Henry hesitated before sealing his letter. Should he add a postscript about his cousin Lionel’s perplexing visit? No, he wouldn’t, because he was ashamed and had already been rebuked by Nialie for his meek behaviour. Mr. Milquetoast, that’s me.
Lionel’s visit would have been a trial at the best of times, but as his cousin came during Aseret Yemai Tushuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, it was a mitzvah to be reconciled with a family member who had wronged you, even as it was written: “A person should be pliant as a reed and not hard like a cedar in granting forgiveness.”
Lionel, his sister Anita, and his younger brother Nathan were the heirs apparent to McTavish Distillers Ltd., Jewel Investment Trust, Acorn Properties, Polar Energy, and the rest of the increasingly diversified Gursky empire. Lionel, Henry remembered, had been the boldest of the Gursky brood even as a child. Grabbing maids where he shouldn’t. Propelling his bicycle into whatever new boys had been screened to play with him, knowing that their palpitating mothers wouldn’t dare complain.
Henry hadn’t heard from Lionel, who presided over the New York office of McTavish Distillers, for a good ten years when the distressing phone call came. Henry grasped that so far as Lionel was concerned he was certifiable if push came to shove, and maybe he was right. Retrieving an old quarterly McTavish report from a bottom desk drawer, and skimming through it before being confronted by Lionel, was enough to confirm to Henry his own inadequacies. Oy, was he ever in for a drubbing! Lionel, unlike him, was bound to be in tune with the songs that money sang. Bank debentures, floating bond rates, amortization of deferred charges, et cetera. All Greek to Henry.
LIONEL, FLYING INTO YELLOWKNIFE on one of the Gursky jets, recalled his cousin Henry as a backward boy—no, just this side of retarded—whom he used to tease because he was such a bed-wetter. Henry had actually had to repeat the sixth grade. Then, if memory served, there had been no high school for the little prick, but instead an endless spill of grim deferential tutors and shrinks and maybe a private school or two for rich kids whose elevator didn’t go to the top floor. Somewhere along that troubled road Henry had found God and retreated into a Brooklyn yeshiva where he no longer dared to even change his toothpaste brand without the approval of his mighty Oz, the Rebbe who ruled the funny-farm at 770. And then—presto!—he had lit out for the Arctic, of all places, where he took a stone-age bride, an Eskimo. Wait, wait. There had been a newspaper story that had prompted Henry’s flight to the far north—something that Lionel’s parents had worried about in the kitchen, gabbing away in Yiddish. Lionel dimly remembered bits and pieces. A newspaper item recounting that, inexplicably, for the third time in a century, a remote band of Eskimos was starving. The authorities were baffled because at the time there was no shortage of blubber or whatever it was they ate. The nutty natives simply refused food. Even when government officials airlifted in all manner of supplies they still wouldn’t eat. Psychologists who were hurried out to the scene hinted at dark tribal rites, the curse of shamans, referring dumbfounded reporters to Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, The Golden Bough, Totem and Taboo. But all the natives would allow was that it was forbidden, it was the Day of the … what? The Owl? The Eagle? Some shit like that. Nobody could understand the problem, and then Henry flew out and somehow or other set things right. Some of the Eskimos had died, but many were saved.
Henry flew into Yellowknife on a Ptarmigan Air Otter, taking Isaac with him so that he could have a first look at Sir John Franklin High School, which he would most likely have to attend once he had graduated from primary school in the settlement. Nialie was not disposed to accept the alternative, the Rebbe’s yeshiva high school in Crown Heights. “The other boys wouldn’t accept him as such a shayner yid. He would be picked on just because he’s a different colour.”
The enterprising commissioner of the Northwest Territories, anticipating possible investments, had led the delegation greeting Lionel at the airport. Lionel, grown bald and portly, resplendent in a beaver coat, a Giorgio Armani suit and sheepskin-lined boots, his eyes hidden behind tinted aviator glasses. The commissioner had ordained that the penthouse apartment in the nine-storey building, known locally as The Highrise, should be made available to Lionel, the bar thoughtfully stocked only with bottles blessed with the Gursky brand names. The penthouse, lavishly appointed by North of Sixty standards, had been built to accommodate Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip on their visit to the Northwest Territories in 1970. “I hope you’ll be comfortable between the royal sheets,” the commissioner said, his eyes twinkling.
