Winter, step by step E-Book

Christiaan Thierens

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 585

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Alexis (24) is a young man with mild disabilities. Intelligent, but opinionated, passive and very introverted. During an ordinary December week, he is confronted with an avalanche of surprising experiences and shocking memories - stimuli that fuel his frustrations and expand his understanding. It becomes a week of over-living, amid the dogmas of family, the pedanticism of teachers, the decadence of the disco, the stress of a relationship, the questions about his orientation - and the omnipresent shadow of the war, which still doesn't really seem over. The story not only reveals the development of Alexis' self-awareness, it also paints a fascinating picture of daily life in Flanders circa 1975.

Leseprobe

DEDICATION

To all who did not know any better

And still do not know.

BEFOREHAND: WINTER AND ALEXIS

It's winter outside, and cold. That bodes well for the end of the year. Maybe it will be an unusual winter after all, a real winter - finally - and not that bland affair of recent years, with lots of chilly rain and days of gloom. A winter, hopefully, in which people walk around unworldly like Western Eskimos, in which the streets shine with the much-hated road salt, and he, Alexis, looks at the ground even more than usual while his thoughts and dreams linger somewhere on the Decembers of long ago, of his youth. At those memorable holidays ...

He shakes his head and won't stay inside for long today. He already has his own bunch of keys in his hand. He has to go outside; he doesn't want to get caught in that net of his thoughts, in the confusion. No, not again.

Once it was different, that's for sure. And perhaps better. Although ...

That morning, long ago, when little Alexis got up, everything was still so crisp, bright white. Against the porch, the snow was as much as three fists thick, and in the little garden, there was nothing left of the truncated roses or the pile of rotted rhubarb leaves. Everything he saw, near or far - it all seemed clothed with a soft lambskin. The narrow world from their house to the garden wall was leveled with itself. The crooked tiles of the terrace merged imperceptibly into the frozen lawn - he could only suspect them. Nothing but snow, painfully white snow, in which only the round shadows brought some relief. But what struck him most of all, and pleased him in spite of everything, was that it was all so pristine, not yet trodden upon by anything or anyone. No trace of a bunch of hungry looking robins, or of Vanroyen's vicious, immortal alley cat.

As it had always been on a real, early winter morning, he thinks now, as it would not be in barely an hour.

It's not just the light that hurts, it's also the memory. Just like in that song. Tangible, almost audible memories ... in the silence of dawn, in that darkest month. When mother was still alive.

Although, back then it was different. Whenever she pulled the plastic shutter up vigorously and briskly in the morning - seemingly angry and irritated, but without reason - and then saw the chilly, blinding carpet of snow appear in a few movements, she sighed. Perhaps because she was thinking of the filth that would soon be on her floor, perhaps because she was struggling to get the stove going again. And then she pushed Alexis aside at the kitchen window rather cheekily (although she was actually a very small woman) and laughed, perhaps with some slight derision, even contempt. For her youngest stood there gawking open-mouthed at the scene, in love and admiration. He loved it, yes, he loved that snow so intimately. That pristine snow. But not that ... gunk!

"You are an incorrigible romantic," she had said to him several times, and not only in those moments. But never did he know how she came to that. While he himself later found her so often romantic, even sentimental, who knows even verging on slightly hysterical - had he known that word as a young lad. And yet he loved her, perhaps even more than the snow. Then. Different, though. More intimately.

She herself was an only child. Fate had ordained that, like so many things in her life - Schicksal, she called it. Actually, she would normally have had an older brother named Alexander, but he was stillborn. So when she gave birth to her youngest herself, she wanted to remember her lamented brother anyway. Alexander was not to be called Alexander - because of the Prince Regent Alexander, who was despised by all the family as a bonvivant - but then Alexis, a compromise. He himself had always thought it a beautiful name.

Naming back then was no small thing. Normally, the newborn was given the name of one of the grandparents, or a slight variation of it. That was just the way things were. Moreover, the municipal Population Department (called the Civil Registry) as well as the Baptismal Register of the church had to agree to it. It sometimes caused problems if the proposed name for the child did not appear on the official calendar of saints. This was probably why his parents almost immediately abandoned their first idea for a suitable name, Glenn. However, they were both unanimous in their support: his father because it reminded him of John Glenn, the famous American astronaut; his mother because, in addition to all kinds of classical music, she was also captivated by Glenn Miller and the myth surrounding that music-making pilot. But objections were feared from many quarters, and so the memory of Alexander's stillborn brother had finally provided that lovely variant: Alexis. It was a posthumous tribute.

In those days, his mother was the only one who really counted for him. Father did exist, but somewhere in the background. He worked very hard during the day so that the family would never lack anything, and sometimes he came home later, even when all three children had already finished their tasks. It was mother who was completely, and only, responsible for the daily administration, for education and for discipline. But also for well-being, family warmth and trust - and the latter certainly applied to her dealings with him, Alexis, the junior of the heap.

