St. Urbain's Horseman

by Mordecai Richler

  “Don’t be sharp with me, please.”

  “I can’t stand this enforced idleness any more.”

  “Look for a film, then. If you find one you want to do, forfeit the balance of the money.”

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said, relieved. “You’re right.”

  13

  BEN CAME EASILY, BORN SQUEALING AND IN HASTE, early the following morning. May 10, 1967. And Jake, jubilant, hurried home to tell Sammy and Molly the news, only to discover that Pilar had taken them to a movie. Luke’s secretary informed him the master was in Cannes. On impulse, Jake phoned Hoffman’s office and asked for Harry.

  “Yes. Stein here.”

  “Is that the mad bomber himself?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “We at Mensa have decided to disqualify you on the grounds of sexual perversion. You are a disgrace to the rest of the best.”

  “It’s Jacob Hersh, then?”

  He invited Harry to lunch, and a half hour later, strolling in the sun through St. James’s Park with him, he regretted it. He interrupted one of Harry’s diatribes to say, “My God, Hershel, I don’t give a shit about the iniquity of the top-hat tax avoidance schemes. Or how Marmaduke’s school fees are paid. It’s spring. I’m a father again. You and I, we’re going to have Scotch salmon together, mouth-watering asparagus, a bottle of hock. Fresh strawberries. I feel good. Don’t you ever feel good?”

  “Grateful for the treat is what you mean to say. Well, no. I don’t fancy being a charity case.”

  “Harry, you vile thing, what’s to be done with you?”

  “Right now,” he said, “there are lascivious bastards no better than me sunning themselves on the decks of their yachts in the Bay of Cannes, with nubile starlets waiting below, just panting for a chance to suck their cocks. And when I return to the office after lunch, it’s to sweat over their accounts.”

  “Oh, Hershel, Hershel, your idea of the good life and mine are not the same, you know. Leave Ruthy alone, please.”

  “What?” he said, startled.

  “She’s not overly bright. Be a mensh, Harry. This once.”

  “I would be ever so grateful if you would not intrude into my personal affairs.”

  “I thought we were friends now, Harry.”

  Harry laughed dryly. “Come off it. I amuse you. You enjoy hearing my prison stories. I’ve got the courage to do things you only dream of.”

  “Like hell,” Jake replied, his anger rising.

  “You’re not my friend. You’d never invite me to dinner at your house, because I’m not good enough for your wife. Or to be introduced to your real friends. I’m just a thing to you.”

  “All right, that settles it. As soon as Nancy’s up to it, you’re invited to dinner.”

  “Going to make me the household Cockney, are you now?”

  “I’m no Old Etonian, you know. I’m a working-class boy too.”

  “Look, mate, I’ve never had any friends and I like it that way. You think I’d ever trust you?”

  “Why not?”

  “Everybody’s rotten.”

  “What if I wasn’t?”

  “Don’t worry. You’re rotten.”

  “Oy veh. Did I ever pick somebody to celebrate a birth with. I must be crazy.”

  But when they reached the White Elephant there was a bottle of champagne drifting in a bucket at Jake’s table.

  “I ordered it,” Harry protested, “and I’m paying for it. It’s Veuve Clicquot. Is that good enough?”

  “Of course it is. Thank you, Harry. I’m touched. Really I am.”

  “You’ve had a bottle or two before, mate. Let’s not break into tears over it.”

  “Cheers, comrade.”

  “Cheers. Have you put the boy down for a good school yet?”

  “Cut it out, Harry. Relax. Let’s have a good time.”

  But Harry was no longer listening. Eyes charged with rancor, he scanned the other tables. Lissome girls in miniskirts laughing at jokes made by men old enough to be their fathers. Harry watched, his silence terrifying, as a tall raven-haired girl in a clinging Pucci shift glided toward the ladies’ room, stopping, with the utmost assurance, to pluck a strawberry from the fruit trolley, flicking it on to a darting pink tongue, and then nodding yes, yes, an appreciative hand held to her bosom. “Immediately, madame,” the waiter purred.

  All at once, Harry seized Jake by the arm. “You don’t understand,” he cried. “I’m not getting enough of anything, don’t you see? And most of the things I want I’m already too old to enjoy.”

