Monday, 31 October 2011
Time Being
Another weekend has passed in relative calm. These were the days of hanging in & clinging on. Of Broken Flowers and No Surprises. Of a slow walk over carpets of yellow in an autum forest. In dreams, a dark man in a cheap foam shark suit mugged me and I saw a boy sitting next to a large white rabbit. The boy was waiting for something to happen.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Brusselmans Translated
The situation with me is unchanged: I have trouble finding the time, confidence and inspiration to do any real writing at the moment. However, to keep the blog from getting stagnant and stinking, I can post this. It is the first three chapters of the Herman Brusselmans novel ‘De Droogte’ (The Dryness), I once translated for Michael Little of “Unremitting Failure” to show him what the non Dutch-speaking world was missing out on. Herman Brusselmans has been writing over 50 brilliant, gripping and hilarious novels, and none of them has been translated (as far as I know). This post is very second hand, I know - and no one has to read it - but at least I burry the previous posts under a great big fucking Heap of words. I hope Brusselmans himself, or his publishers read this and contact me to be his official translator (even though I’m just a rotten Dutchman)... Note that this is just a rough draft and that we can make it even better in combination with my friends the native speakers, making it a duo enterprise... We’d be giving a treasure to the world!
The Dryness (De Droogte, 2003)
THE FIRST CHAPTER
Because my wife was the sleaziest bitch and the vilest whore of all of Belgium, I’d had a rather difficult divorce. She wanted our house with everything in it, the car and the dog. If it were up to her, I would have gotten nothing. If it were up to me, she’d get the dog. That ugly rotten beast with its little rat face and its dirty white curly hair was always on the brink of biting me. I nevertheless invited it every other day to take a walk with me in a forest not far from our house. Every other day the fucking dog refused to go. I didn’t really like walking in a forest all alone, so therefore, I stayed at home. But almost as often, I sat in a bar. ‘He always sat in a bar’, my wife’s lawyer said to the judge.
‘Not true,’ my lawyer said, ‘every other day he sat at home.’
‘Yes, but then every time his wife happened to be out,’ my wife’s lawyer said.
‘Then she was with her lover every time!’ I shouted.
‘Calm down,’ my lawyer said, ‘I do the talking here.’
‘But it’s true!’ I yelled. ‘I am sure she had a lover. All signs point in that direction.’
‘You prove I had a lover!’ my wife yelled provocatively.
‘Darling, I want you to leave me out of it,’ her lawyer said.
‘Is it you?' I yelled in disbelieve. ‘You bastard!’ I flew at him.
My lawyer tried to pull me away from his colleague. The judge also did his part and gave me a punch on my mug. After that, he knocked down my wife’s lawyer; kicked my lawyer in the balls; and whacked my wife to the ground. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I got carried away there for a moment. Everyone, take your seats and I want you to shut up for a while now. If there is one who’s going to speak here, then it’ll be me. Or do you think I became a just judge like that?! I could have become anything I wanted to! I could play the piano like the best and there is no doubt that, if one day I hadn’t run into my own goalpost with nasty consequences, I would have become Anderlecht’s goalkeeper!’
‘Anderlecht is a shite team,’ I said.
That was going to cost me dearly. The judge ordered that my wife got the house with everything in it and the car. I only got the dog. ‘But your honour,’ I said, ‘I don’t even want the dog. The beast is a menace.’
‘You get the dog and that’s final,’ the judge said.
‘Your honour,’ my wife said, ‘I will take the dog.’
‘But baby,’ her lawyer said, ‘you know I’m allergic to everything with curly hair.’
‘Aha!’ I yelled to my wife. ‘So that’s why you’ve been shaving your pussy for the past six months! And here I was, thinking you did it to arouse me!’
‘You get aroused from a naked pussy?’ my lawyer asked. ‘I don’t buddy. I’d like to see a big bush.’
‘So do I,’ the judge said, ‘although I don’t object if it is a little trimmed around the edges.’
‘Listen, would you mind continuing this sort of conversation later on in some bar?’ I said. ‘It’s my goddamn future at stake here, and you keep jabbering on about pubic hair. Besides, I get the horniest from one of those little strips right in the line of the vulva. Boy oh boy, that makes me so horny.’
‘Horny! You don’t know what horny means!’ my wife yelled. ‘Our coat hanger was hornier than you!’
‘It is your coat hanger now, you filthy thief,’ I said. ‘And your house. And your car. And your dog, goddamnit.’
‘No, I assigned the dog to you,’ the judge intervened.
‘You can stick that dog up your arse,’ I said.
‘Watch out buster, or I’ll fine you for slander.’
‘You can fine me as much as you want,’ I said, ‘I can’t pay for it anyway. I’ve got no job, I’ve got no wife, I’ve got no house, I’ve got no money, I’ve got nothing.’
‘What do you mean, you’ve got no money?’ my lawyer said panicky. ‘Then how are you going to pay me?’
‘And what do you mean, you’ve got no job?’ my wife said.
‘I got fired yesterday,’ I said.
‘I’m not at all surprised, you deadbeat,’ my wife said.
‘You should have become a judge,’ the judge said. ‘Before a judge gets fired, man, that really takes a whole lot.’ He looked at his watch. ‘But now I’ve got to go to the whores. Come on, everybody out of my court!’
My wife, me and our lawyers left the courthouse. ‘I hope I never see you again,’ my wife said.
‘You will see me,’ I said, ‘when I come and pick up the dog.’
‘Yes honey,’ her lawyer said, ‘when he comes to pick up the dog.’
‘He will not come to pick up the dog,’ my wife said determinedly as ever, ‘it is my dog and it will stay my dog.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But you will see me anyway, when I come to pick up my cd’s.’
‘Those are mine now,’ she said, ‘like everything is mine now. You’ve got nothing, you dick.’
She was right. There I was, I had nothing. All I got was a lawyer that asked me how I thought I was going to pay him. My wife and her lawyer walked away from me holding hands.
‘Why would I pay you anyway?’ I said to my lawyer. ‘You lost the case like it jingles.’
‘That doesn’t change a thing,’ he said, ‘I get paid by the hour.’
‘Then send me your bill, you greedy fuck,’ I said.
‘To what address?’ he asked.
Yes, to what address? Where could I go? I was thinking. Up till today, I was living in my own house, although the last five months together with a woman with whom I was involved in a divorce and who hated me like a disease, like I hated her, but with which situation we dealt by ignoring each other. Now that we were definitely divorced and I had to get out of the house permanently, I was out on the streets. There was no other option than rent something here or there, no doubt something very cheep. Till that point, maybe I could move in with my mother. Frankly, I’d rather live in a cardboard box during heavy rain than with my goddamn mother, but where was I going to find a waterproof cardboard box.
‘Okay, you send your fucking bill to Plastron Street 42,’ I said to my lawyer.
‘Wait, I’ll pen that down,’ he said. ‘He took out an electronic diary and wrote down: ‘Plastron Street 22.’
’42, you idiot,’ I said. ‘The Van de Veldes live at 22. They’ll never let me move in with them. I once almost knocked up their daughter. Luckily she got her period the very same day. Talk about a narrow escape…’
‘I wonder how she’s doing… ?’ I pondered. The last thing I heard about her was that she was ran over by a bus and now had to shit trough a hole next to her belly button.
My lawyer changed 22 into 42, and I asked him if he could buy me a coffee in the bar over there. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing that,’ he said, ‘but I have to attend the circumcision of my brother’s youngest son. I hope that will turn out a little different than with my brother’s eldest son. If he’s naked in the shower at the volleyball club, all the other volleyball players laugh at him for having only half a dickhead. Oh well, there’s something with everyone. See you next time, Fazio.’
He walked away. So there I was. Lonely, divorced, no house, no car, no dog, and enough money in my pockets for a few cups of coffee. I walked into café The Bars, where I sat down in a corner. It was about time to think what would become of the rest of my life.
THE SECOND CHAPTER
My father died at a double murder that had gotten out of hand. He was finished off together with a co-worker when both were active as night watchmen doing their jobs. The murderer broke into the factory, got caught by them, shot them, and stole four thousand bicycle tires, because it was a bicycle tires factory.
It wasn’t a particularly smart thief. Right next Sunday, during their weekly bicycle ride, both him and his wife, as well as their two kids, had new tires around the wheels of their bicycles. Inspector Danny Dio, a keen cyclist himself, was suspicious about this and the very same night he had Freddy Hangermans, which was the suspect’s name, arrested and was giving him the third degree. No less than six hours later, Freddy almost immediately came to a confession.
The night my father got murdered, my mother and I were playing a game of carts when suddenly there was a knock on the door.
