Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [150]
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re unfortunate enough to be his wife?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Please,” said Miriam.
“Leave her out of this, if you don’t mind?”
“He used to mock my stutter, and I would tear my hair out in bed, and my mother had to literally drag me kicking and screaming to school. Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t, Miriam.”
“What pleasure did it give you?”
“I’m not sure I even remember who in the hell you are.”
“For years I used to dream I would be in my car, you would be crossing the street, and I would run you over. I put in eight years with an analyst before I decided you weren’t worth it. You’re filth, Barney,” he said and, taking one last drag of his cigarette, he dropped it into my lobster bisque and strode off.
“Christ,” I said.
“I thought you were going to hit him.”
“Not with you here, Miriam.”
“I’m told you have a vile temper, and that when you’ve had far too much to drink, like now, which is hardly flattering, you start looking for a fight.”
“McIver?”
“I’m not saying.”
“Don’t feel well. Going to be sick.”
“Can you make it to the toilet?”
“So embarrassed.”
“Can you —”
“Got to lie down.”
She helped me to my room, where I immediately fell to my knees, retching over the toilet bowl, farting resoundingly. I wished myself buried alive. Or drawn and quartered. Pulled apart by horses. Anything. She wet a towel and wiped my face and finally led me to my bed.
“This is so humiliating.”
“Sh,” she said.
“You hate me and never want to see me again.”
“Oh, shettup,” she said, and she sponged me with that wet towel again, and made me drink a glass of water, supporting the back of my head with her cool hand. I resolved never to wash my hair again. Lying back, I closed my eyes, hoping to shut out the spinning room. “I’ll be all right in five minutes. Please don’t go.”
“Try to sleep.”
“I love you.”
“Yes. Certainly.”
“We’re going to get married and have ten children,” I said.
When I wakened, maybe a couple of hours later, she was sitting in the easy chair, her long legs crossed just so, reading Rabbit, Run. I didn’t speak out immediately, but took advantage of her being so absorbed to feast on the sight of such beauty seated there. Tears slid down my cheeks. My heart ached. If time stopped now, forever, I thought, I would not complain. Finally, I said, “I know you never want to see me again. I don’t blame you.”
“I’m going to order some dry toast and coffee for you,” she said, “and, if you don’t mind, a tuna sandwich for me. I’m hungry.”
“I must stink something awful. Will you not go if I have a quick shower?”
“I take it you find me predictable.”
“How can you say such a thing?”
“You were expecting me to come to your room.”
“Certainly not.”
“Then who were the champagne and roses for?”
“Where?”
She pointed.
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing today. I’m not myself. I’m a mess. I’ll phone room service and have them take it away.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I won’t.”
“Now what shall we talk about? Psycho, or Ben-Gurion’s meeting with Adenauer?”
“Miriam, I couldn’t lie to you. Not now, or ever. Yankel was telling the truth.”
“Yankel?”
“The man who came to our table. I would block his path on the playground and say, ‘D-d-do you p-p-piss in b-b-bed, p-p-prick-face?’ And if he stood up, terrified, obliged to answer a question in class, I would begin to giggle before he could get a word out, and he would collapse in tears. ‘N-n-nice going, Y-y-yankel,’ I’d say. Why did I do such dreadful things?”
“Surely you don’t expect me to be able to answer that?”
“Oh, Miriam, if you only knew how I’m counting on you.”
Then, all at once, I endured — no, enjoyed — something like the spring breakup of the ice crushing my soul. I began to jabber, incoherently, I fear, mixing misadventures of my childhood with tales of Paris. From an account of Boogie