Hutchison Street

by Abla Farhoud

  Alain Pasquier had always had a way with women. If you saw him slumped in his armchair, his eyes red from crying, you would wonder what women could possibly have seen in him. Oh, he has charm, a lot of charm. There’s something in his beautiful sad eyes and in his whole being that begs for salvation. Or, in a more poetic vein, he is saying, I am placing my head, my heart, my entire body in your beautiful white hands. Crush me, if you feel like it, without you I am nothing. Naturally, any woman who was the least bit maternal or romantic or who had the mettle of Jesus Christ our Saviour, or a female version thereof, would become entrapped by his beautiful misty eyes and his romantic poet’s mane of hair.

  His lovers and his two legal wives were never disappointed, at least in one respect: Alain Pasquier was an exceptional lover. He loved women, womankind, femininity – except his mother and sisters, whom he loathed with a guilty passion.

  He adored the company of women, their conversation, their interests, their concerns, their intelligence, their boundless capacity for love, their good nature, and the mood swings brought on by their menstrual cycles, whims or the simple need to be true to their feelings.

  He had no interest in talking about hockey, cars, or the ups and downs of the stock market. He far preferred what the Brits would refer to as small talk over a cup of tea, gossip, and (yes!) shopping, going to the theatre, and, of course, reading books – popular novels as well as the classics from Duras to Yourcenar, from Proust to Fuentes and Vásquez Montalbán, authors he had introduced them to and taught them to appreciate. All of his friends were women, with the exception of one childhood friend he still had dinner with once or twice a year, which was just enough to remind him that the company of men meant little to him, and what would I do, dear God, if from one day to the next, there were no more women in the world?

  Once he got over them, he would get in touch with them again, and they would come back, having forgotten the terrible scenes, the foul language, the lies, the blackmail and the insulting letters. He had charm, all right, and women liked his company as much as he liked theirs. His former students, who had got a lot from their professor, would reappear years later. Pasquier was generous with his time and knowledge. He was never condescending. He was always stimulating and his classes were full. No matter whether he was depressed, discouraged or disappointed in life, he always gave it his all when he walked into class and he taught brilliantly.

  Alain Pasquier had always been incapable of looking ahead, of seeing himself in the future, but he could relive the past at will, down to the slightest detail, especially the things that had been painful.

  Of all the women who had dumped him, his first big love, the mother of his children, still took the prize for the length and intensity of suffering she had caused when they separated. Depression, one year on sick leave. At the time, his mother, who had never loved him, had nonetheless come to look after him. Marie-Claude had walked out on him, leaving him the house and kids, and bye-bye, I don’t want to have anything more to do with you. He had fallen into the depths of despair, particularly since Marie-Claude had been ruthless. After having told him clearly why she was leaving, she had disappeared. Disappeared without a trace. She had given him back his life by loving him and, with one fell swoop, she had pulled the plug. Complete darkness. Nothingness. As if nothing had ever existed between them. As if he had never existed. He no longer had a grip on life. Everything collapsed. No floor, no ceiling. Only an old crevice into which he had fallen. He was disappearing into his childhood malaise, and reliving his own lack of life – if you can call such horror living.

  He felt more or less the same kind of pain each time he went through a separation. “Why do they all leave me? I love them so much. I have loved them so much. I can’t live without them. I have done everything. I have done everything …”

  His second wife has just walked out on him. “Oh God, I want to die …”

  She has been speaking for a long time. He hasn’t heard anything, but he knows. It is final and there is no going back. He will never get over it. He is too old. Broken. At the end of his tether. An old dirty sock with holes in it, buried at the bottom of the laundry hamper. Life doesn’t mean anything anymore, it never has.

  She is going down the stairs. “I am worth nothing because she doesn’t love me.”

  He hears the front door close.

  He falls to pieces completely. I am worth nothing because she doesn’t love me, a refrain recorded at the age of five, when he was absolutely sure that his mother would never love him. Sounds are amplified and distorted. “I am worth nothing. I’m a failure. My life has never amounted to much. I will die the way I was born. Rejected. A beggar. Even my mother. All my life, I have begged. Love me. Even my children love their mother more than me. I, too, loved my mother … Just a smile, a kind look … God, how I loved her. God, how I loved her. I am tired. Tired.”

  Alain Pasquier’s daughter was in the habit of coming to see her father once a week. Actually, she came to do her laundry. That day, she found him asleep. It’s really unusual for him to be asleep on the living room couch, she thought at first.

  She didn’t notice the handwritten note lying on the floor between the coffee table and the couch.

