Son of a Smaller Hero (26 page)

Noah slapped his arm and killed a mosquito. “I’ll have a drink,” he said. “You?”

“All right.”

Her needs were contradictory. She despised him for what she thought he was going to say, but, on the other hand, she was afraid that he was suffering immensely, and that made her feel tender towards him.

He told her about the scrolls that his father had supposedly died for. He said that he couldn’t believe it. He told her about Melech’s letters, and about the empty tin of kerosene. “There is the kind of Jew,” he said, “who gets the same nourishment out of a
Goy
as the worst type of communist gets from a lynching in the south. Take the
Goy
away from him and you’re pulling out the thread that holds him together.” Those people in the next valley, the ones who were having a party, were playing music loud. The music came to them in gusts. “Another kind of Jew claims all the famous dead and flings them into the faces of prejudiced persons like bits of coloured paper. Einstein, he says. Anti-Semites always begin by telling you that Jesus Christ was a Jew. The Rosenberg case, if it didn’t prove anything else, proved that the middle-class Jew is more middle-class than Jew. Hell, that wretched judge.”

“Hold on,” Miriam said. “I’m going to get more soda. I’ll be right back.”

Noah got up and walked over to the road and picked up a pebble and tossed it towards the stream. The pebble swooshed through the trees, bounced off a rock, and plopped into the water.… A frog croaked. There were plenty of fire-flies. “Hell,” Noah said.

Somebody shrieked at the party in the next valley. Laughter followed, splattering into the night. A bottle crashed. More shrieks, more laughter.

“Noah?”

“Coming.”

Drinks were poured, but they didn’t start talking right away.

Miriam wept inwardly, certain that this was their final night and hoping against that certainty. She recalled all the devious routes,
beginning with Queen Street, that had brought her to these porch steps to share a bottle with a rueful lover. “Tired?” she asked.

“No.”

He’s resentful, she thought, because I pushed him away from me in the bedroom.

“Funny,” Noah said. “Ten years ago a man who was religious was a fool or a liar. Now the pendulum has swung back.” He laughed. “The West have got God again the way the middle-aged light up on their childhood. If God weren’t dead I guess he’d be editing
Time
today. Maybe he is. Who knows?”

There was a fine, cool smell to the night. The moon, red and altogether too pretty, was high and perfectly round in the pitch-black sky.

“I’m getting drunk,” she said.

He grinned and brushed her hair back with his hand and momentarily felt a resurgence of his old love for her. Changing, he thought. Even two people sitting together, two people who know each other damn well, and there’s always the changing back and forth.

“It’s too bad,” he said, “that there is no longer anything that one could wholly belong to. This is the time of buts and parentheses. All that seems to remain are one’s responsibil … Oh, Miriam, I wish that most men – me included – were taller and all women lovely. I …”

Two headlights shone into their eyes, then moved sideways and away. There was the clean hard knock of pebbles being kicked up on the road – and then the car appeared. A woman leaned out and shrieked and waved a bottle at them. They couldn’t make out what she had said. Then zoom and away. Tail lights, red, into the night.

“I guess they’re coming from the party,” she said.

“I’ll bet they’re back in an hour,” he said. “They’ll swim in the lake. Somebody will catch somebody with the wrong somebody and …”

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Noah felt the liquor taking hold. He wanted to make love to her, but he couldn’t. He wanted to tell her that he was leaving her, but he
couldn’t do that either. Heart, he thought. I wonder if she’ll ask me when the time comes, ask me like he asked her, if there was a light. Well, he thought, my father was a hero. That calls for another drink. He emptied the bottle and then flung it into the grass. “Cheers,” he said. He stared at the dark trees that wobbled just a bit before him and listened for the rushing of the water between the rocks. The stag at eve had drunk its fill/As danced the moon on Monan’s Rill. Christ, he thought. I should have hit Itzik. “Miriam.” She didn’t answer. Noah got up. He staggered into the living-room. She was seated on the sofa. “Miriam?” She puffed hard on her cigarette and he made out her face as something chill and quite alone in the quick light.

“Noah, did you come here to tell me that we’re through?”

He choked. “I came here to ask you to marry me,” he said.

Again her face in the quick light. She wielded that cigarette like a star. He followed it with fascination and because he couldn’t bring himself to look into her eyes. Why did I say that? he thought.