Her confidence, very special, indeed. And bizarre. The best memories - and at the same time the most poignant - he had of the times when he was sick. No, he was not sickly, but neither was he in perfect health, and even then somewhat unstable and somewhat on the weak side - something that would be confirmed more and more over the next few years. But he would never forget how he was truly cherished in those moments of illness: father always called him Sonny Boy then. And from his mother, he would receive at his bedside a bottle of pink or yellow yogurt - heavenly, and not only in taste - accompanied by some of Anco's rusks and a cup of hot, fresh broth. To regain his strength. Maybe in a different order.

Now yes, all of this was the normal, loving approach at home when a child was sick or feverish, whether with Alexis or any other scion. But there was one special and woeful "privilege" that was reserved only for him, and that was his mother's outpourings, about the sad personal feelings that dominated her days at the time and which she confided endlessly to him. They were not conversations in the true sense of the word, for they began when he was barely a toddler - not yet truly proficient in contact - nor were they expected to be answered. They were sighs and jeremiads she uttered to herself that had to do with her own family and her recently deceased mother Marga, with the pain of saying goodbye, with death, and with a mass of frustrations around that. All this was then fed dramatically by hypersensitive fragments from the opera repertoire.

Of course, it was only much later that Alexis began to seriously question this strange form of maternal trust and the problems that plagued her. At the time, he simply did not understand her sighs and wails - of course not - and he simply sat there like a mute child, or a passive sounding board, as one would say these days. But nevertheless, these incidents unconsciously left a deep impression on him that would undeniably influence his subsequent emotional life. Or affect it? Never again would he forget the aria of Mama, Mama! from Cavallaria Rusticana, never again would he be able to banish from his mind the sobbing lament of Paljas. Because little Alexis had to experience that not once, but at least ten times, each time accompanied by his mother's grief that always culminated in a few sparse tears toward the end of the song.

Mostly he sat and endured everything in his Grey Elephant - a sturdy wooden rocking chair that Fons, his handy grandfather and christening godfather, had made especially for him after Germany, in the long winter of his death. That godfather Fons was Mom's father and so had also died - also far too young - as had his wife Marga. However, it was certainly not because of him that the tears flowed so often and abundantly - the man was actually talked about very little, except in a haze of mystery and heroism - it was mainly because of mother Marga and the misery around her that mother wept. But to fathom all that, Alexis' head still had to grow a great deal in years, wisdom and wit.

However, he soon realized, with a kind of childlike Fingerspitzengefühl, that mother Marga's hold on her daughter must have been unimaginably great, and that her father Fons had been allowed to emerge from the scenery only occasionally. In short, the situation at the little boy's home turned out afterwards to be exactly the same as it had been with his own mother's a generation earlier. But he only discovered this much later, although the shock was no less for that.

The music of Leoncavallo and Mascagni in itself was poignant and melodramatic, and together with his mother's misunderstood grief, it left deep marks on the toddler, willingly or unwillingly. The melodies came from an imposing and precious piece of furniture that incorporated both a perfect Bell radio with lamps and a pickup. The sound was incomparably warm and made any later, even expensive transistor pale, but the polished furniture itself was also worth seeing: it filled an entire corner of the living room and even had a sort of display case at the top along its entire length. In it were four large photographs in black and white, nicely lined up. This was not to be underestimated, because they showed an important part of family life, especially its emotional side.

On the far left in this "window" was the last photo of St. Nicholas with the three children, on mandatory visit in Grand Bazar - little Alexis seated on holy knee. This photo, of course, by the nature of things, had to be renewed every December.

Then you had an artistic photo en profil of his mother in her younger years, with a romantically wavy hairstyle and hair that fell almost to her bum - she almost looked here like a voluptuous model from Hollywood, the type of movie star that the kids at Fa. Vandamme's (next to the school gate) could run together with a ball of gum for half a cent. This was a photo with a story, and Mother was very taken with the portrait, being the only one, perhaps, as Alexis found his mother here simply unrecognizable and even ugly.

Third, you had a picture on a rare, thicker kind of paper, which represented one Aunt Hilla from Stuttgart at breast height. This so-called "aunt" was not a relative, but again this was a separate and emotional story, which Alexis had to deal with drop by drop and repeatedly. Emotional the photo certainly was, for here too there was a risk that at the mere sight his mother would get a lump in her throat and glassy eyes with emotion. Which in turn, without exception, was always the case with the fourth print, namely the last photograph taken of mother Marga before her death. In the eyes of little toddler Alexis, however, there was no noticeable difference between THEIR grandmother and the German aunt: they were both black and white, both in the same pose, chest-high, with a sweet, affable facial expression, and with even the same appearance, especially the developed bosom. As befitted the breed of grandmothers and distinguished ladies.

Those photos ... That was at least half a family history. While godfather Fons was "somewhere" in a shoebox, on top of countless postcards and prayer cards. Was this right, was this wrong - and above all, was this fair? Either way, in Alexis' judgment, his godfather had never received the honor and recognition due to him, especially in comparison to the other predecessors. This did not change - quite the contrary - when his parents also ended up in the showcase, first his mother, and then, most recently, his father.

Always he had wanted so much to know more about that strange godfather, that hero he had never known, but as a wise twenty-something he now began to realize that the less the box was opened, the bigger and richer the myth surrounding his ancestor would be. So the box just stayed closed.

