Atuk picked up a fifty-dollar bill and turned to Mush-Mush; his smile magnanimous. ‘There was no need to run away, kid, just because you’ – he winked at Jean-Paul – ‘borrowed some money. Come on, I’ll buy you an ice-cream and we’ll go home.’
‘I no go.’
‘Kid, I—’
‘Ignak spoke the truth and you only lies. It is safe on the outside.’
Atuk laughed and slapped his knees. ‘He kills me. Of course it’s safe on the outside.’
‘You frighten me no more, brother. I’m going to tell this white woman everything.’
‘Sure, kid. Go ahead.’
‘You mean, you don’t mind?’
‘You know how much I love you, Mush-Mush. Go ahead. Tell her.’ Atuk grinned at Jean-Paul. ‘Mind if I sit down?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I’m so glad the kid’s safe.’ Atuk jerked his head toward Mush-Mush and tapped his forehead. ‘He doesn’t mean any harm, you know.’
‘I begin with the true DEW-line story,’ Mush-Mush said ominously.
‘Oh, one thing. Before you begin. Are you sure she’s white?’
Mush-Mush drew back.
‘You’ve had the proof?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Maybe you’re the one who’s nutty,’ Jean-Paul said.
Mush-Mush whispered something to Arnold.
‘Gee, I dunno,’ Arnold said nervously. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘What is it?’ Jean-Paul asked.
‘He, well, like he wants you to – he wants to see your stomach exposed.’
McEwen looked baffled.
‘You see,’ Atuk said, ‘my little brother feels he can’t trust you, he can’t be sure you’re powerful white woman, until he sees your stomach. What harm can it do?’
McEwen pulled up her blouse and Mush-Mush walked around her several times. ‘Give her the white pill now,’ he said.
Atuk dug into his pocket. ‘He wants you to take an aspirin,’ he said.
McEwen took the pill, washing it down with a glass of water. Breathing quickly, Mush-Mush went round and round her. Arnold watched, alarmed. The Eskimo’s smile lapsed and he looked exceedingly mean. Without warning, he seized McEwen’s head and examined it closely.
‘Ouch,’ McEwen said, breaking free.
Mush-Mush peered intently at McEwen’s chest and stomach.
‘OK,’ McEwen said, pulling down her blouse, ‘the story. Give.’
‘No. Because you are a fake. Unless—’ He grabbed the pill bottle. ‘Read the craziness upon it for me. Does it say X brand or—’
Atuk held up the bottle for Arnold to look at.
‘Aspirin.’
‘If you don’t mind,’ Atuk said, gathering up the fifty-dollar bills on the desk, ‘I’ll take my little brother home now.’
‘The sooner the better,’ McEwen said, still holding her head.
Atuk led Mush-Mush to the elevator. Arms raised heavenwards, eyes rolling, he said, ‘Oh, descend, descend wondrous box, to street level.’
‘All you have to do is press the button.’
‘Know-it-all.’
‘What are you going to do with me?’
‘Make you a partner in the business. What else?’
‘Aren’t you angry?’
‘You’re family, Mush-Mush. How can I be angry?’
Mush-Mush told him that Ignak had returned to the Bay.
‘Good.’
‘You mean you will truly share profits with me?’
‘Sure, kid. Now you go home and see how the others are making out.’
Mush-Mush looked left, he looked right. The rush hour traffic was at its height. ‘Alone?’ he asked.
‘But there’s no danger on the outside. You said so yourself.’
Mush-Mush began to tremble.
‘It’s straight ahead. You can’t miss the house.’ Clapping him on the shoulder, Atuk added, ‘Partner.’
‘Ok.’
‘All you have to do is remember that there are traffic lights at each corner. You see that one?’
‘Yes.’
‘You wait until it’s red and then you run like hell. It’s the only safe time to cross the street, remember.’
‘When it’s red.’
‘Good. See you at home.’
Atuk stepped into the nearest phone booth.
‘Buck, relax. Ignak’s gone back to the Bay and Mush-Mush was just killed in a traffic accident.’
A car skidded. Atuk winced, waiting for the impact. It came. He made the sign of the seal.
