“Gotcha,” he said, slipping out of the room, tiptoeing over to the elevator bank, and then grabbing a taxi at the front door of the hotel. “Take me to a bar where they don’t play loud music.”
Seated on yet another bar stool, Moses pondered Beatrice’s baffling note again. It was three A.M. in Montreal now, but he, phoned her all the same. “What did you mean,” he asked, “that the human question mark was Alexander Pope?”
“Are you telling me,” she replied, her voice hard, “that you don’t remember?”
He began to sweat.
“You mean I’ve been sitting here, unable to sleep, crying because the note I left must have hurt you, and you don’t even remember last night?”
Moses hung up, mortified, and when he got back to the hotel he was confronted by another problem. His open suitcase on the floor was half empty. As it turned out, however, she hadn’t stolen anything. He found his shirts, socks, and underwear in the bathroom, floating in a tub full of water.
Once out at the Industrial Airport the next morning, Moses knew, without asking, which was the right gate for the PWA flight to Yellowknife. The familiar northern flotsam was already gathered there. A knot of chunky young Eskimos with their hair slicked back, wearing heavily studded black leather jackets, stovepipe jeans, and vinyl cowboy boots. Ladies in beehive hairdos and fat coats, lugging plastic bags filled with goods from Woodward’s. There was also a group of northern workers obviously returning from leave, heading back to the oil rigs or DEW line stations, their stakes blown on whores, satisfied that women were shit, life was shit, everything was shit. Bruised and fleshy they were, one of them with his eye badly blackened.
On arrival in Yellowknife, Moses took a taxi directly to The Gold Range, where he knew he would find Sean Riley. Sean ordered two and a juice, but Moses settled for a black coffee.
“It’s like that, is it?” Riley asked.
“Yes. How’s your book doing?”
“When I was a kid, my old man caught me in a lie, it was a visit to the woodshed. Now I get paid for it.”
Moses placed a photograph on the table. “I’d like to know if you saw this old man around here last week, possibly shopping around for a charter.”
“The naturalist from California. Mr. Corbeau?”
“That’s right.”
“Cooney flew him out to King William Island last Wednesday, I think. He figured the old coot was crazy, wanting to camp out there, but there was something about him. Anyway, according to Cooney, he built himself a snow house in a jiffy. Had plenty of supplies.”
“Could you fly me out there?”
“I could find him if I had to.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“I charge ten dollars a mile for the Otter, six for the Cessna, if you agree to help with the pedalling.”
“We’ll take the Otter and we’ll put in overnight at Tulugaqtitut to look in on Henry.”
Henry and Nialie, given only short notice that they would be blessed with guests at their Shabbat table, enabling them to celebrate the mitzvah of hospitality, Hachnasat Orechim, happily stayed up most of the night preparing delicacies. Challah. Gefilte fish. Roast chicken. Tsimmes. Lokshen pudding with raisins. Honey cake. The very best linen was set out on the table and, as a concession to Moses, a prized bottle of fifty-year-old cognac on a side table. Isaac was ordered to bathe and put on a white shirt and tie and smartly pressed trousers before he went out with his father to meet the incoming Otter, Henry’s sidecurls dancing in the breeze.
“Sholem aleichem,” Henry sang out, embracing Moses.
“Aleichem sholem.”
Riley, not wishing to impose on two old friends who seldom got together any more, agreed to drinks at Henry’s house, but would not stay to dinner. “Could be I’m running a fever,” he said. “I think I’ll look in on Agnes McPhee.”
“Abei gezunt,” Nialie said.
After she had blessed the candles, they sat down at the table and Henry pronounced the traditional blessing over his son. “Yesimecha Elohim keEfrayim vechiMenasheh.” May God inspire you to live in the tradition of Ephraim and Menasheh, who carried forward the life of our people.
Henry waited, expectant, but a sulking Isaac didn’t respond until prodded by Nialie.
“Harachaman hu yevarech et avi mori baal habayit hazeh veet imi morati baalat habayit hazeh.” Merciful God, bless my beloved father and mother who guide our home and family.
Isaac, just short of hostile at the table to begin with, soon found himself giggling in response to Moses’s teasing of Henry, amazed that anyone could get away with cracking irreverent jokes about the Rebbe, astonished to see his father drinking more than one cognac. To Henry’s delight, he even joined in when the two men began to sing Shabbat songs, slapping the table with their hands to keep time.
“You know,” Moses said, “the first time I met your father he was just about your age, and we sat on his bedroom floor and refought the Battle of Waterloo with toy soldiers.”
Then, forgetting himself, Moses lit a Monte Cristo. Nialie was about to protest this desecration of the sabbath when Henry silenced her with a wave of his hand. It was, however, too much for Isaac. “How come,” he demanded, “Uncle Moses is allowed to smoke on Shabbat here and I’m not allowed to play hockey with the guys or even watch TV without being scolded for being such a bad Jew.”
“Moishe is not so much a bad Jew,” Henry said, “as a delinquent one.”
“I’ll put it out,” Moses said.
“No,” Henry said, and turning back to Isaac, he added, “And, furthermore, he is not my son. Remember, it is a mitzvah to teach one’s child Talmud Torah, as it is written: ‘Set these words, which I command you this day, upon your heart. Teach them faithfully to your children; speak of them in your home and on your way …’”
“Everything is written,” Isaac said, fighting tears, “even that I’m supposed to have a lousy time, because if it isn’t Shabbes it’s Tishah Be-Av or Shavuot or the Fast of Gedaliah or the Seventeenth of Tamuz or some other shit out of the stone ages. I know. Leave the table. I’m going. Good-night everybody.”
“Oy vey,” Henry said, dismissing Isaac’s outburst with a nervous giggle. “What a difficult age for a boy. Forgive him, Moishe, he didn’t mean to be rude. Excuse me for just a minute.”
Nialie waited until Henry had gone to Isaac’s bedroom, shutting the door behind him, before she spoke up. “He steals,” she said.
“Does Henry know?”
“You mustn’t say a word to him.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t.”
And then Henry was back, laden with weather charts, other documents, and a recently published book, many passages underlined. “According to Dr. Morton Feinberg, a really outstanding climatologist, we are in for it. The new ice age, which is almost upon us, will bring an end to civilization in the northern hemisphere as we know it.”
“Thank God for that,” Moses said, reaching for the cognac bottle.
“Fifty years from now, maybe less, the equatorial countries will dominate the planet.”
“Henry,” Moses said, irritated, “as there was once a School of Hillel and a School of Shamai, so there are now other experts who believe we are in for a different kind of judgement day. They say all the evidence points to the earth’s gradually warming because of the increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which tends to trap a good deal of the earth’s heat. But the hell with all of them. Maybe you should worry less about the world coming to an end and more about Isaac.”