Joshua Then and Now

by Mordecai Richler

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I love you. I’m also afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “The others.”

  FOUR

  1

  “…AND THEN I SAID,” MCMASTER DRONED ON, AS THE Sony whirled, “ ‘Look, Colucci, you dumb dago, you North End asshole, I don’t know what you’ve got going with anybody else in Number Four, but you can stuff that envelope where the monkey put his fingers.’ Cut. Stop. Correction. And then I said, ‘Look, Colucci, you are dissimulating, you are not a credit to your people, like Dante or Mayor La Guardia, I don’t know what arrangement you have with other officers in this station, but I do not accept emoluments, and therefore please put that envelope back in your pocket.’ Is that better?”

  “Terrific,” Joshua said.

  “You’ll clean up all the other dirty parts as we go along.”

  “Sure.”

  Reuben appeared in the doorway. “The Flopper’s on the phone. What do you think?”

  “I’ll take it.”

  Shooting McMaster a sour look in passing, Reuben passed him the phone.

  “Lookit,” The Flopper hollered over the din of The King’s Arms, “tell ya why I called. There’s a sale on Wonder Bras at the Bay, and we thought we’d pick up some, only we don’t know what size cup ya take.”

  “Very funny. Ha, ha.”

  “You sound lousy. Now you take care of yourself, you son of a bitch,” The Flopper pleaded in a throbbing voice. “Here’s Rog.”

  Roger’s voice was thick. More of the correspondence had been leaked, he said, and it was going to run in Maclean’s under the photograph of the two of them kissing. “Issue a statement,” he said, “and I’ll see that it goes out on the wires immediately.”

  “You think that would change anything?”

  “His kid was on the National last night. They interviewed him in London. What a shifty little bastard.”

  “Well, he has his grievances.”

  “Issue a statement. One minute. Robbie wants to say something.”

  Robbie was also drunk. “I don’t give a shit about you, darling. What I want to know is, how is Pauline?”

  Joshua choked.

  “Joshua?”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Joshua said, signaling his father to take the phone from him.

  “That’s it,” Reuben said, “he’s tired now,” and he hung up and turned to McMaster. “I think he’s had enough of your memoirs for one day.”

  “He’s not tired. Besides, we’ve got a best seller in the making here.”

  “Josh?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Anything I can get for you while I’m here, then?” Reuben asked McMaster.

  McMaster rocked in a wicker chair, sucking on a soggy White Owl, his colorful shirt unbuttoned, his hairy belly bursting out of his double-knit tartan trousers, his dainty feet encased in white golf shoes. “Yeah, another Laurentide. But just bring me the can. I’ll open it myself, if you don’t mind?”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “You bring it to me in a glass and your boy here has the first sip.”

  “Why can’t we be friends, Stu? Here,” he said, extending his hand, “shake.”

  “Daddy,” Joshua called out, terrified, “don’t.”

  “Don’t worry,” McMaster said, “I know better than to shake that hand.”

  “Yeah, well,” Reuben said, leaving, “I’ll give you another hour with him and that’s it for today.”

  After McMaster had finally gone, Joshua was able to make it upstairs to his study and, looking across the bay, he saw Trimble out on his dock. He’ll be coming here, Joshua thought. If not today, tomorrow.

  Joshua wished he were on morphine again.

  Ensconced in the hospital, his body throbbing, he had, under the influence of morphine shots, dreamed again and again that Pauline was there, adrift over his bed, and then he would call out her name, only to have one of the nurses loom into sharp focus.

  “What is it, Mr. Shapiro?”

  Apprehensive, unable to work, Joshua began to sift through cardboard boxes that had not been unpacked since they had left London, sorting out old papers. Somehow a photograph of Monique and him in San Antonio had survived the years. She was snuggled into that black bikini and he was grinning beneath a broad-brimmed straw hat. Look at him, the prick. He also found a handbill saying that Litri, Aparacio, and Luis Miguel Dominguin would be in Valencia for the Fallas, and a yellowing flyer from the Florida, Boite de Nuit, Calvo Sotelo 17, Valencia, which proclaimed “El más extraordinario programa de Grandes Atraccionies, Presentación de Sugestivas Estrellas, con Lolita Madrid y Bella Nelly.” Something else he had unwittingly dragged across continents was three stapled sheets from the Office Espagnol de Tourisme, announcing “Voyage aux Îles Baleares, séjour très agréable en toutes saisons.”

