Cleaning his room, Nialie didn’t quite know what to make of the changes. The pinups of hockey players pasted to the wall (Guy Lafleur, Yvan Cournoyer, Ken Dryden) had been displaced by a row of McTavish labels peeled carefully off bottles that had been soaked in the sink, and a photograph of the McTavish building on Fifth Avenue, scissored out of the last quarterly report.
“What does an ‘adjusted dividend’ mean?” he asked at the sabbath table.
“Search me,” Henry replied.
“‘Amortization of goodwill and other intangible assets’?”
“I’m afraid your father is a prize klotz in these matters.”
“‘A covenant’?”
“Ah. Now we’re talking turkey. We are Am Berit, ‘The People of the Covenant.’ A covenant is what Riboyne Shel O’lem made with us at Mount Sinai, choosing Jews over all the other peoples in the world, liberating us from slavery in Egypt. Now how would you say Egypt in Hebrew?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Come on.”
“Eretz Mitzraim.”
“Yes. Excellent. Now in every generation, each person should feel as though he himself had gone forth from Eretz Mitzraim, as it is written: ‘And you shall explain to your child on that day, it is because of what the Lord did for me when I, myself, went forth from Egypt.’”
Hypocrite, Isaac thought, his only response a smirk. Hypocrite, hypocrite.
“Don’t make such a face to your father.”
“I can’t help how I look.”
“Leave the table.”
Henry waited an hour, tugging absently at his sidecurls, before he went to Isaac’s room. “Is there anything wrong, yingele?”
“No.”
“If there’s a problem, I’m here to help.”
“There’s nothing wrong, I said.”
But when Henry leaned over to kiss him good-night, Isaac slid away from him.
“Do you think I should buy us a TV set?” Henry asked.
“Only if we can afford it.”
Nialie found Henry in the living room. She brought him a cup of lemon tea. “Was he bad to you again?”
“No.”
“You look terrible.”
“I’m fine. H-h-h-honestly.”
A few days later Nialie startled Isaac going through the papers on Henry’s rolltop desk. “What are you looking for?” she demanded.
“A pencil,” he replied, leaping back.
“There’s plenty in your room.”
“Do you know how much he gives to the yeshivas in Jerusalem, never mind the Rebbe?”
“It’s his money.”
“Millions and millions.”
“Shame on you.”
“Yeah, sure. Go to your room. Don’t worry. I’m going.”
Then, his ear to the door, Isaac heard her say, “You ought to lock your desk every night.”
“What have I got to hide?” he asked.
Plenty, Isaac thought. If only she knew. But he wouldn’t tell her. He didn’t dare. Henry, whom everybody took for a holy man, a saint even, hid filthy photographs in his desk. Photographs more revealing than anything Isaac had ever seen in Playboy. They had come in a plain brown envelope from somebody in England and showed a naked woman, a really skinny one, doing amazing things with one man and sometimes two of them.
Nialie confronted Isaac at breakfast the next morning. “How can you be so rude to your father?” she asked.
Because he’s a hypocrite, he thought. But he didn’t say it. Instead he glared at her.
Ten
Condemned to a night in Edmonton before he could catch his morning flight to Yellowknife, Moses checked into the Westin, and then settled into a stool at the bar. Sean Riley was on TV. He was in Vancouver, peddling Bush Pilot, the book about his thrilling adventures in the Land of the Midnight Sun. The pleasantries didn’t last long and then the interviewer, a former Miss B.C. Lion, took a deep breath, swelling her bosom, and asked about Riley’s celebrated crash in the winter of ’64. His passenger, a mining engineer, had died on impact. A month later Riley, who had been given up for dead, limped out of the barrens right into the Mackenzie Lounge in Inuvik.
“As you know, it was rumoured in Yellowknife at the time that you survived your terrible ordeal by resorting to, um, cannibalism. If that’s the case,” the interviewer suggested, flushing, “and, darn it, who’s to say any one of us would have done different—if that’s the case—I’m looking at a guy who has had a very unusual experience, eh?” Then, glancing hastily at one of her index cards, she added. “Now what grabs me is how such an unusual experience has affected you personally and psychologically?”
“Say, I don’t get to appear on TV that often. Do you mind if I say hello to Molly Squeeze Play in Yellowknife?”
“What?”
“Hiya there, Molly. See you in The Gold Range tomorrow. Meanwhile keep your legs crossed, ha ha ha.”
“Does it haunt your dreams?” Shirley Anne asked.
“Molly?”
“Cannibalism.”
“Well, I’ll tell ya, it kind of puts you off your prime rib. Like, you know, it’s so good and sweet. Hardly any gristle.”
The bar was rocking with chattering men and women wearing name tags, educators gathered from all ends of the continent to ponder WHITHER THE GLOBAL VILLAGE? But, as Moses started into his fourth double Scotch, most of them had dispersed, only a handful of dedicated drinkers surviving. Then a lady came flying into the room, out of breath, obviously too late for the party. She snuggled into the stool immediately beside Moses and ordered a vodka on the rocks. “Prosit,” she said.
MY NAME IS CINDY DUTKOWSKI wore a snug woollen dress and carried an enormous shoulder bag. Fierce she was, black hair unruly, petite, forty maybe. She taught Communications 101 at Maryland U. “Say, do my eyes deceive me, or didn’t I see you in Washington last week, rapping with Sam Burns at the Sans Souci?”
“You’re mistaken.”
“I’ll bet you’re also a media personality and I should know your name.”
“Sorry about that.”
“If you tell me your name, I won’t bite.”
“Moses Berger,” he said, signing his bar bill and starting to slide off his stool. She shoved him back.
“Hey, you’re really shy. It’s a form of arrogance, you know. It also protects you against rejections in highly charged social encounters. I was a psych major.” Hers, she said, was an open marriage, which allowed both partners a life-style enabling them to explore their full sexual potential.
“That must be awfully convenient for you.”
“Oh come on. Do I have to spell it out? I’m interested if you are.”
MY NAME IS CINDY DUTKOWSKI scooped up her enormous shoulder bag and they went up to his room, not hers, because she was sharing with a real square, she said, a lady from Montana who undressed in the bathroom. “I’m willing to act out your favourite fantasy, so long as it isn’t too kinky.”
“The usual,” an intimidated Moses said, “will suit me fine.”
In that case, she had a menu of her own. “I’m going to be your laid-back, but secretly horny high-school teacher and you are the nerdy little teenager. I’ve asked you to report to my office after classes, pretending that we have to go over your latest assignment, but actually because I caught you peeking up my skirt when I sat on your desk this morning and it really turned me on. Now you go wait out in the hall and don’t knock on my office door until I call out ‘ready’. You dig?”
“I’m not sure exactly how you want me to behave.”
“Well, you know. You don’t know from nothing. Like Canadian will do.”