St. Urbain's Horseman by Mordecai Richler Page B

expected the coming of the vandals. Above all, the injustice-collectors. The concentration camp survivors. The emaciated millions of India. The starvelings of Africa.
    It took from the beginning of mankind until the year 1830 for the world’s population to reach 1000 million. The next 1000 million came in only a hundred years. The third 1000 million took only 30 years. And by the end of this century there will be 6250 million people in the world, nearly twice as many as there are now. Already half the world’s people are undernourished and about 450 million exist at starvation level. What is going to happen in the next 35 years?
    Well, I’ll tell you, Jake thought, the demented Red Guards of China are going to come, demanding theirs, followed by the black fanatics, who live only for vengeance. The thalidomide babies, the paraplegics. The insulted, the injured. Don’t bother barring the door, they’ll spill in through the windows.
    Jake was not surprised that out of his obsession with the Horseman he had been delivered Ruthy.
    Who had sent him Harry.
    Who had served him Ingrid.
    Elijah the Prophet had disappointed him, never coming to sip from his silver wine cup at the Passover table. Not so the vandals.After years of waiting somebody had at last come to ask him, Jacob Hersh, husband, father, son, house owner, investor, sybarite, film fantasy-spinner, for an accounting.
    â€œIn 1967, while 450 million people were starving and, in England, at least 18 per cent of this happy breed lived below subsistence level, and society’s golden rule was alcoholism, drug addiction, and inchoate brutality, I, Jacob Hersh, descendant of the House of David, paid £15,000
not
to direct a fun film, made love to my wife on crisp clean sheets, sent my progeny to private schools, worried about corpulence gained through overindulgence and play hours lost through overimbibing. Furthermore, I envied friends more successful and cursed those invited to more parties. I complained about our maid’s indolence. I lamented the falling off in the British craftsman’s traditional pride and a rise in the price of claret. While the rich got richer and the poor poorer, I survived very nicely. As Luke once put it so pithily, if we’re all on the Titanic, at least I’m going down first class.
    Amen.”
    The slap of slippered feet wakened Jake. It was Mrs. Hersh.
    â€œDoes Nancy know you send money every month to a woman in Israel?”
    â€œMaw, if I thought you were going through my mail, I’d hit the roof. I really would.”
    â€œThe letter was lying on the floor. I picked it up. Is the child yours?”
    â€œI already have a
kaddish
. Haven’t you enough grandchildren?”
    â€œThat’s no answer.”
    â€œAll right then, no, it’s not mine.”
    â€œSo why does she send photographs?”
    â€œEverybody wants to be cast in a Jacob Hersh production.”
    â€œThe way people live today, I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.”
    â€œOnce,” Jake said, “my father talked to me about careers I might take up. He advised me not to become a doctor because I’d be at everybody’s beck and call. Even in the middle of the night. Dentistry, he said, would involve me in expensive equipment. Become a rabbi, he said, and you don’t need to make any capital outlay. All you need is what I already had, a big mouth. Do you think I would have made a good rabbi?”
    â€œYou could have been anything you set your mind to.”
    â€œWith a house in the higher reaches of Outremont and a good Jewish girl for a wife.”
    â€œI’ve never said a word against Nancy.”
    â€œAnd it’s best that you never do,” he said, “because I love her. And so long as she loves me, I cannot be entirely bad.”
    Watching him stagger off to the glass-topped table, seeking his bottle, she thought, why, oh my God, why did he ever leave