Moses, about to protest, was dismissed with an impatient wave of the hand.
“Don’t start. I know what your big-shot reporter friend Birenbaum thinks. I heard him say it to you behind my back. ‘Who does he think he is the way he dresses? His hair. Beethoven.’ You buy a poet in this poor excuse for a country, it doesn’t honour its literary giants, you want value for money. Long hair, a cape.”
Moses fiddled absently with the flap of the large brown envelope on his lap.
“Hey, wipe your eyes please. Shed no tears for me. At least your father didn’t have to feign a hunchback or carry a jester’s stick with a bell attached to it. Moishe, I smell talent in you and I have a nose for it.”
“You had absolutely no right to open my mail.”
“And maybe you had a right to give The New Yorker this as your return address? Or are you so self-centred, Mr. Rhodes Scholar, that you didn’t realize it was meant as a provocation?”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t you dare look at me like that. I’m your father and it goes without saying I forgive you this childish business with The New Yorker. It mustn’t upset you either because it was only natural. You know your Oedipus and so do I. I never published there—not that I ever wanted to—so you would, administering a slap in the face to old L.B. Okay, that narishkeit is over with and you know what? You’re goddamn lucky. Had they accepted your story you would have gone on to write more formula fiction tailored to their commercial expectations. Moishe, you have escaped a trap. Now I want you to continue to attempt to write and when the time comes I will try your stories on editors who can be trusted. But let’s get right down to work, eh? Because the next time you come home I could have shuffled off this mortal coil. You know something? I’m really glad we’re having this talk. Letting our hearts speak out before it’s too late. I haven’t felt as close to you since you were a little boy. My page, I used to say. So say something.”
Moses fled the room, his stomach heaving, sinking to his knees before the toilet bowl just in time. Then he dug out his bottle of Scotch from its hiding place. When he finally entered the kitchen he found that L.B., celebrating his escape from a migraine, was already into his favourite meaclass="underline" scrambled eggs with lox, potatoes fried in onions, bagels lathered with cream cheese. “Sit down, my boy. Maw has made enough for both of us.”
“Some baleboosteh, isn’t she?”
“I thought the conversation we had in there was strictly entre nous.”
Bessie, sniffing trouble, looked closely at her son. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Our neophyte artist here has had his first rejection slip and he’s taking it hard instead of appreciating how lucky he is.”
“I would like to say something,” Moses said. L.B. shot out of his chair, snapping to attention.
“Not all neglected writers are unjustifiably neglected.”
“How dare you speak to your father like that?”
“Here is a boy,” L.B. said, “once my pride and joy, bright with promise, who cannot accept responsibility for his own failures, but would lay them on his father’s white head. Well, I’ve got news for you. I didn’t make you a drunk. I deserved better.”
Five
The night before the big brown envelope from The New Yorker shot through the mail slot Moses had been a guest at Anita Gursky’s first wedding. Actually he hadn’t been invited. He had been strolling aimlessly down Sherbrooke Street, hard by McGill, past the sullen grey limestone mansions built by the Scottish robber barons who had once ruled the country. Self-absorbed, he passed the former homes of shipping and rail and mining magnates who had flourished in a time, sublime for them, when there had been no income tax or anti-trust laws or succession duties. Sir Arthur Minton’s old house, now a private club; the Clarkson home, converted into a fraternity house; Sir William Van Horne’s former residence with its delightfully loopy greenhouse. And then he ran into Rifka Schneiderman, of all people. Rifka Schneiderman, who had used to belt out “The Cloakworkers’ Union Is a No-Good Union” on the other side of the mountain, but a world away, in the dining room of the cold-water flat on Jeanne Mance Street. Rifka, to his astonishment, had grown into a fetching if rather overdressed young lady, her once-unruly hair tamed by a poodle cut. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “I thought you were studying at Oxford or Cambridge or something.”
“My father had a heart attack.”
Rifka was to be a bridesmaid at the wedding. However her fiancé, Sheldon Kaplan, had been struck with one of his allergy attacks. Rifka, her mood sentimental, asked Moses to escort her instead.
“Only if you promise to sing your song,” he said.
Anita Gursky had met her first husband on the ski slopes of Davos. A New Yorker, the wayward son of a German-Jewish banking family, he hoped to make his name as a tennis player. Life came to the wedding at the Ritz-Carlton.
Becky Schwartz leaned closer to Harvey. “Don’t look now,” she said, “but the Cotés just walked in looking like they smelled something bad. How can she wear a backless dress with those shoulders like chicken wings? I said don’t look.”
“I’m not.”
“I thought I told you to cut your nose hairs before we went out. Feh!”
Plump, double-chinned Georges Ducharme, parliamentary secretary to the minister of transport, winked at Mimi Boisvert. “I’m going to be the first to boogie-woogie with the rabbi’s wife.”
“Tais-toi, Georges.”
“Do not talk in the language of the peasantry here. Speak Yiddish.”
Cynthia Hodge-Taylor was there, so was Neil Moffat, Tom Clarkson, a Cunningham, two Pitneys, and other insouciant young Westmounters. Their far more punctilious parents would not have blessed a Gursky wedding with their presence, but for the young set it was sport, and possibly, just possibly, a chance to see their photographs published in Life.
Jim MacIntyre said, “My father, you know, was one of the government prosecutors in the trial. When Solomon was confronted by a particularly damning piece of testimony all he could say was I AM THAT I AM, and right there, my father swore, the temperature in the courtroom dropped by twenty degrees. The judge looked like he was going to have a stroke.”
There were thousands of red roses in vases all over the ballroom. At the appropriate moment, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians swung into “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”, and Mr. Bernard took to the floor for the first dance, tears streaming down his face as he foxtrotted cheek-to-cheek with Anita.
Moses danced with Kathleen O’Brien, whom he had chatted with more than once at The Lantern. “Come on,” she said, “We’re going to get some fresh air.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Your dad wrote a poem for the bride and groom. In exactly five minutes Becky Schwartz will step up to the microphone and read it aloud.”
Outside, Moses said, “Well, he always wanted to be a poet laureate.”
“I hope you don’t drink like this in Oxford. I believe your father is counting on you to come home with a First.”
“Actually nothing would delight him more than my being sent down.”
“Now now now.”
Back in the ballroom she led him to the table where Mr. Morrie was rooted with his wife, Ida, and their enormous pimply daughter, Charna. “He’s the sweet one,” Kathleen whispered before making the introductions. “Be nice.”
“How’s your father?” Mr. Morrie asked.