Son of a Smaller Hero Page 8

  But Miriam’s abstruseness was fast becoming too much for Noah. She had taken to passing smart remarks about “his girl” when Theo was around, and Noah was expected to bring her to the apartment soon. They both believed that there actually was one and Noah did not want Miriam to think that he was the kind of man who could not have lots of girls.

  That was Tuesday. Noah spent that afternoon drinking beer in the Bar Vendôme.

  The Bar Vendôme was a small basement bar on Drummond Street, not far from Wellington College. The crowd varied. There were the clean-faced young men in brushcuts and bow ties with their pretty, well-dressed girls: and then there were the women, who, having been courageous enough to rebel and to seek “bachelor” apartments and to compete with men for jobs, were, now that they had both, unable to speak of their jobs, except cynically, and unable to contend with their apartments, except when drunk or accompanied or both. A few dissipated men, regulars, sat at the bar consuming drink after drink without expression, watching the newly scrubbed girls who sat with younger men. A French Canadian girl who wore a lot of jewellery and painted and who went to Paris every summer with her mother came in nearly every night. She sobbed when she had more than six drinks, and that, also, was nearly every night. There were many bright young journalists and lawyers and commercial artists.

  Noah finally got up enough courage to call her.

  “I’m in the Vendôme, Miriam. Would you like to come around for a drink?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Swell. I’ll wait.”

  “I’ll leave a note for Theo. He can join us later.”

  “Oh yeah, sure. Good idea.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “You sound drunk.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  There was a pause.

  “All right. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

  He noticed that her voice had cooled. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Sorry? Sorry for what?”

  “Never mind.”

  She hung up.

  Three-quarters of an hour later she stood soaking wet in the doorway. He watched her whip off her kerchief and fling her hair clear of her neck with a quick, defiant toss of her head. He waited impatiently, and at last she came up to him. They looked at each other and grinned. He laughed richly. He reached out and fingered her wet hair and touched her lips and cheeks impetuously. Then he flushed deeply and withdrew his hand. She pressed his arm and smiled as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “You are drunk,” she said.

  “Am I?”

  She grabbed his chin and turned him towards the mirror. Her fingers felt cold. Looking into the mirror, he saw that his eyes were glossy, red. “All right. But I’m not drunk.”

  “Neither am I.”

  They laughed again, together, and then turned away from each other embarrassed.

  Two tables away Jerry Selby turned to a man with heavy jowls and rimless glasses and said: “The way I look at it, Mr. Corby, give us another twenty years and we’ll be as big as you guys in the U.S.A. This is one market you can’t afford to miss up on. Your product is the best on the market. And believe you me I’m not saying that just because you’re sitting here with me. But you can’t afford to be shy. Even when you’ve got the best. Look at Bishop Sheen, for instance. He’s got God, and you can’t do any better. But even he knows that you’ve got to get out there and sell.”

  Noah ordered two whiskies. Now that they were together he did not know what to do. He drank his whisky quickly and ordered another. She seemed calm, indifferent, too, perhaps, and he longed for an excuse to touch her again. He clasped his hands together and tapped them against his chin nervously. I’m afraid, he thought. She turned to him as though she anticipated some remark or instruction. He wanted to hit her. “Would you like another drink?”

  They drank again.

  She watched him. She felt light on her feet, young, and she wanted to hurry him into a taxi and back to the apartment. But she knew that she couldn’t do that, that afterwards he would not forgive her. She knew that she must wait.

  “I was drunk, I guess,” a lean man said thickly. “I thought that after this war there was going to be a big fiesta. I believed in Taft shaking hands with Browder. I believed in the war and I believed in 1945. And now, what? Your best ticket to prosperity in Germany today is …”

  “I don’t know anything about politics,” the woman with him said.

  “Let’s go,” Noah said.

  “What about Theo?”

