Marg seized Mrs. Hall’s arm and led her over to John. “I was just telling Mrs. Hall, John, that you’d be delighted to discuss Canadian writing with her. What were you saying about Lemelin, Mrs. Hall?”
Fifteen minutes, Mrs. Hall thought. She’s been in that bedroom fifteen minutes.
The record player clicked, and Fats Waller began again.
Collin turned to Bill. “I think we’re going to have a big third act any minute. Neil’s a bloody fool. I don’t care if he’s drunk, but this is Theo’s house.…”
“Don’t blame Neil, man. She was on to me once. That woman’s turned into a tiger.”
The bedroom door opened, and Marg whirled around to face Neil. His expression was bewildered. His shirt was soaked in whisky and his hair was wet.
“Wipe the lipstick off your face, you fool,” Marg whispered.
Neil pulled out his handkerchief desperately. “That girl’s mad. First she can’t get to you quick enough and then … Why should she spill a drink in my face?”
“You should have had more sense than to …”
Mrs. Hall approached quickly. “Is Miriam not feeling well?” she asked icily.
“As a matter of fact,” Neil began lamely, “she’s …”
Marg backed into the bedroom and shut the door behind her.
Miriam lay face down on the bed. Her dress unzippered, she whimpered softly. Marg sat down beside her and stroked her hair gently. “I brought you a drink,” she said.
Miriam gathered up bits of pillow into her fists tightly.
Mrs. Hall knocked on the door. “I’d like to get something out of my purse,” she said.
Marg began to search frantically among the mess of coats and shawls and hats and bags for a purse that might feasibly belong to Mrs. Hall. “What colour is it?”
“I could find it in a jiffy if you’d let me in,” Mrs. Hall called out.
IV
On that first Sunday of the winter of 1954, as under a stern sun the snows of St. Dominique Street showed glittering white in spots, Melech Adler, his mottled hands lying shrivelled on his lap, sat in the armchair in his living-room considering his past. Later, after he had taken his pills and eaten his lunch of boiled beef and potatoes, he would lie down to rest for an hour or so. Mr. Adler had ten children, six boys and four girls. One of them had died in a fire, and another was with the army in Germany. His youngest daughter, Ida, was sort of engaged. This Sunday was special. Later Max would send Moore around with the Cadillac to pick up Mr. and Mrs. Adler. The Adlers were to join their children in Max’s home in Outremont for a family meeting.
Old Melech Adler sat in his chair and unfolded his newspaper and turned to the obituary column. He frowned. He recalled how long ago and during another season, Moore, the drunkard, had tried to cheat him by mixing in cast iron with the brass and weighing down sacks with earth. After they had begun to haggle in a jocular way about prices Noah whispered to his grandfather that his father and Paquette had hidden many of the sacks. Melech, his face darkening, had asked Noah to please wait for him in the office. Melech had known that Moore’s scrap was stolen. That some of it had been stolen from his own yard. But Noah hadn’t obeyed him. He had begun his story over again. Melech had slapped his grandchild. But he had done that only because he wanted to protect him from the drunkard.
He could have been the brightness of my old years. But he ran away with a shiksa. He’s no good.
Most of the family arrived shortly after lunch.
Mr. Adler sat in a corner. Max sat in his armchair discussing school with Jonah. The other grandchildren were grouped around him, all of them making raucous bids for his attention. Now and then he gripped one of them in a huge hand, and laughing gruffly, pressed a dollar bill into his pocket.
The women sat around the table gossiping and waiting for the maid to serve tea.
Ida knew why there was going to be a meeting. She had told Max how things were between Stanley and herself, and Max had grinned boyishly and pinched her cheek and said, you’ll have to get married, that’s all. I want to marry him, anyway, she had said. Still better, Max had said. You don’t worry about a thing. Tomorrow … em – Mort? Stanley, she had said. Then he had pressed one of the many buzzers on his big desk and a tall blonde woman had come in unsmilingly and had waited for his word. Miss Holmes honey, he had said, send Moore around with the Caddy for my sister, eh? After she had gone Max had turned to Ida, smiling boyishly again, and had said: Some looker, eh?
