The Matter With Morris

by David Bergen

  I am not a patriot like you, Ursula. I do not understand the notion or the ideal, and I do not believe that we should have the right to carry guns in our pockets and purses so that we might protect our property and ourselves. You come from a civilization, Ursula. Act that way. Your son Wilhelm needs sensibility and love. He doesn’t need to be taught the parts of an assault rifle, how to break it down and restore it. I am not so naive as to believe that if I want to kill someone, I couldn’t do it with my bare hands, or with a rock that I pick up from the roadside. This has been done, but it is more intimate and real than a handgun or a rifle fired from a distance. If I had my way, I would melt all weapons into ploughshares.

  And so on. Words that would fall on deaf ears. Morris the pontificator, Morris the nutcase. Unlike Bellow’s Herzog, Morris sent his letters. He wrote them by pen, sometimes he typed them, and then he folded the paper and slipped it into an envelope and applied stamps and walked up to the red mailbox, pulled back the handle, and dropped in the letter. He was a doer. An actor. And idler.

  Up Osborne to the foot of the bridge and then right, down a path to the edge of the river. On the far bank, a fire burned and around the fire several figures huddled. Morris heard voices, low and indistinct, and then the laughter of a woman. Under-the-bridge homeless people. He stood and listened and watched. Then he took the gun from his pocket and threw it, like a rock slung from the hand of a young boy out into the middle of the river. He heard a splash and then nothing save the low voices and the traffic above him on the bridge. He stood for a long time looking out at the fire on the other bank. There was joy and drinking and comradeship. The sound of a bottle breaking. A voice lifting in song. Morris turned finally and walked back home.

  4

  Lucille came to find Morris at noon, two days later. She knocked on his door, and when he opened it, she said, “Get dressed, I’m taking you for lunch.”

  He was barefoot and wearing old corduroys and a muscle shirt. He hadn’t shaved for a number of days and his beard was growing in delicately. He was not man enough to grow a proper beard. He invited her in, asked to take her trench coat. She stood in the foyer and said that she’d made reservations at 529 Wellington. She motioned at the chair in the living room. “I’ll wait, Morris. You go shower and shave and find clean clothes. Make yourself handsome.”

  Morris did as she commanded. He shaved, eyeing himself carefully in the mirror. Over the last while, when he did shave, he’d been cutting himself in his haste, or perhaps his hands were getting shaky. The onset of Parkinson’s or perhaps it was his agitated state. He couldn’t concentrate for long. He trimmed his eyebrows as well. Lucille didn’t like bushy eyebrows. Then he showered and towelled himself dry, imagining what he might wear. Standing naked before his closet, he felt reduced. He’d noticed in the mirror that his biceps were thinner. He would look into purchasing a Bowflex. He chose a light blue shirt and black dress pants that he’d found at Harry Rosen. Alistair, his personal salesman, had said, “Morris, the fit is marvellous.” All flattery and flotsam. He put on his socks and shoes and presented himself to Lucille, who was peering through her reading glasses at a book in her lap. It was Cicero. “This is where you steal your words from,” she said. “And I thought it was you talking, Morris.” She laid the book on its face and stood.

  “I have nothing original to say, you know that, Lucille.”

  She approached him, looked him up and down again, and touched his shoulder. “Nice,” she said.