  Noah frowned. He wished that she wouldn’t keep throwing him in his face that way. Besides, he was suspicious of Theo. He was suspicious of Theo because although Noah believed that you could love one man or two men or ten men he did not believe that you could love man. Not man, and not mankind. Such generalities, such loves, were the tormented inventions of those who loved with much facility and no truth.

  “Theo can go to hell,” Noah said.

  Suddenly, he felt her hand soft and restraining on his wrist.

  “He won’t get away for hours, anyway,” he said. “We can come back.”

  St. Catherine Street glistened in the rain. Up towards Peel Street and under a play of darting neon, long queues formed waiting to get into the first-run movies. Yellow streetcars clanged by. The loudly human street smelled of exhaust fumes and other bodies and drowsy lights. Noah grabbed her hand swiftly and held it in a laconic grip. He decided that after he had counted up to ten he would tell her that he loved her. What will happen then? She’ll get into a taxi, he thought. She’ll tell Theo. Tell him in bed. And, Christ, they’ll laugh. He counted up to sixteen and then he turned to her. “Let’s go back,” he said. “I want another drink.”

  This time they sat at a table in a dim corner and ordered two whiskies from Emil.

  “Carter is having a thing with Edna,” a girl said.

  “But Edna is the end.”

  Emil slammed his tray down on the bar. “I told you that I wanted two gins and tonic with lemon and three without. Not three with and two without.”

  Noah and Miriam didn’t talk. As the crowd thickened they were pushed closer and closer together on the red-leather bench. Perry sang “La Vie en rose.” They drank whisky, and they held hands. He allowed himself hope but he felt her eyes on him like a threat. “I love you,” he said. “I can’t help it. I love you.”

  She laughed. She wiped her eyes and kissed his hand. He looked at her and he could not bear the deep, hurt thing in her eyes. Suddenly, everything had changed. Her upturned face was full of expectations. He felt that something still remained to be done. His joy was tremendous, but so was his sense of frustration: his anger increased. He eyed her yearningly and understood, briefly, the nature of madness.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Sometimes I’m so happy that I don’t know what to do with myself. There seems to be no way of expressing it.”

  “I’ve always wanted a man with whom it would not be necessary to talk. So that when we were together – silent – we would be full.”

  “There are so many things I must tell you.”

  She nodded obediently.

  “I would like to be something really fine for you.”

  She touched his lips with her fingers. She thought, briefly, of the others in the bar, but then she realized that she no longer minded them. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve waited so long.”

  Jerry Selby and his heavy-jowled client got up to go.

  “You sleep on it. It may sound crazy but I don’t want your business if I have to talk you into it. I want you to do what you think is best.”

  “Noah, do you worry about being a Jew? You know what I mean.…”

  “No. I don’t. The guy who wants to get into a restricted golf course or hotel and the other guy who won’t let him in are really brothers. The fact that one is inside and the other outside is an accident. They could switch places just like that. B
esides, there is a certain kind of Jew who needs a Goy badly. And then …”

  “And then there’s the kind like you, the worst, who turns all the way around and becomes an anti-Semite himself. What about Germany?”

  “The important thing is not that they burned Jews but that they burned men. It didn’t have to happen in Germany, either. A Zionist, who I know very well, sold scrap to Japan right up to ’41. He didn’t see the connection. Nobody in the family protested against nonintervention in …”

  The room was full. Talk swayed like the candlelight. There were red girls in green dresses, pink men in blue suits, and brown girls in yellow dresses. Women with tanned backs and men with pallid faces and women with flaxen heads.

  “What, darling?”

  “Against non-intervention in … Isn’t that what you call him?”

  Miriam didn’t reply. Noah scratched his head and began to make quick circles with his hands. “Christ, I feel stupid. I can’t think.”

  A swaying man grabbed Perry, the West Indian pianist, by the arm. “Your people deserve a break,” he said.

  They left.

