I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well, and Other Stories

by Norman Levine

  A year before she died she told me:

  “After I finished school I wanted to go to art school. It was the only thing I have ever wanted to do in my life. But my mother and father didn’t approve. They made fun of the paintings I did in my bedroom. When I said I was going to show them to a principal in an art college—to see if I was good enough to get in—they thought I was foolish.

  “I brought my portfolio to the principal of St. Martins. He looked at the paintings and drawings. And said he would write and let me know within two weeks.

  “I couldn’t wait at home. I went to Cornwall. Stayed on the farm where I was evacuated to during the war. Went for walks on roads that I knew. And all I could think of . . . that what I’d be doing with my life . . . was being decided in London.

  “When I came back I asked my parents if there was a letter? “They said no.

  “Days. Weeks. Months. Passed. I did nothing. Something had happened to me.

  “My father arranged that I work in the bank. I didn’t last a year. Then I went to Teachers Training College. Then we met.

  “After my father’s funeral I began to turn out things for my mother. In their bedroom, in a drawer, I came across an envelope addressed to me. It was opened. Inside, a letter from St. Martins. It said I had been accepted.”

  MY KARSH PICTURE

  It was mid-january 1944 and I had returned to Ottawa from the West—having received a commission as a pilot officer—to spend a few weeks’ embarkation leave at home before going over to England. That, as it turned out, wasn’t exactly right either. For I was still to stay another seven weeks in Canada, in a finishing school in Quebec, in order to learn how to behave like an officer. But my mother didn’t know this, and she wanted to have a photograph taken while I was on embarkation leave so she could be left with a picture when I went overseas. And the man to take your photograph, if you lived in Ottawa, was Karsh.

  Though Karsh at that time was not the internationally known figure he is today, he had already established himself among the wealthy and influential people in Ottawa. Whenever I went to my uncle’s on the Driveway, there was his Karsh picture on the mantel in the living room, as there were of my aunts and cousins. And though Karsh did not, I imagine, charge then as much as he charges now, whatever he did charge was still more than my parents could afford.

  The Jewish community in Ottawa’s Lower Town was small and provincial, but it had a well-organized grapevine. My parents soon got wind that the person who did all the touching-up at Karsh’s, a refugee, sometimes took private sitters in the evenings, and could produce photographs exactly like those of Karsh for a fraction of the price.

  My mother arranged an appointment. And I went out on a freezing night to meet the toucher-upper in the Honey Dew on Sparks Street. His name I have forgotten (I’ll call him Lou). But I remember him as a tall thin man with a sallow complexion and a melancholy look on his face. And he had thin, straight, sandy hair. He had with him a very short, roly-poly, amiable man called Zhavel, also a refugee, who was to act as his assistant. During the day Zhavel worked for a tailor on Metcalfe Street. We walked over to the arcade and the tall man looked around furtively before taking some keys out of his pocket and opening the door of Karsh’s studio.

  I had never seen so much equipment before. Wires, reflectors, lights, tripods, venetian blinds, drapes—it looked like my idea of a Hollywood set. I took off my coat. I had some cold cream put on my forehead. I combed my hair. And the toucher-upper, Lou, posed me on a small raised platform, holding my gloves in one hand, arm bent, elbow on my knee, a spotlight behind me to give the Karsh halo outline. I faced the camera.

  Zhavel was holding up a light, standing on a chair a short distance to my left, so that half my face was in shadow, the other blinded. I could see he was standing fully stretched—his trousers were at half-mast. Lou looked in the camera, black hood over his head, did some adjusting, and put in a plate. Then, holding a rubber bulb in his hand, he came close to me, to the shadow side, and said, like the maestro,

  “You like flying?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Fine. Now imagine this. Imagine you are flying over Germany. And a battle that will decide the future of mankind is being fought in the skies. It is simply terrible. Stukas are diving. Parachutes are everywhere. You are turning, firing. You are coming out of a dive. It is terrible.

