Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [155]
Hello, shmuck.
Arguably the days my memory functions perfectly are heavier to bear than those when it fails me. Or, put another way, as I continue to tour the labyrinth of my past there are some episodes I recall all too clearly. Take Blair, for instance.
Blair Hopper né Hauptman had entered my life, like an unwanted polyp, in the summer of 1969. He turned up at our cottage in the Laurentians (where Miriam, that bleeding heart, welcomed troubled kids, abused wives, and other flotsam) on a rainy evening, having found our address in the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada:
Even though circumstances, and not choice made Canada your haven, we are happy to welcome you. Those of us providing service to the Anti-Draft Programme assume that your opposition to the war in Vietnam stems from principle and therefore you are likely to become outstanding citizens.
(Oh, I should mention here that under the exigent terms of my liberation from The Second Mrs. Panofsky, she got the house with the conversation pit in Hampstead, but I was able to retain the property in the Laurentians. My first instinct had been to get rid of the scene of my alleged crime, but on reflection this seemed to me as good as a confession of guilt. So, instead, before moving in with Miriam, I had the cottage torn apart, knocking down walls, putting in French doors and skylights, adding rooms for children and studios for both me and Miriam.)
Enter Blair. I would like to report that Max, our usually prescient German shepherd who gave the children so much pleasure, had greeted that interloper with a growl, his teeth bared, but the truth is that treacherous hound loped right up to him, wagging his tail. Honour compels me to admit that Blair Hopper né Hauptman was a handsome young man in those days. No doubt about it. Closer to Miriam’s age than mine, which is to say, some ten years my junior. He was tall, straw-haired, blue-eyed, and broad-shouldered. He would have looked nifty in an SS uniform. But in fact he was wearing a shirt, tie, seersucker suit, and loafers. He arrived bearing gifts: a tub of unpasteurized honey (made by a commune in Vermont, his first stop on the latter-day underground railway) and, hubba hubba, a pair of Indian bead moccasins. I was sipping a Macallan at the time and invited him to join me.
“I’d be grateful for some mineral water,” he said, “but only if you have a bottle that is already opened.”
We were fresh out. So Miriam fixed him a herbal tea. Rosehip I think it was. “Did you have any trouble at the border?” she asked.
“I came in as a tourist. Passing for a country-club Republican in my seersucker suit. And I was able to show the pigs plenty of travellers’ cheques.”
“I should warn you,” I said, doing my icy polite bit, “that my father is a retired police officer. So we don’t go in for that epithet in this house.”
“I’m sure things are different in this country, sir,” he said, his cheeks reddening, “and that the police here behave admirably.”
“Well now, I don’t know about that.” And, as I was about to launch into an anecdote about the shenanigans of Detective-Inspector Izzy Panofsky, Miriam cut me off.
“How about a peanut-butter sandwich?” she asked.
Blair had arrived on a Friday, and was with us for only ten days, but that first weekend he was already making himself useful, insisting on doing the washing-up, and mending the front gate that I had promised to get round to one of these days. When a hornet got into our kitchen, and I reached for a fly-swatter, he called out, “Don’t, please,” and managed to release it through the screen door. Why, that devious bastard could open a child-proof, press-and-turn bottle of aspirins just like that, without struggling and muttering, “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Something else. I didn’t care for the way he had big eyes for Miriam and how she seemed to be amused by his attentions.
Sunday evening Miriam asked, “Must you drive back to town tonight?”
“Aw, I thought I’d take the week off,” I said, as