‘You’ll have to speak louder, Buck. People are screaming outside.’
15
Ti-Lucy brought Atuk his morning Standard. Like thousands of other Torontonians, Atuk turned to Jean-Paul McEwen’s column first.
SICK, SICK, SICK
By Jean-Paul McEwen
‘Somewhere in Toronto today a used car dealer is having the speedometer “adjusted” on his ‘58 Chevy. A charming chap with a British accent is going club-to-club selling credulous widows shares in a uranium mine. A decent fellow, somebody who never thinks of himself as a murderer, is having “one for the road” before driving home; – and two blocks away a woman who has led a blameless life, a mother of three, starts across the street – to her death.
‘As you read this, a fifty-year-old man is being told he is too old for his job. Because we have enforced religious education in our schools the innocent son of agnostic parents is being mocked by his teacher and classmates for refusing to subscribe to Bible Comics. In the time it took you to read that last sentence they dumped tons of coffee beans into the Gulf of Mexico while, in Cabbage Town, hundreds of families living on relief cannot afford the price of a package. On Spadina Avenue, a little boy has just come home with a bleeding nose. “What happened?” his mother asks. “They think I’m a sissy because I won’t play Switch-Blade.” She washes and tends to him, she reassures the lad, he goes upstairs to practice his piano – and one day he may grow up to be another Glenn Gould.
‘In his enormous home in Forest Hill, a manufacturer who was 4-F during the war, complains to his wife that domestics aren’t what they used to be, while in a rooming house on Jarvis Street a broken man takes his VC out of his cardboard suitcase and starts for the pawn shop. As you read this column a baby is being born and a man is dying … two youngsters are swearing eternal love and a man is telling his boy that he and Mummy are no longer attracted to each other … a Negro student, who will one day be in the Nigerian cabinet, has been told there are no vacancies at Twentyman Towers … a teacher, a ridiculed spinster, has just picked up Manny Green’s essay and, reading it, she realizes that the boy is not, as others in class call him, Lard-Ass or Squint-Head, but possibly another Seymour Bone. Manny, blinking behind his thick glasses, looks up at his teacher’s hairy face. To him, she is beautiful. This is Toronto. Love and injustice. Criminality and kindness. This is our city. And lurking somewhere in it is one of the foulest of the human species: the despoiler of virtue.
A GRIMM FAIRY TALE
‘Once upon a time there was a pretty girl who lived in a pretty town in Ontario, and she learnt to jump higher than any other girl in the whole wide world. The girl was not only a champion, she was good and brave and generous and first Toronto, then the entire nation, took her to its heart. We cherished her. Then one fine day the girl came to live in Toronto. She became a TV and film star and soon began to meet smart people at cocktail parties. All the smart women did not like her because she was young and beautiful and all the smart men wanted something from the girl.
YOU KNOW WHAT
‘The girl amazed Toronto. The smart people were confounded. For the girl would not be spoiled. She remained beautiful and brave and good until – she met a depraved man, a so-called noble savage, from our own far north. The man, quick to exploit animalistic techniques, seduced the girl.
‘If my tale ended here it would be like so many others, I suppose. But it does not end here.
‘The beautiful girl, having fallen – so to speak – once, is now falling for others as well. She thinks she is helping those other men!
‘The girl is no longer pretty and her language has become … salty.
‘This is one of the saddest tales even this world-hardened reporter has ever had to write because, like Canadians everywhere, I believed in the girl. I loved her.
‘Now I know there is a name for him … and a name for her.
‘Let’s not pull punches.
‘F——and W——’
Atuk shrugged and turned to Seymour Bone’s column. Today Bone had turned his discerning eye to matters other than theatrical. He was, like citizens everywhere, concerned about Strontium-90. Not only, he wrote, has it been responsible for the birth of malformed babies, but, more recently, children were being born freakishly coloured. Last month, in Alberta, an unquestionably Anglo-Saxon couple had given birth to a coloured child. It could, he warned, happen in Toronto next. Bone blamed American nuclear tests.
