Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [57]
Why didn’t I let her go, while I could still have managed it with impunity? Why did I take her in my arms, rocking her even as she sobbed, undressing her, easing her into bed, stroking her until she slipped her thumb into her mouth and began to breathe evenly?
I sat by her bedside for the remainder of the night, chain-smoking, reading that novel about the Golem of Prague, by what’s-his-name, Kafka’s friend, and early in the morning I went to the market to fetch her an orange, a croissant, and a yogurt for breakfast.
“You’re the only man who ever peeled an orange for me,” she said, already working on the first line of the poem that is now in so many anthologies. “You’re not going to throw me out, are you?” she asked in her little girl’s Mother-may-I-take-a-step voice.
“No.”
“You still love your crazy Clara, don’t you?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
Exhausted as I was, why didn’t I give her money right then, and help her move into another hotel?
My problem is, I am unable to get to the bottom of things. I don’t mind not understanding other people’s motives, not any more, but why don’t I understand why I do things?
In the days that followed, Clara couldn’t have been more contrite, docile, ostensibly loving, encouraging me in bed, her simulated ardour betrayed by her tense, unyielding body. “That was good. So wonderful,” she’d say. “I needed you inside me.”
Like fuck she did. But, arguably, I needed her. Don’t underestimate the nursing sister longing to leap out of somebody even as cantankerous as I am. Looking after Clara made me feel noble. Mother Teresa Panofsky. Dr. Barney Schweitzer.
Scribbling away here and now at my roll-top desk at two in the morning in twenty-below-zero Montreal, pulling on a Montecristo, trying to impose sense on my incomprehensible past, unable to pardon my sins by claiming youth and innocence, I can still summon up in my mind’s eye those moments with Clara that I cherish to this day. She was an inspired tease, and could make me laugh at myself, a gift not to be underestimated. I loved our moments of shared tranquillity. Me, lying on our bed in that box of a hotel room, pretending to read, but actually watching Clara at her work table. Fidgety, neurotic Clara totally at ease. Concentrating. Rapt. Her face cleansed of its often-disfiguring turbulence. I was inordinately proud of the high esteem others, more knowledgeable than I, had for her drawings and published poems. I anticipated a future as her guardian. I would provide her with the wherewithal to get on with her work, liberated from mundane concerns. I would take her back to America and build her a studio in the countryside with northern light and a fire escape. I would protect her from thunder, snakes, animal fur, and evil spells. Eventually, I would bask in her fame, playing a dutiful Leonard to her inspired Virginia. But, in our case, I would be ever watchful, safeguarding her against a mad walk into the water, her pockets weighed down with rocks. Yossel Pinsky, the Holocaust survivor who would become my partner, had met Clara a couple of times, and was skeptical. “You’re not a nice man any more than I am,” he said, “so why try? She’s a meshugena. Ditch her before it’s too late.”
But it was already too late.
“I suppose you want me to have an abortion,” she said.
“Hold on a minute,” I said. “Let me think.” I’m twenty-three years old, is what I thought. Christ Almighty. “I’m going out for a walk. I won’t be long.”
She was sick again in the sink while I was out and, on my return, she was dozing. Three o’clock in the afternoon and Clara, the insomniac, was in a deep sleep. I cleaned up as best I could and an hour passed before she got out of bed. “So there you are,” she said. “My hero.”
“I could speak to Yossel. He would find us somebody.”
“Or he could manage it himself with a coat-hanger. Only I’ve already decided I’m going to have the baby. With you or without you.”
“If you’re going to have the baby, I suppose I should marry you.”
“Some proposal.”
“I’m only mentioning it as a possibility.”
Clara curtsied. “Why, thank you, Prince