by Abla Farhoud
He was over forty and he had lived several lives. Lives without a past and without a future. He had not yet found his destination, and wasn’t looking for one either. He had always lived his life this way and he didn’t even know that it was possible to live any other way.
He had no strong ties to anyone. He wasn’t attached to anyone – no family, no social, cultural, patriotic, religious affiliations. He spoke French, English, Spanish and Italian fairly well, without preference for any language. Even the phonetics professor Henry Higgins would not have been able to detect where he came from and where he had lived, since his accent – or rather accents – were vague and impenetrable. He had changed his name to Kowalski because he hated his father, and didn’t want to hang on to anything that reminded him of his father. He chose Kowalski because he liked Stanley Kowalski, a character played by Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. He had kept his given name, Ronald, but everyone he ran into called him Ron. He liked the name a lot, because it sounded like “run,” like the title of the cult film, Run Lola Run, which he had seen a dozen times.
Here today, gone tomorrow. His only fixed address was a storage locker of a few cubic metres, which he had rented for ten years and paid for in a god-forsaken corner of Saint-Léonard.
He didn’t know where he belonged, but he really didn’t give a damn. One of a kind, not part of any gang, even when he was a teenager. He didn’t conform to anything. He followed his own rules and his own laws. That made him feel superior to many other people he met.
Among other people, he seemed self-sufficient, sure of himself. Alone with himself, he felt diminished by his rage and violence, which he would always have to keep on a tight leash, holding back and controlling himself.
His rage owned him: it kept him, he kept it at bay.
His body, his head, his feelings were never at rest, except when he was in the wilds, or when he was listening to a story. His love of stories dated back to when he was a little boy and his aunt, his mother’s sister, used to come into his bedroom, bringing a new book each time. She would show him the pictures, one at a time, taking all the time in the world, and then tell him to lie down and close his eyes. She would then read the story from beginning to end. And he would fall asleep happy.
When he felt the need to hear a story, he would turn on the TV. But he was quickly disappointed, so he would switch off the television and rush off to the movies.
Françoise Camirand
She had just bumped into Ron Kowalski. The one she had nicknamed “the free electron” had become just that, at his own expense. He would detach himself, he would split in two. She couldn’t figure him out. First of all, she had pictured him clearly, but then, as she was writing about him, other people she had known in the past became superimposed on him and cluttered up the path she had taken.
There were more and more people like Ron Kowalski in Montreal and everywhere in the world. Young and old. Migrants, here and elsewhere, born in Poland, Italy, Israel, or in Montreal, Saint-Léonard or Baie-Comeau. It didn’t matter where, these people are from nowhere.
A person can be a composite, but how could she make him into a unified person, someone like him who was fundamentally ineffable?
She had seen him several times, sometimes years apart. She had not forgotten him, but who could forget him? Then, recently, she saw him twice on Hutchison Street and once at the corner grocery store. He had almost not aged, he looked good and had a certain charisma. He had a good quality leather bag on his shoulder, he was well dressed and he carried himself well, but he couldn’t stand still. He shifted from foot to foot, and looked ready to move right or left or straight ahead, it didn’t matter, he just looked ready to pounce.
Ron Kowalski is the kind of person who in real life already looks like a fictional character. Whenever he walks into a place, people notice him. With sweeping gestures, a smirk on his face, he goes from one language to another with no hesitation and with no accent that reveals where he comes from. When he’s standing up, he looks alert, when he’s sitting down, he’s always slouching and when he’s smiling, it’s to charm us to death. The only time you see the child in him is when he’s laughing.
Françoise saw him burst out laughing in the grocery store when the oranges started to roll off the display case. No one was able to keep the oranges from falling off the shelf, not even him. When she heard him laugh like a bird cooing and saw him with his arms outstretched, she knew that he would become a character in her novel.