“You’re drunk,” she said.

“All right. I’m drunk.”

“When shall we get married?”

“Whenever you like,” he said, swaying.

“Do you love me?”

“I did, but … I – I feel a tremendous affect …”

“Pity?”

He felt something knot deep inside him.

“It’s not good enough, Noah.”

The bottom has fallen out, he thought. He turned away from her. “What’ll you do?” he asked.

“That’s none of your business.”

He sat down beside her and tried to take her in his arms, but she moved away.

“Are you going to take care of
her?”
she asked.

“Yes.”

“Is that why?”

“No.”

“You’re a fool.”

“Perhaps.”

“A coward.”

“I want to rest for a bit. I’m confused. So much has …”

“So you’re going to become a member of the community after all?”

“I didn’t say that.”

The room began to brighten a bit.

“I’ll be able to forgive you everything in time,” she said. “Except your having had to get drunk. Except your having asked me to marry you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Oh, go to hell.”

Noah got up and began to pace the floor with the exaggerated care of the drunk. He paused by the window. The moon, a pallid thing, began to fade away. A mist settled on the woods. The sun was like a fire in the pine trees on the far hills over to their right. Creeping higher surely.

“It’s morning,” she said. “Would you like something to eat?”

“No.”

She came up from behind and kissed his head tenderly. She hugged him fiercely for the briefest instant. “Noah,” she said. Said, involuntarily, just before she let him go. “It’s morning,” she said. He froze by the window. A wire seemed to tighten around his heart.

“I’ll never be able to forgive myself for what I’ve done to …”

“Please go,” she said.

“Miriam, I …”

“Haven’t you any consideration for me? Go. Please go.”

She crumpled up on the sofa. Noah moved towards her and then turned around, having thought better of it. The screen door banged louder than her weeping.

Outside, there was a mess of cigarette butts on the porch steps. Sun glistened on the empty whisky bottle that had been flung into the grass.

It was going to be a fine day.

S
TE. AGATHE DES MONTS IS QUITE HIGH IN THE
Laurentians, about sixty-five miles from Montreal. It is built in the foothills that finally drop into a wide blue lake called Lac des Sables. Ste. Agathe did not flourish until the Outremont Jews discovered it around 1941, and brought the boom with them. Old hotels were remodelled and enlarged, new ones went up almost over-night. Speculators, like Max Adler, outdid each other throwing up quick cottages that had Frigidaires and indoor plumbing – as opposed to the outhouses of their boyhood in Shawbridge. The quiet lake erupted in a roar of motorboats. A riding academy was opened, and summer camps – sometimes with a child-psychiatrist in attendance – were opened for the sons and daughters of the second-generation Jews.

Dr. Harry Goldenberg’s cottage was located on a quieter part of the lake. Several days after
Shivah
had ended Noah and his mother came up to stay for a few weeks. Shawbridge, long ago, had been split into two camps. The orthodox and the communist. But Noah noticed that the split in Ste. Agathe was vastly different. On one side there were men like Max. Max Adler had a pinball machine in his living-room. His basement was furnished like the gaudiest of nightclub bars. All his friends were quickly introduced to the wonders of
his sunken bathtub, and – women in particular – to the air vent concealed in the floor of the first-floor landing that blew their skirts over their heads if the pressure was released as they passed. The flower bed on the lawn spelled
ADLER
when in bloom. In the other camp were doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and several of the more cultured abortionists. Harry Goldenberg was kind, but very sensible. A bookcase with a glass door protected his set of the Harvard Classics. Mrs. Goldenberg subscribed to
Commentary
. There were two children. Harvey was a law student at McGill and on the executive of the Hillel Society. Sheila, a year younger, was training to do social service work and was engaged to Larry Gould, the lawyer’s son. Harvey, Sheila, and Larry were all employed at a children’s camp several miles away and came into Ste. Agathe two or three nights a week. Harry Goldenberg had instructed family and friends to do their best to make Noah feel “at home.” Noah, however, did not at first respond to his uncle’s kindness. He avoided all of them. He took his mother for a walk every morning and the rest of the day he wandered off by himself. He didn’t even visit Max. The beaches of Ste. Agathe were sandy and on a lake instead of a yellow river. There were no fat ladies in bloomers. Only the elderly spoke Yiddish. Instead of dancing to jukeboxes on the balconies of general stores the young, splendidly dressed, danced on tiled terraces to the music of hotel bands.