  14

  IN THE END, NANCY AND JAKE DECIDED SPAIN WAS impractical, so was the south of France, and they took a house in Cornwall instead. A week after Nancy came out of the hospital, Jake drove her and the children to the place he had rented near Newquay. Pilar, who had gone on ahead by train, was standing in the door to meet them. Jake stayed the weekend and then returned to London, hopefully for no more than a week, to meet with his lawyers, consult his agent, and discuss the possibility of doing a ninety-minute film for BBC TV.

  Night after night, he returned to his house to drink alone in his attic aerie, waiting for the phone call that would say his father was dead. RITA HAYWORTH LEAVES ALY KAHN FOR ISSY HERSH no more. He missed Luke, and wished they were still intimates. Jenny wrote to tell him about Expo, and the possibility of a National Film Development Corporation being formed. “Exciting things are beginning to happen here …” Hanna, she added, had begun to suffer dizzy spells. Joey’s last postcard, actually the first they’d had in two years, had come from Buenos Aires. Where, Jake noted, consulting his atlas, the Paraná River empties into the Atlantic.

  Joey Hersh, Jesse Hope, Yosef ben Baruch, Joseph de la Hirsch, St. Urbain’s one and only Horseman, where are you now?

  Contemplating the Horseman’s journal and his newly acquired effects, the riding habit made for him by Joseph Monaghan, Ltd., Exclusive Tailors to Gentlemen, Dublin, and the Barnaby “International” saddle, Jake tried to grasp how the Horseman could ever have become involved with a woman quite so vacuous as Ruthy. Money, the readiest explanation, was unacceptable to him. And Chava, on reflection, was exceedingly ordinary too. Unlike those elegant girls who had once festooned the backyard on St. Urbain so incongruously, sipping Manhattans as they watched Joey attack the punching bag. Joey, Joey, his back splattered with uneven cuts and holes. Shrapnel? And who, if anybody, had informed on him, and was responsible for the fire-engine red MG turned over and gutted in the woods alongside the highway? Uncle Abe?

  Again and again, Jake drifted off to sleep, sliding into dreams of the Horseman, demanding on the kibbutz of Gesher Haaziv as he once had on St. Urbain, “What are you going to do about it?” Sitting in the courthouse in Frankfurt.

  Mengele cannot have been there all the time.

  In my opinion, always. Night and day.

  Dimly, Jake recalled having said to Waterman, “The Golem, for your information, is the body without a soul. He was made out of clay by Rabbi Judah Ben Bezalel in the sixteenth century to defend the Jews of Prague from a pogrom and, to my mind, still wanders the world, turning up whenever a defender is most needed.”

  Out there, riding even now. St. Urbain’s Horseman. Galloping, thundering. Look sharp, Mengele, Die Juden kommen! He will extract the gold fillings from the triangular cleft between the upper front teeth with pliers. Slowly, slowly.

  Surfacing from a dream of the Horseman, easing himself out of bed, legs leaden and throat raw on Friday morning, June 2, Jake fumbled into his dressing gown and stopped only once to brace himself against a chair and fart, sighing with relief, before he reached the front door, where he stooped, instantly overcome by vertigo, to retrieve the morning newspapers. The Times headline danced before him. Squinting, Jake deciphered it:

  MORE EGYPTIAN ARMOR MASSES IN SINAI

  The Egyptian Commander-in-Chief, General Mortagi, had issued an order of t
he day to his soldiers in Sinai, saying, “The results of this unique moment are of historic importance for our Arab nation and for the Holy War through which you will restore the rights of the Arabs which have been stolen in Palestine and reconquer the plundered soil of Palestine …” and yet – and yet – he discovered, reading further, the Israeli forces had been sent on leave and were disporting themselves on the beaches.

  No fighting yet, Jake grasped, baffled, dropping the newspaper to the floor and starting upstairs again. Where there was more cheering news to sustain him. Peeing, he scrutinized the stream, as was his morning habit, hopefully but with critical objectivity. With cojones, he liked to think, as well as a prayer. This morning’s urine was a rich bubbly yellow, nice and fleecy with mucous membrane deposits. Spared again. Once more there was no telltale pink, which would have signified kidney congestion, stones, or malignancy – his father’s fate. Neither was there any green detectable, which would have meant bile. Or, God help you, Jake, black, signaling intestinal stasis or melanotic sarcoma.

