Solomon Gursky Was Here

by Mordecai Richler

  “Yes.”

  “How much are you asking for it?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  “I’ll give you seven,” Mr. Bernard said, counting out the bills, “because if you sell direct to me, you don’t have to cut in the goy shopkeeper in Ste.-Adèle.” Then he kicked over the table and jumped up and down on it. “You are my brother, you cuntlapper, and if the rich anti-Semites in Ste.-Adèle are buying your shit, it’s only because they can say, hey, you know who made that crappy lopsided little table for me for ten dollars? Mr. Bernard’s brother. You can’t do this to me. I want you back in the office eight o’clock tomorrow morning, or I’ll take an axe to that woodshop.”

  Morrie gathered together the remains of his table and set them down beside the fireplace.

  Out of breath, Mr. Bernard subsided to the sofa. He wiped his face with a handkerchief. “What have you got for dinner?” he asked.

  “Veal chops.”

  “What with?”

  “Roast potatoes.”

  “I had that last night. Would she make me some kasha instead?”

  “I could ask.”

  “Better say it’s for you. Hey, remember Mama’s kishka? She always had the biggest piece for me. But I was her favourite, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “What have you got for a starter?”

  “There’s some borscht from last night.”

  Mr. Bernard yawned. He stretched. He raised a buttock and farted. “Eddie Cantor’s on tonight. You got a radio here?”

  “The reception is not very good in the mountains.”

  “I suppose we could play some gin. Aw, forget it. I can eat better at my place. But a Popsicle would hit the spot. You wouldn’t have any in the ice-box, would you?”

  “Didn’t I know you were coming?”

  Morrie brought out a couple of Popsicles, crumpling the wrappers.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Mr. Bernard asked, retrieving the wrappers and flattening them out. “You fill out the coupon in back you can win a two-wheel bicycle. What time can I expect you back in the office tomorrow morning?”

  Morrie began to crack his knuckles again.

  “Morrie, be sensible for once. Without you, how am I going to settle my quarrels with Solomon? I need your vote so that I can beat him fair and square.”

  “I’m tired of being pressed in a vice between the two of you.”

  “Good. Tell him!” shrieked a voice from the top of the stairs.

  An outraged Mr. Bernard shot out of the sofa, his arms extended, his fingers curled. Ready to scratch.

  “If I ever made you kasha, you oysvorf, it would be sprinkled with arsenic,” Ida shouted, scooting back into her room and this time shoving her dresser against the door.

  “You have no idea what Solomon’s like now,” Mr. Bernard said, sinking back into the sofa, “our crazy brother. We were better off when he was chasing nooky. Now he stays overnight in the office, sometimes with Callaghan, the two of them knocking back a quart each, and he listens to the shortwave radio, fiddling with the dial all night. Hitler makes a speech, he never misses it.”

  “I’m not coming back to the office any more.”

  “I’ll give you until Monday morning out here, but that’s it.”

  Mr. Bernard got home after dark, but he knew better than to telephone Solomon at his place. There was no point. He was never there. And in the morning Mr. Bernard discovered that Solomon was in Ottawa again, stirring things up, at a time when the last thing the Gurskys needed was more enemies in high places.

  Solomon told MacIntyre, “I have acquired two thousand acres of farmland in the Laurentians as well as—”

  “Where in the Laurentians?” MacIntyre demanded.

  “Not far from Ste.-Agathe. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, Ste.-Agathe,” MacIntyre said, relieved. “For years now I’ve taken my holidays winter and summer at Chalet Antoine in Ste.-Adèle. Do you know it?”

  “No. I’ve acquired two thousand acres, as well as a large herd of beef and dairy cattle, and I have a list of people who promise to settle there.”

  “Mr. Gursky , are you seriously asking me to consider placing more Jews in the province of Quebec?”

  “And why not?”

  MacIntyre sent for a file. “Look at this, will you?” It was an editorial page clipping from Le Devoir. “The Jewish shopkeeper on St. Lawrence Boulevard does nothing to increase our natural resources.” Then he passed him a copy of a petition that had been delivered to parliament by Wilfred Lacroix, a Liberal MP. The petition, signed by more than 120,000 members of the St. Jean Baptiste Society opposed “all immigration and especially Jewish immigration” to Quebec.

