St. Urbain's Horseman

by Mordecai Richler

  Within the hour, Duddy was at Jake’s flat insisting that he read the play he had brought with him – read it immediately – before they talk – and Jake’s protests were unavailing. Grudgingly, he retired to his bedroom and when he emerged, having skimmed through the play, Duddy leaped up from the sofa. “So, big expert, what do you think?”

  “I hope you’re not putting any money into it. It’s a disaster.”

  “Atta boy. I’ll buy that dream,” Duddy said, and then he unburdened himself.

  He and Marlene Tyler, née Malke Tannenbaum, showstopper of the Mount Carmel Temple’s production of My Fair Zeyda, and occasionally seen on CBC-TV, were wed, or as the rabbi put it, joined hands for nuptial flight, within two months of their first meeting. Something of a show biz celebrity by this time, often seen around Toronto with local lovelies, Duddy was interviewed by the Telegram. “When it comes to wedlock,” he said, “there was never any doubt in my mind that I would marry one of our own brethren. I’ve seen too many mixed marriages. It just can’t work.” And Marlene said, “It may sound silly, but we won’t have milk after meat in our house for hygienic reasons germane to our faith.”

  The house Duddy built in Forest Hill, the letter K woven into the aluminum storm door, antique coach lamps riding either side, double garage doors electronically controlled, was sumptuously furnished for Marlene Tyler, the girl of his dreams, pink and white, like a nursery. But he had assumed that after their marriage, she would give up stage and television, as she was only an adequate performer and could see for herself that they were rich and there was no need. After the lonely years of struggle and bachelorhood, gulping meals in restaurants and sleeping with shiksas, he had yearned for home-cooked meals, an orderly home life, and screwing on demand. “Like on drippy Saturday afternoons after you come home loaded from a bar mitzvah kiddush. Or like on Saturday night after the hockey game and there’s only Juliette on TV. I even had a TV set put in the bedroom with remote control, so that we could watch from the bed and get in the mood before they picked the three stars. Foreplay, that’s the word I want.”

  Duddy had anticipated nights on the town together, marvelous dinner parties, and, in the fullness of time, children. A son. “After all, what’s the struggle for? It’s a hard world, you know, everybody in business is rotten to the core.” Somebody who would not know his early hardships, but would have a first-class education. The Harvard Business School. And ease the pressure on him at Dudley Kane Enterprises, because who could you trust if not your own? Nobody. “But instead, damn it, I was fool enough, for a wedding gift, to buy the Toronto rights on an off-Broadway musical. I backed the production on the condition that Marlene would star in it. Well, you know she wasn’t absolutely awful. Some reviewers liked her. And next thing I know she’s beginning to get work here and there. TV variety shows, theater reviews, dances. And one, two, three, I’m a bachelor again. Only worse. Dinner at home? Sure, why not? The maid defrosts a TV dinner for me in the oven. Or I eat out and spend the night playing poker with pals. And then what? Me, I’m too tired to stand. I drive down to the theater or TV studios to pick her up. She’s standing outside in her furs, giggling with the rest of the cast. Most of them are fags, all right, but the others? Who knows what they do in the dressing rooms? You haven’t met Marlene yet. Oy. For a Jewish girl she likes it, let me tell you. Now I’m a man of some sexual experience, you know. Not to brag, I’m well-hung. It’s a big one. Masturbating helps, can you beat that? I mean, remember on St. Urbain we were told it would give us pimples or stunt growth? Bullshit. Scientifically speaking, what’s a cock? Tissue and veins. You pull it, it stretches. You don’t use it, it shrivels. Where was I? Oh, I’ve had a hundred and ninety-two girls, not counting Marlene, and more than one has pleaded for me to stop. Enough, Kravitz, you insatiable monster. Big Dick, one of the girls used to call me. Nice, huh? I liked that. Big Dick Kravitz. The girls tell me I’m a very virile guy and I don’t come quick as a sneeze either, like lots of shmecks today. Or need to be spanked, no shit, you’d be shocked what some goyim go in for. Those girls are expensive but an education, the things they can tell you. Would you believe that in Toronto, Ontario, there is a genius of a broker sitting on Bay Street who forks out a hundred dollars every Friday night to have a girl stand on him in her high heels, that’s all she’s wearing, and pee all over him? Goddammit, Jake, that bastard is one broker in a thousand, he’s one of the greats. I’d get into high heels and piss on him for nothing every day and twice on Saturday if only he’d handle my portfolio. Anyway, in Marlene I met my match. She can take it and come back for more, pumping away for dear life. So what goes on there at rehearsal, they’re always grabbing each other in those dance numbers, hands everywhere, and everybody in tights and getting worked up? She’s a good Jewish girl, it’s true, but the way I look at it they’re only human. So I pick her up at midnight, I’m pooped, let me tell you, and I have to be at the office at eight thirty or they’ll steal me blind. And she, she’s rarin’ to go. Let’s have a drink at the Celebrity Club, don’t be an old square, she says to me, and all the fags trail along with us, giggling like high school girls. And who pays each time? Daddy Warbucks, you can count on it. They’re all squealing with laughter at jokes I don’t get, I’m half asleep in my chair, and when we finally get home, she wants to eat. Who can wake up the maid? She’d leave us. So me, me, I make her scrambled eggs. I’m sleepwalking and what does she say, thank you, darling? No. She says you never talk to me, you sit there like a lump. Yawning in my face. It’s two o’clock, I say, I’m all talked out, what do you want from me? You can sleep in until noon. Me, I’m out at eight. And quiet. I mustn’t wake her, poor thing.”

