St. Urbain's Horseman

by Mordecai Richler

  Swaying gently as she nursed Sammy in the kitchen at three in the morning, she searched for a way of assuring him that he did not have to become famous for her sake. Or Sammy’s. But such was his drive, there seemed no way she could say as much without wounding him and, rather than that, she said nothing.

  If, on rare occasions, he eked some satisfaction out of his work, he was, for the most part, laden with contempt for his peers, too many of whom, he felt, presented with a script, knew instinctively what would play well, and that’s all. Almost everybody in television was a lightweight, he complained to her, and a cliché monger. Such was his scorn for actors that, watching him on the set one day, she wondered why they endured him. For, unlike the others, he would not flatter and cajole those he needed, arousing them to surpassing performances. Instead he mocked, he teased, he laid low with pointed jokes. He flayed them for their vanity. Even he could not understand why they tolerated him. “When I directed my first play in Toronto,” he once said to her, “telling the writer what had to be rewritten again and again, not that a hack could ever get it right, and keeping the actors late and making them go through a scene for the umpteenth time, I had to retreat to the toilet more than once, overcome by giggles – incredulous – because they had listened.”

  He seldom took one of his leading actors to dinner, he never sent flowers to a leading lady. The only companions he sought out on any production, those he fooled and played poker with, were the cameramen, the grips, the stagehands, and that company of failed actors, the bit players of whom no wrong could be uttered, who were jokingly referred to as Jacob Hersh’s Continuing Rep. Largely drunks, has beens, never beens, itinerant wrestlers, wretched drag queens, superannuated variety artists, decrepit Yiddish actors, befuddled old prize fighters, and more than one junkie, all of whom not only counted on Jake for work and handouts but, in a suicidal mood or awakened in a hospital after a bender, could summon him in the middle of the night.

  All of this, however endearing, would only have been acceptable, Nancy felt, had Jake been blessed with a talent of the first order, but, she sadly allowed, this was not the case, and so she was fearful for his sake. Fearful, touched, and apprehensive. For it made her heartsick to see how ferociously he threw himself into each play he did, however ephemeral, often going sleepless for nights while he blocked it, and afterwards, drained and becalmed, waiting for the telephone that didn’t ring with the offer of a film. Then besieging his agent’s office, quarreling with him, demanding to know how he got lesser directors film assignments.

  Adding to his troubles, Jake had begun to insult the writers available to him in television. Those he longed to work with were either not the type to accept a commission or, though they liked him personally, were chary of committing a screenplay to a director unproven in film.

  The less satisfaction his work gave him, even as he drifted on the crest of the television plateau, having done everything he could there and beginning to repeat himself, the more he began to talk about his cousin Joey, speculating about his whereabouts, wondering what he was really like, oddly convinced that somehow Joey had answers for him.

  Once, there was a telephone call.

  “May I speak with Joseph Hersh, please?” a man asked.

  “He doesn’t live here. This is Jacob Hersh’s house. Why do you want to speak to him?”

  “Do you know where I can reach him tonight? It’s important.”

  “No, but –”

  “Are you a relation, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him Hannon called. I know everything. If he comes within a mile of here again, I’ll kill him.”

  “Why?”

  “You just give him the message; he’ll understand.”

  Another time, a bill that wasn’t theirs was stapled to their monthly statement from Harrod’s. It was for cigars and brandy, some thirty-five pounds, and it was signed “J. Hersh.”

  “Why should he do this to me?” Jake protested. “If he needs money, why doesn’t he come to me? Why doesn’t he come to see us anyway? I don’t understand.”

  He told Nancy how Hanna used to advertise for Joey in the Personal column of the Louisville Courier during Kentucky Derby Week. Maybe, he joked, he should run an ad in the Times now that the Grand National was coming up. Then there was Ascot. He also told her that in the days when he had shared a flat with Luke, he sometimes rushed home from wherever he was, convinced the Horseman was waiting at his door. When he had lived alone there had been nights when he had held imaginary dialogues with his cousin, saying it was the family, not Jake, who had betrayed him and allowed Baruch to die in squalor. Offering to put things right, however he could. “He’s got a commercial pilot’s license, you know. He’s played pro baseball. Once, he was in the movies. He actually rode with Randolph Scott.”

