Solomon Gursky Was Here

by Mordecai Richler

  “Yeah, but what would I do for a year, never mind two?”

  “We’re going away,” she said, presenting him with his birthday present, a safari for two in Kenya.

  It worked wonderfully well for the first few days. Then, the morning after they had seen the hyenas feeding on the dead hippo, they stopped at the Aberdare Country Club for lunch, and Sam caught up with the news.

  Air France Flight 139, originating in Tel Aviv on Sunday, June 27, bound from Athens to Paris, had been hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The airbus had refuelled in Libya and was now on the ground at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, where His Excellency al-Hajji Field Marshall Dr. Idi Amin Dada, holder of the British Victoria Cross, DSO, MC, appointed by God Almighty to be saviour of his people, announced that he would negotiate between the terrorists and the Israelis.

  “They’ll fly out that no-nothing kid, Sanders, to cover for us.”

  “It’s no longer any of your business, Sam.”

  The next morning they crossed into the Rift Valley, hot and sticky, the dung-coloured hills yielding to soaring purplish walls on both sides. Then they took a motorboat across the crocodile-infested waters of Lake Baringo to Jonathan Leakey’s Island Camp. The camp overlooking the lake was hewn right out of the cliffside, embedded with cacti and desert roses and acacias. Sam made directly for the radio in the bar.

  Wednesday, June 30. The hijackers demanded the release of fifty-three convicted terrorists, five held in Kenya, eight in Europe, and the remaining forty in Israel. If there was no Israeli response by three P.M., Thursday, they threatened to kill the hostages and blow up the airbus. Another report, this one out of Paris, revealed that forty-seven of the two hundred and fifty-six hostages and twelve crew members had been freed and flown to Charles de Gaulle airport. They said that the Jews had been separated from the others under guard in the old terminal building at Entebbe, this segregation imposed by the two young Germans who appeared to be in charge of the operation. Yet another report stated that Chaim Herzog, Israeli ambassador to the UN, had appealed for help from Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

  Sam asked to use the office telephone. After endless delays, he finally got through to the network in New York, and then he stumbled out of the office ashen-faced, searching for Molly. He found her by the poolside. “Kornfeld, that coke-head, put me on hold. I hung up on him.”

  The next day they continued on to Lake Begoria. Sam, to Molly’s chagrin, only feigning interest in the herds of antelope and gazelles and zebras they passed. Then, fortunately for Sam, there was to be a four-day break in Nairobi before they moved on to the Masai Mara. They no sooner checked into the Norfolk Hotel than Sam bought every newspaper available and drifted out to the terrace to join Molly for a drink. He was not altogether surprised to find that the terrace, usually thinly populated in the early afternoon, was now crowded with Israelis. A sudden infusion of tourists. Obviously military men and women in mufti. They talked in whispers, occasionally rising from their tables to chat with an old man who sat alone, a bottle of Loch Edmond’s Mist before him. He was a short man, wiry, his hands clasped together over the handle of a malacca cane, his chin resting on his hands.

  “You’re staring,” Molly said.

  Sam hurried to the front desk, described the old man, and was told his name was Cuervo. “Mr. Cuervo,” the clerk said, “is a dealer in Kikuyu and Masai antiquities. He has a gallery on the Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. The Africana.”

  Sam returned to his table and told Molly to belt up.

  “But we just got here.”

  They took a taxi to Embakasi Airport, where Sam saw an El Al Boeing 707. Refuelling, he was told, before proceeding to Johannesburg as scheduled. There were also two unmarked airplanes on the far end of the tarmac, another Boeing 707 and a Hercules, both being guarded by Israeli tourists.

  Instead of returning directly to the Norfolk, Sam and Molly stopped at the Thorn Tree Bar at the New Stanley Hotel. And there he was again, the old man, and at tables on either side of him there were Israelis laden with camera cases that obviously held weapons. Mr. Cuervo was chatting with two other men, whom Sam later discovered were Lionel Bryn Davies, chief of the Nairobi police, and Bruce Mackenzie, a former minister of agriculture who now served as a special adviser to Jomo Kenyatta. Once the two men left, Mr. Cuervo motioned for Sam and Molly to join him.