  Relieved, almost happy enough to whistle, Jake curled up on the bed again and began to breathe, heavily, drifting. Wait, wait. Something was ringing. No, something not in his head this time. Something outside him. The telephone.

  “Yes,” Jake said, “who is it?” His voice, thickened by his stuffed nose, sounded like somebody else’s to him.

  “If you’re going to Cornwall tonight,” Harry said, “I was wondering if I could have the use of your place?”

  Cornwall? Oh, yes. Nancy was there. With the kids. “What’s today?”

  “Friday.”

  “Today is Friday. A guten shabbus then, Hershel.”

  “Seen the newspapers yet?”

  Yes; and Jake allowed he was extremely concerned about the Israeli situation.

  “Take it from me. There’s not a thing to worry about.”

  “Oh,” Jake said, tightening. “Why?”

  “Oil.”

  “Knock it off, comrade. I’m in no mood.”

  “The American Sixth Fleet isn’t there for nothing, you know.”

  “Neither are the Russians.”

  “Not to worry, the Americans won’t let anybody rock the boat. The fixed capital investment necessary to extract one barrel of crude oil daily is a hundred and ninety dollars in the Middle East compared with seven hundred and thirty in Venezuela and fifteen hundred in the United States.”

  “So what, Hershel?”

  “So the CIA, Feisal, and Standard Oil. The –”

  “Harry, they’ve declared a jihad –”

  “The Middle East is an effing gold mine. The cost of producing a barrel of oil there is only fifteen cents against a dollar sixty-three in the United States.”

  “– they’re planning to exterminate the Jews.”

  “Not bloody likely. Israel’s not a colony suppressed by imperialism, you know, but a colon. A settler’s citadel. So the Yanks will take care of them. Now can I use your place or not? I wouldn’t make a mess or drink your liquor. I’ll bring my own.”

  “Oh, screw off, Harry. I’ll call you later. As of now, I don’t even see how I can leave for Cornwall earlier than Tuesday morning.”

  In the bathroom again, Jake removed his bridge, plunked it into a tumbler, added hot water and a Polydent tablet, and bared his teeth to the mirror. More tartar. Increasing drift. Worsening animal erosion. The ravages of PYORRHEA ALVEOLARIS (or Rigg’s Disease), now usually known as Periodontal Disease, characterized in the final stages by the promotion of pockets of purulent material around the teeth and loosening of the affected teeth.

  Jake brushed his teeth vigorously, spitting pink.

  Then he poured himself a shot of Fernet-Branca bitters.

  Then he sank to the bed again, raised his knees, spread his legs, peeled the silver foil from a hateful suppository, dipped it in vaseline, and groped for his anus, shoving the pellet home (“Take that, you bitch.”), his greasy fingers glancing against a cherry-size hemorrhoid.

  Then Jake washed again before inserting the bridge in his mouth.

  Then he drank two cups of instant coffee, giving the Times a cursory look. A full-page ad followed the editorial page.

  WHILE YOU’RE EATING YOUR DINNER TONIGHT,

  417 PEOPLE WILL DIE FROM STARVATION

  It takes you about an hour to eat a nice, leisurely dinner. From the time you start to the time you finish your dessert, 417 people will die from starvation.

  You see, world population has already outgrown world food supply. Every 8.6 seconds someone in an underdeveloped country dies as a result of illness caused by malnutrition. That’s 7 deaths every minute. 417 deaths every hour. 10,000 deaths every day. Most of them children.

  Jake swept the Times off the table and called Nancy in Cornwall. Sammy answered the phone.

  “This is the chief of police speaking,” Jake said. “We have a report that there’s a flying saucer in your garden.”

  “It’s Daddy. Do you wish to speak with Mommy?”

  Ben howled as Nancy set him down.

  “Hullo.”

  “Oh, my God, Jake, you sound awful.”

  “I’m going to quit smoking.”

  “Where were you so late?”

  “I went to dinner with Jimmy Blair and a producer, but I don’t want to say anything more at this point because it could all collapse on Monday.”

  “Was Harry with you?”

  Startled, he said, “No,” the lie only technical. “Why should you think that?”

  “Are you letting him use our house when you come here?”

  “No. Yes. What’s the difference?”

  “I don’t want him in our house.”