What enchanted her as much as his smile was the bond that formed immediately between Ron Kowalski and Jeannot Paterson, the store’s lowly employee. All of a sudden, they started up a conversation with each other. Which was surprising, to say the least, since Jeannot Paterson was not making the inarticulate sounds he usually did. He was actually talking. He switched from English to French, just like Ron. It was the very first time that Françoise heard Jeannot’s voice, and it occurred to her that Ron Kowalski must be a magician as well as a free electron.
Jeannot Paterson
His life didn’t amount to much. For those who couldn’t tell him apart from the counters at the grocery store where he worked, his life did not amount to much.
He could have been born a Gemini, Taurus, Libra or Capricorn, he was born under the sign of Fear. From early childhood – and perhaps even in his mother’s womb – between a father who always had a beer in his hand and a mother who was prey to anxiety and panic attacks, he had caught a fear the way a child catches a cold, the flu or measles, without ever getting better. This fear had never left him, had never let him relax, had stuck to his skin, had hollowed out his belly, had made all of his limbs tremble, had carved lines in his face. His face had aged, he was drawn, and he was never calm. He never looked comfortable and self-assured, except perhaps when the door to the grocery store was double bolted and he had all the time in the world to wash the floor with a large mop soaked with plenty of soapy water.
His life didn’t matter to anyone, but it was his life and he liked it. He had grown used to it. He had internalized his fear, he had learned to live with it, he could not have lived without it, since it was so much a part of his personality.
He was called Jean Paterson, officially, on his healthcare card, which he always carried on him, right next to the photo of his mother who had been dead for many years. When he was young, his mother called him Jeannot.
On the rare occasion when his father talked to him, he called him John. At the grocery store, he was Johnny. When he talked to himself, to alleviate his fear, he would say: “You can do it, Jeannot, my boy, you know that you can.” When he was angry with himself, when he couldn’t go on any longer because he was paralyzed by fear, he would use his English name, repeating: “Come on, John, come on, John.” It helped him. It helped him cross the street and deal with his problems. It helped him when he had to run to the basement or reach to the end of the counter to get something that someone had asked him for, “no, not the right-hand counter, Johnny, left, at your left-hand, Johnny, left, your left-hand, in front of you, down there, yes, down there to the left.”
“You can do it, Jeannot, my boy, you know that you can.” It helped him answer a customer who had noticed him and said hello to him. He would reply with a smile that looked like it had jumped out of an old jack-in-the-box. It was the dazzling smile of a child who had grown old by accident; it was a ray of sunshine that had nothing to do with the rest of him. Anyone who had seen him smile once would never forget it.
He didn’t get many smiles or hellos. That didn’t bother him. In fact, he liked it better if no one noticed him,
if he was forgotten. Bonjour, allô, hello, hi, he would reply, if he had to, with an accent that was not identifiable, an accent that came from nowhere, just like his face and body, which looked like they were apologizing for existing.
How had Jeannot ended up on Hutchison Street when he was born and raised in Verdun and li
ved in constant fear? It was thanks to his friend Paul, his one and only friend. Paul had brought him to Outremont, almost holding his hand to get him there. They had taken a bus, then the metro, and then another bus, it was not easy to remember it all. His friend Paul had a neighbour, Jorge Mihelakis, who had an uncle who had a grocery store at the corner of Bernard and Hutchison, and the uncle was in need of a helper. Someone who would keep the store clean. Jeannot was the ideal person for this kind of work. Jorge’s uncle found the perfect helper, who never said a word louder than anyone else, who never said a word period, even though he knew how to talk, who did everything he was asked to do right away without grumbling or grousing, without saying, “But I just did that!” Mr. Mihelakis wanted to hang on to his helper, and needed him to be close at hand, so he found him a room a couple of doors down from the store.
When you saw Jeannot, Jean, John, or Johnny carefully sweeping or washing the floors between the aisles in the grocery store, you would never know that Jeannot often had a stomach ache because he was afraid. That was
because Jeannot was not afraid when he was doing
repetitive chores. Day after day, the repetitive movements were like caresses. If Mr. Mihelakis shouted “Johnny” from one end of the store to the other, if he was in a hurry and Johnny had to do something quickly, he would once again be overcome by fear. Johnny would come running, muttering, “come on, John, come on, John,” but he was afraid, so afraid that his heart raced and his stomach hurt. And yet, Mr. Mihelakis had never hit him. Never.