‘Now who can that be, in the middle of the night like this between Saturday and Sunday?’ I said.
‘Just when I am winning,’ my mother said.
‘I’ll get the door,’ I said. And yes, so I did. In the door were two policemen. ‘Mother, it’s for you!’ I yelled. My mother happened to be a first class shoplifter and it was about time the law would find out and arrest her. That moment had come, so I thought, although I thought it rather a bummer that it had to happen at night. Personally, for years I’ve been an advocate that arrests should only take place during the day, but hey, my advice is seldom asked.
My mother joined us. ‘I have paid for all the boxes of cigarillo’s I have had in all my life,’ she said, ‘and furthermore, for all the other things I am completely innocent. I saved up personally for that full automatic fryer. Just as for those twenty thousand Frank pair of sunglasses. To accuse a poor woman like that! You’d better catch some murderers!’
‘That’s precisely what we are doing,’ said the one policeman, ‘for instance, we are utterly searching for the murderer of your husband, who was shot dead at work tonight.’
‘My André!’ my mother called out. She fell down on her knees and made a series of crocodile’s tears ricochet from her eyes. What a faker. I am totally convinced that she was thrilled to bits to be finally relieved from her husband.
I have to admit: my parents did not have a good marriage. The occasions at which my mother gave my father a damn good thrashing are incalculable. The number of times he told the doctor that he had accidentally walked into a door. There’s no keeping track. No wonder he was a boozer, and then especially Peruvian medlar gin. However, because that stuff is very hard to come by over here, my father walked around sober more often than drunk.
My mother, at her turn, sticks to Trappist beer. Give her a cigar to go with it and she won’t bother you, unless she is in one of her moods. My mother has those moods. The house isn’t big enough when that happens. Then she yells ‘eighty square meters! All of my life I have to move about in this eighty square meter dump! Oh, if only I had a two hundred square meter house, with a garden, a pool, and a gardener. And a pool guy. Ooooo, yes, if only I had a pool guy! I am sooooo unhappy.’
It is not an ethical thing to say about your own mother, but the woman was barking. If there is one man who disserved to be taken away from his bossy, insane wife, than it was my father.
In the mean time, my mother was still sunken down on her knees, whining ‘My André! My André!’ The two policemen were probably embarrassed by the situation, just as I was. Okay, my father was murdered, but to go making such a spectacle of it, not me. All in all, I’m a rather cool guy. Besides, I didn’t have a very close relationship with my father. Sometimes, I would say things to him like: ‘Pass the salt, will you, dad’, or: ‘Goddamnit, get the hell out of my sight, you week poof’, and he would say little things to me like: ‘you shouldn’t eat that much salt’, or: ‘there’s no need to shout to me like that’, but that’s about as close as the contact was. It is not just because someone is your dad that you have to behave like his son. The fact that you are such and such’ son, and not so or so’s, that’s a pure coincidence. I, personally, never put much faith in heredity or trivia like that. The only thing by which you can notice I am my father’s son is because I look amazingly like him, physically. We could have been brothers.
The one cop said to my mother: ‘Madam, we’re very sorry your husband died.’ The other cop said to me: ‘Sir, I know what it is like to loose a brother. Mine died three years ago at a drowning.’
‘His own drowning I assume?’ I asked, to be sure.
‘Yes… ‘ the cop said. He started crying. Me and the other cop were getting increasingly embarrassed by the situation. Not only was my mother on her knees wailing ‘My André! My André!; now the other cop was blubbering: “Leo, Leo, why did you have to go swimming on that misty evening?’
All in all, it was a night to forget quickly.
Many years later, I was in café The Bars thinking about these, fortunately long past, incidents, and I was wondering whether or not I had the psychological strength to hold it out at my mother’s place for some time. But then again, what other options were there?
I wondered if my mother would be okay with me temporarily moving in with her. It is not just because someone is your mother, that she just like that would let her only son move in with her, after the idiot has had his house hustled from him by his ex-wife. Agh, to hell with my mother. I never even liked to live in the house me and my wife bought after our marriage with the money the bitch inherited from a dead aunt. Eighty square meters was the house! I already spent my entire youth in an eighty square meter house and I knew damn well it is next to impossible to live nicely in a shithole like that. And, as it happens, I am a great devotee of nice living. I also like nice fucking, nice boozing, nice hanging about, and nice wiping my feet on everything. Everything, as long as it’s nice. I have the conviction that we live only once, and for the duration of that one shot, we have to experience, as often as possible, nice things.
The waiter of café The Bars disrupted my pondering by asking what I wanted to drink. ‘Give me a coffee and a cognac, Jean-Claude,’ I said.
‘Of course, Fazio,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.’
‘Don’t get wise with me, Jean-Claude,’ I said, ‘I am not in the mood for that sort of thing today. I am divorced a minute ago and my wife took everything.’
‘I just went through the same thing,’ he said.
‘Do tell,’ I said, because other people’s misery always cheers me up immensely.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘when I divorced my wife, she took everything.’
‘Is that the truth,’ I said. I was cheered up already.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘The things one goes through, with those damned skanks,’ I said.
‘Look who you’re talking to, Fazio. The things I have experienced with my wife, Hugo Claus could write a book about it.’
‘Especially because Hugo Claus went through the same thing with his wife,’ I said.
‘Yes? How do you know? Do you know Hugo Claus?’
‘I know his brother,’ I said. ‘I used to play cards with him once in a while in café Las Vegas.’
‘But not any longer?’
‘No, Claus withdrew from public life. I even believe he went into a monastery. With the Franciscan monks.’
‘What a coincidence. My uncle Albert himself is a Brother Franciscan.’
‘And? Does he half like the job?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to that branch of the family for years.’
‘Jean-Claude, it’s better to stay away from family branches as far as possible. By the way, speaking about nice jobs, don’t you here at the café have an opening for a waiter? Or a bookkeeper? Or a chef? Or a public relations manager? Or a bouncer? Or whatever?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Why do you ask, Fazio? Do you know someone who’s looking for a job?’
‘I’m gonna be honest with you, Jean-Claude. I’m looking for a job myself. I got fired yesterday.’
‘That’s tough. What kind of work you were doing again?’
‘I was a Mazda salesman. In the spanking new Mazda 6 petrol version, I was humping the boss’ secretary yesterday. The boss suspected something when he caught me at it. I was fired on the spot. His secretary was livid. “Finally we’ve got somebody who knows how to eat pussy,” she told the boss, “and now you kick him out.” “Are you implying that I don’t know how to eat pussy?” the boss asked. “Well, buddy, my poodle can eat better pussy than you,” the secretary said.’
‘So I guess she was fired on the spot too,’ suspected Jean-Claude.
‘He gave her a choice,’ I said, ‘either getting fired, or taking her poodle to the vet and have him put down.’
‘What did she do?’ Jean-Claude asked.
‘Put down,’ I said. ‘Apparently the animal wasn’t thát good at eating pussy. Anita had only told him that to annoy him.’
‘Well well… ‘Jean-Claude said. ‘And that’s why you are looking for a new job?’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I am a worker by nature.’
‘What things can you do?’
‘Everything, pal. Give me any work and I’ll start right at it. As long as it is not too tiring, I am happy. When I get tired, I become a nasty motherfucker, and I wouldn’t do that to the people. I am getting rather tired at the moment, with the divorce and all. What the hell is holding up my coffee and cognac, Jean-Claude? There are more cafés nearby, you know. Same thing every fucking time! Half an hour later and a person hasn’t even ordered yet. Get going, get your lazy ass out of here and make with the drinks!’
He hurried to the bar. I had been cheered up for a moment by the suffering of the poor sap, but that was already in the past. Yes, I was tired. My physical condition is nothing to write home about. That is, for a large part, my own fault. I exclusively eat junk food, I smoke and I drink, I don’t exercise and I’m a hypochondriac. When I only as much as see somebody that looks tired, then I think I am too. Jean-Claude looked very tired and, wham, I was so whacked that it doesn’t need a Polaroid. Don’t talk to me about sports. I used to do sports. I wasn’t a bad tennis player. The fuckness was that I couldn’t tell my forehand from my backhand. It needs no argument I regularly smashed the ball over the stands, or hit myself in the gob with my racket. That last thing once happened when I was forty-love up against Gerard Nilis, the head mechanic of the Mazda dealership. It was a pity that I had to be carried off and never had a chance to finish the match because Gerard got fired the same week after he had humped the boss’ secretary in the grease pit.
