Son of a Smaller Hero Read online

  IV

  When Shloime finally came home that evening his mother and Ida were both waiting in the kitchen. Ida was leaning defiantly against the gas stove, a spoon in her hand. She had prepared the dinner. “Look at him,” she said. “The Cat’s Pyjamas, Jr. Only eight o’clock and he’s here to eat already.”

  “You shouldn’t quarrel,” Mrs. Adler said. “Paw will …”

  Shloime sat down in his chair. There was a plate of meat and potatoes in front of him. He tasted the meat, tentatively, and then slammed his fork down on the table. “The meat’s cold,” he said.

  “What – did – you – expect?”

  “All I am doing is stating facts. The meat is cold. Meat. M,E,A,T. Cold. C,O,L,D.”

  “Maw, I’ll kill ’im. I’m telling you I’ll …”

  “Eat your meat, boyele. Paw …”

  “You call this meat?”

  “You heard Maw. Eat your meat. I’ll tell Paw.”

  “I will state another fact. Ida is twenty-eight. Ida needs a husband. Husband. L,A,Y.”

  “All right, Maw. All right. Fair is fair. I’m going to the movies.”

  “Children, children.”

  Mr. Adler stepped into the room and Shloime began to eat hurriedly. Ida smiled. Mrs. Adler looked at him pleadingly. Mr. Adler waited while the silence, which he had imposed on them, gripped the room, then he said: “What is?”

  “Nuttin.”

  “Nothink? I heard shouting like animals.”

  “We were just kidding around, Paw. So help me.”

  “Why weren’t you in the synagogue tonight?”

  “I was sleeping, Paw. Tired. I …”

  “He was in the poolroom, Paw. I’ll bet you.”

  “Look what’s talking? Fatso the first. Yeah. What do you do in …”

  “Speak when you are spoken to. Both of you. Shloime, were you in the poolroom?”

  “Paw, I …”

  “Yes or no. Speak.”

  “I stopped in for a coke. But that’s all.”

  “Eat your supper. Afterwards you will do the dishes. Friday you give all your pay away to Maw. Finished.”

  Ida clapped her hands together. “Ha, ha, ha. I’m laughing.”

  Shloime felt a fluttering in his stomach. I’ll fix them, he thought. I’ll fix all of them. Mrs. Adler, passing him by, stroked his head tenderly. Shloime jerked away from her. His eyes flooded with tears, he leaped up and rushed out of the room.

  “Crybaby.”

  “Don’t talk so. Leave him alone. Ain’t he your brudder?”

  Ida shrugged her shoulders.

  Mr. Adler sat down in the parlour and put on his glasses, spreading the Jewish Star out on his lap. The walls were lined with stiff, formal wedding pictures, and pictures of the grandchildren. There were also several framed graduation certificates, and a picture of Melech Adler in a top-hat and tails. That picture had been taken at Max’s wedding.

  A few days earlier Moore had come into the office. Mr. Adler, who had not seen him for several years, had been shocked. Moore had aged tremendously. Grey-haired, his body shrunken, he had stunk of alcohol: but when he had asked for a job, Mr. Adler had given him work in the yard. He had felt sorry for Moore, and standing in the shade of his office Melech had not been altogether displeased to see him sweating in the sun and dust, shovelling coal into sacks. In fact he had suddenly felt expansive. He had sent Paquette out to buy cokes for everybody and he had decided to make Moore his night watchman.

