The Orphanage Page 2

  I realize that, once again, I may have misled you. Because, let’s face it, you’ve started to think the orphanage was some kind of hell on earth. But it wasn’t like that at all.

  Objectively speaking, the orphanage was organized like a concentration camp. It had around five hundred children and some fifty nuns.

  With a ratio of ten to one— fifteen or twenty to one, if we count only the nuns directly responsible for the children —it took rules and discipline. Rules and discipline work rather well, especially backed by the certainty that every misdemeanour will be punished immediately.

  And the nuns knew there was nothing better than the strap for nipping temptation in the bud. And ensuring peace and quiet.

  All that to say that ruling the orphanage with an iron fist meant the children were as good as gold. So opportunities to punish them were rare enough.

  In six years, I was strapped only twice. Once the first morning, then a few more blows years later for reasons I can’t remember.

  Twice in six years is nothing to write home about.

  GOLDEN BOY

  It was a basic tenet of survival.

  When there were fifty of you to a floor, when you had to change floors every two years, you had to land on the right side of three new nuns every time. You needed to find a way to stand out from the rest. To distinguish yourself. To be someone.

  Being the nuns’ golden boy was as good as it got.

  Who knows how anyone ever becomes the golden boy? At least at the start. Because once you’re there, the recipe for staying there comes easily.

  You have been at the orphanage for a few months. Nothing has set you apart from the other children yet. Then suddenly one of the nuns sees you reading to another child.

  The Three Little Pigs, some story or other about bears or wolves, or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. One sentence per page. A simple sentence, in big letters.

  The nun can’t believe it:

  — Richard! (With time, she learned my name.) You can read! But how did you learn?

  — Dunno. I just can.

  — But that’s extraordinary! He taught himself to read at four years old. Our little Richard is a genius!

  The label stuck. And what a label!

  The other time the same nun went on like that was when I made a model of the orphanage.

  Those old enough will remember the little red plastic bricks from the pre-Lego days.

  On the floor for the three- and four-year-olds, we had thousands and thousands of them in the playroom. With hundreds of little doors and windows. More than enough to build a fair-sized model.

  I had been there in my corner playing with these bricks for a good hour. The nun pointed, looked on in surprise, then said:

  — Richard, can you tell me what you’re building there?

  — The orphanage, Mother. I’m building the orphanage.

  It was in the shape of a cross, minus the longer part, which didn’t exist yet. Everything in proportion.

  Count the windows: the exact number of windows in the orphanage. Same for the doors, each in the right place. I must have been on the second or third floor by then.

  — But we have an architect on our hands!

  We finished it as a group. Ten or fifteen children put the finishing touches to the model.

  It was displayed in the parlour for years. To show relatives and visitors how clever and skilful the children in the orphanage were.

  An architect!

  Here I was presented with a second term of distinction. And a respectable one at that. Architects designed and built palaces. I would be an architect!

  From this moment on, throughout my whole childhood, whenever anyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I replied proudly: an architect.

  It never failed to surprise, not at a time when the only options seemingly open to the working classes were, in order of notoriety and prestige, to become a priest, doctor, lawyer, or engineer.

  — And our Richard is an artist as well! the adults would say.

  Who wouldn’t have milked it for all it was worth? As it happens, I became an architect at the age of twenty-four.

  Only to realize, a few years later, that my real passion lay elsewhere. But not that far away, in fact, in city planning.

  Now where were we?

  I had been at the orphanage for little more than a couple of months and I’d already been labelled a genius and an architect.

  The barrier of anonymity had come tumbling down. I had stood out. Taken on an identity of my own. Not that I had been looking to do that. It had more or less been an accident.

  And, accident or otherwise, I understood that what had happened was to my advantage. And that I mustn’t lose this advantage.

  My findings so far:

  The nuns were more interested in me than the other children.

  They were interested in me because I surprised them at things that were important to them.

  Children didn’t matter. It’s the adults that had to be won over.

  In the presence of a new adult, the question to ask myself was: What is important in their eyes? What would make them happy?

  That’s how you become a golden boy. And not only in the eyes of nuns.

  For ten years after I left the orphanage, I was able to see that the recipe worked with all adults.

  With Monsieur Bouchard, who was impressed by my hard work on the farm.

  With Uncle Albert, who was grateful when I got up at five o’clock after a snowstorm to dig his car out.

  With Madame Bergeron (no relation), whose every wish was my command. And with how many more?

  I can already hear you sniggering at the back: Oh, what a toady he was! Cynics, the lot of you!

  Think of it this way: You were born into a normal family, with whom you grew up. You never had cause to be worried, never doubted your status within the household. You always knew that, no matter what you did, you were entitled to your lot.

