by Abla Farhoud
Srully was born and raised on Hutchison Street, very close to Bernard, where he still lived. He had been going to the yeshiva at the corner of Saint-Viateur, one block from his house, since he was twelve years old. It is probably true to say that in seven years, if you take account of the fact that he came home at lunchtime and returned to the yeshiva after supper, he had travelled the length of Hutchison between Bernard and Saint-Viateur at least 21,330 times. For anyone, even for a boy of his age, dodging tricycles, scooters and bicycles, the trip would normally take one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty seconds, but for Srully it took just forty-five seconds.
With rounded shoulders and his head bowed, he walked so quickly and hurriedly that any new people in the neighbourhood would be surprised. But the long-time residents, who were so used to the quick gait of the Hasidim, didn’t even notice him. They knew that from sundown on Fridays and all day on Saturday, they would slow the pace down considerably, so much so that Hutchison Street would look completely different. The sidewalk became a place of relaxation: men chatted with each other, two, three, four at a time, as they ambled along, young couples walked side by side with smiles on their faces, entire families, pushing baby carriages, walked up and down in their finery, the old folks shooting the breeze, the young ones running up ahead, in keeping with the customs.
In Srully’s heart, this wasn’t a day of rest. It was far from Shabbat, a blessed day he cherished, not only for the rest, but also for the prayers and chants that were different from the weekday ones. With his entire being in turmoil, Srully was torn apart. He had to answer his mother and he didn’t know what to tell her. He had tried, without much success, to explain why he didn’t want to get married or become a rabbi, that he only liked to study, which she already knew. If it hadn’t been for money problems, his mother would have liked to let him do what he liked and she would even have been proud of him, but things being what they were, with his father slaving away, they had to find a way to make ends meet. It was a terrible dilemma for everyone. The only one who could find a solution was him.
Srully was hungry. When he finished school, he was always very hungry. On a normal day, he would have already been back home in forty-five seconds. He would have washed his hands and said the prayer for hand-
washing, then another prayer before bolting his meal down, and a final one before going back to his books. Today, he slowed down. If he could, he would have stayed at the yeshiva. He was afraid to go home. That very morning, when it was still dark out, his mother had spoken to him in a stricter tone than usual, telling him that the house was getting too small for everyone, that his brothers and sisters were growing up, and that the more the children grew the more room they took and the more food they ate. “And don’t forget, Srully, another child will be born in one month, God willing.” God help me, he thought, his mother had even phoned a match-maker she knew. “You know, Srully, a young rich girl who could get us out of this bind would be more than welcome.” The anxiety machine inside him began to rev up. Praying and chanting had had practically no effect on his situation. What was he going to say to his mother?
When he reached his house, Srully turned right around and ran back to school. He went right to his desk and pulled out the letter that his maternal uncle had sent him, confirming his earlier offer. “Come, Srully,” his old uncle had said, “come whenever you like. I have no one left, you will be comfortable, you will be able to study as much as you like. Srully, our community definitely needs young men like you.”
When his uncle had first mentioned moving to New York, he had thanked him. Srully kissed his uncle’s hand and touched his forehead with it. Then he hugged his uncle. But Srully had no intention of leaving his childhood home. He was happy here, with his family, friends and teachers. Hutchison Street, where he had grown up, was all he knew and loved. He had run up and down his street so much that he had worn out the soles of at least a dozen pairs of shoes, which were often too small. Hutchison was not just his street, but also his universe.
Everything would be different in New York, where he had once spent a week with his uncle. He hadn’t liked it. Down there, the yeshiva, which was two blocks from his uncle’s house, was nearly identical to his own yeshiva, but the people who taught there and studied there were not. He had found them full of themselves, conceited about how much they knew, which is not at all what a Hasid should be like, nothing like the Hasids here. Only one thing was better about it – the library. It was bigger, it had more books, and it was full of books he had never read.
Srully’s eyes were full of tears as he walked slowly toward his house with his piece of paper folded up and clenched in his right hand. He had made his decision. He didn’t have a choice. He would go to New York.
His heart was beating so hard that it hurt. He wasn’t hungry any more.
Françoise Camirand
Srully. She had watched little Srully grow up. What a pleasure it was to rediscover him, to get into the head of the passionate, anguished, solitary young man he had become. As a child, he had looked like the other boys, but, around the age of twelve, he had changed. She didn’t see him every day, but each time she did, she noticed the difference. He was always sitting on the front steps with his nose in a book, oblivious to the outside world. While the other boys were racing around on their bicycles, kibitzing with one another, or just hanging out together, he would be walking alone, holding a book in his hand.
She was reluctant to enter Srully’s world, just as she was afraid to penetrate the entire universe of the Hasidic Jews, which seemed so mysterious to her. Then one day, she set aside her fears: ready or not, here I come, one, two, three, go! I’m diving in, I don’t have a choice. That started the ball rolling.
Right away, she felt a bond between herself and Srully. In a split second. Her own love of books had something to do with this breakthrough. What they had in common was much more striking than their differences.
