Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [194]
Rereading that story this morning, and recalling the Boogieman’s taste for cruel pranks, I could no longer believe, as I once did, that he had been sufficiently angry following our quarrel to betray me out of spite. And yet — and yet — turning to McIver’s Paris journal, I consulted the entry for September 22, 1951:
… In passing, I once said to Boogie, “I see you’ve got yourself a new friend.”
“Everybody is entitled to his own Man Friday, don’t you think?”
No. Boogie never said that, I decided, setting out for one of my aimless morning strolls. It’s a malign invention, typical of the lying McIver. There had been such warmth between Boogie and me. I was not his flunky. Comrades is what we were, brothers kicking against the pricks. I couldn’t be wrong about that. I wasn’t going to allow that Boogie, even given his drugged-out state on the lake, that once soaring talent addled beyond repair, would take off forever just to get back at me. More likely we were to blame for his self-destruction, having anointed him, when we were young and foolish, as the only one of our bunch destined for greatness. And those publishers who had courted him in New York, pledging lavish advances against a novel only he knew he couldn’t deliver, could only have added to his burden. I had solved the problem at last. Boogie, in flight from unbearable expectations, had gone to ground somewhere, assuming a new identity, just like Margolis. “Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.” I forgive you.
I must have walked for an hour, maybe more, so self-absorbed that I had wandered into unfamiliar territory. I had no idea where I was until I recognized that I was standing outside the Provincial Bus Terminal. And, oh my God, that’s where I caught that unnerving glimpse of the lady of my sometime wet dreams, Mrs. Ogilvy of the pubic hairs that used to glisten with pearly drops for me. Eighty years old now, I reckoned. Knobby hands clutching the rails of her walker to which she had defiantly fixed a Union Jack. Humped now. Shrivelled. Eyes bulging. Gathered with others, chanting:
One, two, three, four,
what are we for?
Wheelchair access,
Wheelchair access.
There must have been thirty-five of them there, maybe more, all of them wheelchair-bound. A Hieronymus Bosch sprung to life. Or a scene out of a Fellini film. Amputees and double-amputees. Survivors of strokes or polio, with wasted legs thin as rake handles. Victims of Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, heads jerking, spittle trickling down their chins. Fleeing the scene, I hailed a taxi.
“Where to, mister?”
“ … um, drive …”
“Yeah, sure. That’s what I do. But where to?”
“ … ahead …”
“Do you want a hospital?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“ … downtown …”
“Right.”
“ … it’s the street next to, you know, I want …”
“Gotcha.”
“ … it comes right after where the hotel is …”
“Which hotel?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m taking you to a hospital.”
“No.”
“ … you know where the bookshop is on the corner?”
“If you feel like you’re going to be sick, for Christ’s sake, not here, let me know, and I’ll pull up to the curb.”
“I’m not going to be sick.”
“There’s always a silver lining, eh?”
“ … it’s where they serve drinks I want …”
“A bar?”
“Of course a bar. I’m not stupid, you know.”
“This has to be my lucky day,” he said, pulling over. “You got a wallet on you, maybe with a card with your home address, I’ll take you there.”
“I know where I live.”
“Tell me, then. I won’t squeal.”
“ … it would be close enough to where I’m going if you drop me on that street with a saint in its name.”
“Oh, that’s a big help in fucking Montreal.”
“ … Catherine. On the corner, please.”
“Which corner?