Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [187]
“It was before I was born. I simply don’t know.”
“Or you don’t want to know. Which?”
“Leave it alone, Caroline. It hardly matters any more.”
“I have no idea how your mother put up with him for all those years.”
“He wasn’t always so bitter. Or afraid of dying. Now let’s get some sleep.”
“You didn’t have to smoke that cigar last night. You could have told him you’d given up smoking.”
“But I wanted to please him for once. He’s such a lonely old man now.”
“You’re afraid of him.”
“Caroline, you never should have given away those Cohibas without asking me.”
“Why not?”
“Because they were a gift from my father.”
“But it was you I was thinking of. You had so much trouble giving it up. I didn’t want you to be tempted.”
“All the same …”
Shit shit shit. Mike, I apologize. I’m sorry. I’ve misjudged you yet again. But I thought it better not to say anything. Typical of me, that.
I want all my loved ones to know the truth. I need them to understand that when Hughes-McNoughton pulled that dumb trick, counting to five, and suggesting Boogie might now stride through those courtroom doors, I also turned to look. I thought, wouldn’t it be just like my perverse old buddy to appear in time to save my skin. I did not murder Boogie and bury him in the woods. I’m an innocent man. Of course this late in my own endgame, and given that Boogie was some five years older than I am, he could now be dead of natural causes. Not that The Second Mrs. Panofsky would ever believe that.
Whoops. I forgot to mention something. My mountain-sized second wife turned up at McIver’s funeral, if only to glare at me, and she later responded to my maudlin letter in the Gazette with a one-worder delivered by courier: HYPOCRITE!!! She had struggled up the hill to McIver’s graveside, supported on two canes, her breath coming in whistles, draped in a tent of a caftan. Her head was bound in a turban, and sneaking peeks at her, I could not make out a single wisp of protruding hair. So I concluded that the poor thing was on chemotherapy and that she too might precede me into one of those six-foot-deep pits. This would save me something like thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars a month. Following my trial, our divorce was sanctioned by a private member’s bill in the Senate, Resolution 67, March 15, 1961. She was awarded alimony of two thousand monthly, big money at the time, to be adjusted for inflation, and the house in Hampstead. Even so, I never wished cancer on that demented harridan.
Unable to sleep, still troubled by my attendance at McIver’s graveside, I thought it might be useful to renew my animus against him by dipping into his autobiography again. Flipping it open anywhere. As it turned out, the book opened on his charming account of my wedding to The Second Mrs. Panofsky:
Montreal. April 29, 1959. Since my return to Montreal, ensconced in my basement apartment on Tupper Street, I’ve managed to avoid running into P——, although I have heard news of his exploits. Predictably, he’d gone seriously into trade on his return to Montreal, peddling everything from scrap metal to Egyptian artifacts, rumoured to have been stolen. Today my luck ran out. We all but collided in the rain on Sherbrooke Street,83 and P——, devious as ever, feigning pleasure at our fortuitous encounter, insisted that we repair to the Ritz for a drink. It had to be the Ritz,84 à coup sûr, if only to taunt me with his new affluence. He bragged that he was now a TV producer, contemplating film production, but I knew the truth was he was actually a vendor of odious TV commercials and industrial films. Then, as is his wont, he reached for his switchblade. “I’m sorry your first novel didn’t get better reviews,” he said. “I certainly enjoyed it.”
And how was I managing, he wanted to know, bleeding empathy, asking direct questions comme d’habitude.
I told him I was hard at work on a new novel, surviving on a grant from the newly formed Canada Council, and teaching creative writing one night a week at Wellington College.
He said he was developing a television