The connection dawned on her spontaneously and words came easily to her. She was always delighted to write about Srully, her twin from another life, if only because they shared a desire to do what they loved and were driven by a similar passion.
Emboldened by her feat of having made Srully come to life in her book, she began to think about the old Hasidic woman who had always fascinated and touched her. Well before she began her Hutchison Street project, she had thought about writing a short story about her.
She grabbed her handbag and went out. She wanted to refresh her memory and to feel once more the chord the woman had struck in her.
The lady she called Batsheva the Grandmother lived on the Mile End side of the street about six or seven houses down from her place. Françoise walked south toward Saint-Viateur with her heart racing and her head abuzz with words and emotions.
She saw her on the sidewalk in front of her house, surrounded by children. This was the first time she had seen her standing outside.
Two young twelve-year-olds were gently propping her up on either side, each one taking her arm and helping her climb the steps of her concrete staircase. Françoise slowed down and looked at them. There was no rush, everything was smooth and slow, as if the kids were carrying a tray of crystal glasses that they were trying hard not to drop. Were these her grandchildren or great-grandchildren?
Françoise went as far as Saint-Viateur and then turned around and came back. The old lady was already indoors, settled into her armchair and looking out onto the street. Children, younger than the ones who had helped her up the stairs, were playing on the sidewalk.
As Françoise walked along, she repeated her mantra: give me good words, the right words, let me slip subtly into the body, the head, and the heart of this woman I have seen so often, peering out of the left corner of her window. Give me good words, the right words … easy does it …
Françoise walked home and went up to her office. Taking her time, with the mantra still bouncing around in her h
ead, she wrote the story of Batsheva the Grandmother. From beginning to end, nearly all in one go.
Batsheva the Grandmother
She spent her days sitting by the picture window, perched in its left-hand corner. From there, she could see the outside staircase and a stretch of sidewalk where the little ones played and where the bigger kids waited for the school bus. She sat in a comfortable easy chair. In the early morning, well before her great-grandchildren left for school, Batsheva was already there, looking out, her hands folded over her bony midriff. She couldn’t see very well anymore, she could hear almost nothing, she didn’t eat much, she wasn’t a good sleeper, but her heart was holding up. That heart of hers had seen much worse. Batsheva had lived through the most terrible atrocities the world has ever seen, but much later she had also witnessed the most beautiful things that life has to offer.
She never talked about it. She had never talked about it. What good would it do? And, in any case, how could you possibly talk about the unspeakable?
She didn’t talk about the good things either. All the people who had lived through good times with her were still alive, thank God. Why would she talk to them about things they were already aware of?
In the early years, of course, the old folks had also lived through poverty and misery. But why remind yourself? Everything was over and forgotten.
Poverty and misery, they’re nothing. They are part of life.
The unspeakable is not part of life. She had never thought that the unspeakable was part of life.
In the history of her people, the unspeakable had occurred several times over. Her mind was too weary to remember all the countries where this had happened. She didn’t want to remember, she wanted to cleanse her heart before she died.
She prayed. Several times a day, she prayed for it never to happen again. Not in her lifetime, or in the lifetime of any other human being.
For years, she had managed to forget everything. Forever, she thought.
When she came to this country, she lived with distant relatives who had welcomed her with great generosity. She would get so tired from working all day that she would fall dead asleep. The house was filled to the rafters with people – uncles, aunts, cousins big and small – and there was a lot to do. And there were always newcomers showing up, people who had escaped, like her, thank the Lord. Everyone squeezed in as best they could. They prayed a lot and ate very little.
Then she got married. And children began to arrive. She had six of them, may God bless them and keep them in good health, along with their children and their grandchildren. She used to be so exhausted that the sound of a baby crying was the only thing that could wake her up at night. Nights were too short, but she didn’t have dreams or nightmares, thank God. The alarm would go off in the early hours of the morning, and she would be off and running again. Hand-washing, prayers, breakfast for everyone, making do with clothes that were not warm enough and boots in need of repair. After the children left, she would fall asleep. But not for long. She didn’t have a washing machine back then and washed clothes by hand. She had to clean house, make meals when the cupboards were bare, and prepare for Shabbat and all the other holidays without two nickels to rub together. She had to mend and sew and iron and scrub the entire house. And scrimp and save. They were penniless and she would have to boil her soup bones over and over again.
Batsheva had never enjoyed good health. She sometimes wondered how she had managed to survive and make it to old age. She never complained. That was all part of life. She had seen so very much when she was young … It’s nothing, all of that, hardship, work, fatigue, poverty and even misery and illness, it’s all part of life.
She had reached old age and she couldn’t hope for a better way to end her life. All her children were married; they had children and grandchildren. None of them was hard-up. Quite the opposite. And they were all in good health. What more could she ask for at the end of her life?