After an hour, Alexis is already out and about in the direction of Hemelaer Square, a remarkable area because in a radius of a few hundred meters, there are four schools here: the "vocational school," where he himself sweated and lusted a lot; the Abbey School, which his older brother and even his friend Paul had as clients; and the Pedagogic School - something for teachers, where strangely enough his father had been an "internal student" for several years. I say oddly, because, according to him, his father never had anything to do with teaching, except as a victim or a clever playboy, if his earlier stories were to be believed. And then, somewhere in that educational neighborhood, there is another elongated and low building with a facade of dark blue tiles that houses mostly preschoolers, up to the age of seven. That's a school that everyone in the family attended and that apparently only I remembered about.

Alexis notices that the snow has indeed turned into a dirty mess, both on the roadway and the sidewalk. He's kind of pissed about that now, too, not just his mother at the time. The only place that still has a pristine and shiny white coating is the remains of the old weaving mill - a big pile of stones and crumbling walls that looks more like a medieval ruin than a factory. Actually, it is the remains of a German bombing raid during World War II. And he wonders, for the umpteenth time, why this mess has still not been cleaned up by the city, as has been done everywhere else. Perhaps as a pointer to the dissolute youth? The Provo rebels, the hippies, and yes, the college kids of today?

Now, as with everything in life, the medal of war, and in particular that bombing, had two sides. Friend Paul, who could explain it all well, would call it ambivalent or ambiguous, although according to Alexis he was "ambivalent" himself ... But yes, that war. With, on the one hand, the injustices, the lies and the horrors, which his mother sometimes used to talk about in a cruel way when she was in shape, especially when she had drunk too much wine - she was just unstoppable then and always did it vehemently and particularly excitedly, almost hysterically. Sometimes she even seemed to screech at some points in her story.

On the other hand, you then had his father with his rather pleasant anecdotes about the war. About the opportunism - or something like that - and the unlimited creativity of the ordinary Flemish citizen in the art of survival. Like the rush of as many as a hundred neighbors, who ran with all kinds of knives - butcher knives, peelers, even forest axes - to the pasture of farmer Smet because there lay a dead horse, felled by a Messerschmitt of the merciless Luftwaffe. He also liked to tell about Mr. Flor from the Pedagogic School, a real brainiac and the equal of Einstein, who, however, always wandered back and forth between his lessons to the closet with the technical material at the back of the classroom to have yet another drink of the day. "After three hours," his father then laughed amusedly when he had once again told the story to his attentive offspring, "after three hours there wasn't much teaching left, believe me!"

That other, sensational and entertaining side of the war the children did get to hear only when their mother was still alive. After that, it was basically over with the father. He retreated in front of his television set and became surly and sullen. Alexis couldn't remember ever seeing the man smile again as a widower - maybe he did, a little bit, when family friend and former colleague Casimir came to visit and they sat together over a glass, bickering. But he never wanted to talk about the misery and sufferings of war. Just like his father Bart, whom Alexis had never known either: it was tacitly accepted among the adult family members that ancestor Bart kept silent about his First World War, even though he had experienced it at first hand in seven of the eight major battles. The royal honors were displayed on the wall of the reception room. For posterity. For all eternity.

Look, it's starting to snow again. Alexis straightens his collar and pulls the zipper of his coat up to his chin. A little strange after all, this snow, because he hasn't seen many spiders in the house, and as far as he can remember, there hasn't been one morning of persistent fog in the month of August, either. And surely those are popular signs in the vernacular that it will definitely be a hard, white Christmas. Bullshit, in other words. Also the saying that one has 'better winter hands than snowballs' is not true, because he likes to throw a snowball, for sure. Unless they mean something else with those "snowballs" - he didn't think of that before, he grins ...

It's all said and asserted, yes, like all these other so-called truths and unshakable certainties, and he hates it terribly. Always had. Yes, it's still fresh in his mind: on the eve of his Solemn Communion, he felt like such a hero, such a wise smart-ass that he swore his life would be one big crusade against that kind of nonsense and superstition. He was barely an adolescent then, but still ... Above his bed in the cold, shared bedroom - under the pictures of Elvis, David Cassidy, Chris Andrews and the heavenly Sal Mineo - he had even affixed a piece of cardboard that read, "Here's where it all ... doesn't happen!

One certainly did not expect such a thing.

He didn't actually understand himself what he meant by it, but he felt he was right.

And as crazy as it sounds, that was Alexis in a nutshell.

I.

My father had already fallen asleep in his armchair during the weather reports, and he was still asleep. I had been watching a feature film with Richard Harris, the old man who had also sung the bloody beautiful MacArthur's Park, and occasionally the other old man - mine, that is - who couldn't sing, even in church. It was even with some wistfulness that I watched, because he was sleeping so peacefully and introspectively, while I sat there alone and wide awake with nothing but strange thoughts in me. And restlessness, especially restlessness.

It wasn't a war movie, of course, because then he surely would have stayed awake, if only out of reverence for the postwar traumas and sensibilities that the German Third Reich had left on his late wife. Although ... Even when I turned off the television set with a dry, too loud click, he slept on. His thin upper lip did lift for a moment as if something bothered him, and he noisily picked his nose, his false teeth giving a rarefied whistle that I could never get used to. But he became oblivious to my presence and dreamed on in the only world that still counted for him: his world, the own world of a man who has been through it all, the world of a tired worker at rest, literally and figuratively. Finally.

