The Whole Megillah (7 page)

‘That's exactly where a man like you would keep it!'

‘Ha! You are an original, Mr. Bushmill. I'll say that for you. Let me say that I can find the book when it is needed. Is that clear enough for you?' He began lighting a pipe he'd been playing with. I'd watched him scrape, ream, fill and pack the thing. At last he was going to put it to the match. He hardly looked as his fingers worked independently on this, as though it were some hobby of their own, which didn't involve him. ‘You understand, Mr. Bushmill, that I'm an old man. I'm alone in the world. I can't afford to take chances.'

I nodded. ‘But how can we do business, Mr. Kurian? You say you have the Gerson Soncino Megillah, but you won't show it to me.'

‘I wouldn't use the name, Mr. Bushmill, even in this innocent habitation. With death about, one should be careful.'

‘The walls have ears, eh?'

‘And eyes. I wouldn't scoff, if I were you, sir. Think of the dead. Let me freshen your drink.' He got up and brought a bottle with the label ‘Bushmill' and poured what he called a drop into the glass. ‘On an occasion, I once called myself Woolworth simply because someone asked my name suddenly. I happened to see the name on a department store across the road. I think I brought it off.'

‘You're avoiding my question, Mr. Kurian. How can we do business!'

‘Simply enough. You bring your buyer to a place I shall tell you about, at a later date, I might add, and if he is carrying the right kind of money, then I'll part with the book in question. What could be simpler, sir?' He began playing with the pipe again. It had gone out. ‘I see that you appreciate a good ball of malt, Mr. Bushmill?' He laughed. ‘That's a curious name you've taken, sir. It makes talk about drink very difficult. I always tell my friend Father Campbell, who just lives at short walk from here, that the ability to tell good whiskey is the true measure of a man. I can see by the way you are sipping yours a great many things.' I didn't offer him the explanation that I sip all strong drink slowly, so as to drink as little of it as possible. But I wasn't going to throw away his high opinion of me for the price of a little truth telling.

‘Is Father Campbell a connoisseur of fine books as well?' I asked.

‘We are rivals in fact,' he said with a wide smile, lifting a lighted match over the bowl of his pipe as he spoke. ‘Oh, not in a crass commercial way. I don't mean that. But we talk books over the chessboard day and night when I'm in Toronto. He's got a billet at what he calls "The Father Fort" over on Spadina, just north of Harbord. It's run by the Basilians, who are over on Bay Street. He says the Father Fort marks the Basilians' furthest penetration west--in Toronto at least. Although he's a Scot, he's got one of the best minds for Irish writing. A good palate for Joyce especially. Many's the night we've seen the dawn come up over a section of
Finnegans Wake
and a bottle of Old Bush. He was one of the first churchmen to recognize … Jaysus, Mary and Joseph!' he shouted, blowing on his thumb and shaking his arm in the air. When he recovered, his pipe was still unlit, so he tried again, but didn't begin talking until he had taken a few trial puffs. ‘Campbell is a collector too, in a small way. He's the crafty devil, though! He began collecting Hopkins!' Another wide grin covered his face here, to share the rich humour of this observation, which missed me by a kilometre or two. ‘Now, the churchmen could hardly object to that, now, could they? Him being one of themselves and all? Of course, nowadays they leave him alone. He has quite a collection of the ungodly Irish as well as the godly. He divides literature into these classes, you see. Joyce he still considers ungodly, but with chance of improvement. He has the first edition of Dubliners, in a dust-jacket, that I covet shamelessly. I tell him not to put any store in earthly things and make a gift of it to me, but he simply tells me that my queen is in danger and to concentrate on the game. Oh, he's a great fellow.'

‘I'm sure he is, but what exactly do you want me to tell the man I represent?'

‘Damn it all, man! Tell him what you like! Barring this address. I hold you to your honour on that one point, sir. You are the middleman. Arrange things to suit yourself and I promise you that when I have the money, you will quickly have the book.' He gave me a straight, perhaps even honest, look in the eye and rose like a head of state concluding an interview with a foreign ambassador. I got to my feet automatically. In a moment, he had generously shaken me by the hand and delivered me to the corridor with hardly another word. The corridor looked as though it had been refurbished while I'd been in Kurian's room. Perhaps it had taken on a glow from his amazing personality. I walked down the stairs with this thought, such as it was, in mind.

