Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [50]
“Is it a drag, or is it any good, man?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Would I dig it?”
Eventually I succeeded in unloading him onto a clatch of frivolous Americans, whose company I did my utmost to avoid. To begin with they were far from grateful, but soon they discovered that P——, determined to ingratiate himself, could be hit easily for money. Leo Bishinsky borrowed from him to buy canvases and paints, and the others sponged off him, each according to his need. 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?”
Boogie, enduring a long losing streak at the gaming tables, and threatened with eviction from his hotel, got P —— to settle his rent.
In common with other autodidacts, P —— feels compelled to brandish whatever he is reading, his conversation burnished with quotes from their work. Since he sprung from the ghetto’s mean streets vulgarity comes naturally to him, but he is also inclined to both drunkenness and fisticuffs, which is surprising, considering his Jewish origins. A denial? Possibly.
Born in Montreal, raised in an English-speaking home, P —— still tends to invert many of his sentences, as if they were translated from the Yiddish, as in, “He was a hateful bastard, Clara’s doctor,” or, after the fact, “Had I known it would have been different, my behaviour.” I must remember to use this peculiar syntax when writing a Jew’s dialogue.
P——’s countenance is not unpleasant. Black curly hair hard as steel wool. Shrewd tradesman’s eyes. Satyr’s mouth. Tall, shambly, and given to strutting. He still seems adrift here, out of his league, but now an acolyte of one of the quartier’s most obnoxious poseurs whom he trails after as if he were his catamite, his Ganymede, which is not the case. Neither of them is queer.
Wrote 600 words today and then tore them up. Inadequate. Mediocre. Like me?
Paris. Oct. 3, 1951. S——’s husband is in Frankfurt on business, and so she sent me a pneumatique this morning, inviting me to dinner in our oubliette, a bistro on the rue Scribe, where neither of us was likely to encounter anybody we knew. A prudent bourgeoise, fearful of wagging tongues (“Elle entretient un gigolo. Tiens donc.”), S —— reached for my hand under the table and slipped me sufficient francs to settle the bill.
I have served as S——’s dutiful lover for three months now. She picked me up one summer night on the terrace of the Café de Flore. Seated alone at the table next to mine, she smiled, indicated the book I was reading, and said, “Not many Americans are capable of reading Robbe-Grillet in French. I must confess even I find him difficult.”
She admits to being forty, but I suspect she’s somewhat older, as witness her stretch marks. S——, now my self-appointed houri, is in no immediate danger of being confused with Aphrodite, but she is pleasingly pretty, slim. She begins to imbibe in the morning (“Gin and eet, comme la reine anglaise”), and she consumed most of the wine at dinner tonight, prodding me to indicate that her legs are spread apart under the table, an invitation for me to remove a shoe and sock and then massage her with my toes.
Later we repair to my disgusting little hotel room, which she affects to adore, because it gratifies her nostalgie de la boue, as well as her concept of what’s appropriate to a struggling young artist. We copulate twice, once fore, and once aft, and then I refuse her cunnilingus. This makes her sulk. She does brighten, however, when, on her insistence, I read to her from my work-in-progress. She pronounces it merveilleux, vraiment incroyable.
S —— dreams of being celebrated in my pages, and has picked the name of Héloise for herself. In spite of the driving rain and my fatigue I walk her back to her Austin-Healey, parked at a discreet distance, assuring her of my high esteem for her beauty, wit, intelligence. Back in my room, I immediately sit down to write 500 words, describing, while it is still fresh in my mind,