Perhaps now he would indeed dream of that past world. It would not surprise me; I think more than half of our dreams are about the past. This is also the case with me. More than half, even about the kindergarten of so long ago with those shiny blue wall tiles in the long hallway and my wickerwork with that brightly colored paper that Sister Mechthilde was not pleased about. Or was it Miss Odile? That was in the dream, of course, because in reality I had always been the best in the class at braiding those shiny mats, and certainly at picking and (sometimes daringly) combining the most beautiful colors.

Judging by the almost imperceptible twitching of his fingers, my father was certainly now dreaming of the old days, of his busy, always busy work years. Not just the activities at work, but also and perhaps even more so the busy hustle and bustle of home. With the woman he had remained in love with all his life, with his three growing children and with all the chores and things that a household entails. No, it was not just some ordinary hassle, it was more than that, and in my opinion not normal - he exaggerated in it and my mother followed him, or maybe it was the other way around, because her influence was not to be underestimated. Within the perfect marriage they shared, they found each other day and night in their drive to change, to plan and plan and plan, to tear down, repair and build. And they did everything themselves, almost everything. Wallpapering, painting, removing paneling, reinforcing driveway, doing front yard, even insulating and bricklaying. Only for plastering and floors, central heating and parquet did they call in a specialist - sometimes it was an acquaintance or a neighbor who did the job in black. But even with those fellows, father was a competent, self-appointed helping hand.

Without a doubt, mother had significant management. To the outside world, father was the boss of the family, but in reality it was mother who had the last word. This was not only the case with us, it was typical of those years. I knew that she owned a very beautiful and thick German Zeitschrift, Schöner Wohnen - only one, because it was printed on fancy paper and therefore very expensive - and from it she probably drew her ideas for the ideal interior. If father had let her, she would have turned our small front room into a palatial but sterile gem, something like the parlor at the K. family, a little further down the road. That house had a wide window, so you could easily look in from the street and admire the perfect decor, a picture! Such a showroom was certainly an example for mother, she secretly and jealously looked up to it. Fortunately, my father was different: he didn't like the fact that the sofa and furniture there were always covered with a plastic veil to protect all that beauty from the bad sunlight. Nay, that went too far for him.

Always busy, always changing. That was their life, and they knew what they wanted. They wanted to "get ahead," they wanted to "get higher," and in this they were united, more than ever. We lived in a medium-sized house - I had never known anything else - but if it had been up to them, it would have become a palace, or a villa with a swimming pool. And as if he could read all my critical thoughts then, father would say, "We'll do it for you." After all, we had to have it better than they, who apparently had seen black snow in their early years.

Planning, calculating, preparing ... And so the works always happened. Very much against my will. I didn't like all those changes at all, I found everything perfectly livable as it was. Why go through all that trouble? Moreover, those so-called "improvements" to the living space brought endless weeks of dust, clutter, filth and disorder in which I could not possibly live normally. Really, it drove me crazy at times. Sick. But in the eyes of father and mother I was talking nonsense and was just too sensitive. That would change, they said. That too, yes!

I don't think either of my parents valued rest much, unlike me. Rest in all senses of the word, so both calmness and serenity (what one sometimes says of a landscape or a farming village), but also personal, physical rest, moments of relaxation. Only on Sunday afternoons could you be sure that they were both asleep and snoring on the couch, or locked in their bedroom, but that was to "make babies," we laughed afterwards, especially the two bigger rascals.

Not that I felt unhappy, and if I did, I was unaware of it anyway. But if the miserable work took too long, I would sometimes reluctantly return home from technical school, where I would find another half-ruin. I had a lot of stress then, I had to suffer all that idly. What else could I do?

I remember a seemingly totally insignificant little story that was shown on Dutch television, which at the time was as popular as our own Brussels. It was a short film about a boy having a bad day at school, being bullied by his friend, and then noticing that his bicycle had a flat tire. So an hour of waiting at the streetcar stop. Arriving at the apartment, he discovers his goldfish lying dead in its bowl. No one home, he doesn't even know where anyone is. He goes to the loo, trips, hurts his knee and wets his pants. He then tries to turn on the TV, but it apparently doesn't work. Meanwhile, the boy, a fresh-faced adolescent, is hungry and thirsty, he limps to the refrigerator, and when he opens it, a full bottle of milk falls on the floor: shards everywhere so, and milk, lots of milk, not to be done. Now it really gets too much for him: in desperation, he jumps out the window and commits suicide.

I'll say it: it was a short film, between two programs, and I don't think anyone noticed it except me. But the story made such an impression on me that I still haven't forgotten it. I can still see it all happening before me, although I am now twenty-four and in those days maybe twelve or thirteen - the same age, so to speak, as that adolescent unlucky guy from the movie. I was particularly touched and moved, I recognized myself and my situation very strongly, yes, somehow I made the connection between the incessant chaos at home and the chaos with that boy. But, of course, I was not committing suicide. Although at times the stress and discomfort were also just about untenable for me, in that constant preoccupation of my parents and the others, who happily joined in.

