Joshua Then and Now (18 page)

From Seville, he hitchhiked to Granada. Coming out of the Sierras at Motril, Joshua joined the main road from Malaga, and now, just as he had planned, he was following the route of the retreating republican army On January 17, 1937, he remembered, the nationalist attack on Malaga had been spearheaded by mechanized Italian units. Two German cruisers shelled the coastal city daily and, on February 6, as the pride of the Canadiens, Howie Morenz, lay in a hospital bed and Joe Louis signed to meet Tommy Farr, the civilian population was ordered to evacuate, following the road to Almeria. In Ronda, republican zealots threw several hundred of the local bourgeoisie over a clifftop to their deaths. Meanwhile, pursuing nationalist troops, supported by tanks and aircraft, massacred stragglers in the retreating republican column. On this road, Joshua, this very road. The men were killed, but the women spared, if only to add to the Republic’s food crisis. Dr. Norman Bethune was there. For three days and three nights, he and three other men ferried survivors to Almeria.

A few evenings later, when Almeria was choked with refugees, some forty thousand people having reached what they believed to be a haven, the city was heavily bombed by German and Italian airplanes. The airplanes made no attempt to hit the government battleship in the harbor or bomb the barracks, but deliberately dropped bombs in the very center of the town, where the exhausted refugees were gathered. While I, Joshua thought, was learning to play bolo and cheering on Boston’s Kraut Line: Milt Schmidt, Bobby Bauer, Woody Dumart.

Tourists, Joshua discovered, were rare in Spain in 1952, especially footloose young Canadians, and he was amazed, after having endured the grasping French, to find himself treated as a guest everywhere he wandered in Almeria, even bartenders standing him to drinks.
Como su casa
.

Barcelona.

There seemed, at first glance, to be a few of the very, very rich in Barcelona, many who were unspeakably poor, but hardly any middle class to speak of. The rich, he discovered, were for the most part vastly entertaining fellows who had never done a day’s work in their lives and were offended by the very notion of it. Oblomovs abounded. Among them, the engaging but mindless Antonio, who wore a Savile Row suit and drove a sparkling white Austin-Healey. “Given the benefit of a couple of drinks,” Antonio said, “we’re all republicans here. A few more stiff ones, and we’re Communists. But come four o’clock in the morning, man, every self-respecting Spaniard is an anarchist. So we need Franco, don’t you see?”

Yes. Certainly. And the next evening Joshua sailed for Ibiza.

U
NTIL PAULINE WAS CONFINED TO A BED IN THE ROYAL
Vic, adrift on Valium, Joshua had been able to enjoy himself in Montreal even in the pit of winter, out tramping the streets at night, the snow heaped everywhere, the black trees bare. Ears stinging, squeaking powdery snow underfoot, he would ascend the mountain into Upper Westmount, pausing here and there to peer boldly into living room windows, watching families gathered round their crackling fireplaces, proof against icy blasts, playing back the day’s events to each other or maybe perusing spring seed catalogues, planning a better garden. But what he enjoyed most of all was seeking out old classmates to bait. St. Urbain urchins who had struck it rich. Especially Pinsky. Irving Pinsky. “If you need maybe a fire,” Pinsky used to say in the schoolyard, “my father says Shapiro’s the man. What a
yold.”
Pinsky, now a dentist, lived on Summit Circle and could be found there most nights out walking his Russian wolfhound.

“Joshua, what are you doing here?”

“I come up here for the fresh air, Irving. You have no idea how it stinks down below. We even have niggers on our street.”

“You’re supposed to say ‘blacks’ now. How would you like to be called a kike?”

“I’m a Jew, Irving, you’re a kike.”

“Well, you haven’t changed.”

Which was more than he could say for Pinsky. Pimply, scrawny Pinsky had matured into a slender man with curly gray hair. Whiskyad distinguished. He wore his Persian lamb hat at a perky angle, a black cashmere overcoat, a silk scarf, kid gloves, suede fur-lined boots. A world traveler now, he knew what to order for breakfast at Brennan’s in New Orleans, just the right fellow to deal with at Davidoff’s in Geneva, the first day forced Kent asparagus became available at the Guinea in London. He also considered himself something of a lady’s man. And only a month after Joshua and Pauline moved into their house, Pinsky, who had been introduced to Pauline at a concert, saw her waiting by a bus stop. He pulled up in his Mercedes 450SL and offered her a lift downtown. Pauline accepted, joking with Joshua about it. Encouraged, Pinsky phoned the following week to invite them to dinner on Tuesday.