  They walked aimlessly up St. Catherine Street, past the Loew’s Theatre and the Chicken-Coop and Ogilvy’s department store. The sign at F.D.R.’s said: “WE SELL 4½ TONS OF SPAGHETTI A WEEK.” They got caught up by the traffic lights at Guy Street, and overheard a man say: “Did you know that the human head weighs thirty-five pounds?” They looked at each other and laughed. Miriam pressed Noah’s hand. “I want to kiss you,” he said. She giggled. “Not here,” she said. A tattered man in steel-rimmed glasses was distributing pamphlets at the next corner. “Put God in your will,” he yelled. “You’re sure to be in His.” Noah stopped and lit a cigarette, and she stood close to him. He touched her cheek. “God,” he said. She smiled. “Your eyes are wet,” she said. “I know,” he said, taking her arm again. They walked for a bit without saying anything, then Miriam stopped him and took a puff of his cigarette. They couldn’t look at each other without laughing. There was a big poster of Yvon Robert over the doors of the Forum. He was going to wrestle Sir Harry Northcliffe next Wednesday night. A world’s championship match. The poster made them laugh, too. Everything did. Finally, Miriam said: “We’d better get a taxi.”

  They got into a taxi, and that’s when her mood changed – changed swiftly. I still love Theo, she thought. I don’t want to hurt him anyway. Noah, she noticed, was sulking. She kissed him, but he didn’t respond. I can’t have them both in the apartment, she thought. I’ll go crazy. Noah was thinking just about the same thing. He was thinking that he would have to move. But what if she won’t come with me, he thought. She hasn’t said that she would.

  When they pulled up in front of the apartment Miriam was quickly transformed into an efficient, modern woman. She let go of his hand and made up her face. Then she checked to see if there was any lipstick on him. He pulled away from her abruptly. “I’ll tell him right now,” he said. “We’ll go away tonight.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Miriam, Miriam. You were serious. You weren’t …”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Don’t … I’m in the next room. I hear things. I …”

  “Don’t torment me, Noah, please don’t.”

  “I can’t go in now. I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you later.”

  “All right,” she said.

  Sadly he watched her walk away from him.

  Earlier that evening Theo had come home from his lecture and found Miriam’s note. He had been vaguely pleased that the two of them had gone out together, for he was troubled, and he wanted time to think. His days, from the very beginning, had been ordered. When he had been a small boy his mother had ordered them for him, just as she had ordered his father’s days, hardly allowing him time enough for death. Dr. Hall had, in fact, died most inconveniently. Had he held out for just another two weeks he would certainly have been chosen the C.C.F. candidate for Verdun. But Mrs. Hall was conditioned to disappointments. G.B.S. had answered none of her letters: her daughter, Beatrice, had married a Catholic and did not practise birth control. She wrote Theo weekly letters from Toronto, as lengthy as they were erudite, dealing with political and population problems and criticizing Direction.

  His days, from the beginning, had been ordered in the nature of a preparation. Ever since he had been ten years old Theo had kept several sheets of paper tacked over his desk. One of them, a chart divided up into hours, listed things to be done on a particular day. Another listed books to be read: a third music to listen to. Through boyhood and adolescence and into manhood he had hurried through his days trying to catch up with his self-imposed schedules. He had seldom had moments for unscheduled pleasures, so now, slumped back on the sofa with his eyes shut, he could no longer remember what he had wanted to think about when he had the time. He felt guilty. So he switched on the reading-lamp and began to read. He read for an hour or more, not really absorbing anything, before he fell asleep on the sofa. He woke suddenly when his book fell to the floor. The crash startled him. Where are the students? Miriam! I’ll be late for lectures! Slowly, he became aware of his surroundings. He slumped back into the warm, snug sofa. 12:15. I wasted a half-hour sleeping, he thought.

  He heard the key fumbling in the lock.

  Miriam opened the door and Theo smiled calmly. She was surprised, almost insulted, to find him unchanged. The familiar room whirled around her. She allowed herself to be kissed in a perfunctory way.

  “Are you drunk, darling?”

  “I don’t really know,” she said. “Why? Would that be funny?”

  “I’ll make you some black coffee.”

