The Street by Mordecai Richler Page B

okay? It makes me want to puke.”
    Danny and I walked home from school together and I hinted that I would be interested in meeting some guys – “and dames too,” I allowed – who took life more seriously. There were other things besides sports, I said, and I told Danny a dirty Jewish joke, hoping to lead round to the subject of girls again. It was Segal’s joke, the one that ended Bloomberg’s dead, but I got no further than telling him about this peddler, one of ours, who had a cock as big as a Coorsh’s salami, when Danny cut me short.
    “You’re a chauvinist,” he said.
    “No kidding? Um, is that bad like?”
    “Well, it’s not good. Listen, would you be interested in going to a social on Friday night?”
    “Don’t mind if I do.”
    That was Tuesday. Wednesday, I hurried to Irving’s Barbershop and got a Hollywood haircut. I also allowed myself to be cajoled into a mudpack facial to remove disfiguring blackheads. Thursday, I retrieved my one-button roll sports jacket from the cleaners and bought a hand-painted tie at Morrie Heft’s. Friday, I slipped into my new suit trousers and I was ready an hour early. When Danny finally picked meup I was astonished to discover that he was wearing the same smelly old sweater and baggy trousers he came to school in every day.
    There was no liquor at the party. They did have a record player, but nobody could boogie. A fuzzy-haired girl with a guitar sat on the floor and led a folk-singing session.
Joe Hill
and
Los Quatro Generales
. When it came my turn to pick a song I slipped my arm around the girl who sat next to me and asked for the one that began,
    If all the girls were like Hedy Lamarr,
I’d work half as hard and get twice as far.
    “Who brought
that
here?” somebody squealed.
    “All-You-Eta,” I suggested quickly. “How’s about that. It’s a kind of gag version of
Alouette
. It goes All-you-eta, think of all-you-eta. All –”
    “Shettup,” Danny pleaded, poking me.
    “But that’s a clean one.”
    “It also happens to be,” the fuzzy-haired girl said icily, “a tasteless corruption of one of our few authentic French Canadian folk songs.”

FOUR

The Main
    T WO STREETS below our own came the Main. Rich in delights, but also squalid, filthy, and hollering with stores whose wares, whether furniture or fruit, were ugly or damaged. The signs still say FANTASTIC DISCOUNTS or FORCED TO SELL PRICES HERE , but the bargains so bitterly sought after are illusory – and perhaps they always were.
    The Main, with something for all our appetites, was dedicated to pinching pennies from the poor, but it was there to entertain, educate and comfort us too. Across the street from the synagogue you could see THE PICTURE THEY CLAIMED COULD NEVER BE MADE . A little further down the street there was the Workman’s Circle and, if you liked, a strip show. Peaches, Margo, Lili St. Cyr. Around the corner there was the ritual baths, the
shvitz
or
mikva
, where my grandfather and his cronies went before the High Holidays, emerging boiling red from the highest reaches of the steam rooms to happily flog each other with brushes fashioned of pine tree branches. Where supremely orthodox women went once a month to purify themselves.
    It was to the Main, once a year before the High Holidays, that I was taken for a new suit (the itch of the cheap tweed was excruciating) and shoes (with a built-in squeak). We alsoshopped for fruit on the Main, meat and fish, and here the important thing was to watch the man at the scales. On the Main, too, was the Chinese laundry – “Have you ever seen such hard workers?” – the Italian hat-blocker – “Tony’s a good goy, you know. Against Mussolini from the very first.” – and strolling French Canadian priests – “Some of them speak Hebrew now.” “Well, if you ask me, it’s none of their business. Enough’s enough, you know.” Kids like myself were dragged along on shopping expeditions to carry parcels. Old men gave us