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St. Urbain’s Horseman
“An exhilarating experience. Richler is at the top of his powers, almost incapable of making a wrong move.”
– The Nation
“It is sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes full of honest sentiment … page after page of crackling and neat satire.”
– New York Times
“It combines his gift for comic horseplay and a certain engaging nastiness with the moral concern of a man aware of death and evil.”
– Robert Fulford, Saturday Night
“Mordecai Richler is stunningly talented.… Inventive and outrageously funny.”
– Newsweek
“An exuberant novel.…”
– Guy Vanderhaeghe
“Brilliant.… Mordecai Richler has written a masterpiece.”
– New Leader
BOOKS BY MORDECAI RICHLER
FICTION
The Acrobats (1954)
Son of a Smaller Hero (1955)
A Choice of Enemies (1957)
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959)
The Incomparable Atuk (1963)
Cocksure (1968)
The Street (1969)
St. Urbain’s Horseman (1971)
Joshua Then and Now (1980)
Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989)
Barney’s Version (1997)
FICTION FOR YOUNG ADULTS
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (1975)
Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur (1987)
Jacob Two-Two’s First Spy Case (1995)
HISTORY
Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!:
Requiem for a Divided Country (1992)
This Year in Jerusalem (1994)
TRAVEL
Images of Spain (1977)
ESSAYS
Hunting Tigers Under Glass: Essays and Reports (1968)
Shovelling Trouble (1972)
Notes on an Endangered Species and Others (1974)
The Great Comic Book Heroes and Other Essays (1978)
Home Sweet Home: My Canadian Album (1984)
Broadsides: Reviews and Opinions (1990)
Belling the Cat: Essays, Reports, and Opinions (1998)
On Snooker: The Game and the Characters Who Play It (2001)
Dispatches from the Sporting Life (2002)
ANTHOLOGIES
The Best of Modern Humour (1983)
Writers on World War II (1991)
Copyright © 2001 by Mordecai Richler Productions, Inc.
First published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart 1971
This trade paperback edition first published 2001
Movie tie-in edition published 2007
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Richler, Mordecai, 1931–2001
St. Urbain’s horseman
eISBN: 978-1-55199-562-5
I. Title.
PS8535.138S34 2001 C813.′54 C2001–930019-0
PR9199.3.R52S34 2001
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com
v3.1
For Florence,
and my other editors,
Bob Gottlieb and Tony Godwin
Defenceless under the night
Our world in a stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
W. H. AUDEN
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part Two Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part Three Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Four Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
About the Author
ONE
1
SOMETIMES JAKE WONDERED IF THE DOKTOR, GIVEN HIS declining years, slept with his mouth open, slack, or was it (more characteristically, perhaps) always clamped shut? Doesn’t matter. In any event, the Horseman would extract the gold fillings from the triangular cleft between his upper front teeth with pliers. Slowly, Jake thought, coming abruptly awake in a sweat. “He’s come,” Jake proclaimed aloud.
Beside him, Nancy stirred.
“It’s nothing,” Jake said softly. “Just the dream again. Go back to sleep.”
The Doktor was reputed to keep armed bodyguards, maybe four of them. Certainly he kept a weapon handy himself. Say a service revolver tucked under his pillow or an automatic rifle leaning against the wall in his villa with the barred windows off an unmarked road in the jungle, between Puerto San Vincente and the border fortress of Carlos Antonio López, on the Paraná River. Even that doesn’t matter, Jake thought. St. Urbain’s Horseman will take him by surprise, gaining the advantage.
Jake couldn’t get back to sleep. So, careful not to disturb Nancy, he slid out of bed and into his dressing gown, sucking in his stomach to squeeze between the bed and the baby in the bassinet.
Once in his attic aerie, Jake glanced automatically at the wall clock that had been adjusted to show the time in Paraguay – the Doktor’s time. It was 10:45 p.m. in Asunción.
Still yesterday.
Jake stood back and studied his desk, ostensibly such a mess, but to his initiated eye an
ingeniously conceived system of booby traps. The second right-hand drawer, for instance, which seemed carelessly left open, was in fact precisely one and three quarter inches open. The airmail envelope, which appeared to be haphazardly thrown over his diary, had actually been laid there at an exact thirty-degree angle to his desk lamp. Or was it sixty degrees? Goddammit. The trouble with Jake’s snares, so cunningly set for his mother the night before, was that the morning after he could never recall the crucial measurements and angles, and he was too indolent to keep a written record. Scrutinizing the second right-hand drawer again, it occurred to Jake that maybe last night he had set it at two and three quarter inches. Or was that the night before?
Four a.m. Jake drifted downstairs to the kitchen, where he fixed himself a gin and tonic and lit a Romeo y Julieta. The hall mirror caught him … Jake tugged at his cap. He shook his head, rejecting the catcher’s signal, reared back on his left leg, kicked, and threw. No-Hit Hersh’s garbage ball. Inimitable, unhitable. Wondrous Willie Mays swung and missed and the umpire hollered “Strike three.” Gut gezukt, Jake thought. And so much for Red Smith, who had put him down for trade bait.
There would be a three-hour wait at least for the morning papers, unless, Jake thought, I drive down to Fleet Street. Hell, no. Jake retired to the oak-paneled sitting room with yesterday’s Evening Standard, pretending he had no idea what was on the back page, trying to sneak up on it by way of Londoner’s Diary and “the page with the human touch.”
