Solomon Gursky Was Here (45 page)

Tell me, what it is I spy,

Frisky Johnny, randy Johnny,

Hanging down beside your thigh,

Frisky Johnny, randy Johnny?

Have you got a swelling there,

Frisky Johnny, randy Johnny?

Meanwhile Kate would pick his pocket and usually that's all there was to it. But if the victim caught on to what was happening, making a fuss, then Ephraim would be called upon to act as the sisters' stickman. Simulating outrage, he would elbow through to the victim, vociferous in his defence, assuring him that he had seen everything. Then, as soon as Kate had slipped him the booty, he would rush off, ostensibly to fetch a peeler, but actually hurrying back to his lodging to await the girls, a bottle of claret uncorked on his bedside table. If necessary, back in the gin-shop the girls would submit to a useless search, protesting their innocence, bawling at their offended modesty, until the embarrassed victim would flee into the fog.

Bug-hunting became such a plague that questions were raised in parliament. Irate citizens wrote to the
Times,
inveighing against Scotland Yard's ineptitude. And so, inevitably, one night the sisters' victim turned out to be a police detective, working with an accomplice of his own. The accomplice, another detective, followed Ephraim out of the gin-shop, nabbing him as he was about to enter his lodging house. Even so, Ephraim might have got off with another six-month sentence, but the detective insisted on a visit to his rooms.

“You don't understand, sir,” Ephraim said. “I don't live here among the Ikey Pigs and I had no idea that those girls had slipped that gentleman's purse into my pocket.”

“Why did you stop here, then?”

“You will think badly of me, sir, but I had come to await those wicked girls in their rooms. My father was taken from us at Trafalgar and now my poor widowed mother will be undone. I am a victim of my own lust.”

But a closer search of Ephraim's waistcoat yielded one of the calling cards he had foolishly had printed and the address was the same. The detective and Ephraim proceeded to his attic rooms, where the work table was strewn with begging letters awaiting pick-up by clients. Burglar's tools, actually not Ephraim's but held by him for a ticket-of-leave man of his acquaintance, were discovered in the closet. A brace and bit fitted with a large, adjustable cutting head; a jemmy; a set of pick-locks and a peter-cutter. A desk drawer turned out to be filled with forged official seals. Another drawer contained a harvest of silk handkerchiefs, the property of the Sullivan sisters, but no matter. As the detective began to make notes, Ephraim lunged at him, knocking him off his feet, and flew down the stairs right into the waiting arms of the other detective, who had just entered the lodging house with the Sullivan sisters in tow.

“There he is,” Dotty squealed, “the fancyman who forced us into a life of sin.”

“He takes all our money,” Kate hollered.

Two

The fat pulpy man from the DEW line station offered him twenty dollars, but Isaac wouldn't do it. Instead he continued as before. For five dollars he met the man once a week in the toilet of the Sir Igloo Inn Café and pumped his thing until it squirted. This time, however, the man gave him two hand-rolled cigarettes as well. “It's a special kind of tobacco, kid. If you like it, and you want more, maybe we can talk again about the other deal.”

Isaac couldn't spend his earnings going to a movie because they didn't have one. They didn't have anything in Tulugaqtitut. Bored, an irritated Isaac drifted through the settlement, cursing it. He paused at his customary vantage point, the one that offered him a view of Agnes McPhee's bedroom. She seldom drew the curtains, and more than once he had seen Agnes going at it with one of the bush pilots, her quivering naked legs reaching for the ceiling. But today he couldn't even catch her undressing. So Isaac wandered into the Hudson's Bay trading post, Ian Campbell instantly alert, setting aside his ledgers to watch him. “Hey, Isaac,” Campbell called out, playing to the other customers, “has your father decided on which kind of boat yet?”

Everybody, but Nialie, knew Henry was crazy. “Mind your own business,” Isaac hollered.

“Just asking, kid, because it looks like rain.”

Each mail plane would bring Henry elegant packages from boatbuilders. C. vanLent & Zonen Kaag, Abeking & Rasmussen, S.E. Ward & Co., Hitachi Zosen. Each package came with encomiums from satisfied sheiks and international arms dealers and Hollywood moguls. There were colour photographs, elaborate deck plans, and, invariably, a personal letter from the designer.

