she said, “when you came to see me in the hospital with the proof of your short story. You were so shy in those days, Charlie.”

  “I’ll never forget that officious young doctor,” Charlie said. “And you were so – You wrote me every day when I was in the army!”

  “It worked once,” she said. “Don’t you see?”

  “Yeah. But it would never work again.”

  Joey embraced him fervently and dug her head into his chest. “Please,” she said, “please, please, please, don’t leave me. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “You couldn’t – But I always thought that was what you wanted most. For me to leave you, I mean.”

  Joey shook her head.

  “I always thought you hated me for being such a fat, funny failure.”

  “Oh, no. No Charlie.”

  “But –”

  “I love you, Charlie, I always have.”

  “You love me,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

  “How vulnerable,” she said, “how vulnerable we both are.”

  “About Norman,” he said. “The other night, I mean. I –”

  “Don’t. Let’s not go into that.”

  “No,” he said, “I know you never went to bed with him, but – I hated him then. You and him. There was the script, you see. Oh, he’s always made me feel so inferior. Big, honest, principled, Norman. If he had made love to you – Oh, if you only knew how much I wanted to have something on him.… Why doesn’t Norman ever do something wrong or vulgar or stinking? What a cruel, remote bastard he is. Nothing affects him.… You know, sometimes I wonder if he’s human.”

  He took Joey in his arms and stroked her head.

  “You love me,” he said. “Imagine that.”

  “We could try,” she said. “Couldn’t we try?”

  Joey clung to him, not seeing a fat middle-aged failure, but remembering the man inside the others didn’t know or had forgotten. The young, hopeful man who had wanted to write beautifully. Here he was; Charlie Lawson was his name. He had been scorned, pummelled, and lied to, he had been knocked down, pulled apart and pitied, he had been used, and only she still retained an impression of the unfulfilled man inside. Charlie, she thought, Charlie, Charlie. They sank down on the bed together and, almost with reverence, helped each other to undress. When he considered her hard bony face, the breasts that had begun to sag and the thickening waist, it was with a fondness sprung from proprietorship.

  “Oh, help me,” he cried. “Help me to live.”

  VII

  Norman met them in a flat in Soho. The fat, rosy-cheeked man’s name was Morley Scott-Hardy. He wore a white monogrammed shirt and a purple corduroy jacket and grey flannels and brown suede shoes. His pale pulpy flesh gathered in knots about his face and body so that he was not so much fat as threatening to break out here and there. He had very little hair, a round wet mouth, and soft damp eyes. Scott-Hardy carried a gold-tipped walking stick. Yet behind the foolish façade there seemed to lurk a serious shrewd intelligence. His young friend was called Pip. A darkly beautiful boy, he was, it seemed, an illustrator of children’s books.

  When Scott-Hardy and Pip invited him back to the flat they shared on Sloane Street he quickly accepted; he had no place else to go.

  A framed picture of Sugar Ray Robinson hung over the fireplace. The parlour was dense with pillows and drapes. Scott-Hardy poured Norman a vodka-and-tomato-juice and excused himself. Meanwhile Pip, who wore a black turtleneck sweater and pre-faded blue jeans, spread himself out on the rug like a sacrifice.

  The table placed like a counter before the bookshelves was laden with little magazines rich with Scott-Hardy’s pronouncements on literature. From the back pages of one of these journals Norman learned that Scott-Hardy was thirty-one, a critic, and the author of two small volumes of poetry.

  When Scott-Hardy returned he rubbed himself into the sofa like a cat pushing against a man’s leg and poured himself a drink. “I’m afraid I’m a little tipsy,” he said with pride.

  Pip stared at Norman, his eyes big and bothered.

  “You’re an American,” Scott-Hardy said. “That’s something to go on.”

  “What do you think he does, Morley?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Perhaps he was a lorry driver.”

  Scott-Hardy’s rosy cheeks quivered. “Tu pense?” he asked.

  “Or a wrestler?”

  Norman rubbed the back of his neck anxiously.

  “Here,” Scott-Hardy said kindly, “let me get you another drink.”

  “He should have been here last Wednesday night,” Pip said.

  “Pip!”

  “What did I say now?” Pip turned and smiled wickedly at Norman. “Henry James was here Wednesday night.”

  Norman turned inquiringly to Scott-Hardy.

  “He’s a writer,” Scott-Hardy said.

  “Oh. Oh, I see. Last Wednesday night?”

  “Um.”

  “We hold seances,” Scott-Hardy said.

  “What did James have to say?”

  “Not very much.”

  “Go ahead. Tell him.”

  Scott-Hardy hesitated.

  “Come on.”

  “I asked James if he was the protagonist of The American and he replied, ‘Tut-tut, young man.’ I thought that was frightfully clever.”

  Norman drained his glass of vodka.

  “Last week,” said Pip, “we had a boy here who died of tuberculosis in Manchester in 1892, but he was illiterate and rather a bore.”

  “Do you hold seances often?”

  “Rather.”

  “No. Not any more.” Scott-Hardy turned his glass round and round in his damp pink hand. “My confessor forbids it.”

  “Tell him about Vanessa.”

  “Pip!”

  “Go ahead. Don’t be a bitch. Tell him.”

  “Vanessa can make tables fly through the air.”

  “He doesn’t believe you.”

  “Pip!”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Please tell Pip you believe him.”

  “I believe you.”

  Pip looked like he was going to purr.

  “Morley’s turning Catholic.” Pip rolled over on the rug, played the dead dog, and then sprang upri
ght swiftly. “May I have a drink too?”

  Scott-Hardy hesitated too long. Pip grabbed the bottle and poured himself a quick one. One sip and the giggles broke from him like glass.

  “I spy something with my little eye,” he said, “that begins with the letter Q.”

  Scott-Hardy flushed. “Pip, that’s enough.” Ignoring the boy’s giggles he turned to Norman with a warm, milky smile. “You must be tired. Would you like to go to bed now?”

  Norman shifted uneasily on the sofa.

  “Ask him if he knows how to play botticelli?”

  “Ask him yourself, you brat.” Again the warm, milky smile. “You won’t be annoyed, I assure you.”

  “But –”

  “Where would you go?”

  “I have to get up early. I have an appointment at Waterloo Air Terminal.”

  Scott-Hardy led Norman into the spare room.

  “This is very kind of you,” Norman said.

  But there was little sleep for Norman in the spare room. I can’t go on much longer without a name, he thought. His head ached. It occurred to him for the first time that the woman with the two children may have been waiting for him. He had gone to the air terminal without a ticket, hadn’t he? Obviously he had gone there to meet somebody. Those two boys might be his. Zurich. She had come from Zurich with the children. Yesterday it was. Surely they would be able to give him her name. That would be the key, he thought. Her name, if she was his wife, might be enough of a jolt to restore his memory. But if she wasn’t – He would ask to see all of yesterday’s arrival lists. On one of them there must be a name he would recognize.

  Norman started at the sound of giggling like breaking glass. When he opened his eyes he was amazed to see Pip squatted at the foot of his bed. He seemed thinner in his pyjamas and rather like a bird. Norman felt sure that a little shake of his blanket would be enough to send Pip fluttering up to the ceiling.

  “Morley has passed out,” Pip said.

  “That seems to please you.”

  “Um.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost four.” Pip, his knees protruding left and right like wishbones, made himself more comfortable. “What fun it must be to lose one’s memory.”