16
BZZZ . . ZZ . . ZZZZZ . . zz . . z … z …
Damn him, Michele Peel thought, ever since the shelter at the bottom of the garden had been finished Rory was forever at the buzzer, calling drills. Damn; but all the same she quickly hitched up her skirt, flushed the toilet, and ran.
BZZZZ … zzzzz … zzzz . . zz … z …
Atuk was subjected to a two-hour interview by network executives, producers, and advisers from the agency.
‘Whatever you do,’ the producer said, ‘don’t get a haircut between now and the show.’ He measured Atuk’s neck with a tape. ‘Oh, would you sign these release forms, please?’
Atuk began to read. He swore he hadn’t been coached, he absolved the company of all responsibilities, and then, just for form’s sake, he inquired indignantly, ‘Why must you have the address of my next of kin?’
‘Aw, don’t bother your head about it,’ Derm said, clapping him on the back. ‘It’s just the usual legal mumbo-jumbo.’
So Atuk signed.
‘That’s my baby,’ Derm Gabbard said.
Twentyman came round the table closer to Snipes.
‘Have you read it from start to finish?’ he asked.
Snipes nodded.
‘You’ve digested all the details? I must be sure of that.’
‘Sure have. It’s crazy, crazy. Poor Atuk. This will be the end of him.’
Twentyman laughed. ‘You’ve still got a lot to learn, my boy. This is only the beginning for Atuk.’
‘But are you sure,’ he asked, indicating the report, ‘that all this is true?’
‘You saw the photographs, didn’t you? Do they look faked?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Now I can assure you the details won’t be released until the day after tomorrow.’
Snipes smiled.
‘Don’t worry. It cost me a pretty penny, but it was well worth it. Now we have plenty to do, haven’t we, my boy? First there’s the True Sons of Canada. I’ll leave that to you. And—’
‘We’re ready to go with a special edition of Metro. As for the pickets, sir, well …’
Life sure does play tricks on a man. What are we to the Fates, Jock thought, but bits of sand to be blown about at will. Jock had, in all his dreams of glory won with the force, never seen himself elected Miss Canada. But there he was, waving for the cameras, throwing kisses, as he was held aloft by Niagara Fruit Belt Jr. and the Best Developed Biceps of Sunnyside Beach. Jock was puzzled to see one of the judges, Jean-Paul McEwen, unaccountably, break down and weep. He blew her a kiss too.
Nurse Tomkins, at the Protestant Temperance Hospital, twisted her handkerchief in her hands and bit back the tears.
‘Just what do you mean “Dr Zale” left instructions?’ Superintendent MacKintosh demanded.
‘Dr Zale. You know, the sweet old man with the assistant. The big strapping fellow.’
‘Assistant! How big?’ Superintendent MacKintosh asked, tapping her foot. ‘Oh, six foot six at least.’
‘I see.’
Panofsky pushed Leo inside. He kicked him.
‘What is it now?’ Goldie asked.
Without waiting to take off his surgical coat, Panofsky climbed on to a chair and began to pound his son over the head. ‘All these years of working with me at the hospital,’ he said, ‘and still a butter-fingers.’
Leo tried to protect himself.
‘Are we ever in for it now.’
‘You’re in for it anyway, Dr Kildare,’ Goldie said. ‘The fuzz were around asking for you this morning.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Panofsky said, climbing down from the chair, ‘my work is done now. They can arrest me, if they like.’
Rory Peel threw his arms up in the air, exasperated. ‘Fellas, fellas,’ he said, ‘he’s no ordinary Eskimo. Atuk would be an asset to our club.’
‘For the last time,’ Bernstein said, ‘we’re not prejudiced here. His being an Eskimo has nothing to do with it one way or another. It’s that he’s a goy.’
‘But—’
‘Rory, look at it this way. Personally, I have nothing against the goys. But if you let even a few of them in the next thing you know their kids and our kids are playing together at the pool. They go out on a date. What’s one date, you say? Yeah, sure. Then one night your daughter comes home and she wants to marry one.’
On that fateful afternoon, when Atuk came to call, the Peel residence was charged with activity.
Michele was in the sitting-room painting a picture – an assignment from her instructor at the Temple. Setting her brush down delicately, she started for the toilet. She had only been there an instant when … BZZZZ … zzzz . . zzz. . z . . z . ..