  He ordered a six-ounce prime rib and Lucille ate rice and vegetables and a crème brûlée for dessert. She was full of energy, as if she’d gone to a shop somewhere and bought her youth back. Morris studied her. “You’re different,” he said. And she said thank you as if “different” was important, as if change were crucial. As Hamlet had spuriously spurned Ophelia, so had he spurned Ursula. Thrown her out on her ear. All this movement; to act or not to act. Lucille was wearing sunglasses on the top of her head. In this dimly lit room, amidst the hush of waiters, businessmen with mistresses, she leaned towards him and said that she had something to tell him, though she wasn’t sure how he would respond. Startled, he tried to appear calm. Perhaps she had a new lover. They had driven to the restaurant in her Passat, shiny black. She had many bracelets on her right wrist that clattered as she shifted. He loved women, envied their accoutrements, their clacking heels, swaying hips, their inwardness, their need to talk themselves towards intimacy. He had wanted to touch Lucille’s wrist where the bracelets lay, but he restrained himself. Flanking the restaurant was the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, at which a funeral was taking place. Parking-lot attendants waving their orange sticks, a policeman at the entrance. Morris, climbing from the car, had said, “When I die, I want a Jewish funeral.” He said that he had made an appointment to see the rabbi of this synagogue, and then cancelled. He planned to read the Torah. He said that what so many Jews had forgotten was that the Torah was more important than the state of Israel. “They’ve got their priorities mixed up.” Lucille listened to him and smiled affectionately. She did not believe anything he said; he was extremely impetuous, his head full of fantasies. And now, tapping at her crème brûlée, she was remarkably confident. She said, “Remember I told you about the letter I received from Tyler Goodhand? Well, I phoned him, and then on Monday I drove to Shilo to meet him. Oh, Morris, what a sweet boy. And all along how I hated him. But he’s a boy, just like Martin. And he’s suffered so. Are you upset?”

  “Why would I be upset?” He was astounded, in fact, at the power of the written word. His written words. “It was the letter then.”

  “That. And then the phone call. You were right, he’s innocent and vulnerable. And I was so harsh.” She said that she’d spent an hour alone with Tyler, just the two of them. A beautiful boy. “I felt so close to Martin. It was a mistake, Morris. A terrible accident. Tyler’s been incredibly brave. And I should have known that, but my sadness was too great.”

  “And now?”

  “Oh, Morris, it’s still big, but there’s a corner of my heart that has been set loose. I should have done this months ago, when he called you.” She dipped her long head downwards, towards her dessert, and said, “I’m stubborn sometimes.”

  “What does he look like?” Morris asked. He felt jealous.

  “Short. Stocky. He’s got that smooth head all army boys seem to have. Cropped, like Martin when he left for Afghanistan. And I saw his tattoo. It’s on the inside of his left wrist. Martin’s name in small script. He showed it to me and I cried.” She removed her sunglasses from the top of her head and blinked. The relief on her face made her look younger. Then she leaned forward and touched his arm. “There’s one other thing. Tyler said that the charges against him are going to be dropped. Something about the charges being contrary to the Criminal Code and the National Defence Act.” She removed her hand from his arm.

  “So he’s free,” Morris said.

  “He is. He said that he wants to go back to Afghanistan.”

  Inexplicably, he felt disappointment and rage. “So he can shoot some more of our young men.”

  “Morris. Morris.” Lucille watched him carefully.

  He waved a hand in the air and looked across the room to where two men in suits were sawing at their meat. “It’s a surprise,” he said. “Your sudden change of heart. The dropping of charges.”

  “Yes, I know. As long as I was angry, you could be forgiving. You know what Tyler told me? He said that Martin

  wanted to be there. Martin told Tyler that if he had to choose again, a hundred out of a hundred times he’d choose Afghanistan. The army. You’d prefer to think it was your fault, Morris. That you forced Martin. You didn’t. He was a big boy.”

  “This is not helping, Lucille. So Tyler, with his bullet-shaped head, tells you what Martin wanted, and you believe him? These are young boys caught up in the adventure of war. The army needs naive boys who move easily from video games to real warfare. They count on it. And now you’re good friends wi
th Tyler? I wrote that letter, Lucille. I wrote it for Tyler. It was to help you.”

  “Oh, Morris, I know. Tyler told me. You did a good thing. You’re a wonderful writer.”

  And what to say? Such smugness: “you’re a wonderful writer.” But she was not mocking him. She was not skeptical or cynical or full of doubt like he was. She knew his intent before he himself knew it. Whereas he would have resented her writing that kind of letter, she saw it as a good thing. A good thing, Morris. He had done a good thing. He imagined this might be a form of love, that Lucille still loved him, that she was making an effort to form a friendship, due to an impression of beauty. What did Cicero say? If such a love exists in the world—one without worry, without need, without care, without sighing—then so be it!