There were many things to discuss at the meeting. Noah was leaving and they would have to decide things about Leah.
Ida lolled on the bed nibbling peppermints and reading the Good Housekeeping magazine. She was glad that Max had given Stanley a job because that had made him less scared about getting married: besides, Max was his hero.
The meeting had not gone as Ida had expected. Max, for one thing, had been called to Toronto on business at the last minute. So his wife, Debrofsky’s only daughter, had conducted the meeting. Ida didn’t like her. She was a small, bony woman with a pinched face. Her dog, which she called Babykins, was a pedigree French poodle that had cost a good deal of money. Debrofsky’s only daughter had a hard, unjoking way of speaking, and addressed the Adlers with resentment, as if they, unlike Babykins, did not have a pedigree. Her father sat behind her in an armchair. He was a yellowing man with shrivelled eyes who was in the habit of saying: “I came to Canada with fifty cents in my pocket” – and taking off his glasses and pointing at a picture of his factory – “and I worked hard.” He wanted a grandson before he died. Stanley had also come to the meeting. He had sat on the piano stool twisting his fedora in his hands, avoiding Ida’s searching, sympathetic looks. When Debrofsky’s only daughter had announced the engagement, Melech Adler had looked darkly at Ida, but had said nothing. Ida had smiled hopefully at Stanley when Debrofsky’s only daughter had announced that Max would give the young couple one thousand dollars with which to start housekeeping. Stanley had nodded. He had been watching Melech, the truly orthodox member of the Adler family. Stanley thought that the old man was quite a character.
Melech Adler, who was the son of a scribe, was full of sorrow after the meeting. He watched his wife bake raisin buns.
“Jenny … Nu, Jenny, you – you are happy?”
“Happy?”
“Maybe you would like a movie sometimes.… Or a talk?”
“You are not well, Melech?”
Between Melech and the grandchildren Jenny didn’t get much rest.
“This is my house, Jenny. I came here fifty years ago and I knew from nothink. Scrap I collected in the lanes. I drove a horse and buggy through Griffintown and the Goyishe hoodlums threw stones at me.…” He cleared his throat, and began again. “Look at them, all over the street, new ones, greeners. They come around for naduvas. Did I beg when I came to Canada? They have it easy, the new ones. Not like we did. But their sons will be ashamed for de beards. The sons will grow up Goyim, like Noah. It’s a bad world. You wait.”
“About the greeners you are right. Mrs. Myerson said to me yesterday dat only de worst ones get away.”
Melech stood up suddenly. He was shaking. “You heard, you heard the meeting? You think I care they don’t ask me anything no more? Bah! Let them do, let them. I should worry. But when I die – probably before my time – it’ll be them that put de nails in my coffin. Them. You hear? Some life I had.” He walked around the table and grabbed Jenny’s arm forcefully. “There is no justice in this world. God don’t listen always. Not like He should, anyway.…”
“Melech, Melech.…”
She held her hand to her lips surreptitiously, as though to caution him against God, who was watching and listening. For the first time in his life he came close to striking her. He stared at her fiercely, his eyes burning darker, and then he retreated from the room.
“Melech, Melech, what is …”
V
“Boyeler?”
“I didn’t hear you come in, Maw.”<
br />
“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tomorrow afternoon, he says.”
“Yes. How do you feel?”
“How would you feel?”
Noah knelt down before her and kissed her hands. “Maw, I tried to explain. I’ll only be gone for a year. I haven’t enough money to stay away longer. I …”
“Money. Wouldn’t I give you money?”
“Yes. You would.”
“When I think of how my father struggled to get us out of Europe. How all of us struggled.… Max says Europe is scum. He says they’re finished. What’ll you do there among all those anti-Semites?”
“I’ll look around.”
“Look. What for?”
“I would like to understand things better.”
Leah withdrew her hands from him. “You are going to get away from me, aren’t you?”
“Maw, that’s not …”
“Are you going to begin to lie to me after all these years?”
Noah stood up. “No,” he said. “But what you’re thinking is only partly right. Will you listen without interrupting?”
“Who’s interrupting?”