Neil and Garth leaped to their feet, so did Valerie, as at precisely 13.08 hours Rory pressed the button concealed under his desk top. Together the family scampered down the stairs, across the garden, and into the shelter. Rory waited grimly by the entrance. Once they were all safely inside he flicked the stop watch. ‘Not bad today,’ he said. ‘47.2 seconds off.’
Michele nodded gratefully, clutching her stomach.
‘However,’ Rory added severely, ‘I think we can knock another thirty seconds off this time. All right! Garth!’
Quickly, the youngster secured the hatch.
‘Neil!’
Rory’s first-born son leaped up to man the machine gun.
‘Valerie!’
The sound-effects tape was turned on and this time, Rory noted with pleasure, Garth did not weep hysterically when the bombs fell and the burning people and animals outside began to scream.
‘Is it all right,’ Michele asked, ‘if I use the toil—’
‘OK, Brunhilde,’ Rory shouted through the mouthpiece to the maid waiting outside, ‘zero in.’
Brunhilde forced open the hatch and towered over the family, her expression fierce.
‘She forgot the ketchup,’ Garth complained.
But Rory was too absorbed to comment. He paced up and down. ‘O?,’ he said, ‘it’s H-Day plus three. We’re out of ammo. They’ve forced open the hatch. It’s Mrs Springhorn from next door. Jimmy’s mother.’
Neil, Valerie, and Garth waited tensely, not knowing who would get the call. Brunhilde crossed her eyes, she began to gurgle. Rory raised his arm, looked directly at Neil, and then, with a terrible suddenness, pointed the finger of command at Valerie. ‘Go,’ he said.
Valerie kicked the intruder in the stomach.
‘Ooooh,’ Brunhilde moaned.
‘Quick!’
Garth charged the maid with a make-believe bayonet.
‘Good boy.’
The hatch was secured.
‘Rory, I’m going to burst. I simply must go to the—’
‘Valerie, you can stop kicking her now. Valerie, will you please stop.’
‘Thank you,’ Brunhilde said.
‘Ok. We will assemble in the sitting-room at 14.30 hours for notes. Family dismissed.’
Atuk arrived only a short while later.
‘Old prejudices die hard.’
‘But I’ve talked the whole matter over with Rabbi Seigal, you know, and I’m very proud now. I think Goldie has chosen wisely.’
‘God willing, I’ll do my best to make her happy.’
The doorbell rang and Rory signalled over the intercom for Brunhilde to open the door. ‘That would be young Jimmy Springhorn for Valerie,’ he said.
Four tall men stepped into the room. Two were in uniform. RCMP. The FBI men were in plain clothes.
‘Are you Atuk, the Eskimo?’
Atuk nodded shyly.
‘You’re under arrest.’
An alert FBI man stepped between Atuk and the window. The Eskimo approached Rory. ‘Please note,’ he said quickly, ‘that there are no bruises about my face and body.’
‘It is my duty to inform you that anything you may say might be used against you.’
‘Is much strange,’ Atuk said. ‘Me simple Eskimo.’
‘What’s the charge?’ Rory asked.
‘I wouldn’t know … well, just how to put it into words.’
Part 3 This Was the Noblest
Canadian of Them All
1
Legends about Buck Twentyman abounded.
Take Twentyman’s student days, for instance. Even though he had inherited untold millions, young Buck had insisted on working his way through college just like less fortunate fellows. And even this early in his career, he proved himself an astonishingly resourceful man. One summer, the story goes, Buck and some other high-spirited students were hired to escort several hundred Chinese back to the west coast, from where they would embark for their homeland. For now that the Chinese had built the railroad that linked the dominion from coast to coast it was decided that they should all be repatriated. Buck was in charge of one car-load, some two hundred and ninety head, and every night he had to count his Chinese. One night, in Calgary, he and the other fellows tied one on, so to speak, and when they returned to the train Buck, taking the count, discovered he was short one head. He did not panic. He returned to town with some friends, stopped at the first laundry, found the proprietor, one Chung Lee, at dinner with his family, and kidnapped him.
The Incomparable Atuk Page 11