There came Jean-Claude with the coffee and cognac. I paid him and told him to beat it. I don’t like tired people around me. I counted my money. Only a hundred and twenty euros left. Not exactly an amount to start singing the loudest song about. How much did I have on the secret bank account about which Véronique knew nothing? At the most a couple of thousand euros of hard earned savings. A big chunk out of that would go to my lawyer, but for now my lawyer could get bend. I would pay him the day I’d get rich. But the question was: how was I going to get rich? Probably not by sitting in café The Bars drinking coffee and cognac. It was not like I was wasting my time, for I was thinking and making plans, was I right or not? To get a job, that would be the thing to do. First convincing my mother I was moving in with her for a while, then finding that job, and then? Yes, what then? Where are our lives leading to, what’s after death, what’s the point of it all? Those were worries for later.
I was thinking about something. The judge may have assigned everything to my wife, but wasn’t I allowed to pick up some clothes and personal belongings? I was going to do that right away. But how? I had no car. Goddamnit, who could ever have predicted that I was going to sink so low as to not having a car? Not me. What could I do? Borrowing a car, that seemed a good idea. ‘Jean-Claude!’ I yelled. ‘Come over here buddy.’
As he came shuffling near, I sipped my coffee and took a substantial gulp of cognac. Damn, that was strong coffee. I lit a cigarette. ‘Jean-Claude,’ I said, ‘can I borrow your car for half a day?’
‘My car?’ he said. ‘I don’t have a car.’
‘Why don’t you have a car?’ I sternly asked.
‘Because the judge assigned it to my wife, the bastard,’ Jean-Claude said.
‘You should have seen my judge,’ I said. ‘If there is one bastard here, then it’s him. With his stupid little beard and his chiselled chin.’
‘Mine had a stupid little beard too,’ Jean-Claude said.
‘Yes, but did he had a chiselled chin?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Jean-Claude.
I was thinking. Jean-Claude was too. Eventually I said: ‘maybe it was the same judge… ‘
‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ Jean-Claude said.
‘What was yours’ name? I asked.
‘Judge Van Vorteghem,’ he said.
‘Mine judge De Smaele,’ I said.
He was thinking. I wasn’t. I almost immediately said: ‘No, then it’s not the same one.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘And so you can’t help me get a car?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Then leave me alone,’ I said crossly. How the hell is it possible in this world of ours? Never, once someone manages to reach out and give someone else a helping hand, for instance with a car. I took another few swigs.
THE THIRD CHAPTER
Like I said, I was sitting in café The Bars, mapping out my future. It had become clear to me that it was my intention to drive to Véronique’s house to pick up clothes and related knickknacks. It’s a good thing I don’t care about personal belongings. Stuff like my illuminated globe, my Stef Kamil Carlens autograph, or my book about wines of the Provence, I could leave behind me permanently with a clear conscience. There was a new life to be built up here and trivial amulets had no place in it.
But how was I going to make my way to my ex-wife’s house? I made a decision. With a taxi. This was the plan: with a taxi hither; quickly gather the necessary items, than to Plastron street 42. Then we’ll see what happens next. I drew courage from these preparations and my fatigue partly made way. Stronger even, I was proud at myself. And suddenly over the moon that I was going to be released from that rotten Véronique.
We had met in the waiting room of doctor Henry Robyns. Because of my youth and such, I was in need of mental help. I had taken up a job at a blacksmith to pay with the there earned money for a psychiatrist. My task was applying little horseshoes on ponies, a thing for which I proved too have a certain talent. The blacksmith, Lucien De Cranck, even asked me to join him permanently. I refused. Before I had looked for this cushy job, I first had asked my mother for the money to pay the psychiatrist. ‘Are you insane?’ she said. ‘First of all, psychiatrists are quacks, and secondly, I don’t have the money for things like that. I am a poor woman.’
She wasn’t. After my father got murdered, she had received four million Belgian Franks from the insurance company, but she carefully hid that money, the stingy bitch. I was lucky I didn’t had to pay her money for letting me live with her. If there was one in urgent need for money, it was I. Due to circumstances, I hadn’t finished any of my schools, and the labour market wasn’t looking for someone like me. That temporal job at the blacksmith’s was the first labour I had ever done. Luckily, I got paid hush hush, so I could keep on the dole. The dole money was something like eighteen thousand Frank, enough to pay for my booze and cigarettes. No, it was no fat pickings for the youth during those plentiful times at the end of the twentieth century.
Doctor Robyns was recommended to me by a wacko I had been in school with, whom I sometimes met in my then regular bar The Bitch, which later burned down to the ground during a party to which one could only come carrying a torch. The Bitch’ landlord, Ronny Bitch, always had those original party ideas.
Vincent Mammelock, the wacko, had said that doctor Robyns had helped him tremendously. ‘Since I’ve seen him,’ he said, ‘I am all… what’s that called when you’re no longer abnormal?’
‘Normal,’ I said.
‘I am all normal,’ he said.
‘What was your problem?’ I asked.
‘I had that illness, I forgot the name, then you’re always with two.’
‘Schizophrenia,’ I said.
‘Yes, that was bothering me, but I’m now over it,’ he said. ‘Not true!’ he yelled in a completely different voice.
‘I don’t think you are completely over it, Vincent,’ I said.
‘Yes, I am,’ he said, ‘but my other personality still has some problems. But what do I care. As long as I am healthy. I’m very egotistic you know.’
‘Isn’t that hard for a schizo?’
‘I wouldn’t know, I am not a schizo. Say, do you want to come to the party this Friday? I can sell you a torch for hardly any money if you like. I’ve laid hold of a few of the best quality.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘this Friday I have to be somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘That is none of your business, Vincent.’
‘You are right,’ he said, ‘I apologise.’ ‘It is my business!’ he yelled out. It seemed that this doctor Robyns was not a Nobel Prize candidate, but I decided to give him a shot. I made an appointment and that Friday night I was sitting in his waiting room for the first time. A girl was sitting there with me, who didn’t look half bad. She wore a blouse and a skirt and open shoes, a for those days not undaring outfit. Her hair displayed some curling here and there, but not in a way that it disturbed me to a degree that it made me sick. She had intelligent eyes behind intelligent glasses. Her nose was neither turned-up nor Jewish, rather something in-between. Her legs were hairless. ‘Do you come here often?’ I asked her.
‘Twice a week,’ she said after a hesitation that seemed to have lasted forever.
‘I’m hoping for three times,’ I said, ‘but that is for the doctor to decide. This is my first time you know. How was your first time?’
‘Rather heavy,’ she said. ‘It was with a docker. He immediately jammed his enormous shlong up my arse. I wasn’t used to that. Kept me awake for days.’
‘I meant with the shrink,’ I said.
‘I think he’s too old to have sex with,’ she said. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty four,’ I answered.
‘That seems just about the right age,’ she said. ‘But you’ll have to forgive me I don’t want to have sex with you anyway. I find sex in a waiting room filthy. Actually, I always find sex filthy.’ Right then I should have known better.
We smoked our cigarettes without much eroticism. In this way we got talking. I found her an interesting chick. I should have known better then. ‘Why are you seeing doctor Robyns?’ she asked.
‘Because I got over my father’s death way too quickly,’ I said, ‘and that doesn’t seem particularly normal to me. And furthermore, I am quite bonkers, although I am the only one with that perception. Maybe I am not bonkers at all. But hey, not being bonkers and thinking you are, that can hardly be called normal behaviour. To top it off, I have a whopper of an Oedipus complex with which I never bother my mother. Again, not normal, I’ll admit. And finally, I can say I am enormously paranoid, except when I am pursued.’
‘Are you that often pursued?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Well, in that case, you better have yourself checked out by doctor Henry Robyns.’
‘What do you have checked out?’ I asked.
‘Everything concerning sex,’ she said
‘Like what?’
‘You name it,’ she said.
‘Bananafilia?’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘That you have a craving to be penetrated by a banana the whole time.’
‘Shit, I ain’t got that,’ she said. ‘But thanks for the tip. Maybe that’s how I will get over all of my complexes. Who knows.’
Right then I should have known better.
Doctor Henry Robyns was seeing a customer out of his office, and this time it was Véronique’s turn, as the girl had said her name was.
After her, it was my turn. She waited till I had finished. Together, we went for a drink at café The Registry, and so we learned to get to know one another. What an ignorant naive idiot I was. I even married her. If that isn’t ignorant and naive and idiotic, I don’t know what is. Nevertheless, our marriage did start promising. Although, it all depends on what you call promising. That banana business soon started to get very irritating. And things went from bad to worse. This couldn’t go on. The aforementioned divorce was imminent. Good thing we didn’t have kids. That was mostly because of me and Véronique. Neither of us was fond of children. I find having children effeminate and she finds having children not matching her inborn repulsion for those little brats.