  For the rest of that day, and into the next, his thoughts ranged far and wide. In his determination to be rational he failed and he found himself slipping downwards. He willed himself to be happier. This proved impossible. He washed his car, inside and out. He scrubbed the tires and rims. Everything gleamed. He walked down by the river and watched the last of the ducks preparing to fly south. There was one family of six, and the ducklings were so small that he feared for the young ones’ lives. How could something that tiny fly five thousand miles south? The parents had been irresponsible; they had bred too late in the season. A week later, at dawn, he again walked down to the river and found ice forming near the shore. The ducks had fled, poor things. His heart was constricted, as if it sensed the possibility of rejection, of falling into the hands of someone irresponsible. A man on a bicycle passed. Morris nodded hello.

  That afternoon he met Libby and Meredith at Viva on Sargent. They shared a large soup and ordered sizzling shrimp. Both girls talked and talked. Libby said that Shane had tried to contact her. She’d hung up on him. She laughed lightly as she said this, wrinkling her nose as if she’d tasted something slightly off. Meredith wondered what was more repulsive, a young man with an older woman, or vice versa. “It’s more acceptable for an older man to have a younger lover. But I don’t understand the girl. Where’s the attraction? That old flesh? Yuck.” Libby said it was the mind. She’d loved Shane’s mind, the way it worked. “He was way more mature than any boy in high school.” It was as if their father wasn’t present, Morris thought. These girls, talking, not asking for his valuable opinion. And then, as if the scene had been preordained, Leah entered the restaurant. She was with a man who might have been her cousin. They stood at the counter, ordered, sat and waited for fifteen minutes, and then walked out with two bags of food. Morris saw her, she didn’t see him. She was dressed plainly, she wore no makeup, and she looked very young. This was the way of the world. He was shaken by the sight of her. His heart ached briefly and he imagined, absurdly, that he might still be attractive to her. Meredith noticed his agitation and wondered if it was the conversation. “Too much for you, Dad?” she asked. She was different from Libby. She saw only herself and would never have been able to imagine her own father having sex. “Talk on,” Morris said. “You both sound so wise.”

  “Daddy.” This was Libby, who knew she wasn’t wise, and this made her wiser. Meredith was talking about Harvey, their mother’s ex-lover. She said that he had had money, lots of it, but she’d never understood what their mother saw in the man other than his fat wallet. She lifted her eyes and fluttered them at her father. Crass girl, thought Morris. She had a loose mind, like her grandfather when he descended into senility. She rarely visited her grandfather; she said he smelled old, and besides, she had a child to care for. She was handsome, bigger boned than Libby, and though she wouldn’t admit it, she’d been devastated by Martin’s death. Morris had always wondered if that was why, for a period of time, she hadn’t allowed Morris to see Jake. She was punishing her father.

  It was Libby who brought up Tyler’s name, hesitantly. “Did Mom tell you?” she asked. She was looking at Morris.

  Morris nodded. Shrugged.

  “She’s nuts,” Meredith said. “She’s letting him off the hook.”

  “It’s not about him,” Libby said. “Can’t you see how relieved Mom is? It’s like she’s been born again.”

  “More like she’s in love. And now she wants us all to meet him,” Meredith said. “I’m not. I’ll tell you that. I’d tear his eyes out.”

  “You might surprise yourself.” Morris the peacemaker. He didn’t believe himself, but he knew that Meredith needed some words of guidance, some regulation.

  At the curb, before he said goodbye, he said that he planned to take their grandpa to the memorial service at Vimy Ridge Park on Remembrance Day. Did either of them want to come along? Meredith said she had no interest, and she skipped towards the car with a quick wave, avoiding having to hug him. Libby said yes, she would like to be there. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Are you okay, Daddy?” she asked. He said he was good. He was satisfied. That was enough, he said.

  The first column he would write upon his return (and he would return) would be an apology. He would apologize to his wife, his children, to the good readers who had trusted him, to his son Martin, to the writers he had stolen from. Bellow, for instance. What did he say? We must get it out of our heads that this is a doomed time, that we are waiting for the end … People frightening one another—a poor sort of moral exercise. What he would not do is apologize to the prime minister, or to the CEO of Colt. These were managers of death. Rewarded for their sins. If Morris still sounded slightly mad, so be it. He was in fact sane.

