Son of a Smaller Hero Page 6

  “Grease it well,” Gas said.

  Those Jews who lived on St. Dominique Street, St. Urbain, Rachel, and City Hall clubbed together and took cottages in Prevost for the summer. How they raised the money, what sacrifices they made, were comparatively unimportant – the children had to have sun. Prevost has a very small native population and most of the cottages are owned by French Canadians who live in Shawbridge, just up the hill. The C.P.R. railway station is in Shawbridge. Prevost, at the foot of the hill, is separated from Shawbridge by that bridge reputedly built by a man named Shaw. It is a confusion of temporary clapboard shacks and cottages strewn over hills and fields and joined by dirt roads and an elaborate system of paths. The centre of the village is at the foot of the bridge. Here are Zimmerman’s, Blatt’s, The River-View Inn, Stein the Butcher, and – off on the dirt road to the right – the synagogue and the beach. In 1941 Zimmerman and Blatt still ran highly competitive general stores on opposite sides of the highway. Both stores were sprawling dumpy buildings badly in need of a paint job and had dance halls and huge balconies – where you could also dance – attached. But Zimmerman had a helper named Zelda and that gave him the edge over Blatt. Zelda’s signs were posted all over Zimmerman’s.

  Over the fruit stall:

  AN ORANGE ISN’T A BASEBALL. DON’T HANDLE WHAT

  YOU DON’T WANT. THINK OF THE NEXT CUSTOMER

  Over the cash:

  IF YOU CAN GET IT CHEAPER BY THAT GANGSTER

  ACROSS THE HIGHWAY YOU CAN HAVE IT FOR NOTHING

  However, if you could get it cheaper at Blatt’s, Zelda always proved that what you had bought was not as fresh, or of a cheaper quality.

  The beach was a field of spiky grass and tree stumps. Plump, middle-aged women, their flesh burned pink, spread out blankets and squatted in their bras and bloomers, playing poker, smoking, and drinking Cokes. The vacationing furriers and pressers seldom wore bathing-suits either. They didn’t swim. They set up card-tables and chairs and played pinochle solemnly, smoking foul cigars and cursing the sun. The children dashed in and out among them playing tag or tossing a ball about. Boys staggered between sprawling sun-bathers, lugging pails packed with ice and shouting: “Ice-cold drinks. Chaw-lit bahs. Cigarettes!” Occasionally, a woman, her wide-brimmed straw hat flapping as she waddled from table to table, her smile as big as her aspirations, gold teeth glittering, would intrude on the card players, asking – nobody’s forcing, mind you – if they would like to buy a raffle in aid of the Mizrachi Fresh Air Fund or the J.N.F. Naked babies bawled. Plums, peaches, watermelons, were consumed, pits and peels being tossed indiscriminately on the grass. The yellow river was unfailingly condemned by the Health Board during the last two weeks of August, when the polio scare was at its worst. But the children paid no attention. They shrieked with delight whenever one of their huge mothers descended into the water briefly to duck herself – once, twice – warn the children against swimming out too far and then return – refreshed – to her poker game. The French Canadians were too shocked to complain, but the priests sometimes preached sermons against the indecency of the Jews. (But as Mort Shub said: “Liss’n, it’s their job. A priest’s gotta make a living too.”) At night most of the Jews crowded into the dance-halls at Zimmerman’s and Blatt’s. The kids, like Noah and Gas and Hoppie, climbed up the windows, and, peashooters in their mouths, took careful aim at the dancers’ legs before firing. Fridays, the wives worked extremely hard cleaning and cooking for the sabbath. Everybody got dressed up in the afternoon in anticipation of the arrival of the fathers, who were met in Shawbridge, most of them having arrived on the 6:15 weekend excursion train. Then the procession through Shawbridge, down the hill and across the bridge, began. That event always horrified the residents of that village. Who were those strange, cigar-smoking men, burdened down with watermelons and Kik bottles, yelling to their children, laughing, slapping their wives’ behinds and – worst of all – waving to the sombre Scots who sat petrified on their balconies?

  Noah showed up last.

  “Pinky’s Squealer wants to come with us,” Gas said.

  “Did you tell him where we’re going?”

  “Ixnay,” Gas said. “You think I’m crazy?”

  “He’s got a quarter,” Hoppie said.

  Pinky’s Squealer showed Noah the quarter.

  “All right,” Noah said.