  “Planes are breaking up like little toys, bits go by your face. But you are determined to live. You are determined. You look determined. Look determined, please.”

  I tried to look determined. I was nineteen. And all my flying so far had been done in Tiger Moths and Ansons over stretches of prairie and foothills in Alberta.

  “Got him?” Zhavel said from the chair. “I can’t hold this light much longer.”

  “Yah,” Lou said. But he didn’t sound very enthusiastic.

  Zhavel put his light down on the chair. And they had a huddle by the camera. I could hear bits of conversation.

  “—he’s a stoneface. What can you do?”

  “Let me try . . .”

  So Zhavel took hold of the bulb. And Lou climbed up on the chair to take charge of the light.

  “Now,” Zhavel said from somewhere to my left, slowly and intimately. “There is a beautiful girl. And you are very tired. You have fought forty times today. The ack-ack has made mincemeat of all your friends. You are fed up with war and all that business. And you are alone in your tent. And she comes in. She is wearing negligible clothes. And . . .”

  “Zhavel, he’s too young.”

  “If he’s old enough to get killed he’s old enough for this—she comes close to you and kisses you gently on the lips and says . . .”

  “Zhavel, I know his father.”

  “All right. You try something then. The guy’s a stoneface. Not a crease.”

  Lou said nothing in reply. And Zhavel again took over. He changed his approach.

  “Look. How would your mother like to remember you? You’re dead, see! And all they’ve got is this picture hanging on the wall. Do you want to leave them a picture with no expression? Nothing to say thank you for all the things you’ve done for me all these years? Don’t you want your mother and father to look at the picture and get some joy? Think of something happy!”

  “And double it,” said Lou from behind the light. “You’re not going to a funeral. Ask him about when he was a child.”

  “What was the first thing,” Zhavel said, “you wanted to be? Think. Don’t think too hard, but what was the first ambition?”

  “I wanted to be,” I said, “the man who swept the leaves from the street in the fall with a big broom and put them into a barrel.”

  “And now you’ve become an officer.”

  “Zhavel, quit horsing around with philosophy,” Lou said sharply.

  “I’ll tell him a joke then.”

  “Which one?”

  “About Yosel.”

  “That one takes you half an hour.”

  “How about the salesman with the rubber goods on the farm?”

  “That’s an Old Country joke—he’s a Canadian boy.”

  They had another huddle. And when they came away from it Zhavel looked very sly.

  “You are feeling miserable,” he said gently. “You’ve got no money. Your girlfriend has left you for your best friend. You have been in an accident and you have your legs and arms amputated without anesthetic. You have lost buckets of blood. And you’ve got a toothache. Life isn’t worth living . . .”

  “It’s no good,” Lou said from the chair.

  Suddenly Zhavel exploded. “You’re no good. Your face is a cover. A garbage can. For what? I’ll tell you. You’re a liar. A rotten apple. A thief—I give up. The guy has only one expression.”

  “Cheese,” I said.

  “What, you like food?”

  “As
a matter of fact I do. But you’re supposed to say cheese before you have your picture taken, sometimes.”

  “You like latkes?’’

  “Yes.”

  “You like smoked meat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you are alone with a plate of hot juicy smoked meat, lots of fat, and this beautiful girl, and she is making latkes with nothing on . . .”

  He must have pressed the bulb then, for the toucher-upper came down from the chair, and they had another long huddle around the camera.

  When it was over, and I was putting on my coat, I asked Lou:

  “Will it look like a Karsh?”

  He led me to a room where in tanks filled with water were floating pictures of several Canadian and American generals, the royal family, and the pope.

  “In two days you’ll be floating there with them,” he said.

  Two months after the war ended I came back to Ottawa. The Karsh photograph was on the wall. There I was, gloves in one hand, halo behind my head. I heard that the toucher-upper had died of TB. No one knew what had happened to Zhavel.