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

I bought myself a good lunch at Dooney's and tried one of those frothy coffees afterwards. Around me on the walls the works of a local painter were hung, but I didn't see anyone admiring them. The main focus in the café was a chess game, which was under way at a table near the front. A bearded man in sunglasses and a yellow straw hat was beating a skinny fellow in torn blue jeans, who was getting useless help from friends to the right and left of him. He seemed to know that he was losing, but didn't understand how.

I'd forgotten it was Saturday until I ran into Lowther's office answering machine. I left a message on it and, with another quarter and a whim, called Honour Griffin. I thought that she might be interested in the good news about the megillah I had for her boyfriend. For five minutes she quizzed me about why I was telling her. Did she think she and Lowther could keep a secret on Bloor Street? She seemed excited by the news, anyway, and it served to make up for her surprise at my knowing about her and Lowther. I could tell that that aspect bothered her. I won dered if Pepper had found out about Lowther. Maybe he wouldn't care. A separated woman's life is her own.

Honour wanted to meet me. I told her that I was just about ready to leave the cafe and that I had things to do, but she talked me into waiting to have coffee with her. I hadn't properly licked the cinnamon off the top of the frothy milk when she walked in, looking around. When she finally spotted me, I was surprised. I hadn't thought she'd taken much interest in me when I met her the first time. Maybe I had the look of a man waiting for the appearance of a beautiful woman.

Honour was that in spades. She had wrapped her long hair around the back of her head in a loose bun, which gave her a fresh, homespun look that went well with the crisp pink cotton dress she was wearing.

‘Hello!' she said with a bright smile.

I shuffled to my feet and nearly blundered into her as she pulled out a chair and sat down.

‘You have had a lucky morning, Mr. Cooperman!'

‘Benny, please. Everybody calls me Benny.'

‘Well, Benny, you've certainly won your spurs. Where on earth did you find it?'

‘That's the part I can't talk about. It wasn't all that hard once I'd figured it out.'

‘You spoke to Mr. Kurian, then?'

‘That's right. It's all fixed. All I have to do is play honest broker between Mr. Lowther and Kurian.'

‘But you're working for Mr. Lowther.'

‘In an imperfect world, we have to take what we can get, Mrs. Moore.'

‘I wish you wouldn't call me that. Even when I was living with Tony, I went by my own name.'

‘You want me to call you Ms. Griffin?'

‘My friends call me Honour, Benny.'

No sooner had the coffee come than she began pulling a strand of hair out of the bun and twirling it around her fingers. In her cool cotton dress, which showed just a suggestion of the underwear beneath, Honour Griffin was stunning. Even the chess players turned away from the game to watch her sip coffee. I tried to keep a clear head.

‘I left a message for Mr. Lowther at his office,' I said.

She nodded and asked, ‘How much does Kurian want for the book?'

‘It's to be negotiated. But really, I shouldn't be talking about this to you. Even though you are a friend of my client, you're not my client.'

She gave a shrug and began worrying the fallen strand of hair unmercifully. ‘What I can't understand is how on earth you were able to find Mr. Kurian.'

There didn't seem to be an answer I could give to that, so I said some thing about telling all when the time was right. This didn't satisfy her, but she knew that it was the best she was going to get out of me.

‘Are you a collector too, Ms.--I mean, Honour?'

‘Not really. But I was interested in Tony's collection. It's quite valuable, you know.'

‘And the Gerson Soncino Megillah was the jewel in the crown?'

‘You might say that. Tony could have got nearly four hundred thou sand for it. You see, he wasn't at all sentimental about his collection. A good deal always overrode any feeling he might have had for an object. He liked to wheel and deal, if you know what I mean. He wasn't one of those collectors who gloat over an item and keep it hidden forever.'

‘He collected guns too, I understand.'