  Noah, who at that moment was parked across the street in his taxi, wondering whether or not to go in and speak to Melech, occupied a unique position in the Adler family. He was, to begin with, Leah’s son. Leah wasn’t liked. He was the grandson of a man whom Melech Adler had deeply respected – Jacob Goldenberg, the Zaddik. The family never knew what Noah would do next. He ran away from home at seven years and again at ten, the last time getting as far as Toronto. Several years later he marched in political demonstrations. That was something that Wolf and the others could never do: they were Jews. At first Noah’s boldness had given them pleasure, but later his enthusiasms frightened them. The Adlers lived in a cage and that cage, with all its faults, had justice and safety and a kind of felicity. A man knew where he stood. Melech ruled. The nature of the laws did not matter nearly as much as the fact that they had laws. The Jews, liberated and led into the desert by Moses, had wanted nothing so badly as to return to slavery in Egypt. Noah broke the laws and was not punished. He flung open the door to that cage, and said, in effect, follow me to freedom. (Noah, at sixteen, had only understood that the laws were not true and that had seemed all-important. He had not yet known that laws in order to be true only required followers.) During the war he had tried, twice, to get into the army and once into the navy. He had threatened to report uncles and cousins for war profiteering, and the uncles and cousins had not been able to understand one Jew informing on another. They were, quite honestly, loyal to each other. As much as they might condemn one another in their own homes they presented a solid front to the Goyim. Melech watched and said nothing. Was he afraid? Did Noah have a grip over him? They didn’t know. None of them, except possibly Shloime, was a malicious person, yet they waited anxiously for Noah’s punishment. This particular cage, in order to prosper, required a gate that was clanged shut.

  One Sunday when the family had been gathered in the parlour Noah had overheard Goldie scolding Bernie, who had just hit Yidel. “If you do things like that you’ll grow up like Noah,” she had said. In retrospect, the incident seemed ludicrous enough. But Noah had been deeply hurt. He wanted to be liked by the family, and he feared them as much as they did him. At weddings and bar-mitzvahs voices were lowered when Noah joined the group. Others, more straightforward, turned their backs to him. They fed him with drink: and, briefly, he played the role of the drunkard for them. Then, when he abandoned that role, they began to think of him as a communist. For as long as he was a drunkard or a communist whatever he said was invalid and required no reply.

  Noah was lonely. He visited them separately and read poetry or stories to them. He tried to explain why he did not follow Melech’s laws. Immediately, they said: “C’mon, have a drink.” They didn’t drink with him, but watched approvingly. He offered to take their children to the circus or for walks on the mountain. They declined. “What? A guy who drinks like you?”

  Noah realized that he had come to the end of something, and that he and the family could not meet again except as strangers suspicious of one another. That hurt him. He did not want or expect them to change their ways for him. He was not that selfish. But neither could he go on being an embarrassment and a sorrow to them. All that remained, he knew, was for him to speak to Melech.

  He lit a cigarette and got out of the car.

  The door opened.

  Noah stood before him embarrassed, holding his taxi cap in his hands. “I had a fare near here,” he said. “I thought I’d drop in.”

  Melech Adler took off his glasses and folded up his paper. But his eyes stayed solemn: Noah saw no tenderness, no response, in them.

  “How are you, Zeyda?”

  “You work on Saturday?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Adler got up and walked over to the window. He cleared his throat, not trusting his own voice. Jenny is probably listening by the door, he thought, Ida, too. “You are no longer welcome here. Understand? Finished.”

  “But I … Can’t you try to understand?”

  “Understand? What should I try to understand?”

  “Can’t you see how everything is falling apart around you? Your sons are Canadians. I am not even that. Don’t you think … I can’t be something, or serve something, I no longer believe in. As it is, well … I’m sort of between things. I was born a Jew but somewhere along the way … You can’t go back, Zeyda. It would be easy if you could.”

  “I don’t understand what you talk.”

  Can’t I see, he says. If I had told him about Moore that day, Melech
thought, if I had explained it to him first, everything would have been all right. But he found out himself. Melech tugged slowly at his beard. His hands, he noticed, were clammy. He waited. He wanted Noah to ask him a favour. That would help, he thought. It would be a start.

  “Take love, for instance,” Noah said. “If you have never been in love then you still know that it’s missing. Well, something is missing. But I don’t know what it is. All I know is that it’s missing.”

  “Other boys go to college. They make something from themselves.”

