The Orphanage Read online

  Then there were horror movies.

  Great big rubber monsters like Godzilla wrecking everything in their path. Disgusting characters like Frankenstein lurking behind the door you were about to open.

  Or the earth had been destroyed by cosmic ray, nuclear holocaust, or alien attack.

  As far as I can remember, this was the only time when the fifty children got to let go, laugh their heads off, and shout in terror without fear of being reprimanded by the nuns.

  And sometimes the Saturday night movie took an altogether different turn.

  I spoke earlier about my concern at seeing myself grow older.

  One Saturday night the movie was about a group of teenagers. And according to the movie, there was nothing fun about being a teen.

  The main character, after one prank too many, wound up at the police station. Then he and his gang ran across what looked like the foundations of a new building on a construction site.

  — Will I have to do that too when I get to his age? I thought. I’d be scared of falling!

  In the last scene, the hero gets behind the wheel of a car and, accelerator down to the floor, races toward a precipice.

  The idea being to fling himself from the car at the last possible second. Our hero won— because the guy he was racing against drove over the edge and was killed.

  — Will I have to do that too? I’m sure if anyone has to die, it’s going to be me!

  The movie stayed with me for years.

  Later I found out it was called Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean. An excellent movie, a cinematic masterpiece.

  But that’s beside the point. Was it an error of judgment on the nuns’ part to let us watch it? Or did I just overreact?

  Life at the orphanage went by just like that. Humdrum, quiet, monotonous. With something unexpected cropping up now and again.

  I would be remiss to end my discussion of everyday life at the orphanage without mentioning one such event, a truly exceptional event.

  I’ll start by confessing to a little white lie earlier, when I said that nobody at the orphanage harboured any ideas of revolt. There was one boy who always did the opposite of what he should have done… and who got the strap almost every day.

  That not being enough, the nuns had to come up with other sanctions.

  One day the whole orphanage went on an outing to the zoo in Quebec City.

  The whole orphanage, that is, except the boy in question, who was locked in.

  Not to be outdone, he ingeniously found a way out of the room. And his ingenuity didn’t stop there. Because then he came up with the perfect way to exact his revenge.

  Long bathroom sinks, each with a dozen or so faucets, ran along one of the walls in each dormitory. We brushed our teeth there before going to bed.

  And what did our little bright spark decide to do but plug the sinks and turn all the taps on full blast.

  Since the orphanage was empty, he was free to repeat the prank in all the dormitories. On the boys’ side as well as the girls’.

  We got back from Quebec City to find the orphanage flooded. Three inches of water everywhere. Water cascading down the stairwells. The nuns got out as many sheets as they could find. And every child helped wring them out. Long into the night.

  The same boy was rumoured to have set fire to the new wing as it was being built.

  What a blaze!

  Back then wooden posts propped up new buildings until the concrete had set. The new wing had five floors, each supported by a veritable forest of wooden posts. The flames were so intense that everyone thought the whole orphanage was going to go up in smoke.

  The nuns had us down on our knees, praying for God to change the direction the wind was blowing, or something like that. Five hundred children on their knees, little hands joined together, little eyes closed, repeating Hail Mary after Hail Mary in unison, with all the conviction their little hearts could muster.

  God couldn’t help but be moved.

  In other words, the spirit of revolt was alive and kicking in the orphanage.

  But as I remember, real revolt was limited to this single boy.

  And don’t go drawing any hasty conclusions from the above. For a child, normal is whatever he knows. Which is just as well, since it means a child who spends his summers playing in the lanes is no less happy than the little rich kid at a cottage by the lake. Quebec comedian Yvon Deschamps dispels any doubts on this count in his monologue Dans ma cour. Read it and you’ll see what I mean.

  Personally, I have never seen children laugh more or seem happier to be alive than the kids of Bissau, Port-au-Prince, and Ouagadougou. The orphanage in Chicoutimi was a haven of riches and comfort in comparison.

  At a push, I’d even go so far as to say we enjoyed it there.

  VACATION TIME

  — You’re lucky, you Bergerons, to have your family.

  That’s what the nuns would tell us. Adding that the other children had no one worrying about them outside the orphanage walls.

  But if you still had family, what were you doing in the orphanage, I hear you ask. That’s a good question. Here’s the answer.

  My mother and father married in 1952. He was twenty, she was twenty-one. Back then there was no such thing as contraception. Even if there had been, the priests— who still held sway —were imploring French Canadians to have babies, as many babies as possible.

  To fill the heavens with pure souls or to overturn the Battle of the Plains of Abraham? Probably both.

  At any rate, my parents had five children in just short of four and a half years. They were on pace for ten or twelve. But it stopped with the fifth.

  A problem during childbirth left my mother in a coma for months, then paralyzed for life.