Well, it was an ordinary, and yet strange, quiet evening in late fall. The movie with Richard Harris had ended, the TV was off. I was thinking about myself and my life, consequently also about him there in the armchair. The clock struck eleven and I had the impression it was much later. Five to twelve, for example.

Would I tell him, I wondered? Would I tell him what I had long suspected, even hoped for, and only now knew with certainty? Would I tell him of the past day that had not just gone by like thirteen in a dozen, of that encounter, of that turning point - that milestone in the plain of my still young past?

I was in the appropriate mood and looked at him from the side. He still lay there, like a weathered, worn-out patriarch who had known better times - but of course that was never the case, not even with him. Those better times were but figments of the calendar to give the people some meager comfort and an ounce of self-respect ... Yes indeed, he lay there with that smug wrinkled face, and that ever-even audible rising and falling of his chest.

I decided not to tell him. No. Even though he wouldn't be angry if I woke him up. Nor would he be angry if I told him. He might not hear it. Then again - he just wouldn't understand. At best, perhaps he would pretend to listen with an attentive look, and he would certainly be silent. But his thoughts would not be with my story, they would be with his late wife, my mother - when she was alive and everything still had its place, when she died, when two of the three children had left home, so immemorially long ago - and after a while he would curtsy with a deep sigh, he would stand up wearily and say absentmindedly, "Come, Alexis, to bed."

Of course, you never knew with him.

He might still have witnessed the weather reports, for he had cursed and grunted in his armchair because rain and wind and night frost had been predicted - the inexorable announcement of winter - but he had undoubtedly missed the news afterward, however eventful that might have been with the events in Chile, Nicaragua and Turkey, and especially the latest images of the horrific attack. Barely a thousand kilometers from our front door.

Oh yes, for the first time in months, our gritty prime minister, Christian Democrat like my father, had declared palely and openly before the cameras that all was not well with his government - that there were even "internal tensions”. For the first time since the last election, there had again been open talk of a possible "crisis in the Rue de la Loi," imagine that! And for the first time in my life, I had clearly noticed that even a bloated, arrogant Roman Catholic minister seemed to be able to have real concerns, too, and could visibly age overnight.

Still, even tonight I had been annoyed by his unflappable, self-confident appearance, and especially by the way he had tried to cover up the obvious truth - which would then later be called "diplomatic" or "sober" and even "courageous" in the press of his followers, i.e. the yellow-colored press, of course.

Hadn't my mother once claimed - at a Communion visit, I thought - that she saw a future politician in her sweet little Alexis, because the boy commented on everyone, was annoyed blue at many things and sometimes came out razor sharp? As if that made a good politician! But then, in her heart and mind I was also born to be a great lawyer, a pleader, an orator who made the newspapers every day... How different that ambition had turned out, how sad for her... Just as Patrick, the eldest, had not become a doctor - although a respected scientist - and her girl Connie had not become a proud Mère Supérieure, although she sometimes acted, I think, like a true Sister Superior. Nay, her desires had never actually been fulfilled.

Still, it was not only during that one visit, but also at home at the table that mother suggested her wish that one day I would step into national politics. To defend the pious ideals of her glorious Holland ancestry, to revive the old values and crumbling traditions in our lax times, what else? Naturally, she stood as one behind the Christian anti-revolutionaries of Biesheuvel (not that grubby Joop den Uyl) in the Netherlands, where, after all, her roots lay, through mother Marga. She herself would not be able to stand on the barricades of an ethical revival - by the way, I sometimes critically wondered why not - so I suspected she was counting on me for that. In fact, I think she was once so excited in her discourse at the kitchen table that I had to solemnly promise to become a minister. And I might have promised that, still wet behind the ears. Not without risk, because promises were sacred. And unbreakable - according to the unwritten rules of her, of mother Marga, of the entire Dutch tribe ... and also of me.

I thought my mother was wonderful at times. A lady who deserved all respect, a good woman, a shining example. She had great plans, for each of us. By the way, she invariably claimed that she loved all three of her children equally, although in retrospect I found that principle of "implacable equality" to be highly debatable. Still, she loved us, almost as much as her husband Joseph - or Jeff, as she always called father.

I knew she kept all our school reports, as well as our New Year's letters. Also our class pictures, from every school year. On that score, I certainly envied her, because she thus possessed photos that I actually wanted, and fervently even wanted, photos that usually showed (other than myself) a particularly cute classmate, or worse, a secretly coveted sweet boy from that year. Nay, the only interesting photos in my own possession were a passport photo of the lovely Louis - aka Lou - and a meticulously cropped image of my friend Klaus at a jiujitsu sports camp. Those two portraits I kept safely in the smallest compartment of my wallet. I cherished them like a hidden treasure, like magical miniatures. Until one particular day I discovered they were gone. Just disappeared. Perhaps I had thrown them away in a moment of hopelessness? Had they perhaps fallen out of my wallet? Had I left them somewhere on the bus or something when admiring them? Either way, I had suddenly lost them. They were gone. Forever ...

