But I stopped myself there this must be projection. Be? sides, it didn't make any difference. All of us ancient combatants or not were long dead. Today, I was merely a stand-in for that long-ago actor, and my role was a mere formality. Hold hands, murmur soothing words, wait for Harry to return with his tail between his legs. On which note I drifted off into sleep.
I didn't sleep long, but when I awoke it was completely dark outside my window. I pulled myself together and dressed. May was downstairs and smiled as I came into the room though I think we both felt a little awkward now. "I was wondering if you'd fallen asleep," she said.
"I did for a while. And I've woken up starving. Why don't we get something to eat?"
"I'll make something."
"Let's go out. On the way over here I thought I saw a Jewish restaurant. If they make a good borscht?"
We put on our coats. The night was cool, with a wind, but the restaurant was just around the corner. It was one of those old-fashioned Jewish restaurants with a counter at the front where ancient men drink tea with lemon, read The Jewish Forward, and pick their teeth. In back, there were cheap tables, chunky waitresses, and excellent food. I had decided I wasn't going to raise the one obvious subject, but then May herself brought it up. As I dunked a piece of potato into my soup, she said, "This is like Russian food, isn't it?"
"Some Jewish cooking is, but this is more Polish. Which has always struck me as funny the Russians and Poles are the most anti-Semitic people on earth, but they're all raised on good yiddisher food. Even the Germans are, a little."
"I remember Harry once saying something like that. He's German, you know. Brightman? Hellman. Heinrich Hell-man? He was born in Berlin. Both his parents died in the First World War and an uncle in Winnipeg adopted him the uncle changed the name."
"So your father was adopted himself, and then he adopted you?"
"I never thought of that. As I said, we never talked about it at all." For a second, her voice seemed to falter, but when she went on, her tone was normal again normal, but self-consciously so, as if she was deliberately trying to erase the desperation she'd shown me before. "I know that his uncle was married, but there were no other children. When he died, he left his fur business to my father. He moved it to Montreal and then expanded to Toronto."
"It seems a strange business to be in. But I suppose not in Canada."
May smiled. "I'm not much of a Canadian. When I was a little girl, he took me to Banff and I saw a bear through binoculars, but that's the closest I've ever been to the wilderness. Actually, you know, you'd enjoy talking to him. He always says that he made his real money out of Russia, not Canada he claims that Stalin made him a millionaire."
I swallowed cabbage roll. "I don't get it."
"Well, I'm not sure how true it is. But as well as manufacturing furs turning them into coats he had an import-export business. In the thirties, he brought in a lot of fur from the Soviet Union."
Once, in Leningrad, I'd gone to one of the fur auctions. It was enormous, with buyers from all over the world. I said, "Did he ever go there? To Russia?"
"Oh yes, several times. You really should talk to him. I know he got to meet one of the important Bolsheviks? not Lenin but? Zinoviev?"
"Yes." It made sense. Zinoviev, a close friend of Lenin's and the first head of the Comintern, had been relatively cosmopolitan and well-traveled qualities that would have made him interested in a foreign businessman intrepid enough to visit post-Revolutionary Russia. Of course, those same qualities had made him the first of the major Bolsheviks whom Stalin had purged. That had been in 1934, so presumably Bright-man had gone before then. "I'd love to talk to him," I said. "There aren't many witnesses from those days still around? and most of those who are don't like talking about it the subject only reveals their own ideological follies."
"Not Harry. He was only interested in money and made no bones about it? which he always claimed the Russians appreciated."
For the first time, I was feeling a glimmer of interest about this man, and suddenly an image of him flashed before my eyes. It had to be pure invention, since I'd never seen him, but it was very vivid just the same. A street market. Stalls. A big, bulky figure wrapped up in a long beaver coat and a large fur hat, his face turning away from me. I said, "I take it that his business was really his life."
She hesitated. "I'm not sure. But no, it wasn't. He sold out about fifteen years ago and he's been happy since. He travels a lot I get that from him. He loves art and collects it? linocuts, woodcuts, that sort of thing. And there's me. He's very devoted to me, he always has been. That's why I know?"
Up to this point, talking about her father objectively, she'd been under control; now her features started to crumple and she worked to get a grip on herself. As deftly as possible, I steered the conversation away. We finished eating, but when we were done it was still only ten. I didn't want to go back to the house, where we'd have to talk some more, so I suggested we walk; after my sleep, I wasn't tired anyway. May explained the city to me: the streets ran north-south, east-west on a grid. We headed up Spadina a broad, barren, windy street then turned east along Bloor. This was obviously a main drag; even in the cold, there were lots of people about, hurrying east toward the bright lights in the distance. That was Yonge Street, May said. Across the road, she pointed out some of the University of Toronto buildings, including the Conservatory of Music, all built in magnificent Victorian-Gothic granite. We continued along in silence, but as we came up to a corner, May pointed down a side street. "He lives just up there? Harry, I mean."
"Can we look?"
"All right. It's not far."
Almost at once, only a few blocks from the center of the city, we were in a solid old residential neighborhood. This was definitely not poverty row: the houses were large Edwardian structures, reposing on generous lawns in the shelter of huge maples and elms, while the curb was lined with BMWs, Mercedes, and good sensible Volvos. A man passed us, a tense smile on his face he was being tugged along by a pint-sized dachshund. After five minutes I wasn't sure where I was, but then May stopped under a streetlight and pointed across the road. "That's the house. Behind the fence."
The fence was low, wrought-iron, with a gate. A tall hedge grew behind it a black mass of shadow and an immense elm dominated the lawn. The house was dark, almost lost behind the tree, but was plainly very large: three stories plus a garret, with a jagged range of peaks, gables, and turrets running across its roof. It might have had an ominous, haunted-house look except for its substance; it was too solid for ghosts. May said, "It's too big for him. He's always saying so, but he can't bring himself to move."