Son of a Smaller Hero

  “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.

  5

  Autumn and Winter 1953–4

  STE. 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.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” Noah said.

  Sheila put down the tray and beat her chest solemnly. “A spectre is haunting Outremont.” She giggled. “I could have just killed you last night but you were terribly funny in the end, Noah, and I like you a lot.” She sat down on the foot of the bed. “Why do you hate us?”

  “I don’t hate you,” Noah said.

  “Is it because Daddy wants to give you Harvey’s old clothes?” She cocked her head as though she meant to catch Noah’s answer like a ball. “Daddy would like me to introduce you to some decent girls and that kind of thing, but I won’t if you don’t want me to.…”

  “Are they angry about last night?”

  “Mother’s blazing. Daddy’ll get her a new dress or a box of chocolates and everything’ll be dandy. Is it true that you were living with a married woman – a Gentile – in Ste. Adele?”

  “Yes, I …”

  “Skip it. I won’t pry,” she said. “But isn’t it awful about all the publicity they got up about your poor father?”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “That was your Uncle Max’s fault. Daddy says Max wants the Liberal nomination. He hasn’t got enough education to be an M.P. He’d shame us in Ottawa. Daddy says Max is too ambitious.”

  “That’s what my father used to say. But I like Max.”

  “Drink your coffee. Would you like to play tennis this afternoon? I’ve got the day off.”

  “I don’t know how to play tennis.”

  “Would you like to go riding?”

  “I’m afraid that I …”

  “Oh, then we can just go for a walk or something.”

  “All right. But it’ll have to be today. I owe Panof … a friend money. I must get back to Montreal and get a job.”

  Winter came swiftly that year. One day it was hot, and the next a hard wind swept in from the north and wiped the city clean of the clouds. The grey financial houses of St. James Street reached higher into the sky, as if they meant to rend holes in it. A shortage of coal was rumoured. At night the stars glittered like bolts twisted into a steel roof and a copper moon gleamed coldly. Heartier Montrealers armed with rugs and rum cheered the McGill Redmen to a few victories in Molson’s Stadium. A man got up in the Recorder’s Court and promised the end of the world within six days. Gus “Pell” Mell announced from Griffintown that he was planning a comeback. I’ll kill Greco, he said. Palmer wrote in the Herald that he’d take Montreal over any city in the world. The uranium market wobbled. A twelve-year-old boy was stabbed to death on Mount Royal and the police rounded up nearly all the likely suspects. A Gazette editorial pleaded for protection against perversion. An M.P. got up in the House of Commons and said that the best civil defence plan for Canada was to paint big white signs on the highways saying this way to Detroit, that way to Pittsburgh. Then the snows came floating down joyfully. Day after day of it. St. Catherine Street was transformed into a white, fluffy wonderland. An early-bird of a Presbyterian minister denounced the commercialism of Montreal Christmas. A big department store came back with a full-page advertisement saying WE’RE PROUD TO SELL. EVERYBODY BENEFITS FROM MORE SALES.

  Noah and his mother watched the winter coming from an apartment in Outremont.

  Leah had many visitors. A lady at last, she was asked to join the Shaar Zion Synagogue. Her father had been a Zaddik, and her husband had died for the Torah. The colour returned to her skin. Her slouch, a posture that had formerly suggested defeat, was replaced by a new animation. A hard, intense light burned in her eyes. She did not mention Miriam to him. She knew better than that. But she made febrile plans for him.

  “You’ll go to McGill. You’ve got much more brains than Harvey. You can do whatever you want.”

  “Maybe next year, Maw.”

  “Or, if you like, I’ll speak to Max. He’d do anything for me.”

  “Don’t push me with Max, Maw. I don’t mind driving the cab.”

  “I’d like to see you married and on your way before I die. Is that too much to ask?”

  “No, Maw.”

  “You don’t need to drink so much.”

  “Yes, Maw.”

  “I’m glad you get along so well with Sheila. She’s a good girl. She can introduce you to …”

  “Maw, did he ever speak to you about the box?”

  “Who? What box?”

  “Daddy.”

  “Before you go on, boyele, please get me my pills. Sometimes my breath comes short. I can’t … Thank you … ah … thanks.… Now what was it you were saying?”

  “Nothing.”

  One evening soon after that Noah had a night off and decided to go through the crate that contained his father’s papers. Most of the stuff had come from the bottom drawer of Wolf’s desk – from the drawer with the false bottom.

  Leah was entertaining Mrs. Greenspon in the living-room. Noah could hear them.

  “The Ethel Gordon Chapter of Hadassah would like to send a fully equipped ambulance to Israel in memory of your husband, Mrs. Adler. We were wondering if we could count on your help.…”

  Wolf’s diary filled an enormous ledger of the type that was used by bookkeepers. The title-page read:

  THE DIARY OF WOLF ADLER

  Strictly Private

  Dates – Memories – Projects – Inventions & Thoughts

  Each letter had its ornate share of curls and dots and wiggly lines. It was necessary to hold the next page – a sample of Wolf’s signature – up to the mirror in order to read the elaborately formed letters. Following that, came several pages of dates. Births, weddings, deaths. Noah flipped through the diary impatiently. Pages and pages in code. Each letter had been printed.