Crisis in the Rue de la Loi? It had caused outrageous news coverage. Of course, such a thing was eagerly reported. But father had not been annoyed at all - even if he had heard it in a waking state. He was one of those old faithful Christian Democrats from father to son: even if he never said it, he carried the Prime Minister on his hands. I didn't. Never. Not any prime minister. The system was possibly right, but it was not properly applied. Always with exceptions and very clumsy. That was so with every system and every belief, I found: it was all fine and promising, until man interfered, the "phenomenon" of man. Then it was gone to hell. It always was.

Of course father fundamentally disagreed with the proposed state reform and the division of the fatherland - after all, for what else had his own father Bart sacrificed himself in the battles of 14-18? Of course, he too always complained bitterly (and preferably a quarter in advance) when, in his opinion, the refund he received each year from the taxes was too little and too late. But then these were not the faults of the great leader of the nation, but rather of politics, of the group of incompetent liberal and redneck baggers in his entourage. To me he never said this, but I caught it regularly when he was visited by friend Casimir. It was always in that spirit that the two gentlemen squabbled.

For myself, government - and perhaps any government - was little more than a necessary evil, and I accepted the phenomenon for what it was worth. But if I sometimes thought about it more deeply and seriously, I invariably came to the conclusion that it was almost impossible to do good politics in good conscience and keep everyone happy or make everyone more happy. And if I then dared to think even deeper, I discovered that there were good and bad elements in every party program, whether of the prime minister or the opposition. And worse: what one said in the "democratic hemisphere" and what you defended there simply depended on your place in that tribune - whether you were in the majority or in the opposition. And apparently that could change overnight.

It didn't have much to do with what one really believed in, with heart and soul, your own principles, your own fundamental values. After all, you had, of course, the ever-present constraint of the party line and the yoke of party discipline. But the very worst thing in my opinion was that everyone thought this was obvious; that both the press and the politicians, both the minor party members and the heavyweights, just accepted that situation. A modus operandi it was called, yes, that was another handy expression I had come to know through the daily newspaper commentaries on the radio.

Why should I tell him if he didn't listen? Maybe it would interest him after all, against his habit, but in that case I certainly had no right to make him part of my sudden awakening and this different experience of daytime. There was a small chance that he would really care anyway, and he certainly shouldn't - god help me, no! For no matter how old and how unsympathetic he might be at times, he was my father and I was his last resident child - for that reason alone I still loved him. Different from the others, but I loved him anyway. And not just because we shared a past.

Always I had been his worry child. By the age of one, I had been dying three times. At my Solemn Communion I had croup. At eighteen, I had finished my studies with fruit and without difficulty, and yet I had gone to work as a loader and unloader in the factory, like him at the time. I had been rejected for military service, for reasons unknown to him, except that I had spent thirteen days in the Military Hospital, in a separate ward. I was twenty-four, and neither married nor engaged. A straggler. Not even in love - at least, he had to think so, if he wanted to. But his time of thinking and caring was over. Because he didn't want it anymore. And so I had to be silent.

Sometimes I could hardly digest it, as I did this evening. I wondered if he really no longer thought about me at all - or about my sister or my brother and his twin grandchildren. I imagined that under the hard husk of his old age and his widowhood he must be engaged in a busy and constant thinking activity - but I probably only imagined it, for I never perceived any of it.

However, I was still a young lad, and I regarded his aloof recluse with incomprehension and annoyance. We both lived under the same roof, the parental roof, and yet we lived side by side, like strangers, like two different species from two different eras. I didn't understand him. Not yet. I only wished he would listen to me for once, maybe even help me gently.

The clock struck 11:30 and his double chin sank even deeper onto his chest. I shuffled to the refrigerator and put the Meudon lemonade bottle to my mouth while my thoughts were already elsewhere. I sat back down on the couch, in my seat - we had each had our regular seat for years - and I closed my eyes.

What a day! What a strange Monday it had been ... Started very early on in a special, significant way. At breakfast. Like every morning, I had put two slices of rye bread into the old Rowenta toaster with the certain knowledge that after half a minute or so a metallic click would announce the appearance of two warm, crispy toasts. This also happened. But the miracle was that one of the two toasts jumped out of the toaster - this occurrence was in itself a miracle, it almost never happened - and what's more, it landed on the countertop on its side and just stayed there upright! On its side! Vertically!

Physically it was possible, of course, but the chances of something like this happening, with that crippled device and in those circumstances, were if not non-existent, then extremely small. Something that belonged on my private list of miracles and prophecies. I didn't know whether to laugh or get scared, so I yawned. Had my superstitious Dutch grandmother Marga still been alive, she would no doubt have explained this phenomenon as the announcement of Great News, of a happy surprise in the course of the day. Because things that always fall over and then suddenly miraculously remain standing - therefore not a piece of toast, but a coin, for example, or a book or an envelope - that had to mean something, especially in those strictly Catholic circles. And so - needless to say - my own mother had invariably believed that and proclaimed it to us. Also to my father, who, according to my recollection, did not respond to this except with barely audible, indeterminate guttural noises. I suspect that he simply did not allow such derailments in himself, and thus at most chuckled somewhat lightly, perhaps even smiled with a tinge of derision on his thin lips. I just don't know, but it certainly wouldn't have surprised me at the time, when he was still alive to the full.

