Read Online St. Urbain's Horseman by Mordecai Richler - Free Book Online Page B

fingernails. Nancy reeked more of the hard stuff now than perfume. Her eyes were swollen.
    â€œWere the children any trouble?”
    â€œHow could they be any trouble, they’re my precious darlings. I live only for them.”
    â€œI love them too, Mrs. Hersh, but I certainly do not live only for them.”
    You. You whore. Mrs. Hersh shoved the open, smelly can at Nancy. “What’s this?”
    â€œDog food.”
    â€œYes, that’s what I thought. I said to myself, it’s dog food. But you haven’t got a dog.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou had one then?”
    â€œNever,” Nancy said, beginning to enjoy herself.
    â€œI opened it by mistake. I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I’m in such a state, just thinking of him in court right now. Naturally, if I’d read the label …”
    â€œBut there was no label. There’s no label on any of the cans in his attic.”
    Tears filled Mrs. Hersh’s eyes and, all at once, Nancy relented. Her tone softer now, conciliatory, she said, “Don’t you know that everything in his office is kept in a special order. He can tell if anything has been touched.”
    â€œWhat’s it for, my God, the dog food?”
    â€œFor Ruthy.”
    â€œRuthy?”
    â€œMrs. Flam. Harry’s betrothed, as it were. It’s of no importance. But please don’t go through his things, Mrs. Hersh. For your own sake, please don’t.”
    â€œI wouldn’t in a million years –” She rose, stumbling. “It’s the flushes. I think I’ll lie down.”
    â€œLet me help you,” Nancy said, taking her arm.

9
    J AKE’S PAST, WHICH HE HAD ALWAYS TAKEN TO BE characterized by self-indulgence, soaring ambition, and too large an appetite, could at last be seen by him to have assumed nifty contours. A meaningful symmetry. The Horseman,
Doktor
Mengele, Harry, Ingrid, all frog-marching him to where he was to stand so incongruously, stupefied and inadequate, on trial in Courtroom Number One at the Old Bailey.
    Yesterday the case against him had looked shaky, very shaky, but today, Friday, Harry was to be summoned to the stand for the first time. Harry, the idiot. And Jake, fear enveloping him, recalled their first meeting or, rather, what he had ruinously taken to be their initial encounter, the aggrieved Harry correcting him before leaving the house.
    â€œYou don’t remember having met me before, do you?”
    â€œNo. Sorry.”
    â€œNot to worry. Very few people notice me. I’m used to it, don’t you know.”
    But even then he hesitated at the door.
    â€œYou say you haven’t got the money, Mr. Hersh, and that even if you so desired you couldn’t spare it. A pity, that. For is it not a fact that at the moment you are being paid more monthly not to work than I take home in a year?”
    â€œWho told you that?”
    â€œI put it to you that you have lied to me.”
    â€œWhere have we met before, Harry?”
    â€œI take it you are implying that we couldn’t possibly move in the same circles.”
    â€œInferring,” Jake said, the nastiness rising in him.
    Harry’s cheeks bled red.
    â€œNow tell me how come you know,” Jake asked, “or think you know about my private affairs?”
    â€œIf you lied to me about that, I say you are also prevaricating about your cousin. You know the present abode of Joseph Hersh. Or de la Hirsch,” he added snidely, “and you are protecting him.”
    Standing in the dock, Jake, in his mind’s eye, conjured up Harry as he had struck him on his first visit to the house.
    Sneering, ferret-like Hershel. A Londoner born, a Londoner bred. National Health had been enacted in time for the steel-rimmed glasses, but too late to mend the crooked tartar-encrusted teeth. Harry’s brown hair was thin and dry, his skin splotchy and almost as gray as his mac, and there were little tufts of hair