“If I stay here we’ll learn to hate each other. Even now, I – I’ve always wanted … I’ve always loved you, Maw, but I’m beginning to … I can’t stay. It would kill both of us. But I’ve always wanted to go to Europe. I’d like to …”
“So you couldn’t wait six months? I’m sure I won’t live longer than that.”
“Maw, please, that’s exactly what I mean. Would you like me to wait around hoping for your death?” He turned to her again. “Please stop thinking that you’re going to die. I’ll be back in a year’s time. I’ll stay with you for a while then. Meanwhile, Harry will gladly …”
“They don’t want me.”
“They want you, Maw. And many, many people with your heart condition live for ten and twenty years.”
“If you decided to stay I wouldn’t bother you about your drinking.”
“Drinking.”
“You could have as much as you want.”
“Where in the hell do people get the idea that I’m a drunkard?”
“You think I’m faking, don’t you? You think I only make the attacks so that I can keep you with me?”
“No, not quite. But I think that you do tend to use your condition unfairly at times.”
“Why are they no longer going to call the new school the Wolf Adler Memorial School? Why did they change the name?”
“Ask Max.”
“Max said I should ask you.”
“Oh, I see.”
“He sees. That’s the sum of all my insurance policies speaking. What’ll you do when you get back? Drive a taxi again?”
“Maw, I’m not your husb … I don’t know. But I don’t think so.”
Leah got up. “My son has turned out a bum after all my struggles. I’m going to sleep. I don’t care any longer, Noah. You’re yes a taxi driver, no a taxi driver. My life is over. Finished.…”
Noah followed her into the hall.
“I’ll write you every week, Maw.”
“Write, don’t write. To put a knife into my back would have been kinder. Now go. Go. Be happy.”
VI
Upstairs Melech Adler wandered absently through empty bedrooms that had used to belong to his children. The rooms were draughty and chill and smelled badly. Melech shivered. He tried hard to possess again, if only for a moment, the laughter and the ailments and the play that had used to fill these rooms. Bedsprings had rusted under dust-sheets. There were fading marks on the walls where graduation pictures and pennants had used to hang. In Max’s old room, opening the cupboard, he stumbled on a pair of boxing-gloves and several back issues of sporting magazines. The gloves were mouldy, the pages had yellowed. Melech dropped his find to the floor and stared at his yellowed, shaking hands. He collapsed into a frayed armchair which had been covered by sheets, and stared at the walls. When Ornstein had died his children, according to the orthodox custom, had covered the mirrors with towels. They had said, according to the modern custom, that their father was better off that way. “He died quickly, Mr. Adler. No suffering.” Melech Adler held his head in his hands, and sorrowed over what had become of him. He would have rested that way for hours but finally, inevitably, he noticed the white sheet he sat on. He saw the other white sheets that covered the armchair opposite him and the bureau to the right. He backed out of the room, horrified. Suddenly, he heard the radio turned on in Ida’s room.
It’s Make-Believe Ballroom time,
The hour of sweet romance.…
Something stirred within Melech. She is my child, he thought. He was certain that she, his daughter, would comfort him. Her door was opened. Ida, holding an absent partner, glided to and fro before the mirror. Her eyes were shut, her expression dreamy; she wallowed in a smile that said life was good, life was full. She danced naked. Dancing away from him, like the years. His eyes blurred. Helga, Helga, forgive me. He saw, more real than her, the rusting springs and the mattress abandoned on the floor. Fading marks on the walls and white, white sheets. Ida opened her eyes and approached the mirror as though she expected to be received by it. She saw an old, bearded man staring at her. She reached for her dressing-gown in a panic and whirled about to face her father. I caught him, she thought. Melech smiled and nodded in a friendly manner. Smiled, and saw too late that she misunderstood his intentions. His shoulders slumped. He was surprised and ashamed that his daughter could think of him in such a foul way. So he turned away, hoping to be gone before she could speak things that, once heard, could never be forgotten. But she couldn’t understand that either. Besides, he was against Stanley.
“Can’t I have privacy in my own room even? Spying on me, eh? I’m going and I’m glad. What are you looking? Did you ever let me do what I want? Once. Ever ask me how I felt? I’m going. I’m glad, you hear?”
