Free I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place by Howard Norman Page A

him down in a folding chair out of the wind, between boulders, facing the sea. I stuck an umbrella fixed to a long pole in the sand, supplied him with water and lemonade, a makeshift oasis.
    â€œI have mixed feelings about the ocean,” he said when he had settled in. “Some days I have real affection for it. Other days I feel otherwise.” I walked back and forth along the beach, taking notes on what late-staying sea and shore birds I could find, checking identifications against my field guide. When I got back to Isador, he said, “I’ve been thinking. Now that we’re out here, can you arrange for a nice duck for supper? I’m in good standing with the hotel chef.”
    â€œMaybe next time,” I said. “I’m going to sit with you for a while, then I have to walk to the marsh—that’s the actual place I’m commissioned to write about. Are you going to be all right?”
    â€œYou put too much sugar in the lemonade,” he said. “You know, I look at the ocean and I think, I never learned to swim. Lucky thing I didn’t fall off the boat that brought me to Canada. Some people, and I saw this with my own eyes, jumped off the ship halfway between there and here. No matter how bad things had gotten for them before, they figured it was going to get worse.”
    â€œYou don’t know all the reasons, Isador.”
    â€œI’m only saying, I saw it with my own eyes.”
    I sat drinking lemonade with him, talking about this and that.
    â€œThis is a comfortable chair you provided for me here,” he said. “If I ever get to go on an ocean cruise, I’d like this chair. Do they let you bring your own chairs?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œComing over from Europe, that’s not what I’d call an ocean cruise.”
    â€œNo, I guess not, Isador.”
    â€œI had a change of clothing and my childhood menorah. That’s it.”
    â€œYou told me.”
    â€œThat was a rough passage. Nobody knew their fates. Nobody knew what was what. What was this place Canada, anyway? Still, Jewish children from many countries were conceived on shipboard those weeks. How anyone found privacy on that ship beats me. A hotel, now that’s a different story. But a ship full of refugees—really something, don’t you think?”
    â€œYes, I do. Would you like to get back to the city now?”
    â€œYou said you had more you needed to look at.”
    â€œI can come back, if you’re too tired.”
    â€œIn a little while. This umbrella is nice. Let me ask you something. What’s with you and birds, anyway? I don’t understand.”
    â€œI look at those sea ducks and I wonder where they go at the end of a day.”
    â€œWhat’s the mystery? At the end of the day they go home. What’s there to figure out?”
    â€œWant to look at sea ducks through these binoculars? They have beautiful faces.”
    â€œI prefer the pigeons of my Russian youth. I close my eyes and see them. For this I don’t need binoculars.”
    â€œI’ll be back in an hour, probably. No more than two.”
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    Later that October, Mathilde and I drove out to Peggy’s Cove, mainly to walk on the beach, catch the last autumn sun, and have lunch at the Oyster Café. In the car, I offered the fact of my having been at the Woodstock music festival back in August as a bona fide of worldliness. This didn’t have the effect I’d hoped for. Mathilde listened intently, as focused as a stenographer who would be responsible for reading back a transcript, as I described what I’d seen and heard in the muddy fields and hills of Yasgur’s upstate New York property. I dropped the names of musicians, some of whom I saw perform: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the Incredible String Band, Richie Havens, Canned Heat, the Who, Joan Baez, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I mentioned that I saw a lot of people making love