The Street

by Mordecai Richler

  “Mrs. Bambinger and Julius are safe,” my mother said, clapping her hands.

  “They’re coming here from Australia,” my father said. “By ship. There was a telegram.”

  “I’m soaked. I’ll be lucky if I didn’t catch pneumonia.”

  “Yeah. Just look at him,” my father said. “You’d think he’d been out swimming. And what did he prove? Nothing.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Bambinger said, “you may still be too young for coffee but a little brandy won’t hurt you.”

  Everybody laughed. Thrusting past Bambinger, I fled to the bedroom. My mother followed me inside. “Why are you crying?”

  “I’m not crying – I’m soaked.”

  The dining room vibrated with laughter.

  “Go back to your party. Enjoy yourself.”

  “I want you to apologize to Mr. Bambinger.”

  I didn’t say a word.

  “You will be allowed one cup of coffee a week.”

  “Was that his idea?”

  My mother looked at me, astonished.

  “Alright. I’m going. I’ll apologize to him.”

  I went to Bambinger’s room with him. “Well,” he said with an ironical smile, “speak up. I won’t bite you.”

  “My mother says to tell you I’m sorry.”

  “Ach, so.”

  “You’re always picking on me.”

  “Am I?”

  “Maybe they don’t understand. I do, but.”

  Bambinger rolled a cigarette, deliberately slow, and let me stand there for a while before he said, “Your grammar is atrocious.”

  “This is my room and my bed.”

  “Ach, so.”

  “It shoulda been anyway. I was promised. Only they made me stay with my sister and rented it to you instead.”

  “I think your parents need the money.”

  “I apologized. Can I go now?”

  “You can go.”

  The next morning Bambinger and I couldn’t look at each other and a week went by without his once admonishing, correcting, or trying to touch me. A thick letter came from Australia and Bambinger showed us photographs of a small unsmiling boy in a foreign-type suit that was obviously too tight for him. His wife had stringy grey hair, a squint, and what appeared to be a gold tooth. Bambinger read passages from his letter aloud to my parents. His family, I learned, would not be arriving in Canada for six weeks, the boat trip alone taking a month.

  Bambinger now applied himself entirely to work and frugality. He gave up smoking even hand-rolled cigarettes and put in overtime at the factory whenever it was available. On weekends Bambinger searched for bargains. One day he came home with a suit from a fire-sale for his boy and on another he purchased an ancient washing machine and set to repairing it himself. He picked up a table and chairs at an auction and bought a reconditioned vacuum cleaner at a bazaar. All these, and other articles, he stored in the shed; and all this time he ignored me.

  One day I surprised Bambinger with a collection of nearly new comic books – “For your kid,” I said, fleeing – and the next morning I found them on top of the garbage pail in the shed. “Julius will not read such trash,” he said.

  “They cost me a nickel each, but.”

  “The thought was nice. But you wasted your money.”

  On Saturday afternoon, only a week before Mrs. Bambinger and Julius should have arrived, my father came into the kitchen carrying the newspaper. He whispered something to my mother.

  “Yes, that’s the name of the ship. Oh, my God.”

  Bambinger staggered in from the shed, supporting a table with three legs.

  “Brace yourself,” my father said.

  Bambinger seized the newspaper and read the story at the bottom of page one.

  “You can never tell,” my mother said. “They could be in a lifeboat. That happens all the time, you know.”

  “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

  Bambinger went into his room and stayed there for three days and when he came out again it was only to tell us he was moving. The morning of his departure he summoned me to his room. “You can have your bed back again,” he said.

  I just stood there.

  “You’ve been deprived of a lot. You’ve suffered a good deal. Haven’t you? Little bastard.”

  “I didn’t sink the ship,” I said, frightened.

  Bambinger laughed. “Ach, so,” he said.

  “Why you moving?”

  “I’m going to Toronto.”

  That was a lie. Two weeks later I saw Bambinger walking toward me on St. Catherine Street. He was wearing a new suit, a fedora with a wide brim, and glasses with thick shell frames. The girl with him was taller than he was. At first I intended to ask him if he was ever going to come round for the stuff in the shed but I crossed to the other side of the street before he spotted me.

