Ephraim continued to wander, running guns to New Orleans during the American Civil War, he told Solomon, and then dropping out of sight until 1881, the year a swirl of pogroms followed the assassination of Alexander II by terrorists. Ephraim, his nagging wife safely dead, his son now married, eventually sent the feckless Aaron steamship tickets and enough money to come to Canada with Fanny. But Ephraim did not care for the adult Aaron any more than he had for the simpering child, and neither did he warm to Fanny. So he dumped them on a homestead he had acquired on the prairie and disappeared again.
“My dear father,” Mr. Morrie wrote, “had been poorly advised about the Canadian climate and brought cherry and peach tree saplings and tobacco seeds with him.”
They arrived in April, greeted by snow and frost, obliged to retreat to a hotel in the nearest railway town until the thaw. Then Aaron built himself a sod hut, acquired a team of oxen and a cow, and planted his first wheat crop. It froze in the field. So Aaron bought pots and pans, tea, kerosene and patent medicines from a wholesaler and peddled to the farmers. Bernard was born, and then Solomon and Morrie.
Meanwhile Ephraim scaled the Chilkoot Pass into the Klondike. “He told me,” Solomon wrote in his journal, “that he found work as a piano player in a saloon in Dawson, doubling as a cashier. The drunken prospectors paid for their booze and girls with gold dust, Ephraim usually the one to handle the scales, joshing the men, distracting them, even as he ran his fingers through his Vaselined pompadour. Then, before going to bed every night, Ephraim washed the gold dust out of his hair. Eventually he put together a stake of $25,000, most of which he lost in a poker game in the Dominion Saloon.”
It was spring before Ephraim returned to the prairie and settled down in a tarpaper shack on the reservation with Lena Green Stockings. From time to time he looked in on Aaron and his family, mocking him, a Jew peddler; needling Fanny; and teasing the children. His visits, Solomon noted in his journal, were dreaded. But Mr. Morrie wrote, “My grandfather was a very colourful man, more interesting than many you’ve read about in my favourite Reader’s Digest feature, The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Ever Met. How we looked forward to his joining us at the sabbath table! His had been a very hard life, filled with adversity. The poor man lost his beloved wife while he was still in his prime and never found anybody to replace her in his heart. He could speak Indian and Eskimo and set bones better than any doctor. Sadly, though he lived to a very ripe old age, he didn’t last long enough to see his grandchildren succeed beyond his wildest dreams. He would have been very proud for sure.”
On his visits Ephraim reproached his grandchildren for their ignorance, saving his worst sarcasm for Solomon, because he had Ephraim’s hair, his eyes, and his nose.
Ephraim waited and watched and when he adjudged Solomon ready, he was there as the boy came tumbling out of school into the thickly falling snow; he was there standing on the stern of his long sled, stinking of rum, his eyes hot. Instead of turning right at the CNR tracks he took a left fork on the trail leading out to the prairie.
“I thought we were going to Montana,” Solomon said.
“We’re heading north.”
“Where?”
“Far.”
Seven
It depended on whom you talked to. Some said certainly six, seven million, others swore ten, maybe more. Anyway in 1973 that was the scuttlebutt on how much Harvey Schwartz had already made for himself hoeing the hundreds of millions ripening in Jewel, the Gursky family investment trust, as well as riding shotgun over Acorn Properties, the Gursky international real-estate company, its estimated value a billion plus at the time. Mind you, a good chunk of Harvey’s fortune was tied up in vested shares. But it was the weight of the money, they said, that explained why Harvey chewed his fingernails and suffered from insomnia, dyspepsia, and agonizing bowel movements. The gossips, as is so often the case, were wrong. Even before Harvey had accumulated his millions, he had been consumed by the secret fear that one day they would come for him. He would be falsely accused of a crime. Robbery, rape, murder, take your pick. One day he would be framed and they would come for him, his protestations of innocence unavailing unless he had a foolproof alibi. So Harvey, who knew he could be arrested when he was least expecting it (any time, any place) constantly worked at clearing his name. Once, at ease by the poolside of the Tamarack Country Club, on the verge of snoozing, Harvey came quickly alert when he grasped that everybody else was discussing the Kleinfort murder case. “You know,” Harvey said, as soon as he had the group’s attention, “I wouldn’t even know how to handle a gun.”
Harvey’s obsession crystallized when he saw The Wrong Man, an Alfred Hitchcock movie inspired by the true story of a bass-fiddle player at the Stork Club, who was mistakenly identified in a police lineup and charged with robbery, only to be saved at the last moment when the real culprit struck again. Harvey, who had seen the movie three times, suffered with Henry Fonda throughout.
Harvey knew. Harvey understood. So naturally he took precautions. If, for instance, he went to a movie with his wife, Becky (whose testimony in his favour wouldn’t count), he not only held on to the stubs, filing them with the date, but also did his best to make his presence felt. He might thrust a hundred-dollar bill at the ticket seller, apologizing for not having a smaller banknote with him, but making himself known. Once inside, he would look for anybody he knew, greeting even the slightest acquaintance effusively.
—Yes, on the night of the rape I definitely saw Mr. Schwartz at the Westmount Square cinema.
Checking into a hotel in New York, Chicago, or wherever, Harvey donned surgical gloves as soon as the bellboy had set down his bags and departed the suite. He searched the closets, the shower (since Psycho), and every dresser drawer, unwilling to leave his fingerprints about until he was satisfied that no bloodied knives or incriminating guns had been left behind by a previous occupant, setting him up. Harvey also insisted that his chauffeur obey all traffic regulations, especially speed limits, lest some disadvantaged mother, crazed with greed, throw her baby under his wheels, intending to sue for millions. Then, in the days when he was still obliged to fly commercial, he never accepted a seat next to an unaccompanied lady, lest she was a plant, set in place to hit him with an indecent assault suit. Happily, nowadays, he enjoyed access to the Gursky jets, thanks to Mr. Bernard’s largesse.
The truth was Mr. Bernard could be surprisingly caring, treating Harvey like his most favoured acolyte, thinking aloud in his presence. He told him that if he were prime minister he could settle the national deficit one-two-three. He felt strongly that there was too much screwing without rubbers in the Third World and he would put a stop to that. If the Israelis only had the sense to call on him he would also settle the Arabs’ hash.
“You know, Mr. Bernard, we should keep a record of your table talk.”
“For future generations?”
“Yes.”
So the sessions began, Mr. Bernard pontificating.
“You know what’s the greatest invention of western man?”
“No.”
“Interest.”
Mr. Bernard munching cashews, sipping Mascada Blanc, reminiscing.
“Abraham Lincoln (I’m not knocking him, he freed the niggers) he was born in a log cabin in a warm climate, which couldn’t have been that bad. But for Bernard Gursky it was a sod hut on the freezing prairie, which was all my poor father could afford at the time, Ephraim he wouldn’t give him shit. I was Ephraim’s favourite, you know. Big deal. Ephraim always had money for whores and gambling, yesirree, but for his own son? Bupkes. How do I know your tape recorder is working?”