  Old Annie, shaking her head sadly, watched the four boys start off across the fields. Noah led. Hoppie, who came next, was Rabbi Drazen’s son. He was a skinny boy with big brown eyes. His father had a small but devoted following. Hoppie hung around the synagogue every evening and stopped old men on their way to prayers. “Gimme a nickel and I’ll give you a blessink.” He didn’t do too badly. “I’m holy as hell,” he told Noah one evening.

  “What’s the difference between a mailbox and an elephant’s ass?” Gas asked.

  “I dunno,” Pinky’s Squealer replied quickly.

  “I wouldn’t send you to mail my letters.”

  Gas was plump, fair-haired, and covered with freckles.

  They turned up the dirt road that led to the Nine Cottages, the sun beating down ruthlessly on their brown bodies. They passed Kravitz’s cottage, Becky Goldberg’s place, and the shapeless shack that housed ten shapeless Cohens.

  There was still lots of blue in the sky but where there were clouds the clouds got very dark. The tall grass at the foot of the mountain was stiff and yellow and made you itch. There were also mushy patches where bulrushes grew, but they avoided those. The mountain was cool, but the boys had a long climb and descent ahead of them. The soft plump ground they tramped on was padded with pine cones, needles, and dead leaves. Sunlight moved deviously among the birch and maple and fir trees and the mountain had a dark, damp smell to it. There was the occasional cawing of crows: they saw two woodpeckers: and, once, a humming-bird. They reached the top of the mountain around one o’clock and sat down on an open patch of ground to eat their lunch. Gas chased around after grasshoppers, storing them in an old mayonnaise jar that had two holes punched in the top. After they had finished their sandwiches they started out again, this time down the other side of the mountain. The foliage thickened, and in their eagerness to get along quickly they scratched their legs and arms in the bush, stumbling into the occasional ditch concealed by leaves and bruising their ankles against stones. They heard voices in the distance. Noah, who had been given the BB gun, pulled back the catch. Gas picked up a rock, Hoppie unstrapped his scout knife. “We’ll be late for shabus,” Pinky’s Squealer said. “Maybe we should go back?”

  “Go ahead,” Hoppie said. “But watch out for snakes, eh?”

  “I didn’t say anything!”

  Voices, laughter, too, now, came splashing loudly through the trees. The ground began to level off and, just ahead, they saw the beach. There were real canoes, a diving-board, and lots of big crazy-coloured umbrellas and deck-chairs. The boys approached the beach cautiously, crouching in the bushes. Noah was amazed. The men were tall and the women were awfully pretty, lying out in the sun there, just like that, not afraid of anything. There was no yelling or watermelon peels or women in bloomers. Everything was so clean. Beautiful, almost.

  Gas was the first to notice the soft-drink stand. He turned to Pinky’s Squealer. “You’ve got a quarter. Go get us Pepsis.”

  “Gas should go,” Hoppie said. “He’s the least Jewish-looking of the gang. Look at his nose – Christ! They’ll take him for a Goy easy.”

  “You can have my quarter.”

  “Aw go water your tea-kettle,” Gas said. “Maybe I don’t look as Jewish as you or Noah, but they can always tell by pulling down your pants …”

  They all giggled.

  “It’s not so funny,” Hoppie said. “That’s how they found out about my uncle, who was killed in Russia.”

  “You’re all chicken,” Noah said. “I’m going. But I’m having my Coke right out there on the beach. If you want anything to drink you’ll have to come too.”


  A convertible Ford pulled away, and that exposed the sign to them. Gas noticed it first. Suddenly, he pointed. “Hey! Look!”

  THIS BEACH IS RESTRICTED TO GENTILES

  That changed everything. Noah, who got very excited, said that they should hang around until evening, and then, when the beach was deserted, steal the sign.

  “Yeah, and walk back in the dark, eh?” Pinky’s Squealer said. “It’s Friday, you know. Ain’t your Paw coming?”

  Gas and Hoppie looked puzzled. Both of them had been forbidden to play with Noah by their mothers. Pinky’s Squealer made sense, but they did not want to be associated with him and if Noah intended to stay, they would look foolish having left him behind. Noah wanted to stay. Having his father up for the weekend usually meant two days of quarrelling.

  “Aw, in a hundred years we’ll all be dead,” Gas said.

  Pinky’s Squealer waited, kicking the stump of a tree absently. “If you come with me, Hoppie, you can have my quarter.”

