Son of a Smaller Hero (6 page)

The principal of Wellington College was a small man with eyes of no colour at all who would be remembered and celebrated for
having feared God and been tolerant of men. He never forgot the face of a Wellingtonian. Everybody respected him. The dean had compiled a huge mimeographed bibliography which listed the dimensions, title, number of pages and illustrations, author, and subject, of all the books that had ever been published in Canada. Dr. Edward Walsh, the assistant dean, had a splendid smile: nobody could outdo him as a host. He began his lectures in Political Science I by writing on the blackboard:

Most of the students came to Wellington because their marks weren’t high enough for them to get into McGill. Many of them were Jews who couldn’t get into McGill because of the quota system.

Into this benign backwater of mediocrity came a young professor of English literature named Theo Hall. That was in the autumn of 1952, about five years after he had married Miriam Peltier. Theo, who had been hired to run the English department, inherited a staff of superannuated high school teachers, middle-class housewives with a penchant for poetry, and old graduates who were writing their autobiographies. He could have got a better job at a big American university. He could have stayed on at Magdalen College, Oxford, and become a fellow. But Theo had faith. Three hundred years before him the Jesuits had paddled up to Hochelaga to pitch their Bibles against the tomahawks of the Iroquois and the Sioux. Since then Hochelaga had become Montreal. The pagans had been banished and the Christians held the fort. Theo was made of the same
intrepid stuff as those Jesuits. Armed with the texts of Wilson, Trilling, and Leavis, he hoped to wrest Montreal from the grasp of the philistines.

He was a tall man with tired eyes and a small mouth. His smile was wan, condescending, like the smile of a novitiate showing a group of peasants through St. Peter’s. He would have liked to have been a poet but he was not morbid about his limitations and did not envy the success of others. He had gone the other way, using the word Art like a man at his prayers. He hoped to organize the English department of the college along saner lines and to found a little magazine that would print the best in Canadian writing and criticism. Theo began with the college library. He went over it catalogue by catalogue and before a month had gone by he had ordered seven hundred new books. He overhauled the curriculum of the English courses and by the end of his first academic year had managed to get rid of a lot of faculty dead wood, replacing them with bright young lecturers of his own choosing.

Disappointments were plentiful.
Direction
did not inspire or proselytize in Canadian academic circles. A lot of material came in but no forceful talents emerged. After the third issue, the magazine settled down to a circulation of about seven hundred copies. Two hundred were sold in the United States, a hundred or so in England, and the rest in Canada. The Russian Embassy took three copies. But among smart people his magazine was known as
No Direction
. Theo’s students proved yet another disappointment. Most of them did well enough in examinations but Theo had a compulsion, almost neurotic in its intensity, to surround himself with disciples and to discover talent. So when he chanced on a more than usually bright student his enthusiasm leaped. He brought home his prodigies one after the other and one after the other they turned out ordinary spirits. His hopes thwarted, he turned cruelly on his would-be talents. Susceptible to the exasperations of spirit which characterize most reformers, he tended to suffer vulgarity in smaller spirits as a personal affront. He was a
social democrat. Encounters with almost any amusement designed for the crowd made him choke up and clench his fists. He did not find it easy to cope with society.

Miriam tried to help. She pampered him when he was depressed and when his enthusiasm was at its most feverish she tried to calm him down. She adored him for his angers and helped in all his exploits against bigotry without complaint or second thoughts, but she believed in him rather than in his causes. If someone, among their friends, remarked that marriage didn’t work the inevitable reply was: “But look at the Halls.”

That afternoon, in the first week of November, Theo came home early from classes. He chucked his briefcase on the sofa and grinned boyishly. “I’ve got somebody coming for drinks.”

“Oh-oh. Here we go again.”

They kissed in a perfunctory way.

“You look all in. Bad day?”

“So-so.”

She smiled helpfully. Theo slumped back on the sofa and shut his eyes. Sometimes, when she smiled at him like that, he felt hopelessly inept. In the past few months their intimate moments had been characterized by a poverty of sorts. She seemed bored, her enthusiasms were rehearsed. Perhaps we should have a child, he thought.

Miriam served tea. “All right. Tell me about it,” she said.

“He’s a taxi driver. Evening College student. Noah Adler. Jewish with accent. Living in a rented room on Dorchester Street, hangdog look.”

“What time you expecting him?”

