Solomon Gursky Was Here (32 page)

“No, madam.”

“Well, then.”

He padded after her into the bedroom and the first thing he did was to show himself and piss into the chamberpot. “Empty it,” he said.

Retreating into a corner, she began to weep.

“Do as I saith.”

She emptied the chamberpot and then blew out the candle. He thrust her on to the bed and she would not remove her long flannel nightgown but raised it, hiding her face. He let that go the first time, which was quick for both of them, but before he took her again he relit the candle and made her shed her nightgown and look on him. Afterward, even as she wept softly, he retrieved his package, undid the string, and dumped his coal black laundry on her sweaty body. “I will not leave here before dawn,” he said, “if it is not ready for me.”

The following Sunday, with an especially jolly Mr. Nicholson there, Ephraim mortified her by teasing her with his foot under the table when they sat down to supper together. He was more than somewhat surprised when she did not come to him by the fireplace once Mr. Nicholson had begun to snore. But then, in the early hours of the morning, she was there, rousing him from a deep sleep with her foot. “I had expected you earlier,” he said. “Go back to your room.”

Stung, she turned to flee.

“Wait.”

She paused.

“Here,” he said, tossing her his parcel.

The next Sunday no sooner did Ephraim sit down to the deal table for his lesson with Mr. Nicholson than Mrs. Nicholson swept into the room, her needlework to hand.

“You will not sit here through my lessons any more,” Ephraim said.

Mrs. Nicholson fled.

“Oh dear,” Mr. Nicholson stammered, “what have you done now?”

“You are a sweet man, sir, of kind and gentle disposition, but I am not of your sort.” Unbuttoning him, he added, “In payment for these lessons and because I hold you in high regard I will do this much for you, but no more.”

Afterward Mr. Nicholson took off through the back door, charging across the heath in a turmoil.

Ephraim took Mrs. Nicholson by the hand and led her toward the bedroom.

“Are you mad?” she demanded, hanging back.

“Mr. Nicholson will not be back until the morning. It is arranged.”

Monday, and through the rest of the week, Mr. and Mrs. Nicholson did everything possible to avoid each other. They ate in silence. If their eyes met, she blushed and his lower lip began to tremble. On Saturday he pretended not to be aware of her weeping over the kitchen sink. Peeling potatoes, she cut herself. The sight of her blood was too much for him. He repaired to The Wagon and Horses and lingered there until closing time and had to be helped home by two of his young friends. “Easy does it, Auntie.”

Sunday was intolerable.

“Bolt the door. We won't let him in, Mr. Nicholson.”

“Yes.”

But when they heard him singing on the cinder path they both leaped up. She raced to undo the bolt, but he managed to be the first to greet him.

Because she was knitting him a sweater he presented him with the gold pocket watch that he had inherited from his uncle. When she splurged on a joint for Sunday night dinner he hurried out and bought a bottle of claret for them to share at their lesson. Other accommodations were made, but not spoken of. She, for instance, would wind into her shawl and go out for a stroll while they were at their lessons. Then he would leave the cottage and not return until Monday morning. In return for his consideration, on Wednesday nights she now retired early to her bedroom and allowed him to entertain his young friends from the poetry society. In preparation for these visitations he sometimes borrowed one or another of her garments, but she did not taunt him with Deuteronomy, Chapter 22, verse 5. Neither did he remark on the scent she trailed on Sunday mornings.

Ephraim carried on until he grasped that his knowledge of Latin and penmanship far surpassed Mr. Nicholson's ability to help him
further. There was something else. One Sunday night he observed how her breasts had begun to swell and the dark brown nipples trickled an unfamiliar sweetness. Only then did he notice the thickening of her waist.

The following Sunday Mr. and Mrs. Nicholson sat and waited until after dark and still he did not appear.

“He's not coming,” she said.

“Nonsense, Mrs. Nicholson. He's been late before.”

“You don't understand,” she said, weeping, “your uncle's candlesticks are gone.”

Pearls of sweat blossomed on Mr. Nicholson's forehead.

“It's your duty to inform the authorities,” she said.