None of them understood. Henry was not unreasonable. He didn't expect a boat built of gopher-wood, or that the length would be three hundred cubits, the breadth fifty cubits, and the height thirty cubits. But he was not interested in Twin MTU main engines or U25 HP Caterpillar D-353s. When the time came he was not so foolish as to think his descendants would send forth a dove—or, more appropriate to the generations of Ephraim, a raven—but neither would a pad for a Bell Jet Ranger III helicopter be required. The likelihood was that there would be no fuel and they would be dependent on the wind in their sails for power. So Henry was thinking of a three-masted ship modelled on turn-of-the-century schooners or possibly a windjammer or the sort of square-rigger that had once been built in the Maritimes.

“Please don't do it,” Isaac said.

“Why not,
yingele
?”

“Don't do it!”

“Give me a reason.”

“Everybody is laughing at us already. Is that reason enough for you?”

“Are you ashamed of me?”

“Maybe for more reasons than one,” Isaac said, fleeing.

Seated at his rolltop desk with the two bullet holes in it, awash in estimates and brochures, Henry turned to his Pentateuch for solace, rocking over it, reading, “And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.”

Of course that could never happen again. God had established a covenant. He had set his bow in a cloud. But the conditions that prevailed today, the wickedness of man great in the earth, were as bad as those of Noah's time. God's punishment, Henry was convinced, would be another ice age. Then there would be floods and a properly equipped ship would be crucial to survival. Meanwhile, Henry continued to study the entrails.

A CIA report predicted catastrophic changes that would return the world climate to a condition similar to that of one hundred to four hundred years ago. The report, leaked to the Washington
Post,
anticipated famine in the near future.

The earth's cooling will lead to increasingly desperate attempts on the part of the powerful, but hungry, nations to get grain any way they can. Massive migrations, sometimes backed by force, will be a live issue and political and economic instability will be widespread.

Henry's file also included a recent item clipped from the Edmonton
Journal
.

The proposition that the planet is cooling has been advanced most articulately by Reid Bryson, professor of meteorology and geography at the University of Wisconsin.

Between 1880 and 1940, the mean global temperature rose about one degree Fahrenheit. Since then it has fallen by about half that amount.

Bryson argues that the period of 1930–61 was a time of extraordinarily benign weather that has been mistaken for normality. The earth's declining temperature and the historical evidence persuade him that the weather in the coming years will be more unpredictable than ever—and quite possibly devastating.

Once his parents had gone to bed, Isaac lit his handrolled cigarette in his own little bedroom, switching on a tape.

A gale-force wind screamed across the Arctic. “Last week,” the narrator said, “we left Captain Allan Cohol lying in a fish net inches from death. Frightened by the golden-haired stranger's escape from a coffin of ice after centuries of entombment, the men of the Eskimo village have overcome him and are preparing now to thrust a harpoon through the giant stranger's heart.”

“No!” Kirnik cried. “We will take him by sled to Dr. Fantom. The doctor has things to cause sleep. When he sleeps we will send for the police.”

“So the men of Fish Fiord,” the narrator said, “manhandled the mighty man of muscle onto a dogsled, his fabulous frame still entangled in the coils of the net. Their destination was the sinister quarters of Dr. Fantom, renegade refugee from the world of medicine, practising his nefarious skills in the hiding of the high north. Fantom looked down at the giant in the net.”

“I am Captain Allan Cohol. Inter-galactic 80321. I demand my rights.”

Chuckling malevolently, Fantom said, “Come now, relax. My name is Frederick Fantom, MD. You may call me Fred. I will call you Al. Well, isn't that amusing, gentlemen? Meet our new friend. Al Cohol. What a truly intoxicating pleasure to make your acquaintance. Now then, your arm, my friend. This won't hurt a bit.”

“Don't touch me with that needle, you foul physician. This is medical mayhem,” Captain Al Cohol protested, already in a daze.

“Let's get some stimulant into you. Overproof rum. Just what the doctor ordered, Al. Now open your mouth like a good patient.”

Sounds of struggle. Gurglings, splutterings, liquid being swallowed.

