Free I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place by Howard Norman

unencumbered.’ Let them put that on his gravestone for all I care. Except I hope when he kicks the bucket he’s going downstairs, not upstairs, if you know what I mean.”
    Apart from the elopement postcard, I wasn’t hearing from Mathilde at all. On the fifth night of Hanukkah, I mentioned this to Isador. He’d just set the room service tray out in the hallway. “What’s there for her to tell you?” Isador said. “She’s freezing her
tuches
off out there in Saskatchewan. She’s painting her paintings. She’s sleeping, she’s waking up. But that’s not the problem, is it? No, the problem is, you’re in over your head with this Mathilde. You’re drowning. She’s walking so far ahead of you—is this how it feels?—she’s about to turn the corner and disappear. You need to figure out what skills you have. I can get you work in the hotel if you want. I’m sure the thing that happened with the anti-Semite is water under the bridge by now. Besides, the hotel’s got a new owner. It’s been advertising for bellmen.”
    â€œI showed Mathilde some of my writing.”
    â€œWhat did she say about it?”
    â€œShe suggested hotel work—for the time being.”
    â€œSee, brilliant minds think alike. There’s worse things than hotel work, let me remind you.”
    Each night a candle was added to the menorah on Isador’s kitchen table; each night another conversation about the ongoing soap opera, as Isador called my life. By the eighth night, he’d narrowed his tolerance for my unwillingness to see the truth. “Once and for all, here’s my understanding of everything with this,” he said. “Your Mathilde’s got bigger appetites for life than you have. God in heaven, you can’t even read half the same menu she’s reading. So what’s your choice? Savor the time you have with this Mathilde, for as long as one of
her
appetites is for you. Count your blessings. Let me put this in an old immigrant’s way: she’s got a lot of stickers on her steamer trunk.” (I’ve never since been able to see, in a photograph or movie, world travelers about to embark on, say, a 1930s luxury liner, standing on the dock next to their big steamer trunks festooned with travel stickers, without thinking of Isador saying this to me.) “Now, can we
please
try and enjoy the last night of this ancient holiday without you sounding like such a pitiful shmuck?
Meshugga,
so worked up! It’s like you’ve forgotten how to take a piss. Forgotten how to lift a fork to your mouth. You aren’t thinking of doing anything harmful to yourself, are you?”
    Â 
    Roughly a month after I’d first met Mathilde, I got Isador to go with me to my favorite birding haunt near Port Medway, about a two-hour drive from Halifax. This was, believe me, a triumph of Herculean dimensions, getting Isador Sarovnik out to a beach. Through stubborn persistence I’d managed to persuade the editor of the travel section of the Sunday
Halifax Herald
to commission an article on a protected bird preserve. I felt this to be the start of something substantial, possibly even a career. Once I’d informed Isador and asked him to accompany me, he said, “Sure, why not? I’d just as soon drop dead out by the Atlantic Ocean as anywhere, what’s the difference? Besides, I need the actual evidence of you earning some money, being a solid citizen. You can take your millions and buy your Mathilde some paintbrushes. How much are they paying you, this newspaper, to write about birds?”
    It was $150, but the way I put it was, “Over four months’ worth of rent.”
    It was early October, warm and windy on the rocky beach. “This is Canada,” Isador said. “Winter can arrive suddenly, on a whim. So I’m wearing more layers than a layer cake.” He had napped on the drive out. I sat