Joshua Then and Now Page 16

  He couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Mr. Shapiro?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he replied.

  “Well, have you looked at it yet?”

  “It’s a treat I’m saving for my weekend. Goodbye now.”

  Later it would come out that no sooner did McMaster hang up than he dug into his desk drawer for a White Owl and bit off the tip. “Hey, Henri, I want to look at some files.”

  “What kind?”

  “Lists of stolen furniture. But going back some. And, oh yeah, let’s feed Reuben Shapiro’s name into the computer and see what we come up with.”

  It was 9 p.m. before a moaning Pauline came awake, her hands agitated, fluttering. Sitting bolt upright, she stared directly at Joshua. “The worms must be crawling in his mouth now,” she said. “The flesh putrefying.”

  And, a little sweaty, once more he rehearsed the reasons for having left her when he had so obviously been needed.

  Murdoch. The new introduction to his book. But it was no good. He knew now that he should never have returned to Spain in pursuit of … what? Ghosts who were to prove maddeningly elusive. The callow boy he had once been.

  TWO

  1

  THE DAY BEFORE, YET ANOTHER REPORTER HAD TRIED the cottage, this one from Maclean’s, wearing tinted aviator glasses, a safari suit, and Chelsea boots.

  “Looking for somebody?” Reuben asked, stopping him on the dirt road.

  “Shapiro’s place.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’m a personal friend of his.”

  “Well, yeah, right,” Reuben said, looking him up and down, his grin lascivious, “but you don’t have to tell me, honey. I could see that.”

  “Hey now, look here,” the reporter said, indignant, “I didn’t mean that kind of friend.”

  “Yeah, well. Sure. Now I only work here. But you see that old bastard up there on the porch aiming that shotgun right at your family jewels? Well, you take one step closer and he’ll spray you with salt and pepper.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “Over here,” Reuben said, pulling him behind a tree.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “I’m not supposed to answer any,” Reuben said, taking a swig from his hip flask and offering it to the reporter.

  “No thanks.”

  “Don’t you drink?” Reuben asked, affronted.

  “Not this early in the day. Now you answer some questions, Granddad, and I’m going to lay twenty dollars on you.”

  “Shit,” Reuben said, wiping his mouth with his arm, “you know what they pay me for cleaning up around here? Three-fucking-fifty an hour. I got skills, you know.”

  “Sure you have. And I’ll bet you know plenty.”

  “I want thirty bucks.”

  The reporter counted it out and handed it over. “What sort of shape’s he in?” he asked.

  “Mean.”

  “Do the kids know about it?”

  “I wouldn’t waste your time asking them any questions. One’s a worse liar than the other.”

  “Is his wife with him, or has she left?”

  Reuben, his manner sly, said, “Now you didn’t strike me as the jealous type.”

  “I’m not really a friend, I’m more like an acquaintance. And not that kind, either,” he added, thrusting a photograph of Pauline at him.

  “Oh her, yeah. The wife. You wanta talk to her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, there’s something I always wanted to know about your crowd. Do you piss standing up like the rest of us, or do you squat?”

  “Jesus Christ Almighty! I’m a married man.”

  “So’s Shapiro.”

  “I’ll lay more money on you after I’ve talked to her.”

  “Follow me, son.”

  He took the reporter into the bush, careful to lead him where it was most overgrown, and then into the swampy part, so that after brambles had nicked his safari suit, his Chelsea boots sucked up green brackish water and mud. When they came out at the brook, Reuben said, “You’ll find her over there, behind that tree, reading.”

  As the reporter stepped gingerly beyond Reuben, balancing on a mossy rock, he suddenly felt a rod prod him in the buttocks, sending him flying into the water. He surfaced to find Reuben standing over him, rake in hand. “You’re no personal friend of Josh’s,” he said, “and, furthermore, this is propriété privée. No swimming allowed. So you come out of there, sonny, right now, and get moving. Or I’ll break your little fingers.”

