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Authors: Mordecai Richler
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breakfast and had Morton bring around the car and drove down to St. James Street where the Canadian rich worked.
André had attended a private school, and in the morning old pinhead Cox forced all the students to take cold showers. He studied Latin and in sixth grade got caught with a copy of
Sunbathing
in his desk and he made left-wing on the school hockey team. At night his mother read him the poems of Bliss Carman and his father dozed or approved of the editorials in the
Gazette
or recited a poem by Rudyard Kipling. His mother had many lovers and named him André because his father wanted to call him George after the King. André adored one of his mother’s lovers, Jean-Paul, who did not last too long. Jean-Paul stole things, he called André’s father
le roi des yahoos
to his face and his mother
la belle Lucretia
which André did not understand until later on, he was perpetually drunk and borrowing money and he was killed when a training ’plane he was in crashed during the first months of the war.
Yes, one fine day you got up and it was war. (It was not war when Guernica happened and the woman said
vale más morir de pies que vivir de rodillas
. No, not yet. But now Mr. Chamberlain said I am speaking to you from number 10 Downing Street and Mr. Hitler said up Germans and the
Montreal Gazette
said Save Your Scrap Iron.) So Mr. Bennett got up in the Mount Stephen Club and said gentlemen, this is war: he came home and he told André how it makes a man out of you: Mrs. Bennett knitted socks for the RedArmy: and every week André made a bundle of the
Gazettes
and drove down to salvage campaign headquarters with Morton.
But what did it mean?
As a boy living in it the war had meant The Walls Have Ears, hurrah for Churchill, Send us More Japs, V for Victory, up the Yids, Open up a Second Front, send your laundry to the chink, Buy Bonds, bravo the red heroes, Hitler has only got one ball and Goering has none at all, United Nations with Flags Unfurled, hip-hip the frog maquis, and so on. But later, just one year ago, he had visited a beach in Normandy. There were craters in the gravel; and he had found a black boot with a bullet hole in it. Pillboxes, at least four feet thick and crazycoloured, lay smashed on the surf like the toys of giant children. The town itself, Ste. Famille, was abandoned and a ruin. So all through the night he sat up on the beach and tried hard and with no success to see the men charging out of the sea and falling with bullets in their bellies, and feel the Germans warm in their pillboxes firing away and muttering ach, swine – but en didn’t do that kind of stuff or he was crazy or freezing and udy came out at dawn and found him with the boot in his hand and trembling and he slept like a baby in the car all the way back to Paris and he was drunk for two days and the gang said he was being dramatic.…
So he came to Spain, Valencia, where the killing had started in a way and maybe they could explain it.
Yes, there were truths.
The Communists had one and so did the Christians. Even the bourgeois had one and for a long time they did pretty good with it. But you could not paint, not really, so long as men were killing each other so often. There was
the
truth, a shining beauty of a truth, and if he was strong enough he would find it. But until then, until that never day, his centre would be confusion. He would accept what came and act or chooseaccording to what he knew, for not to act would mean nonliving, which was the lot of the coward.
Toni’s room was small and simply furnished. There was a discoloured yellow square on the wall where in 1937 a portrait of
La Pasionaria
had hung. In 1943 a student had committed suicide in the room by slashing his wrists. The blood had been washed away but where the pool had dried the floor varnish was still rubbed out. Then, for some time, the building had been run as a brothel. When Señor Jorge purchased the establishment only a year ago and had converted it
André had attended a private school, and in the morning old pinhead Cox forced all the students to take cold showers. He studied Latin and in sixth grade got caught with a copy of
Sunbathing
in his desk and he made left-wing on the school hockey team. At night his mother read him the poems of Bliss Carman and his father dozed or approved of the editorials in the
Gazette
or recited a poem by Rudyard Kipling. His mother had many lovers and named him André because his father wanted to call him George after the King. André adored one of his mother’s lovers, Jean-Paul, who did not last too long. Jean-Paul stole things, he called André’s father
le roi des yahoos
to his face and his mother
la belle Lucretia
which André did not understand until later on, he was perpetually drunk and borrowing money and he was killed when a training ’plane he was in crashed during the first months of the war.
Yes, one fine day you got up and it was war. (It was not war when Guernica happened and the woman said
vale más morir de pies que vivir de rodillas
. No, not yet. But now Mr. Chamberlain said I am speaking to you from number 10 Downing Street and Mr. Hitler said up Germans and the
Montreal Gazette
said Save Your Scrap Iron.) So Mr. Bennett got up in the Mount Stephen Club and said gentlemen, this is war: he came home and he told André how it makes a man out of you: Mrs. Bennett knitted socks for the RedArmy: and every week André made a bundle of the
Gazettes
and drove down to salvage campaign headquarters with Morton.
But what did it mean?
As a boy living in it the war had meant The Walls Have Ears, hurrah for Churchill, Send us More Japs, V for Victory, up the Yids, Open up a Second Front, send your laundry to the chink, Buy Bonds, bravo the red heroes, Hitler has only got one ball and Goering has none at all, United Nations with Flags Unfurled, hip-hip the frog maquis, and so on. But later, just one year ago, he had visited a beach in Normandy. There were craters in the gravel; and he had found a black boot with a bullet hole in it. Pillboxes, at least four feet thick and crazycoloured, lay smashed on the surf like the toys of giant children. The town itself, Ste. Famille, was abandoned and a ruin. So all through the night he sat up on the beach and tried hard and with no success to see the men charging out of the sea and falling with bullets in their bellies, and feel the Germans warm in their pillboxes firing away and muttering ach, swine – but en didn’t do that kind of stuff or he was crazy or freezing and udy came out at dawn and found him with the boot in his hand and trembling and he slept like a baby in the car all the way back to Paris and he was drunk for two days and the gang said he was being dramatic.…
So he came to Spain, Valencia, where the killing had started in a way and maybe they could explain it.
Yes, there were truths.
The Communists had one and so did the Christians. Even the bourgeois had one and for a long time they did pretty good with it. But you could not paint, not really, so long as men were killing each other so often. There was
the
truth, a shining beauty of a truth, and if he was strong enough he would find it. But until then, until that never day, his centre would be confusion. He would accept what came and act or chooseaccording to what he knew, for not to act would mean nonliving, which was the lot of the coward.
Toni’s room was small and simply furnished. There was a discoloured yellow square on the wall where in 1937 a portrait of
La Pasionaria
had hung. In 1943 a student had committed suicide in the room by slashing his wrists. The blood had been washed away but where the pool had dried the floor varnish was still rubbed out. Then, for some time, the building had been run as a brothel. When Señor Jorge purchased the establishment only a year ago and had converted it
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