The Orphanage Read online

  THE ORPHANAGE

  Title Page

  Richard Bergeron

  THE ORPHANAGE

  An autobiography

  TRANSLATED BY PETER MCCAMBRIDGE

  Montreal

  Credits

  Originally published as L’orphelinat, récit

  © 2012 by Del Busso Éditeur

  Publié avec l’autorisation de Del Busso Éditeur, Montréal, Québec

  Translation Copyright © Baraka Books 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover by Folio infographie

  Book design by Folio infographie

  Translated by Peter McCambridge

  Conversion to ePub format: Studio C1C4

  Legal Deposit, 3rd quarter, 2012

  ISBN 978-1-926824-65-9

  Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

  Library and Archives Canada

  Published by Baraka Books of Montreal.

  6977, rue Lacroix

  Montréal, Québec H4E 2V4

  Telephone: 514 808-8504

  [email protected]

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  Baraka Books acknowledges the generous support of its publishing program from the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec (SODEC) and the Canada Council for the Arts.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing for our transla tion activities.

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  Foreword

  Everything in this book is true…

  or false.

  Telling the difference

  is not what is expected of childhood memories.

  Yet childhood does forge

  worldview and character,

  the foundations upon which an adult is built.

  Later, and only then, do childhood memories

  really take shape.

  SCARED

  I was a big boy.

  Soon, I would be four years old. The four of us— the four oldest —were in the back seat of our father’s car. The baby was just six months old. He wasn’t with us.

  A man with a loud voice was sitting up front in the passenger’s seat. Who was he? And why was he talking so loud? He had a scary voice.

  Later I would find out it was my Uncle Léopold, a really lovely man. The other man, the driver, was my dad.

  He looked sad. He smoked one cigarette after another, finding time for only a few words in between. Uncle Léopold answered him at length, in his big, scary voice.

  It was night. Night comes early in winter.

  Chicoutimi isn’t far from Alma, but the ride seemed to take forever. Because everything felt heavy and sad.

  We could feel it from the back seat. We didn’t dare move, didn’t dare open our mouths. But where were we going anyway? They must have told us, the older children, but we didn’t understand…

  When we got into the car, I think I saw tears in my grandmother’s eyes. It had been a long time since I saw anyone looking happy, it had been a long time since the adults around us spoke in anything other than hushed tones, heavy with meaning.

  — Not in front of the children, I heard many times.

  Even we, the children, hadn’t laughed much lately. Something bad must have happened. Something happened and that’s why we were in the car.

  We drove on and on.

  It looked as though we had arrived at last. A huge building began to take shape, bigger than any I had ever seen. And the car stopped in front of what looked like the main entrance.

  We got out of the car. My older brother and I each took the hand of a younger brother. We walked up the steps to the main door. The door opened.

  Two funny-looking women welcomed us.

  Funny, first because of the way they were dressed. They were all in black, from head to toe, with a veil over their heads. Their faces were hemmed in by a piece of white cloth that opened out at the shoulders to become a broad collar.

  I would learn later, much later, that this piece of clothing is known as a wimple.

  The ladies’ foreheads, necks, and hair were all hidden. Did they even have hair?

  The whole time we were there, we children— all the children, not just me and my brothers —would wonder if they did. Without ever being able to know for sure, one way or the other.

  Funny-looking women, too, because of the way they spoke. Softly, with pretension, with pursed lips, carefully chosen words, and, most of all, looking as though they were overflowing with compassion.

  It was definitely the first time I had ever seen women like these.

  In fact, they weren’t funny at all. Funereal would be a better word.

  If I didn’t know this word when I was four, I knew what I was feeling all the same. Scared.

  Especially since, in this immense entrance hall, the voices of these ladies, weak though they were, resonated as if in a drum.

  My father tried to adjust to the way they talked. He spoke quietly too. But there was nothing he could do about his diction and vocabulary: every time he opened his mouth it was clear he was a construction worker, in 1959.

  He also kept his head down as he spoke, not daring to look the women in the eye.

  Submissive. Humiliated by his lack of education, compliant to what appeared to be figures of authority, my father said no more than a few words.

  Uncle Léopold didn’t have the same self-control. Uncle Léopold always felt comfortable, no matter what was happening. Uncle Léopold wouldn’t stop talking.

  Did I tell you about his voice?

  Imagine it in a huge hall like that, its walls smooth and hard. It boomed like thunder. It rolled around forever.

