“Listen, I was faithful to my vows for decades. Paid my shul membership on time; gave regularly to UJA and whenever my fortunes increased I topped up my donations. Were there only more righteous dopes like me, the community would be swimming in a surfeit of funds! But now I have to finish my story. The new chapter is wonderful. I feel like a kid again. I can run circles around any obstacle. I am ready for Freddy!”
“Freddy?”
“Just an expression. Waiting for Fred Astaire. For a dance. So where’s that Valerie? Supposed to be home this morning and I hear nothing. You know I should have been a bachelor from the start. It suits me. Living like a hermit.
Stanley, I am getting to like you. The only one who pursued me and didn’t give up. But can I trust you, boychikle?
When we got off the boat in 1922 I had just passed bar mitzvah age but had not yet gone up to the bimah. How could I? We were fleeing the Cossacks and their fellow murderers, the White Russians. We got across the border to Poland and languished in Warsaw until my mother, blessed be her memory, managed to locate my father in Montreal. The old boy had set off more than ten years prior and had stopped writing. Little did we know what he was up to!
He probably hoped we had all perished in the Revolution or the civil war that followed. He found a comely lady and had shacked up with her in Mile End and the last thing he wanted was to get a letter from the Immigrants Aid Association asking him to show up at the office. And what did he find there? A letter from his wife who was now in transit and hoping to be reunited with him.
Well, reunited we were all the next spring. Right off the train in Windsor station he took us unsmiling back to a flat on Esplanade near St. Viateur. We were not a minute in the front corridor than he fell upon me, the youngest. The other two were too big to beat. And he began to shove me and when I failed to push back he knocked me down and kicked me everywhere while my mother was trying to fight him off.
‘Where did you get this chevreman,’ he bellowed!
‘Yankev he’s yours, he’s yours. You left with him in my belly, as the Lord is my witness. I’ll swear on the Sefer Torah! Don’t beat him; he’s yours.’
He’s yours, he’s yours, I kept hearing in my ears for many years afterwards but I never wanted to go near him again. Like an animal he had fallen upon me, his eyes wild with rage.
And what about all my anger all those years, Stanley? I wanted peace in the house and worried about my mother. I said nothing no matter the insults he hurled at me. Except that last night in the Hospital of Hope, that last time we were opposite each other, he in the bed and I in the visitor’s chair.
‘You’re so stupid,’ he spat out at me, no matter he was slowly losing his strength and the power to breathe. He only knew words of spite, except when he went fishing in his little stream up in Val David. There with this awful smelly pipe he would sit content. Even civilized. The brute was pacified momentarily. Or just after his daily shot of rye.
Listen, Stanley, you didn’t come for an old man’s stories. Go to your friends. Enjoy the air, the view. Leave the family behind in CÔte St. Luc. And don’t try to reform me, boychikle!”
* * *
I spent two busy weeks in Vancouver and then returned the following March when Valerie left an S.O.S. on my voice-mail.
“Your uncle asks about you, Stanley. He is very ill. Please phone me back.”
“Stanley, you unrepentant goodnik, you came to visit your terrible uncle!”
There he was, propped up in the government hospital. Since he had served in World War II, his doctor got him into a veterans facility.
“Hey, the food’s terrific here, Stanley, if only my teeth would cooperate.”
But then he grew uncharacteristically quiet.
“So you’re happy you came to Vancouver?” I asked but no sooner did the words escape my lips that I regretted uttering them. Why add pinch to injury?
“It was good, Stanley, good. So how’s your aunty, Stanley? How’s she doing? Not so good, I hear. In a convalescent home on the slopes of Westmount? You know, now that she is ill, all my resentment has gone. Of course, it helps I’m a sick A.K. myself. Solidarity in suffering,” he said with that old glint returning to his eyes.
“She’s o.k. but losing her bearing. One day she’s happy, the next day…”
“Like a caged animal, Stanley? Just like when we lived together.”
“But now she forgets easily, one day to the next.”
“What are you talking about – it’s one hour to the next. Stanley, she either never remembered or the little things didn’t interest her. And boy, did we fight over the kleine sachen. But who remembers now, Stanley, who remembers?”
“The other day, uncle, when I phoned she asked: ‘Did ya hear?’”
“Did I hear what?”
“I gave them notice! I gave them notice. A shame on these lodgings and what they call food here!”
“You gave them notice at the residence without telling us, without discussing it with us first? Where will you go, aunt Frances?”
“Back home, of course.”
“But you can’t live alone.”
“Why not? I’ll get a girl to help me.”
“And sleep over too?”
“And sleep over too! Sure…”
“And what’ll it cost?”
“It’ll cost what is costs, Stanley. I need to move. I can’t stay here. It’s like a jail. And the food, oy, even a famished dog wouldn’t touch it.”
“She’s still the same old pest, Stanley Shloimeleh. Nothing will stop her. Not even the Angel of Death who stays away from her as from the plague. Even this Angel has qualms. Why be in a hurry to take on Frances? She’s a handful.”
“And you, uncle, you’re not a piece of cake either.”
“I’m going, Stanley. My guardian angel has given me advance warning. He’s watched me since I was a kid in the Ukraine. But he’s packing it in. Enough with old Morris who got a good run for his family. Eighty-seven years of protection service and now I have to get ready to join the others, to echo our Bible. Let me at least get up there first so I can settle in and bolt up the door before Frances arrives. I’ll have triple locks installed up in heaven. I won’t give her any address. I don’t want her following and pestering me in the world to come. Listen, I have to get there first; otherwise she’ll beat me to it.”
“Beat you to it?”
“She’ll get up there first. And convince some do-goodnik angel to have me billeted with her for eternity!”
“Uncle, how do you know you’re both going to the same location?”
“Ha, ha, that’s good, Stanley, that’s first-class.”
Within three days his system began to shut down. On a Thursday afternoon the nurse noticed no more motion in his chest. He had drifted away.
But where was he to be buried? How could he be left in alien Vancouver soil? I had him shipped back to Montreal and we had a graveside ceremony with only a handful of acquaintances. No eulogy. A few of his cronies showed up. And aunt Frances resplendent in her wheelchair.
“Morris,” she whimpered, “Morris, you got away again.”
* * *
“Listen, you wanted it, so I am giving it to you. I am making you all legatees, all eight of you except Valerie and Stanley. They each get 25% off the top. Then the rest of you can fight over the remaining portion – but only after Frances and Valerie pass away. The usufruct is theirs to share, after all they shared me. See you all later. Ta ta.
Morris”
And so concluded Uncle’s will in his own handwriting.
“That’s Morris for you, always getting in the last laugh,” added the lawyer nervously. “No one’s going to contest the will, are they?”
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