Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [102]
Well, that’s why I took to Mr. Goodwill’s little girl the way I did.
I’d be ironing one of her dresses or brushing her hair and I’d think: I’m all she’s got. I’m not even half a mama, but I’m all the mama she’s ever going to get. How’s she going to find her way?
How’s she going to be happy in her life? I’d stare and stare into the future and all I could see was this dark place in front of her that was black as the blackest night.
Skoot Skutari’s Theory
My grandfather was born in a northern Albanian village, the son of poor country Jews. When he was eighteen he left home, telling his parents he was going to walk to Jerusalem. Instead he traveled westward to the city of Skutari (and tacked that name on to his own), and caught a boat bound for Malta. From there he traveled to Lisbon, then boarded ship for Montreal. By the year 1897 he was living in rural Manitoba, traveling from township to township and earning his living as a peddler of household sundries. Abram Gozhdë Skutari was his full name, a self-made man, a millionaire, founder and owner of a nationwide chain of retail outlets.
In the early days, though, he was heartbreakingly poor, and the life of a backwoods peddler was painful to him. He was reviled by the very farmers and townspeople who depended on him to bring them necessities. The old Jew he was called. No one had the decency to ask him his name or where he lived or whether he was married and had a family. The men in the region refused to shake his hand, as though he carried lice on his body. That hurt him terribly, he never got over the insult of that.
And then along came Eaton’s Mail Order, and suddenly people didn’t have to deal with traveling peddlers any longer. It was cheaper and easier to send in an order to the Winnipeg store for their shoe polish and hair ribbons. But how was Abram Skutari to support his wife Elena (my grandmother Lena) and their little boy (my Uncle Jacob)?
It occurred to him to apply for a bank loan and start up his own business, selling work clothes, safety equipment, fire-fighting outfits, drilling supplies, everything, in fact, that Eaton’s left out of their catalogue back in 1905. And bicycles. My grandfather had the idea that bicycles were the future. The automobile was coming in, yes, but he was looking around and seeing that every young person in Winnipeg would soon be lusting for one of the new, massproduced bicycles that had come on the market.
He was fearful, though, about applying for a loan, having never set foot in a bank, especially not the Royal Bank, an imposing stone and marble temple situated in the middle of Winnipeg at the corner of Portage and Main. He was a man who didn’t own a necktie.
He spoke brokenly. It’s possible he really did have lice—many people did during that era—but something happened that gave my grandfather courage. It was something he witnessed, an incident that changed his life.
This event took place in the summer of 1905 when he was in the midst of his peddling rounds, he and his horse and his wagon piled with merchandise. It was mid-afternoon. He pulled into a little town in Manitoba, a place as bleak as any eastern European shtetl, at that time a company town, stone quarrying, a particularly fine grade of limestone. On this day my grandfather happened to be driving past one of the worker’s houses when he heard the sound of someone moaning, as though in great pain. He didn’t stop to think or knock, but entered directly through the back door.