  And so you would delight in exploiting your parents’ generosity and patience. All too often, you became egotistical monsters, torturing your poor parents. Nine times out of ten, just for the fun of it, for no good reason at all.

  Had I seen you at it, I wouldn’t have admired or envied you, not a bit of it. I would have come down on you like a ton of bricks: Idiots! Ungrateful idiots, at that!

  At any rate, I would have been in deep trouble if I had ever acted like that.

  I had no choice. Like any child, I depended on the adults around me. But none of them were won over ahead of time; I always had to think about how to bring them round to my side. As they appeared in my life, one by one.

  Draw whatever conclusions you like! Six years being the nuns’ pet. Six years of surprising them, of always giving them more than they asked for.

  Evening classes at five years old to hone this precociousness:

  — You can count on me, no matter what.

  Doing the reading at Christmas mass in Chicoutimi cathedral?

  — No problem. As long as I have something to stand on to see over the lectern.

  Getting 100% in every subject?

  — I won’t let you down.

  And what else? As long as it reinforced my status as a child prodigy, no expectation was too high, no mountain too steep.

  Time for a little perspective. Before you think I have a big head.

  At three years old, my son knew all his fairy tales by heart. You should have heard him doing Bluebeard:

  — You betrayed me, traitor! You shall pay!

  When she was four, my daughter could read perfectly. Better yet, she had learned to read La Presse and Le Devoir at the same time as I did, every morning, from her seat on the other side of the table.

  She set me straight. When I let her have it about a bad mark, reminding her what a child prodigy she had been, she retorted:

  — Stop going on about me reading when I was four, just like you. At L’École internationale de Montréal everybody could read when they were
four. Some of them in languages as different as Chinese, English, and French!

  The worst part is that, having met some of my daughter’s friends, I’m pretty sure she was right.

  Which sample is skewed? Were standards too low at the orphanage or too high at my daughter’s school?

  It doesn’t matter. Now in my mid-fifties, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to put things in perspective. I have met many brilliant people— brilliant in all kinds of ways —throughout my life. But the fact remains that, thanks to my cleverness, or at least that which the nuns believed was mine, I was able to become their golden boy. And being the nuns’ pet makes six years in an orphanage a lot more bearable.

  When I think back on it, I wonder how the other forty-nine kids coped.

  Because even for the one who managed to attract attention, to arouse some sympathy, his or her childhood wasn’t anything to boast about. It must have been really something else for the others!

  They are all my age now. I often think of them, and what has become of them. I hope they pulled through.

  ROUTINE

  All concentration-camp systems are alike: daily life is dull and repetitive.

  There’s no point returning to the unbending rule that all misdemeanours would be punished. Because the unbending nature of that rule meant misdemeanours were rare.

  And when they did happen, they were caused by a careless mistake, never the result of a revolt or a challenge to authority.

  So much so that life at the orphanage was perfectly calm, although a bit dull and repetitive nonetheless.

  I have already told you what happened in the morning, once the wake-up bell had been rung. Some made their beds, others lined up for the strap. Routine.

  Then it was time for breakfast.

  Porridge, always porridge, nothing but porridge. With a slice of white toast thinly spread with commercial jam bought by the twenty- or fifty-litre barrel load.

  Then a group of children would wash, dry, and put away the dishes, while another group wiped down the tables and swept the refectory.

  There were no dishwashers in those days. And even if there had been, the orphanage wouldn’t have had one anyway. No doubt due to belt-tightening. Which meant they didn’t have the means to employ staff either.

  Chores were up to us children. Every meal. Three times a day. Washing the dishes and cleaning the refectory. Always.

  Routine.

  The orphanage was a school, too.

  From junior kindergarten to fifth or sixth grade. We didn’t have far to go: the classrooms for each year were on the same floor as the dormitories.

  I was made a classroom assistant. I helped the children who were struggling. I read to them. I supervised them when they were doing their homework. I even corrected and marked their tests.

  I never had much to learn at school. Not at elementary school, at any rate.

  Because I had taught myself to read at four. And because, from the same age, I was given special lessons on all kinds of subjects. The nuns wanted to know how bright I was, I suppose.

  And that’s what going to school at the orphanage was like for me. It all made me feel that I was appreciated. At a time and a place where being worth something was vital for me.

  School in the mornings and afternoons. Homework in the evenings. With meals in between. Routine.

  Speaking of meals, lunch and supper deserve special mention.

  Because the food was terrible, as you might imagine. The meat especially. Always in shapeless stews and fricassees. All cooked in enormous pots and pans.

