Barney's Version Page 9

  That in recognition of the past exploitation of the Québécois collectivity, the White Niggers of North America, fifty per cent of Wellington courses should now be taught in French.

  That if studies of the disposable past are to continue, they should no longer go by the appellation “history” but, instead, “his and herstory.”

  Police barricades went up outside Wellington, but no siege guns were put in place. Bed sheets with slogans daubed on them were draped from windows. DEATH TO THE PIGS. VIVE LE QUéBEC LIBRE. REPATRIATE THE FLQ FREEDOM FIGHTERS. The electricity was cut off on the third day, which meant that The 18th of November Fifteen could no longer watch themselves on TV. When furniture was broken up and burned in various fireplaces, it aggravated Judy Frishman’s asthma. Then, once they ran out of usable wood, Marty Holtzman caught cold. He could see his mother camped on the far side of the barricades, armed with his cashmere sweater and sheepskin-lined coat, but at that tantalizing distance this only fed his sneezing fits. A chocolate-bar diet was adequate for some, but it made Martha Ryan’s skin break out, so she refused to pose bare-chested at the window any more for cameramen, putting vanity before the cause. Not surprisingly, she was denounced as a bourgeois cunt at that night’s cell meeting.

  Inevitably, the close quarters, the dark, and the freezing temperatures made for dissension in the ranks. Greta Pincus ran out of allergy pills and asked to be released for health reasons. It was discovered that Donald Potter, Jr., was surreptitiously squirting contact-lens fluid into his eyes in the bathroom, not sharing with the two comrades who had run out of theirs. Potter was denounced. He countered by accusing the others of being prejudiced against gays. Molly Zucker pleaded to be let out on Thursday for her appointment with her analyst, but the vote went against her. The toilets, which hadn’t been flushed for days, became unendurable. So, on the ninth day of the siege, the frustrated 18th of November Fifteen decided to walk out in time for the CBC-TV National News deadline. They marched out in a disciplined file, heads held high, saluting with clenched fists even as they were loaded into the waiting paddy wagon. I stood watching, a distraught Miriam at my side, digging her nails into the palm of my hand hard enough to make me wince.

  Beneath Miriam’s seemingly serene nature, there was a woman warrior waiting to leap out. Put another way, anybody going for a stroll in the woods in our country knows enough not to wittingly pass between a bear and her cubs, but I would rather risk a mauling by a grizzly any day than threaten Miriam’s children.

  “Will they beat up Saul once they get him into the station?” she demanded.

  “They won’t mess with this bunch. Some of their parents are too well connected. Besides, there are lawyers waiting with bail, John Hughes-McNoughton among them. Saul will be home tomorrow morning.”

  “We’re going to follow the paddy wagon to the station and warn those bastards if they so much as lay a finger on Saul —”

  “Miriam, that’s not the way to handle it.”

  Her hot tears notwithstanding, I insisted on driving her home. “You think I’m not worried? Of course I am,” I said. “But you’re such an innocent. You have no idea how things work. You don’t get anywhere threatening the cops. Or signing petitions. Or writing letters to the editor. What you do here is sweet-talk the right people, spreading a little vigorish where it counts. And that’s what Hughes-McNoughton and I will be up to, starting tomorrow.”

  “We could at least go down to the station and sit there until he gets out on bail in the morning.”

  “Miriam, no.”

  “I’m going.”

  “The hell you are.”

  We began to struggle, and finally she collapsed in my arms, heaving with sobs, which did not subside until I led her to bed. Five a.m. I found her pacing up and down in the living room, where she greeted me with her most chilling look. “God help you, Barney Panofsky, but you’d better be right about how to handle this.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, but the truth was that my confidence was more than somewhat forced.

  Saul was released on bail later that morning. Undeniably the ringleader, he was accused, among other things, of disturbing the peace and of the wilful destruction of private property. Nobody knew precisely what charges would be laid by Wellington, but as I hastily explained to Miriam, Calvin Potter, Sr. was on the board of governors and Marty Holtzman’s father sat in Trudeau’s cabinet.

  After breakfast I compiled a list of helpful names and then I called Saul into the library, Miriam and Kate trailing after to protect him. “I don’t want you to worry, comrade,” I said. “Maître Hughes-McNoughton is going to see some people here, and I’m going to meet with others in Ottawa.”