  Jake was not entirely without film offers. Again and again he was sent scripts to mull over and asked to consider the sort of production that required an instant decision. Either the subjects were deplorable or the deal he celebrated on Monday, yielding to euphoria, dissolved on Wednesday. After the second film Luke had written won a prize at Cannes, the three of them went to dinner at Chez Luba, but it didn’t work. Luke asked Jake to read his latest work, an original screenplay.

  “I’d be glad to read it and give you an opinion,” Jake said, “but if you’re looking for a director, why not try Tim Nash? He’s gone into films now, you know.”

  Out of necessity, Jake met most often with fringe producers, inept dreamers whose fantasies he submitted to after lunch.

  It was after one such engagement that he came home to discover Nancy was pregnant again. He ought to have guessed, because only a month earlier, Nancy was suddenly inclined to drift off to sleep, a book in her hand, after lunch, and she was, come nightfall, uncommonly lecherous in bed.

  Molly, born in May, came easily. Nancy had only been home for a month when Herky and Rifka descended on them breathlessly, having already done Copenhagen, Paris, Rome, and Venice. Their first European tour.

  “Did you enjoy Venice?” Jake asked.

  “It was really something.”

  “What was Copenhagen like?”

  “Very, very clean.”

  “And Paris?”

  “It was a real experience.”

  Herky and Rifka had not come without a tribute for the first-born Hersh, but Nancy, unwrapping the gift, a tangle of wires and pads, was obviously baffled.

  “You see, Rifka, I told you. They haven’t even seen it here yet. It’s an anti-bedwetting device. Early Warning System.”

  “Just what we wanted,” Jake said.

  You lay it into his crib, Herky explained, plug it in, and no sooner does he pee than, whamo! he gets an electric shock. “It’s sure-fire. We’re doing very well with it.”

  Jake hastily removed them from the bedroom, taking his sister and brother-in-law to a Jewish restaurant in Soho. Riding two whiskies, Herky began to enthuse about his grand tour.

  Each according to his trade. American neophyte painters coming over for the first time hasten to the Tate, Jeu de Paume, the Uffizi, the Prado. Beginning writers seek out Dr. Johnson’s chambers, Oxford, Cambridge, Jane Austen’s Bath, and in Paris hope for a glimpse of Sartre at Les Deux Magots and take a meal where James Joyce did, not forgetting the Ritz bar, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Too many times to count, Jake had taken sentimental visitors to Marx’s grave and past old Sig Freud’s flat, he had pointed out the Café Royal, Bloomsbury, the bookshop in Hampstead where Orwell had served, and other sanctified places, forever ours. But Herky Soloway was a special case. In London, above all, he wished to pay obeisances at the shrine of the incomparable Thomas Crapper, repository of stools immortal, where the Cascade had first been successfully flushed and the Niagara had been invented. Herky, warming to his subject, told Jake of the sparkling enamel toilets of Copenhagen, each bowl a joy to behold, and how he had bought a bidet (a fun thing for his showroom) in Rome, and descended into the sewers of Paris, wind
ing through the very bowels of the city, and in a smelly café in Montmartre actually squatted on the craziest thing, no seat, only imprints for your feet, and a light switch that went on and off as you locked or unlocked the door. What misers, eh? But a good precaution against the syph. In St. Germain and Étoile he had tried the pissoirs. Amazing, right out there on the streets, stinking to high heaven, and he had read in Henry Miller, there’s a hot writer for you, that perverts left bread there in the morning to eat at night after everyone had peed on it. Europe, oy veh iz mir. But c’est la vie, n’est-ce pas? And in Versailles, you’ve heard of it, I suppose, would you believe that they used to do it in corners and the tapestries – excuse me, Rifka, I know you haven’t finished your dessert yet, but I must tell him – were for wiping themselves. The nobility yet.

