“When you are presented to Mrs. Gursky you will thank her for inviting you to the party. She has a honor of germs. Polio, typhoid, scarlet fever. So if you have to go to the toilet you ask me and I’ll show you where there is one for the guests.”
“You mean even you,” Moses asked, his cheeks hot, “aren’t allowed to use their toilet?”
“You and that temper of yours. I don’t know where you get it.”
The three Gursky brothers had built neighbouring fieldstone mansions on the Montreal mountainside. Mr. Bernard had three children. Mr. Morrie had two, Barney and Charna. And following Solomon’s death his widow lingered on in her husband’s mansion with her two children, Henry and Lucy. All of the Gursky children, secure behind the tall stone walls of the estate, had been munificently provided for. Once through the wrought-iron gates, an awestruck Moses, totally unprepared by his father, was confronted with undreamed-of splendour.
There was an enormous swimming pool. A heated, multi-level tree house, designed by an architect and furnished by an interior decorator. A miniature railway. A hockey rink, the boards thickly padded. A corner candy store with a real soda fountain tended by a black man who laughed at everything. There was a musical merry-go-round (this actually rented for the party) and a bicycle track running along the perimeter. The railway, the corner candy store, the rink and bicycle track had all been built shortly after the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. At the same time the chauffeurs entrusted with all the little Gurskys (except for Henry and Lucy), driving them to their private schools, had taken to carrying arms.
Some twenty children, most of them as petrified as Moses, had been invited to Lionel’s birthday party and they stood in line to congratulate him.
“And what’s your name?” Lionel asked.
“Moses Berger.”
“Oh yeah, your father works for us.”
The party was enlivened by clowns who rode around the grounds in a little circus jalopy. The jalopy, given to backfiring explosively, had an outsize klaxon that played the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (which, in Morse code, also stood for “V for Victory” at the time). There were strolling accordion players and saucy French-Canadian fiddlers dressed like the voyageurs of old. There were jugglers. A torch singer, appearing at the Tic-Toc, dropped by to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. Four middle-aged midgets dressed like six-year-olds sang “The Lollipop Kids”. A magician was flown in from New York. An Indian from the Caughnawaga reservation, appropriately costumed, performed a war dance and then presented Lionel with a tribal headdress, pronouncing him a chief. Mrs. Gursky immediately removed the headdress and warned Lionel that he had to have a shampoo before going to bed. Then there was a birthday cake, large as a truck tire, the marzipan icing cleverly done up like a Time magazine cover, featuring Lionel Gursky, Boy of the Year.
Moses followed the arrows to the basement GUEST FACILITIES, just in time to collide with a flustered Barney Gursky emerging from the bathroom.
Afterward Moses wandered past the pool to the far side of the estate where he came upon two children seated on a swing. The boy seemed to be his own age. The girl, possibly a few years younger, was sucking her thumb. Popping it free, she said, “Why don’t you go back to the party where you came from?”
Henry introduced himself and his sister, Lucy.
“My name’s Moses Berger.”
Lucy shrugged, as if to say so what, slid off the swing and sauntered back to the fieldstone mansion.
“What school are you at?” Moses asked.
“I don’t g-g-go,” Henry said. “I’m not allowed.”
“But everybody has to go to school.”
“I have a t-t-teacher who comes here. Miss Bradshaw. She’s f-f-from England.”
Not to be outdone, Moses said, “My father’s L.B. Berger. You know, the poet. What does your father do?”
“My f-f-father’s dead. Would you like to see my room?”
“Sure.”
Just as Henry jumped off the swing a lady with tangled hair, black streaked with grey, shuffled out of the French doors of the fieldstone mansion. She was barefoot, wearing no more than a baby-blue nightgown, supported on one side by a stout lady in a starchy white uniform and, on the other, by a young man in a white jacket.
“Who’s that?” Moses asked.
“My m-m-mother isn’t well.”
Then to Moses’s surprise, Henry took his hand and held it tightly, leading him into the house.
The living room, the largest Moses had ever seen, was crammed with paintings lit from above, many of them in heavy gold frames. Moses recognized one of them as a Matisse and another as a Braque. He knew as much because his Folkshule teacher, Miss Levy, used the Book-of-the-Month Club News as a teaching aid and in those days the covers featured work by famous artists. But what caught his eye was a clearly outlined blank space on the wallpaper. Obviously a big picture had once hung there. Dangling wires from a lighting fixture were still in place.
Months later Henry told him that the blank space had once been filled by a portrait of a beautiful young lady. When you looked at it closely you saw that one of her eyes was blue and the other brown. Either the painter had been drunk when he was working on the picture or he was crazy to begin with. Lucy had a theory of her own. “I think the lady wouldn’t pay him for the picture, so he got even by painting her eyes in different colours.” Anyway, shortly after their father’s death the picture had been stolen. Everybody had a good laugh at what real dummies the crooks were. They left behind a Matisse, a Braque, and a Léger, among others, and made off with nothing more than a worthless picture by a local artist.
Enormous teddy bears filled every corner of Henry’s huge bedroom. The bed was unmade and Moses could just make out the outlines of a rubber sheet under the linen one. Then he saw the antique lead soldiers arrayed in ranks on the floor. British grenadiers on one side, French dragoons on the other.
“How old are you?” Moses asked.
“Th-th-thirteen.”
“And you still play with toy soldiers?”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Actually Moses wanted to, and the two of them settled on the floor, Moses behind the French dragoons.
“They lost,” Henry said, offering him the grenadiers instead.
“What?”
“W-W-Waterloo.”
As the battle developed, incredibly detailed field pieces being brought into play, Moses really began to enjoy himself. Then, suddenly, he leaped to his feet. “Jeez. I’d better get back. My father will be worried.”
“You’re my prisoner now,” Henry said, racing to the bedroom door, blocking it with his outstretched arms.
“Aw, come on. Don’t be such a jerk.”
Henry, biting back tears, let his arms collapse. “Will you come and p-p-p-play with me again?”
“Offer to pay him,” Lucy said, standing in the doorway. She smiled. Her fist curling over her mouth, her cheeks hollow from the strain of sucking.
“I’ll come again.”
Moses ran all the way back to the party, arriving in time to stumble on its closing ceremony. All the kids were gathered in a circle close to the gates, their beaming parents waiting to drive them home. One of their number, a plump redhead called Harvey Schwartz, wearing a ruffled blouse and magenta velvet trousers, skipped forward and presented a bouquet of red roses to Mrs. Gursky. “This is for our gracious hostess,” he said, kissing a stooping Mrs. Gursky on the cheek, “who was kind enough to invite us here for a day we will remember forever and ever.”
“You’re an angel,” Mrs. Gursky said, wiping her cheek with a Kleenex.