  “Yeah, sure. That figures. This society is rotten to the core.”

  “Lucky for you it is, because you’re facing two years in the slammer is how John sees it, and I’ve been there, you won’t like it. So you are not to say a word to reporters or any other running dogs of imperialism until this is over. No manifestos. No pensées of Chairman Saul. Understand?”

  “Will you please not threaten him,” said Miriam.

  “I’m willing to listen to you, Mom, because you don’t find it necessary to shout in order to make your feeble points, and you don’t contribute funds to the upkeep of the Israeli army of occupation in the homeland of the Palestinians.”

  “Saul, prison isn’t what you think it is. If they lock you up for only six months they will be gang-raping you every night.”

  “I don’t have to sit here and listen to your homophobic prejudices.”

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  “I will not do anything to compromise my comrades.”

  “Spartacus has spoken.”

  “Darling, listen to your father. You won’t be asked to compromise anybody.”

  The judge, I found out, would be Mr. Justice Bartholomé Savard of St-Eustache, who was reputed to be something of a womanizer and bon vivant. John had once introduced me to him at Les Halles. “I am a great admirator of your people,” he said. “For sure mine could learn a lesson from yours on how to stick together, come water or high hell.”

  I hurried home to comfort Miriam with the news. “We’ve struck gold, my love. The judge just happens to be the brother of my onetime saviour, the good Bishop Sylvain Gaston Savard.”

  But she did not respond as I had hoped. “I would like you to tell me why,” she said, “you have never admitted to anybody the real reason why you were responsible for the English translation of that idiotic book about his appalling aunt. Don’t think I’m never asked about it.”

  I had not only paid for the privately printed English edition of that little monograph in praise of Sister Octavia, but I had also been obliged, at the time, to contribute a goodly chunk of the cost of raising a statue to the bitch in St-Eustache. Bishop Savard hoped his aunt would be beatified one day, if not for her noble work among the poor, then at least for her 1937 campaign to get her people not to buy from Jew shopkeepers “who had cheating in their blood.”

  “Because,” I said, “if the truth were known it would only make matters worse.”

  “You’re not being honest,” she said, clearly irritated with me. “It’s because after all these years you’re still trying to please Boogie. He would be delighted to know you had created a scandal. ‘You see, Boogie, appearances notwithstanding, I’m still capable of épater le bourgeois, just like you taught me.’ ”

  “You’re taking a sleeping-pill tonight.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  I drove to Ottawa, where I just happened to run into Graham Fielding, the lanky deputy minister of justice, in the lobby of the Château Laurier, and the two of us repaired to the National Arts Centre restaurant across the street. Fielding was the scion of an immensely rich Montreal stockbroker family. His wife, who cut his hair and darned his socks, was not allowed to shop for clothes on her own: instead, he accompanied her once a year to the Oxfam Nearly New store. We had first met and knocked back a couple of beers
together one night many years ago in Paris, when he was studying at the Sorbonne. Nudging fifty now, constantly prodding the bridge of his hornrimmed glasses with his forefinger, Fielding still had the appearance of a precocious schoolboy, the class snitch. We were well into our second round when he summoned the waiter to bring him his very own box of Montecristos. Isn’t that nice of him, I thought. Then I watched him select a cigar for himself, allowing the waiter to snip and light it for him before waving him off. Amused, I told him how deeply I admired his wife’s geometric paintings, all of them done in different shades of yellow, and how it was a damn shame that she had not yet exhibited in New York, where her work was bound to fetch big bucks. If she would be good enough to send me some slides, I would pass them on to the great Leo Bishinsky, an old pal of mine. Then I told him about Saul, burnishing the tale to make it as entertaining as possible.

  “You do realize,” said Fielding, withdrawing his long legs from under the table, “that prosecutions by provincial authorities are a world unto themselves.”

  “Graham, I would never have mentioned the case to you if I thought you could influence the proceedings in any fashion. That would be most improper,” I said, calling for the bill. I left him my card. “And please don’t forget to send me those slides.”