  BY THE RICHELIEU

  Until I was eighteen I spent my summer holidays at the family cottage on the banks of the Richelieu south of Montreal and six miles north of the American border. Two miles away is the French-Canadian village of Île aux Noix. There is an island in the river, opposite the village, with a decaying fort and a moat with shallow water. Water lilies and a thin green scum cover the surface. During the last war the fort was used as an internment camp for aliens.

  I imagine that until the road was built, during Prohibition, the river was busy. But though the channel is still occasionally dredged and the red and black buoys that mark its passage are sometimes repainted, I have seen few riverboats go by. The only traffic now comes from the small hired boats with the sport fishermen. For alongside the channel the weeds are thick—so thick that sometimes I have been stopped, as the keel or the propeller became entangled.

  The countryside is not exciting to look at. Even from the water. It is flat with a few isolated trees and farm fences. The farmers have small fields. They are all French Canadian. They grow wheat, corn, potatoes. Some have chickens and pigs. The two hotels along the bank shut in winter. They are there for the American businessmen who come down in the summer and fall to play cards, drink, and fish. For this part of the Richelieu has some of the best fishing I know. I’ve anchored by the red buoy, opposite the Grand Hotel, for muskellunge; trolled along the banks for pike; caught carp at night using a light and spearing them as they rose to the surface a few yards from the shore. There are also fine black bass and perch.

  When I first knew the place it still hadn’t been discovered by the tourists, although the signs were there—a cluster of stilt-cottages along the bank, nearer Montreal. And every spring afterwards, when I came down, the cluster of stilts grew and spread downwards to the border.

  Until the arrival of the stilts, the people by the river’s bank lived in a few proud old cottages. The one my parents had was built by a priest—so village rumour said—who came from Rimouski to retire after he won a lottery. It was made out of wood: dark green with white trimmings, and a wide veranda went right around. The main highway was a quarter of a mile away. Between highway and cottage were empty, gentle sloping fields. And between cottage and river there was a raised walk of rough planks. In spring the water came up the cottage steps so that I could take out the dinghy, the canoe, or the rowboat from the shed and push it down a few yards to float it. In summer I had to push the boats through mud. By the time I reached the deep water the bottom and sides of my feet were covered with mud and bloodsuckers.

  Two miles down from the cottage, towards the border, the river had taken a small bite out of the land and left a cove. The banks of this cove are lined with magnificent elms. Whenever I was fishing or sailing near here I could see the hulk of a great house almost completely hidden by the trees. It was the largest house not only along the river but, I imagine, between Montreal and Montpellier. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of rough greystone, large windows, the wood a shiny black. I knew, as did everyone else around here, that the house belonged to the Dobells.

  Like individual people, I sometimes think that families also have a zenith to their lives. So many generations have to be sacrificed in the climb upwards for another to have that bright interval at the top. After which there are others to take the decline down. From what I have read, and what my parents told me, I would say the Dobells were at their peak in the early 1920s. Arthur Dobell, who now had the house, was of the fifth generation. He rarely occupied it. Usually he was photographed at his place in Bermuda, or in Palm Beach, or somewhere on the Riviera.

  My first meeting with him was accidental. It was a hot August afternoon. I had taken out the sailboat with the drop keel—which was a present for my sixteenth birthday from my father—and combined sailing across the river while at the same time trolling for pike. I let the line out, tied it to my big toe, and felt the pleasurable vibration of the spoon travelling through the water. Not far from the island I felt the bite. Then I saw him drift alongside. He looked like some seaweed with the sun shining on it. I had a spinner with three hooks. One of the hooks had got inside the edge of his jaw, through the flesh, and come out again. I could see the blue end of the hook clearly. I landed him and clubbed him to death. I didn’t know how much he weighed. But when I held him, he stretched from the bottom of the boat up to my hip. Then the storm came. I had to tack several times to make any progress back. When the rain began I decided to shelter in the cove in front of the Dobell house.

  He must have watched me, for he came running out. Helped me tie up, dismantle the mast, and brought me inside where I rang my parents. Then we stood by the large windows and watched the lightning over the river and the rain. It didn’t look like easing up so he suggested that I spend the night there.