  “O.K. O.K., the car’s waiting. I’m late. Phone you later from the studio.”

  Actually, after Jake had parted with Blair and the others at the restaurant, more or less obliged to join them later at C. Bernard Farber’s mews flat in Belgravia, he had impulsively made a detour to Regent’s Park, having decided that only Harry’s malevolent presence could make Farber’s brawl tolerable. Harry had to be drummed out of bed.

  “Come on, Hershel. I’m taking you to a party. Girls, champers, you name it. We live in swinging London, don’t we?”

  “You do, maybe.”

  “Me?” Jake laughed. “Nancy and I read in bed. We hardly ever go to this sort of thing.”

  “What sort?”

  “One of our proconsuls, C. Bernard Farber, has won his laurels. He has found favor in the eyes of a new triumvirate. He’s returning to Imperial Hollywood. It’s a farewell party.”

  “What shall I wear?” Harry asked.

  “Oh, for Chrissake, anything. As long as you’ve got dark glasses.”

  A sea of cars surrounded Farber’s flat, spilling out of the mews into the road and beyond. There was a Rolls-Royce painted in psychedelic colors, more than one Ferrari, Aston Martins double-parked and too many E-types to count. Jake’s Hillman Minx, a shame for the neighbors, had to be abandoned more than a block’s distance away.

  Luscious girls festooned the wrought-iron stairwell. They sat on the floor. Driven against the wall, their eyes wandered, seeking out celebrities. And there were many there. A bona fide Hollywood star, and more than one famous director, including the first to show pubic hairs in CinemaScope. A Beatle was rumored to be on his way to Farber’s flat, drawing nearer all the time. Already there, real enough to touch, was a man who had once lit a cigarette for Jacqueline Kennedy. Somebody who had told Orson Welles he no longer had it. As well as the first British actress to have her bare nipple tweaked in BCU.

  Jake, his mood ebullient, was not seeking trouble when Frankie Demaine accosted him. “Who’s your friend,” he asked, indicating Harry, “is he important?”

  Harry, who had heard, flinched. He couldn’t cope with such double-edged jokes. It was not his idiom. Jake flared up. “You’re goddam right he is. It’s Stein. You know, from …” and he succeeded in losing the company’s name in the din.


  Vindictively, he guided Harry from group to group, introducing him as a producer. He foisted him on girls. “This is Stein,” he’d say. “You know, Stein. He’s going to be making pictures here now.”

  Harry, once thrust on the girls he longed for, could not stitch together a coherent sentence. He was either gratuitously coarse without any redeeming wit or stunned into silence. Finally, Jake rescued him. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

  Outside, Harry protested, “You picked a bad time, mate. I just had a cunt lined up.”

  “Oh, Harry, please. I don’t like women being talked about like that. It offends me.”

  Harry’s face burned with rage.

  “All right, then,” Jake said, “if you had a girl, where is she?”

  “How could I take her back to my place?”

  “Go and fetch her. Use my place.”

  “A fine time to tell me. It’s too late now, isn’t it?”

  Wearily, his smile contrite, Jake invited Harry back to his place for a nightcap.

  “Oh, sure,” he said snidely. “Only I can’t sleep in, mate. That would get me home just in time to shave before going to the office.”

  “You can stay the night.”

  “Maid’s room is free this week, is it?”

  O.K., Harry. Skip it. After dropping him off near Regent’s Park, Jake drove on to the White Elephant, where he lost thirty-five pounds at roulette.

  Harry’s weekly wage.

  Remembering, his head still aching, Jake phoned Nancy again, as soon as he reached the studio, to say he could start out for Newquay at six on Saturday morning, but he had to be back in London by noon Monday, which really meant leaving again on Sunday afternoon. More than a little depressed, even sharp with him on the phone, she agreed it would hardly be worth it; all that driving would exhaust him. Satisfied, Jake hung up and hastened to Harrod’s, scooting from counter to counter, loading himself down with all manner of meats, cheeses, delicacies, and toys, stuffing the lot into his car and barreling off into the night, bound to join his family in Newquay for the sabbath, just as years and years ago, his father had descended on them in fly-bitten Shawbridge, the ghetto’s summer swimming hole, loaded down with watermelons and cherries, kosher meats, bottles of Kik, and pails and sand shovels.