St. Urbain's Horseman (57 page)

Jake drifted over to the window to watch Molly in the sandbox. Sammy was crouching in the long grass with his action man, the one he called the Horseman, after Jake's stories.

“How did it happen?” Nancy asked.

“What?”

She repeated her question.

“An air crash. He was in cigarette smuggling, they say. That's very big stuff in Paraguay, you know. There's no duty on American cigarettes. They import millions and millions and fly them by night into Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia. They land on makeshift fields. He was burned to a crisp.”

“Poor Hanna.”

“His body was beyond … Why did it have to be Joey? There are so many bastards in this world I could do without.”

She passed him a cup of coffee.

“There's a small policy. Five thousand dollars for Hanna. They found his papers in an hotel room in Asunción.”

Briefly, Jake slumped forward, resting his head on the table. Nancy massaged his neck.

“He crashed in a clearing between the Mato Grosso and the Brazilian Highlands, not far from the Paraná River.”

Neighing, the stallion rears, obliging the Horseman to dig his stirrups in. Eventually, he slows to a jog. Still in the highlands, emerging from the dense forest to scan the scrub below, he strains to find the unmarked road that winds into the jungle, between Puerto San Vincente and the border fortress of Carlos Antonio López.

“You know,” Jake said, standing up, “according to Simon Weisenthal, who runs the Documentation Center on Nazis in Vienna, when Dr. Mengele fled Buenos Aires, going to Barloche, in the Andes, where so many of them live in opulent villas, it happened that an Israeli lady was visiting her mother there. Both of them had been in Auschwitz, Mengele having sterilized the Israeli lady. One evening, in the ballroom of the local hotel, she suddenly found herself face to face with Mengele. Naturally, he didn't recognize her, after all he had sterilized thousands. But he did take in the number on her lower left arm. Not a word passed between them, according to eyewitnesses. A few days later however, the Israeli lady did not return from an excursion in the mountains. It was several weeks before her body was discovered near a crevasse. A mountain climbing accident, the police said.”

“Hold on, Jake. What if he was no more than they say? A cigarette smuggler.”

“I don't know. I'll never know now,” he cried, “don't you see?”

“Yes,” she replied, alarmed.

“Weisenthal writes, I've got his book upstairs somewhere, he writes that the Jewish community in Asunción has been apprehensive for years. They've had many anonymous letters. If Mengele should be kidnapped, the letters threaten, not one Jew in Paraguay will survive … Oh, hell, who knows what the truth of the matter is. Some guys, you know, they don't understand E = mc
²
, it drives them crazy. I don't understand anything. I'm going upstairs,” he said, picking up his carton of mail.

“Will you be all right?”

“Certainly.”

Opening the cupboard, he plucked the Horseman's journal from the shelf and flipped it open.

On the first page, Jake found the entry that read, “The Horseman: Born Joseph Hersh in a miner's shanty in Yellowknife, Yukon Territories. Exact date unknown.”, and added, “died, July 20, 1967, in an air crash, between the Mato Grosso and the Brazilian Highlands, not far from the Paraná River.”

What are you going to do about it
, a voice demanded.

He wept, that's what. The tears he couldn't coax out of himself at his father's graveside or summon up for Mr. Justice Beal's verdict on Harry or his mother's departure flowed freely now. Torn from his
soul, the tears welled in his throat and ran down his cheeks. He whimpered, he moaned. He sank, trembling, to the sofa. He wept for his father, his penis curling out of his underwear like a spent worm. His penis, my maker. Rotting in an oversize pinewood casket. He wept for his mother, who deserved a more loving son. He wept for Harry, fulminating in his cell and assuredly planning vengeance. He wept for Nancy, whose stomach was seamed from childbearing. Who would no longer make love with the lights on. He wept because the Horseman, his conscience, his mentor, was no more.

Unless, he thought, pouring himself a brandy at his desk, I become the Horseman now. I seek out the villa with the barred windows off the unmarked road in the jungle, between Puerto San Vincente and the border fortress of Carlos Antonio López, on the Paraná River. I will be St. Urbain's avenging Horseman.
If
, a more skeptical voice intruded,
there ever was one
.

Why did he return to Montreal? He came to fuck me, Jenny said. “If he is hunting this Nazi down and finds him,” Uncle Abe shouted, “he won't kill him, he'll blackmail him.” What if the Horseman was a distorting mirror and we each took the self-justifying image we required of him?