Noah had his problems. His father’s body, the toes turned inwards, robbed him of sleep. He wrote letter after letter to Miriam, then tore them up. Evenings he sat in the bar of the Hotel St. Vincent and stared at that faded, tattered photograph of Melech with a giggling girl in his arms. He wandered over all the hills that surrounded the town and one day he climbed one from where he could see Ste. Adele. He began to spend his evenings on that hill amply supplied with cigarettes and whisky. Panofsky sent him money without Noah’s having asked for it. The enclosed note said: “Now you’re one of the Kremlin’s agents.” He began to think that he did love Miriam
and had abandoned her out of fear. Drunk, he imagined that he was his father’s murderer. The theft of Melech’s letters represented a worse crime to him than Shloime’s having robbed Panofsky. Who had phoned Wolf that night to tell him about the fire? People stopped Noah on the street to tell him that they had known his father, and that wire kept tightening around his heart. Saturday night Sheila gave a party. Noah was invited. The party, in fact, was for his benefit. He drank recklessly all afternoon and crept silently across the lawn at ten o’clock that night. He saw his mother sitting in a corner and talking to two girls. She was telling them that he was brilliant. Noah burst into the party. He knew that he was going to make a fool of himself. “Am I late?” he asked savagely.

Everybody tried to act natural.

“Noah’s here,” Leah said joyously.

Sheila took him in her arms and began to dance with him. “I could just kill you,” she said.

Noah struggled out of her arms and began to wheel another girl across the terrace wildly. He suggested things to her that were slightly shocking and the girl left him standing alone in the middle of the dance. The terrace spun around him. Harvey seized him by the arm. “Take it easy.” Harvey smiled. “Sheila’s fixing some black coffee for you.”

“That girl’s stolen my billfold,” Noah said. “Call the cops.”

“Think of your mother,” Harvey said urgently.

Noah squinted into a spinning confusion of faces. The moon whirled like a top. Leah confronted him.
“Boyele,”
she said, squeezing all the sadness of the world into that word. Noah tottered. He patted his mother’s head, and turned to Harvey. “She walks in beauty like the night,” he said.

The record player started again and Noah slipped away from Harvey. He fell into the arms of two girls. Louis Armstrong held a trumpet to his ear and blew with all his might. One of the girls
tittered nervously. The other said: “Your father has only been dead ten days.”

“If you can’t sing and you can’t dansh,” Noah said, “if you aren’t engaged and you can’t play piano, then show ush your …”

Harvey dragged him away. “It’s the last time I come to one of your parties,” Noah said truculently. Then, grinning, he added: “Las’ sh one into the lake is a stinker.”

Harvey tightened his grip. Sheila giggled. “It’s not funny,” Harvey said.

“Funny?” Noah said.

“Not you,” Harvey said.

“That girl I danced with s’got trenchmouth. She tried to …”

“I know,” Harvey said.

“If you don’t lemme go,” Noah said, “I’m gonna be sick all over your new jacket.…”

Harvey wavered. Sheila giggled again.

Noah sensed a sympathetic audience. He pulled away from Harvey in the living-room and swept a very ornate bit of bone china off the table. It was a slipper covered with many ugly china flowers. He swung it in the air and bang, splash, it came down on the floor. Harvey clenched his fists. Sheila tittered. Noah climbed up on a chair. “A spectre is haunting Outremont,” he said solemnly. “It is the spectre of …”

He tottered. Harvey broke his fall. Noah passed out in his arms.

When he awakened the next afternoon Noah remembered enough of what had happened to feel greatly embarrassed. But before he had much time to think, there was a knock at the door.

“I brought you toast and coffee,” Sheila said.

Sheila had long brown hair and bright, flashing eyes. Noah thought that her manner was too intently cheerful. Miriam’s mouth had suggested much suffering. Sheila, however, obviously moved in
the best of all possible worlds. There was plenty of warmth about her. There was also no doubt that she had consumed a good deal of milk as a child, but no greater suffering than the death of a pet dog was suggested.