  So, Duddy went on to explain, he had made a deal with Marlene. He agreed to bring her to London, where he had some business to transact in any case, and try to get the play produced. He would let her do it, with the proviso that if it failed she would renounce the theater and have a child. “So,” Duddy asked, “do you think anybody would be crazy enough to put it on here?”

  “No. In Toronto, maybe. Who wrote it, incidentally?”

  The author’s name had been xxx’d over on the title page.

  “Doug Fraser.”

  “Oh, my God, I should have known as much.”

  “Geez, I didn’t realize the time,” Duddy said, leaping up. “Would you have dinner with us tonight. I promised Marlene …”

  “Not tonight. I’m busy. Tomorrow, if you like.”

  “Done. Oh, one thing. If Marlene asks, we had lunch together today. Dig?”

  “Look here, Big Dick, I thought you were in love with her.”

  “Sure I am. But she’s bound to be unfaithful to me sooner or later. It’s in the cards. Why should I be the one to look like a fool? This way I get my licks in first. Tomorrow at seven. Right?”

  Plump, bejeweled Marlene Tyler, resplendent in a dress of glittering blue sequins, her massive helmet of spun hair bleached blond, false eyelashes heavy and flickering, a beauty patch dabbed on her chin, a gold Star of David plunging between her squeezed bosoms to fend off the evil eye, floated across the lobby of the Dorchester to join Duddy and Jake. “You know where I trod this afternoon,” she said. “I trod where Dickens trod. You’re so lucky to live here, Jake. It reeks with atmosphere.”

  At dinner, Duddy started to tell Jake how he had missed the Hersh social event of the year, his Cousin Irwin’s bar mitzvah. “Your Uncle Abe spent enough money on it to float a battleship. He adores the kid. He thinks he’s a genius.”

  But Marlene could not be diverted from talk of the play. “Do you think we’ll have trouble finding backers here?” she asked.

  “Why doesn’t your rich husband put up the nut?”

  “How would it look?” Duddy demanded, glaring at Jake. “I wish the play every success, but if it was only put on because of my money, we could become a laughing stock. Like Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies.”

  Eventually Marlene sailed off to the ladies’ room.

 
; “Duddy, why are you leading her on? She loves you.”

  “What are you talking, she loves me?” he charged, exasperated. “Who in the hell could love Duddy Kravitz?”

  5

  “MARRIAGE IS A ROTTEN BOURGEOIS INSTITUTION,” Jake allowed in Paris. “It stinks. I keep up with the times, you know. But, Nancy, ours would be something special. A rock.”

  Jake’s father saw it differently. A week before Jake stood up for Nancy, with Luke in attendance, at the Hampstead Registry Office, he sent him an airmail letter, special delivery, with a clipping from the Montreal Midnight enclosed.

  MIXED MARRIAGES STINK!

  Most mixed marriages misfire!

  This sad conclusion was reached by Midnight after careful probing into the status quo of this important question as an ever-increasing number of young couples are crossing religious and racial barriers in teaming up with a mate “for life.”

  Dear son, his father’s letter began.

  You take it for granted that I will bless this unholy marriage and seal it with a gift check, but I must disappoint you. In the past I have had to defend your character on many occasions, but how can I defend you for this disgraceful deed that you are planning?