  “If it would facilitate matters, I could buy land in Ontario or the Maritimes.”

  “I am overwhelmed by the prodigality of your purse, Mr. Gursky, but there is a problem. Yours is a race apart with—how shall I put it?—an exasperating penchant for organizing their affairs better than other people. This endless agitation to flood this country with relatives and friends or so-called farmers must stop. My hands are tied. I’m sorry.”

  When Solomon returned to the old McTavish building the next morning, he discovered Mr. Bernard lying in wait for him.

  “How did you make out?” Solomon asked.

  “Morrie wouldn’t listen to reason.”

  “Let him be, Bernie.”

  “Listen, there’s a trial coming up. Bert Smith is spilling the beans everywhere. I get on the witness stand, prejudiced people think I haven’t got an honest face. You get on the stand you will be so fucken arrogant the judge will hate you. Morrie’s a sweetheart. Everybody loves him. But he’s got to be coached. So pull yourself together and bring him back here.”

  “I have business in Ste.-Adèle a week Wednesday. I’ll look in on Morrie, but I’m not making any promises.”

  Solomon’s business was at the Chalet Antoine, the most elegant resort in Ste.-Adèle, rising from a hilltop thick with pine and cedar and silver birch, commanding a view of Lac Renault that the travel brochures described as ravishing. A notice posted on the gate read:

  RESTRICTED CLIENTELE ONLY

  It was late on a fine summer’s afternoon when Solomon got there. He made right for the bar that was tastefully done in natural pine with a low beamed ceiling. There was a painting of Howie Morenz cutting in on the net. There were also photographs of Red Grange, Walter Hagen, and Bill Tilden. French doors opened on to a flagstone terrace bordered by beds of gladioli, overlooking the tennis courts and the lake. There were six guests in the bar. A stout middle-aged couple at one table, obviously just back from the golf course. She wore a tartan skirt and he was in knickerbockers. A man, alone, pondering the stock market pages in the Star. A man and woman at another table. He, staring stonily into the middle distance; she, intent on her copy of Anthony Adverse. And then a lovely young lady seated alone, sipping white wine, writing a letter on rice-paper stationery, the sort that could only be ordered from abroad. Honey-coloured hair caught in an ivory clasp. Red painted mouth full but severe. She wore a striped beach shirt, a pleated navy blue skirt and tennis shoes. Magazines littered her table top. Vanity Fair, Vogue. When Solomon sailed in, she looked up—squinting just a little, obviously near-sighted—and then returned to her letter. Interloper dismissed.

  Solomon sat down, unfolded a Yiddish newspaper, and summoned the waiter. “Du whisky, s’il vous plaît. Glenlivet.”

  The man who had been staring into the middle distance leaned over to say something to his wife. She set down her book and reached for her handbag, securing it on her lap. Distress darkened the golfers’ table like the wind before a violent rain. But the young lady who was seated alone continued to write her letter.

  Paul, the burly, hirsute waiter, went to fetch the manager and led him to Solomon’s table. M. Raymond Morin. A capon with a handlebar moustache.

  “Ah,” Solomon said, “le patron.” And he repeated his order.

  “I must ask you to leave.”


  “Oh, don’t be so fatuous, Raymond,” the young lady seated alone called out, “serve him his drink and be done with it.”

  “There are other bars …”

  “Dépêches-toi mon vieux,” Solomon said.

  Then the man who had been pondering the Star’s stock market pages said, “I can appreciate your finding this hotel’s policy offensive, but I can’t grasp why anybody would want to drink where they are not welcome.”

  “Your argument is not without merit,” Solomon said.

  “Paul, call the police.”

  “You needn’t bother, M. Morin. They’re on their way,” Solomon said, and then he repeated his order.

  “It’s against our policy to serve your kind.”

  “You tell him, Ray,” the golfer’s wife said.

  “I bought this hotel yesterday afternoon.”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “And, as for these two,” Solomon said, indicating the golfer and his wife, “I want them out of here before dinner.”

  “Cheek.”