W
EARING HIS NEW SWEATER
, carrying a gold pocket watch, the candlesticks, and a purse with five pounds and twelve shillings in it, Ephraim quit the mine in Durham and started out on the road to London. He also had with him some mementoes from his father's house. Phylacteries, a prayer shawl, and a Hebrew prayer book.

Who knows Four? I know Four: Four the Mothers, Three the Fathers,
Two the Tablets, One is God in Heaven and Earth.

Who knows Five? I know Five: Five the books of the Torah, Four the Mothers, Three the Fathers, Two the Tablets, One is God in Heaven and Earth.

Spring it was, the earth moist and fragrant, rhododendrons and azaleas in blossom.

Ephraim never saw Mrs. Nicholson again, or laid eyes on his son, the first of what would become twenty-seven unacknowledged offspring, not all of them the same colour.

Eight

“What did you think, Olive?”

“I'm not saying, because you'll just point out a boo-boo and spoil this movie for me too.”

As usual, they went to The Downtowner for a treat. Mrs. Jenkins gave him what she hoped was a piercing look. “I'll bet you've had a wife stashed away somewhere all these years, Bert, with grown kids, and she's finally tracked you down for back alimony payments.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“The shyster from Denby, Denby, Harrison and Latham who came to see you, what is it a month now? You still haven't told me what he wanted.”

“It was a case of mistaken identity.”

“Don't look now, Pinocchio, but your nose just grew another three inches.”

“Mr. Hughes was looking for another Smith.”

“Then how come you get all that mail from those lawyers and suddenly you keep a locked strongbox under your bed?”

“You've been snooping.”

“What are you going to do about it? Move out. Go ahead. Make my day. For all I know your name isn't even Smith. Bert,” she said, covering his hand with her own, sticky with chocolate sauce, “if you're wanted by the cops you can count on Olive, your only pal in this vale of tears.”

“I've never broken a law in my life,” he said, sliding his hand free before anybody saw.

“Hey,” she said, giggling, “what's the difference between a lawyer and a rooster?”

He didn't want to know.

“A rooster clucks defiance.”

He didn't even chuckle.

“It's a play on words, Bert. I'll explain it to you, if you want.”

“That won't be necessary.”

“Said the farmer's daughter to the preacher.”

Rattled, Smith paid both their bills for once and left a sixty-five cent tip in the saucer.

“I think somebody's ship has come in and he's not telling.”

Pleading a headache, Smith did not join her in the parlour that night to watch “Kojak”.

“Somebody saw you come home in a taxi last Tuesday, but you got out at the corner so that Olive couldn't see from her window.”

“I was feeling dizzy.”

“Bert, whenever you're ready to spill the beans, I'll be waiting. Meanwhile,” she sang, “I'll tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree.”

“Thank you.”

“Loyalty is my middle name. Let's just hope it's yours too, old buddy of mine.”

The legacy, which Smith was told had been left to him by his late Uncle Arnold, who had died childless in Hove, had come to $228,725.00.

“But I thought it was fifty thousand pounds,” Smith had said.

“That was in 1948. It was invested on your behalf.” Trudging through the driving snow, Smith had taken the certified cheque right to the Royal Bank. Deposited it. Started home. Panicked. Hurried to the Westmount post office to rent a box. Then back to the bank to tell them no statements were to be mailed to his home address any more, but only to his P.O. number. He was back first thing in the morning to test things, drawing two hundred dollars in cash.

Smith decided that he was too old to have his teeth fixed. He considered buying a Harris tweed jacket, some shirts that weren't drip-dry, a pair of wingtip shoes, but Mrs. Jenkins would demand to know where the money had come from. Strolling through Eaton's, he saw a small refrigerator that would do nicely for his room. He came across an electric kettle that would be a blessing. He
could fix himself a cuppa whenever he felt the urge. Not Salada tea bags, either, but Twinings Darjeeling. No, he didn't dare. Olive never missed a trick.

“What do you make of Murph Heeney in number five, Bert?”

Heeney, the new roomer next door to him, was a big bear of a man, hirsute, a carpenter, never without a bottle of Molson Export in his paw.

“He's not my type.”

“Guessy guessy what I found under his bed? A stack of
Playboys
. Certain pages stuck together with his spunk.”

