Joshua Then and Now

by Mordecai Richler

  Kevin and Pauline were now at McGill together. He was the leading man in just about everything the drama society did, and he played hockey well enough to interest professional scouts. He won the Quebec amateur golf championship and, together against the world, they took a mixed doubles tennis title. Kevin was also briefly prime minister of McGill’s mock parliament. Pauline wasn’t the only one who thought he would win the roses. All the prizes. She had no idea that he was already plagiarizing his English essays out of books by forgotten writers. Or that he seldom sat down to an exam without a crib sheet. Pauline thought he was wonderful, absolutely wonderful, and began to fight with their father about him. The senator would smile, but say nothing. Pauline hated him.

  “Jane, Kevin, and I became inseparable. The Three Musketeers. I took it for granted they would marry – my brother, my best friend.” No, there would be a coronation. Older couples sent drinks to their table in the Ritz. They raised their glasses. Here’s to us, all of us, the right sort. The best this country has to offer. And, yes, there was an MG, his, bought with some money their mother had left him, and they drove everywhere in it. Their presence was sufficient to make the tackiest roadhouse modish. If they danced in a certain bar in Ste. Adèle, it immediately became the in place. Oh, there were things, little disturbances, but Pauline didn’t pay attention. He seemed to owe money everywhere. Somebody – not one of their set, certainly – once accused him of cheating in a bridge tournament. Crap. Envy. Pauline laughed it off.

  Then, all too swiftly, Kevin was into law school, where their father was still a legend, and Kevin, just like the others, discovered the Jews. “What did we know about Jews? You have no idea how cocooned we were. What sheltered childhoods we led. We were the best. The brightest. The chosen.”

  “Hey, there.”

  “Yes,” she said, her foot riding up to rest between his legs, “the chosen. With a country to inherit.”

  And, suddenly, there were all those fierce, driving Jews, who didn’t play by their rules, each one hollering “me, me, me.” My God, they demanded space, lots of space, but they didn’t even know where their grandfathers came from. They interrupted you in mid-sentence. They grabbed seats in the front row in lecture rooms. They wore diamond socks. They didn’t give a shit about football. Clearly, no matter how dazzling their marks, they would never be accepted into the right law firms, but they could argue rings around most of the law professors and they were not going to be denied. They had already taken over the McGill Daily, raging at each other in the columns, arguing about beasties Kevin and Pauline had never heard of. Trotsky. Brecht. The Rosenbergs. With their stinging wit, they drove Kevin out of the mock parliament. “One of them, a good three inches shorter than I was, a young man who was doing postgraduate work in English lit, began to send me love letters suggesting intimacies I hadn’t even dreamed of yet.…

  “Oh my, all those short, dark men with heated black eyes. The appetite. Jane and I used to joke about the need to wear another layer of panties, maybe even barbed wire. We used to giggle about being called shiksas. It was fun for us, but not for the boys. Kevin and the others, as hopeless as British grenadiers suddenly confronted by Indians in the underbrush, had their first intimation that just possibly they were not good enough to compete. Oh dear, oh dear, they say our fraternities were restricted. It was the only place we felt unthreatened. So up your ass, Joshua ben Reuben. We were scared.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  “Try to understand, darling. As far as you and Seymour and Max are concerned, we had all the advantages and you didn’t. Our boring world, a make-believe ballroom, was already diminishing, and it was yours that was burgeoning. I was called a Westmount snob on campus. An anti-Semite. A racist. Horrified, I had a couple of Jewish boys to the next party at our house. What I mean to say is, I invited a couple. Four came. They made deprecating remarks about the tasteless food. They wanted to know if I fucked and if not, who did. One of them stepped right up to my father and asked him how much he had paid for our house.”

  Abbott, the best of the boys even then, simply rolled up his sleeves and began to study in earnest. But Kevin, as he was bound to, tried to get by on charm. He courted the brightest of the Jewish students, flattering, cajoling, until he sweet-talked one of them, Isenberg Pauline thought his name was, into lending him his notes and then even beginning to write his papers for him. Suddenly Kevin was turning in assignments sprinkled with quotes from Laski and Brandeis. He was summoned to the dean’s office. The dean would probably have settled for throwing a bad scare into him, maybe making him lose his year, but then Kevin made the mistake of trying some fancy footwork on the dean, reminding him of whose son he was, laying everything off on poor Isenberg. The scholarship boy. Clearly not one of us. The dean, a decent man, was outraged. The senator was summoned to his office, and he asked that Kevin be treated just like anybody else.