  The young lady seated alone put down her pen. “Ah well then, in that case the hotel’s policy hasn’t changed, only the nature of the clientele prohibited.” Then she gathered her things together and retreated to the terrace.

  The reader of the stock market pages smiled.

  “Are you a lawyer?” Solomon asked.

  “I’m afraid I’m already committed to representing the other side, Mr. Gursky.”

  “The law was an ass.”

  “But it’s all we’ve got. And there’s still a body or two unaccounted for.”

  “But not Bert Smith’s. Wasn’t that decent of me?”

  “More likely foolish.”

  “This country has no tap root. Instead there’s Smith. The very essence.”

  Two provincial policemen arrived: Coté and Pinard. “What can we do to help, Mr. Gursky?”

  “I am the manager here,” M. Morin protested.

  “Don’t make a fool of yourself, Raymond,” the lawyer said. “If Mr. Gursky says he has really bought this white elephant, I expect it must be the case. Somebody has put one over on him.”

  “Actually the hotel’s completely booked from Friday afternoon, but I do appreciate your concern.”

  “Glad to be of help. Incidentally I’m Stuart MacIntyre. I believe you’re acquainted with my brother Horace.”

  “Indeed I am!”

  “He’s joining me here on Friday.”

  Solomon slipped out to the terrace. She sat at the far table, the sun in her hair and on her bare arms. “Have you really bought the hotel?” she asked.

  “Yes. May I sit down?”

  “Are you sufficiently wealthy to buy all the restricted hotels in the Laurentians?”

  “I ought to introduce myself.”

  “I know who you are and what you are, Mr. Gursky. I’m Diana Morgan. And there’s no need to stare. You’re quite right. One eye is blue and the other is brown. Will they send you to prison?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Don’t underestimate Stu MacIntyre.”

  “You know him, of course.”

  “His wife’s a Bailey. She’s my aunt. Stu and my father go duck hunting together.”

  “How long will you be staying here?”

  “I come here for tennis lessons. We have a cottage near by.”

  “Have dinner with me.”

  She shook her head, no. “Your brother is making a bookcase for me. He’s such a sweet man.”

  Rising, Solomon said, “I apologize for what happened in there.”

  “You were looking forward to a real donnybrook, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said, surprised.

  “You don’t understand. Those boring but nice people in there abhor a scene even more than they dislike Jews.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the people in there.”

  “What do you give a damn about?”

  “I’m looking for the Kingdom of Prester John,” he said, retreating back into the hotel.

  Prester John. She wanted to call him back. Stay, she thought, talk to me some more, Mr. Solomon Gursky. But bloody Stu was sitting in the bar. Even as things stood, he was bound to report to her father. Her luck. Oh well, she thought, if she hurried home there would still be time for a swim before dinner.

  Solomon, standing by the window, watched her stride toward her car, a dark green Biddle and Smart sports phaeton. He lingered by the window until she drove off.

  “Couldn’t get to first base with her, could you, Gursky?” And then Solomon turned back to the room and found himself face to face with the golfer, the latter’s eyes dancing with malice.

  “Don’t you dare condescend to me,” Solomon said, lunging, grabbing the golfer by the throat and slamming him against the wall. More than a hundred years after Maimonides had written his Guide for the Perplexed, your ancestors, pledging each other’s health in cups of their own blood, were living in mean sod huts, sleeping on bare boards wrapped in their filthy plaids.

  “Let go of him,” the golfer’s wife screamed.

  Spinoza had already written his Ethics when your forebears still had their children wearing amulets to ward off the evil eye and carried fire in a circle around their cattle to keep them safe from injury.

  “Please, Mr. Gursky. He’s choking.”

  Solomon yanked the golfer forward, then shoved him back hard, bouncing his head against the wall. His wife screamed again. Then the two provincial police moved in, breaking Solomon’s grip on the golfer. “Hey, that’s enough,” Pinard said. “Enough.”

  Seven

  Plump, foolish Ida, her makeup too thick, greeted him at the door. Solomon had come bearing gifts. A flask of scent for her. An enormous teddy bear for Barney. Then he presented Morrie with a complete set of bench stones in an aromatic cedar box; a set of rasps and rifflers, imported from England; and a jack plane made of red beech.