  My, my.

  2

  MONIQUE’S STOUT, FLESHY MOTHER CONTINUED TO fulminate on the terrace of the Casa del Sol, resolutely refusing to acknowledge Joshua whenever he passed her table, but she seemed to have become reconciled to her daughter passing most of her nights at Joshua’s place. Certainly she never intruded on them. Then, one morning, he was awakened by a visitor. Wiry, beady-eyed Mariano. It was, Mariano said, his duty to put a number of questions to him. “You must remember,” he began, “that in Spain we expect foreigners to behave with a certain decorum.”

  Joshua suppressed a smile.

  “You have committed certain indecent acts on public beaches.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your conduct has come to the attention of the bishop, and he is outraged.”

  “Are we going to have a little auto de fe just because Monique and I have kissed on a beach?”

  “You have been seen nude together on Las Salinas and twice on the beach of the Casa del Sol.”

  “Seen by whom?”

  “You deny it?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Hugely embarrassed, Mariano sighed and said, “There are photographs of the two of you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “They are the kind of photographs they sell in Pigalle.”

  “What happens now?”

  “It’s not good. I’m trying to help, but not everybody is your friend here.”

  “Have you come here to arrest me?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, offended, “but I must urge you to go carefully.”

  “May I see the photographs, please?”

  “I haven’t brought them with me, but they exist.”

  That afternoon, emerging drunk from Don Pedro’s, squinting against the sun, Joshua started down the hot dusty road winding out of San Antonio until he was about a mile out, and then he cut across the olive grove and sank to the grass under a gnarled tree. He awoke an hour later, no longer dizzy. He climbed the mountainside and once he reached the hump of guano-covered rock overlooking Dr. Dr. Mueller’s villa he had, it seemed to him, sweated out his drunkenness. He dug his knife out and clambered down the rock face into Dr. Dr. Mueller’s garden, skinning his knee against a jutting rock.

  “Mueller,” he called.

  No answer.

  “It’s me, Mr. Mr. Shapiro.”

  Nobody home. Lucky you, he thought, and now if you know what’s good for you, beat it. But instead he used his knife to pry open the terrace doors. Inside, it was soothingly cool. He had no idea where he might have hidden the photographs. Neither did he know exactly what he was going to do. There were, of course, no lampshades made of human skin or unmarked bars of soap lying about. There was a sentimental photograph of what appeared to be an Indian camp caught at dusk, only one of the braves was drinking Steffens Pils out of a bottle, and underneath was the inscription “Gemeinschaft Nord-deutscher Indianerfreunde.” A buffalo robe hung on one wall, and there were crossed tomahawks over the mantelpiece. There was also a framed photograph of a severe-looking man with a handlebar moustache in
the uniform of the Kaiser’s army. His father? Another photograph, this one of an elegant lady with coiled blonde hair seated on a sofa with two plump boys. The lady wore a high, frilly-collared black dress, the boys school uniforms, and all three stared solemnly into the camera. Underneath, somebody had inscribed in ink “Dresden, 1943.” Joshua studied Mueller’s foreign-language bookshelves, infuriated because the books were, he had to admit, mostly in good taste or, at worst, innocuous. Hemingway, Maugham, Michael Arlen, Charles Morgan, and what appeared to be the complete works of Zane Grey. There was a shelf of German books on natural life. Everything from horse-breeding to a history of leopards. And then, in a glass case, three rows of paperback westerns in German by Gus McCabe.

  Turning to the records strewn on the table, Joshua was disgruntled not to find anything Wagnerian. Some Gene Autry, a Carmen album, The Best of Maurice Chevalier, Beethoven’s Second Symphony. Frustrated, he scooped up a lamp with a porcelain base in the shape of a waltzing eighteenth-century couple, flung it toward the ceiling, and watched it splatter on the floor, slivers everywhere. He found the camera with the long-range lens and smashed that too.