  Progress. The cast had come off his pathetically atrophied right arm on Thursday, and he was now allowed to sit out on the porch for an hour every afternoon, taking the sun with his father and the senator. A caretaker had mowed the lawns and was tending to the rock garden at Trimble’s Folly. Once, picking up his binoculars, Joshua was startled to see Trimble himself out there, wandering, a stricken figure, and he knew it was only a question of time before he came calling. How are you doing, old son?

  Trimble had, he learned, renewed his family membership in the golf and country club, and Joshua wondered if he would come out for the opening-day sailing race and dance. Shoving it to them. Every time the phone rang, Joshua started, silently offering a year of his life if it was his wandering Pauline. It never was. All the same, he hired somebody to turn over the soil in the vegetable garden, and decided to order everything she would require from the nursery in Knowlton, sending out psychic signals.

  Come home, Pauline. Pauline, my love.

  One afternoon, inevitably, Reuben slipped into his room to tell him that Detective Sergeant Stuart Donald McMaster would be there at 8:30 sharp the following morning, and their long work together would have to begin, his present state of health being no excuse for further procrastination. In preparation for his arrival, Reuben set up Joshua’s Sony tape recorder, no less than two dozen blank cartridges stacked alongside.

  “Can you handle it?” Reuben asked.

  “I wish I knew where Pauline was right now.”

  “So do I,” Reuben said, averting his eyes.

  “When I was riding all that morphine they pumped into me in the hospital, I used to dream she was there.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “How could she not have come to see me?”

  “All she needs is a little more time alone, Josh. I’m sure of it.”

  “If she’s alone. How do I know she’s not with somebody else?”

  “How about a Scotch?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Reuben fetched him one.

  “Hey, Josh, there’s something I still gotta know about the Seligson break-in.”

  “What?”

  “Are you absolutely sure you left a lot of those old banknotes strewn about his desk?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry about that, Daddy.”

  “Can you remember if they were from the stack that was in sequence?”

  “Yes, they were. Why?”

  “Never mind,” he said, brightening. “It’s not important.”

  “Say, shouldn’t we ask the senator to join us?”

  “He’s snoozing.”

  “How old are you now, Daddy?”

  “Seventy-three, I figure.”

  “I’m forty-seven.”

  “Cheers,” Reuben said, raising his glass.

  “It’s absurd. It’s fucking ridiculous. I can’t be forty-seven yet. I’m not ready.”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  “What’s it like being seventy-three?”

  “Well, you always seem to be getting up to piss. And it only comes in trickles.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You get to like porno films. I have, anyway.”

  “Hey, remember Maw in Trader Horny?”

  “I’ve managed to avoid anything she’s played in,” he said stiffly.

  The senator wandered into the room, puffy-eyed. “Am I intruding?” he asked.

  “Hell, no. But now we won’t be able to ta
lk dirty any more. I’ll get you a drink.”

  “Thanks. How are you feeling, my boy?”

  Joshua had to laugh. “I’ll tell you how I feel,” he said, “how I feel right now. Like the blind lottery-ticket seller.”

  2

  IN THE WATERFRONT CAFÉ, WHERE HE WAS TO BECOME a regular, Ibiza’s blind lottery-ticket seller would come wandering through the beaded door, tapping his cane, in hazard. The fishermen were fond of luring him into the rear of the café and then swiftly but surreptitiously shifting the tables and chairs around to block his passage out. As the old man lashed left and right with his cane, desperately trying to find a way out of the constantly shifting maze, the fishermen fell about laughing.

  Ibiza, Ibiza.

  Not him, no, no, but somebody else called Joshua Shapiro, a boy he blushed even to recall, had once been rooted there, roaring.

  And yet, and yet, he thought, even as he disowned this other Joshua, I’d give a good deal for a cup of his enthusiasm right now.

  Ibiza.

  There are four islands in the Balearic Archipelago: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza, and Formentera.

  Ibiza is an island of limestone hills, lush pine forests, fertile flat-lands, and enticing stretches of sandy beach. There is also a salt marsh. Juniper and evergreen oak thrive there. The most gnarled of the olive, fig, and almond trees are reputed to be a thousand years old. Oranges are grown on Ibiza, but they are not nearly as sweet as those produced in the province of Valencia. The Ibizenco peasant, an obdurate man, is not highly adaptable. He survives, nothing more. Many of the island’s sailors, however, mariners of prodigious skill, had traveled the world. And there was a time when Ibiza’s fishing grounds were fabulously rich.