“And how,” Pinsky asked Joshua, the moment he had served drinks, “did a guy like you manage to catch such a lovely wife?”

“Why, thank you,” Pauline said, driving her elbow into Joshua’s ribs.

Pinsky belonged to a gourmet club. He collected vintage wines. And so it was first-rate fare they ate with him and his striving wife, Gilda, off a Belgian lace tablecloth. Irving Pinsky, once celebrated for the sneakers he let rip in Room 42, FFHS, now resplendent in a burgundy velvet dinner jacket worn over a black turtleneck sweater, Gilda’s slack plump arms clattering with gold bands and bracelets. Their faces reflected in the dancing light of silver candlesticks, they drank wine served up in tinted goblets, twenty-five-year-old cognac coming in birdbath-size snifters. But before they even sat down to dinner, Pinsky took them down to inspect his wine cellar, brushing unnecessarily against Pauline on the stairs. They passed through a laundry room, with its twin tubs, into the sanctuary, its up-to-date thermostat set at 13° Celsius. And here a glowing Pinsky allowed a fulminating Joshua to fondle, warning him not to shake unduly, his cherished bottles of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild ’61 and Chateau
Lafite ’66. A leatherbound ledger stood open on a bible stand which had been retrieved from a Lisbon antique shop, and here every bottle was entered, the date of its removal noted, as well as a few pertinent remarks about its body and texture. For future reference. Proffering a bottle of Forster Kirchenstuck ’67, Pinsky asked, “Guess what this baby’s worth on today’s market?”

“Why, I’d say at least twenty-five bucks.”

“More like a hundred,” Pinsky said, quivering with delight. “Ask your absolutely enchanting wife, she’d know.”

After they got home, an amused Pauline told him, “When you went to the toilet, he asked me if I’d like to have lunch with him.”

The next time Joshua encountered Pinsky, out walking his Russian wolfhound, it was the day after Pinsky had returned from his winter retreat at an exquisite little hotel on a remote and as-yet-undiscovered West Indian isle. Fear and trembling showed beneath his taut tanned flesh. “Haven’t you heard?” he asked.

“No. What?”

“It’s terrible. Unspeakable. I’ve been burglarized.”

“What did they take?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Worse. Come,” he said, grieving.

Pinsky led him back to the house and right down to the cellar. “Look at this,” he said. “And this. And this,” thrusting one precious bottle after another at him.

All Joshua could think to say was, “They’re not as dusty as they were the last time I was here.”

“Prick.
Look at this.”

“Oh, my God, there’s no label.”

“Some snake, some pervert, has washed the fucking label off every fucking bottle. The bastard has also moved the bottles around in the racks.”

“I hope you’re insured, Irving.”

“Of course I’m insured. But what can I claim? The police – they sent some jerk of a detective called McMaster here – say nothing’s been stolen. Imagine anybody doing such a thing to me. Why, I keep asking myself.”

“Fortunately, a man with your educated palate could open any one of these bottles and tell not only the vineyard, but the vintage.”

“Certainly. But how would I know which one to open?”

“Red with meat. White for fish.”

“I wish I had your simple tastes.”

Walking was Joshua’s only exercise. Even on the coldest nights, the streets abandoned but the lights glowing everywhere, it used to please him to stroll downtown, past the Forum, as far as the International News Store, to fetch a batch of magazines for him and Pauline to read in bed. But with Pauline in the hospital, things were no longer the same. The children were understandably upset, and when he returned from his walk it was to confront homework problems that confounded him, or to settle squabbles, something he lacked the patience for.

One afternoon he returned from The King’s Arms to find a tearful, pale Susy adrift on the study carpet in a confusion of encyclopedias and other reference books, her own essay pages blank.

“What’s your problem?” Joshua asked.

“It’s my project. I don’t know where to begin.”

“I’ll help,” he said, aware of Alex watching.

“Tell him what you’re into,” Alex said.

“High school education in modern China.”