  Once Rifka had been dropped off at the Dorchester, Herky rubbed his hands together, he clapped Jake on the back (Now we can have us a ball, Yankel), and Jake took Herky out to savor the delights of London, swinging London, after dark. Beginning with the fabled cottages of Hyde Park Corner.

  “Now, Herky, before we go down, let me tell you they have blinkers on all the urinals and for a good reason. Don’t start up conversations or stick your nose in everywhere. Provocateurs are not uncommon in there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cops looking for importuning fags, if you must have it spelled out.”

  “Listen here, my pockets are full of credit cards. I’ve got a personal letter of recommendation from my bank manager.”

  “Do me a favor, Herky. In and out.”

  They also took in the public conveniences of Piccadilly at its finest hour, shortly after midnight, when the acid and shitheads and pushers joined together to turn the place into a junkies’ bazaar. Herky pushed open a door to discover a young man sprawled on the floor, mainlining it. Herky retreated, whistling. “Thank God we haven’t got any national health plan in Canada.”

  Finally, they returned to Herky’s suite, and Jake’s brother-in-law, in an expansive mood commingled with gratitude, poured them each large brandies. “I don’t know about you, Yankel, but I had a ball. We didn’t do the tourist bit, did we? Not many people see the London I’m seeing.”

  Jake agreed, and the next afternoon, by arrangement, he took Herky to Raymond’s Revue Bar and then to shop for gifts, while Rifka went to a matinée of The Sound of Music. Harnessed with photographic equipment, including a movie camera, Herky tramped happily through Hamley’s and Liberty’s, he had Jake shoot some film of him feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, grinning and blowing kisses on the steps of Canada House, and then continued to Harrod’s, where he immediately asked for the toilets.

  Oh, Harrods, her toilets perceived.

  In all of his grand tour, Herky had seen nothing to rival the Gentlemen’s Toilet adjoining the men’s hairdressing salon on the lower ground floor of Harrod’s. Bug-eyed, he exclaimed, “This is quality, Yankel. This I call class.” The floors were marble. So were the sinks. The door to each closet was oak. “This is something. This is really something. Damn it, you could eat off the floor here.”

  Overriding Jake’s protests, he began to take photographs. Endless snaps of the fabulous appointments. A gentleman, emerging from a closet, stared at Herky, dumbfounded. “Good heavens!”

  Somebody else heatedly demanded Herky’s film. Harsh words were spoken.

  “Buggers,” another man shouted, banging his cane. “Filthy buggers!”

  Barbers descended on the toilet. Somebody seized Herky’s camera. “It’s insured,” Herky assured Jake, just before he was driven against the wall, sweaty and stammering, desperately dealing out business cards. A store detective appeared, taking charge. Which led to their being marched to an office on the fourth floor, where Jake, biting back his laughter, began to explain.

  8

  IN THE MORNING HARRY WAS DISPATCHED TO THE Dorchester to deliberate over a star’s newly acquired mass of bills; an affair’s detritus. The star, internationally known, obscenely overpaid, was attended in his suite by a bitch-mother private secretary, a soothing queer architect to keep everybody’s glasses filled with chilled Chevalier Montrachet, and, kneeling by the hassock on which his big bare feet rested, a chiropodist. The chiropodist, black leather toolbox open before him, scissors-filled drawers protruding, black bowler lying alongside on the rug, was kneading the star’s feet, pausing to snip a nail reverently or caress a big toe, lingering whenever he provoked an involuntary little yelp of pleasure.

  “I am ever so worried,” the chiropodist said, “about your returning to Hollywood, sir.”

  “Mmmnnnn.” This delivered with eyes squeezed ecstatically shut.

  “Who will look after your feet there?”

  Harry, riding too much wine at an unaccustomed hour, contrived to leave in company with the chiropodist, inviting him to the pub.

  “Do you get to do many of the stars?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. They all send for me.”

  “The women too?”

  “You’d be surprised some of the things I’ve seen,” he burbled. “You learn to knock on the door first.”

  “And to keep your eyes down when you’re on the job, what?”

  “Now look here, they’re all good types. All of them.”