No, no, Jake argued, and he pulled the Horseman's saddle out of the cupboard, heaving it onto the floor before him. It wobbled briefly and then fell on its side. With a distinct metallic clunk.

Jake lunged at the saddle, upending it, and probing its innards he found the pouch. “That's where he keeps his gat.” There was indeed a revolver, and alarmed, his heart hammering, Jake took it in his hand. Feh, he thought, shrinking from it, setting it down gently on his desk, pointing it away from him. Jake poured himself another brandy and contemplated the weapon. He knew almost nothing of such things, but even to his untrained eye it seemed an archaic gun.
Pick it up, chicken
. So he took it in his wet palm again, raised it, and pointed it at the window.

Look sharp, Mengele.
Die Juden kommen
.

Then, demonstrating his courage to himself, Jake gritted his teeth and turned the revolver, pressing the barrel to his forehead.

Putz
, you can hurt yourself.

I want to find out who I am, he had told Issy Hersh. It's taken years, but now I know. Who am I? Well, I'm not Hedda Gabler. I'm Aaron maybe.

Now Jake pointed the revolver at that discolored square on the wall where “Sepp” Dietrich's photograph used to hang. He pointed it, squeezed his eyes shut, and fired. There was a tremendous report, a kick, but, to his astonishment, no hole in the wall.

Nancy bounded up the stairs and charged into his office, “Jake! Jake!” the tears actually flying.

He seized her, holding her tight, and explained.

“Watch this,” he said, taking up the revolver again. With more confidence now.

He fired at the wall once more. Eyes open this time. A tremendous bang, but no hole.

“It only fires blanks. It's an actor's gun. A souvenir of his film days, probably.”

Jake poured himself another brandy and slumped on the sofa. “I'll just finish this and try to get some sleep. I'm all right, Nancy, honestly.”

She woke him at six to say, “Luke phoned. He wants to take us to dinner.”

“Say yes.”

“Really?” she asked, startled.

“Yes, really.”

For sentimental reasons, they met at Chez Luba. Jake told Luke he would like to direct his script. Ostensibly, Luke was overjoyed. So was Nancy. So was Jake. But their shared gaiety was forced, a fragile cork bobbing on currents of doubt.

Even as Jake basked in their concern for his well-being, his belated return to the land of the living, his mind rode with the Horseman. He told them about the other letter he had found, Hanna's letter. “She doesn't believe Joey's dead. She thinks he may be in trouble with the police again and staged the crash to evade arrest and because he needs the insurance money. She's not touching the money. It's being kept in a special account, until Joey sends for it.”

Luke set down his glass wearily. Nancy toyed gloomily with a fork.

“Of course, it's absurd,” Jake said.

They parted, agreeing to meet for lunch tomorrow. To discuss the script. And then, for the first time since the trial's end, Jake and Nancy made love, shy with each other.

In his nightmare, he was the Horseman now. It was Jake who was St. Urbain's rider on the white stallion. Come to extract the gold fillings
from the triangular cleft between Mengele's upper front teeth with pliers. Slowly, he thought, coming abruptly awake in a sweat. “I've come,” Jake proclaimed aloud.

Beside him, Nancy stirred.

“It's nothing,” he said softly. “Just a nightmare. Go back to sleep.”

Careful not to disturb her, Jake slid out of bed and into his dressing gown, sucking in his stomach to squeeze between the bed and the baby in the bassinet.

Once in his attic aerie, he retrieved the Horseman's journal from the cupboard, found the page where he had written “died July 20, 1967, in an air crash,” crossed it out, and wrote in over it, “presumed dead.” Then he returned to bed, and fell into a deep sleep, holding Nancy to him.

Portions of “September 1, 1939” and “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden are reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. Copyright 1940, renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden.

Portions of “The Girl That I Marry” by Irving Berlin are reprinted by permission of Irving Berlin Music Corporation. Copyright 1946 by Irving Berlin.

The puzzles for the intelligence test on pp.
this page
are from
Know Your Own I.Q.
, by H. J. Eysenck, Penguin Books, and
The Mensa Puzzle Book
, by Nicholas Scripture, New English Library.

Mordecai Richler was born in Montreal in 1931. In a career that spanned more than forty years, Richler wrote ten acclaimed novels, numerous screenplays, and several books of non-fiction. His last novel,
Barney's Version
(1997), was the winner of The Giller Prize, the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, the
QSPELL
Award, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Novel in the Caribbean and Canada region. Richler also won two Governor General's Awards and was shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize.

Mordecai Richler died in Montreal in July 2001.