St. Urbain's Horseman (34 page)

“Boy, you must be Hope's cousin. You got the same muscles in your shit.”

Waterman intervened. “There might have been some Germans who once thought the Nazi Party was a good thing, but I never met any.”

“They want to leave their past behind them,” Hanley said.

“And you know something, taking the long view,” Jake said, “they weren't such a bad lot. Let's say they murdered six million Jews, say five. Who wanted them? Joel Brand offered Lord Moyne a million of
them in forty-four for some trucks and, as his Lordship put it so succinctly in Cairo, what shall I do with a million Jews? Where shall I put them? Right. And what, gentlemen, are our biggest problems today? Overpopulation and the mother-fucking commies. Six million Jews would have bred at least another six by this time and, let's face it, they would have voted communist in sufficient numbers to have put the reds in power in France and Italy after the war. And then what? Big trouble. You guys would still be based in Trenton, Ontario. Mosquito country. No
PX
. No maids. No supplementary gash.”

“It doesn't surprise me that this Jesse Hope bird is your cousin,” the security officer said.

“Sir, I should have thought anything beyond a Dr. Seuss Beginning Reader would surprise you, but never mind. Skip it.”

“You're a beaut. You really are.”

“Fetch me another one, Waterman.”

“Tomorrow's another day. I think we'd better get you back to your hotel now.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

But, once in Baden-Baden, Jake embraced Waterman and insisted he join him for a nightcap.

“Waterman, I like you. You've got wit. Intelligence. Style.”

Waterman grinned good-naturedly. “Say, is Hope really your cousin?”

“No. I have figured out who he is. Finally. Jesse Hope, also known as Yosef Ben Baruch and Joey Hersh, is the Golem. Surely that surprises you?”

“What's the, um, Golem?”

“A sort of Jewish Batman.”

“Oh.”

“The Golem, for your information, is the body without a soul. He was made out of clay by Rabbi Judah Ben Bezalel in the sixteenth century to defend the Jews of Prague from a pogrom and, to my
mind, still wanders the world, turning up wherever a defender is most needed. You lose much in the game, Waterman?”

“A couple of hundred maybe.”

“Where was he going from here?”

“Frankfurt.”

“Waterman, because you're such an original mind, and lovable, I'm going to let you in on something, a confidence, but you are not to say anything to the security officer.”

“Sure thing.”

“The
CBC
unit coming out here next, week is only pretending to be shooting something called
Freedom's Defenders
. How many air women have you got stationed on the base?”

Waterman appeared perplexed.

“Is it classified?”

“Maybe a hundred.”

“When the
CBC
unit arrives you keep close tabs on them. The truth is they're really putting together a film on lesbians in the armed services. You'd better believe it, Waterman.”

Frankfurt could only mean the Horseman was attending the proceedings against Robert Karl Ludwig Mulka, Friedrich Wilhelm Boger, Dr. Victor Capesius, and others of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“Mengele cannot have been there all the time.”

“In my opinion always. Night and day.”

Dr. Mengele, Jake learned, sitting in the press section, was concerned about the women's block.

“… The women often lapped up their food like dogs; the only source of water was right next to the latrine, and this thin stream also served to wash away the excrement. There the women stood and drank or tried to take a little water with them in some container while next to them their fellow sufferers sat on the latrines. And while this was going on the S.S. walked up and down and watched.”

Bodies were gnawed by rats, as were unconscious women. The women were plagued by lice.

“Then Mengele came. He was the first one to rid the entire women's camp of lice. He simply had the entire block gassed. Then he disinfected the block.”

As Hanna, St. Urbain's blight, had once scuttled from table to table at bar mitzvahs, flashing Joey's picture, stopping strangers in railway stations and shoving the photograph under the noses of startled arrivals in the air terminal, so Jake besieged reporters outside the court house, in bars and restaurants, asking whether they had seen the Horseman at any of the hearings.

“Sometimes when members of the special detail removed the bodies, they would find that the hearts of some of the children were still beating. That was reported and the children were shot.”