  On November 11, he drove to the Remembrance Day Service at the memorial to the forty-fourth Battalion of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles in Vimy Ridge Memorial Park.

  His father and Libby were with him. He’d asked Lucille to join them, but she’d said softly that she was fine with not going. “Okay, Morris?” And so three members of the Schutt family hovered at the edge of the gathering and watched a man in a white robe read a Bible passage from the Sermon on the Mount. The words floated upwards and were carried away by the wind. In the bare branches of a nearby tree, a young boy perched and watched the goings-on. A group of soldiers performed the three-gun salute. Morris heard the sharp cracks as the guns fired and he observed the people present and he realized that he both belonged and did not belong. His father was cold. He had a blanket over his lap and Morris had found a toque and mitts, but still his father was shaking. He gave him coffee from a Thermos and his father looked up at him and said, “Thank you.” Then he asked, “Is it Martin? Is he gone?”

  Morris said that yes, he was, and his father, with brilliant clarity, saw that he had missed something. And then the lucidity in the eyes disappeared. A soldier with a trumpet played a song. The wail and wonder. The wind blew. Reaching for the last note, the trumpet faltered, slightly off key, and then faded away. A lone soldier, dressed as if he had just stepped out of World War I, stood at attention near the cenotaph. A middle-aged couple who had perhaps lost a son laid out a wreath. The crowd, as if responding to some silent call, surged forward suddenly and laid poppies on the wreath. Touchingly, surprisingly, Libby joined them. Grandpa Schutt called out, agitated, and when Libby returned she took her iPod and gently positioned the earbuds for her grandfather. He sat quietly, and then began to sing, humming at first and then breaking into words, haltingly and finally with more force, drawing the attention of those nearby. He sang “Everybody Knows,” his voice strong and clear. People stared. Some fidgeted. Morris wondered if he should quiet his father, and then decided no. Libby crouched and held her grandpa’s hand. Across from the park was a church. He thought that if at this moment he could gather in his arms all those who loved him, he would have maybe fourteen or fifteen people in his circle. Wasn’t that enough? He would turn fifty-two in a month. Time was slipping away. He could die soon, and his life would be incomplete. He was only halfway through Book IX of The Republic. He had intimate things to say to Lucille. A place must be found for Martin’s ashes. Libby must grow up. Meredith required love; Jake as well. He stood
in the cold and the wind, and he knew that when he got home he would pick up his ballpoint pen and write all of this down in his journal. There was still much to solve and much to consider. Take note, thought Morris. Here I am.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author is thankful to Levon Bond for his guidance regarding military details.

  I have begged and borrowed from many writers: Plato, Cicero, Petrarch, Dante, Shakespeare, Søren Kierkegaard, Jacob Boehme, Theodor Adorno, Paul Tillich, Leo Strauss, Reinhold Niebuhr, Allan Bloom, Terry Eagleton, and finally and most avidly, Saul Bellow.

  All quotes from The Republic of Plato are from the translation by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1968.

  The quote on page 3 attributed to Jacob Boehme is taken from Personal Christianity, by Jacob Boehme, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.

  The excerpt from Petrarch on page 8 is taken from My Secret Book by Francis Petrarch. Translation copyright 2002 by J.G. Nichols.

  The line on page 102, attributed to Theodor Adorno, is taken from Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, by Theodor Adorno, Verso. Translation copyright 2005 by E.F.N. Jephcott.

  The quote on Socratic Restoration on page 128 is taken from The City and Man by Leo Strauss, University of Chicago Press.

  The lines on pages 140, 154, 213, and 249, attributed to Cicero, are taken from Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 (Books 3 and 4), University of Chicago Press. Translation copyright 2002 by Margaret R. Graver.

  P. S. Ideas, interviews & features

  About the author

  Author Biography

  Meet David Bergen

  About the book

  About Writing The Matter With Morris, an essay by David Bergen

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