Jews in the place.’
‘No, I saw some BTOS on the make a couple of minutes ago.’
‘Well, we’re the only Westmount Jews around.’
‘Bernie’s here.’
‘O.K. Krantz. I’m the only Jew from Wellgreen Avenue. Do something with that.’
‘O.K. Breavman, you’re the only Jew from Wellgreen Avenue at the Palais D’Or.’
‘Distinctions are important.’
‘Let’s get some women.’
At one of the doors in the main hall there was a knot of young people. They argued jovially in French, pushing one another, slapping back-sides, squirting Coke bottles.
The hunters approached the group and instantly modified its hilarity. The French boys stepped back slightly and Krantz and Breavman invited the girls they’d chosen. They spoke in French, fooling no one. The girls exchanged glances with each other and members of the party. One of the French boys magnanimously put his arm around the shoulder of the girl Breavman had asked and swept her to him, clapping Breavman on the back at the same time.
They danced stiffly. Her mouth was full of fillings. He knew he’d be able to smell her all night.
‘Do you come here often, Yvette?’
‘You know, once in a while, for fun.’
‘Me too. Moi aussi.’
He told her he was in high school, that he didn’t work.
‘You are Italian?’
‘No.’
‘English?’
‘I’m Jewish.’
He didn’t tell her he was the only one from Wellgreen Avenue.
‘My brothers work for Jew people.’
‘Oh?’
‘They are good to work for.’
The dance was unsatisfying. She was not attractive, but her racial mystery challenged investigation. He returned her to her friends. Krantz had finished his dance, too.
‘What was she like, Krantz?’
‘Don’t know. She couldn’t speak English.’
They hung around for a little while longer, drinking Orange Crush, leaning on the balcony rail to comment on the swaying mob below. The air was dense with smoke now. The band played either frantic jitterbug or slow fox trot, nothing between. After each dance the crowd hovered impatiently for the next one to begin.
It was late now. The wallflowers and the stag-line expected no miracles any more. They were lined along three walls watching the packed charged dancers with indifferent fixed stares. Some of the girls were collecting their coats and going home.
‘Their new blouses were useless, Krantz.’
Seen from above, the movement on the floor had taken on a frantic quality. Soon the trumpeter would aim his horn into the smoke and give the last of Hoagy Carmichael and it would be all over. Every throb of the band had to be hoarded now against the end of the evening and the silence. Soak it through pressed cheeks and closed eyes in the dreamy tunes. In the boogiewoogie gather the nourishment like manna and knead it between the bodies drawing away and towards each other.
‘Let’s get one more dance in, Breavman?’
‘Same girls?’
‘Might as well.’
Breavman leaned over the rail one more second and wished he were delivering a hysterical speech to the thick mob below.
…and you must listen, friends, strangers, I am bind ing the generations one to another, o, little people of numberless streets, bark, bark, hoot, blood, your long stairways are curling around my heart like a vine…
They went downstairs and found the girls with the same group. It was a mistake, they knew instantly. Yvette stepped forward as if to tell Breavman something but one of the boys pulled her back.
‘You like the girls, eh?’ he said, the swaggerer of the party. His smile was triumphant rather than friendly.
‘Sure we like them. Anything wrong with that?’
‘Where you live, you?’
Breavman and Krantz knew what they wanted to hear. Westmount is a collection of large stone houses and lush trees arranged on the top of the mountain especially to humiliate the underprivileged.
‘Westmount,’ they said with one voice.
‘You have not the girls at Westmount, you?’
They had no chance to answer him. In the very last second before they fell backwards over the kneeling accomplices stationed behind them they detected a signalling of eyes. The ring-leader and a buddy stepped forward and shoved them. Breavman lost his balance and as he fell the stoolie behind him raised himself up to turn the fall into a flip. Breavman landed hard in a belly-flop, a couple of girls that he had crashed into squealing above him. He looked up to see Krantz on his feet, his left fist in someone’s face and his right cocked back ready to fly. He was about to get up when a fat boy decided he shouldn’t and dived at him.
‘Reste là, maudit juif!’
Breavman struggled under the blankets of flesh, not trying to defeat the fat boy but merely to get out from under him so he could do battle from a more honourable upright position. He managed to squeeze away. Where was Krantz?
There must have been twenty people fighting. Here and there he could see girls on their tiptoes as though in fear of mice, while boys wrestled on the floor between them.
He wheeled around, expecting an attack. The fat boy was smothering someone else. He threw his fist at a stranger. He was a drop in the wave of history, anonymous, exhilarated, free.
‘O, little friends, hoot, blooey, dark fighters, shazam, bloop!’ he shouted in his happiness.
Racing down the stairs were three bouncers of the management’s and what they feared most began to happen. The fighting spread to the dance floor. The band was blowing a loud dreamy tune but a disorganized noise could already be heard in opposition to the music.
Breavman waved his fist at everyone, hitting very few. The bouncers were in his immediate area, breaking up individual fights. At the far side of the hall the couples still danced closely and peacefully, but on Breavman’s side their rhythm was disintegrating into flailing arms, blind punches, lunges, and female squeals.
The bouncers pursued the disruption like compulsive housekeepers after an enormous spreading stain, jerking fighters apart by their collars and sweeping them aside as they followed the struggle deeper into the dance floor.
A man rushed onto the bandstand and shouted something to the bandleader, who looked around and shrugged his shoulders. The bright lights went on and the curious coloured walls disappeared. The music stopped.
Everyone woke up. A noise like a wail of national mourning rose up and at the same time fighting swept over the hall like released entropic molecules. To see the mass of dancers change to mass of fighters was like watching a huge highly organized animal succumb to muscular convulsions.
Krantz grabbed Breavman.
‘Mr. Breavman?’
‘Krantzstone, I presume.’
They headed for the front exit, which was already jammed with refugees. No one cared about his coat.
‘Don’t say it, Breavman.’
‘O.K. I won’t say it, Krantz.’
They got out just as the police arrived, about twenty of them in cars and the Black Maria. They entered with miraculous ease.
The boys waited