  SEVEN

  Benny, the War in Europe, and Myerson’s Daughter Bella

  WHEN BENNY was sent overseas in the autumn of 1941 his father, Garber, decided that if he had to yield one son to the army it might just as well be Benny, who was a dumbie and wouldn’t push where he shouldn’t; Mrs. Garber thought, he’ll take care, my Benny will watch out; and Benny’s brother Abe proclaimed, “When he comes back, I’ll have a garage of my own, you bet, and I’ll be able to give him a job.” Benny wrote every week, and every week the Garbers sent him parcels full of good things a St. Urbain Street boy should always have, like salami and pickled herring and shtrudel. The food parcels never varied and the letters – coming from Camp Borden and Aldershot and Normandy and Holland – were always the same too. They began – “I hope you are all well and good” – and ended – “don’t worry, all the best to everybody, thank you for the parcel.”

  When Benny came home from the war in Europe, the Garbers didn’t make an inordinate fuss, like the Shapiros did when their first-born son returned. They met him at the station, of course, and they had a small dinner for him.

  Abe was overjoyed to see Benny again. “Atta boy,” was what he kept saying all evening, “Atta boy, Benny.”

  “You shouldn’t go back to the factory,” Mr. Garber said. “You don’t need the old job. You can be a help to your brother Abe in his garage.”

  “Yes,” Benny said.

  “Let him be, let him rest,” Mrs. Garber said. “What’ll happen if he doesn’t work for two weeks?”

  “Hey, when Artie Segal came back,” Abe said, “he told me that in Italy there was nothing that a guy couldn’t get for a couple of Sweet Caps. Was he shooting me the bull or what?”

  Benny had been discharged and sent home not because the war was over, but because of the shrapnel in his leg. He didn’t limp too badly and he wouldn’t talk about his wound or the war, so at first nobody noticed that he had changed. Nobody, that is, except Myerson’s daughter, Bella.

  Myerson was the proprietor of Pop’s Cigar & Soda, on St. Urbain, and any day of the week you could find him there seated on a worn, peeling kitchen chair playing poker with the men of the neighbourhood. He had a glass eye and when a player hesitated on a bet, he would take it out and polish it, a gesture that never failed to intimidate. His daughter, Bella, worked behind the counter. She had a clubfoot and mousey brown hair and some more hair on her face, and although she was only twenty-six, it was generally agreed that she would end up an old maid. Anyway she was the one – the first one – to notice that Benny had changed. The very first time he appeared in Pop’s Cigar & Soda after his homecoming, she said to him, “What’s wrong, Benny?”

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  Benny was short and skinny with a long narrow face, a pulpy mouth that was somewhat crooked, and soft black eyes. He had big, conspicuous hands which he preferred to keep out of sight in his pockets. In fact he seemed to want to keep out of sight altogether and whenever possible, he stood behind a chair or in a dim light so that the others wouldn’t notice him. When he had failed the ninth grade at F.F.H.S., Benny’s class master, a
Mr. Perkins, had sent him home with a note saying: “Benjamin is not a student, but he has all the makings of a good citizen. He is honest and attentive in class and a hard worker. I recommend that he learn a trade.”

  When Mr. Garber had read what his son’s teacher had written, he had shaken his head and crumpled up the bit of paper and said – “A trade?” – he had looked at his boy and shaken his head and said – “A trade?”

  Mrs. Garber had said stoutly, “Haven’t you got a trade?”

  “Shapiro’s boy will be a doctor,” Mr. Garber had said.

  “Shapiro’s boy,” Mrs. Garber had said.

  Afterwards, Benny had retrieved the note and smoothed out the creases and put it in his pocket, where it had remained.

  The day after his return to Montreal, Benny showed up at Abe’s garage having decided that he didn’t want two weeks off. That pleased Abe a lot. “I can see that you’ve matured since you’ve been away,” Abe said. “That’s good. That counts for you in this world.”