  “I thought we’d met before,” Sam said.

  “Oh, no. I’ve never had the pleasure. But of course I recognize you from television. What brings you to Nairobi?”

  “We’re on safari.”

  “Ah.”

  “And you?”

  “Tomorrow night you and Mrs. Burns must be my guests for dinner at Alan Bobbé’s Bistro, and then I will try to answer at least some of your questions. Shall we say drinks at seven?”

  “Are you sure we haven’t met before?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  That night, Saturday, July 3, following the ninety-minute raid on Entebbe, two El Al Boeing 707s, one of them a makeshift hospital, put in at Embakasi airport. They were joined in the early hours of Sunday morning by four Thunderbird Hercules. Waiting ambulances rushed ten of the more gravely wounded Israeli soldiers to Kenyatta State Hospital. Then the airplanes refuelled and were gone.

  Sam read about it at breakfast in the Sunday Nation, which had to have had advance notice of the raid. The rest of the day passed slowly, Sam irritable, self-absorbed, but at last it was time to join Cuervo at Alan Bobbé’s Bistro. The maître d’, who had been expecting them, reached for the bottle of Dom Perignon that floated in a bucket of ice on their table.

  “Please don’t open it yet,” Molly said. “We’ll wait for Mr. Cuervo.”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Cuervo had to leave Nairobi unexpectedly. He sends his apologies and insists that you are to be his guests for dinner.”

  Back in Washington, writing his piece about Cuervo for the New Republic, Sam checked things out in Los Angeles as a matter of form. As he suspected, there was no Africana Gallery on Rodeo Drive nor a Cuervo listed in the telephone book.

  Seven

  1983 it was. Autumn. The season of the sodden partridges, drunk from pecking at fallen, fermented crab apples. Leaves had to be raked. It was nippy out there. The air smelled of oncoming snow, but Moses had not yet taken down his screens and set his double windows in place. His winter wood, dumped in the driveway by Legion Hall, needed to be stacked. Avoiding these chores, Moses— choking on dust—surrounded by overturned cartons—contemplated the interior of his cabin. A sea of disorder. All because he was determined to find his missing Silver Doctor, as if his life depended on it. Exhausted, Moses went to pour himself a drink. Then the phone rang.

  “Hi, there. It’s me.”

  The overdressed, fulminating divorcée he had picked up in Montreal on Tuesday.

  “I’ll be on the four o’clock bus to Magog. Is there anything I can bring?”

  Oh, Christ, had he invited her out for the weekend? “Um, no.”

  “You don’t sound pleased.”

  “Why, I’m delighted. I’ll meet you at the bus station.”

  As soon as she hung up, Moses dialled Grumpy’s and asked to speak to the bartender. “It’s Moses Berger. What’s the name of the lady I met at your place on Tuesday?”

  “Not Mary?”

  “Yes. That’s it. Thanks.”

  He collected empty bottles and soiled dishes. He emptied ashtrays. Then he began to stuff papers back into cartons. Fool. Drunkard. Why didn’t you say you were in bed with a fever?

  There had been a time when Moses had enjoyed the novelty of having a woman out to his cabin for the weekend, but now that he was fifty-two years old—grown increasingly cranky, according to Strawberry—given to rising and eating whenever it suited him, he found it an intolerable intrusion. The exception, for some years, had been Kathleen O’Brien, whom he adored. But eventually he came to dread her visits as well. Visits that unfailingly ended wi
th the two of them stumbling about in a drunken stupor. Kathleen disposed to tears and self-pity and finally incoherence, lamenting the fate of what she called Les Misérables. The select club of Gursky casualties. She, a victim of Mr. B., and Moses undone by Solomon.