  I was beginning to be proud of you when your first television play came out in Toronto, and hoped that some day you might direct a good and successful one, and find yourself a proper lifemate, and I would be able to come to your home without shame. Oh, not you. You had to go to England to direct plays there. You made a nice salary in Toronto, more than I make. But Canada wasn’t big enough for you. YOU COULD GET ALL OF EUROPE INTO IT EASY, I told you that, but what does the old man know? He is only good for a touch.

  In your letter you state that you are not marrying a Jewess or a Gentile, but a woman, THE WOMAN YOU LOVE. Now tell me did you ever see young couples marry for hate? No, it’s always for love, or even better, love at first sight. That’s lafs (LAFS is the first letters of love at first sight).

  And what about her family, if she has any? Do they want to accept a Jew in their midst? Goyim are such bigots, as we all know. And what happens when you have directed a bad play, or had a job refusal, and there is no money to pay the bills? You get mad and knowing you, you go to the bottle. Words, arguments, your fault, no it’s your fault, and so forth, and perhaps a third party mixes in, then what, the first thing you’ll be told off in these words, the dirty Jew, the good for nothing, the boozer, the shmock –

  “Shmock,” on reflection, had been xxx’d over by his typewriter.

  – and you’ll come back with words said in anger, and knowing you I AM SURE they won’t be nice words, the plays you direct are full of nasty words, you are saturated with them, it will come naturally to you.

  You have been present in the time of a breakup of what was once believed to be the IDEAL MARRIAGE, but hard times, moneyless days, interferences, and third parties turned love into hatred. Now what can YOU expect? LIVE spelled backwards is EVIL, and the way you are starting out I can only see a doomed and disastrous marriage, without a happy ending.

  THINK THINK THINK hard before you take the fatal step. From after Aug. 20, your fatal day, my door and all that goes with it will be closed to you. The doors of all the Hersh family will not welcome you. Not being married according to the Jewish laws your children, if any, will be considered illegitimate.

  So now it is up to YOU to choose between –

  A. Your father who has tried to do the best for you.

  B. An unwelcome woman that has come into your life.

  If you choose B, I see no alternative but to ask you to forget my address, and not to try to see me. And so, with the utmost regrets I close this letter, which might be the last.

  IT IS UP TO YOU NOW. “TO BE OR NOT TO B, THAT IS THE QUESTION.”

  A for Dad

  But, alas, for what had seemed like the longest, most excruciating time, actually no more than two months, it had not been up to Jake, whose mind was irrevocably resolved. It had been for Nancy – unreservedly loving one day, withdrawn and sullen the next – to pronounce. Nancy, who did not say no in Paris, but would not say yes either. Who declined, though she knew it stung him, his persistent attempts to literally wrap her from head to toe in gifts, as she feared this would only certify possession.

  Stamp her Jake’s. Irretrievably Jake’s.

  Even on their return to London, she vacillated, delighting in his presence most of the time, but on her despairing days enormously resentful of the manner in which he overwhelmed her, after the first week no longer phoning to ask if she was free tonight, but instead turning up after work every evening as a matter of course, sinking to the sofa, putting his legs up on the coffee table, knocking off his shoes, and pouring himself a drink. He was suffocating her, she feared, and yet – and yet – she anxiously awaited his arrival each evening, fretful if he was late, embracing him at the door, and yielding to him in bed before dinner. He excited her, he made her laugh. She had never experienced such tenderness from a man. But there were days, abysmally depressing days, when she felt like a prize, one Jake desired only because Luke had sought it first, and when she would have been gratified not to see him, however marvelous their evenings together. Days when she would have been happier not to bathe and oil and perfume and powder herself, make up, and dress from the inside out, all to arouse Jake, to give Jake pleasure, but, instead, could do her own things. However modest. Like wash her lingerie, mooch about the flat in an old sweater and jeans, read, listen to records, and nibble cheese and crackers when she felt like it instead of preparing an elaborate dinner for the two of them. Which dinners, another growing resentment, were increasingly consummated not by their inherent succulence for she was a first-rate cook, but only when the master rubbed his hands gleefully over the plate, smacked his lips, and dug in with a vengeance. And there were evenings when she would have been grateful to indulge her own fancies, however despicable, rather than be obliged to rise and respond to his moods. His hopes. His work. His burgeoning ego.

  He was of course impatient of her attempts to find work.

  “Publishers here don’t pay a living wage,” he said. “They hire debs for a pittance.”

