Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [17]
“Comme tu es belle,” he cooed.
“Merci, chéri.”
“Je t’adore,” he said, stroking her cheek with his hand. Then he called peremptorily for the waiter, le roi le veut, flashed a roll of francs bound with a gold clasp, and settled the bill. The two of them drifted toward our table, where she obliged him to stop, indicating the remnants of our feast with a dismissive wave of her hand, saying, “Les Américains. Dégueulasse. Comme d’habitude.”
“We don’t like Ike,” said the Frenchman, tittering.
“Fiche-moi la paix,” said Hymie.
“Toi et ta fille,” I said.
Stung, they moved on, arms around each other’s waist, and strolled toward his Aston-Martin, the old man’s hand caressing her bottom. He opened the car door for her, settled in behind the wheel, slipped on his racing driver’s gloves, made an obscene gesture at us, and drove off.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Hymie.
Piling into Hymie’s Citroën, we sped to Hauts-de-Cagnes, Hymie and Boogie belting out synagogue songs they remembered as we charged up the all-but-perpendicular hill to Jimmy’s Bar on the crest, and that’s when my mood began to curdle. Wintry is my soul’s season. And that evening, perfect but for my fulminating presence, my heart was laden with envy. For Hymie’s war experiences. His charm. His bankroll. For the effortless manner in which Boogie had been able to establish rapport with him, their joshing now often excluding me.
Years later, shortly after the murder charges against me had been dismissed, and Hymie was home again, now that the blacklist was a nightmare past, he insisted that I recuperate at the beach house he had rented for the summer in the Hamptons. “I know you don’t want to see anyone, in your mood. But this is just what the doctor ordered. Peace and quiet. Sea. Sand. Pastrami. Divorcées on the make. Wait till you taste my kasha. And nobody will know anything about your troubles.”
Peace and quiet. Hymie. I should have known better. The most generous of hosts, he furnished his beach house with wall-to-wall guests almost every night, most of them young and all of whom he set out to seduce. He would regale them with stories of the great and near-great he claimed to have known. Dashiell Hammett, a prince. Bette Davis, misunderstood. Peter Lorre, his kind of guy. Ditto Spence. Passing from guest to guest, he would illuminate them like a lamp-lighter. He would whisper into the ear of each young woman that she was the most gorgeous and intelligent on Long Island, and confide in each of the men that he was uniquely gifted. He wouldn’t allow me to brood in a corner, but literally thrust me on one woman after another. “She’s wildly attracted to you.” Going on to introduce me, saying, “This is my old friend Barney Panofsky and he’s dying to meet you. He doesn’t look it, I know, but he just got away with the perfect crime. Tell her about it, kid.”
I took Hymie aside. “I know you mean well, Hymie, but the truth is I’m committed to a woman in Toronto.”
“Of course you are. You think I don’t hear you coming on like a pimply teenager on the phone after I’ve gone to bed?”
“Are you listening in on the extension in your bedroom?”
“Look, kid, Miriam’s there, and you’re here. Enjoy.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, it’s you who don’t understand. When you get to be my age, what you regret is not the times you cheated a little, but the times you didn’t.”
“It’s not going to be like that with us.”
“I’ll bet when you were a kid you clapped hands for Tinkerbell.”
Early every morning, rain or shine, Hymie, who was then being treated by a Reichian analyst, would trot out to the dunes and let out primal screams sufficiently loud to drive any sharks lingering in the shallows back to sea. Then he would start on his morning jog, accumulating a gaggle of everybody else’s children en route, proposing marriage to eleven-year-old girls and suggesting to nine-year-old boys that they stop somewhere for a beer, eventually leading them to the local candy store for treats. Back at the beach house, he would make both of