Olive Jenkins turned Smith's shirt collars. If he was feeling poorly she climbed the stairs to his room with beef tea made from an OXO cube. During the longest week of the month, the week before his pension cheque came, she had fed him bangers and mash or toad in the hole for supper. Well, now he could buy her a new colour TV or treat her to a movie and Murray's for supper once a week. No. She'd smell a rat. “Where did you get the do re me, Bert?”

All that money in the bank. He could visit the Old Country, see where his parents had come from. Lightheaded, he ventured into Thomas Cook & Sons and inquired about ships to England, astonished to discover that now only Polish or Russian liners sailed from Canada, which would never do. But the insolent young clerk, his look saying you just stepped in here to get warm, you old fart, still stood before him, reeking of pansy aftershave, brandishing ship plans with cabin locations, quoting fares.

“Would that include meals?” Smith asked.

The clerk, cupping a hand to his mouth, failed to squelch his laughter.

“I suppose you own this establishment,” Smith said, fleeing.

Smith continued to draw two hundred dollars a week from his account. He stashed what he didn't spend, which was most of it, in a hiding place that he had prepared by sawing through a floorboard one night. He took to treating himself to solitary lunches at Murray's, requesting a table in the rear, but even so he started whenever the door swung open. Most afternoons he stopped at Laura Secord's for a half-pound of cashews or chocolates, and then he would move on
to the lobby of the Mount Royal Hotel or Central Station, never going home until he had finished every last bit.

“Where have you been all day, old buddy of mine?”

“Looking at magazines in the library.”

“What did you do for lunch?”

“Did without.”

Not according to her information.

“As the vicar said to the rabbi's wife, I think we ought to have a little chat.”

She made tea. And when he sat down she spotted his new socks at once. Argyle. Knee length.

“Bert, I want to know if you're shop-lifting.”

He was stunned.

“If you're short, Olive will see you through, but you must tell me if you're in trouble.”

He shook his head no, and started for his room. Mrs. Jenkins followed him to the foot of the stairs. “You never used to hold out on good old Olive.”

“Maybe I'm not the only one who's changed.”

Once Smith had been the only one favoured with a special place in Mrs. Jenkins's refrigerator, but now the shelf below his was crammed with bottles of Molson that rattled whenever the door opened or the engine started up. Saturday night TV with Olive, the two of them resting their tootsies, as she liked to say, sharing Kool-Aid and Twinkies, watching the Channel 12 movie, was now also a thing of the past. Olive no longer wore any old housecoat on Saturday nights, her hair in curlers. Now she was perfumed and girdled, Shirley Temple curls tumbling over her cheeks, wearing a candy-floss pink angora sweater a size too small and a green miniskirt, her fat legs sheathed in black fishnet stockings and her feet pinched into fluffy white slippers with baby-blue pom-poms. And it was “Hockey Night in Canada” on TV, the parlour stinking of spilt beer and pizza and White Owl cigars, Murph Heeney in attendance.

“Hey, Olive, how am I gonna concentrate on the power play when you're making me feel so horny?”

Olive shrieked with laughter, squirting beer. “You'd better clean up your act, buddy, because after these messages.… Here comes Johnny! Whoops, I mean Bert, my loyalist pal in this tear of vales.”

“Am I intruding?”

“Naw,” Heeney said. “Come on in and haunt the room for a while, Smitty, you old turkey you. Canadiens 3, Chicago 4, with eight minutes to go. Time is becoming a factor.”

Smith fled to his room, scandalized, and the next morning he slipped out early for an Egg McMuffin breakfast at McDonald's. Then, stepping out into the slush, he searched for a taxi. He waved off the first to slow down, because it was driven by a black man, but got into the next one.

“Central Station, please.”

“Hey, you know who once warmed their arses right where you're sitting right now, mister? Nathan Gursky and his wife. Big bucks that. So I asked him for his philosophy of life. I collect them, you know. He says his old man taught him all men are brothers and his wife laughs so hard he turns red in the face. Guess where he's going? Old Montreal. His shrink. How do I know? His wife says, ‘At those prices please don't sit there for an hour saying nothing but um, ah, and er to Dr. Weinberg. Tell him the truth. Now it's Lionel you're afraid of.' Imagine that. All those millions and he's a sicko.”