“Four. In twenty minutes.”

“Shall I ask him to stay for dinner?”

“Only if you like him.”

Theo sipped his tea quietly. Miriam got up, put Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on the gramophone, and then sat down again. They were listening to the symphonies in order. After the symphonies they
would turn to the concertos. Theo slumped back on the sofa with his eyes shut and reached out for her hand. She accepted it wordlessly, like the morning paper. She watched him. When he relaxed his long body went limp, dead, as if he was grateful for any kind of respite. Miriam, however, couldn’t sit still. She let go of his hand and walked over to the window. She felt as though she wanted to rip something apart. Herself, perhaps. She squashed her cigarette in the ashtray on the window-sill.

When Noah arrived, about three-quarters of an hour later, Miriam opened the door for him: Theo had gone out to do a bit of shopping.

“Is this Professor Hall’s apartment?”

“You must be Adler. I’m Mrs. Hall. But Miriam will do.”

Noah followed her into the living-room. The walls were grey and the furniture functional. One wall was papered pink. Two walls were lined with bookcases made up of bricks and unfinished pinewood boards. Other books spilled over onto the floor. Several prints by very modern painters hung on the walls. The room had a curious quality that made him expect to be led into another and more oppressive room as soon as his papers had been verified. Miriam frightened him. He wished that she would do something wrong, knock over a chair or rip her stockings. She was quite tall with warm brown eyes and black hair. Her skin was dark. But she seemed awfully clean, fresh, as if she had just stepped out of a bath. She was wearing a brown sweater and a green corduroy skirt and moccasins. Her glib poise seemed calculated to undermine him and he hung back sullenly. She was the first modern, sophisticated woman whom he had ever met. A woman entirely unlike his aunts, cousins, and former girlfriends. He found it difficult to believe in her. There seemed to be no flaw or error in her manner. He felt dazed, and couldn’t remember what to do with his hands, whether it was proper to sit down or pick up a magazine or what. In desperation he pointed at a Jackson Pollock. “Did you do that?”

“Oh.”

“What’s wrong – I’m sorry …”

“Nothing. Here, let me take your jacket. Theo’s gone out to get some soda-water. Sit down, I won’t eat you. Here, have a cigarette.”

He accepted the cigarette and put a match to it before he remembered that he was supposed to light hers first. He put out the match swiftly. Lit another one, and pushed it towards her.

“Theo says that you drive a taxi.”

“That’s right.”

“Is it fun?”

“It’s not bad.”

She bit her lip. “Cold, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“Yes.”

She tossed a copy of the
New Statesman & Nation
at him. “Here, I won’t bother you.”

Noah pretended to read. Panofsky had used to get the
New Statesman & Nation
, and he sometimes glanced through it in the library. He enjoyed the classified section most and he had once sent them an ad.: “Fascist meat-eater coming to settle in London will exchange fencing lessons for furnace-room with prejudiced family” – but he had had no reply.

She handed him a glass of sherry and he gulped it down quickly. Already too late he noticed that she had only sipped at hers. She refilled his glass and this time he drank more delicately. She watched him. He was dressed shabbily. Poor Theo, she thought. He doesn’t know what he’s let himself in for. He felt her eyes on him like a humiliation. He looked down at his hands and saw that his fingernails were dirty. He hid his hands in his pockets.

“There’s an interesting article on the Jewish question in it,” she said. “I think Theo would like to discuss it with you.”

Briefly, Noah was tempted to go into his they-used-to-beat-me-up-on-my-way-to-school routine, but instead, he said: “Which Jewish question?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Noah jumped up and began to walk up and down the room. “Why couldn’t he be here when I came? Why do you look at me as if I was a freak or something?”

“You didn’t have to come.”

“That’s right. I think I’ll go.”

“Go ahead.”

He hesitated.

“Go on. Nobody’s stopping you.”

“My manners are bad, eh?”

“Atrocious.”

He began to make excited circles with his hands, groping for words. “I’m nervous. I guess that’s it.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. Can … 
May
I have another drink?”

“Scotch?”

“Yeah.
Yes
, I mean.”

“Will you stay for dinner, Noah?”

She did not invite him to stay because she liked him. But, immediately, she had recognized that he came from a poor family. She wanted to impress him. She, too, had come from a poor family.

“Are you being polite or …”

“Oh, stop being such an ass!”