  Each time she came out one or another of the tapes had to be played. Mr. Bernard, mouldering in his lead-lined coffin, coming back to haunt them: “Every family has a cross to bear, a skeleton in the closet, that’s life.…”

  The rabbi who had spoken over Mr. Bernard’s casket had said, “Here was a man who was wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. He flew in his own jet. He sailed on his own yacht. He had been to Buckingham Palace as well as the White House. Mrs. Roosevelt and Ben-Gurion had both come to his house to eat Libby’s boiled beef and kasha. Prime ministers of this great country regularly sought his advice. The truth is Mr. Bernard, may he rest in peace, founded one of the greatest family fortunes in North America. But what did this paragon, this legend in his own time, plead for on his deathbed? I’m going to tell you because it’s such a beautiful lesson for all of us gathered here. Mr. Bernard asked for the one thing his millions couldn’t buy. God’s mercy. That was his last request. A plea for God’s mercy.…”

  But Mr. Morrie, who had been there, told Moses what had actually happened at his brother’s deathbed.

  Fading, his eyes filming over, Mr. Bernard had blinked awake to see Libby taking his bony waxy hand, holding it to her powdered cheek. She sang:

  Bei mir bist du schön,

  Please let me explain,

  Bei mir bist du schön

  Means that you’re grand.…

  I could sing Bernie, Bernie,

  Even say “voonderbar”…

  Mr. Bernard tried to scratch, intent on drawing blood, but he no longer had the strength. “No, no,” was all he could manage.

  “Bernie, Bernie,” she sobbed, “do you believe in God?”

  “How can you talk such crap at a time like this?”

  “It’s not crap, sweetie-pie.”

  “It’s not crap, she says. Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand anything? If God exists, I’m fucked.”

  And then, Mr. Morrie said, he was gone.

  KATHLEEN’S VISITS, often unannounced, became a torment. The once fastidious and acerbic Miss O., a lady of quality, spilling out of her Subaru with the dented hood, puffy, her step uncertain, wearing a food-stained old sweater and a skirt with a broken zipper, bearing liquor commission bags that rattled, and then talking into the dawn, repeating her stories again and again.

  Contemplating her one night, passed out on the sofa, snoring, her mouth agape, Moses remembered her leading him out of the Ritz, at Anita Gursky’s first wedding, to spare him listening to the poem L.B. had written in honour of the bride and groom. He leaned over and wiped her chin, he kissed her on both cheeks, covered her with a blanket, and whispered, “I love you,” assuming that she couldn’t hear. But Kathleen stirred. “Me too you,” she said. “But what will become of us?”

  The missing manilla envelope still inflamed her. “He didn’t lie. Not to me. The little runt took it or maybe Libby has it.”

  Gitel Kugelmass, who lingered on at the Mount Sinai, never came out to his cabin, but phoned often. Most recently to report that Dr. Putterman was undoubtedly an RCMP undercover agent.

  “Gitel,” Moses said, “I want you to come with me to see a doctor I know.”

  “Maybe that Dr. Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial, where it was proven the CIA was paying them to experiment with mindbending drugs on old people who had no idea what was going on.”

  Unfortunately he couldn’t deny that.

  “Or you could put me on the next plane to Moscow, where I could join the other dissidents in the loonybin.”

  The last time he had taken Gitel to lunch she had said, “Remember the letter L.B. sent me and Kronitz in Ste.-Agathe, pleading with us to think of the children? Not that my Errol Flynn of the north didn’t already have his chess set packed. Well that letter is to be included in that young professor’s book, you know the one I mean, he’s always gabbing away on TV, he’s against nuclear arms and wears Red Indian jewellery?”

  “Zeigler?”

  “That’s the one. Isn’t it ironic, Moishe? All those years hungering for fame and L.B. doesn’t live to see his biography published?”

  Three letters from Professor Herman Zeigler lay unanswered in Moses’s cabin. The last one, a gem, had come with three enclosures.

  1. A street map, detailing the exact route of L.B.’s afternoon strolls from the house with the garden and ornamental shrubs on a tree-lined street in Outremont, down to Park Avenue, past Curly’s newsstand, the Regent cinema, Moe’s barbershop, the YMHA and Fletcher’s Field, cutting left at Pine Avenue to Horn’s Cafeteria. He asked Moses to correct any errors or add variations to the route.

  2. A photograph of “The Bard”, a sculpture of L.B.’s massive head by Marion Peterson, CM, OC, that now rested on a pedestal in the foyer of La Bibliothèque Juive de Montréal.