“Were there also other methods of killing children?”

“… I saw them take a child from its mother, carry it over to Crematory
IV
, which had two big pits, and throw the child into the seething human fat …”

Nobody at the court house, nobody in the bars, nobody in the restaurants had seen Joey. Neither was he performing in any of the nightclubs or cellars Jake sought out.

“Mengele cannot have been there all the time.”

“In my opinion, always. Night and day.”

If God weren't dead, it would be necessary to hang Him.

J
AKE DIRECTED HIS FIRST FILM IN
1965
AND ANOTHER
the following year. The year Luke won a prize at Venice, not a word was heard of the Horseman, Molly fractured her ankle, Hanna suffered a mild stroke, and he bought the sprawling house Nancy had found for them in Hampstead. In the autumn, Nancy discovered she was pregnant again. She was well into her eighth month, in April 1967, when Jake had to fly to Montreal. Cancer, which had lodged in Issy Hersh's kidney three years earlier, had been cut out, flared again and been trimmed with a knife again, taken root, and spread tentacles throughout his body.

“What can be done?” Jake asked his father's doctor.

“Nothing. He's filled with it from here to here.”

Dragging himself unwillingly back to Issy Hersh's sweltering apartment, which overlooked an Esso service station, Jake sat by the bedside telling his shriveled father how once he was well again they would take in Expo together, with
VIP
treatment laid on, and they would drive to the Catskills, just the two of them, all roads leading to Grossinger's, but Issy Hersh continued to stare at him with large vacant eyes. Jake told him how his own son, Sammy (bound to outlive both of us, the little snot-nose) often asked about the
zeyda
, but this elicited no response from the head lolling on the crushed pillow. He
assured his father that he was happily married. Yes, yes, the old man's eyes responded, but to a
shiksa
.

MIXED MARRIAGES STINK!

Jake sat by his father's bedside and invited him to come to London and stay with them. They would take in the strip shows in Soho together, hornier than anything the old Gayety had ever dared to offer. But Issy Hersh did not react. So Jake began to ramble on about the old days, trying Tansky's Cigar & Soda for size, evoking the summer shack in Shawbridge, but his father, his eyes turned inward, did not smile. Jake promised to buy him a cane, he offered him a new dressing gown. He reminded his father about Saturday mornings at the Young Israel synagogue, he chattered about
seders
past, the first time they had been to the steam baths together, but he could bring no spark to his father's eyes. Finally, he helped Issy Hersh into his dressing gown, trying not to stare at the wasted body, his father's hitherto ballooning belly reduced to an empty flap overhanging surgical cuts that circled him like a belt. Supporting him on his paralyzed side, Jake led him into the stuffy, cluttered living room, and the TV set, where father and son watched the Jackie Gleason show together, Issy Hersh wheezing with laughter, his eyes suddenly sparkling.

“Oh, boy, that Gleason, the crazy fool, the spots he gets into … Do you get the show in London?”

“No,” Jake snarled, and he dared to ask his father a direct question about his mother and the year of their divorce.

“Water over the dam,” his father replied, smiling again, his pleasure-filled eyes claimed by Gleason.

“I know him,” Jake put in angrily.

“You know Jackie Gleason … personally?”

Jake basked in his father's awe.

“In real life is he … such a boozer?”

“Yes.”

Issy Hersh smiled, satisfied, and did not speak again until the commercial break. “Do you get
Bonanza
in London?”

“Yes.”

“He's a Canadian, you know, Lorne Green. A Jewish boy.” Then, as if it was too much to hope for, he added, “Do you know him?”

“In the old days,” Jake said, “I would never use him.”

“You mean to say you could have had … Lorne Green … for a part … and you didn't …?”

“Absolutely.”

Liar, the old man's eyes replied. “He's a millionaire now, you know. He really made it.”

On screen, Bobby Hull tooled down the sun-dappled 401 in a Ford Meteor. Coming on strong.

“You wouldn't know James Bond. What's his name?”

“Yes I do.”

“In real life, what's he like?”