And then! A new guy had started at work, a certain Paul. Not with us, the loaders and unloaders, but on the belt. I had seen him looking at me, and in the canteen I had felt him sitting next to me. I had only dared to look at him surreptitiously, but I had seen his hands: beautiful, warm hands with long, straight fingers and shiny, almost perfect nails - pristine hands, even after two hours of band work. And with a silver ring on both little fingers.

I hadn't realized anything at all at the time, not even that brief moment of disappointment when I saw his rings. After all, hadn't I subconsciously assumed they were engagement rings? And then two more? They were beautiful rings, beautiful hands, it was a beautiful boy at first sight, and I was happy to feel him next to me. Yes, without those rings I might have fallen in love with him instantly.

He looked a little like my last boyfriend, that boy I had secretly known at nineteen, five years before. Louis. Five years ago ... But Paul was a little bigger, and also cuter, and in a way prettier. And his voice was different when he reached for the coffee and couldn't reach it. A little raspy, but not at all hoarse or harsh. I feared he wouldn't last long on the belt, even in the whole factory.

I had looked at my own hands and secretly compared them to his - ugly hands I had, with red pimples and countless little lumps and wounds from the paper suits, and broken nails. I had also had beautiful hands in the beginning, but the labors had battered them. I was sorry, even for him, because soon he would have to suffer the same way ...

In the afternoon he had sat at the table next to me a second time, and he had addressed me, this time not just for the coffee pot. He had asked what my name was, how old I was, how long I had worked there, whether I liked it, and finally: whether I wanted to go somewhere after work to have a glass with him. Simple comme bonjour. Had he not asked that last question, I might have found his curiosity excessive, even arrogant and inappropriate, actually more like an interview or an interrogation than a normal conversation. But that last question was special.

And I had fearfully said no. Fortunately I had added softly: tomorrow perhaps, but he had answered nothing. How foolish, how over-cautious I had been, I thought now full of self-reproach. Actually, I had passionately wanted him to ask that special question, I had wanted it from every boy - in fact, I should have accepted his invitation just as passionately. Maybe Paul wouldn't want to go out with me at all now, maybe he was someone for whom a first refusal was enough. Take it or leave it. Definitely. Without a doubt, I was that type myself.

But there was father. Father, who was used to me arriving home punctually at five o'clock. Father, who knew the factory's hours perfectly. Father, who might well have questioned me and my movements when I arrived late. Father, who would suspiciously desire an explanation for breaking a long-standing, faithful habit ...

But that's what I wanted, right? Didn't I?

Nay, I should not have refused Paul. And if father had asked something, I might as well have explained it to him. Finally. If he - yes, if he ... And I, Alexis, the youngest. The little child. The cowardly hare!

Was I in love with Paul? Was he in love with me? Was he also different, like me? Why had he invited me already on his first day of work? Who would do such a thing?

Paul was very definitely handsome, AND intelligent. You could tell. I found him very sympathetic. His mere presence made an impression, and not only on me. I had been happy and nervous - as always - when he addressed me. But he was no longer a rash, open-minded boy, but a young man, and even then probably older than me. He had a mustache, admittedly a fine, groomed one, but it still looked a bit prickly. Stylish nonetheless, like Clark Gable. I hadn't often really been in love - well many emotional crushes, what else can I call it? - but never before had I fallen in love with mustaches, or with older men either. On the other hand, those previous crushes had never been successful either.

Maybe he brought change to this. I had the impression that he could do anything and would change everything. A premonition. Paul ... a beautiful name, if pronounced correctly and civilized. Like "ball”. He didn't want people to say 'Pol,' he had immediately added unasked and sternly. And he was right about that, because it was almost certain that people would call him that after a few days. That was just the natural thing to do with us, or in other factories. Marcel soon changed to "Cell" and Ferdinand to "Nand”. I was even called 'Petie' by most, but that was more for fun and games, and also because I was rather petite and small among the others. And the friends had often called my Louis 'Lou' anyway.

I was almost certain that he was also gay. I had a sixth sense for it. Always had. Even when I didn't know the word, I had known of certain boys' similar interests. Even in grade school I had been aware of that, which of course had certain consequences in sports and games. I also knew - yes, I had experienced it - that boys could look gay without being it, and that others did not look like that at all and were it anyway. Even a married man with two children, but of course it was difficult or impossible for me to prove that. How I knew it was a mystery to me, but I knew it. I felt it. A sixth sense, yes.

Homophilia, what was it? The question had occupied my mind for a long time, and certainly since I was sixteen. It was not merely a higher affinity or sexual interest in other boys. Or some sexual contact and experimentation. That was talk of fathers and catechists. If it was only that, I wouldn't have had gay feelings since I was nineteen. It was infinitely more, it was so much broader. It was a desire that coursed through your whole body from head to toe, an intense desire that bewitched your head, unexpectedly tangled your nerve strands, and made your heart pant like a motherfucker. Renounce and resign, know and be happy.