“Peace … Soon I will die peacefully …”
Then everything that she wanted to forget started coming back. In the middle of the night. Always the same images, night after night. Her brothers and her sisters forcibly snatched from their beds, carried off like animals to the slaughter, while she hid. She watched them being beaten but she couldn’t cry out. She would sit bolt upright in bed, trembling and in a sweat. She hoped that her screams had stayed inside of her, that she hadn’t woken anyone up. It doesn’t help to cry out anymore. She should have done so long ago. She should have stopped them. She should have grabbed the murderous hands. She should have screamed loud enough for God to hear. She was crying now. She had never seen her brothers and sisters again. She cried her heart out. Some nights, the dreams were so vivid that she would get up and go looking for her brothers and her sisters all over the house. She would open the door of the apartment and go down the stairs. She had to find them.
Her son or daughter-in-law would catch her in time, before she reached the sidewalk. They would speak to her in soothing tones and gently walk the Grandmother back to her room.
When that happened, she would be exhausted for many long hours. It began to happen more and more often, despite her prayers. She would even feel weary sitting by the window and watching the children.
Batsheva the Grandmother wanted nothing more than to die peacefully, giving thanks to God. She didn’t want to die with screams caught in her throat, images spinning in her head, hatred lodged in her heart, because that way the unspeakable would have got the best of her, in the same way that it had annihilated her brothers and sisters and millions of other people.
When it happened, she would carry the entire world on her frail shoulders – victims, executioners and witnesses all tangled up together. She would reach out to them with her aching body. And the question that had been inscribed in her DNA since the first time the Jews were exiled would come back to break her heart. Why? Why? Why? And she would be afraid. Terribly afraid.
She prayed that the human race would never again …
And she prayed.
To forget. To die in peace.
And she prayed.
She prayed.
Interlude
The Story of a Divided Street
Hutchison is a Scottish name. Montreal changed the name of Taylor Street to Hutchison to honour the family that had sold its land to the city. That was back in 1889.
Hutchison Street stretched northward as the city expanded out from the river at the southernmost end, and gradually became what it is today. Saint-Viateur Street, built in 1896, was named in honour of the Clerics of Saint Viator, a teaching order based in Outremont. Bernard Avenue did not get its name until 1912.
Hutchison is a street like no other. The proof? Ask any taxi driver, whether he has just arrived in Montreal or has lived here for generations. Ask him where Hutchison Street is, or better still, give him an address and let him drive you there. No driver will say that he doesn’t know where it is, no one will make you repeat the name, and no one will get lost.
Hutchison has always had one sidewalk in Mile End and the other in Outremont. Feet spread apart, caught between two stools like the many immigrants who live in the neighbourhood. The street is none the worse for it. Even after the municipal upheaval, a project called Une île une ville, when Montreal was reorganized into boroughs –
arrondissements – Hutchison Street remained split down the middle. One side landed in the borough of Plateau-Mont Royal, the other in Outremont. Not only does it have a double affiliation along the east-west axis, but it is cut twice along the north-south, by Mont-Royal Boulevard in the south and by the railway line that intersects Hutchison just past Van Horne Avenue further north.
From Sherbrooke Street to the Jean-Talon train station, which used to double as the Parc metro station, Hutchison appears and disappears several times. It never runs in a straight line the way streets often do in Montreal. Unusually erratic, the st
reet changes direction several times, becoming one-way north, or one-way south, and unexpectedly two-way from Fairmount to Van Horne. Speed bumps are now built into the roadway and in the summertime large flower planters are installed right in the middle of the road on the stretch between Laurier and Van Horne.
At first sight, Hutchison looks like many other residential streets in Montreal with its two- or three-storey row housing, brick or grey stone facades, outside staircases that are either straight or spiral, balconies, postage-stamp gardens of dirt, grass or flowers, lots of trees and few restaurants or stores. The exterior architecture has not changed much. Except that the wood and wrought iron on some of the staircases and balconies have been
replaced with more modern materials that need less maintenance.
The corner of Hutchison and Bernard, on the Mile End side, has undergone the most change since 1970. An immense restaurant painted in an improbable Mediterranean blue, which violated the French language law, Bill 101, by displaying the English name “Buy More,” replaced a vacant lot, on which a single gas pump had stood alongside the semblance of a garage. With time, the guy who was nicknamed Monsieur Buy More grew tired of flipping burgers and skewering souvlaki. He rented out the restaurant and then, a few years later, he sold the building, including the second floor, to the neighbourhood Hasidic Jews.
After the building changed hands, all the windows were papered over, and the premises seemed to have been abandoned. Then, bit by bit, the place at the corner became a gathering spot, although the dirty and yellowing paper was not removed. The building was going to be turned into a synagogue, no doubt, with a school on the top floor. It would not have been the first time in the neighbourhood, where as far back as the 1980s a huge rooming house with furnished 1½ apartments, on the corner of Hutchison and Saint-Viateur, had been demolished and a synagogue and yeshiva erected on the lot. It was the first one on the street, or at least the most visible because of its size and the number of Hasidim who used it every day and not just on Shabbat or on holidays. A few years ago, it even made headlines along with the