“Somebody has to check out the oil-lease properties from time to time, don’t you think?”
“There are no discos in Yellowknife. You went there to see Henry to try to buy his shares. Then you flew to London to try to sweet-talk Lucy out of hen.”
“Vanessa and I took the jet to London to take in Wimbledon.”
“It’s too late to lie. I know now. I know sure as I’m sitting here what you’ve been up to,” he said, and his cheeks bleeding red, he reached out to snatch Lionel’s hand, thrusting it into his mouth and biting down on his fingers as hard as he could. Lionel, groaning, finally wrenched his throbbing hand free, tucking it under his armpit … and the lights were extinguished and the film began.
Jimmy Durante, one of Mr. Bernard’s favourite entertainers, stood before a concert piano, raised a glass of champagne to the old man, a Gursky brand, and then settled down to croak and play “Happy Birthday, Mr. Bernard” followed by a medley of his most famous ditties.
The Schnozz’s impudent image yielded to that of the Chief Rabbi of Israel, who stood before the Wailing Wall and pronounced a blessing in Hebrew. His voice was soon superimposed over a montage of selected Gursky history, beginning with a shot of the sod hut on the prairie (now a museum, a Gursky shrine), the sod hut where Mr. Bernard had been born, and then dissolving to a shot of the first distillery, the St. Jerome distillery, Mr. Bernard and Mr. Morrie posing in the foreground, only the merry bright-eyed figure of the other brother, Solomon Gursky, air-brushed out of the picture, as it was out of all the others.
Next Golda offered a tribute.
Then Harvey Schwartz’s wife Becky was discovered in a golden kaftan seated at her Louis XIV bureau-plat of deal veneered with ebony and boulle marquetry. She turned to the audience, her smile demure, and began to read a tribute she had composed for the occasion, even as the camera tracked in on a prominently displayed copy of her book, a collection of columns about family life first published in the Canadian Jewish Review: Hugs, Pain, and Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Jan Peerce proposed a toast to Mr. Bernard and then sang “The Bluebird of Happiness.”
Zero Mostel raised a laugh extolling the virtues of Gursky blends, even as he staggered about a stage feigning drunkenness, singing, “If I Were a Rich Man”.
A harpist played the theme song from Love Story as Mr. Bernard and Libby were seen strolling hand-in-hand through the streets of Old Jerusalem. The famous star of many a biblical blockbuster sat in the garden of his Coldwater Canyon home and recited Mr. Bernard’s favourite stanzas from Longfellow.
Then there was a slow dissolve to the wine-dark sea. The custom-built one-hundred-and-ten-foot-long Gursky yacht was seen cruising the Greek isles as a voice that sounded like Ben Cartwright’s began to recite:
The camera eye tracked past a snoozing Mr. Bernard to reveal a sixty-five-year-old Libby, lounging on deck in a flower-print halter and pedal pushers, attended by black stewards in white linen jackets.
Laughing, her belly rocking with delight, Libby fed caviar with chopped onion and Coca-Cola to one grandchild, chopped liver on crackers to another.
The image of Libby cavorting with her grandchildren yielded to a longer shot of the yacht at sunset as another voice declaimed, “From William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon.”
Finally the children of a kibbutz in the Negev, photographed from a helicopter, stood in a pattern in the Bernard Gursky Park and spelled l’chaim, the apostrophe raising a bottle of Masada Blanc, a Gursky brand, to Mr. Bernard.
The film done, a spotlight illuminated Mr. Bernard, seemingly crushed by such acclaim, swimming in tears, a sodden handkerchief clenched between his dentures. Everybody was enormously moved, especially Libby, who now rose into the light to sing their song to him:
There wasn’t, Libby would remember, a dry eye in the house, the rest of her song lost in applause, soaring applause as Mr. Bernard leaped to his feet, knocking back his chair, and fled the ballroom.
“He’s just an old softie at heart, you know.”
“Don’t you just want to hug him?”
The truth was Mr. Bernard had to piss again, he had to piss something terrible, there was such a burning inside him, and when it came out it was, to his astonishment, red as Big Sur burgundy, another Gursky brand. A week later they began to cut and a tearful Kathleen O’Brien lighted the first of many candles at the Cathedral of Mary, Queen of the World. Mr. Morrie, responding to a summons, visited his brother at home for the first time in twenty years.
“So,” Mr. Bernard said.
“So.”
“Look at Barney now. I was right about him all along. I want you to admit it.”
“I admit it.”
“No resentments?”
“No.”
“How’s Ida?”
“She’d like to come to pay her respects.”
“Tell her to bring Charna with her. I don’t mind.”
“Charna’s dead.”
“Oh shit, I forgot. Did I go to the funeral?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad.”
“Bernie, I’ve got something to say, but please don’t shout at me.”
“Try me, you little prick.”
“You must make provision for Miss O.”
“A big brown envelope. It’s in the office safe.”
They cut and pared Mr. Bernard a week later, pronouncing him fit, but Mr. Bernard knew better. He sent for Harvey Schwartz. “I want my lawyers here at nine sharp tomorrow morning. All of them.”
Later the same afternoon Mr. Bernard saw Miss O’Brien.
“I’m going to die, Miss O.”
“Would you like me to do your weenie now?”
“I wouldn’t say no.”
Four
Passing his parents’ bedroom door, a few years after they had moved into Outremont, Moses stopped, arrested by their voices. His mother was telling L.B. about the intelligence tests at school. A new-fangled notion. Moses had scored so high that the school inspector had asked to meet the bright Jewish lad who was bound to discover the cure for cancer. L.B. sighed. “You don’t know how devoutly I hope he will go into medicine. Or law maybe. Because if Moses is really determined to become a writer he is certain to be compared to me and suffer for it. Possibly I never should have had a child. It was indulgent of me.”