“I’ll require a board to go under my mattress. My back, you know.”
“Right, right. Now I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that there are old natives here who still tell tales about your great-grandfather, tales handed down from one generation to another. Would you care to meet any of them, Mr. Gursky?”
“Tight schedule. Can I get back to you after I’ve met with my cousin?”
Lionel was annoyed that when Henry, that God-crazed fool, finally did turn up, he had brought his little half-breed son with him. But the boy, obviously as dim-witted as his father, settled unobtrusively into a corner with a comic book and the latest issue of The Moshiach Times. Page one delivered a Tzivot Hashem Report from a girl named Gila, rooted in Ashkelon. She wrote, “Our madircha, our counsellor in Tzivot Hashem, tells us that there are children like ourselves all over the world, all trying to do the same thing, to carry out the commands of our Commander-In-Chief, Hashem.” The proper noun Hashem was followed by an asterisk that led to a footnote explaining, “Hashem: A name of G-d,” as if Isaac didn’t know as much.
Isaac seemed self-absorbed, indifferent, while the two men talked or, more accurately, Lionel pontificated and Henry listened.
“I think it’s time we put our fathers’ quarrels behind us, Henry, don’t you?”
Nialie had made Henry promise. Don’t fidget. Look him in the eye. Yes, he had assured her, but he had already lowered his eyes and begun to cross and uncross his legs.
“You’re a character, Henry. You’re really something else. Do you know you still haven’t cashed your last dividend cheque?”
“I’ll send it to the bank first thing tomorrow morning.”
“That cheque was for three million, eight hundred thousand and some odd dollars. Have you any idea what you’ve already lost in interest?”
Having managed to put him on the defensive, Lionel now did his shrewd best to evoke the old days, reminding him of the games they had played together behind those tall sheltering walls. Then, tired of dribbling, he went for the basket. Mr. Bernard, he said, was now seventy-four years old, he no longer dipped both oars in the water, so it was sad but inevitable that control of James McTavish Distillers Ltd. would soon fall into Lionel’s hands.
“What about Nathan?”
“Let’s be serious. It’s a humbling thought,” Lionel went on to say, “but also a challenge. Remember what John Kennedy (another bootlegger’s son, eh) said? The torch has been passed to another generation. I used to shmooze with Bobby. I know Teddy. Sinatra has been to our place in Southampton. You know who sang at my Lionel Jr.’s bar mitzvah? Diana Ross. Kissinger has to use the can there’s one of the girls from Rowan and Martin being shtupped by the schwartze. Not Sammy Davis Jr., but the other one. The funny one. Rocky was at the bar mitzvah. So were Elaine and Swifty and Arnie Palmer. We golf together. About the distillery. There will be changes. Long overdue. Control should pass into my hands, but there’s a kicker. What we have to remember is that this is a public company with an enviable cashflow and shares that are presently under-valued, so there are lots of vultures circling out there. The family, assuming all of us vote our shares as a block (after all, we’re mishpoche, no matter whose version of the old quarrel you accept) still only controls 21.7 percent of the company. According to the best advice available to me—and I’m talking Lehmann Brothers, I’m talking Goldman Sachs—we’re vulnerable. Maybe even a sitting duck. Now put plainly, Henry, you have no real interest in the company. Why, you’ve never so much as attended a board meeting. That’s not a reproach. We’re all so damned proud of you. You’re into things that really matter. God and eternity and shit like that. Henry, you’re a saint. A flicking saint. I look up to you. But somebody’s got to stay in New York and watch over the shop. It isn’t carved in stone anywhere that a Getty will always run Getty Oil or a Ford Ford. You’re lucky enough to have it you’ve got to watch over it day and night. Henry, in order to protect everybody’s interest, including yours and Lucy’s, I need the authority to vote both your shares. I brought along some proxy papers. You could have the Rebbe look them over. Or I tell you what. And I want you to know I didn’t come here intending to make this offer. I could regret it tomorrow. My lawyers will think I’m crazy. I am crazy! I’m willing to buy out all your shares at 25 percent above current market value. What do you think?”