Mr. Mihelakis was very kind to him. Johnny could eat all he wanted in the store and drink as much as he liked, anything except beer or wine. He could even go outside to smoke. Summer and winter, the moments he spent smoking alone outside made him totally happy. You burn through one cigarette very quickly and his boss was very clear about that – only one cigarette at a time. There was no lunch hour or dinner hour, not even a half hour, although Johnny could eat any time. Mr. Mihelakis didn’t take a break for meals either. They each ate whenever they were hungry, or whenever they could, taking advantage of a quiet moment, but as all small shopkeepers will tell you, it’s always just as you’re taking your first bite that someone will come in to bother you. Everyone knows that. Mr. Mihelakis and Johnny knew it better than anyone and they never complained.
Several times a day, Johnny went to get two large cups of coffee, one for him and one for Mr. Mihelakis, at the Buy More restaurant across the street. When Buy More closed down, Mr. Mihelakis bought an electric coffee maker. It was Johnny’s job to make a good pot of coffee, and Mr. Mihelakis was very happy. Johnny liked good coffee and liked it when Mr. Mihelakis was happy. He often went out to smoke a cigarette with a coffee in his hand. Even when it was cold out, he would go out with his parka open and his bare neck exposed to the elements, feeling like a king standing outside surveying his kingdom.
Around nine o’clock in the evening, Mr. Mihelakis would lock the door and do the cash. He would put an envelope in his pocket and go put the money in the night deposit at the TD Bank just across the street. That’s when Johnny had the grocery store all to himself. Mr. Mihelakis trusted him and Johnny was proud of that. He could take his time cleaning up, putting things away, and drinking a little apple juice without any interruptions. He could even munch on a chocolate bar, or empty a bag of chips if he wanted, and then turn off the lights, lock the door, check to see that the locks were secure, and slowly walk back to his room in the basement of a beautiful house on Hutchison Street, just two minutes from the store. He would sleep a bit, then wake up to start another great day.
His only dream was to become so used to his work that he would never again make any mistakes. He was making fewer and fewer, but he was so unhappy if it ever happened. Jeannot loved his work. Johnny loved Mr. Mihelakis and Mr. Mihelakis loved him. There was no way that Jeannot Paterson wanted to be sent back to his father in Verdun.
The Diary of Hinda Rochel
Phew! I have time to write. The other day a woman who was almost as old as Madame Genest came up to talk to me. I have seen her often. She lives just across the street from us. She stopped me in the street and spoke to me in French. I write and read French, but when I have to speak it, I get very nervous, and I stutter a bit. I don’t often get a chance to speak. I do with Madame Genest in school. I speak English or Yiddish with my friends, and we speak mainly English when we are together. The woman had a piece of paper in her hand with columns full of Jewish names, first names and family names. She asked me if the names were Hasidic. I was surprised. This was the first time that someone has stopped me in the street to ask me a question. People know who we are and they don’t bother us. They avoid looking at us, they walk past as if we don’t exist. Except sometimes. I have seen mean people staring at us, but not very often. Sometimes, they look like they feel sorry for us. I see people talking to one another as they come toward us, they’re looking at us from a distance and I know they are talking about us. From the look on their faces, I can see that they are wondering how we can live like this, especially in summer when it’s very hot out, and for us it makes no difference whether it’s hot. It’s just like me, when I see my neighbours I wonder how they can walk down the street showing their legs, their thighs and their breasts as if they were at the mikvah with no one else around.
I’m writing and writing, and I have forgotten that I wanted to talk about that lady. I’m happy today. I’m all alone in the house and I have the time to write as much as I like. I’m sick, that’s why. The whole family has gone to spend Shabbat with my grandmother. “Rest,” my mother said. It’s because it’s Shabbat that she said that, not because I’m sick. You have to rest on Shabbat. I don’t know if it’s forbidden to write. My mother has never said so. So I’m just doing it. For me, writing is resting.
