Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [133]
“Daddy, for Christ’s sake, I’m really tired of that joke. It’s asinine.”
Snorting, his mouth clamped on a mushy White Owl, Izzy heaved himself into the chair closest to the food platters. “I keep three guns in the house.” Avoiding my reproving look, he yanked the smoked-meat platter toward him and, reaching for a fork, began to stab at fat slices, flicking the lean cuts aside, as he began to stack meat on kimmel bread. “They’re well hidden, scattered, you know. Somebody comes in here, uninvited, boy, if he wants to I’ll air-condition him, sure as hell.” Then he started on one of his trips down memory lane. “During the Depression, you know what I earned? Twelve hundred bucks a year, that’s all, and I’ll bet some of you lost that much tonight. Could I live on it? Good question. Don’t forget I had a free car. I was in the mood for a piece of tail, it was always compliments of the house,” said Izzy. And then, carrying his wobbly sandwich with him, he drifted over to the liquor cabinet to pour himself a hefty shot of Crown Royal and ginger ale. “You’d go into places, everybody knows you’re in the detective office, they’re glad to see you, you know how it is? Butcher shops, especially the kosher ones, groceries, most of them are glad to see you. Specially they may need your help. So they load you down with free stuff. Clothing factories too, they may need you in an investigation, like you go inside to scare an employee for them who wants to start a union or shit like that. I didn’t feel the Depression at all.” And then, his immense sandwich balanced in one hand, his rye and ginger ale in another, a sour pickle clenched between his teeth, Izzy wiggled his eyebrows at me and retreated to his basement flat.
“He’s something else,” said Nate.
“Tell me, Marv,” said Irv, “did you stop over in Europe on your way to Israel?”
“Paris.”
“You shouldn’t spend your dollars in Europe. France, especially. In 194362 they rounded up more Jewish kids for the gas chambers than even the Gestapo could cope with.”
Sensing trouble, everybody hurried into their coats and fled. Standing at the top of the stairs to my father’s flat, I shouted, “You’re a pig, a chazer, and I can see through all your childish tricks.”
Slippers flapped on the stairs, and my father ascended, his face ashen. There were times he looked fifty, his energy boundless, and other times, like now, he seemed old and crushed. “You all right, Daddy?” I asked.
“Heartburn.”
“I’m not surprised, packing away a sandwich like that.”
“Can I have an Alka-Seltzer, or has she locked that up?”
“Please don’t start, Daddy. I’m tired,” I pleaded, fixing him an Alka-Seltzer.
Izzy accepted the glass, gulped it down, and belched resoundingly. “Barney,” he said, a quiver in his voice, “I love you.” And suddenly, unaccountably, he was in tears.
“What is it, Daddy? Tell me, please. Maybe I can help.”
“Nobody can help.”
Cancer. “Here, Daddy.”
My father accepted a Kleenex, blew his nose, and wiped the corners of his eyes. I stroked his hand and waited. Finally he raised his tear-streaked face and said, “You don’t know what it’s like not to be able to fuck regular any more.”
Here we go again, I thought, angrily withdrawing my hand, as once more Izzy lamented the departure of Madame Langevin, our first maid. “Forty-eight years old,” he said, grieving, “and she had breasts,” he reminded me again, rapping a tiled counter top with his knuckles, “hard as this.”
Madame Langevin, once The Second Mrs. Panofsky had found out, had been sent packing over my objections. Our new maid, a West Indian, was not allowed into the basement flat unless Izzy was out.
“Daddy, will you go to bed now, please.”
But he was back at the liquor cabinet, helping himself to another rye and ginger ale. “Your mother, may she rest in peace, suffered terribly from gas. What held her together during those last years? Wire and string. Stitches. All those operations. Shit. Her stomach was so criss-crossed it looked like centre ice at the end of the third period.”
“You’re not being decent,” I protested.