Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [177]
I had Chantal phone Duke’s Department of Canadian Studies, pretending to be Blair’s secretary, saying he had mislaid the paper with his hotel reservations. Where was he staying? The Washington Duke Hotel. Next I insisted Chantal phone the Washington Duke to ask for a confirmation of Professor Hopper’s reservations. “We have a single room booked for Dr. Hopper and another for Mrs. Panofsky,” said the clerk.
“Feel better?” asked Chantal.
I invited Solange out to dinner. “What can she see in that prick?” I asked.
“I’ll bet he doesn’t correct or contradict her at dinner parties. Possibly he is considerate rather than ill-tempered. Maybe he makes her feel cherished.”
“But I love Miriam. I need her.”
“What if she doesn’t need you any more? It happens, you know.”
Six months passed before she moved in with Blair Hopper né Hauptman, and I thought I would go out of my mind. Imagining them in bed together, that bastard daring to fondle her breasts. One drunken night in our empty Westmount house, I swept crockery off the kitchen shelves, tore pictures off the walls, overturned tables, smashed chairs against the floor until the legs broke off, and took out our TV with one swing of a floor lamp. I knew how much of Miriam’s love and thoughtfulness had gone into the acquisition of even the tiniest item in our home, and I hoped the racket I was making, destroying what she had put together, could be heard even in that sin-bin she was sharing with Blair in Toronto. The next morning with rue my heart was laden. I collected some of her favourite pieces, hoping they had not been splintered beyond repair, and hired a furniture restorer to mend them. “Do you mind if I inquire as to what transpired here?” he asked.
“Break-in. Vandals.”
I moved into this downtown apartment, but couldn’t bring myself to sell the house at once, just in case. I could not abide the idea of strangers in what had once been our bedroom. Or some mod-con yuppie bitch installing a microwave oven in the kitchen where Miriam had baked croissants to perfection, or cooked osso buco even as she helped Saul with his homework and kept an eye on Kate banging pots together in her playpen. I certainly wasn’t going to tolerate a dentist, or a stockbroker, tramping on the living-room carpet on which we had made love more than once. Nobody was going to taint our bookshelves with the collected works of Tom Clancy or Sidney Sheldon. I didn’t want some oaf playing Nirvana at ten thousand decibels in the room where Miriam had retired to the chaise longue at three a.m. to nurse Kate, while she listened to Glenn Gould, the sound turned down low so as not to waken me. I had no idea what to do with a basement closet full of skates and hockey sticks and crosscountry skis and boots. Or the white wicker bassinet that had seen Miriam through three pregnancies. Or Mike’s abandoned attempt at making his own electric guitar.
Striding up and down in my apartment in the early morning hours, drinking alone, pulling on my umpteenth Montecristo of the day, I shut my eyes and summoned up Miriam as she appeared at my wedding to The Second Mrs. Panofsky. The most enchanting woman I had ever seen. Long hair black as a raven’s wing. Striking blue eyes to die for. Wearing a blue chiffon cocktail dress, and moving about with the most astonishing grace. Oh that dimple in her cheek. Those bare shoulders.
— I’ve got two tickets for tomorrow’s flight to Paris in my jacket pocket. Come with me.
— You can’t be serious.
— ‘Come live with me and be my love.’ Please, Miriam.
— If I don’t leave now, I could miss my train. Miriam has been gone for three years now, but I still sleep on my side of the bed and grope for her when I waken. Miriam, Miriam, my heart’s desire.
9
Okay, here goes. The trial. Me and the great Franz K., both falsely accused.
Were I a real writer, I would have shuffled the deck of my memoirs so that this would be a real nail-biter. Worthy of Eric you-know, he wrote The Something of Dimitrios. Eric like I was going for a walk.