They moved two hundred cans and skedaddled before any of their customers could discover that the cans were actually filled with a mixture of used motor oil and water, and now the provincial police were out making inquiries.
Moses sat staring at the salmon fly he had set out on the table. His Silver Doctor. After all his years on the rivers it finally struck him that he wasn’t the angler but the salmon. A teasing, gleeful Solomon casting the flies over his head, getting him to roll, rise, and dance on his tail at will. Sea-bright Moses was when he first took the hook, but no more than a black salmon now, ice-bound in a dark river, the open sea closed to him.
Retrieving the fly, Moses returned to his cabin. Once dead by air, once by water, and now, Moses assumed, pacing, a shot of Macallan in hand, and now truly dead. If Solomon were still alive, he would be eighty-four years old, hardly impossible. But since he had last surfaced in Nairobi, Moses had heard from him only once. A telegram sent from Hanoi, in 1978, in response to a memoir Moses had published in Encounter about the group that had once gathered round the table with the crocheted tablecloth.
LOOK AT IT THIS WAY. THE SYSTEM WAS INSPIRED, BUT IT IS MAN THAT IS VILE. IT WON’T WORK. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. THE MANIFESTO. THE WORLD CONTINUES TO PAY A PUNISHING TOLL FOR OUR JEWISH DREAMERS.
Solomon, Moses suspected, didn’t die of old age, but in the Gulag or a stadium in Latin America. Wherever, the ravens would have gathered.
Dead, Moses. Extinct. You knew that back in 1980, the first year masses of red roses did not bedeck the grave of Diana McClure on the anniversary of her death. So the black salmon is now obliged to sit down, sort things out, and write Solomon’s tale or what he knew of it. Or to risk the open sea, swimming out of his Gursky mausoleum never to return.
Problems.
“Hello there, Beatrice. Guess who? Yes. It’s your favourite barrel of fun, Moses Berger. If you’ll give up that oaf, I’ll swear off drinking for life and take you to London myself.”
Moses glanced at the portrait of L.B., contemplating the cosmos, enduring its weight, and turned away, surprised by tears. He freshened his drink. Then, badly in need of distraction, flicked on the TV, knowing it was time for Sam Burns to pronounce on PBS. Worrying about Lech Walesa. Disgusted by the massacre of the Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila. Instead there was an interview with the self-satisfied thug himself. Defence Minister Arik Sharon, and Moses switched off the TV impatiently.
Happily Henry hadn’t lived to learn of the raids on the refugee camps, winked at by the party in power in the country that was to be a beacon unto the nations. Neither did he live to see the end of the world or to discover that if God did intend to punish us for our transgressions, we would fry rather than freeze, victims of the greenhouse effect. Once more he resolved to visit Nialie in the spring, possibly for Passover, and pardoned himself for not contacting Isaac, an abomination to him.
Moses lit a Monte Cristo, broke open a fresh bottle of Macallan, thrust Solomon’s journals aside, and turned to his latest file of Gursky clippings. The family battle for control of Mr. Bernard’s little cabbage patch was heating up, growing increasingly acrimonious. Competing appeals to shareholders appeared in full page ads in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal among other places.
Savvy investment analysts had long predicted that McTavish, given its under-valued assets but uninspired management, its vulnerability through sometimes ill-conceived diversification, was ripe for a hostile takeover bid that would wrest control from the family. What they had not anticipated was that it would be the Gurskys themselves who would be locked in a quarrel over the spoils. A dispute that became public knowledge after Isaac Gursky reached the age of majority, acquiring the shares that had been left in trust for him by his father. While these shares of themselves were not of intimidating consequence, and Isaac was considered a mere scratch player in the unfolding struggle, he began to attract attention once it was discovered that he was a protégé of the shy, self-effacing man the press had dubbed the Gursky jackdaw. The surprising Mr. Morrie who had been surreptitiously accumulating McTavish shares for years, parking them as far away as Tokyo.
Mr. Morrie, ensconced in a suite in the Sherry-Netherlands, was quickly established as a sentimental favourite of the press. He was, after all, the last survivor of the founding brothers. An observant reporter from Money noted the moist eyes and trembling hands when Mr. Morrie, whom he described as the Gursky leprechaun, read a statement aloud:
“It pains me, in my old age, to see the children and grandchildren fighting tooth and nail over the business my genius of a brother Bernard built with a little help from me and Solomon who died so young. There is more than enough money for all concerned. Nothing would delight me more than to have everybody meet with me to settle this embarrassing family feud in private. After all, we are a family. All I am asking for is seats on the board for my son Barney and my nephew Isaac. Lionel, bless him, is welcome to stay on at McTavish, though not necessarily as CEO. It is my fondest hope that he will come to realize that blood is thicker than water.”
Lionel would have none of it. Heavily favoured in the betting if only because he was the CEO in place, he held the bulk of his late father’s shares and was supported by his brother, Nathan, his sister, Anita, and, he claimed, his cousin Lucy, the Broadway producer. Lucy, barricaded in her apartment in the Dakota, refused to talk to reporters, but, according to informed reports, she so detested her nephew Isaac that she was willing to overlook an old family feud and throw in her lot with Lionel. Her shares, it was rumoured, might be sufficient to tip the balance either way.
Then an imponderable factor came into play. The shadowy Corvus Trust of Zurich. A spokesman for Corvus, custodians of 4.2 percent of the McTavish shares, only aroused suspicions by declaring that they were “friendly buyers, potential white knights, not hostile bidders.”
Moses, following the struggle from his cabin, read of platoons of fabulously expensive lawyers, who were pelting the courts with charges and counter-charges; merchant bankers and brokerage houses at risk on both sides; and uncommitted raiders and greenmail enthusiasts circling the fray, ready to pounce.
Journalists rejoiced in what was undoubtedly the juiciest family feud in years, billions at stake.
Isaac babbled to one and all about his movie-making plans and Barney was turning up on talk-shows everywhere, gabbing about his future plans for McTavish, including a bid for a major league baseball franchise and a scheme to tow icebergs from the Arctic to the Middle East.
Responding to a tip, a New York Post reporter located a selfproclaimed former mistress of Barney’s, the now disconcertingly plump, even matronly Darlene. This led to titillating photographs and a full-blown interview in Penthouse. Darlene wore her ankh ring for the occasion. “It’s Egyptian,” she explained, “and symbolizes life. Most Wiccans wear it with the point facing out to protect themselves against negative forces, but I’ve got a strong psychic shield. I wear it with the point inward.” She said that she had been a witch since Camelot. “You know, King Arthur’s time. I’m reincarnated every seven generations. I’m part Jew, part Mohawk, and part Seventh Day Adventurer. And did I tell you that I was once a good Jewish mother, you know, when I saw the Crucifixion? It was very, very moving.”
The interviewer pointed out that Barney had denied that they had ever been lovers.
“Uh huh,” she said, unsnapping the locket lying against her throat, “then how come I still got this?”