“Look,” Kirnik cried, alarmed. “Look at his eyes. Look at the way his face is changing.”

Captain Al Cohol began to roar. “Kill! I'll kill you all. A-a-rghh-h-h!”

There now came the terrifying sounds of tearing and rending. The Eskimos shout and scream as Captain Al Cohol hurls himself at them.

“What is this?” the narrator asked. “Captain Al Cohol, the hero of the inter-galactic fleet, driven into madness by a glass of rum?”

Then another voice proclaimed, “The ordeals of Captain Al Cohol is a radio adaptation by E.G. Perrault of a comic-book series written by Art Sorensen for the Alcohol Education Program of the Northwest Territories Government.”

His tape done, Isaac reached under his mattress to dig out his folder of New York photographs, cut from the pages of
Time, Newsweek
and
People
. Photographs of the world out there where the main event wasn't the arrival of an Otter from Yellowknife and the sun didn't sink below the horizon for month after chilling month. Photographs of film stars and tycoons and fashion models. He had written to his Uncle Lionel, reminding him of his visit and inviting him to come again, signing himself, “Your admirer, Isaac.” In response, he had been sent an electric train set with a card signed by Lionel's private secretary.

The next evening a resolute Isaac delighted Henry at the dinner table, joining him in saying grace and asking if they might resume their Talmud studies. They had only been at it a week when Isaac burst into tears at the table.

“What is it,
yingele
?”

“Please don't send me to school in Yellowknife. I want to attend the Rebbe's
yeshiva
in Brooklyn.”

Henry, his eyes sparkling, danced his son around the room, singing,
“Shteht oif shteht oif, l'avoidas haBoiray.”
Wakeup, wake up, to do the work of the Creator.

Nialie watched without expression, frightened for both of them.

Three

September 1916. Solomon, seventeen years old now, short for his age, wiry, his skin burnt nut-brown by the prairie sun, was perched on the corral fence behind the Queen Victoria Hotel with Bernard and Morrie. Plump Bernard, who parted his hair in the middle and already owned a three-piece grey serge suit and a homburg and spats, sucked on a caramel. Morrie, whittling away on a chunk of wood as usual, was apprehensive as Solomon had joined them on the fence for once, familiar as he was with Solomon's need to bring Bernard to the boil. Slapping at flies, squinting against the sun, the Gursky brothers were waiting for the sale to start. Aaron had bought a snorting, restive herd of wild mustangs from Hardy, overpaying again, and now hoped to sell to the farmers, most of whom were already in debt to him at the store. By this juncture the Gurskys had moved into town, living above

A. GURSKY & SONS

GENERAL MERCHANTS

Importers of Stable and Fancy

DRY GOODS

Sole Distributors of

DR. COLBY'S celebrated ANTI-COSTIVE

and TONIC PILLS, unequalled in the

Promotion of Regular Evacuation.

Cajoling, sweaty, Aaron bantered with the farmers at the corral, laughing too hard at their inane jokes. The farmers feigning indifference, most of them waiting for sundown when the jumpy Jew's prices would drop.

No sooner did Aaron cut a deal on a horse, realizing a small profit, than he would invite the buyer into the hotel bar for a ceremonial drink. The farmer would not order a beer like Aaron, but would spit on the sawdust-covered floor, wink at the bartender, and demand a double shot of the hard stuff, saying, “Both of my boys have already enlisted, but I suppose yours will be staying put.”

Then a breathless Aaron would zip out to the corral again, counting the shiny rumps of the remaining horses, calculating likely losses in his head, mingling with the other farmers, thrusting gifts of coloured hair ribbons at their wives and children. Panicky at sundown, he would drop prices drastically.

Solomon prodded Bernard with his elbow. “Now that you're such a man of affairs, a student of correspondence courses, what do you make of all this?”

“Whatever I make of it is strictly my own business.”

“Why can't we be like the three musketeers,” Morrie asked, “all for one and one for all? The Gursky brothers.”

“Well,” Solomon said, “I'll tell you what I think. The bar's turning over a bigger profit than Paw is sucking up to that bunch of farmers. What Paw ought to do is buy the hotel and sell drinks and let somebody else worry about the horses.”