  Someone must already have told me about hell, without me ever being able to picture it. It was there and then that I discovered it for myself.

  I had never been as scared in my life. I think I might well have peed my pants. And I wasn’t the only one.

  After what seemed like forever, the adults began their goodbyes. Soon it would all be over, I told myself. I didn’t understand what had just happened, but at least the whole unpleasant experience would soon be at an end.

  My father and Uncle Léopold turned on their heels and walked to the door. Not even a kiss goodbye. Nothing.

  It wasn’t as though we were expecting one. Back then, such displays of affection were rare. They walked out the door, and closed it behind them. Could someone please tell me what’s going on?

  The four of us were left standing there, the four children, alone with these unsettling women.

  Dad was going to come back any minute, I was sure.

  — I am Mother Superior, the shorter of the two said. Welcome to the orphanage.

  WETTING

  THE BED

  Don’t ask me what happened next. I have no idea. The chain of events doesn’t pick up again until I awoke the next morning.

  I woke up in a bed, to the shrill ringing of a bell. Surprise! My bed was in the biggest bedroom you could imagine. One metre to my right, there was another bed. And to my left. The foot of my bed touched the headboard of another. And when I tilted my head back, I could see another bed leaning a
gainst mine.

  It didn’t take me long to work out I had just spent my first night in a dormitory.

  Before going on, let me tell you a little about how the orphanage worked.

  At the orphanage, you started by learning new words: dormitory, refectory, parlour, the big (play)room, cell (a nun’s bedroom), chapel, gymnasium, infirmary.

  For now, it’s the dormitory we’re interested in.

  Each dormitory held fifty children. It was divided into two by a passageway that ran down the middle and led to the cells. Twenty-five children on one side, twenty-five on the other. Five rows of five beds on each side. It was enormous!

  All the children waking up around me were the same age as I was. Three or four years old. There was nothing strange about that: we were divided up into groups no more than one year apart.

  The floor for three- and four-year-olds was just below the floor for five- and six-year-olds, which in turn was just below the floor for seven- and eight-year-olds, which was just below the floor for nine- and ten-year-olds. You will have worked out that the orphanage had five floors including the ground floor.

  A few seconds later, I had worked out that the third oldest in my family, a year younger than I, was asleep in the same dormitory. The oldest son, a year older than I, had been sleeping just above us on the floor for five- and six-year-olds. The fourth, barely two years old, had slept on the ground floor, which was where the infants slept.

  This system meant I would spend one year with the brother just younger than me and the next year with the brother just older than me. It was the same for the three children in the middle.

  At both ends of the spectrum, the oldest and the youngest sons would both spend only every other year with one of their brothers. The result was that, for the longest time, it felt as though I had only two brothers, both part-time: a big brother and a little brother. I would see the two youngest only on vacations, twice a year.

  Things were no better for the oldest brother: of his four brothers, he would know only me. And things were even worse for the youngest: a baby when he first came to the orphanage, all his life he would feel like an only child, not the youngest of five.

  None of which helped foster a sense of family.

  And remember that we were boys, just boys. It’s girls who, once they reach adulthood, try their best to make it at least look as though they belonged to a family.

  Speaking of girls, there were just as many girls as boys in the orphanage. They were arranged in the same age groups over the same floors, but on the other wing, on the right-hand side of the building.

  Which explains why we never saw them. Not even outside: they had their own playground.

  Perhaps it would help if I explained that the orphanage was built in the shape of a cross. The left wing— the right arm of Christ on the cross —was the boys’ wing. The girls had the left arm.

  On the ground floor, the top of the cross was taken up by the entrance hall and parlour. A small chapel used to stand there on the first and second floors, until a bigger one was built, along the length of the cross. The upper floors probably had rooms reserved for the nuns, along with the cells in the middle of the dormitories.

  That’s probably also where the chaplain lived. He was in charge of sports and the choir.

  A good-looking man, the chaplain. A nice man, to boot. All the children loved him, as did all the nuns who lived by his side?

  Far be it from me to start any rumours!

  Especially since, at four years old, I was completely indifferent to what might be going through the mind of a man spending his life with so many women. Many of whom, no doubt, were rather easy on the eye.

  While we’re describing how the building was laid out, all that is missing is the main part of the cross. And for good reason: when I entered the orphanage, it had not yet been built.

  Now back to the first morning.

  I realized I had wet my bed. I was humiliated. Especially since it hadn’t happened to me in ages. Every morning, my grandmother, knowing the younger ones had wet their beds, would congratulate me.