  Next I imposed on an old friend to take me to lunch at the Mount Royal Club on a day I knew Calvin Potter, Sr., would be there. Stopping at his table, I congratulated him on his daughter’s engagement to Senator Gordon McHale’s son, who had such a bright political future. “Unfortunately, Calvinism dies hard,” I said. “Old Gordon, for instance, simply cannot tolerate homosexuality. He thinks it’s a disease.”

  Changing the subject, Potter inveighed against wanton destruction and wildfire radicalism, and insisted that Wellington’s young vandals, his son included, be taught a lesson.

  “You’re right, but my concern is for innocent family bystanders. Should there be a prolonged trial the private peccadilloes of some of the offenders, a few of them obviously sexually confused — albeit temporarily, it goes without saying — would be magnified by the press, given their insatiable appetite for scandal among their social superiors.”

  Calling in a marker here, and a marker there, I wangled an invitation to Club Saint-Denis, where I cornered the provincial minister of justice and argued passionately that Canada had no culture to speak of that wasn’t French Canadian. And that weekend I went on a retreat to the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, where I was able to renew the acquaintance of the good Bishop Sylvain Gaston Savard, the devoted nephew of the odious Sister Octavia. We embraced, as old friends should, and sat down to chat. The bishop told me about the sad state of repair of his cathedral in St-Eustache, and the dire need of funds to restore it to its former glory. “Now that’s very interesting,” I said, “because I am so grateful to this province — no, this nation struggling to be born — for the sustenance it has given me and my family, and I’d like to put something back into Quebec. But of course it would be improper of me to be of any help while your brother is to sit in judgment on my errant son.”

  So even Miriam had to agree that I had done everything possible, and the trial itself started unnervingly well. As a matter of fact, to begin with, it was something of an anticlimax. Wellington’s lawyers did not go for the jugular, perhaps mollified because parents of the accused had promised to endow a chair of visible-minority social studies at the college. A subdued, appropriately pale Saul wore a suit and answered questions in such a timorous voice that Judge Savard had to ask him more than once to speak up.

  On the morning that Saul and his comrades were to be sentenced, sympathizers gathered in front of the court-house. They wielded placards that read FREE THE 18TH OF NOVEMBER FIFTEEN. REMEMBER LES PATRIOTES. Fortunately the judge, who had never enjoyed such attention before, was in an expansive mood. Summing up, he recalled his own struggles as a rebellious youth in St.-Eustache. Coming of age, he added, at a time when you couldn’t be served in French in an Eaton’s department store and the recipes on macaroni boxes were in English only. He remembered the Great Depression. The Second World War, which he had watched in news-reels. He allowed that the times were calculated to try the souls of young men and women. There was the Cold War. Drugs. Pollution. Promiscuity. Pornographic magazines and movies. Unfortunate tensions between the English and French in Quebec. A lamentable decline in church and — he added, eyes atwinkle — synagogue attendance. So the young, he ventured, were obviously troubled, especially the more sensitive among them. But this, he pointed out, did not entitle them to run amok, destroying private property. Nobody was above the law. And yet — and yet — he wondered aloud, would it serve any point to incarcerate the sons and daughters of respectable, law-abiding families with common criminals? Yes, certainly, if they held to their radical beliefs. No, just possibly, if they had come to repent sincerely. Then, having given Saul his cue, he asked if — before he was sentenced — he had anything to say for himself.

  Alas, Saul was now aware of the reporters, as well as his many admirers in the courtroom. Hushed, expectant. “Well, young man,” said Mr. Justice Savard, prodding him, his smile benign.

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what you sentence me to, you old fart, because I do not recognize the authority of this court. You are just another running dog of imperialism.” Then, saluting with a clenched fist, he hollered, “Power to the people. Vive le Québec libre.”

  Miriam, convinced that Saul had blown it, was horrified. And Maître Hughes-McNoughton and I, fearful that all our efforts had been in vain, exchanged despairing glances. While Mr. Justice Savard tried to restore order, there was nothing for me to do but flee the court for a much-needed smoke.

  Within minutes a smiling Miriam emerged, followed by a disappointed Saul, who was promptly embraced by Mike and Kate. “He’s got a suspended sentence,” said Miriam, “providing that he is responsible for no further outrages, and lives at home. There is also a fine to be paid.”

