by Abla Farhoud
If they ever brought their babies, that would be different. But she knew that would never happen. Her kids didn’t like animals or babies either. Too bad, because their mother, Thérèse Huot, happened to prefer babies who cry or laugh, birds who chirp, cats who meow, purr or lap up their milk, all animals, actually, except squirrels. She had never seen animals collect things and stash them away in a bank, except squirrels … and her children.
Françoise Camirand
She hadn’t invited anyone over for dinner in a long time. In the evening, she would often eat with Jean-Hugues, her lover, who was also her publisher. She preferred to have her three writer friends over, without him. He knew it. And even before she reminded him, he would steal away, alleging that he had a deadline to meet or an important meeting to attend, so he wouldn’t be insulted at not having been invited.
She had decided to make kapama for them, with marinated chicken. It was not a fancy dish, but it took a very long time to prepare.
She had discovered kapama on a trip to Bulgaria she had made long before. Her host, Madam Gabrovo, had taught her how to stuff vine leaves with meat and rice, although instead of looking like neat little cigars, her sarmi were shapeless and bulgy and looked like they would pop open when they were cooked. Madam Gabrovo would take one out of her hands and deftly whip the disgraceful lump into an elegantly folded vine leaf. “You have to practise, Françoise. I’ve rolled thousands of these, and you haven’t even done ten. It takes patience.” Françoise learned how, in the end.
Madam Gabrovo used to prepare the dish on special occasions only, except that when she saw how much Françoise loved kapama, she couldn’t resist making it more frequently, if only to witness her guest’s pleasure. And, who knows, maybe she would even end up learning to roll acceptable vine leaves. What’s more, Madam Gabrovo thought it was amazing to host a Québec novelist. She was particularly proud of it since she had read and appreciated all of her work and was planning to translate her latest novel.
Every time that Françoise made kapama – which she, too, did only on special occasions – she remembered Madam Gabrovo and her laugh, her charming accent and her impeccable French. “Françoise, everything is in the breathing. That’s what people here say. What distinguishes one dish from another, even when they have basically the same ingredients, is the way the cook breathes. It makes all the difference and gives the dish a unique taste … Just like in a novel,” she added with a complicit smile.
Each time, Françoise would bring out the yellowed piece of paper on which she had written the recipe. She would read it over again, even though she knew it by heart.
Rub the chicken pieces with salt, then rinse under running water and drain. Marinate in olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and spices for at least twenty-four hours. Cover the bottom of a earthenware casserole with plain vine leaves, then place the chicken pieces on the vine leaves leaving as little space between the pieces as possible. Arrange the stuffed sarmi on top of the chicken, placing each one tightly against the other, in several layers if necessary, and sprinkle with a few cloves of garlic. Cover with an overturned plate. Then fill the pot, three-quarters full, with homemade chicken stock, or else water with a bit of salt. Cover and bring the mixture to the boiling point, then let it simmer slowly. Taste it to see whether it’s cooked, but don’t eat it all up. Save some for your guests. Serve with yoghurt flavoured with dried mint leaves.
She prepared the meal in several stages. When she wasn’t able to write anymore, when her characters eluded her, she would roll a few sarmi and freeze them.
With each vine leaf that she rolled – with just the right amount of meat and rice, not too much or else the roll would be less juicy, not too little, because it would lose its shape and the taste of the leaf would overpower the taste of the filling – Françoise would think about her friends. She would imagine the evening unfolding … what her friends would talk about, the distinct way each of them would talk, listen, laugh and make the others laugh. It was fun. She enjoyed the evening in advance. Making food for a dinner party was like writing a book. Everything happens beforehand, first in the imagination, then in reality, when you put the rice on to cook, when you prepare the meat, the same way a word turns into a sentence, and a character turns into a story. Everything is carefully arranged so that the guests (or the readers) can relish it the way you thought they would. After all, a meal is merely a pretext for getting together and enjoying the company of your friends – just like a book.
Her friends had started to write at nearly the same time she did. They didn’t know each other when they published their first book, but, gradually, they met at literary gatherings, found they had things in common, and became friends. Two at a time at first, then all four of them. They were young, they saw each other often, they read each other’s writing, they gave each other feedback and they were supportive of each other. They each liked what the others wrote. There was no jealousy among them. At certain times, one of them would be successful, while another was struggling; at other times, the opposite would happen. Despite the ups and downs, they all continued to respect and admire everyone’s writing. Even when it became a challenge to find an evening when all four of them were free at the same time, their friendship endured, as strong as ever.
They would laugh, they would gab, they would chitter-chatter. They talked about everything and nothing. Then, each of them would speak at length while the others listened. They would each take a turn, and speak as long as they wanted about their writing, where they were at, sometimes raising a particular writing problem they were having, which the others discussed with enthusiasm and generosity.
One of them was writing a play based on her trip to Africa, the other was working on something set in China, and the third was doing a screenplay for a feature film taking place between Chibougamau and the North Pole. Françoise was the only person who hadn’t ventured one inch beyond the confines of her hometown.