  Bureau drawers in the master bedroom revealed no photographs of Monique and himself, but film stills had been tacked to the walls everywhere. William S. Hart, Hopalong Cassidy, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea as Buffalo Bill, Gary Cooper, Wallace Beery, Andy Devine. Another photograph, stuck in the mirror, showed Mueller wearing chaps and spurs, six-guns drawn. There was a hairnet lying on the bureau and a crash diet torn from the pages of Look. Tailor’s dummies lined one wall. One wore a gunfighter’s outfit, another a saloon girl’s costume, a third was dressed as a plains Indian. Six-guns in a holster were slung from a bedpost.

  The bathroom medicine cabinet yielded vitamin tablets, a powder for the cleansing of dentures, a salve to relieve rectal itch, and a tube of hand lotion.

  In the living room, Joshua picked up a batch of records and smashed them against the corner of a table, immediately regretting it. This is childish, he thought, and he stooped to retrieve pieces of the broken lamp base from the floor. Suddenly, he was disturbed by a noise coming from the front of the villa. Voices? A dog? Springing dizzily to his feet, he bolted out of the house, continuing across the garden in a half-crouch, and starting to climb the rocks. He ran – stumbling – rising – running again. He ran and ran. Down the mountainside, across the olive grove. He didn’t stop until he emerged on the road. The bus to Ibiza was approaching. He waved it down and clambered inside. Only then did he realize that his arms were badly scratched and that he was drenched in sweat.

  Sometime past midnight, in Ibiza, Juanito caught up with him in the waterfront café. “Come on,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Rosita’s.”

  “I don’t want to go to Rosita’s. I’ve had enough of that.”

  “Come on.”

  “I said no. Leave me alone.”

  He was careful to be back in San Antonio in time for breakfast at the Casa del Sol, the Freibergs be damned. Otherwise he felt Mueller would certainly be suspicious. But when Mueller finally moseyed onto the terrace in his white linen suit, he didn’t even acknowledge him. He heard no more from Mariano. A week passed before Mueller sat down at his table in Don Pedro’s. “My place was broken into the other day,” he said thickly.

  “Oh?”

  “Vandals.”

  “Did they do much damage?”

  “Sufficient. They took things too. My diamond stickpin is gone. So is my camera. They found my traveler’s checks,” and, biting into his ivory cigarette holder, he added, “Eighteen hundred dollars is missing.”

  “Why, my dear Dr. Dr.,” Joshua said, “how I’ve underestimated you.”

  “Drunken fishermen must have taken it. Fortunately, I’m insured. I have already phoned the American Express in Madrid and warned them that somebody would be passing forged checks.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Oh, they were very kind. They are sending new checks. Mariano is sending them a copy of his report.”

  “Well, well.”

  “Have you had any trouble?”

  “Yes. With hostiles.”

  “What?”

  “Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. But I managed to run them off my property. Me and my six-guns.”

  “Take my advice,” Dr. Dr. Mueller said, rising, “don’t leave any money sitting around.”

  Joshua found Freiberg’s brother-in-law, Max, sunning himself on the beach. Prodding him with his foot, he demanded, “Did you change any money for that Nazi in the last few days?”

  “What Nazi?”

  “Dr. Dr. Mueller.”

  “He’s no Nazi,” Max roared, shaking with laughter.

  “He’s a wanted man in France,” Joshua charged hotly, “isn’t he?”

  “Do you know what that drunkard did in the war?”

  Joshua didn’t know.

  “He was with a government office in Berlin. He sat on his ass and wrote propaganda. He never got to the front, but eventually it came to him.”

  “He was with the army of occupation in France.”

  “Writing articles.”

  “Why is he wanted in France?”

  “Not because of the war,” Max said, disgusted, “but because of something he did in nineteen-fifty. He assaulted a girl in Nice. A whore. I hear he tried to scalp her. You know how he is when he’s drunk. He could have thought he was Chief Crazy Horse.”

