St. Urbain's Horseman Read Online Free PDF Page B

bone. One more minute and I would have had her up against the wall.”
    They found some butts, lit up, and climbed Mount Royal in search of couples in the bushes. “Everybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it,” Duddy sang, “pickin’ their nose and chewin’ it, chewin’ it.” He told Jake that once he discovered a couple stuck together, just like dogs, and had to summon the St. John’s Ambulance man to get a kettle of boiling water to break them apart. Jake didn’t believe him.
But there, your lordship, you have a scene from my early sex life
. How Hersh was first led astray, he thought, feeling better, much better.
    Jake reached into his dressing gown pocket for a cigarillo, but came up with the most urgent of the morning mail instead. The letter from the tax inspector. The Grand Inquisitor, bless him, was keen to meet with Jake and his accountant for further epiphanies.
    If only he had listened to Luke.
    â€œI happen to know of at least three of Hoffman’s clients who are being reassessed. If I were you, Jake, I’d move elsewhere.”
    â€œI’m scared to. He knows too much about me.”
    It was the sapient Oscar Hoffman who had first incorporated him, with a capital of one hundred pounds and three directors. Jake had come to him with a tangled and confused carton of accounts, receipts, and statements from his agent, which a bony little man, a bantam with steel-rimmed glasses, had gathered together, his smile servile, retreating from Hoffman’s office as unobtrusively as he had entered. Then Hoffman had told Jake that from this day forward he would draw a salary of five thousand pounds from his company,P.A.Y.E being deducted at source. A further ten thousand pounds could be left in company accounts, for outgoings, as it were, and there would be no need for more inventive measures to be taken until such time as Jake’s earnings burgeoned, as they certainly would, Hoffman assured him, beaming.
    But at the end of the first year in the troubled life of Jacob Hersh Productions, Hoffman pondered the balance sheets and was displeased. “My goodness! Five thousand pounds in withdrawals!”
    â€œYes. I’m afraid so.”
    â€œSurely, you invested some of this in screen properties.” Here he paused to peer at Jake. “Paying cash, you understand.”
    â€œYes. Sure I did.”
    Which earned him a benevolent smile.
    â€œAnd on your trip to Canada in February you hired a writer, I suppose. Took options on this and that. Kept a secretary, paying her in cash.”
    â€œDamn right I did.”
    â€œAnd here I see you were in Paris … 1959 … The George V, from the twelfth of April to the fifteenth …”
    Nancy in a light blue Givenchy negligée with white lace cuffs and a high collar, tied in a bow around her neck, seated by the dressing table, head inclined, combing out her long black hair.
    â€œâ€¦Â was that not to meet with a producer, which would have made the trip deductible?”
    Producer of my first-born son.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œGood. Very good, Mr. Hersh. Now you take these accounts home again and try to recall any other business trips, properties and options paid form cash, and so forth and so on.”
    In his attic aerie, Jake opened the Horseman’s cupboard and removed the journal. The entry on the first page read, “The Horseman: Born Joseph Hersh in a miner’s shanty in Yellowknife, Yukon Territories.Winter. Exact date unknown.” Following, there was a list of Joey’s aliases. Jake flipped to another section, still sadly incomplete.
    JEWS AND HORSES :
    Babel, Isaac.
Sunset
.
    LEVKA: You’re an idiot, Arye-Leib. Another week, he says. Do you think I’m in the infantry? I’m in the cavalry, Arye-Leib, the cavalry … Why, if I’m even an hour late the sergeant will cut me up for breakfast. He’ll squeeze the juice out of my heart