‘Jean-Claude,’ I yelled. ‘Call me a taxi will you, pal.’
‘Certainly, Fazio,’ he said, and immediately grabbed the phone.
Moments later he announced the taxi would be at the spot in ten minutes.
‘Ten minutes… ‘ I mumbled to myself. ‘How can I spend those?’
I looked around for a left-behind newspaper at a table. No. Al that was left behind had been taken by someone. So there I was, with nothing to do and waiting for a taxi. I finished my coffee, and my cognac, and I smoked another cigarette or two, three, soon I had lost count. Ten minutes quickly turned into fifteen, twenty minutes, and then I had lost count again. It then took considerable time for the taxi finally arrived. I left The Bars and got in it. 'They told me ten minutes,’ I said.
‘Not to me,’ the driver said. ‘Which way and where to , my friend?’
‘Just do me the Wild Overway number 68,’ I said.
‘Beautiful surroundings,’ he said. And left. ‘Seen the match yesterday?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Fascinating spectacle. It turned really exciting at two all. Then Carlos Mendoza started one of his renowned rushes. He passed Juan Funtes like he was made out of air, same with Alfonso Dos Perros, Ricardo Pilãr, Piramantico Isabella and Florian Urbani, after which he spooned the old pigskin just wide of the goal post. I could just… ! And they say guys like that make 375,000 euros a month. I once made some calculations: if I want to make that kind of money, I have to drive 4,755,604 kilometres a month. Without ever stopping for gas, food, a knap or a red light. I’d like to see you try. If only I had become a hairdresser, like my father. What was your father?’
‘He was a night watchman.’
‘Hard job.’
‘’Especially in winter. It wasn’t too bad in summer. The sun sometimes only sets at 10.32 pm and rises at 4.16 am. Those are short nights, so there is not much watching involved.’
‘Yes, you’re right. I, myself, have a preference for the autumn. The leaves falling from the trees; the first colds; regular light chill rains, yes, I like that. Every colour seems a shade of sepia. Kids, splashing about in puddles; a dog seeking shelter against a sudden gust of wind; a tram jingling its sad song. Call me a romantic, but I can get tears in my eyes from it.’
‘I wouldn’t call you a romantic. Rather a complete idiot. A tram jingling its sad song… it’s a long time ago I heard gibberish from this calibre.’
‘Am I wrong, or is milord an intellectual?’ he asked.
‘Wrong,’ I said.
‘What a relief. You see, I am not particularly fond of intellectuals. Only yesterday I had one in my cab. He wanted to go to the museum by all means. “And then go staring at fucking incomprehensible paintings the whole day?” I told him. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. Typical for intellectuals. Just give me a sound worker, they never bother me, unless they’re really shitfaced. Only the day before yesterday I had one of those in my cab. He hardly sat down or he wanted to start barfing. Not me. I immediately stopped, hauled him out of the car and gave him a few punches to his muzzle that would smart for a few days. This I vow. We’re there, I believe.’
‘No, not yet,’ I said.
‘Goddamnit, you’re right, what was I thinking. What’s the address again?’
‘Wild Overway number 68.’
‘Wild Overway… right, yes, that’s here left, then straight ahead for a few hundred meters, second to the right, at the end of the roundabout make a diagonally left, and the third right… ‘
‘Left,’ I said.
‘You’re right. Come to think of it. We’re there in about four, five minutes. You can never be sure, with traffic these days. Before you know it, you’re in a jam and then you’re really screwed. I’m getting fucked up, from those present day jams. My hairs are standing on end, from my arms to the back of my neck. Triple screwed over, man, that’s what it is. Buggered senseless till I get jiggered stiff. What was that again about the roundabout?’
‘Diagonally to the left.’
‘Oh right. Peace of tart. And to where does the journey go?’
‘I already told you.’
‘You’re right. The thing I meant was, if it is personal or business you had to go there.’
‘Personal.’
‘For me it’s for business.’
‘Look out for that tractor!’
‘Yeah yeah, I’ve seen it. You have to be pretty blind for not seeing a tractor like that. Boy, what a whopping tractor. There, the first, the second, the third, and presto… ‘
‘Left,’ I said.
‘Damned, you’re right again. The first… The second… The third… Left… There, we’ve finally ended up in the Wilde Overway. Number?’
’68. What the hell is wrong with your memory?’
‘A lot. Don’t get me started. A lot, man. 64… 66… 68… ‘
‘We’re there.’
‘I thought so. That’ll be eight euro forty.’
‘I gave him eight euro fifty. ‘Keep the change.’
‘The kind sir is too good for this world. See you.’
‘See you.’
I got off. The taxi drove straight ahead and soon disappeared behind the corner. It was my original intention to take this same taxi to the Plastron street, but another fifteen minutes in the company of this deranged driver would be too much for me. I was going to call for another taxi at my ex-wife’s place.
From across the street, I looked at my former house. What a silly house. And small! Never again will I live in such a ridiculous attached house like that. Never.
Véronique’s lawyer’s Mercedes was parked in front of the door. I walked straight passed it and rang the bell.
THE FOURTH CHAPTER
I rang again. The dog was barking, but no one else.
[...]
To be continued? It gets better & better...
 |
| Herman Brusselmans |
THE FIRST CHAPTER
Because my wife was the sleaziest bitch and the vilest whore of all of Belgium, I’d had a rather difficult divorce. She wanted our house with everything in it, the car and the dog. If it were up to her, I would have gotten nothing. If it were up to me, she’d get the dog. That ugly rotten beast with its little rat face and its dirty white curly hair was always on the brink of biting me. I nevertheless invited it every other day to take a walk with me in a forest not far from our house. Every other day the fucking dog refused to go. I didn’t really like walking in a forest all alone, so therefore, I stayed at home. But almost as often, I sat in a bar. ‘He always sat in a bar’, my wife’s lawyer said to the judge.
‘Not true,’ my lawyer said, ‘every other day he sat at home.’
‘Yes, but then every time his wife happened to be out,’ my wife’s lawyer said.
‘Then she was with her lover every time!’ I shouted.
‘Calm down,’ my lawyer said, ‘I do the talking here.’
‘But it’s true!’ I yelled. ‘I am sure she had a lover. All signs point in that direction.’
‘You prove I had a lover!’ my wife yelled provocatively.
‘Darling, I want you to leave me out of it,’ her lawyer said.
‘Is it you?' I yelled in disbelieve. ‘You bastard!’ I flew at him.
My lawyer tried to pull me away from his colleague. The judge also did his part and gave me a punch on my mug. After that, he knocked down my wife’s lawyer; kicked my lawyer in the balls; and whacked my wife to the ground. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I got carried away there for a moment. Everyone, take your seats and I want you to shut up for a while now. If there is one who’s going to speak here, then it’ll be me. Or do you think I became a just judge like that?! I could have become anything I wanted to! I could play the piano like the best and there is no doubt that, if one day I hadn’t run into my own goalpost with nasty consequences, I would have become Anderlecht’s goalkeeper!’
‘Anderlecht is a shite team,’ I said.
That was going to cost me dearly. The judge ordered that my wife got the house with everything in it and the car. I only got the dog. ‘But your honour,’ I said, ‘I don’t even want the dog. The beast is a menace.’
‘You get the dog and that’s final,’ the judge said.
‘Your honour,’ my wife said, ‘I will take the dog.’
‘But baby,’ her lawyer said, ‘you know I’m allergic to everything with curly hair.’
‘Aha!’ I yelled to my wife. ‘So that’s why you’ve been shaving your pussy for the past six months! And here I was, thinking you did it to arouse me!’
‘You get aroused from a naked pussy?’ my lawyer asked. ‘I don’t buddy. I’d like to see a big bush.’
‘So do I,’ the judge said, ‘although I don’t object if it is a little trimmed around the edges.’
‘Listen, would you mind continuing this sort of conversation later on in some bar?’ I said. ‘It’s my goddamn future at stake here, and you keep jabbering on about pubic hair. Besides, I get the horniest from one of those little strips right in the line of the vulva. Boy oh boy, that makes me so horny.’
‘Horny! You don’t know what horny means!’ my wife yelled. ‘Our coat hanger was hornier than you!’
‘It is your coat hanger now, you filthy thief,’ I said. ‘And your house. And your car. And your dog, goddamnit.’
‘No, I assigned the dog to you,’ the judge intervened.
‘You can stick that dog up your arse,’ I said.
‘Watch out buster, or I’ll fine you for slander.’
‘You can fine me as much as you want,’ I said, ‘I can’t pay for it anyway. I’ve got no job, I’ve got no wife, I’ve got no house, I’ve got no money, I’ve got nothing.’