  There were lots of papers lying all over the apartment. Two dressers and four desks overflowing with file

  folders and piles of papers held down by paper weights in all shapes and sizes. Her father had a lot of projects on the go, some begun long ago, none of which had ever been completed. But he kept the paperwork handy, close by, just in case …

  The Diary of Hinda Rochel

  My cousin Avrami just came from New York. Our whole house has changed. I’m just happy to be going to school. Even on Shabbat, which is my favourite day because there is peace in the home, it’s not the same anymore. Everything is spoiled because of him. He doesn’t want to go to the yeshiva with my brother. And I don’t know what part of the house to go to anymore. I can’t stay locked up in the bathroom all day. He’s always moving around. He changes his clothes several time a day, he goes out, he comes back in, he goes out again, and he comes back right away. He never touches the mezuzah, not when he goes out, and not when he comes back in. He doesn’t give a hoot whether our house is blessed or not. He wants to drive my father’s car. “May God forgive you, Avrami, you know perfectly well that it’s Shabbat.” Avrami then said some bad words that I can’t write down. My mother burst into tears and my father, who is usually so gentle, had to control himself so that he wouldn’t slap him. I wanted to ask my father why Avrami had come to live with us. But I didn’t dare. Things were going so badly. Good bye shalom bayit. Peace in the home has gone out the window. Even our Shabbat meal wasn’t good, in spite of all the candles we lit and all the good things there were to eat. Perhaps it was good, but I couldn’t taste anything. My brother went to the yeshiva anyway to sing and pray. If there had been a yeshiva for girls, I would have rushed over there, too.

  Usually, we sing during the Shabbat meal and even afterward. But Avrami spoiled everything. Even the younger kids were on edge. They didn’t have their beautiful Shabbat faces on. Even they got yelled at.

  My father always says, “We don’t sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.” But this time, nothing. We didn’t sing. When Avrami left, Papa was agitated, emotional, I think. “Oy vey! Oy vey! I feel sorry for my brother, having a son like Avrami,” he said. “I don’t know what he’s going to do, may God help him.” Usually, it’s my mother who says “Oy vey! Oy vey!” Not my father.

  I went out into the backyard, and my little brothers followed me. I would have liked to be by myself to think about all that. But since it was not possible, I started to think about how I would translate “Oy vey!” into French for my diary. I came up with the French expression, “quel malheur.” There’s a lot of malheur, or misfortune, in Gabrielle Roy’s book, too. Just thinking about her main character, Florentine, I felt a
little less sad.

  Françoise Camirand

  There’s nothing more touching than walking along Hutchison Street on a Saturday and seeing entire Hasidic families all dressed up in their “Shabbat best.” They are all out in their finery, from the smallest child to the biggest one, including the spectacular shtreimel. It conjures up images of Sunday mass, for those who are old enough to remember, when people would gather on the steps of churches throughout Quebec. This occurred in the 1950s, and even into the early 1960s, when Françoise still went to church with her mother, father, sister and brothers, all of them dressed up from head to toe in their Sunday best. The worst thing about it was that they had to stay clean and well behaved all day. Françoise was allowed to read. Her school teacher would let her take a few books home for the weekend. Once she had devoured them, she would read them to her sister.

  She passes a family of ten, including the parents. There are two babies in a double stroller, two little girls between four and six who are dressed alike in identical new bonnets and long satin dresses. They scamper along, pleased with how they look, showing off their new patent-leather

  shoes. Hasidic or not, a new pair of shoes is always an important event for a child. Two eighteen-year-old boys, miniature men, proudly sport a suit and tie, a freshly laundered white shirt and a holiday kippah. They are running up ahead. The parents lag behind, with their two teenaged girls, also dressed the same, except that their beautiful, clean and shiny hair is done in a slightly different way.

  As she goes home, she is thinking about all the work the mothers do. Shabbat waits for no one. It arrives at a set time, once a week. Everything needs to be ready before they can light the Shabbat candles. To observe the compulsory period of rest, a mother needs to work like crazy in the days leading up to the Sabbath. She has to see to all the little details, follow all the religious guidelines and, above all, remember everything. The closer the time comes, the more the pressure builds. There are suits to clean, white shirts to wash and iron, three meals to prepare, bread dough to knead, groceries to buy, treats to get for the children – because it’s Shabbat, and everything needs to be taken care of so that there’s nothing left to do during this blessed day of rest, for the glory of the All-Powerful. And, above all, the mothers must not forget to set the timer, which enables the cooking to start and stop on time, without anyone’s intervention. Every week, mothers struggle to get everything done right down to the minute. If someone forgets to set the all-important timer, no food. You could rely on the grandmother, perhaps, who doesn’t live too far away. But has she prepared a meal for twelve?

  Fifty-two Shabbats a year, in addition to countless other holidays, each with their specific set of strict rules, to be adhered to in all cases. Orthodox or Hasidic mothers will be the first to ascend to heaven on the wing of an eagle. There’s no doubt about it. If not, is there any divine justice?

  Hershey Rozenfeld

  Scorned by everyone, considered an oddball and a good-for-nothing, Hershey Rozenfeld was the laughingstock of the community. Instead of singling him out as someone who was setting a bad example, people preferred to ridicule him and ostracize him that way. Would any child or teenager look up to a ridiculous man whom everyone made fun of?

  Some good souls were more than willing to tell him to go back to where he came from. In New York, at least, he would be far away, and good riddance, our children don’t need bad examples. The community doesn’t need dead wood or another rotten apple either, there are already enough hatless men around, although you can’t do anything about those people, since they have been living in the neighbourhood longer than we have. The only thing we can do is not look at them.