  Faced with such a catastrophe, what could my father do? A crane operator, he always worked far from home: the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in Ontario, then the dam at Chute-des-Passes at the head of Rivière Péribonka, then the dams on Rivière Manicouagan.

  Before coming to any decision, it was agreed we should wait until Maman came out of her coma. We waited for three months, during which time our grandmother— my father’s mother —looked after us.

  There were ten of us living in her tiny apartment. As well as living on top of each other, circumstances didn’t help lighten the atmosphere any.

  It was only when Maman woke up that we were able to gauge the true horror of the situation.

  The right side of her body was paralyzed. Hemiplegia, they call it. The left side of her brain had also been unplugged, to put it simply.

  For the rest of her life, she would have the mental age of a child of five, the doctors said. She would never speak or walk again, they said. She would have to spend the rest of her days in an institution. Which she did.

  But she did learn to speak and walk again— in every which way, mind you. But it was always something to laugh about. And a five-year-old laughs a lot.

  Maman was a happy child for the rest of her life. A happy child who laughed a lot and made others laugh too.

  Even today, at eighty years young, the twelfth floor of the Angelica Residence in Montréal-Nord delights in her constant good humour.

  My father’s world fell apart.

  Barely twenty-six, he suddenly found himself without a wife and with five young children to look after. Offers flooded in from both sides of the family to take care of such and such a child and raise them as their own.

  — They want to take them away from me—never!

  The orphanage seemed like a much better solution to him:

  — That way at least, my children will be together. I’ll be able to bring them home twice a year, at Christmas and over the summer. And it will only be for a while. I’ll take them back as soon as I can.

  So today our vacation begins. The nuns told us:

  — Tomorrow your father will come for you. You are going on vacation.

  In the summer, I would sit on the old balcony at the end of the floor u
ntil I saw my father’s pale blue car turning into the drive. I would sit there from the early morning, until two or three in the afternoon if I had to.

  I would do the same in the winter, this time by the window. Allowing me to withdraw from everyday life in the orphanage to keep my eyes peeled for my father was another favour afforded me by my special status.

  As soon as the car came into sight, my headlong race to the main entrance on the ground floor began. Just let those nuns try to stop me!

  But they didn’t even think to slow me down. Instead, they shouted after me:

  — Enjoy your vacation!

  — Goodbye!

  The car ride from Chicoutimi to Alma was almost too much.

  Five overexcited children shouting, laughing, and squabbling for all they were worth. With no fear of us being told off since Papa was just as happy as we were.

  And arriving at our grandmother’s house was really something! So much so that it went down in family history. My brothers acted just as you might expect. They were happy, of course. Excited, too. But within reason.

  I would completely lose it.

  As soon as I saw my grandmother, I would start shouting, crying, rolling around on the floor, beating the walls.

  My father would grab hold of me to stop me hurting myself. It would last for an hour, two hours, three hours. Until, my energy spent, I was exhausted.

  When I finally recovered, I would be on the living room sofa, opposite my grandmother’s hide-a-bed. Where I would sleep for ten or twelve hours.

  When I woke up, either in the middle of the night or the next morning, I would see my grandmother sleeping just a metre or two away. And I was happy.

  Then the countdown would begin. Seven or eight days for the Christmas vacation, double that for summer.

  An outrageous number of visitors would come to my grandmother’s house, especially over the Christmas vacation. She had had eleven children, most of them married with offspring of their own.

  In a rented summer cottage by a lake, my father would welcome just as many visitors, but more spread out, in smaller doses.

  Everything would change halfway through the vacation.

  Until then it seemed like it would never end. Then everything seemed to be rushing by. And fear would set in: we would have to go back to the orphanage in so many days.

  I had gotten into such a routine that I would act just like I did back at the orphanage. I had no interest in the other children. Not my cousins. Not the other boys, let alone the girls. Not even my brothers.

  I spent my time with the adults. I would sit at the table with the men and, without saying a word, without making the slightest sound, would watch them play bridge for hours.

  Or I would slip into the living room and listen to the women gossip. Often, when the evenings dragged on into the wee small hours, I would fall asleep right there.

  They would find me asleep on the kitchen floor, my head resting between the wall and the dryer. Or in the living room, my body curled around the foot of the lamp.

  Then they would pick me up and lay me down on the living room sofa that practically belonged to me by then. It was there that I would wake up the next morning, opposite my grandmother’s hide-a-bed.

  As the days went by, once we passed the halfway point, we grew increasingly worried. Then, without fail, it would be time to go back.

  I would direct operations. All five of us would twist our father’s arm to at least delay the inevitable.

  — After supper, Papa! After supper!

  I would even come up with ways to put it off until the next day.

  Like the time we buried the car in the snow— only for our father to free it with one heavy foot on the gas.

  Things were always quiet on the way back. And sad. Especially since it would be late at night. Proof at least that some of my strategies had paid off.