  Abe worked extremely hard, he worked night and day, and he believed that having Benny with him would give his business an added kick. “That’s my kid brother Benny,” Abe used to tell the taxi drivers. “Four years in the infantry, two of them up front. A tough hombre, let me tell you.”

  For the first few weeks Abe was pleased with Benny. “He’s slow,” he reported to their father, “no genius of a mechanic, but the customers like him and he’ll learn.” Then Abe began to notice things. When business was slow, Benny, instead of taking advantage of the lull to clean up the shop, used to sit shivering in a dim corner, with his hands folded tight on his lap. The first time Abe noticed his brother behaving like that, he said, “What’s wrong? You got a chill?”

  “No. I’m all right.”

  “You want to go home or something?”

  “No.”

  Whenever it rained, and it rained often that spring, Benny was not to be found around the garage, and that put Abe in a foul temper. Until one day during a thunder shower, Abe tried the toilet door and discovered that it was locked. “Benny,” he yelled, “you come out, I know you’re in there.”

  Benny didn’t answer, so Abe fetched the key. He found Benny huddled in a corner with his head buried in his knees, trembling, with sweat running down his face in spite of the cold.

  “It’s raining,” Benny said.

  “Benny, get up. What’s wrong?”

  “Go away. It’s raining.”

  “I’ll get a doctor, Benny.”

  “No. Go away. Please, Abe.”

  “But Benny …”

  Benny began to shake violently, just as if an inner whip had been cracked. Then, after it had passed, he looked up at Abe dumbly, his mouth hanging open. “It’s raining,” he said.

  The next morning Abe went to see Mr. Garber. “I don’t know what to do with him,” he said.

  “The war left him with a bad taste,” Mrs. Garber said.

  “Other boys went to the war,” Abe said.

  “Shapiro’s boy,” Mr. Garber said, “was an officer.”

  “Shapiro’s boy,” Mrs. Garber said. “You give him a vacation, Abe. You insist. He’s a good boy. From the best.”

  Benny didn’t know what to do with his vacation, so he slept in late, and began to hang around Pop’s Cigar & Soda.

  “I don’t like it, Bella,” Myerson said, “I need him here like I need a cancer.”

  “Something’s wrong with him psychologically,” one of the card players ventured.

  But obviously Bella enjoyed having Benny around and after a while Myerson stopped complaining. “Maybe the boy is serious,” he confessed, “and with her club foot and all that stuff on her face, I can’t start picking and choosing. Besides, it’s not as if he was a crook. Like Huberman’s boy.”

  “You take that back. Huberman’s boy was a victim of circumstances. He was taking care of the suitcase for a stranger, a complete stranger, when the cops had to mix in.”

  Bella and Benny did not talk much when they were together. She used to knit, he used to smoke. He would watch silently as she limped about the store, silently, with longing, and consternation. The letter from Mr. Perkins was in his pocket. Occasionally, Bella would look up from her knitting. “You feel like a cup coffee?”

  “I wouldn’t say no.”

  Around five in the afternoon he would get up, Bella would come round the counter to give him a stack of magazines to take home, and at night he would read them all from cover to cover and the next morning bring them back as clean as new. Then he would sit with her in the store again, looking down at the floor or at his hands.

  One day instead of going home around five in the afternoon, Benny went upstairs with Bella. Myerson, who was watching, smiled. He turned to Shub and said: “If I had a boy of my own, I couldn’t wish for a better one than Benny.”

  “Look who’s counting chickens,” Shub replied.

  Benny’s vacation dragged on for several weeks and every morning he sat down at the counter in Pop’s Cigar & Soda and every evening he went upstairs with Bella, pretending not to hear the wise-cracks made by the card players as they passed. Until one afternoon Bella summoned Myerson upstairs in the middle of a deal. “We have decided to get married,” she said.

  “In that case,” Myerson said, “you have my permission.”

  “Aren’t you even going to say luck or something?” Bella asked.

  “It’s your life,” Myerson said.