‘What do you mean, you’ve got no money?’ my lawyer said panicky. ‘Then how are you going to pay me?’
‘And what do you mean, you’ve got no job?’ my wife said.
‘I got fired yesterday,’ I said.
‘I’m not at all surprised, you deadbeat,’ my wife said.
‘You should have become a judge,’ the judge said. ‘Before a judge gets fired, man, that really takes a whole lot.’ He looked at his watch. ‘But now I’ve got to go to the whores. Come on, everybody out of my court!’
My wife, me and our lawyers left the courthouse. ‘I hope I never see you again,’ my wife said.
‘You will see me,’ I said, ‘when I come and pick up the dog.’
‘Yes honey,’ her lawyer said, ‘when he comes to pick up the dog.’
‘He will not come to pick up the dog,’ my wife said determinedly as ever, ‘it is my dog and it will stay my dog.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But you will see me anyway, when I come to pick up my cd’s.’
‘Those are mine now,’ she said, ‘like everything is mine now. You’ve got nothing, you dick.’
She was right. There I was, I had nothing. All I got was a lawyer that asked me how I thought I was going to pay him. My wife and her lawyer walked away from me holding hands.
‘Why would I pay you anyway?’ I said to my lawyer. ‘You lost the case like it jingles.’
‘That doesn’t change a thing,’ he said, ‘I get paid by the hour.’
‘Then send me your bill, you greedy fuck,’ I said.
‘To what address?’ he asked.
Yes, to what address? Where could I go? I was thinking. Up till today, I was living in my own house, although the last five months together with a woman with whom I was involved in a divorce and who hated me like a disease, like I hated her, but with which situation we dealt by ignoring each other. Now that we were definitely divorced and I had to get out of the house permanently, I was out on the streets. There was no other option than rent something here or there, no doubt something very cheep. Till that point, maybe I could move in with my mother. Frankly, I’d rather live in a cardboard box during heavy rain than with my goddamn mother, but where was I going to find a waterproof cardboard box.
‘Okay, you send your fucking bill to Plastron Street 42,’ I said to my lawyer.
‘Wait, I’ll pen that down,’ he said. ‘He took out an electronic diary and wrote down: ‘Plastron Street 22.’
’42, you idiot,’ I said. ‘The Van de Veldes live at 22. They’ll never let me move in with them. I once almost knocked up their daughter. Luckily she got her period the very same day. Talk about a narrow escape…’
‘I wonder how she’s doing… ?’ I pondered. The last thing I heard about her was that she was ran over by a bus and now had to shit trough a hole next to her belly button.
My lawyer changed 22 into 42, and I asked him if he could buy me a coffee in the bar over there. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing that,’ he said, ‘but I have to attend the circumcision of my brother’s youngest son. I hope that will turn out a little different than with my brother’s eldest son. If he’s naked in the shower at the volleyball club, all the other volleyball players laugh at him for having only half a dickhead. Oh well, there’s something with everyone. See you next time, Fazio.’
He walked away. So there I was. Lonely, divorced, no house, no car, no dog, and enough money in my pockets for a few cups of coffee. I walked into café The Bars, where I sat down in a corner. It was about time to think what would become of the rest of my life.
THE SECOND CHAPTER
My father died at a double murder that had gotten out of hand. He was finished off together with a co-worker when both were active as night watchmen doing their jobs. The murderer broke into the factory, got caught by them, shot them, and stole four thousand bicycle tires, because it was a bicycle tires factory.
It wasn’t a particularly smart thief. Right next Sunday, during their weekly bicycle ride, both him and his wife, as well as their two kids, had new tires around the wheels of their bicycles. Inspector Danny Dio, a keen cyclist himself, was suspicious about this and the very same night he had Freddy Hangermans, which was the suspect’s name, arrested and was giving him the third degree. No less than six hours later, Freddy almost immediately came to a confession.
The night my father got murdered, my mother and I were playing a game of carts when suddenly there was a knock on the door.
‘Now who can that be, in the middle of the night like this between Saturday and Sunday?’ I said.
‘Just when I am winning,’ my mother said.
‘I’ll get the door,’ I said. And yes, so I did. In the door were two policemen. ‘Mother, it’s for you!’ I yelled. My mother happened to be a first class shoplifter and it was about time the law would find out and arrest her. That moment had come, so I thought, although I thought it rather a bummer that it had to happen at night. Personally, for years I’ve been an advocate that arrests should only take place during the day, but hey, my advice is seldom asked.
My mother joined us. ‘I have paid for all the boxes of cigarillo’s I have had in all my life,’ she said, ‘and furthermore, for all the other things I am completely innocent. I saved up personally for that full automatic fryer. Just as for those twenty thousand Frank pair of sunglasses. To accuse a poor woman like that! You’d better catch some murderers!’
‘That’s precisely what we are doing,’ said the one policeman, ‘for instance, we are utterly searching for the murderer of your husband, who was shot dead at work tonight.’
‘My André!’ my mother called out. She fell down on her knees and made a series of crocodile’s tears ricochet from her eyes. What a faker. I am totally convinced that she was thrilled to bits to be finally relieved from her husband.
I have to admit: my parents did not have a good marriage. The occasions at which my mother gave my father a damn good thrashing are incalculable. The number of times he told the doctor that he had accidentally walked into a door. There’s no keeping track. No wonder he was a boozer, and then especially Peruvian medlar gin. However, because that stuff is very hard to come by over here, my father walked around sober more often than drunk.
My mother, at her turn, sticks to Trappist beer. Give her a cigar to go with it and she won’t bother you, unless she is in one of her moods. My mother has those moods. The house isn’t big enough when that happens. Then she yells ‘eighty square meters! All of my life I have to move about in this eighty square meter dump! Oh, if only I had a two hundred square meter house, with a garden, a pool, and a gardener. And a pool guy. Ooooo, yes, if only I had a pool guy! I am sooooo unhappy.’
It is not an ethical thing to say about your own mother, but the woman was barking. If there is one man who disserved to be taken away from his bossy, insane wife, than it was my father.
In the mean time, my mother was still sunken down on her knees, whining ‘My André! My André!’ The two policemen were probably embarrassed by the situation, just as I was. Okay, my father was murdered, but to go making such a spectacle of it, not me. All in all, I’m a rather cool guy. Besides, I didn’t have a very close relationship with my father. Sometimes, I would say things to him like: ‘Pass the salt, will you, dad’, or: ‘Goddamnit, get the hell out of my sight, you week poof’, and he would say little things to me like: ‘you shouldn’t eat that much salt’, or: ‘there’s no need to shout to me like that’, but that’s about as close as the contact was. It is not just because someone is your dad that you have to behave like his son. The fact that you are such and such’ son, and not so or so’s, that’s a pure coincidence. I, personally, never put much faith in heredity or trivia like that. The only thing by which you can notice I am my father’s son is because I look amazingly like him, physically. We could have been brothers.
The one cop said to my mother: ‘Madam, we’re very sorry your husband died.’ The other cop said to me: ‘Sir, I know what it is like to loose a brother. Mine died three years ago at a drowning.’
‘His own drowning I assume?’ I asked, to be sure.
‘Yes… ‘ the cop said. He started crying. Me and the other cop were getting increasingly embarrassed by the situation. Not only was my mother on her knees wailing ‘My André! My André!; now the other cop was blubbering: “Leo, Leo, why did you have to go swimming on that misty evening?’
All in all, it was a night to forget quickly.
Many years later, I was in café The Bars thinking about these, fortunately long past, incidents, and I was wondering whether or not I had the psychological strength to hold it out at my mother’s place for some time. But then again, what other options were there?
I wondered if my mother would be okay with me temporarily moving in with her. It is not just because someone is your mother, that she just like that would let her only son move in with her, after the idiot has had his house hustled from him by his ex-wife. Agh, to hell with my mother. I never even liked to live in the house me and my wife bought after our marriage with the money the bitch inherited from a dead aunt. Eighty square meters was the house! I already spent my entire youth in an eighty square meter house and I knew damn well it is next to impossible to live nicely in a shithole like that. And, as it happens, I am a great devotee of nice living. I also like nice fucking, nice boozing, nice hanging about, and nice wiping my feet on everything. Everything, as long as it’s nice. I have the conviction that we live only once, and for the duration of that one shot, we have to experience, as often as possible, nice things.
The waiter of café The Bars disrupted my pondering by asking what I wanted to drink. ‘Give me a coffee and a cognac, Jean-Claude,’ I said.
‘Of course, Fazio,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.’