  “Watch out for snakes,” Hoppie said.

  Pinky’s Squealer ran off.

  They waited. The afternoon dragged on slowly. But at last the sun was lower in the sky and a stronger breeze started up. Only a few stragglers remained on the beach.

  “Is a Gentile a protestant and a catholic too?” Hoppie asked.

  “Yeah,” Noah said.

  “But they’re different,” Hoppie said.

  “Different,” Gas said. “You know the difference between Hitler and Mussolini?”

  Noah said that as it was getting late they would have to chance it, stragglers and all. The few couples that remained were intent on each other and wouldn’t notice them if they were smart. Noah said that he and Gas should stroll out on to the beach, approaching the sign from different directions, nonchalantly. It didn’t look like it was stuck very solidly into the sand. Hoppie was to yell if he saw anybody coming for them. He had stones and the BB gun.

  So the two boys walked out innocently on the beach. Noah whistled. Gas pretended to be looking for something. The wind kicked up gusts of sand, and the sun, quite low now, was a blaze in the opposite hills. Suddenly, frantically, the two boys were yanking at the sign. Gas roared with laughter, tears rolled down his cheeks. Noah cursed. They heard, piercing the quiet, a high-pitched yell. “Look out!” Gas let go, and ran off. “Hurry!” Noah persisted. A man was running towards him with a canoe paddle in his hands. Noah gave one last, frenzied tug, and the sign broke loose. The man was about twenty feet away and already swinging his paddle. His eyes were wild. “You son-of-a-bitch!” Noah swerved, and raced swiftly for the bushes. A shower of pebbles bounced off his back. The paddle swooshed through the air behind him. But he was fast. Once in the bushes he scampered madly off into the mountain. He ran and ran and ran. Until finally, clutching the sign in his hands, he tumbled down on the pine needles, his heart thumping wildly.…

  Noah sat down on the window-sill of his rented room. I couldn’t find Gas, he remembered, but Hoppie was waiting for me in the bushes. It got dark fast, and – of course – we got lost. I wasn’t frightened. I had the sign, didn’t I? But Hoppie was scared. We didn’t have a flashlight. For all we knew we might come out of the woods again back at Lac Gandon. We had stopped climbing and had reached a level bit of ground when suddenly we heard many voices. Light beams shot through the darkness. We hid the sign under a mess of leaves and climbed up the nearest tree – our pockets filled with stones. The voices and the lights came nearer. Remembering, Noah laughed warmly. I think every Yid in Prevost was on the mountain that night. Where they got all those pitchforks and clubs and sticks, God knows. Hoppie and I never thought we’d be grateful to Pinky’s Squealer, but we were that night. We slid down the tree and uncovered the sign, and that was our night of glory in Prevost. Nothing was too good for us. Sunday morning, Noah remembered, he, Mort Shub, Gas, and Hoppie had planted the sign on the beach. They had got some paint first. When the people had come out to swim, they had read:

  THIS BEACH IS RESTRICTED TO LITVAKS

  That was some time, Noah thought fondly. It really was. He leaned back on the bed, and smiling almost imperceptibly, smoked with his hands clasped behind his head. Pinky’s Squealer, he thought, is studying to be a rabbi now, like his cousin Milton Pinky Fishman. Noah got up. Miriam, he thought, resembles those pretty women on the beach at Lac Gandon. I did not make my mother to suffer or my father bewildered, or my grandfather hard. I should have had the right to begin with my birth. He sat up and rubbed his jaw absently. It’s all absurd, but here I am. Glancing out of the window he saw a blackboard of sky with several stars chalked up in yellow and an imperfectly rounded moon done up in orange. It would be all right, he thought, to reach out and pull down a star or two to look at. They can’t be as big or as far away as they say. They’re only stars, he thought. If you were tall enough you could pick them like berries. “Miriam,” he said softly.