  I had changed my clothes. Wrapped myself up in one of his expensive dressing gowns that had a silken Miami-Florida label sewn inside with his name. And sat in front of the fireplace. He had lit the set-logs and quickly they were blazing away. It was the most impressive fireplace I had seen. A cement roof and sides came out from the wall like a canopy and leaned into the room.

  “My great-grandfather built it from pebbles in the cove,” he said quietly.

  Thousands of small round bluish-green stones were set in the cement.

  The butler came with hot cocoa. I sat there drying out, feeling warm, and looked around the room. At the heavy curtains; the large oil paintings on the wall of the dead Dobells; the heads of stuffed animals, all with the same brown sad eyes.

  “How heavy was the fish?”

  “I dunno. But it’s the biggest pike I’ve ever caught. Do you want it?”

  “No thanks.” And he smiled, a shy, understanding smile.

  I was disappointed when I first saw him. He looked much smaller than his photographs, about five foot seven, slightly built. And his appearance was entirely commonplace. Yet I felt a curious sense of detachment about him. Though I knew he was in his late thirties, he looked amazingly young. Money, I thought, had preserved him, like it did this house.

  “Do you like music?”

  “I can play the trumpet,” I said, “not well.”

  He went to the gramophone by the wall, lifted the lid until it locked in its hinges, took out a collapsible steel handle, wound it several times, then put on a record.

  “Are you going to college?”

  In the morning

  In the evening

  Ain’t we got fun?

  “No. Not till next year.”

  “What will you study?”

  “Medicine.”

  The rent’s unpaid, dear,

  We haven’t a sou.

  But life was made, dear,

  For me and for you.

  “Isn’t
that Sir Nicholas Dobell—?”

  I indicated the second-last oil on the wall. It was a rhetorical question—the Kipling face, the weak eyes looking through glasses, the high white collar were familiar to me from photographs. Nicholas Dobell had, along with Charlie Conacher and Sweeney Schriner, been one of my schoolboy heroes. I knew he had lectured in surgery at McGill, then went on to a chair in Cambridge, and was knighted just before he died.

  The record stopped.

  “When you graduate,” he said, “I hope you’ll go and see something of this world. I don’t think these boys did. Not until it was too late. It’s not the same after thirty. You begin to look at things differently. And things begin to flatten out . . .”

  And again I felt that curious feeling of tenderness emanate from him and with it the sense that it was impersonal. It was the kind that one usually gets from a doctor.

  For the rest of that summer I was often in this house.

  I went sailing in his yacht up and down the river. Sometimes we swam out to the white raft anchored in the middle of the cove and lay there and got brown. And sometimes I was with him for meals when the butler brought the food to one of the wicker tables under the large striped beach umbrellas that were stuck like mushrooms on the lawns. He introduced me to various dishes. He taught me how to make a passable omelette. He taught me what little I know about wines. There was always a phonograph handy, portable ones on the yacht and in the house, which he would take out onto the lawns and keep playing records—they were only records of the twenties. It was in his library that I first came across Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. He taught me to drive his Plymouth coupe with the white tires and we raced along the highway, flashing by the empty fields, the slow river, the signs showing how many more miles it was to Morgan’s. On weekends he took me into Montreal or Ottawa—and bought me a small present, usually a book—and then to one of his favourite restaurants, or to a country place by the lakeshore. Meals with him were always an event.

  I guess all of us have a favourite period in our lives. That summer was mine. It was one of those times that now, looking back, I realize how much it influenced my life. What I sometimes tend to forget is just how easy it was to live it, without much thought. Although I did sometimes wonder—especially at dusk when I saw him on the lawns against the large house, a solitary figure watching the sun set over the river behind the trees—why someone as likeable and with so much money had no visitors. I had the feeling that he only used Île aux Noix in the sense of a retreat. That away from it he was quite a different person. Certainly the impression of an irresponsible playboy, created by the papers and gossip, did not bear out in what I knew of him.