‘Yes, I hated the guns. I warned him that people who keep guns end up getting shot. And you see how right I was!'

‘Hmmm. Could Tony--I'm sorry--could your late husband dispose of any part of his collection without sharing the proceeds with you?'

‘I suppose not. But I've never had a head for that sort of thing. My lawyer says that as long as I was legally his wife, I could rightfully claim up to half of any profit he made. I told him he'd be doing me a favour if he got those guns out of the house. I didn't want any part of them.'

‘But he was willing to share such profits with you?'

‘It never came up. And when the megillah was stolen, we both lost out equally.' She laughed bitterly and lit a cigarette. That was when I first noticed that she was wearing contact lenses. She blew the smoke upwards and the overhead fan caught it and broke it up into a million motes of light. Looking around, I was surprised to see that she was the only smoker in the café. I unwrapped a Hall's and slipped it in my mouth as secretly as possible.

‘I used to help Tony with his collection. Now I'm living very simply, surrounded by other people's things. Living out of a suitcase, really. I'm beginning to find it restful. No clutter, none of those proprietary anxieties. I quite enjoy it most of the time.'

‘People get involved in collections. I've known a few collectors in Grantham. This fellow Dalton, now, he's a collector, isn't he?'

‘He wrote the book. He began with a collection of expulsion notices from all the best private schools in North America. Then he went on to toy banks and lead soldiers--which you've probably heard about. He's got to be a great expert on the American Civil War because he recreated many of the battlefields on tabletops. When he can't put his hand on something he wants, he becomes quite nasty. I could tell you a lot about that side of him.'

‘You had a lead soldier he coveted?'

‘In a manner of speaking. Yes. But I gave it to Tony instead. Wells never forgave either one of us.'

The sun had come out strongly and was burning into the interior of the cafe. I blinked. Honour found a pair of large sunglasses in her bag. She put them on, making the murky mystery of the woman all the darker. Overhead, the ceiling fan turned and the green tendrils of one of the potted plants reached down towards her from the suspended white container. From where I sat, a bright sunflower caught the light. It was painted on a west-facing wall across the street. I was beginning to feel as though I'd better get moving. If I couldn't find Lowther to tell him about the terms Kurian outlined, at least I should appear to be looking for him. I put down some money on the table, enough to cover both of our drinks. Honour smiled and made a half-hearted attempt to make me stay. I think I was a little surprised to find myself out in the street again and not looking at the regular appearance and disappearance of the lacy outline under the top of her dress.

As soon as I got back to Brunswick Avenue, I called Lowther's office again and left another message. The gerbils, indifferent to my return, continued eating a toilet paper cylinder, but the flowers seemed to enjoy a little company. I told myself that real businessmen do not take time off in the middle of the day to have a nap. That's when I fell asleep on the burgundy couch, ready by the phone, poised to wake up if Lowther returned my calls.

When the phone rang, I was running up and down the aisles of Book City, pursued by Mary the bag lady and Honour Griffin. I'd just taken refuge behind the round table when strange shapes began materializing from the antique fireplace behind me. I was glad when the noise that accompanied the shapes became the familiar, if insistent, summons of the phone.

‘Yes?' I tried to read the dial on my watch to see whether I'd slept through the night. I hadn't. It was still Saturday afternoon.

‘Cooperman? Colin Lowther here. You've been trying to get hold of me.'

‘If you're still interested in buying the book we were talking about, I've located it. But it's going to cost you a bundle, as they say on TV.'

‘That's wonderful news! I take it that you were able to locate Mr. Kurian?'

‘What's the difference? If you have enough money, the thing will be turned over to you. It's as simple as that. How high are you willing to go?'

‘Kurian knows that everybody bidding is aware of the book's value. No bargains are going to be made, I'm afraid. Tell him I'll pay three fifty.'

‘That's three hundred and fifty thousand dollars? He calls that "a fair price.'' I don't suppose he'll take a cheque.'

‘Tell him that I have the money in cash. Or that I can get it. Tell him to bring the book to any place where there are lots of people milling around. Get him to name the place or you pick it.'