  The island’s capital is also called Ibiza, and is quite unforgettably approached by sea. Cubelike, sun-dappled white houses. The Upper Town and its surrounding wall, built in the sixteenth century, soaring above the natural harbor. There are passageways winding through the wall, and when the lookout signaled the appearance of a Barbary pirate ship on the horizon, the Ibizencos hastily took refuge within. Defenders assumed positions at the top of the wall, overlooking the passageway into the Upper Town, as if peering down into a well. No sooner did the corsarios appear at the bottom than they were bombarded with rocks. His father would have approved, Joshua thought. Real scrappers, he would have said.

  Stepping down the gangplank of the Jaime II early one evening in 1952, an exhilarated twenty-one-year-old Joshua Shapiro was immediately hailed by a man who was to become his mentor on the island. Juanito Tur-Guerra, otherwise celebrated as Juanito Pus, owner of two battered fishing boats, a dockside barraca, or storage shed, and undisputed king of the waterfront.

  “Venga, hombre. Aquí.”

  Clapping Joshua on the back, Juanito summoned fishermen to help him with his kitbag; he booked him into the small, flaking hotel on the quay and propelled him into the bar for a glass of Fundador. He was a small lithe man, his face leathery, his blue eyes flecked with mockery. Juanito had more than energy, he was a furnace. They stood at the bar for hours, joined by still more rubber-booted fishermen, laughing a good deal. Joshua established that he was a Canadiensi.

  “Yes, but what do you do?”

  “I’m a reporter. Sort of.”

  Juanito, like Uncle Oscar an authority on all matters, wasn’t having any of it. Biting into a fresh cheroot and spitting on the floor, he revealed to the others that Joshua was obviously a rich man’s son, sent to Ibiza to avoid his being drafted for military service in Korea. Joshua protested that there was no draft in Canada, but unavailingly, and the story was to stick with him for the duration of his stay.

  Come midnight – groggy, staggering drunk – Joshua pleaded fatigue and inquired after his room, but Juanito insisted that they all immediately repair to Casa Rosita.

  Voices subdued to whispers lest wives overhear them, they clambered over an incredibly narrow and twisting rock passageway that ran between the overhanging whitewashed houses in Sa Penya, the fishermen’s quarter built on a rock promontory at the harbor mouth. Casa Rosita was the local bordello, and the arrival of Juanito and his band was greeted with whoops of delight from the girls. The girls, a frisky bunch, wore soiled housecoats unbuttoned over torn slips or bra and panties. Ascending to an upstairs bedroom with one or another of the drunken fishermen, they lugged a slopping pail of hot water, a bar of strong soap, and a freshly boiled but frayed towel.

  “Is that a religious medal?” the girl asked, reaching for the long, thin key that was suspended from the silver chain round his neck.

  “It’s my inheritance.”

  The keys to the kingdom of Shapiro.

  “If anything happens to me,” Reuben had said, seeing him off, “everything you find in that box is yours. Do you mind if I kiss you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You never know. So I thought I’d ask first.”

  Arriving on the island, Joshua had been surprised to see the waterfront churning with strollers, but he soon came to appreciate that the weekly visit of a ship from Barcelona, Valencia, or Alicante was sufficient to bring out the crowds. An even more auspicious occasion, he discovered, was when Juanito let it out – the word flashing from bar to bar – that there would be a fresh shipment of girls for Casa Rosita on the incoming ship. The thin, pasty girls, their makeup garish, were unmistakable as they hobbled highheeled and defiant down the gangplank, straining against the weight of cardboard suitcases bound with rope. The fishermen, stoked with Fundador, scrutinized them from the terrace of the waterfront café, staking claims and passing judgment on their promise. Impatient as they were to introduce themselves, the fishermen understood – even as Rosita hustled her charges off, respectable people creating a disdainful passage for them – that it would be early and alone to bed for the whores tonight. In the nature of things, they would have serviced the crew in the boiler room on their passage from the peninsula.