CHIN UP! THE POLIO GIRL CAN COOK
For 15 years Betty Ward has wanted to cook her own meals. And in her iron lung she has read cookery books in the hope that one day her dream would come true.
Now with the aid of one of the latest pieces of apparatus for polio victims she can cook at her home in Esher, Surrey. A remote control unit has been fitted in her iron lung and it controls a hot plate and a frying pan. She gives instructions to her mother about mixing the ingredients and then controls the cooking by moving a switch in different positions with her chin.
“My most successful dishes,” said Betty, “are pancakes and braised chops.”
Nancy had ripped out the story with his photograph on the back page. For the children’s sake. Capital Units, Jake read, was down another penny. So was M.&G. Modesty Blaise was in trouble again, but there were no tit pictures. India ink nipples. And in spite of himself, Jake began to feel horny. Should he wake Nancy? No; the baby robbed her of enough sleep. He began to scan the bookshelves, looking for something with an erotic passage, one of his Traveler’s Companion Books maybe, before he remembered that whatever Harry hadn’t stolen was now an exhibit in Courtroom Number One. Like his Y-front underwear.
Jake found a coin in his dressing gown pocket and tossed it, but it landed heads. Two out of three. Three out of five, then. He went into the kitchen and poured himself another drink. 4:15; a quarter past eleven in Toronto. If he were there now he would be shooting pool with cherished friends at Julie’s, or be drinking in the Park Plaza Roof Bar, enjoying being at home. At ease in Canada. The homeland he had shed with such soaring enthusiasm twelve years earlier. Thousands of miles of wheat, indifference, and self-apology, it had seemed. And no more.
Jake recalled standing with Luke at the ship’s rail, afloat on champagne, euphoric, as Quebec City receded and they headed into the St. Lawrence and the sea.
“I say! I say! I say!” Jake had demanded, “what’s beginning to happen in Toronto?”
“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:
My dear Sturmbannführer,
I do appreciate, as does Dr. Goebbels, that you are a writer of integrity and do not wish to see the glorious past distorted. Though the victors must be generous, all of us at the ministry agree that we must not do too much to whitewash perfidious Albion. On the other hand, you know our quarrel was never with the British people, but with their criminal government. It is most unfair of you to suggest that we wish to soften the past, because we are concerned about box office potential in the liberated territories. Therefore, I beg you to reconsider, and to add the following sequence to your scenario in progress.
Heil Hitler!
JACOB VON HERSH
“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:
CU GENERAL ROMMEL
As he raises his field glasses to his eyes.
POV ROMMEL (THROUGH FIELD GLASSES)
The 8th Army retreating in disarray across the dunes.
ROMMEL OS
Poor bastards. They fight like lions, but they are led by donkeys.
EXT. DAY. LONG OVERHEAD SHOT. THE DESERT
A file of Good Britons in retreat as far as the eye can see.
EXT. DAY. DESERT. BRITISH COMMAND CAMP WELL BEHIND THE ENEMY LINES
A thrusting crowd of British and American photographers snapping shots of GENERAL MONTGOMERY, makeup men dabbing his cheeks with grit while others, behind, kick up desert dust to simulate explosions.
REVERSE ANGLE
Cynically, the battle-weary Good Britons smile.
INT. DAY. MONTY’S HQ
favoring stunningly beautiful, but obviously sadistic, MAJOR MARY POPPINS, ostensibly a WREN
POV MAJOR POPPINS
… MONTY, clutching his TEDDY BEAR, rocks in his chair, thumb in mouth.
MAJOR POPPINS
You must stop them here, Monty. They are to come no farther.
As MONTY, a shell
of a man, shrugs …
TRACK BACK to reveal two M15 THUGS, as they spring to attention. They are bearded and wear skullcaps.
MAJOR POPPINS
I will expect him in “the nursery” at 1400 hours.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. DAY. A DUNGEON
reconstructed to resemble a child’s nursery. MONTY, on his knees, stripped to the waist. Terrified yet enthralled as MAJOR POPPINS enters, wearing only a nurse’s cap, bra and corset, and high-button shoes.
MONTY
(slavering)
Bernie’s been a naughty-poo.
At once, MAJOR POPPINS begins to flog him. Thwack
MONTY
Yes! I deserve it, Nanny … Arggh! … Stop! Please, Nanny … Argggh! … I’ll be good … I’ll command the troops to dig in. Please, Nanny.
But she is too sexually aroused to stop now.
INT. DAY. A BEDROOM
MAJOR POPPINS, still in her Discipline Fatigues, picks up the telephone.
MAJOR POPPINS
(into phone)
Get me Moscow. KGB HQ. Comrade Beria, please.
(a pause)
Shalom, Labish. It’s Malka here. Tell Zhukie to stop quaking in his boots. They will keep Rommel occupied here for a while longer.
As she hangs up, her Jewess lips moist with sexual appetite, TRACK BACK to reveal …
… a row of battle-weary, glowering young SUBALTERNS, Cambridge Blues, lined up against the wall, bare-chested, and guarded by two M15 THUGS.
MAJOR POPPINS
(bosom heaving)
Mmmmn …
PANNING over the blond young SUBALTERNS, stopping at the most Aryan one.
MAJOR POPPINS
… you can wash that one for me, and rub him down with chicken fat …
As the SUBALTERN, filled with disgust, is about to protest, one of the M15 THUGS steps up to him.
M15 THUG
So, am I right, Lord Tottenham, in believing you’ve got a vife and child livink in Belgravia yet?
CU LORD TOTTENHAM
Trapped.
2
SAMMY’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,
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