  “I can’t make something of myself that way, Zeyda. I’m sorry. I think it’s freedom that I want. I – I no longer have any rules to refer to the way you had. I …”

  “Listen how he talks. You should study Talmud. You …” Melech turned away from him and spoke quickly, casually, pretending that he was not saying what he said: “If you came here to ask permission to come back I wouldn’t mind you go without a hat. We could talk, the two of us.…”

  Noah hesitated. He felt guilty, tempted. He had never heard Melech ask for anything before. “I’m sorry, Zeyda. I can’t. I can’t go back.”

  Melech stayed with his back turned to Noah. He had nearly said: “When I was young in Lodz I loved a girl, an actress, but –” But he hadn’t been able to get the words out. He would have required Noah to have been weak before he could have shared such a secret with him. But Noah wasn’t weak. He had refused him. My father was a scribe, he thought. He wouldn’t let. I am a strong man. I didn’t go against my family the way he does. I had respect. Helga has blond hair and walks straight. She claps her hands together when she dances.

  “I wanted you to be a somebody. Something. Something not like them. All there is for them is money.”

  “But, Zeyda, if money doesn’t worry you why don’t you make my father a partner?”

  “You too?”

  “But it’s such a small thing. It would make them both happy.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “I came to tell you that I’m going to college this autumn. I’m going to study at night.”

  “Go. Go, go. You go from here and I will give you nothink. You go so you go. Finished.”

  Melech Adler turned away from him again and sat down. And she used to hold my hands in hers and clap them together when she sang. When I chopped wood for her father she came over with a towel and wiped the sweat off my chest. Noah waited tensely, but his grandfather ignored him.

  Melech Adler put on his glasses and picked up his paper again.

  Noah got up. He touched Melech’s shoulder and smiled lamely. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Their eyes met briefly. A just man upright in a chair. Noah was shocked by the fury in his grandfather’s eyes.

  “Go! Get out!”

  Melech watched him go. He wanted to call him back, but he also wanted to punish Noah because he, Melech, had loved Helga and had deserted her. Up until that moment Melech had felt that he hadn’t quite deserted her, that he could, when he wanted to, return to her. But now he realized that he was too old. Noah had unwittingly condemned him as a coward again by walking out on him. Melech stared at the picture of himself in a top-hat and tails. That was taken ten years ago, he thought. If I die, they will have it enlarged.

  Noah sat in the car and rubbed his eyes. He was shaken. He felt that he had seen his grandfather for the first time. Melech was old, but he was full of justice and not to be pitied. Yet I had nothing but apologies to offer him. Noah did not feel triumphant. He felt small. He started up the car and drove off into the night.

  Afterwards Mrs. Adler brought in a glass of lemon tea for Melech. She sat down on the sofa, but he didn’t say anything. She looked around the room. The furnishings were cheap. Mobile. Jenny was not stingy, but she was used to the idea of moving. If there was suddenly trouble, if they had to flee quickly to another country, if … Better not to invest in things that they would have to leave behind. Finally, she said: “Noah was here?”

  “So?”

  “You sent him away?”

  “I sent him away.”

  “Why did you send him away?”

  “I sent him away, that’s all.”

  Each man creates God in his own image. Melech’s God, who was stern, just, and without mercy, would reward him and punish the boy. Melech could count on that.

  “I don’t understand …”

  Melech noticed, for the first time, the bowl of flowers on the mantelpiece. Jenny must have put it there when she had brought in the tea. Undoubtedly, it was a gift from Noah. Melech frowned. Flowers for her, impudence for me. When Jenny had been ill several years ago, Noah had come every day to read the stories of Sholem Aleichem to her.

  “Look, Jenny, he tells me that he ain’t a Jew. What, tell me, is a Jew? It is like belonging to the club where all the members got a crippled foot. So what does he say? One cripple is different from the other. So? Finished. You should let me read my paper.”

  Mrs. Adler sighed. “Would you like maybe a bun wid …?”

  Melech heard. He understood and he was alarmed. But he didn’t answer.