  “And the bigger they are,” Harry said, ordering another round over the chiropodist’s objections, “the nicer to deal with.”

  “Just so.”

  Harry motioned the portly pink-faced man closer. Lowering his voice, he asked, “What about the bloody toe jam?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you think it smells better than yours? Or mine?”

  The chiropodist laughed, “Oh, I say. I say,” his eyes darting, “you’re a salty one.”

  “Keep it. You could sell it, don’t you think? If you were doing Elizabeth Taylor, for instance, there’d have to be a lot of money in her toe jam.”

  “Why that’s nasty. That’s very nasty, indeed, sir.”

  “Then there’s the toenails. Think of the toenails. You could store them. Do you know that Christie used to pluck the pubic hairs from his victims and keep them in a tobacco tin?”

  “I’ve had enough. Quite enough.”

  “Or their farts. Did you ever think of that,” Harry persisted, driving him into a corner. “Their bloody farts are totally wasted. If you had an airtight bag in that case of yours and were quick enough to trap their farts, why there’d be a bloody fortune in it. Take Marilyn Monroe, now that she’s dead. Why, if you had one of her farts trapped in an airtight container –”

  “I refuse to listen to any more. I’m not listening.”

  “You’re a servile little turd,” Harry said, knocking his bowler off. “Do you hear me? A servile little turd.”

  9

  SUMMER.

  Drifting through Soho in the early evening, Jake stopped at the Nosh Bar for a sustaining salt beef sandwich. He had only managed one squirting mouthful and a glance at the unit trust quotations in the Standard (S&P Capital was steady, but Pan Australian had dipped again) when he was distracted by a bulging-bellied American in a Dacron suit. The American’s wife, unsuccessfully shoehorned into a mini-skirt, clutched a London A to Z to her bosom. The American opened a fat credit-card-filled wallet, briefly exposing an international medical passport which listed his blood type; he extracted a pound note and slapped it into the waiter’s hand. “I suppose,” he said, winking, “I get twenty-four shillings change for this?”

  The waiter shot him a sour look.

  “Tell your boss,” the American continued, unperturbed, “that I’m a Galicianer, just like him.”

  “Oh, Morty,” his wife said, bubbling.

  And the juicy salt beef sandwich turned to leather in Jake’s mouth. It’s here again, he realized, heart sinking, the season.

  Come summer, American and Canadian show business plenipotentiaries domiciled in London had more than the usual hardships to contend with. The usual hardships
being the income tax tangle, scheming and incompetent natives, uppity au pairs or nannies, wives overspending at the bazaar (Harrod’s, Fortnum’s, Asprey’s), choosing suitable prep schools for the kids, doing without real pastrami and pickled tomatoes, fighting decorators and smog, and of course keeping warm. But come summer, tourist liners and jets began to disgorge demanding hordes of relatives and friends of friends, long (and best) forgotten schoolmates and army buddies, on London, thereby transmogrifying the telephone, charmingly inefficient all winter, into an instrument of terror. For there was not a stranger who phoned and did not exude warmth and expect help in procuring theater tickets and a night on the town (“What we’re really dying for is a pub crawl. The swinging pubs. Waddiya say, old chap?”) or an invitation to dinner at home. (“Well, Yankel, did you tell the Queen your Uncle Labish was coming? Did she bake a cake?”)

  The tourist season’s dialogue, the observations, the complaints, was a recurring hazard to be endured. You agreed, oh how many times you agreed, the taxis were cute, the bobbies polite, and the pace slower than New York or, in Jake’s case, Montreal. “People still know how to enjoy life here. I can see that.” Yes. On the other hand, you’ve got to admit … the bowler hats are a scream, hotel service is lousy, there’s nowhere you can get a suit pressed in a hurry, the British have snobby British accents and hate all Americans. Jealousy. “Look at it this way, it isn’t home.” Yes, a thousand times yes. All the same, everybody was glad to have made the trip, it was expensive but broadening, the world was getting smaller all the time, a global village, only next time they wouldn’t try to squeeze so many countries into twenty-one days. “Mind you, the American Express was very, very nice everywhere. No complaints in that department.”