Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [82]
“Why, that’s very kind of you, Mr … ?”
“Panofsky. Barney Panofsky.”
Then I saw Mrs. Borenstein stiffen and squeeze her husband’s arm. “We’ve already ordered a taxi,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, embarrassed.
On the first page of this ill-starred manuscript, I suggested that I was a social pariah because of the scandal I would carry to my grave like a humpback. But, to come clean, following my acquittal there were men, WASPy types, reeking of old money, once given to dismissing me with the most cursory of nods, who now stood me drinks at the Ritz. “Good for you, Panofsky.” Or slapped me on the back and sat down, uninvited, at my table in the Beaver Club. “In my humble opinion, you struck a blow for the good guys.” Or asked me to join them for a game of noonday squash at the MAAA. “And I’m not your only admirer there.”
Some of their haughty wives, who had hitherto found me disagreeable, coarse, a sour and unattractive man, now got a charge out of my presence. They flirted shamelessly, my mean origins forgiven. Imagine. A kike with a passion for something else besides money. A real murderer moving amongst us. “You mustn’t take offence, Barney, but I associate your people with white-collar crime, not acts of, well, you know.” I found these women were most aroused when I acknowledged rather than denied the heinous deed. I learned a good deal about Upper Westmount civilization and its discontents. The wife of a partner in McDougal, Blakestone, Corey, Frame and Marois told me, “I could walk into the Ritz nude and Angus wouldn’t even blink. ‘You’re late,’ is all he would say. Oh, incidentally, Angus will be in Ottawa overnight on Tuesday, if that suits you, and I’m game for anything but the missionary position. I’ve read about the alternatives, of course. I’m a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club.”
But I was, and remain, anathema to the quality. Fortunately, they are few in number in Montreal.
The Borensteins attend the Shakespeare festival in Stratford, Ontario, every summer, and I was once seated not too far from them in The Church restaurant. Mrs. Borenstein was flushed, and I’m willing to swear the old man, his hand under the table, was flirting with his wife of something like fifty years. I summoned the waiter and asked him to send them a bottle of Dom Perignon, but only after I had left, and not to say where it came from. Then I strolled out into the rain, feeling deeply sorry for myself and cursing Miriam who had abandoned me.
I dislike most people I have ever met, but not nearly so much as I am disgusted by the Rt. Dishonourable Barney Panofsky. Miriam understood. Once, following an all-too-characteristic drunken rage on my part, which led, inevitably, to my seeking sustenance from a bottle of Macallan, she said, “You hate those TV shows you produce, and you’re filled with contempt for just about everybody who works on them. Why don’t you give it up before it gives you cancer?”
“And what would I do then? I’m not even fifty yet.”
“Open a bookshop.”
“That wouldn’t keep me in Havanas and XO cognac and first-class travel to Europe for the two of us. Or pay college fees. Or leave anything for the children.”
“I don’t want to end my days with a sour old man, full of regrets for a wasted life.”
And, in the end, she didn’t, did she? Instead, she is wasting herself on Herr Doktor Professor Save-the-Whales, Stop-the-Seal-Hunt, Wipe-Only-With-Recycled-Paper, Hopper né Hauptman, who has dropped the second “n” in his original family name lest people discover he was related to the Lindbergh kidnapper, and possibly even Adolf Eichmann, if you scrutinized his family history.
Enough.
Dr. Borenstein is the subject of today’s sermon. Given that he is a gentleman of impeccable taste, imagine my consternation when I saw him, and Mrs. Borenstein, sitting in the fourth row for Terry McIver’s reading from Of Time and Fevers in the Leacock Auditorium last Wednesday night.