Chapter 5, section 1: Chaqu’un son dép

Hermes knelt down and scratched the big black Labrador Retriever behind its ears. The happy beast lolled its tongue and grinned at him adoringly. He grinned back, “Chaqu’un son dép.”

The dépanneur, one of that ubiquitous breed of local commerce lodges: corner stores, general stores, trading posts. No matter where you were in the world, there they were: stores that supplied sodas, juices, cooking oil, cans of ravioli, cigarettes, magazines, candy, a little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of gossip if you had the time. Montréal’s version of this was the dépanneur, and Hermes’s favorite was here on the corner of Villeray and de Gaspé.

There was nothing particularly special about it. In fact, there was usually nothing special about any of them, anywhere. They were usually shabby remnants of once-sterile emporiums. Sometimes they were still unwelcomingly sterile, but more often than not they were comfortably worn. What made each one special was the owners, and the people who hung out there. And their pets.

This happily slobbering beast was Minou—French for kitten—and his owner, Gaetan, was one of the more philosophical of the neighborhood drunks. He had once been a militant Quebéc Separatist, and quite racist to boot, but the owners of this dép had changed that.

For years Gaetan had frequented the dép one block down on Faillon for his staples and conversation. When the owner retired and sold the business to an Indian family, Gaetan found that unacceptable. He scoured the neighborhood for a dép run by a good old-fashioned pure-laine Québecois. He couldn’t find any a comfortable stroll from his house. In fact, there were an awful lot of immigrants moving in. Indians, Haitians, Angolans, Arabs, Vietnamese. Of course the Italians, Portuguese and Greek had always been there along with a smattering of Anglos, but these were different. Alien.

He finally settled on the one nearest his home, partly because the couple who owned it weren’t too outrageously different. At least not on the surface. As he got to know them, however, their story changed him. David was from a well-off Israeli family, and Zahra was a Palestinian nurse. They had met in a scandal over a building his family owned in Jerusalem’s Old City and fallen hopelessly in love. His family disowned him. Her family wasn’t so forgiving. Luckily, they hooked into a system of safehouses set up to smuggle mixed couples out of the danger zone. They found their way to Crete, then to London, and finally to Montréal, where they were able to stay and melt into the cultural patchwork. She couldn’t practice nursing in the country, and the Jewish Community shunned him. His mother, wracked with guilt, wired him enough money to start his own business. That was a love story to melt the purest heart. Hermes’s cupboards down the street were lined with pasta and canned vegetables he’d never eat. He usually gave them to an annual Christmas food drive.

Hermes held Minou’s floppy ears in both hands and gazed into the dog’s soulful eyes. “Woof,” he said, and stood up.

Minou licked his lips and set his chin on his paws.