She told them about her project, now well underway, to write a novel based on the characters of Hutchison Street. “Why Hutchison?” they asked. “Because I’ve been living here since the age of sixteen,” she replied, “and this is the first time that I’ll be talking about the people I’ve been bumping into on my street all these years.”
And she began to tell them what was special about Hutchison and the people who lived there.
She had seen her neighbours walking, each one in a characteristic manner that was recognizable, even from a distance. She had seen them talking to the shopkeepers, to the cashiers, and to each other. She had seen them ambling down the aisles of the Four Brothers store, dawdling over an array of products at the drugstore, shifting from foot to foot impatiently as they waited in line at the cash, or reading a mystery book while waiting for their prescriptions to be ready. At the Y, she had sometimes seen people without their clothes on although she didn’t even know what their name was.
She had heard them speaking French, English, Yiddish, Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Italian, Chinese and other languages she didn’t recognize. She had heard francophones speaking English, sometimes to be polite, or sometimes because they were too lazy to repeat what they had just said, or to speak slowly enough to be
understood, or sometimes also because they were self-effacing or lacked self-confidence. She had heard the people who came from other countries ask these same francophones, “Why are you speaking to me in English? Because I look like a foreigner, is that it? You Québécois, you make me die laughing. Make up your mind, once and for all!”
She had seen then cleaning up their yards, watering their gardens, feeding the birds, obediently waiting in line at the bank, or else jumping the queue to get ahead of somebody else. She had seen them waiting at the bus stop, shivering, humming to themselves, crying. She had seen them sitting on their balconies, alone or with friends, digging their cars out of a snowbank and cursing, or else lending someone else a hand. She had watched them give spare cha
nge to a street person, shop for fruit, get out of a taxi, leave a grocery store, yell at the store keeper or joke around with him, take the time to pick out a fine wine or else grab the first bottle they laid their hands on. She had seen them in the parks of Outremont and in the cafés of Mile End. She had heard the Hasidim chanting as she strolled past their open windows and gangs of kids singing together.
She had seen them so many times in thirty-nine years.
She had seen women in slippers, wearing a black or white turban and a big winter coat that was partly open, surrounded by children who were all bundled up, waiting in the bitter cold for the school bus that seemed to take forever to come. She had seen them pushing their double strollers, with a long line of other children walking after them.
She had seen Hasidic couples staring at one another lovingly, boys on bicycles racing down the sidewalk, little ones holding on to the pant legs of their brothers and the skirts of their sisters, babies in their fathers’ arms, teenagers stepping out arm-in-arm with grandmothers who could barely walk.
She had seen boys and girls carrying parcels for their old neighbours who needed a cane or walker to get around. She had seen actresses she knew from television or the theatre, whom no one else recognized.
She had seen girls and boys staggering home at four o’clock in the morning, the very ones she had once seen as babies, and who were now having some of their own.
She had seen people make fun of the Hasidim and laugh at them to their face or behind their back. More than once, she had seen a man smiling maliciously as he sicced his big dog on Jewish children knowing full well that they have an atavistic fear of animals and especially dogs.
She had seen ambulances, houses on fire, police cars, funeral processions with her neighbours in tears, grief-struck and unable to find their way home.
She had seen yeshivot and synagogues under construction, sukkot set up on balconies and mikva’ot tucked into basements.
She had seen Hasidic processions, and Greek weddings, and, at the time of the referendum on Quebec
independence, signs saying “Oui” and others “Non, merci.”
She had seen marital squabbles, fights between friends, disputes between neighbours.
She had seen people at their windows, looking out at the street out of boredom while other people were on the outside looking in, trying to see what was going on behind the windows.
“I have been seeing all this since the age of sixteen. Sometimes, without looking. It’s crazy what you can see when you’re not paying attention. We can’t help it – by looking, the foreign becomes familiar with the passage of time.”
“I have always wanted to be a bird, or else an invisible camera, a camera that doesn’t make any noise, that can penetrate a person’s heart to discover how it beats when no one is watching it. Voyeurs like to look at forbidden acts, whereas I like hidden feelings. Inner feelings. What a person is experiencing deep inside and with the people she loves or does not love. I like to hear what’s simmering inside a person. Whatever they are unable to experience. Whatever is stagnant. I want to understand how, and by which process, a person has become the way she is. And why she did not become what she should have become. Or what she would have liked to be. I have always wanted to be able to walk through walls … to penetrate the walls that people build around themselves.”
She got up to get the dessert, to bring fresh glasses and plates, and open another bottle of wine. They raised a glass to the joy of being together and, after taking another gulp of wine, she carried on.
“The word ‘fraternal’ is perhaps a bit strong, but that’s what I feel when I’m writing about my neighbours … I fraternize with them … even though they are not necessarily aware of it, and even though my fondness for them will remain unrequited. It doesn’t matter. It’s just such a pleasure for me to get nearer to them, to capture the fleeting moments when I have watched them and put them into words. I would like to spin an invisible web extending from me to them, from them to me. I would like to be able to touch the part of them that resides in me. And perhaps – why not? – that part of me that resides in them.”