  Righteous folks were irritated and shocked by the fact that he talked to Goys or Goyim, to use the more precise Jewish term for the Gentiles. He even let some of them set foot in his home, where they would drink a cup of coffee or even a glass of beer with him. What a scandal!

  In order to move out of his uncle’s house, Hershey Rozenfeld married a sickly girl whom nobody wanted. The young bride died shortly thereafter, even before bearing a child. That was fine with him, he didn’t really want offspring – something that his fellow Hasidim would consider heresy.

  After his mother died – he was just eleven years old – his father had sent him to live in Montreal with his uncle. He had never felt at home with his new family, or in his new community. He was a Hasidic Jew, and he believed in God, but he wasn’t really devout, and he didn’t want to pretend that he was. He didn’t like groups, and he was even more averse to being part of a group. He retreated into himself so that people would leave him alone, and would forget about him. Most of the time, it worked.

  He did everything differently from everyone else.

  He treasured the lessons he had learned from his mother. “My son,” she had told him not long before she died, “there are good men and there are bad men everywhere. A kippah does not guarantee that someone is good. Hatless men can also be good. Don’t forget that.”

  He had not forgotten.

  He had never intended to be sacrilegious. He liked his religion, even though he found it a bit too rigid for his tastes. There were too many commandments, too many rules, too many things that were forbidden and too many prayers. You had to be careful about everything you did, about everything you looked at, about every morsel of food you ate and every drop of liquid you drank.

  Everything was considered either pure or impure. Nothing in between. Everything was controlled, dictated, regulated. There were many precepts that he followed to the letter, and then others he couldn’t see the point of. For example, being wary of anyone who was not a Hasid.

  He sometimes thought that he was unlucky to have been born into a religion that didn’t suit him. Or else, that he was the misfit and other people were right not to respect him. In New York, it seemed to him, religion was not as much of a burden. “I was happy, my mother was still alive, everything was simple and straightforward.”

  On Shabbat, he went to eat at the home of the uncle and aunt who had raised him, but who had not managed to pass on all their values to him. As Hershey grew older, he felt bad for them. He would have really liked to make them happy. But he could never have made them happy unless he had been born a different person, or unless his mother had not died. Pleasing them meant getting married, but since his wife had died, it meant getting married again, having children, being devout like a real Hasid, staying inside the synagogue until prayers were over without slipping out to smoke a cigarette on the street corner. Pleasing them meant making money, commanding the respect of the community, and, above all, not associating with godless people. That was a lot. It was much too much for someone with his capacity for obedience. To obey without knowing the reason why – that was not for Hershey Rozenfeld. He felt he was already doing a lot to be accepted. It was just as easy to take their sarcasm,

  to which he had become accustomed, and take refuge in his own world while waiting for better days to come.

  Better days would indeed come, and the bird with the broken wing would be embraced by his adoptive family and become a respectable man in the eyes of the community.

  Since the age of fourteen – he was now thirty-eight – he had been working here and there, at all kinds of jobs. He had been employed by the neighbourhood Hasids and often by the Goys. Not that he became rich or anything, but he earned enough to pay his uncle room and board and then enough to get married. After his marriage ended so abruptly, he was happy to stay on alone in his little Hutchison Street apartment, a neat and tidy half-

  basement apartment that he was quite fond of.

  He had been working at St-Viateur Bagel for three years. Of all the jobs he had ever had, this was the one he liked the most, by far. He loved the atmosphere of the bakery. All kinds of people came in and out, sniffing with delight at their bags of bagels. He, too, loved to breathe in the aroma of the bakery, and to feel the satiny flour on
his fingers and the soft dough on his hands. It reminded him of when he was little and his mother would give him a piece of dough to play with, as she worked wonders with the pastry and told stories in her melodious voice. He would cut the dough up into long strips, knead them lovingly, and then shape them into smaller pieces that he twisted into well-formed circles. After tossing them in boiling water, he would coat the bagels with a crunchy topping of sesame or poppy seeds and cook them to perfection in a wood-fired oven.

  One of his pals, someone he had worked with since starting at the bakery, came into some money one day. His friend inherited a tidy sum, which he wanted to put to good use without fretting about it too much. He just wanted to do something that would allow him to stop working. Without giving it a second thought, Hershey Rozenfeld said, “Let’s open a bakery. I’ll do the work, and you’ll pocket the profits. I’ll look after everything.”

  The idea of opening a bakery where they could make all kinds of bread and pastries was a real shot in the arm for Hershey, unleashing a newfound resourcefulness. He honestly didn’t know he had it in him. He often thought about his mother, and he felt good, he felt he was on the right track. In less than two days, he found a storefront to rent on Bernard Street, just big enough, not too expensive. It was perfect. Hashem was omniscient, omnipresent, smiling down on him, and Hershey loved his God, too.

  From then on, everything was smooth sailing.

  It had to be a kosher bakery. The neighbourhood was overflowing with Hasidic families and he wanted their business. But he also wanted the others, the ones his aunt called the non-believers. The bakery had to be a pleasant place that would attract them, those people, but Hershey was not sure how to go about it.