  III

  Something was happening to the old man. His anger and his words were still law for the family, but Shloime and Ida disobeyed him behind his back, something they would not have done so freely before. He complained of rheumatism and a weight on his heart and sometimes he did not go down to the coal yard in the mornings. He had a nap after lunch. He felt the damp November days in his bones. During the afternoon he read Talmud and in the evening he studied with the other old men in the synagogue. Had I been willing to let my children fend for themselves, he thought, had I followed my natural bent, I could have been a scribe – and Noah would have had respect.…

  “Max wants for us to move into an apartment in Outremont. I should retire, he says. What should I do, I ask, if I retire. What …”

  “He means only good, Melech. Thank God we haven’t got for children such bums as Edelman. You know de Edelman boy was in jail again? A Yiddish boy. Now they will say we are robbers on top of everything. As if we didn’t have enough. So what would you like? Sons like Panofsky has? Communists yet. You see his Aaron? Everybody loved Aaron. So. What is? He sits in front of de store in that wheelchair smoking cigarettes like a chimney. Where are his legs? His legs are in Spain. At least we have boys who are pushers. Max, you watch. Maxie will be all right.”

  “Max. A lot he knows.”

  Autumn had come swiftly to the ghetto. The leaves had turned briefly red and yellow on the trees and then tumbled downwards dead. Black clouds swept by fast in the lowering sky, and the prosperous who lived in Outremont, Max among them, brought their families back from their summer homes in the Laurentians. The McGill freshmen among their children wondered whether they would be asked to join a good fraternity or sorority. The boys bought pipes and blazers and the girls tried on party dresses. Meanwhile those who had already graduated began to exchange pipes for cigars: party dresses brought in a good return in engagement rings. He who had failed opened up an insurance office, or, if she were a girl, went in for social service work or nursing.

  Ida couldn’t hear her parents talking. Upstairs, she sucked impatiently on a peppermint and listened to the Make-Believe Ballroom.

  “Right now, folks, we’ve got a swell ditty coming up from the King of Sobs. I Believe, number 2 on your CJAD Hit Parade. Plug. My salary goes up each time I mention CJAD. Can you hear me, boss?”

  Don Bishop laughed. So did Ida.

  “I Believe by – you guessed it! – Johnny Ray. This one is from Ida to Stanley. Are you listening, Stanley? I’ll bet he is! Let’s have that platter, Lou.”

  Ida had gone to Goodman’s hotel, in Val Morin, for her summer vacation and that’s where she had met Stanley. But Stanley did not come from an orthodox family and Ida was worried about introducing him to her father, so they saw each other secretly.

  A shaded yellow light hung low over each of the eight tables in the Royal Billiard Room. Smoke, eight clouds for eight suns, thickened under and around the bulbs. The long and narrow room reeked of french fried potatoes, the walls were heavy with soot. Men watched the players from the benches that flank
ed the walls. Occasionally they made derogatory remarks: but otherwise they did not talk much. The snooker balls clacked together again and again making a hard, clean sound. Shloime, who was also known as Kid Lightning, was playing The Sleeper on the second table. The game was for five dollars, Shloime, who was a good player, was up twenty-two points and they were already on the coloured balls. The Sleeper, who in his wakeful hours had been arrested four times, once for arson, twice for petty larceny, and another time for shoplifting, cursed each time he shot and always watched to make sure that Shloime kept one foot on the floor. Each time Shloime made a run he accused him of fluking. Shloime was excited. Not because of the five dollars, no, but because he was being watched by Lou The Hook Edelman. Each time he sunk a difficult shot Shloime looked up at The Hook and grinned. The Hook had his boys with him. It could mean anything, Shloime thought.

  “You waitin’ for Christmas? Shoot,” The Sleeper said.

  Shloime took aim patiently, and sunk the green ball in the side pocket. The cue ball swerved back and rolled into perfect position behind the brown ball. Shloime knocked the brown hard into the corner pocket and the cue ball zoomed fast down the cloth, nearly scratched in the far corner pocket, jumped clear and rolled lazily up towards the blue ball which was frozen against the band. Shloime leaned his cue against the table and rubbed the chalk off his hand. “Pay up,” he said.

  “You blind? Dey’re still three balls on the table.”

  “This jerk believes in miracles yet,” Shloime said, turning to the others.

  The Sleeper flung his cue down on the table and rushed towards Shloime. “Who’s a jerk, eh?”

  “You tell me. I’m lissnink.”

  The Hook got up and came between them. He turned to The Sleeper. “You’re a jerk. Okay? Now give the kid his five fish.”

  “Dis is our business,” The Sleeper said, beating his chest.

  “I just made it mine. Okay, jerk. I’ll count ten.”

  The Sleeper flung a five-dollar bill down on the table and then grabbed his coat and rushed towards the door. He stopped in the doorway. “You can’t count no higher’n ten, Hook. You ex-con you. Hankink is too good fur you.” Then he slammed the door and rushed down the street.