“Morrie’s had enough of you. He’s tired of bringing up his breakfast every morning. He’s retired to the country with Ida and the kids.”
Mr. Bernard descended on Morrie’s secretary. Terrified, she drew a map that would enable him to find Morrie’s place in the Laurentians. Threatened, she told him about Morrie’s workshop. Cursed, spat at, she snitched about the furniture-making. Mr. Bernard fired her. “Take your handbag and that nail file, the sound drives me crazy, and take your ten-cents-a-gallon perfume from Kresge’s and your Kotex box and get the hell out of here.” Then he called for his limousine and sped out to Ste.-Adèle.
Morrie, forewarned, waited in the living room, his head resting on Ida’s lap. Then he roused himself and stood by the window, cracking his knuckles. When Mr. Bernard finally pulled into the long driveway and pounced out of his limousine, he did not start immediately for the large renovated farmhouse on the hill overlooking the lake. Instead, a startled Morrie watched him make straight for the vegetable garden. Yanking out tomato plants. Trampling on lettuce beds. Kicking over cabbages. Jumping up and down on eggplants, popping them. Pulling a pitchfork free of a manure pile and swinging away at corn stalks. Then he rushed to the front door, pounding on it with his fists. “Look at my suit! Look at my shoes! I’m covered in farm shit.”
He squirted right into the dining room, pulling a linen cloth off the table, sending a vase of roses crashing to the pine floor, and wiping his hands and then his shoes clean of eggplant pulp.
“Tell him that you’re not going back!” Ida shrieked.
“What was your father? A little Jew in a grocery store with a scale that gave fourteen ounces to the pound, living in a shack that didn’t even have an inside toilet. You went into the outhouse for a crap, you had to guard your balls against bumblebees. Now you wear diamonds and mink I risked life and limb to pay for. Go to your room at once. I have to talk to my brother.”
Ida fled, pausing at the top of the stairs to shout “Hitler!” before slamming the bedroom door and locking it from the inside.
“If God forbid she was my wife I’d teach her some manners let me tell you. What did you pay for this dump?”
Morrie told him.
“How many acres?”
“Thirty.”
“Big deal. If I wanted a place in the country, I’d have a hundred acres at least and I’d be on the sunny side of the lake in a bigger house, where the floors didn’t creak.” He shook with laughter. “They must have seen you coming, you putz.”
“I suppose so.”
Mr. Bernard went to the window. “Is that,” he asked, pointing at an obviously new clapboard building, “the workshop where you make the furniture?”
“Yes.”
“I’m told that you accept orders for bookshelves and that you actually sell the stuff through a shop in Ste.-Adèle.” Mr. Bernard scooped up a delicate side table. “You made this itsy-bitsy fuckshit table?”
“Yes.”
“How much are you asking for it?”
“Ten dollars.”
“I’ll give you seven,” Mr. Bernard said, counting out the bills, “because if you sell direct to me, you don’t have to cut in the goy shopkeeper in Ste.-Adèle.” Then he kicked over the table and jumped up and down on it. “You are my brother, you cuntlapper, and if the rich anti-Semites in Ste.-Adèle are buying your shit, it’s only because they can say, hey, you know who made that crappy lopsided little table for me for ten dollars? Mr. Bernard’s brother. You can’t do this to me. I want you back in the office eight o’clock tomorrow morning, or I’ll take an axe to that woodshop.”
Morrie gathered together the remains of his table and set them down beside the fireplace.
Out of breath, Mr. Bernard subsided to the sofa. He wiped his face with a handkerchief. “What have you got for dinner?” he asked.
“Veal chops.”
“What with?”
“Roast potatoes.”
“I had that last night. Would she make me some kasha instead?”
“I could ask.”
“Better say it’s for you. Hey, remember Mama’s kishka? She always had the biggest piece for me. But I was her favourite, eh?”
“Yes.”
“What have you got for a starter?”
“There’s some borscht from last night.”
Mr. Bernard yawned. He stretched. He raised a buttock and farted. “Eddie Cantor’s on tonight. You got a radio here?”
“The reception is not very good in the mountains.”
“I suppose we could play some gin. Aw, forget it. I can eat better at my place. But a Popsicle would hit the spot. You wouldn’t have any in the ice-box, would you?”
“Didn’t I know you were coming?”
Morrie brought out a couple of Popsicles, crumpling the wrappers.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Mr. Bernard asked, retrieving the wrappers and flattening them out. “You fill out the coupon in back you can win a two-wheel bicycle. What time can I expect you back in the office tomorrow morning?”
Morrie began to crack his knuckles again.
“Morrie, be sensible for once. Without you, how am I going to settle my quarrels with Solomon? I need your vote so that I can beat him fair and square.”
“I’m tired of being pressed in a vice between the two of you.”
“Good. Tell him!” shrieked a voice from the top of the stairs.
An outraged Mr. Bernard shot out of the sofa, his arms extended, his fingers curled. Ready to scratch.
“If I ever made you kasha, you oysvorf, it would be sprinkled with arsenic,” Ida shouted, scooting back into her room and this time shoving her dresser against the door.
“You have no idea what Solomon’s like now,” Mr. Bernard said, sinking back into the sofa, “our crazy brother. We were better off when he was chasing nooky. Now he stays overnight in the office, sometimes with Callaghan, the two of them knocking back a quart each, and he listens to the shortwave radio, fiddling with the dial all night. Hitler makes a speech, he never misses it.”
“I’m not coming back to the office any more.”
“I’ll give you until Monday morning out here, but that’s it.”
Mr. Bernard got home after dark, but he knew better than to telephone Solomon at his place. There was no point. He was never there. And in the morning Mr. Bernard discovered that Solomon was in Ottawa again, stirring things up, at a time when the last thing the Gurskys needed was more enemies in high places.
Solomon told MacIntyre, “I have acquired two thousand acres of farmland in the Laurentians as well as—”
“Where in the Laurentians?” MacIntyre demanded.
“Not far from Ste.-Agathe. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, Ste.-Agathe,” MacIntyre said, relieved. “For years now I’ve taken my holidays winter and summer at Chalet Antoine in Ste.-Adèle. Do you know it?”
“No. I’ve acquired two thousand acres, as well as a large herd of beef and dairy cattle, and I have a list of people who promise to settle there.”
“Mr. Gursky, are you seriously asking me to consider placing more Jews in the province of Quebec?”
“And why not?”
MacIntyre sent for a file. “Look at this, will you?” It was an editorial page clipping from Le Devoir. “The Jewish shopkeeper on St. Lawrence Boulevard does nothing to increase our natural resources.” Then he passed him a copy of a petition that had been delivered to parliament by Wilfred Lacroix, a Liberal MP. The petition, signed by more than 120,000 members of the St. Jean Baptiste Society opposed “all immigration and especially Jewish immigration” to Quebec.
“If it would facilitate matters, I could buy land in Ontario or the Maritimes.”