  VJQWIJVU Q YCNMKPI

  Da Yqnh Cfngt

  YCNMKPI

  There was the rattle of tea-cups in the next room.

  “My husband had his faults, Mrs. Greenspon. But he never, for a minute, forgot our heritage. You remember my father, don’t you? Wolf wasn’t one to push himself. He was content with his small lot. He …”

  Each page had the sub-title: “Da Yqnh Cfngt.” Noah guessed that that meant “by Wolf Adler.”

  The code, as a matter of fact, was pathetically easy to decipher. A was represented by C, and W was represented by Y. Each letter, in fact, was represented by the second letter that came after it in the alphabet.

  “Did you know that there’s now a scholarship at Baron Byng in everlasting memory of my late husband?”

  “No, I didn’t know that, Mrs. Adler.”

  Noah started on a comparatively easy page and deciphered it quickly.

  THOUGHTS ON WALKING

  By Wolf Adler

  WALKING:

  How much do I walk per day?

  How long does it take me to walk the equivalent of the circumference of the earth?

  NOTE: All figures are approximate. All steps are maximum – e.g. big steps.

  MORNING: AFTERNOON: EVENING: WEEKEND/HOLIDAYS

  statistics

  one step – one yard

  one mile – 1760 yards

  MORNING:

  in house, before leaving for work 70 steps

  to streetcar (shortest route) 289 steps

  office and yard 700 steps

  NOON: (eat lunch) 000 steps

  AFTERNOON:

  office, yard, trips 1000 steps

  EVENING:

  in 100 steps

  out 2 to 5000 steps

  NIGHT (sleep)

  but trips to toilet average 21 steps each

  ——————

  AVERAGE TOTAL 5109 steps

  5109 steps per day — 5109 yds — approx 3 miles

  DOUBLE AVERAGE FOR WEEKENDS

  Therefore, on average I walk 3 ?
? 5 plus 2 × 6 = 27 miles or approx 4 miles per day.

  4 × 365 = 1460 miles per annum

  Circum. of Earth = 25000 miles

  Therefore, every 20 years (approx) I walk across the earth just going back and forth in Montreal.

  “My father, may he rest in peace, used to say that this match was made in heaven. Now don’t think I’m old-fashioned, Mrs. Greenspon. Superstitious, but …”

  “I’ll tell you something, Mrs. Adler. You don’t know how the congregations are swelling again. So many of our people are coming back to God.”

  Noah deciphered another page.

  THOUGHTS ON TIME WASTED

  By Wolf Adler

  NOTE: All figures are approximate

  We sleep approx 8 hrs per day – 122 days per year. I spend about a half-hour daily* in the toilet – 182 hours per year – 8 days – therefore I waste 128 days per year.

  *regular day (diarrhoea, constipation, balance out)

  OBSERVATIONS:

  If I live until 90 I will have actually lived only (approx) 57 years – having wasted the rest of the time sleeping or in the toilet.

  “You must meet my boy, Mrs. Greenspon. He’s going to go to McGill. I don’t know what I’d do without him, I tell you. Ever since I’ve been ill he takes such good care of me. He takes after my father, you know. When my father, may he rest in peace, died …”

  Noah began to feel queasy.

  There was a project to build a bridge across the Atlantic. An ideal society, with secret signals, had been planned. Another page listed Wolf’s weight before and after eating, before and after defecation, for a period of two weeks. On an average day Wolf accounted for three pints of urine: but Paquette, who was a beer drinker, did much better than that. The dates of all his quarrels with Leah had been entered. Average over a twenty-year period – 2.2 quarrels per day. There was a long and recent essay titled THE INGRATITUDE OF CHILDREN.

  “Noah!”

  “Yes?”

  “Come, boyele, Mrs. Greenspon is anxious to meet you.”

  He replaced the diary in the box.

  Noah began to work overtime. He didn’t cruise much, but waited for calls at the stand. That was quite peaceful and he got a lot of reading done. Then, because the garage was beginning to make sour comments about his earning capacities he began to meet the out of town trains. He spent most of his free time with the Goldenbergs and their friends. Ste. Agathe had been a revelation. A shock. The people, the laws, that he had rebelled against had been replaced by other, less conspicuously false, laws and people while he had been away. That shifting of the ghetto sands seemed terribly unfair to him. If the standard man can be defined by his possessions, then rob his house and you steal his identity. Noah had supposed himself not to be a standard man. But his house had been robbed and his identity had been lost. He was shaken. Not only because he felt a need to redefine himself, but because he realized, at last, that all this time he had only been defining himself Against. Even death was something that he did Not Want. He avoided Panofsky. That man knew what he wanted. What he wanted was positive and required a bigger reply than No.