Free Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner Page B

Over the years, the lacrosse field became a bus station and then the Jean-Talon market. All that’s left now is Shanahan Street. You see down there at the other end of the market? That’s where the fish store used to be.”
    “And where have the Irish gone?”
    “I have no idea. But the Miron quarry has been turned into a garbage dump.”

San Pedro de Macorís

    THERE ARE TWO SAN PEDRO DE MACORISES .
    The first is located on the southeast coast of the Dominican Republic, at 18 degrees north, 69 degrees east. The second occupies the eastern side of St-Laurent Boulevard in Montreal, in a perimeter bounded to the west by Christophe-Colomb, to the north by an imaginary line running through the de Castelnau Metro station, and to the south by the Colmado Real grocery store, on St-Zotique Street.
    Maelo was the founding citizen of this second San Pedro. He arrived alone in the middle of winter in 1976 and learned everything the hard way: the cold, the French language, the geography of Montreal, the bureaucracy, Radio-Canada,
pâté chinois,
unemployment and Guy Lafleur. He found this mixture hard to stomach. He soon considered calling the whole thing off and going back to his hometown, but while he was rolling some coins he was saving to buy his return ticket, a cousin, the first of many,called to announce that he had arrived at Mirabel airport.
    Maelo’s hopes were renewed. Reinforcements were on the way!
    He had started out as a shy immigrant and became a colonizer. The bonds between San Pedro de Macorís and Montreal grew stronger, woven as they were out of enthusiastic letters, chaotic telephone calls, and Western Union money transfers. Family members began to pour in. Cousins invaded the airport, euphoric and shivering. Maelo played the role of the seasoned veteran. He housed the newcomers, found them employment, gave them food and drink and then released them into the wilds. And without intending to, he became the gravitational centre of this new community. He organized fiestas and
cenas,
meetings, lunches, get-togethers in cafés. And when there was nothing on the agenda, people went to lounge at his house as if it were the public square of some invisible city.
    These gatherings culminated on the night of the Dominican presidential elections of 1986, when Maelo announced the holding of a great
jututo
—a meeting that involved the whole family protesting against the candidacy of Joaquín Balaguer, drinking rum and then quarrelling over the future of the republic.
    Balaguer was re-elected, the neighbours complained about the racket, and the
jututo
became a regular event. Now, on Sunday nights, Maelo gathers in the fruit ofthe family tree: his four brothers, three sisters, a dozen cousins, childhood friends and a few random refugees—stray Guatemalans or some Cubans just passing through. The merrymakers devour conches and shrimp, goatfish and giant mussels, kilos of rice and
habichuelas, guandules,
and yucca—all of it washed down with Concha y Toro, Brugal Añejo and
mamajuana.
Then they dance the
bachata
until the wee hours and remodel the world from top to bottom, with the Caribbean getting the bulk of their attention.
    According to Maelo, an immigrant can be adrift, confused, shy, exhausted, exploited, unwilling to adapt, drowning in depression, wallowing in nostalgia. But he must never stoop to being an orphan.

Colmado Real

    NOAH GOES INTO THE POST OFFICE , carefree, jiggling in the palm of his hand the small change he will use to buy a stamp. In the other hand he holds the envelope of miracles, adorned with his mother’s name, the General Delivery address in Ninga and a return address, a reassuring fixed point in the universe.
    He stops suddenly in the middle of the room, completely stunned.
    The air is suffused with the aroma of the thousands of post offices scattered over the plains from Winnipeg to Calgary. Crushed paper, elastic bands, rubber stamps.
    Noah falters. Right at that moment he is catapulted three