Noah, who at that moment was parked across the street from his grandfather’s house, occupied an unique position in the Adler family. He was, to begin with, Leah’s son. Leah wasn’t liked. He was the grandson of a man whom Melech Adler had deeply respected – Jacob Goldenberg the Zaddik. He was the son of Wolf Adler, who, as far as the others were concerned, had died for the Torah. The Adlers lived in a cage and that cage, with all its faults, had justice and safety and a kind of felicity. I wonder what will happen, he thought, now that I’m leaving? They’ll need something to blame me for. Noah stared at the snow. He was immensely happy. He had spent the previous evening with Panofsky. They had sat in the kitchen drinking beer and listening to the music of Vivaldi. Even Aaron had been cheerful. He had given Noah his old suitcase. He had told him stories about Madrid. Panofsky had had lots of beer and had said that he might turn the business over to Karl next summer and come to Europe himself. Aaron had laughed. He had said that the old man was getting lecherous in his last days and that he would be fleeced by the first D.P. he met up with. Noah had laughed, too. But he had known that Panofsky would never quit City Hall Street. A new crowd is arriving, Panofsky had said. Perhaps this time things will work out better. What do I need Europe for? Noah will write us everything. Remembering, Noah grinned. The cold blue sky was without clouds. There was a dry, clean feeling to the day. Miriam had asked him what he wanted. He hadn’t been able to tell her because at that time he had wanted to love her the way he had at first, and he hadn’t been able to. He could tell her now, though. He could tell her that he wanted freedom and that innocent day at Lac Gandon and the first days of their love and many more evenings with Panofsky and the music of Vivaldi and more men as tall as Aaron and living with truth and, maybe, sometime soon, a wiser Noah in another cottage near a stream with a less neurotic Miriam. Oh, he wanted plenty. I’m free, he thought. Max can go to hell. You require me to be an alcoholic, he thought. But you’ll never get that, Max. Not out of me, you won’t. Noah blew on his hands. Remembering his mother, he felt that wire tightenin
g around his heart again. He rubbed his hands together anxiously. She’ll be fine, he thought. Now that she knows I’m really going she’ll pull through. I’ll write every week. Noah dug into his pocket and pulled out two envelopes. One of them contained his rail ticket to New York and his boat ticket. Tomorrow afternoon at four, he thought, I’ll be on that train to New York. What can stop me? The other envelope contained Melech’s letters and receipts and photographs. Giving it to him will be difficult, Noah thought. Why shouldn’t I tell him that Shloime started the fire? He knows that Wolf didn’t die for the Torah. He knows.
The door opened.
Noah stood before him confidently. “I’m leaving, Zeyda,” he said. “I came to say goodbye.”
Melech Adler took off his glasses and folded up his paper. “I told you long ago,” he began slowly, “that you are no longer welcome here.…”
Noah placed the envelope on the arm of Melech’s chair. “I brought you this,” he said. “I’m sorry that I took it. But there were many things that I didn’t know then.”
Melech ignored the envelope. “I suppose you want a thank you for such a big favour? Maybe you want I should give you a blessing for giving me back what you stole from me? Look at you! A nothing. You would mix into the affairs from your Zeyda.”
“Had I known what was in the envelope I wouldn’t have taken it.”
Mr. Adler got up. “You are by me de greatest shame I had. Go.”
“Did my father know what was in the box?”
Melech stared. He had known that one day Noah would come to ask him that question. A wild, vengeful part of him wanted to tell Noah the truth. Ever since he had been a boy Noah had denied him the respect that was justly his. The boy was going away. They might never meet again. Melech didn’t know that Noah already knew the truth about the box. He rebelled against the idea that Noah should come to respect Wolf and not him. Wolf, who had died for a cash-box. Melech walked over to the window. He tugged slowly at his beard. Had I told him about Moore that day, if I had explained it to him first, everything would have been all right. Melech pursed his lips. He remembered that from the first he had always wanted Noah to ask him a favour. He had wanted the boy to be in his debt. He turned to him. “Your Paw knew that I had in the box scrolls. About the other stuff he didn’t know. Nobody knew.”
Son of a Smaller Hero Page 24