  “Do you know what that means, Senator?”

  “Yes, I believe I do.”

  Before he was expelled, the senator and Kevin had the fight that had been simmering for years. Ugly beyond belief. Kevin pleaded, he wept, he begged his father to save his skin just this once. The senator told him he was a disgrace. A weakling. Totally without scruples. He had taken advantage, and probably ruined the life of a poor Jewish boy. The senator would certainly not intervene. A raging Kevin blamed him for his mother’s death. He said she never would have become so promiscuous had the senator not become impotent. The senator didn’t even raise his voice. He simply asked Kevin to leave the house.

  “I won’t bore you with all the details, or how much the scandal was savored in the best clubs – the senator’s son, a common cheat – but a shattered Kevin now found himself something of a pariah as well. The magic was gone. Old friends and supporters melted away, except for Jane and me. Darling Jane,” she said, laughing harshly. “The three of us were out drinking together, mourning his fall from grace, when Kevin didn’t so much propose as say, ‘We can get married now.’ ‘Well no,’ Jane replied softly, ‘neither of us has any money.’ I offered them mine, an inheritance from my grandmother. ‘Great, we could go to Europe,’ he said to Jane. ‘Yes, yes,’ I pitched in, approving, ‘but only until you get your bearings, and then you must return, register in another law school, and show everybody that you are made of the right stuff after all.’ Jane said nothing. She was pensive. And so I made some excuse, thinking it best to leave them alone to make their plans. Afterwards, I was amazed to discover that Jane had turned him down flat: Westmount would never forget. He was tainted forevermore. ‘It’s been fun,’ she told him, ‘but you can no longer take me where I want to go. Bye bye, Kevin. Good luck.’ ”

  “And whatever happened to Isenberg-you-think-his-name-was?”

  “Oh, don’t. Please don’t. It’s reprehensible. He was expelled too. But at the time it just didn’t matter to me. All I was concerned about was salvaging my brother. I threw tantrums. I made threats. I accused my father of being perverse. I told him that far from being sad about Kevin’s situation, he was secretly gloating, as if his unforgivably bad treatment of Kevin over the years had been vindicated by the way things had turned out. He replied that I had rather more to learn about human nature than I had gleaned from a course in Psychology One-oh-one. I called him a hypocrite. He had been abusive to Kevin because of what he had done to a poor Jewish boy, but he belonged to the Rideau and other clubs which didn’t admit Jews, and he wasn’t above joking about their ‘sharp practices.’ ”

  Kevin fled Montreal and, shortly afterwards, so did Pauline. But not before she had it out with all their old friends, telling them just what she thought about their sense of loyalty. Kevin went south and Pauline took off for Europe, never to come back, she thought. To hell with them. Everybody. She married a Communist because she thought nothing would upset her father more. She was cruel to poor Colin, unnecessarily cruel, becoming her mother for a while, carrying on with all those men, more scared than anything. Wondering, until Joshua
came along, if she would also die an alcoholic in a room in the Royal Vic.

  Kevin tried the golf circuit for a while, and then he wrote a pathetic letter and she sent him money and he went to Hollywood for a screen test, and ended up giving tennis lessons, and providing other services, to ladies of a certain age. “My age right now. Right? Right.” He tried stockcar racing. He modeled. He coached a high school hockey team. After each disaster he was drawn back to Montreal, trying the old charm, organizing reunions, and telling transparent lies about how he was on the verge of a breakthrough. Sending out signals to Ottawa, hoping the senator would call. But he never did. And if Kevin was tolerated to begin with, he soon became a subject of ridicule. He was no longer the only one who was disappointed. Everybody now had their own little failures to cope with. Marriages. Children. Careers. They began to hate him. Why not? He had once represented all their hopes, the boy who was going to take all the prizes, and what was he now? A tawdry, sleazy adventurer. “So he clings to me after all these years. I’m the only one he doesn’t have to pretend with or lie to. And I’m sorry, my love, but I still remember and cherish that golden boy who once turned everybody’s head. So, yes, I helped to buy him the boat. He’s cost me thousands over the years. I finance his dreams. And if you really must know, I’ll end up paying for his gala country club dinner, because I won’t have the others snickering about his skipping without settling the bill.”