  2

  Autumn and Winter 1952

  MRS. MAHONEY, IT TURNED OUT, DIDN’T OBJECT TO women or to parties either, as long as she was invited. She was awfully lonely. Noah ate with her once a week and took her to the movies whenever he could. He also got to know the couple next door, Mr. and Mrs. Joey Nowacka, and that friendship inadvertently cost him his record player. Joey drank a lot and played the horses, Bertha was pregnant. Before long, Bertha became Noah’s special charge – and that accounted for his savings.

  Noah was lonely too. He talked about his family a good deal to the Nowackas and Mrs. Mahoney. Often, when business was slack, he drove through the streets of the ghetto, remembering places and things that he had done there. He weakened once, and thought of going back, but a visit with his mother taught him quickly that there was no going back. He did a lot of reading. He walked. His room was peopled with dreams, and he was not happy. College, for instance, was another disappointment.

  The principal of Wellington College was a small man with eyes of no colour at all who would be remembered and celebrated for having feared God and been tolerant of men. He never forgot the face of a Wellingtonian. Everybody respected him. The dean had compiled a huge mimeographed bibliography which listed the dimensions, title, number of pages and illustrations, author, and subject, of all the books that had ever been published in Canada. Dr. Edward Walsh, the assistant dean, had a splendid smile: nobody could outdo him as a host. He began his lectures in Political Science I by writing on the blackboard:

  I. SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT

  a. monarchy

  b. totalitarianism

  c. democracy

  d. others

  (Canada is a parliamentary democracy)

  Most of the students came to Wellington because their marks weren’t high enough for them to get into McGill. Many of them were Jews who couldn’t get into McGill because of the quota system.

  Into this benign backwater of mediocrity came a young professor of English literature named Theo Hall. That was in the autumn of 1952, about five years after he had married Miriam Peltier. Theo, who had been hired to run the English department, inherited a staff of superannuated high school teachers, middle-class housewives with a penchant for poetry, and old graduates who were writing their autobiographies. He could have got a better job at a big American university. He could have stayed on at Magdalen College, Oxford, and become a fellow. But Theo had faith. Three hundred years before him the Jesuits had paddled up to Hochelaga to pitch their Bibles against the tomahawks of the Iroquois and the Sioux. Since then Hochelaga had become Montreal. The pagans had been banished and the Christians held the fort. Theo was made of the same intrepid stuff as those Jesuits. Armed with the texts of Wilson, Trilling, and Leavis, he hoped to wrest Montreal from the grasp of the philistines.

  He was a tall man with tired eyes and a small mouth. His smile was wa
n, condescending, like the smile of a novitiate showing a group of peasants through St. Peter’s. He would have liked to have been a poet but he was not morbid about his limitations and did not envy the success of others. He had gone the other way, using the word Art like a man at his prayers. He hoped to organize the English department of the college along saner lines and to found a little magazine that would print the best in Canadian writing and criticism. Theo began with the college library. He went over it catalogue by catalogue and before a month had gone by he had ordered seven hundred new books. He overhauled the curriculum of the English courses and by the end of his first academic year had managed to get rid of a lot of faculty dead wood, replacing them with bright young lecturers of his own choosing.

  Disappointments were plentiful. Direction did not inspire or proselytize in Canadian academic circles. A lot of material came in but no forceful talents emerged. After the third issue, the magazine settled down to a circulation of about seven hundred copies. Two hundred were sold in the United States, a hundred or so in England, and the rest in Canada. The Russian Embassy took three copies. But among smart people his magazine was known as No Direction. Theo’s students proved yet another disappointment. Most of them did well enough in examinations but Theo had a compulsion, almost neurotic in its intensity, to surround himself with disciples and to discover talent. So when he chanced on a more than usually bright student his enthusiasm leaped. He brought home his prodigies one after the other and one after the other they turned out ordinary spirits. His hopes thwarted, he turned cruelly on his would-be talents. Susceptible to the exasperations of spirit which characterize most reformers, he tended to suffer vulgarity in smaller spirits as a personal affront. He was a social democrat. Encounters with almost any amusement designed for the crowd made him choke up and clench his fists. He did not find it easy to cope with society.