  No doubt local slaughterhouses gave the orphanage carcasses of so-called “reform” cattle for a few dollars. You know the ones: the old dairy cows that reach the end of the line once they hit twelve or fifteen. That go into cat and dog food nowadays. It was a far cry from your milk-fed veal!

  The rule at the orphanage was straightforward: you weren’t allowed to leave anything at all on your plate.

  What were we to do with bits of rubber we’d been munching on for minutes at a time and couldn’t bring ourselves to swallow? I would suck them dry of every last drop of juice, put them in my pocket, and throw them down the toilet after the meal.

  Over six years I must have added a fair few pounds of meat to the Chicoutimi sewers!

  The routine also had us go out and get some fresh air in the yard. Once, twice, three times a day, depending on the weather.

  I don’t remember there being any organized or team sports. It seems to me that “playing” was the only activity on the program. I wasn’t much interested anyway.

  I kept to myself at the back of the yard, up by the fence separating the orphanage from the surrounding homes. Discreetly, almost unnoticed, I would take a look at what was going on in the houses and backyards.

  Sometimes the people who lived there would see me watching and say a few words, always kind. I would mumble something back, embarrassed, and hurry back to the other children.

  Malicious gossip had it that I was spying on them. Watching normal people go about their lives was interesting, all the same…

  Prayer was a big part of life in the orphanage. Which should come as no surprise, considering it was officially known as the Orphélinat de l’Immaculée (Orphanage of the Immaculate Conception) and was run by the Little Franciscans of Mary.

  Everything was a reason to pray. Meals, the beginning of class, going to bed, everything we did, all day, every day.

  On top of that were all the events requiring immediate divine intervention.

  Advent in the run-up to Christmas was the worst. That and Lent, the forty days before Easter.

  Throughout these holy periods, we had to go to the chapel for vespers every day. Not to mention mass on Saturdays and Sundays.

  From the above, you might think I saw all this religion in a negative light, that it was nothing but a succession of unpleasant obligations. Not at all. Because everything about the orphanage encouraged us to believe very strongly in Jesus. (Would you be surprised to learn that I was a believer?) And because it was just one aspect, among many others, of our daily routine at the orphanage.

  It was either that or something else…

  One of the things that bothered all the children in the orphanage was where we went after the fifth floor when we were older than eleven or twelve.

  We Bergerons were less worried than the others because we had a family. Although…

  Some said, without any of us really being able to know for sure, that we headed for “reform school” after the orphanage.

  We knew what reform school was because the nuns would bring it up sometimes whenever they were mad:

  — Why you little rascal! You’re going to end up in reform school. That’s where they lock up children who do not listen. You’ll behave yourself at reform school when a hooligan in the making takes you into a corner to rough you up!

  Quite the program!

  Personally, I watched the years going by and saw myself getting older with growing concern. Was I going to end up in reform school in the not-too-distant future?

  Thankfully, as it happens, my concerns were wide of the mark: I left the orphanage when I was nine.

  Although, come to think of it, what happened right after that wasn’t any better than reform school. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

  The question continued to hang over us: Were children who had passed through the orphanage really sent to reform school?

  It sounded awful. And if they were sent somewhere else, what became of them?

  Since I was destined for life as an architect— well, the nuns had decided for me; I didn’t have much to do with it —I felt compelled to observe how the new wing of the orphanage (the main part of the cross) was being built.

  It took a long time: two years, I’d say. Because once they put the structure up, they then had to demolish the charred remains after the fire. And build it all again.

  I would spend hours, s
itting by the window, watching the construction site grow. Even to this day I still obsess a little every time I see a construction site.

  Decades later, my children would scold me:

  — Come on, Guillaume or Nadianie, I’d say (ten years apart). I’ll put you in your seat and we’ll go for a ride.

  — No way! You’ll only drag us round construction sites for hours!

  The Saturday night movie was the high point of the week for all the children at the orphanage. It was most certainly in the left wing belonging to the boys. Because I am not at all sure there was also a Saturday night movie in the girls’ wing.

  One of the two TV channels at the time in the Saguenay— Lac-Saint-Jean region showed a children’s movie early on Saturday evenings.

  The television was hung from the angle of the wall in the playroom, at least seven feet off the ground. The screen can’t have been more than twenty inches. Black and white, obviously. With a picture that left a lot to be desired by today’s standards.

  The fifty children would sit in a semicircle on the floor. Since the television was so high up, you had to tilt your head back to watch it.

  Despite these conditions, the Saturday night movie was quite the party.

  There were more or less two types of movies that everyone loved. There were comedies— real comedies —starring Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello, and less funny movies with Charlie Chaplin that we enjoyed all the same.