  “Will you stop being so understanding! If I’m drunk perhaps I’d like to stay that way.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. All right.”

  Oh God, she thought. She got up and kissed him, clinging to him tightly. Her ardour distressed him. “I’m a bitch, Theo. An awful bitch. I’m so sorry.”

  “You’ll be fine, darling. You’ve had a bit too much, that’s all.”

  She moved away from him coldly. “I need a shower. You go to bed, Theo. I won’t be long.”

  “Oh, Miriam. What’s happened to Noah?”

  But, shutting the bathroom door behind her, she had pretended not to hear. Theo shrugged his shoulders. Something was wrong, but that something, which was certainly oppressive, eluded him. He sat down and tried to read again, but he couldn’t concentrate. Looking around the room he saw all the familiar possessions and heard all the familiar noises and thought, This is what I have striven for, but found no comfort in the thought or in the possessions. His eyes filled with the ineffable terror of those who, drowning, search an empty hostile sea for something, anything, to hold firm to: whether that thing be true or not. Nothing’s wrong, he thought. I’m tired. He tried to read again, desperately, but the print blurred. The books can be sold, he thought. So can the furnishings. Everything I have is rented. “Miriam …”

  The shower drowned out all other noises. She could not hear him call out and he could not hear her sobbing. She realized quickly that, as far as Noah was concerned, Theo was just a thing in the way. But she knew differently. She recalled with some disgust the exhibition that she had made of herself in the Bar Vendôme. Then she relented. She felt that she was betraying Noah. I do love him, she thought. But if I don’t betray him I must betray Theo. She ripped off her cap and turned the tap on harder, surrendering herself to the water like a punishment. Drying herself, she meticulously avoided looking into the mirror. An ageing woman’s lust, she thought. I can’t. He must know that I can’t. That I was drunk.

  Theo was still up when she got into bed with him. The room helped. She lay her head child-like on the pillow, newly rich in an acquired belief and intent on falling asleep before Noah returned.

  Theo kissed her cheek. “Miriam. Let’s have a child.”

  “Oh. Oh, no!”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, Theo, I … Remember? We said t
hat we wouldn’t until you …”

  “Until I was earning enough money. Well, I am now.”

  He waited, but she didn’t reply. Miriam stared into the familiar, habitual dark of their room. Then, sadly, she turned to him.

  V

  The first time Noah had been to a concert the orchestra had played The Four Seasons of Vivaldi and he had been so struck by it that he had felt something like pain. He had not suspected that men were capable of such beauty. He had been startled. So he had walked out wondering into the night, not knowing what to make of his discovery. All those stale lies that he had inherited from others, all those cautionary tales, and those other dreadful things, facts, that he had collected like his father did stamps, knowledge, all that passed away, rejected, dwarfed by the entry of beauty into his consciousness. The city, the gaudy night, had whirled around him phantasmagorically but without importance. I didn’t know about beauty, he had thought. Nobody ever told me. When he had next been aware of his surroundings he was sitting on a bench on the mountain. It was dawn. People were getting up to go to work.

  Later Noah had found out that there were booths in music stores where customers could try out records. So for weeks he had wandered from store to store sampling different symphonies and concertos, but always coming back to Vivaldi.

  There had been other incidents, too. One afternoon, when he had still been in high school, he had decided not to go to classes, but to go for a walk instead. For suddenly he had realized that nothing they thought horrible could really hurt him. They could strap him. Fail him. Throw him out of school. What did it matter? All their threats, all of Melech’s laws, were like autumn leaves that, once flung into the wind, scattered and turned to dust. He had not done anything special with that afternoon of freedom. He had walked, but not in beautiful places. Yet somehow the whole city had seemed to be illuminated by the fire that burned within him. Walking, he had danced. Loitering on benches, he had suddenly, inexplicably, burst out into great peals of laughter. He had not been able at that time to think of anything reasonable or unremarkable or sorrowful. Finally, he had felt absolutely exhausted.