  “Why are you frightened of him?”

  “Frightened? We are not frightened. But he is not without influence here.”

  “Did you change any money for him in the last few days?”

  Max wasn’t saying.

  “Maybe you’re the putz, not me. He’s reporting the checks as stolen. He says his villa has been broken into.”

  Max laughed. His belly shook.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Who would have suspected Mueller of having a yiddishe kop?”

  “I’ll kill you,” Joshua said, grabbing him. “Honest to God, I’ll kill you one of these days.”

  Max broke free of him. “I’m O.K. If I changed any money for Mueller at the unofficial rate, the check would be in Geneva by now. But what about you? Are you O.K.?”

  Mariano was waiting for him at his place.

  “Where do you get your money?” he asked abruptly.

  “I earn it.”

  “Perhaps by writing reports for your government.” Incredibly enough, Mariano was suggesting he might be a spy. “We have a big military station here. You have been seen observing the soldiers from the hilltop more than once.”

  “With their pathetic wooden tank and rifles firing blanks.”

  “You have made a statement in the presence of three army officers that you were spying on them.”

  “We were drinking together. I was joking.”

  “That’s not what they say.”

  “They’re lying.”

  “They are officers.”

  “Fuck you, Mariano.”

  “You are the one who is lying, just as you lied about the fornications on the beach until I told you that I had proof.”

  “That was different.”

  “Mueller has been robbed of eighteen hundred dollars in traveler’s checks.”

  “He’s lying.”

  “Everybody is lying but you.”

  “Oh, what’s the use? Come to the point, Mariano.”

  “You are nobody, but Dr. Dr. Mueller is a celebrated author in his own country. Gus McCabe, the western writer. He also has admirers in high places in Madrid. He says you are an anarchist with your own concubine here, and that you robbed his villa. The officers have also signed a statement. Because you are so young, I would like to help. If you leave Spain of your own accord within forty-eight hours, the complaint will stop with me and you will be able to enter this country freely again.”

  “Hold it, Mariano. Stop right there. I want to know if it was the fucking Freibergs w
ho told you that Monique and I could be found nude on their beach?”

  “A complaint has also been filed against the Freibergs. It seems their wiring has not been installed according to strict government regulations. It may be necessary to shut down the Casa del Sol.”

  “God damn him, what does he want from the Freibergs? They had nothing to do with me. I can testify to that.”

  “I did not say he filed the complaint. But if their wiring is faulty, there is nothing you can do.”

  “You’re a snake, Mariano. You really are.”

  “You do not seem to understand that if you don’t leave here within forty-eight hours, you will have to face certain charges. You will go to prison, most likely”

  Run, Joshua, run.

  But he had no money. Certainly not enough to get him to Paris. With Juanito’s help, he sold his portable typewriter. Whatever clothes he wasn’t wearing. He met with Monique, they agreed to get together in Nice in two weeks’ time, and then he hurried to the Casa del Sol, running all the way. “I must see the Freibergs immediately,” he told the desk clerk.

  But they weren’t there. They were in Palma, consulting a lawyer.

  “How long will they be gone?”

  “Three days, maybe four.”

  “What about Max?”

  “He’s with them.”

  Joshua scribbled a note, left it for them, and then he booked passage on the Jaime II, sailing for Valencia the same evening. Juanito carried two cases of fresh fish on board for the captain, assuring Joshua of a cabin for the crossing.

  Standing on the deck, waiting for the ship to pull out, he could see Dr. Dr. Mueller with a party of giggly American ladies at the café on the waterfront. It was a Wednesday. Mueller, he imagined, had taken them to the cockfights. The ladies would have been outraged, aroused, and they would have taken many photographs. Dr. Dr. Mueller would have made his set pronouncement. “The Spaniards,” he would have said, “are not as sophisticated as we are. They are born to cruelty.”

  Dr. Dr. Mueller pointed him out to one of the ladies and whispered something in her ear. She laughed. Joshua turned away from the railing and walked slowly, he hoped, to starboard.