‘Don’t get wise with me, Jean-Claude,’ I said, ‘I am not in the mood for that sort of thing today. I am divorced a minute ago and my wife took everything.’
‘I just went through the same thing,’ he said.
‘Do tell,’ I said, because other people’s misery always cheers me up immensely.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘when I divorced my wife, she took everything.’
‘Is that the truth,’ I said. I was cheered up already.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘The things one goes through, with those damned skanks,’ I said.
‘Look who you’re talking to, Fazio. The things I have experienced with my wife, Hugo Claus could write a book about it.’
‘Especially because Hugo Claus went through the same thing with his wife,’ I said.
‘Yes? How do you know? Do you know Hugo Claus?’
‘I know his brother,’ I said. ‘I used to play cards with him once in a while in café Las Vegas.’
‘But not any longer?’
‘No, Claus withdrew from public life. I even believe he went into a monastery. With the Franciscan monks.’
‘What a coincidence. My uncle Albert himself is a Brother Franciscan.’
‘And? Does he half like the job?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to that branch of the family for years.’
‘Jean-Claude, it’s better to stay away from family branches as far as possible. By the way, speaking about nice jobs, don’t you here at the café have an opening for a waiter? Or a bookkeeper? Or a chef? Or a public relations manager? Or a bouncer? Or whatever?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Why do you ask, Fazio? Do you know someone who’s looking for a job?’
‘I’m gonna be honest with you, Jean-Claude. I’m looking for a job myself. I got fired yesterday.’
‘That’s tough. What kind of work you were doing again?’
‘I was a Mazda salesman. In the spanking new Mazda 6 petrol version, I was humping the boss’ secretary yesterday. The boss suspected something when he caught me at it. I was fired on the spot. His secretary was livid. “Finally we’ve got somebody who knows how to eat pussy,” she told the boss, “and now you kick him out.” “Are you implying that I don’t know how to eat pussy?” the boss asked. “Well, buddy, my poodle can eat better pussy than you,” the secretary said.’
‘So I guess she was fired on the spot too,’ suspected Jean-Claude.
‘He gave her a choice,’ I said, ‘either getting fired, or taking her poodle to the vet and have him put down.’
‘What did she do?’ Jean-Claude asked.
‘Put down,’ I said. ‘Apparently the animal wasn’t thát good at eating pussy. Anita had only told him that to annoy him.’
‘Well well… ‘Jean-Claude said. ‘And that’s why you are looking for a new job?’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I am a worker by nature.’
‘What things can you do?’
‘Everything, pal. Give me any work and I’ll start right at it. As long as it is not too tiring, I am happy. When I get tired, I become a nasty motherfucker, and I wouldn’t do that to the people. I am getting rather tired at the moment, with the divorce and all. What the hell is holding up my coffee and cognac, Jean-Claude? There are more cafés nearby, you know. Same thing every fucking time! Half an hour later and a person hasn’t even ordered yet. Get going, get your lazy ass out of here and make with the drinks!’
He hurried to the bar. I had been cheered up for a moment by the suffering of the poor sap, but that was already in the past. Yes, I was tired. My physical condition is nothing to write home about. That is, for a large part, my own fault. I exclusively eat junk food, I smoke and I drink, I don’t exercise and I’m a hypochondriac. When I only as much as see somebody that looks tired, then I think I am too. Jean-Claude looked very tired and, wham, I was so whacked that it doesn’t need a Polaroid. Don’t talk to me about sports. I used to do sports. I wasn’t a bad tennis player. The fuckness was that I couldn’t tell my forehand from my backhand. It needs no argument I regularly smashed the ball over the stands, or hit myself in the gob with my racket. That last thing once happened when I was forty-love up against Gerard Nilis, the head mechanic of the Mazda dealership. It was a pity that I had to be carried off and never had a chance to finish the match because Gerard got fired the same week after he had humped the boss’ secretary in the grease pit.
There came Jean-Claude with the coffee and cognac. I paid him and told him to beat it. I don’t like tired people around me. I counted my money. Only a hundred and twenty euros left. Not exactly an amount to start singing the loudest song about. How much did I have on the secret bank account about which Véronique knew nothing? At the most a couple of thousand euros of hard earned savings. A big chunk out of that would go to my lawyer, but for now my lawyer could get bend. I would pay him the day I’d get rich. But the question was: how was I going to get rich? Probably not by sitting in café The Bars drinking coffee and cognac. It was not like I was wasting my time, for I was thinking and making plans, was I right or not? To get a job, that would be the thing to do. First convincing my mother I was moving in with her for a while, then finding that job, and then? Yes, what then? Where are our lives leading to, what’s after death, what’s the point of it all? Those were worries for later.
I was thinking about something. The judge may have assigned everything to my wife, but wasn’t I allowed to pick up some clothes and personal belongings? I was going to do that right away. But how? I had no car. Goddamnit, who could ever have predicted that I was going to sink so low as to not having a car? Not me. What could I do? Borrowing a car, that seemed a good idea. ‘Jean-Claude!’ I yelled. ‘Come over here buddy.’
As he came shuffling near, I sipped my coffee and took a substantial gulp of cognac. Damn, that was strong coffee. I lit a cigarette. ‘Jean-Claude,’ I said, ‘can I borrow your car for half a day?’
‘My car?’ he said. ‘I don’t have a car.’
‘Why don’t you have a car?’ I sternly asked.
‘Because the judge assigned it to my wife, the bastard,’ Jean-Claude said.
‘You should have seen my judge,’ I said. ‘If there is one bastard here, then it’s him. With his stupid little beard and his chiselled chin.’
‘Mine had a stupid little beard too,’ Jean-Claude said.
‘Yes, but did he had a chiselled chin?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Jean-Claude.
I was thinking. Jean-Claude was too. Eventually I said: ‘maybe it was the same judge… ‘
‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ Jean-Claude said.
‘What was yours’ name? I asked.
‘Judge Van Vorteghem,’ he said.
‘Mine judge De Smaele,’ I said.
He was thinking. I wasn’t. I almost immediately said: ‘No, then it’s not the same one.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘And so you can’t help me get a car?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Then leave me alone,’ I said crossly. How the hell is it possible in this world of ours? Never, once someone manages to reach out and give someone else a helping hand, for instance with a car. I took another few swigs.
THE THIRD CHAPTER
Like I said, I was sitting in café The Bars, mapping out my future. It had become clear to me that it was my intention to drive to Véronique’s house to pick up clothes and related knickknacks. It’s a good thing I don’t care about personal belongings. Stuff like my illuminated globe, my Stef Kamil Carlens autograph, or my book about wines of the Provence, I could leave behind me permanently with a clear conscience. There was a new life to be built up here and trivial amulets had no place in it.
But how was I going to make my way to my ex-wife’s house? I made a decision. With a taxi. This was the plan: with a taxi hither; quickly gather the necessary items, than to Plastron street 42. Then we’ll see what happens next. I drew courage from these preparations and my fatigue partly made way. Stronger even, I was proud at myself. And suddenly over the moon that I was going to be released from that rotten Véronique.
We had met in the waiting room of doctor Henry Robyns. Because of my youth and such, I was in need of mental help. I had taken up a job at a blacksmith to pay with the there earned money for a psychiatrist. My task was applying little horseshoes on ponies, a thing for which I proved too have a certain talent. The blacksmith, Lucien De Cranck, even asked me to join him permanently. I refused. Before I had looked for this cushy job, I first had asked my mother for the money to pay the psychiatrist. ‘Are you insane?’ she said. ‘First of all, psychiatrists are quacks, and secondly, I don’t have the money for things like that. I am a poor woman.’
She wasn’t. After my father got murdered, she had received four million Belgian Franks from the insurance company, but she carefully hid that money, the stingy bitch. I was lucky I didn’t had to pay her money for letting me live with her. If there was one in urgent need for money, it was I. Due to circumstances, I hadn’t finished any of my schools, and the labour market wasn’t looking for someone like me. That temporal job at the blacksmith’s was the first labour I had ever done. Luckily, I got paid hush hush, so I could keep on the dole. The dole money was something like eighteen thousand Frank, enough to pay for my booze and cigarettes. No, it was no fat pickings for the youth during those plentiful times at the end of the twentieth century.
Doctor Robyns was recommended to me by a wacko I had been in school with, whom I sometimes met in my then regular bar The Bitch, which later burned down to the ground during a party to which one could only come carrying a torch. The Bitch’ landlord, Ronny Bitch, always had those original party ideas.
Vincent Mammelock, the wacko, had said that doctor Robyns had helped him tremendously. ‘Since I’ve seen him,’ he said, ‘I am all… what’s that called when you’re no longer abnormal?’
