Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [90]
“I’m going to die,” said Abigail.
“Arnie,” I said, gulping down the heel of the Chivas left in the bottle, “you can now do one of two things. You can quit with a year’s salary or come back to work tomorrow morning. Discuss it with the mother of your children.”
“Tell him you want Hugh’s job and Hugh’s salary.”
“I want Hugh’s job and his salary.”
“I heard her. The answer is no.”
“Why?”
“Arnie, you’ve heard my offer. Discuss it with Abigail and then let me know,” I said, getting up.
“You shouldn’t drive in your condition,” said Arnie. “Wait one minute. I’ll drive you.”
“I came in a taxi. You could call me another one right now, Arnie, please.”
No sooner did Arnie disappear into the kitchen than Abigail said, “My casserole. The Pyrex dish. If he finds them missing, he’ll blame our cleaning lady.”
“But I haven’t finished the kasha yet,” I said.
3
Oct. 23, 1995
Dear Barney,
To each his own albatross.
From the day of your arrival in Paris, touchingly gauche, ill-educated, pushy, it was abundantly clear to me (and others I could name) that you were consumed with envy for my talent. Nay, obsessed is what you were, ingratiating yourself by feigning friendship. I was not fooled. But I took pity on you and watched, amused, as you wormed your way into the affections of The Motley Crew, not too proud to fill the office of unpaid factotum. Clara’s meal ticket. Boogie’s poodle. With hindsight, of course, I reproach myself for having been so indulgent, because, had I not introduced you around, poor Clara Charnofsky would be alive today, and so would Boogie, the latter, alas, a larger loss to drug dealers than the world of letters. Since then, as an observer of la condition humaine, I have sometimes wondered how you continued to function after being responsible for two untimely deaths. Sleep cannot come easy.
I have heard that your maternal grandfather was a junk dealer, so it strikes me as altogether fitting, a symmetry of sorts, that you have subsequently become wealthy as a purveyor of TV trash to the hoi polloi. I was not surprised, given your vengeful nature, that you considered it droll to title an especially prurient series McIver of the RCMP. Neither was I astonished to see you suffering at the Leacock Auditorium when I recently read to a sell-out audience. But, fool that I am, I believed that there was some calumny that even you would not stoop to. Congratulations, Barney. Your latest maledictory gesture caught me unawares. Which is to say I have read your son’s vicious attack on Of Time and Fevers in the Washington Times. Poor sclerotic Barney Panofsky. So depraved in the years of his decrepitude that he has to enlist his son where he fears to tread.
Although I never deign to respond to, or even read, reviews of my work (most of them flattering, I might point out), I did feel obliged to write to the literary editor of the Washington Times to point out that Saul Panofsky’s diatribe had been inspired by his father’s personal animus.
Sincerely,
TERRY McIVER
4
What follows appears to be yet another digression. It isn’t. I’m making a point. Mr. Lewis, our class master in Room 43, FFHS, delighted in reciting Henry Newbolt’s stirring “Drake’s Drum” to us.
If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll
quit the port o’Heaven,
An’ drum them up the
Channel as we drummed
them long ago.
However, according to today’s New York Times, Newbolt (surprise, surprise) was a phony. He scribbled patriotic doggerel, yes, but avoided military service in the Boer War, protesting that it was his role to boost national morale at home. The legend of Drake’s drum was fraudulent, his invention. Actually, the poet, self-advertised as the embodiment of Victorian virtues, enjoyed a lifelong relationship with his wife and her cousin, screwing his wife in London and her cousin on alternate nights in the country. W. H. Auden once wrote:
Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To