  3. Thoughtfully included computer printouts that tabulated the frequency of rank-shifted clauses, tense auxiliaries, nouns with attributive adverbs, total noun phrase packers, et cetera in the poetry of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Robert Lowell, and L.B. Berger.

  L.B., Moses was gratified to note, came first in the use of personal pronouns.

  In the letter itself, Zeigler requested an interview with Moses in connection with a paper he was preparing for a conference in Banff on The Failure Syndrome of the Progeny of Great Canadian Artists. “Certainly,” he wrote, “your co-operation in this venture would be seminal.”

  He had not seen Beatrice for years, but he continued to monitor her climb. An avid fan. She had already dispensed with the biodegradable Tom Clarkson, divorcing him for a pretty price. According to reports, she would soon be married to the man favoured to be the next Canadian high commissioner to the United Kingdom. From there it ought to be only a hop, skip, and a jump to another marriage and a coronet. Meanwhile, the urchin who had once been known as a Raven kid in Old Town would be working garden parties at Buckingham Palace. Moses, delighted for her, visualized Beatrice telling Mrs. Thatcher how to dress and quarter a caribou and reminding Prince Charles that they had met once before, in the Elks Hall in fabled Yellowknife.

  Lucy sent him newspaper clippings and magazine articles about her that he might have missed. A photograph of her in People hugging Andy Warhol, inscribed, “Look at your little Lucy now!!” Reviews, largely favourable, of her productions on and off Broadway. A profile in New York portrayed her as foul-mouthed, notoriously bitchy about actresses who had worked for her, but a perfectionist, no expense spared when she mounted a production.

  Lucy’s last phone call had come a long time ago, maybe a couple of years after Henry’s death.

  “The cannibal was here to see me last night.”

  “What?”

  “Henry’s boy. Isaac.”

  “How is he?”

  “He gives me the creeps is how he is.”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “You sound drunk.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “Come down to New York and I’ll pay your fare. You don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to. I’ll put you up at the Carlyle.”

  “Say, I can remember when you suggested to Henry that he could pay for my company.”

  “We could have been married and had grown children by now.”

  “No, it would have been irresponsible. I’m an unredeemed lush and you have yet to complete your childhood.”

  “I weigh 280 pounds. I can’t stop. I’m a monster. I’m going to explode one day like a sausage in a frying pan,” she shrieked before hanging up.

  Gitel, Beatrice, Lucy, Kathleen. For the rest, the kind of women Moses managed to attract to his cabin offered five minutes of release paid for with hours of irritation. There had been a lady of a certain age who couldn’t abide cigar smoke and a
nother out for a weekend who read a Sidney Sheldon paperback in his bed. Wet towels on his bathroom floor. Hairs clogging his sink. His records put back in the wrong sleeves. Women who expected chitchat at breakfast. And now, not Mary, as Grumpy’s bartender had so aptly put it, out for the weekend. Fortunately, Mary insisted on leaving at once after he reprimanded her on Saturday morning.

  “Not that I give a shit what you think,” she said, “but I wasn’t snooping. I have no interest whatsoever in your fucking papers. I was just foolish enough to believe you’d be pleasantly surprised if somebody tried to put this pig-sty in order.”

  Moses drove her to the bus station in Magog.

  “I’ll pay my own fare, if you don’t mind. And this is for you. I sat on it last night. Do me a favour. Shove it up your ass.”

  His Silver Doctor.

  Eight

  Moses pulled in at The Caboose on his way home.

  “Wait till you hear what happened,” Strawberry said. “It’s 10:30 A.M.—yesterday—bank’s been opened a good half-hour and Bunk ain’t cashed his welfare cheque yet so’s he can start on his monthly toot.”

  Bunk and his woman were now rooted in a shack up there somewhere in the hills beyond Lake Nick.

  “So Hi-Test’s worried and he loads a case of twenty-four into his four-wheeler and off he goes to check things out last night.”

  Entering the cabin, Hi-Test immediately sniffed something bad. He brushed past Bunk, snoozing at the kitchen table, his head cradled in his arms behind a barricade of empty quart bottles of Labatt’s 50. He pursued the smell into the bedroom, bolted right out again, and shook Bunk awake. “Hey,” he said, “your woman’s lying dead in there.”