  “He’s not going back to the office,” Ida said.

  Solomon rocked Ida in his arms, kissing her pulpy cheeks. “My God, Ida, you look ten years younger. If you weren’t married to my brother I’d be chasing you around the room right now.”

  “We could always give him a quarter and send him to the movies, that one.”

  “How long can you stay?” Morrie asked.

  “A few days maybe.”

  “Wonderful,” Morrie said, frightened.

  Solomon brought them up to date on Montreal. How difficult it was to sleep, it had turned so hot. “Honestly,” he said, “you’re better off right here.”

  “You should have brought Clara and the kids with you,” Ida said, fishing.

  King Kong, with Fay Wray, was playing at the Palace, Solomon said, and there was a new Jean Harlow at the Loew’s. Everybody was singing the hit song from the new Moss Hart and Irving Berlin show. Solomon, who had brought the record with him, put it on the victrola.

  She started a heat wave,

  By letting her seat wave.

  And in such a way that the customers say,

  That she certainly can can-can.

  Ida played the record again and shimmied along with it. “Isn’t anybody going to dance with me?” she asked.

  “No,” Morrie said.

  At dinner, Ida warned Solomon to not so much as dip his little toe into the lake. It hadn’t been quarantined like the North River in Prévost. It wasn’t nearly as bad as Montreal, where all the children’s day camps had been shut down. But there were already nine polio cases confirmed in Ste.-Agathe, six in Ste.-Adèle. “Don’t even brush your teeth with water from the tap. I’ll bring a jug of freshly boiled to your bedroom in the morning.”

  “Solange can bring it to him.”

  “Hey there, Barney McGoogle, ain’t he my brother-in-law?”

  Solomon refilled Ida’s wine glass and then demanded a tour of the woodwork shop. Morrie vacillated.

  “Well, I’m not afraid of what will happen to me in the dark. I’ll take him,
” Ida said.

  “You wait here.”

  “Secrets,” Ida called after them. “Dirty jokes maybe. You think I couldn’t do with a laugh?”

  The workshop was fired by a wood-fed boiler. The craftsman’s bench was built in the traditional European style, made of steamed beech with a rubbed-oil finish. There was a large front vice, bench dog holes in front and a recessed tool trough running along the back. Solomon wandered into the rear and passed his hands over the planks stacked neatly in steel trays. Pine, oak, cedar, butternut and cherry wood. He went on to admire all the tools mounted just so on pegged boards or resting on shelves. Mallets, moulding and scrub and block planes, skew and butt chisels, roughing gouges, special bow and fret saws, dowelling jigs and pins and a threading kit.

  “I know I have to testify at the trial,” Morrie said. “Don’t worry. I’ll get everything right.”

  “Did you make this yourself?”

  A kitchen chair. Solomon sat on it.

  “You’ve seen enough. Let’s go.”

  “And this bookcase?” Solomon asked, passing his hand over the one slightly jagged edge.

  “It was ordered by a customer. A lady. Let’s go now.”

  Solomon sat down at the craftsman’s bench and toyed with the vice. “Will she pick it up or do you deliver?”

  “She’s supposed to come for it a week from Friday with her caretaker. They have a small truck.”

  “Invite her to tea.”

  “I knew something was up. Listen here, Mr. Skirt-Chaser, she happens to be Sir Russell Morgan’s granddaughter. Please, Solomon.” He cracked his knuckles and sighed. “You only just get here practically and already my heart is hammering. Okay, okay, I’ll invite her to tea. But only if you swear you won’t try any monkey business.”

  “Would you let me try my hand at making something in here?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. It takes training. A lot of my tools are very delicate.”

  Ida hollered from the kitchen window. “Have I got B.O. and even my best friends won’t tell me?”

  “I’ll be careful with your tools.”

  Early the next morning Morrie drove Barney to Count Gzybrzki’s stables for a ride on a shetland pony. Ida, perfumed and powdered, hurried to Solomon’s bedroom. “Ready or not here I come with a jug of water,” she called out, all giggly. “But no funny stuff, eh?”