I have seen that woman often. In summer, she is always dressed in white. In winter in black. I have already seen her smile at the little kids in our community, but never to girls my age or to the grown-ups. Before she spoke to me, she smiled. I was very close to home. I saw her cross the street and come up to me. Her smile surprised me very much. I didn’t smile back. But when I saw all those Jewish names on her piece of paper, I smiled. There were three columns, printed out by computer, a column for boys’ names, one for girls’ names, and another for family names. She had a pen in her hand and she gave it to me so that I could check off the Hasidic names. I checked all the names I knew beginning with the names of my brothers, sisters, cousins and friends. My name was not in her columns but I didn’t tell her. She said thank you and pointed at my house. “You live there, don’t you?” I said yes. She waved to me and was about to cross the street, when I asked her, “Do you like Gabrielle Roy?” I don’t know why I did that, the words just popped out of my mouth. She turned to me with a smile and a surprised look on her face, “Of course, and you? Do you know who Gabrielle Roy is?” I answered, “Yes and I like her a lot.” She had such a smile on her face, and she looked like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Then she asked, “What have you read by her?” I said, “The only book I’ve read is Bonheur d’occasion.” “And did you like it?” “I’ve read it thirteen times.” I added one time without realizing it. My mother always says that I should be careful. Lying is covered by the 613 mizvot. Many other things, too, but it’s too long to write about. My mother often says that I exaggerate, and that exaggerating is close to lying and that it’s bad. For my mother, everything is bad.
The woman was already on the other side of the street about to walk up the stairs of her building when I saw her turn around and head back over toward me. She waited for the cars to go past and then crossed the street. She asked me, “And you, is your name on my list, what’s your name?” I said, “No. My name is Hinda Rochel.” She said, “Hinda is a pretty name.” I said, “No, Hinda Rochel. That’s me. The family name is Hertog.” “You have a double name, that’s unusual, isn’t it?” “Yes, it’s rare,” I replied. She smiled
and said, mazel tov. She waved again and crossed the street. I was left with her mazel tov. You say mazel tov when someone gets married, when a baby is born, when someone buys a house or a car, but not for a name, even a double one. For her, it was perhaps a very special occasion to speak to a Hasidic girl. It was for me, too. Apart from my French teachers, I have never told anyone my name. I mean, I haven’t told a stranger. No one has ever asked.
Albert Dupras
Just as he was opening his eyes, one morning in May, he heard them talking about him on the radio. Anyone else would have had shivers down his spine hearing his name in the same breath as the words liar, cruel, pitbull, disgusting, petty, asshole, monster or rat. One of those labels alone would have been enough to upset anyone. But not him. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, and he had long since steeled himself for this kind of abuse. Groggy as he was, he was smiling. If they were saying bad things about him, it was because he had done his job. Two things counted for him: doing his job well and getting people to talk about him. The more he was despised, the better known he was, and the better known he was, the farther he could afford to go. He had achieved what he had set out to do.
Each time they mentioned his name in the media, backstage, or in conversations among connoisseurs, he could take revenge for his wasted childhood and his miserable youth.
When he was young, he was the ugliest, the shortest, the fattest. The loneliest. He was also the bravest.
How many times had he found himself without a coat, without shoes, with a bloody nose? How many times had the others humiliated him, poked fun at him, ridiculed him, ostracized him, or looked down at him with disgust as if he were nothing more than a dog turd? He could hardly wait until he was eighteen years old so that he could escape from his lousy home town, where he felt so alone, so alienated from everyone else. Despite all the hardship and distress he had felt since his first day at school, despite the dread he felt every minute of the day with no one to talk about it, little Albert had never missed a day of school. Never. Even though leaving home, walking three blocks, slinking along the walls and slipping into the classroom was like swimming across an icy lake, one hundred and eighty days of the year, for eleven years. Still, he never missed a day. He had boundless courage, without question, and intelligence, to boot.