“Natural,” Jake said vengefully. Then, just as his father's gaze was reverting to the TV screen, Jake retrieved him. “He's after me to direct his next picture.”

“Hey, there's a lot of money in that.”

“Would you be proud of me?”

“James Bond. Boy.”

Jake, embarrassed by his lie, said nothing more, and once Gleason was done he supported his father back to the bed he would never quit again. “The trouble is we never talk,” Jake said, “never really talk to each other.”

“Who needs quarrels?”

Jake helped his father out of his dressing gown and eased him on to the bed, where he lay briefly uncovered, an old man in a sweat-soiled vest and shorts, smiling dependently. Reaching for his blanket, Jake caught a glimpse of his father's penis curling out of his jockey shorts. A spent worm. Jake's mouth opened, a cry of rage dying in his throat. Years and years ago, he and Rifka used to listen by their bedroom door on Friday nights, hands clasped to their mouths to suppress giggles, as Issy Hersh padded to the kitchen stove in his
long Penman's underwear, flung the used condom into the sabbath fire, where it sizzled briefly, and then retreated to his bed. Matching singles they had, each with a red chenille bedspread. In another bedroom, Jake remembered, a different time, this cock was my maker. He stooped to kiss his father good night.

“Everybody kisses me these days,” Issy Hersh said, bemused.

“You're popular.”

“Those James Bond pictures are big hits, real money-makers. You should have seen the lineups here for the last one.”

“Yes,” Jake said at the door. “I'm sure.”

“Oh, Yankel?”

“Yes.”

“You get the
Playboy
magazine?”

“Yes.”

“When you're through with them, you could send them on to me. I wouldn't mind.”

Issy Hersh's wife, Fanny, risen from the basement with a basket of laundry, waylaid Jake in the hall.

“I love your father, he's been a wonderful husband to me, I'm taking excellent care of him.”

“I'm grateful. So is Rifka.”

“They wanted to put him in an incurable hospital, they said it would be too much work for me, but I said no, he's not going to die there.”

“For Chrissake, he isn't deaf. He can hear us.”

“It's good you came here. You must be doing very well.”

“What?”

“Well, the trip from England is expensive. I'm so glad you're doing well and that we've grown fond of each other. You and your wife will always be welcome here. I'm not one of your aunts, a snob. I don't look down my nose.” Now she paused, a hedge-shy horse before the big leap. “Being Jewish isn't everything.”

“I'll tell Nancy you said that. See you tomorrow.”

The next evening, the first night of Passover, Rifka came with Herky and their two rowdy overfed boys. Lenny was twelve, Melvin only five years old. Fanny had set up a bridge table in the bedroom for the
seder
and Jake, a skullcap balanced on his head, rose to ask the four questions falteringly. Turning to his father on the bed he recited, “Why is this night different from all other nights? For on all other nights we eat either bread or matzoh, but tonight only matzoh. For on all other nights we eat any vegetable, but tonight – bitter herbs.”

The old man's eyes were glazed; he made no response.

Years ago, Jake recalled, when the time had come to pass around the hard-boiled eggs, his father had unfailingly grinned and asked, “Do you know why the hebes dip their eggs in salt water on
Pesach?”

“No, Daddy. Why?”

“Because when they crossed the Red Sea, the men got their eggs soaked in salt water.”

Jake continued: “For on all other nights we do not dip our vegetables even once, but tonight –”

It was the doorbell; Elijah the Prophet come early to claim his cup.

“The doctor!” Fanny exclaimed. The long-awaited specialist. A Gentile.

Let me take your hat, sir. This way, sir. Thank you, sir.

They all waited in the living room while the specialist examined Issy Hersh, his unnervingly cheery voice carrying clearly through the wall.

“Well, well. You don't look that bad. How old are you?”

“Sixty-five, sir …”

“When were you born?”

Issy Hersh surfaced with a date. Another century's wintry morning in a Galician
shtetl
.

“What's today? Can you tell me?”

“Wednesday … no, no … Tuesday …”

“Can't always get out just the word you want. Is that right?”