  “But he isn’t skipping now, is he?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Why can’t you be pleased that Trimble, whatever his motives, is giving him a chance?”

  “Running an investment trust? Kevin? It’s ridiculous.”

  “Maybe,” he suggested tentatively, “Jane got him the job?”

  “Oh, sure. Suddenly. After all these years. She woke up remorseful and decided, this being Junior Red Cross Day, she would do something for Kevin.”

  “Possibly,” he said, watching her, “she’s been seeing him in Bermuda.”

  “No. He would have told me. I just don’t understand what Jack wants with him.”

  “Who cares?” he said impatiently. “It’s a job. An opportunity.”

  “You think I’m being a cunt,” she said, “don’t you?”

  He had never heard her use the word before. “No,” he said, “I certainly don’t think that. But that was some dinner party. Jesus. No wonder you’re upset. I don’t dislike Trimble as much as you do. Maybe he’s really out to help Kevin.” But his voice lacked conviction.

  9

  SEYMOUR, IT SOMETIMES SEEMED TO JOSHUA, PUT THE sort of single-minded energy into seduction that other men applied to digging canals that joined oceans or sending rockets to the moon. If hitherto unsavored nookie, as he always put it, was the sweetest reward this world had to offer, no subterfuge or inconvenience was too great. Napoleon could not have put more care into the taking of Austerlitz than Seymour did into the ravishing of the receptionist at Pitney, McCabe, Thornason, Lapointe & Cohen. He would find out a girl’s favorite color, what perfume she fancied, and if roses pleased her more than orchids. If she read, and a few of them did, he would contrive to surface with a signed copy of a book by her most revered author. If it was called for, he came up with rinkside tickets to the hockey game when Boston was in town. He had, in order to seduce a lecturer in Political Science 101 at Concordia U., done a crash course on Kate Millett, and for the sake of the favors of a typist at the Canadian Jewish Congress, he had got dressed in striped prison garb and tramped up and down in front of the Soviet consulate to protest the treatment of his brethren in Russia.

  “Seymour,” Joshua had said, aghast, “what are you doing in that ridiculous outfit?”

  “You are looking at a man,” he replied, “who is going to have congress with a girl from Jewish Congress.”

  He was exceedingly generous with gifts for his girls. Rings from Lucas, necklaces from Ogilvy’s, watches from Birks. The saleslady in charge of the lingerie department at Holt Renfrew suffered through his every entrapment, agonizing with him as he tried to settle on a choice, searching for what he called the real coozy creamer. The one that would make the honey run. Truly, W. H. Auden couldn’t have put more thought into finding the precise adverb than Seymour did into the selection of a pair of lace panties.

  And now Joshua and the boys were setting him up.

  Skimming through the Personals column in the New York Review of Books, Joshua had stopped short, exploding with laughter, when he read:

  ATTRACTIVE, COSMOPOLITAN VIRILE MONTREAL MAN, early forties, successful, literate, adventurous, seeks slender, loving lady friend in her thirties for sensual flights. “The grave is a fine and private place/ but none I know do there embrace.” Am often in NYC and Boston areas. NYR Box 142116.

  Seymour, he had thought, Seymour, you shameless pig! With the creative help of Bobby and Max, riding a shared bottle of Chivas Regal, Joshua sat down to formulate a reply to the ad, coy yet enticing, hinting at, if never quite spelling out, unimaginable delights, but politely requesting a letter, more concrete information, before a meeting could be arranged. This, just in case the ad had not been placed by Seymour. They needn’t have worried. Seymour’s horny reply came bouncing back in the return mail and they consulted again. This time in The King’s Arms, taking a fetching television actress of Joshua’s acquaintance into their confidence, and framing a reply, appropriately salacious but delicate in manner, that suggested an exploratory rendezvous, neither party under any obligation, for late-afternoon drinks in the Maritime Bar of the Ritz.