“How could they ask you to write about that?”

“It was high school education anywhere. I picked China.”

Joshua moaned.

“You told us we should show more interest in other societies,” she reminded him.

“When does it have to be in?”

“Tomorrow morning. Should I make you a Scotch?”

“No. Yes. I’ll give you a note,” he said, avoiding Alex’s eyes.

The pizza Joshua had ordered arrived and they sat down to dinner. Tears rolled down Teddy’s cheeks. “What’s wrong?” Joshua asked.

“She’s looking at me.”

“He says you’re looking at him.”

“Because he shouldn’t eat with his elbows on the table.”

“Why not? I do.”

Teddy glowed.

“You always take his side,” Susy said, fleeing the kitchen.

Joshua turned on Teddy and asked him to stop grinning like a smart-ass.

“I hate her,” he said, running off.

“Well,” Joshua said, smiling at Alex, “haven’t you got anything to say?”

“Sure. But you’d only say no.”

“Try me.”

“Can I register for driving lessons?”

Joshua reached for his Scotch.

“I’d be able to help with the shopping. I could take Teddy to his swimming lessons.”

“O.K. Why not?”

“Oh, yeah. I mean, really?”

“Yeah. Really. I mean, what’s a red-blooded kid your age without wheels?”

“But you didn’t have a car until you were thirty, and at my age you’d read all of Dostoevsky.”

“Yes, but such immortal works as
Fear of Flying
had yet to be written.”

“I didn’t buy the book. Carol lent it to me.”

“Is she that touchingly sensitive gamin with the chewed-out fingernails who’s getting her shit together, as they say?”

“That’s Penny.”

“Then Carol must be the long smelly one with the frizzy hair and the green nail polish.”

Alex laughed, appreciative, and Joshua grinned back, wondering what would happen if he got up to hug him. “Once,” he said, “when I was eleven, my father tried to kiss me and I flinched from him. If he had stayed behind to talk to me for only another five minutes, the cops would have had him.”

Alex waited, hoping for more. But all Joshua said was, “Run upstairs and see what you can do with them, O.K.?”

“Sure,” he said, touching Joshua on the shoulder in passing, “and you know …”

“What?” Joshua asked hungrily.

“I miss Grandpaw. I really do. When’s he coming back from Florida?”

After everyone had gone to bed, Joshua poured himself another Scotch and flicked on the
TV
, catching the last period of the hockey game.

He was half asleep on the sofa when the phone rang, jolting him. Not the hospital, he thought. Please, no.

“Do you know where I’m calling from?”

“No,” he replied, sinking.

“The King’s Arms,” Jane Trimble said thickly. “Why aren’t you here?”

“Because it’s one a.m. and I intend to be up at seven to see that my loved ones get a proper breakfast.”

“I only came here hoping to run into you. Now I’ve been picked up by a young man in computers. He reeks of Old Spice. I’ll bet he wears Jockey briefs,” she giggled. “Multicolored. He put my hand on his thing and asked me if I had ever felt such a big one.”

“Little did he know whom he was dealing with.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. He says older women turn him on. I’m only forty-two, Joshua,” and then she began to cry.

“Go home to bed, Jane.”

“He frightens me. If I go, he’ll follow.”

“Call Jack, then.”

“Oh, sure, call Jack. He frightens me even more. Come and get me.”

“I’m not even dressed.”

“I’ll wait.”

“No.”

“I want to see Pauline.”

“You so much as go near the hospital and I’ll break your arm. And that goes for Jack too.”

“Please come and get me out of this. Please, Joshua.
I have to hang up now. He’s coming.”

Joshua phoned the bar immediately and spoke to George the bartender. “I think you’ve got a lady there.”

“Yeah, she’s been asking for you.”

“Is she in trouble?”

“Well, she’s been necking with this yo-yo, but really leading him on, and now she’s crying and he’s calling her a cock-teaser.”

“Do you think you could get him out of there and send her home in a taxi?”

“Sure,” he said.

Settled, Joshua thought. But he should have known better. A half-hour later the front doorbell rang. “Well,” she said, “Sir Galahad at home.” Sweeping past him into the study, relieving him of his Scotch in passing, she added, “I thought you’d be undressed. How disappointing!”