  Stealthily, pretending all the while there had been no change in their relationship – admitting, in principle, she was free to see other men – he began to move into her flat by calculated inches. One night he came with fresh asparagus from Harrod’s, a thoughtful gift, and the next he arrived with steaks as well – and a teak salad bowl – and a machine for grinding coffee beans – and when she protested heatedly that they would either eat what she could afford or he could visit after dinner, he seemed so hurt, even ill-used, that she surpassed herself in bed, flattering the bejesus out of him, and this he took as license, on the weekend, to turn up with a carful of groceries and liquor, cartons of his favorite food and drink.

  To begin with, he lingered in her bed until three in the morning and then, because she insisted on her independence, which meant separate flats, he rose groggily, overcome with self-pity, to drive off in the cold and flop on his own bed. But having once been allowed to stay overnight, it seemed no more than sensible to keep a toothbrush at her place, his shaving things, clean shirts and underwear. And, come to think of it, scripts he had to read, his bedside lamp, the morning papers he wanted, and matzohs which he munched absently in bed. Her bed. Phone calls began to come for him at the flat. Indignantly, she took messages. Like his secretary. Or mistress. But you are his mistress now, aren’t you, Nancy, dear, and your day doesn’t truly begin until he comes through the door. You sleep better with him beside you. Which only heightened her self-disgust. For why should she be dependent on another for her happiness? Who knows if he could be trusted? If she hadn’t already begun to pall on him? Then one morning, scratching himself on her sheets, he was foolish enough to wonder aloud, “Why don’t we stop kidding ourselves and move in together?”

  Which made her spring out of bed, “No, no, no. This is my place,” and
hastily stack his things in the middle of the living room. His shirts. His underwear. His coffee-grinding machine. His scripts. His bedside lamp. His jar of pickled herring. He disappeared into the bathroom, taking a suspiciously long time to collect the rest of his stuff, and then with an, oh well, if that’s the way you want it, scooped up his things, a salami riding the top of the heap. She stood by the window, tears sliding down her face, as she watched him descend the outside stairs, chin dug into his mound of possessions, his bedside lamp cord trailing after him, the plug bouncing on the steps.

  Typically childish, he didn’t phone the next morning, and she wept copiously, humiliated because she didn’t dare leave the flat in the afternoon, just in case he did phone. He didn’t come by in the evening, either, and she was incensed. Suddenly, the flat seemed empty. Without excitement or promise. Such was her rage at what she had to admit was her dependence that when he did condescend to phone the next morning, she informed him, with all the frostiness she could muster, that no, sorry, she had a date tonight.

  Nancy bathed and oiled and powdered herself, she put on the garter belt that had made him whoop, beating the pillow for joy, and the bra with the clasp he couldn’t solve. She slithered into her dress, undoing the top two buttons, then doing them up again contritely, feeling wretched, fearful she couldn’t yield to another man. And why not? She was hers to give, wasn’t she? So she defiantly opened her medicine cabinet to make sure – just in case, as it were – that she was not without vaginal jelly. She was still searching for the tube and her cap, incredulous that he would actually have the gall, cursing him, when the doorbell rang and, running to answer it, she undid first two, then three, buttons of her dress, blushing at her own boldness.

  Tall, tanned, solicitous Derek Burton, the literary agent who had phoned her every morning for a week, wore a Westminster Old Boy’s tie, carried a furled umbrella, and did not instantly sink to the sofa, kicking off his shoes, but remained standing until she had sat down, and lit her cigarette with a slender lighter he kept in a chamois pouch, and raised his glass to say, cheers. He didn’t have to be asked how she looked, grudgingly pronouncing her all right, and taking it as an invitation to send his hand flying up her skirts, but immediately volunteered that she looked absolutely fantastic. Outside, he opened his umbrella, and held it over her. Derek drove an Austin-Healey with a leather steering wheel and what seemed, at first glance, like six headlights and a dozen badges riding the grille. There were no apple cores in the ashtray. Or stale bagels in the glove compartment. Instead, there were scented face tissues mounted in a suede container. There was also a coin dispenser, cleverly concealed, filled with sixpences for parking meters. As well as a small, elegant flashlight and a leatherbound log book. Once at the restaurant, Derek tucked the car into the smallest imaginable space, managing it brilliantly, without cursing the car ahead of him, or behind, in Yiddish. Then she waited as he fixed a complicated burglar-proof lock to the steering column. Jake would absolutely hate him, she thought, which made her smile most enticingly and say, “How well you drive.”