Son of a Smaller Hero by Mordecai Richler

Author:Mordecai Richler [Richler, Mordecai]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781551995618
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2002-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

II

Soon after St. Jerome, a prosperous French Canadian mill town with a tall grey church, the horizon widens and the highway begins to rise, rise and dip, rise again from the valley and into higher hills. Sloping easily on all sides are the slow, pine-rumpled hills. Old and shrivelled cliffs appear like bruised bones here and there, and in the valleys below, the fertile fields are yellow and green and brown. There is the occasional unpainted barn or silo – blackened by the wind and the rain – rising out of the landscape as natural as rocks. Billboards, more modern, stick out of the earth incongruously. The slim and muddy river, sheltered from the sun by birch and bush, winds northwards drowsily but insistent between the still hills. Cottages – a mess strewn on a hilltop or a pile of them spilled sloppily into a valley – appear every ten miles or so. From time to time, as the highway climbs higher north, some ambitious cliff or hill pokes into the soft underbelly of a low grey cloud. These higher hills, sometimes called mountains, are often ribbed by ski-tows, trails, and the occasional derelict jump. Bears, the stray deer or two, are often rumoured in these parts, but, like the pretty girls who beckon from the travel brochures, they are seldom seen.

About forty-five miles north of Montreal a side-road turns up off into Ste. Adele en-haut. It’s about three miles to the lake. Ste. Adele is the retreat of Montreal’s aspiring middle-class, and, as a resort town, is prone to all the faults and virtues of that group. The cottages are clean but prosaic: no Jews are wanted, but, on the other hand, they are dealt with diplomatically. The French Canadians tolerate the Presbyterians from the city because they have brought prosperity to their village, and the Presbyterians find that the French Canadians add spice to their holiday: they accept their haughtiness as philosophically as rain on Sundays. Few on either side are bilingual.

The pinewood cottage they had rented was about five miles off the highway, pretty high in the hills and by the side of a mountain stream. It had three bedrooms and an open fireplace in the living-room. There was a rock-garden of sorts around by the front and a fine breeze by the stream. The old, musty furniture had been picked up at auction sales many years ago and was bruised in a warming, familiar way.

Noah and Miriam had had a busy week before coming up to the cottage.

They had moved, temporarily, into Mrs. Mahoney’s and they bought a ’41 Ford for three hundred and fifty dollars. Marg Kennedy phoned on Wednesday and asked Miriam to meet her for a drink. Marg was a quick attractive woman who earned more money than her husband and was interested in child psychology. She wrote commercials for a soap company. John, who had got over being a socialist, worked in an advertising agency. The Kennedys were buying a duplex on the instalment plan and planned to have three children, spaced over six years.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.