‘Normal,’ I said.
‘I am all normal,’ he said.
‘What was your problem?’ I asked.
‘I had that illness, I forgot the name, then you’re always with two.’
‘Schizophrenia,’ I said.
‘Yes, that was bothering me, but I’m now over it,’ he said. ‘Not true!’ he yelled in a completely different voice.
‘I don’t think you are completely over it, Vincent,’ I said.
‘Yes, I am,’ he said, ‘but my other personality still has some problems. But what do I care. As long as I am healthy. I’m very egotistic you know.’
‘Isn’t that hard for a schizo?’
‘I wouldn’t know, I am not a schizo. Say, do you want to come to the party this Friday? I can sell you a torch for hardly any money if you like. I’ve laid hold of a few of the best quality.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘this Friday I have to be somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘That is none of your business, Vincent.’
‘You are right,’ he said, ‘I apologise.’ ‘It is my business!’ he yelled out. It seemed that this doctor Robyns was not a Nobel Prize candidate, but I decided to give him a shot. I made an appointment and that Friday night I was sitting in his waiting room for the first time. A girl was sitting there with me, who didn’t look half bad. She wore a blouse and a skirt and open shoes, a for those days not undaring outfit. Her hair displayed some curling here and there, but not in a way that it disturbed me to a degree that it made me sick. She had intelligent eyes behind intelligent glasses. Her nose was neither turned-up nor Jewish, rather something in-between. Her legs were hairless. ‘Do you come here often?’ I asked her.
‘Twice a week,’ she said after a hesitation that seemed to have lasted forever.
‘I’m hoping for three times,’ I said, ‘but that is for the doctor to decide. This is my first time you know. How was your first time?’
‘Rather heavy,’ she said. ‘It was with a docker. He immediately jammed his enormous shlong up my arse. I wasn’t used to that. Kept me awake for days.’
‘I meant with the shrink,’ I said.
‘I think he’s too old to have sex with,’ she said. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty four,’ I answered.
‘That seems just about the right age,’ she said. ‘But you’ll have to forgive me I don’t want to have sex with you anyway. I find sex in a waiting room filthy. Actually, I always find sex filthy.’ Right then I should have known better.
We smoked our cigarettes without much eroticism. In this way we got talking. I found her an interesting chick. I should have known better then. ‘Why are you seeing doctor Robyns?’ she asked.
‘Because I got over my father’s death way too quickly,’ I said, ‘and that doesn’t seem particularly normal to me. And furthermore, I am quite bonkers, although I am the only one with that perception. Maybe I am not bonkers at all. But hey, not being bonkers and thinking you are, that can hardly be called normal behaviour. To top it off, I have a whopper of an Oedipus complex with which I never bother my mother. Again, not normal, I’ll admit. And finally, I can say I am enormously paranoid, except when I am pursued.’
‘Are you that often pursued?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Well, in that case, you better have yourself checked out by doctor Henry Robyns.’
‘What do you have checked out?’ I asked.
‘Everything concerning sex,’ she said
‘Like what?’
‘You name it,’ she said.
‘Bananafilia?’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘That you have a craving to be penetrated by a banana the whole time.’
‘Shit, I ain’t got that,’ she said. ‘But thanks for the tip. Maybe that’s how I will get over all of my complexes. Who knows.’
Right then I should have known better.
Doctor Henry Robyns was seeing a customer out of his office, and this time it was Véronique’s turn, as the girl had said her name was.
After her, it was my turn. She waited till I had finished. Together, we went for a drink at café The Registry, and so we learned to get to know one another. What an ignorant naive idiot I was. I even married her. If that isn’t ignorant and naive and idiotic, I don’t know what is. Nevertheless, our marriage did start promising. Although, it all depends on what you call promising. That banana business soon started to get very irritating. And things went from bad to worse. This couldn’t go on. The aforementioned divorce was imminent. Good thing we didn’t have kids. That was mostly because of me and Véronique. Neither of us was fond of children. I find having children effeminate and she finds having children not matching her inborn repulsion for those little brats.
‘Jean-Claude,’ I yelled. ‘Call me a taxi will you, pal.’
‘Certainly, Fazio,’ he said, and immediately grabbed the phone.
Moments later he announced the taxi would be at the spot in ten minutes.
‘Ten minutes… ‘ I mumbled to myself. ‘How can I spend those?’
I looked around for a left-behind newspaper at a table. No. Al that was left behind had been taken by someone. So there I was, with nothing to do and waiting for a taxi. I finished my coffee, and my cognac, and I smoked another cigarette or two, three, soon I had lost count. Ten minutes quickly turned into fifteen, twenty minutes, and then I had lost count again. It then took considerable time for the taxi finally arrived. I left The Bars and got in it. 'They told me ten minutes,’ I said.
‘Not to me,’ the driver said. ‘Which way and where to , my friend?’
‘Just do me the Wild Overway number 68,’ I said.
‘Beautiful surroundings,’ he said. And left. ‘Seen the match yesterday?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Fascinating spectacle. It turned really exciting at two all. Then Carlos Mendoza started one of his renowned rushes. He passed Juan Funtes like he was made out of air, same with Alfonso Dos Perros, Ricardo Pilãr, Piramantico Isabella and Florian Urbani, after which he spooned the old pigskin just wide of the goal post. I could just… ! And they say guys like that make 375,000 euros a month. I once made some calculations: if I want to make that kind of money, I have to drive 4,755,604 kilometres a month. Without ever stopping for gas, food, a knap or a red light. I’d like to see you try. If only I had become a hairdresser, like my father. What was your father?’
‘He was a night watchman.’
‘Hard job.’
‘’Especially in winter. It wasn’t too bad in summer. The sun sometimes only sets at 10.32 pm and rises at 4.16 am. Those are short nights, so there is not much watching involved.’
‘Yes, you’re right. I, myself, have a preference for the autumn. The leaves falling from the trees; the first colds; regular light chill rains, yes, I like that. Every colour seems a shade of sepia. Kids, splashing about in puddles; a dog seeking shelter against a sudden gust of wind; a tram jingling its sad song. Call me a romantic, but I can get tears in my eyes from it.’
‘I wouldn’t call you a romantic. Rather a complete idiot. A tram jingling its sad song… it’s a long time ago I heard gibberish from this calibre.’
‘Am I wrong, or is milord an intellectual?’ he asked.
‘Wrong,’ I said.
‘What a relief. You see, I am not particularly fond of intellectuals. Only yesterday I had one in my cab. He wanted to go to the museum by all means. “And then go staring at fucking incomprehensible paintings the whole day?” I told him. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. Typical for intellectuals. Just give me a sound worker, they never bother me, unless they’re really shitfaced. Only the day before yesterday I had one of those in my cab. He hardly sat down or he wanted to start barfing. Not me. I immediately stopped, hauled him out of the car and gave him a few punches to his muzzle that would smart for a few days. This I vow. We’re there, I believe.’
‘No, not yet,’ I said.
‘Goddamnit, you’re right, what was I thinking. What’s the address again?’
‘Wild Overway number 68.’
‘Wild Overway… right, yes, that’s here left, then straight ahead for a few hundred meters, second to the right, at the end of the roundabout make a diagonally left, and the third right… ‘
‘Left,’ I said.
‘You’re right. Come to think of it. We’re there in about four, five minutes. You can never be sure, with traffic these days. Before you know it, you’re in a jam and then you’re really screwed. I’m getting fucked up, from those present day jams. My hairs are standing on end, from my arms to the back of my neck. Triple screwed over, man, that’s what it is. Buggered senseless till I get jiggered stiff. What was that again about the roundabout?’
‘Diagonally to the left.’
‘Oh right. Peace of tart. And to where does the journey go?’
‘I already told you.’
‘You’re right. The thing I meant was, if it is personal or business you had to go there.’
‘Personal.’
‘For me it’s for business.’
‘Look out for that tractor!’
‘Yeah yeah, I’ve seen it. You have to be pretty blind for not seeing a tractor like that. Boy, what a whopping tractor. There, the first, the second, the third, and presto… ‘
‘Left,’ I said.
‘Damned, you’re right again. The first… The second… The third… Left… There, we’ve finally ended up in the Wilde Overway. Number?’
’68. What the hell is wrong with your memory?’
‘A lot. Don’t get me started. A lot, man. 64… 66… 68… ‘
‘We’re there.’
‘I thought so. That’ll be eight euro forty.’
‘I gave him eight euro fifty. ‘Keep the change.’
‘The kind sir is too good for this world. See you.’
‘See you.’