She stopped abruptly and blushed. “Oh, my god. If I have been looking at them and seeing them for so many years, it means that they, too, have been watching me and seeing me.”
“Don’t worry,” her friend laughed. “No one on your street is going to write a book about you, except your bio-
grapher perhaps. But you would have to have one foot in the grave already, which is not going to happen anytime soon.”
So they drank to her health and to the health of her prospective biographer. And the discussion continued. The way in which writers look at society, then the people on her block, and, of course, the Hasidim – oh my, how are you going to do it? They went on, asking one question after another.
The evening was coming to a close. Everyone thought it had been great fun, the kapama had been delicious,
and enough to feed an army. The only guy in the group, who was also the only one with children who still lived at home, was happy to bring home a plateful of sarmi and chicken, which would be a real treat for his kids. “Or else,” he said with a chuckle, “I could volunteer to eat some more, as usual.”
She was happy to have seen her friends, and tired, as well. She had not talked this much since her last media tour.
All of their questions and comments were buzzing about in her head, and she was anxious to go to bed, to sleep, and to wake up rested so she could begin working again.
Alain Pasquier
Alain Pasquier had been living in his large 8½-room apartment on Hutchison Street for over thirty years. Over time, his home had filled up with furniture, objects, gizmos, thingamajigs, thick file folders overflowing with yellowed papers, and cabinets and bookcases crammed full of stuff. Paintings, posters and photos covered every square inch of the walls. His closets were bursting at the seams with big green garbage bags and beat-up suitcases that his children were going to pick up – I swear I will, Dad – just as soon as they found a bigger place to live. For some time now, the apartment had been covered with a thick coat of dust, which is not very feng shui, they say, because dust is a sign of death.
Alain and Marie-Claude, his first wife, had bought the apartment for fifteen thousand dollars at the end of the 1970s. They had found it expensive at the time, and would not have been able to buy it if Marie-Claude’s kind and rich aunt hadn’t died and given them a head start. They were both young part-time university teachers. She taught mathematics and he taught literature. Life was beautiful.
Looking at his downcast and disillusioned face now, you could scarcely believe that he had once been happy. Had he really? A man of Pasquier’s age has every right to wonder. When he was living with Marie-Claude he didn’t have time for soul-searching questions like am I happy, do I like teaching, do I want to have children, haven’t I wanted to be a writer since the age of twelve? His wife was a rather effective blend of a bulldozer and a nightingale, whereas he was indecisive and totally lacking in self-confidence. The bulldozer took charge when Alain was undecided and the nightingale smoothed over his lack of self-confidence. He was crazy about her, and her love for him would have saved the world, if the world and Alain could have been saved. Two children were born of their union and in this home.
You might think that he had failed to fulfil his dreams, and that was why he had such a shrivelled up and miserable look about him as he walked along Hutchison or anywhere else, that he had been defeated, like many others, by the hurly-burly of day-to-day life – work, kids, I make a good living so why should I worry about my lot in life, why would I wish for anything else? But, truth be told, he had never had any dreams. He had suppressed any dreams the minute they threatened to sneak through the backdoor of his consciousness. He had every right to whine, to be disgruntled, to resent the entire world, but he had not allowed himself to dream.
Alain was not fully aware of who he was. Any ideas or feelings he had about himself were amorphous or inconsistent. He would consider himself highly intelligent one day, but the following day or even an hour later, he would think he was the most stupid and incompetent good-
for-nothing. He was neither exceptional nor useless. Like seven-eighths of the world population, in fact, he fell somewhere in between the two extremes. But being average was of no interest to him. He preferred to think of himself as either superior or else bloody stupid. He was fifty-five years old, but it had never occurred to him to question the two opposite positions he had taken since childhood. It’s hard to break long-standing habits we adopt in childhood, as anyone who has grappled with them in therapy or other forms of soul-searching would tell you. Several times a day, Alain Pasquier fluctuated between vanity and humility, like a balloon that was inflated and deflated. A simple smile from one of his female students would get him pumped, just as a single word of criticism could upset him and knock him off his feet until the next benevolent look or kind word perked him up again.
In love or not, loved or not, he was never relaxed, calm, happy, self-assured. He was never worry-free. He was a troubled person, carrying a burden without understanding its nature and cause. He would smile and sometimes laugh, but his smile bore the traces of deep-rooted pain and his laugh, often tinged with bitterness, was joyless.
Alain Pasquier did not know who he was, but it didn’t matter to him. What he wanted, what he desired most in the world – and this was perhaps the driving force in his whole life – was to be loved by the woman he loved. Without the loving gaze of a woman, cracks would appear in the mirror in which he saw his reflection. His life would go off the rails, even though, when you thought about it, his life had never been completely on track from childhood on.