  We would also bring an unbelievable amount of gifts back with us. Our father had spoiled us; our aunts and uncles had not wanted to be outdone.

  We often needed two cars to get back. At the orphanage, all the gifts instantly belonged to everyone. My father couldn’t get over it.

  But I’m pretty sure I’ve always understood there was no other way. I was always proud that it was my family that periodically renewed the toys for practically the whole orphanage.

  As soon as we went back, I returned to being the thoughtful, level-headed child the nuns liked so much.

  — Are you glad to be back, Richard?

  — Oh yes, Mother. Very glad!

  HAPPINESS

  Anyone who wakes to a bell or an alarm clock day after day, always at the same time, will know that you come to anticipate it, waking up by yourself a few minutes before it rings.

  What should you do with these minutes? Why not play a little game?

  When I woke, I didn’t open my eyes. I listened and used my other senses to work out where I was. Hearing, first of all.

  With fifty children to a dormitory, there was no shortage of sounds. The box springs were no more than metal bars attached to springs on the bed frames. The slightest movement from any one child and the whole dormitory was treated to a noisy symphony.

  So close to wake-up time, all the children would move about. The creaking sound they made gave me my bearings in no time. No luck! I’d woken up again at the orphanage.

  This particular morning, I let the seconds tick by. No familiar sounds.

  But before getting too excited, let’s move on to the second test: the sniff test.

  A good half of the fifty children wet their beds. With the odd tear here and there, the plastic mattress covers were far from watertight. Especially with plastic in the early 1960s not being what it is today.

  Which meant the mattresses were soaked with urine. Not to mention the covers. In other words, a dormitory with fifty young boys sleeping in it stinks.

  Was that the case this morning? Surprise! Not the slightest whiff of anything unpleasant.

  On the face of it, the sound and smell tests indicated that I probably hadn’t woken up at the orphanage. But hasty conclusions are risky: they can set you up for a fall.

  Eyes still closed, I moved on to the final test: what could I remember?

  Did I remember leaving the orphanage? Did my father come pick us up? Did we laugh until we could laugh no more all the way home? Did we pull up in front of our grandmother’s house? Did I roll around on the floor, laughing, crying, shouting like an epileptic? Did we go to bed exhausted? Was I, as usual, allowed to sleep on the living room sofa beside my grandmother’s hide-a-bed?

  Usually I had no trouble remembering it all.

  Usually I had no trouble working out that I was lying in bed at my grandmother’s. And then I could at last open my eyes.

  But not this time. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember a thing. Had I ever forgotten leaving the orphanage before?

  Come on— not on your life! So how could I have been at my grandmother’s? It was impossible!

  And yet for the minute or so my little game had worked, I had still come across none of the usual signs that I had woken up at the orphanage.

  Could it be I would be waking up at my grandmother’s, even though I had no idea how I had gotten there? Had I been too quick in writing it off as impossible? Perhaps it was possible after all.

  My bed at the orphanage had no headboard. And yet I could feel the back of a sofa to my right.

  The blankets were not from the orphanage. The slump underneath my butt felt very much like the gap between two cushions on a sofa.

  It was time to face the facts. All that remained was to open my eyes and see for myself that I really was at my grandmother’s. But what if it wasn’t true?

  No, it didn’t make any sense. I was at my grandmother’s. I had to be!

  That morning, when I finally relented and opened my eyes, I saw my grandmother sleeping peacefully on the other side of the living room. And I quietly began to cry.

  With happiness.

/>   Today I am fifty-six. Life has given me its fair share of great moments.

  If I had to choose the best of all, it would be that one.

  THE ACCIDENT

  I was seven years old.

  I had been at the orphanage for a long time, so I had had plenty of time to settle in. And become the nuns’ golden boy.

  But sometimes being the golden boy can work against you.

  There were fifty of us per dormitory. A good half of us wet our beds, night after night. The mattresses were soaked with urine and stank to high heaven. But I’ve already told you that.

  The nuns decided to do something about the stench we had to sleep in. But the solution they came up with was foolhardy to say the least.

  Judge for yourselves.

  They decided to fight fire with fire, or stink with stink, as it were.

  They boiled some sort of brew in a huge cooking pot. We could hear the bubbles breaking ominously on the surface.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  The sound was enough to strike fear into our hearts. And we shuddered when we saw brownish fumes rising off the mixture. Not to mention that it really stank!

  They must have been boiling the intestines of the devil himself.

  People tend to be even more frightened of what they cannot see.

  And we couldn’t see into the pot. Because it was too big. Because it was resting on a little portable electric stove with two burners. Because the stove itself was on top of a vanity.

  You know the kind, the little pine vanities you can still find in second-hand stores today. The vanities that people back then sat in front of to get dressed in their rooms.