There was another pause. Their anger had embarrassed both of them. She must be very well-educated, he thought, rich. He wanted badly to say something that would fit. Finally, he asked for the toilet. She indicated the door.

Safely in the toilet, Noah briefly considered an escape through the window, then he began to study his surroundings. The bathtub and
toilet bowl were made of green enamel. There were many taps over the tub. The floors and walls were made of green tiles. Numerous huge pink bath-towels hung in racks. They were all initialled. He opened the medicine chest. Salts. Perfumes. Nylon brushes hung on hooks. The bathtub, he noticed, was sunk into the floor. Noah was amazed. He remembered that several years ago Hoppie Drazen had bragged that he had been in such a toilet at one of Claire Kinsburg’s parties in Outremont. But Noah hadn’t believed him. I must visit Uncle Max, he thought quickly. He’s just the kind of guy to have something like this.
But he’d be joking
. He saw, for the first time, the roll of toilet paper half-concealed in an opening in the wall near the toilet bowl. It was pink. Quickly, obeying an old school instinct, he ripped off a few sheets and shoved them into his pocket. He flushed the toilet before leaving just to keep up appearances.

Theo had arrived.

“H’lo Noah. Sorry. But I had a bastard of a time getting what I wanted.”

On special occasions Theo tried to speak colloquially but the effect was usually embarrassing.

“I’ve asked Noah to stay for dinner.”

“Wonderful.”

Gradually, Noah began to feel easier with them. Theo had meant to probe him about his background and ideas but Noah asked most of the questions. Theo told him about London, Paris, and Italy. He talked to him about books and music. Noah listened. Names stuck to him. Pound, Klee, Auden, Kafka. Names he did not know. Words also. Words like rococo, jejune,
déjà vu
, and
avant-garde
. Words he did not know the meaning of. He saw Theo as a kind of hero. His talk drugged him. Theo was happy too. The give-and-take talk of Oxford had had small rewards. Most fellowship students were beyond wonder. But Noah was different. Talking to him Theo suddenly got an acute notion of his own powers. I will mould this man, he thought.
I will make him big. Knowing. (I will make him grateful.) His head flooded. He talked on and on ecstatically.

Theo talked. Noah listened. Miriam watched.

Noah felt her eyes on him. He felt her body as a living, yearning thing, and that embarrassed him. He did not dare to think of her in that way.

Miriam, most of all, was conscious of the excitement. She felt vibrations in the room that had more meaning than only drink or only talk. Theo mustn’t be hurt, she thought. This thought alarmed her. Why should he be hurt?

She watched Noah, not liking what she saw, but feeling herself drawn to him all the same. He was a raw man with hurt eyes and a clumsy kind of vigour about him that she had not encountered before. She smoked and drank thoughtfully. Something which had stayed dim and uncomplaining within her for years was beginning to stir. She hoped to purge it with drink and memory. But drink sharpened the images and memory counted against her. She recalled the affairs with faceless men that they had all had in Oxford. Loving being highly recommended for ennui, like a glass of water in a gulp for the hiccups. But Noah, she thought, I don’t even know how to talk to him. He would find my sophistication hard. Poor Theo doesn’t realize what’s happening, she thought. Noah’s a ruthless man.

Noah seemed to be absorbed in Theo’s talk. But she felt that he was in no way personally involved or friendly. He shrugged off Theo’s smiles, his generosity, in a superfluous way, as if he had guessed – or had known beforehand – that Theo’s kindness was the kindness of a baffled man. She hated Noah at that moment. He frightened her.

Poetry had been denied Theo. Love also. But the long frugal years of study and scholarships, of frayed jackets and hand-rolled cigarettes were behind him. He had consumed the books. But who knows at what cost? What does he think of when he is alone in his study?
Does he detest the books? Suddenly she saw the books that lined the walls as a great weight pressing down on him. Burn them, she thought. Burn them, Theo. She looked at him and despised him for his simplicity. He’s happy, she thought. He doesn’t know what’s happening. Theo had struggled, and this impudent boy will pick his brains for a few months and walk away with Theo in his pocket. He will read what he needs and turn instinctively away from the rest. But even
he
doesn’t realize what’s going on. Imagine, she thought, he looks up to Theo. He will come to hate him. “Hall? A plodder. Well-meaning, but no insights.” She turned to Noah, looking at him as if he had already said that.