  Only then did I catch a glimpse of the good Bishop Sylvain Gaston Savard approaching, bearing a portfolio filled with architects’ plans and builders’ estimates, his smile large.

  7

  Story in this morning’s Gazette about the former cafeteria manager at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, who was awarded $400,000 after the jury heard that his boss had called him an “old fart.” The cafeteria manager, who was a stripling at the time, a mere fifty-four-year-old, claimed that his boss regularly made age-related remarks to him, including, “Check out Jim’s grey hair”; “How are you doing, old man?”; and “Here comes the old man, get out the wheelchair.”

  Alas, just like Jim, I’m running out of road. Yesterday, released into a downpour from the torture chamber of the man who manipulates my back once my sciatica becomes intolerable, I couldn’t find a taxi. So I boarded a Sherbrooke Street bus. Jam-packed. No seats available. But sitting right before me there was a fetching young woman, mini-skirted, legs crossed. I immediately began to undress her in my mind’s eye, undoing zippers and snaps tantalizingly slowly. She must have been psychic, for, lo and behold, unless she was suffering from a nervous tic, she was giving me the eye. Actually smiling at old Barney Panofsky, making my ageing heart skip a beat. I smiled right back at her. Leaping up, she said, “Now why don’t you sit down, sir?”

  “I am perfectly capable of standing,” I said, poking her back into her seat.

  “Well,” she said, “serves me right for being considerate in this day and age.”

  Onwards. At the risk of offending my neighbours, maybe even inviting a lawsuit like Jim’s boss, that age-ist boor, the truth is that the building I call home in downtown Montreal is actually a rich old fart’s castle. There’s no moat or drawbridge, but, all the same, it could easily qualify as a fortress for besieged Anglophone septuagenarians who tiptoe about in terror of our separatist provincial premier, whose school nickname was “The Weasel.” Most of my neighbours have unloaded their Westmount family mansions and
shifted their stock portfolios to Toronto for safekeeping, as they wait for the Québécois pure laine (that is to say, racially pure Francophones) to vote in a second referendum on independence of a sort, yes or no, for this provincial backwater called Quebec.

  Our building was recently disposed of by the Teitelbaums, sold retail to a new bunch out of Hong Kong, their suitcases laden with cash. It’s called The Lord Byng Manor, after Viscount Byng, the British general who led thousands of Canadians to their slaughter in the battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, and later went on to become one of our governors general. The Hong Kong bunch, fingers to the wind, want to rename our stately pile of granite Le Château Dollard Des Ormeaux, in honour of an early hero of New France. Dollard Des Ormeaux is said by some to have sacrificed himself and his sixteen young companions to save Ville-Marie, as Montreal was known in 1660, in a battle with a band of three hundred Iroquois at the Long Sault. Or, conversely, he was a fur trader with his eye on the main chance, who came to a deserved bad end when his raiding party was ambushed. In any event, my neighbours are outraged by this insult to their Anglophone heritage, and a petition is circulating to protest the proposed name change.

  One of my neighbours, once a feared federal cabinet minister but now in his eighties, has gone gaga. He is still a natty dresser, never without his tweed hat, regimental tie, hacking jacket, and cavalry-twill trousers. But his eyes have emptied out. Weather permitting, his keeper, a cheerful young nurse, airs him out once a day, taking him for a turn round the courtyard. Then they subside onto a bench in the sun, the nurse dipping into a Harlequin paperback and the former cabinet minister sucking jellybeans, watching the cars come and go in the parking lot, and writing down their licence numbers on a pad. Whenever I pass, he smiles and says, “Congratulations.”

  The senator who recently moved into our penthouse is none other than Harvey Schwartz, booze baron Bernard Gursky’s former consiglière. Harvey is worth kazillions. He and Becky own a Hockney, which I wish were mine; a Warhol; a painting by what’s-his-name, who used to ride a bicycle over his canvases;21 and a Leo Bishinsky, constantly rising in value. I stopped the Schwartzes in the lobby recently, the two of them obviously bound for a charity costume ball, tricked out like a twenties mobster and his moll. “Well, I’ll be gol-darned,” I said, “if it ain’t Bonnie and Clyde Schwartz. Don’t shoot.”