The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick

by Morley Torgov

  With June not that many weeks off, Maximilian would ordinarily have been at the piano at this hour, wrestling with Liszt’s tortuous étude, cursing the key of D flat under his breath, cursing the Hungarian, long since dead and buried, for planting a land mine in each and every bar of the composition, cursing the gentle committee of tea-drinking, cookie-nibbling ladies of the festival auxiliary who, with the advice of outside experts like Professor Lacoste, drew up the syllabus of contest pieces. But not tonight. Tonight he could only think of Celia Brzjinski, several blocks away in that stone fortress, mastering page after page of octaves, chromatic runs, ascending thirds guaranteed to break the strongest fingernails. He could see her father winking sternly at her mother, giving a victory sign with his thick, powerful fingers, reminding Celia in his chesty baritone that it was only eight-thirty and she had another hour to go, not that the girl needed reminding.

  For no reason in particular, the boy began to recite his name aloud, slowly, over and over again. “Maximilian … Maximilian … Maximilian.” Now twelve, he would be thirteen sooner than one would think, he told himself. Strange, he thought, how each day, taken by itself, seemed to drag on as if sundown would never happen and yet, in the context of weeks, all the days seemed bunched up, hurled across the span from one season to the next like a meteor. Twelve, going on thirteen. Young. But old. “I must have been born old,” Maximilian Glick told himself many times over the short years of his life. It came back to him now and he repeated it aloud to himself as he stood in the darkness looking out his window at the city. He wondered if he would ever get to stand at a different window, look out at a different city.

  Eighteen

  One morning early in June, Cal Irwin came into the bakery for morning coffee with his neighbourhood cronies, who included Henry Glick.

  “You’ll never believe what I saw last night on television!” said Irwin, in a state of great excitement. “You remember that young rabbi, the fellow with the red beard who blew out of town one night back in March?”

  Everyone nodded. Of course they remembered. Who could forget?

  “Well,” Irwin continued, so eager to tell his story he ignored the waitress’s request for his order, “I swear I saw him on the program from Los Angeles, you know the one, it’s on every week, where they give new comedians a chance to try out their act. He did this monologue, or whatever they call it, about how he grew up in Boston and had all these fantasies about going to strange places and doing strange things.”

  “What was he wearing?” the baker smirked skeptically.

  “Plaid sportshirt, open at the neck. You could see the upper part of his T-shirt, y’know, tweed jacket. Hey, and a pair of beat-up sneakers. But I’ll swear it’s the same guy. I forgot his name, but I tell you I never forget a face. Never!” The others in the bakery scoffed. This was the most ridiculous tale yet. “All comedians look alike these days,” said Henry Glick. “You can’t tell ’em apart. Same clothes. Same jokes.”

  “Maybe,” Irwin admitted reluctantly, “but there was something different about this guy.” Then, chuckling, Irwin said, “He told this story about a bunch of Jewish folks who go down to this river at New Year’s to dump out their pockets, like they’re getting rid of their sins, see?”

  Irwin turned to Henry Glick. “There is such a custom among you folks, isn’t there, Henry?” Henry nodded yes, and Irwin smiled with satisfaction, his credibility now firmly established.

  “Anyway, these people are busy emptying their pockets, and one poor old gent, the poorest of the bunch, accidentally plunks his last ten-dollar bill into the water, just as the rabbi’s preaching that it’s time for change. And the poor old gent —” Irwin interrupted himself to laugh “— the poor old gent yells out ‘If it’s all the same to you, Rabbi, I’ll take two fives.’”

  Henry Glick assured Cal Irwin that a mouse would marry an elephant and have quintuplets before a Lubavitcher would be caught dead on late-night television, especially a comedy show.

  That evening, at the dinner table, Henry Glick related Cal Irwin’s story to Sarah and Maximilian. Sarah laughed. “I like the joke, but really, the whole idea is preposterous.” She and her husband agreed that the coincidence about the ten-dollar bill and Nathan Pripchik was remarkable, yes, but Rabbi Teitelman a stand-up comic on television? “No way,” said Sarah and she and Henry burst into laughter once again.

  Only then did Henry realize that his son was not joining in the mirth. “What’s wrong, Maxie, don’t you get it?” he asked. “You see, son, there’s this old man and he’s emptying his pockets …”

  Suddenly Maximilian began to laugh.

  “Wait a minute, Max,” said his father earnestly, “I haven’t come to the punchline yet.”

  “It’s okay,” said Maximilian, bringing his laughter under control, “I get it. Believe me, I get it.” And pleading that he was too full to finish his dinner, the boy excused himself and hastened to the privacy of his room, feeling now as if he held deep within him the secret of life itself.

  That night Maximilian Glick stood once again at his window, looking up at the night sky. Somewhere in the atmosphere it was possible that at this very moment a signal was being transmitted from a television studio, an indiscernible wave of light and sound which, unravelled through a labyrinth of wires and tubes, would become the face and voice of Kalman Teitelman, or Kal Title, or whatever he had chosen to call himself.

  The man had broken out and now the boy knew that he,

  too, would break out some day. Tomorrow morning, he promised himself, he would call Derek Blackthorn. First thing, before school. This year’s festival, only a few days off now, was out of the question. But next year, Max whispered to himself. Next year!

  And some day, somewhere, the Lubavitcher rabbi and he would meet again. Of that much, Maximilian was certain. Where precisely and how, who knew? Perhaps on a stage, or in a studio, or in an airport halfway around the world, or in a city where the skyscrapers seemed to be reaching higher than their fixed heights, as if grasping for more than their share of the sun.

  And then again, perhaps they would not meet in any real place, only in some spiritual territory where the line between what people are and what people dream of being is invisible, like a spider’s first spinning.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Morley Torgov is the author of A Good Place to Come From, made into a CBC mini-series and three plays for stage by Israel Horovitz, playing on and off Broadway in the mid-1980s to critical and popular acclaim and elsewhere in the USA and Canada to this day. This title was also a CLA and Book of the Month Club selection. He is also the author of The Abramsky Variations, Stickler and Me, St. Farb’s Day, and The War to End All Wars and two mysteries, Murder in A-Major, and The Mastersinger from Minsk. He has written plays for CBC radio and television and his work has been adapted to the stage. He has twice won the Leacock Medal for Humour. Torgov received a degree from the University of Toronto, an honorary D. Litt from Laurentian University, and has written numerous articles for the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, New York Times Sunday Magazine, and other periodicals. His essays have appeared in Family Portraits and Beyond Imagination. Torgov lives in Toronto where he practises law.