  They had a very simple wedding without speeches in a small synagogue and after the ceremony was over Abe whacked his younger brother on the back and said, “Atta boy, Benny. Atta boy.”

  “Can I come back to work?”

  “Sure you can. You’re the old Benny again. I can see that.”

  But his father, Benny noticed, was not too pleased with the match. Each time one of Garber’s cronies congratulated him, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Shapiro’s boy married into the Segals.”

  “Shapiro’s boy,” Mrs. Garber said.

  Benny went back to the garage, but this time he settled down to work hard and that pleased Abe enormously. “That’s my kid brother Benny,” Abe took to telling the taxi drivers, “married six weeks and he’s already got one in the oven. A quick worker, I’ll tell you.”

  Benny not only settled down to work hard, but he even laughed a little, and, with Bella’s help, began to plan for the future. But every now and then, usually when there was a slack period at the garage, Benny would shut up tight and sit in a chair in a dark corner. He had only been back at work for three, maybe four, months when Bella went to speak to Abe. She returned to their flat on St. Urbain her face flushed and triumphant. “I’ve got news for you,” she said to Benny. “Abe is going to open another garage on Mount Royal and you’re going to manage it.”

  “But I don’t want to, I wouldn’t know how.”

  “We’re going to be partners in the new garage.”

  “I’d rather stay with Abe.”

  Bella explained that they had to plan for their child’s future. Their son, she swore, would not be brought up over a cigar & soda, without so much as a shower in the flat. She wanted a fridge. If they saved, they could afford a car. Next year, she said, after the baby was born, she hoped there would be sufficient money saved so that she could go to a clinic in the United States to have an operation on her foot. “I was to Dr. Shapiro yesterday and he assured me there is a clinic in Boston where they perform miracles daily.”

  “He examined you?” Benny asked.

  “He was very, very nice. Not a snob, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did he remember that he was at school with me?”

  “No,” Bella said.

  Bella woke at three in the morning to find Benny huddled on the floor in a dark corner with his head buried in his knees, trembling. “It’s raining,” he said. “There’s thunder.”

  “A man who fought in the war can’t be scared of a little rain.”

  “Oh, Bella. Bella, Bel
la.”

  She attempted to stroke his head but he drew sharply away from her.

  “Should I send for a doctor?”

  “Shapiro’s boy maybe?” he asked, giggling.

  “Why not?”

  “Bella,” he said. “Bella, Bella.”

  “I’m going next door to the Idelsohns to phone for the doctor. Don’t move. Relax.”

  But when she returned to the bedroom he had gone.

  Myerson came round at eight in the morning. Mr. and Mrs. Garber were with him.

  “Is he dead?” Bella asked.

  “Shapiro’s boy, the doctor, said it was quick.”

  “Shapiro’s boy,” Mrs. Garber said.

  “It wasn’t the driver’s fault,” Myerson said.

  “I know,” Bella said.

  EIGHT

  Making It with the Chicks

  I WASN’T QUITE eight years old when I first got into trouble over a girl. Her name was Charna, she lived upstairs from me, and we had played together without incident for years. Then, one spring afternoon, it seemed to me that I’d had enough of marbles and one-two-three-RED LIGHT!

  “I’ve got it. We’re going to play hospital. I’m the doctor, see, and you’re the patient. Is anybody home at your place?”

  “No. Why?”

  “It’s more of an indoors game, like. Come on.”

  I had only begun my preliminary examination when Charna’s mother came home. My punishment was twofold. I had to go to bed without my supper and my mouth was washed out with soap. “You’d better speak to him,” my mother said. “It’s a lot worse when they pick up that kind of knowledge on the streets.”

  “It looks like he’s very well-informed already,” my father said.

  If I wasn’t, it was clearly my mother’s fault. Some years earlier she had assured me that babies came from Eaton’s, and whenever she wanted to terrify me into better behaviour she would pick up the phone and say, “I’m going to call Eaton’s right this minute and have you exchanged for a girl.”

  My sister would compulsively add to my discomfort. “Maybe Eaton’s won’t take him back. This isn’t bargain basement week, you know.”