  No one told me what to do; I followed the others. I got out of bed, trembling with shame and cold.

  I saw that some children— around half the dormitory —were busily making their beds. The others left their beds as they were and went to line up at the back of the dormitory.

  Which half did I belong to? Was I supposed to make my bed or go stand quietly at the back of the dormitory?

  It wouldn’t take long for me to get the picture. A nun walked down between the rows of beds until she reached mine:

  — So the little new boy has wet his bed! Go stand with the others!

  As I got closer, I could see what the thirty-odd children lining up had in common. Their pyjamas were soaked. It was the bed-wetters’ line.

  It was no surprise to see my brother there. He walked down to stand beside me at the end of the line.

  This end of the dormitory, I discovered, is where the toilets and baths were. A tall, stout nun was sitting there on a little bench.

  She called the first child over. She pulled down his pyjamas. She grabbed hold of a leather strap and struck him— once, but hard —over his bare buttocks.

  Some children shouted and cried, some barely reacted at all. The nun then gave them a cursory wipe with a face cloth. Before sending them on their way with these words:

  — If you want it to stop, quit wetting your bed!

  For anyone standing at the end of the line and seeing his turn draw closer, it was quite the initiation ceremony!

  It was my turn. Then my little brother’s turn.

  Is there any point discussing the system’s educational merits? All I know is that, on my first morning at the orphanage, I experienced the strap first-hand.

  Every method works for some, but not for others. I swore I would never be caught out again. And I wasn’t.

  But, night after night, my little brother wet his bed. Every morning, for six years, he got the strap. And he couldn’t have cared less. It was like he was asserting his own free will, telling them “You won’t break me that easily!”

  It wasn’t until much later, thanks to the devotion of Monsieur Bouchard, who, for three long years would get up in the middle of the night to bring him to the bathroom, that my little brother at last stopped wetting his bed.

  THE NUNS

  How, in so few words, have I managed to be so unfair? Mother Superior bringing the full weight of an eminent member of the pre-Quiet Revolution ruling class crashing down upon my father?

  An anonymous nun— who never would have a name —happily beating the children who wet their beds with a strap, day after day? If it all stopped here, you would be left with a dreadful impression of the nuns.

  The nuns, just like other women, came in all types. For a young child who would be entirely dependent on them for years to come, only two kinds mattered: the nice ones and the horrible ones.

  The neutral ones, the ones we barely noticed even though they made up three-quarters of the total, well, we dealt with them for as long as we had to, then forgot all about them.

  A child doesn’t analyze. He feels. He feels sensitivity, kindness, goodness, in how people speak to him, how they act around him. He feels the warmth of humanity washing over him. Intuitively, he knows he’s not being taken in, that it’s all for real.

  Fingers ruffling his hair. A hand on his shoulder. A glance. A smile. The sound of a voice. Another step forward when it comes to figuring them out, feeling reassured, encouraged.

  And it goes on like this, day after day, week after week, month after month.

  These nuns, the nice ones, really did exist.

  There were a few of them at the orphanage in Chicoutimi. And a few of them were a wonderful gift. They were enough for a lifetime of gratitude and respect.

  Enough for me to say: thank you.

  And now, the bad ones. Because there were some horrible ones at the orphanage in Chicoutimi too.
<
br />   A child needs no one to point them out for him. He feels the brusqueness, the hardness, the bitterness in every word and movement. He tries to steer clear of them.

  I’ve already told you about education by the strap. At the orphanage, the strap wasn’t only for bed-wetters. Oh no!

  If memory serves me right, it was the primary means of education. For the slightest misdemeanour, the merest trifle, for every time we were late and who knows what else, the sanction was always the same: the strap— although the number of blows varied.

  But who had to deliver the punishment? Whose hands held the strap? Somebody had to.

  The nun you met earlier, the one who strapped the children when they had just got up, was the one who hit us in the afternoons and evenings, as need be.

  She hit us coldly, with no emotion or qualms, measuring out the right amount of force and delivering the right number of blows to fit the crime that had been reported to her and that she had to punish. It was part of her routine.

  She went about her work quickly and effectively.

  You want names? I won’t give them.

  Although it’s not like I’ve forgotten. It just goes to show how unfair the world is when I can’t remember the names of the nice ones and I can remember every one of the horrible ones.

  But what good would it do giving you their names fifty years later?