Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [19]
Late one night Hymie and I sat on the deck, the two of us sipping cognac. “You were such a bundle of nerves when we first met,” he said. “Sweating anger and resentment and aggression under that assumed hipster’s carapace. But who would have guessed that one day you would get away with murder?”
“I didn’t do it, Hymie.”
“In France you would have got off with a slap on the wrist. Crime passionnel is what they call it. I swear I never thought you’d have the guts.”
“You don’t understand. He’s still alive. Out there somewhere. Mexico. New Zealand. Macao. Who knows?”
“According to what I’ve read, afterwards there was never any money withdrawn from his bank account.”
“Miriam found out that there were three break-ins into summer cottages on the lake in the days following his disappearance. That’s how he probably found some clothes.”
“Are you broke now?”
“My lawyer. Alimony. Neglected business affairs. Sure I’m broke now.”
“We’re going to write a screenplay together.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not a writer, Hymie.”
“There’s a hundred and fifty big ones in it for us, split two ways. Hey, wait a minute. I mean one third for you, two thirds for me. What do you say?”
Once we settled into work on the script, Hymie would rip scenes out of my typewriter and read them over the phone to a former mistress in Paris, a cousin in Brooklyn, his daughter, or his agent. “Now you listen to this, it’s fabulous.” If the reaction wasn’t what he expected, he would counter, “It’s only a first draft and I did tell Barney it wouldn’t work. He’s a novice, you know.” His cleaning lady’s opinion was solicited; he consulted his analyst, handed out pages to waitresses, and made revisions based on their criticisms. He could charge into my bedroom at four a.m. and shake me awake. “I just had a brilliant idea. Come.” Slurping ice cream out of a bucket retrieved from the fridge, he would stride up and down in his boxer shorts, scratching his groin, and begin to dictate. “This is Academy Award stuff. Bulletproof.” But the next morning, rereading what he had dictated, he would say, “Barney, this is a piece of shit. Now let’s get serious today.”
On bad days, dry days, he might suddenly sink to the sofa and say, “You know what I could do with now? A blow-job. Technically, you know, that’s not being unfaithful. What am I worrying about? I’m not even married now.” Then he would leap up, pluck his copy of The Memoirs of Fanny Hill or The Story of O from a bookshelf, and disappear into the bathroom. “We should do this at least once a day. It keeps the prostate in check. A doctor told me that.”
Back at Jimmy’s Bar, in 1952, we hit the road in Hymie’s Peugeot12 again, and the next thing I remember is one of those crowded, tiny, smoke-filled bar-tabacs with a zinc-topped counter in an alley off the market in Nice, and the three of us knocking back cognacs with the porters and truck drivers. We drank toasts to Maurice Thorez, Mao, Harry Bridges, and then to La Pasionaria and El Campesino, in honour of the two Catalan refugees in the company. And then, laden with gifts of tomatoes that still reeked of the vine, spring onions, and figs, we moved on to Juan les Pins, where we found a nightclub open. “ ‘Tailgunner Joe,’ ” said Hymie, “my intrepid comrade-in-arms Senator Joseph McCarthy, that cockroach, actually never flew into battle …”
Which was when a seemingly comatose Boogie suddenly shifted gears, going into overdrive. “When the witch-hunt is over,” he said, “and everybody is embarrassed, as they were after the Palmer Raids, McCarthy may yet be appreciated with hindsight as the most effective film critic ever. Never mind Agee. The senator certainly cleaned out the stables.”
Hymie would never have taken that from me, but, coming from Boogie, he decided to let it fly. It was amazing. Here was Hymie, an accomplished and reasonably affluent man, a successful film director, and there was Boogie, poor, unknown, a struggling writer, his publications limited to a couple of little magazines. But it was an intimidated Hymie who was determined