  It was at Rosita’s that Joshua first met and drank with Mariano, the secret policeman. Seated at the dining-room table on a blustery afternoon in December, a basin full of glowing charcoal below to warm their feet, they chatted, baiting each other with appetite. Mariano, a wiry man, bowlegged, his skin the color of bronze, had beady gray eyes. He was from Estremadura, the province of the conquistadores, sprung from Trujillo, the same city as had Pizarro. Twenty American nations, he was fond of saying, were conceived in Trujillo.

  During the Civil War, Mariano had served in the Army of the North under General Mola. After a village had been taken, in the sweep through the Tagus Valley, it was his chore to uncover and record whatever atrocities had been committed by the fleeing militiamen. He would then seek out any young men left behind, and order them stripped to the waist. Those whose shoulders bore the bruise of a rifle recoil were immediately shot. Then the churches would be reopened for mass, and there would be baptism for those born in the preceding month. Mariano, squeezing the breasts of the girl on his lap hard enough to make her cry out, said, “You have no understanding of the Spanish soul. We stopped Charlemagne. We sent Napoleon back where he came from. If necessary, we will stop Stalin in the Pyrenees.”

  This – deservedly, Joshua supposed – after he had mocked the troops he had just seen on maneuvers, watching their camp from a hilltop vantage point. But the soldiers had seemed very ludicrous indeed. From cosy concrete-lined trenches, they fired rifle bullets at a tank. The bullets were blanks, the tank was made of plywood. In Canada, he told Mariano, there was no compulsory military service. “Mind you, ours is not a Fascist state, in constant terror of a popular uprising.”

  Mariano shook with laughter. “If we didn’t have military service here,” he said, “the peasant boys would never learn how to brush their teeth.” And then he started up the stairs, cheerfully beating the buttocks of the two squealing girls he was sending up ahead of him.

  None of the whores were local girls. They came from the slums of Granada, Cadiz, and Alicante. For most of the year
they traipsed from city to city, lugging pails of hot water and boiled towels, following after the fiestas where the most celebrated matadors were to perform. Litri, Aparacio, Dominguin. They prized their sojourn on tranquil Ibiza as something of a respite, certainly a time to relax.

  Unfortunately, Joshua’s afternoon with Mariano turned out to be the day of the mysterious mountain man, and they were asked to leave Casa Rosita. The mountain man – a sly fellow, unshaven, obese – earned his living biting the balls off sheep, the wound sealed with his healing saliva. He only came down out of the hills to the bordello once a month. The girls fawned on him, flushed with excitement. But the fishermen regarded him with disgust, spitting on the floor and trooping out, Rosita bolting the door after them. Even Juanito refused to spell out whatever service it was the mountain man performed for the girls.

  Joshua began to luxuriate in the sun and in his new friends, studying maps of Spain in his hotel room before he went to bed, inking in old battle lines, planning forays onto the peninsula, trips he would finance by rewriting more Collier’s stories with a twist in their tail for the Toronto Star Weekly. Then something happened.

  One balmy evening, as he sat on the terrace of the waterfront with Juanito, watching the ship from Valencia ease into the harbor, he was struck by the appearance of a tall sorrowful man leaning against the deck railing, biting into an ivory cigarette holder, his long angular face seared by sun and wind. He wore a white linen suit. Only after all the other passengers had disembarked did he condescend to come striding down the gangplank, followed by four sailors struggling with two steamer trunks. Then still more luggage heaped on a cart. Suitcases, a saddle, a rifle in a canvas case, and what appeared to be a furled teepee. Porters hastened to his side without being summoned, but he ignored them, as he did the two trucks that awaited his pleasure. He paced up and down until the hold doors squealed open, and then he sauntered into the bowels of the ship, and when he emerged ten minutes later he was leading a handsome brown stallion. He coaxed the stallion right onto the back of one of the trucks, secured his reins, and fed him apples out of his pockets until all his luggage had been loaded onto the other truck. Then both trucks rattled off toward San Antonio.