  Seymour arrived, shined, scrubbed, and scented, at the appointed hour. A bottle of Mumm’s, nesting in a silver bucket, was already at his side, when he noticed Joshua ensconced at the bar. He waved, his smile sickly.

  “Hi, Seymour. Mind if I join you?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Aw, you’re kidding me,” Joshua said, sitting down at the table. “Go away. Shoo,” Seymour said, his manner abrupt. “I’m waiting for somebody to join me.”

  “Who?”

  “Who who?” Seymour shot him a perplexed look. “I don’t know who.” Then, in a sudden burst of good humor, he laughed at himself and explained that he was meeting a blind date. “Yes, at my age. So?”

  “I didn’t say that. But if that’s the case –”

  “Wait,” he said, as Joshua rose to leave. “Don’t be so touchy. Sit down.”

  “Make up your mind.”

  “She will probably turn out to be awful. One of the world’s crazies. Why don’t you sit here with me until I … She doesn’t know who I am either. It’s too complicated a story to go into. O.K., I’ll tell you. She’s one of those types who advertises in the personal columns of a newspaper, never mind which. I took a flyer. I answered. O.K., O.K., I’m a terrible man.”

  “What have you got there?” Joshua asked, indicating a soft leather satchel beside him on the floor.

  “What have I got there? A satchel. Prick.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Fuck off, will you? I’ll settle your bill.”

  Joshua started to get up again.

  “Sit down, for Christ’s sake.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “My equipment. Happy now?”

  “Your what?”

  “This is a complicated world we live in now. Things aren’t what they used to be. So I’ve got to be prepared. How do I know what she fancies, a woman who advertises for it. A little S and M. Maybe not champagne, but a joint. Or a sniff of coke. Or a special kind of tickler. Who knows? Damn it, will you leave me alone.”

  “I’m going.”

  “Just sit down here with me,” Seymour said, starting each time the doors swung open. “But if I ask you to leave – suddenly – you will be a gentleman. You will understand. Oh, shit, no. This is absolutely ridiculous.”

  Bobby Gross’s wife, Barbara, who was not privy to the full extent of their intrigue, charged through the doors, big buxom Molly padding after
.

  “Molly, look who’s here!”

  “Oooh,” Molly squealed.

  Both ladies were laden with parcels from Holt’s and Ogilvy’s. Molly had a run in her stocking. A smear of cream from a chocolate éclair clung to the moustache on her upper lip. Her leather coat was missing a button. Her voice booming, she explained that they had been out shopping when Barbara had suggested they might stop for a drink together at the Ritz before going home. Why not, she had thought, this once.

  Fuck fuck fuck. Seymour, fuming, began to rub his hands against his trousers, his eyes fixed on the door.

  “Oh, look,” Molly exclaimed, a plump hand held to her powdery cheek, “champagne!” Her smile lapsed and her flinty eyes hardened. “Why the champagne, Seymour?”

  “Ask him. He ordered it.”

  Molly turned to Joshua.

  “I just got a big check,” Joshua said, “totally unexpected. Why don’t we ask the waiters to bring some glasses. We might as well open it now.”

  “What a sport he is,” Seymour said, summoning the waiter.

  “Champagne,” Molly said, giggly.

  Even as they began to chat uneasily, Molly inquiring about Pauline, Seymour, his expression dead, saw their actress drift into the oak-paneled room. Joshua did not believe in levitation, but he could have sworn Seymour was lifted briefly out of his chair before he slumped back, an older man, seething.

  “You know,” Molly said, “I’m going to tell you something about champagne. Quite seriously. Only yesterday one of the nurses told me it’s very good for your bowels.”

  Seymour’s muttered reply was lost.

  “He has such trouble, my Seymour. No matter what I say, he won’t take enough roughage. So he has to force it.”

  “Shame on you, Seymour.”

  “I don’t know how interested you are, Josh, but the way we defecate is unnatural. We should squat, that’s natural.”