I got off. The taxi drove straight ahead and soon disappeared behind the corner. It was my original intention to take this same taxi to the Plastron street, but another fifteen minutes in the company of this deranged driver would be too much for me. I was going to call for another taxi at my ex-wife’s place.
From across the street, I looked at my former house. What a silly house. And small! Never again will I live in such a ridiculous attached house like that. Never.
Véronique’s lawyer’s Mercedes was parked in front of the door. I walked straight passed it and rang the bell.
THE FOURTH CHAPTER
I rang again. The dog was barking, but no one else.
[...]
To be continued? It gets better & better...
Friday, 21 October 2011
Looking At Things
Don was dressed in a plain red shirt and charcoal linen shorts. He had seated himself on a backless concrete bench in the warm wind, looking out over the abiding sea. Boats were ploughing on its surface in the distance... shrimping boats by the looks of it. Don could never get enough of this sight. The vast, pale ocean lay before him, spread out in all directions. But it looked small and glistening as if a giant had sneezed a cloud of diamonds on it.
On the boardwalk behind him, a trail of holidaymakers was strolling along in the midday sun. They left behind them an impression of eternity and mellowness, formed by their slow steps. He saw a man running bend over to regain possession of his straw summer hat that had been blown off. Classic. Don averted his eyes from the act and continued watching the wasp drowning in his glass of lemonade.
A dainty young woman came walking up the path from the village. She was wearing baggy jeans and beat sneakers. A gloomy figure despite the bright red lipstick. Under her arm, she carried some books. Don shot up and positioned himself before her. ‘Hi there... will you come and throw this frisbee with me?’
[I'm as tired as this text...]
On the boardwalk behind him, a trail of holidaymakers was strolling along in the midday sun. They left behind them an impression of eternity and mellowness, formed by their slow steps. He saw a man running bend over to regain possession of his straw summer hat that had been blown off. Classic. Don averted his eyes from the act and continued watching the wasp drowning in his glass of lemonade.
A dainty young woman came walking up the path from the village. She was wearing baggy jeans and beat sneakers. A gloomy figure despite the bright red lipstick. Under her arm, she carried some books. Don shot up and positioned himself before her. ‘Hi there... will you come and throw this frisbee with me?’
[I'm as tired as this text...]
Shortpants Romance
The surest way to alienate yourself from other people, is to write to them about your fears & dreams.
What I must do is writing
Smear on your War Paint, and sharpen the arrows:
We’re getting out on the Path!
So plug out your iPod
Set yourself for hunger
In the jungle, we'll be hiding.
Do you hear?
A terrible silence broke loose.
We’re getting out on the Path!
So plug out your iPod
Set yourself for hunger
In the jungle, we'll be hiding.
Do you hear?
A terrible silence broke loose.
Monday, 10 October 2011
LikeUnlike
A rouble for your thoughts, Comrades!
Two roubles for your thighs.
People are strange
My Farm is Dead
I shot Bambi’s Mom
Good old voodoo
The expression of an old, tan-coloured sadness, with salty tears, slowly trickling down her beard... who’ll design an emoticon for that?
Two people like this...
While biking over to my cushy office job this morning, I passed a bunch of workers: roughnecks, in filthy oil coats, mud & slime... they looked so happy! Then I heard a goat bleating from a cornfield. Perhaps John Lennon was right and nothing is real.
One idealist is more dangerous than 10 homicidal maniacs
Twenty monks in a roller disco
Every man needs a motto!
God should have tried harder..
Twenty-seven white mice dancing the can-can in a grungy fin de siècle interior. Smoky women lure and gaslamps yellowing apaches' twisted faces... An apoplectic dwarf stumbling through the room in a cloud of absinth.
Dreams of stainless peace and complete meaningless importance.
No people like this.
Two roubles for your thighs.
People are strange
My Farm is Dead
I shot Bambi’s Mom
Good old voodoo
The expression of an old, tan-coloured sadness, with salty tears, slowly trickling down her beard... who’ll design an emoticon for that?
Two people like this...
While biking over to my cushy office job this morning, I passed a bunch of workers: roughnecks, in filthy oil coats, mud & slime... they looked so happy! Then I heard a goat bleating from a cornfield. Perhaps John Lennon was right and nothing is real.
One idealist is more dangerous than 10 homicidal maniacs
Twenty monks in a roller disco
Every man needs a motto!
God should have tried harder..
Twenty-seven white mice dancing the can-can in a grungy fin de siècle interior. Smoky women lure and gaslamps yellowing apaches' twisted faces... An apoplectic dwarf stumbling through the room in a cloud of absinth.
Dreams of stainless peace and complete meaningless importance.
No people like this.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Four Is More
The refound love for analogue photography started earlier this year when I found a strange, little, cheap-ass camera made of the worst of plastics. It was equipped with a series of lenses, fit for a tarantula. A closer inspection revealed two things: it had four lenses and the word “sport” was printed on it. I’m not a big fan of active sports, but I reasoned that pressing the shutter and turning the loading wheel would not be excessive exercise. I loved the low techness of the thing. So I decided to give it a go. It was 80 cents; not a huge amount. I took it home and then forgot all about it.
Later this year, before going on vacation, I remembered my ‘sports camera’ and packed it. In a Chinese store in Spain, I bought a film and started making pics with it. Since then, I filled two more rolls, one in Paris and one around the house. I still haven’t made up my mind if I like the gimmicky side of the operation (it smacks of hipness!) and the purpose of four exposures on one photograph escapes me somewhat; although it should capture some sort of ‘action’ with it. But again: it is the lack of sophistication and rough & ready side (this time the strange colours are not due to old film, but because the camera is a piece of junk) that wins me over.
Later this year, before going on vacation, I remembered my ‘sports camera’ and packed it. In a Chinese store in Spain, I bought a film and started making pics with it. Since then, I filled two more rolls, one in Paris and one around the house. I still haven’t made up my mind if I like the gimmicky side of the operation (it smacks of hipness!) and the purpose of four exposures on one photograph escapes me somewhat; although it should capture some sort of ‘action’ with it. But again: it is the lack of sophistication and rough & ready side (this time the strange colours are not due to old film, but because the camera is a piece of junk) that wins me over.
Hairs & Scratches
While I draw my own outline on a lake of felt, a flock of death is flying over.
They’re migrating south for the winter...
What I did was: buying an old East German camera cheaply, a Praktica, one that has to be (guess-)operated completely manually. Just snap for the hell of it and may God have mercy on us all... no safety net. No training wheels. I then put in a roll of film that was at least 5 years past its final processing date and went a-photographing. I may have accidentally let some light come onto the film at taking the roll out, unfamiliar as I was with the Wissenschaftswunder of the proletariat’s finest camera. Brought the roll to the photo shop and then had to wait for a week. I didn’t had them printed, just developed (who needs all the paper work?). Then I put the negatives under the scanner, hairs, scratches & all...
And then... I was most pleasantly surprised & delighted with the unforeseen results of rough, blurry, spacious, delightful, human images. They satisfy more than one passion: the passion of handwork, of low-tech, true image-making practise and, most of all of image imperfection. No more slick, neat, clean, licked-to-death, anal-retentive überboring photography for me; I leave that to National Geographic, Playboy and other women’s magazines and I go grunge. If it hadn’t rained so much yesterday, I would have dragged my poor body out of the house and bought some more films, perhaps even black & white.
[This is not intended as a snobbish plead for analogue photography nor a damnation of digital superficiality; just a celebration of a rare outburst of passion in me.]
They’re migrating south for the winter...
What I did was: buying an old East German camera cheaply, a Praktica, one that has to be (guess-)operated completely manually. Just snap for the hell of it and may God have mercy on us all... no safety net. No training wheels. I then put in a roll of film that was at least 5 years past its final processing date and went a-photographing. I may have accidentally let some light come onto the film at taking the roll out, unfamiliar as I was with the Wissenschaftswunder of the proletariat’s finest camera. Brought the roll to the photo shop and then had to wait for a week. I didn’t had them printed, just developed (who needs all the paper work?). Then I put the negatives under the scanner, hairs, scratches & all...
And then... I was most pleasantly surprised & delighted with the unforeseen results of rough, blurry, spacious, delightful, human images. They satisfy more than one passion: the passion of handwork, of low-tech, true image-making practise and, most of all of image imperfection. No more slick, neat, clean, licked-to-death, anal-retentive überboring photography for me; I leave that to National Geographic, Playboy and other women’s magazines and I go grunge. If it hadn’t rained so much yesterday, I would have dragged my poor body out of the house and bought some more films, perhaps even black & white.
[This is not intended as a snobbish plead for analogue photography nor a damnation of digital superficiality; just a celebration of a rare outburst of passion in me.]
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