It was a totally separate life, it was an other life, an unusual dimension. You were no longer yourself. You were another human being, another gender. You felt that every day. As if there were now three kinds of beings in creation, and that you yourself were a member, willingly or unwillingly, of that third kind, the neuter, the detached. But then, moreover, if you were in love, you didn't give a damn. Not one bit.

And now, in this moment, I felt that so strongly again. I was unlike my father, unlike Richard Harris in his starring role, unlike most of my workmates - and so was he, so was Paul. We lived on the same wavelength, in that one world, that unusual dimension. Those who were not born and had to live in that dimension couldn't possibly know what it was. They could have read hundreds of books about it and made dozens of statistics, they could have talked to hundreds of homophiles - if they weren't like that themselves, they didn't know what being like that meant. It was in the look, in the skin, in the moves, in the thoughts, it was mostly in the feelings. And you also felt those vibes. Sometimes it proved a handicap, as it was for me, these last, dreary years. But sometimes it was a blessing: when one met a guy like Paul.

Someone tapped my shoulder several times. I opened my eyes and saw Father standing sleepily beside me, like a risen giant. "To bed, we are going to sleep, Alexis," he said. I nodded as absently as he did and wished him a good night. He murmured something in reply, and I shuffled to my room.

Behind me, the lights went out one by one. I heard the dry clicking of the switches. It remained an agonizing sound to my ears since, as a young toddler, I had received a violent and painful power surge in my parents' bedroom from their nightlight. I had long since forgotten what, for God's sake, I had come to do in that room - and even then in the dark - but I could still feel the razor-sharp pain of the shock cutting through my entire body at times. As if it were yesterday, never could I forget it. Worse than a flying toothache. Especially when I could now hear the clicking of pre-war switches behind me.

For him, it was an evening like all the others. The ancient ritual of the night watchman. It was pointless to bring it up. He could not know what I felt and meant, even if he wanted to. But that assumption was already too far fetched.

Did I even know myself? I wondered as I slipped between the sheets. I had thought and pondered a lot, certainly not for the first time, but the exchange of thoughts with myself tonight had truthfully not made me much wiser. I felt tired and confused, and that was not pleasant.

II.

Infatuation always brings a misunderstood turmoil, a swerving, a bouncing between heaven and hell. That is the difference with love. Infatuation hollows man out; love closes that hole, that hollow again. Infatuation is like an exhausting marathon without a clear finish line; love is the connecting lap of honor of the laurel wreath. Or still: infatuation is a deep wound that is sometimes painful, sometimes searing, but very often deliciously itchy, it is a wound that nevertheless also sometimes grows closed and heals - and then it has become love.

At best, the wound brings a new realization, a new-learned insight, a purgative sensation. He who is in love thinks incessantly. Not like a math prodigy, not like an engineer, but rather like the apostle John who gets to look into the Book of Revelation - or the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it doesn't matter. The person in love thinks about himself, about the Other, about the past, about the future, about the world. He who is in love sees new things, finds new values, and he experiences the old things in a reborn way. It is a time of many bright moments, also of a succession of failure, getting up and still trying and trying again and again, with no real certainties, no tangible prospects, but with countless dreams in between.

Notwithstanding that - or precisely because of it - the infatuated always gives an absent-minded impression. He is not present, he is not really there. Hence the later confrontation with reality, the possible disillusionment afterwards can sometimes be hell. For the higher you climb ... As in that song by David Cassidy. Or was it by that new, spritely singer with the raw voice and bleached hair?

The next day, when I returned to work - ten packs of thirty kilograms a minute - I thus lived from one lucid moment to the next. If I had had the time and opportunity, I could have written a voluminous novel on that one day, filled with my recent experiences and thoughts. But I had to work, and so my deepest insights and vaguest fantasies remained unwritten and unspoken.

When loading and unloading, by the way, my cronies and I were always very silent. Sometimes someone would whistle a song, sometimes a bawdy joke would be told - between trucks or pallets - but at the work itself we had our hands too full to waste any more of our energy with talk. Or that curious feeling of blind routine and rhythm. I didn't know what the others were thinking about, but I did know what I was thinking about myself: about Paul, and the next coffee break. Paul and yesterday's day. Paul and his declined invitation. Paul and work - and my work.

I realized how everything in my life had already been a coincidence - and that I actually liked it that way, yes, that too. I loved the coincidence, the surprises, the unimaginable and unexpected, the letting live, the black hole. There were people, even at the factory, who did not believe in coincidence, who wanted to completely determine their own lives by constantly actively intervening themselves, by planning everything and always, by making bold decisions, by willfully directing and changing the course of events.

I didn't. Maybe I wanted to, but I didn't and it didn't happen. I was certainly open to all experiences, but I neither sought them out nor sought them out myself. It had been the same for my job - and I realized exactly that now: how unusual it was that, with my diploma HSTO A6-A2, I had to work (and wanted to work) as a loader and unloader for a paltry eleven thousand francs per month. Because it had happened to me that way, not because I had wanted it. Nay, then, at that time, as an eighteen-year-old, I was not at all worried about it. I made some money, I had an occupation, and that was it. For me, that was enough.

Whereas I had always been - or could have been - a brilliant scholar. There was a difference. I remembered well that at the annual parent contact, the class teacher always called me "very smart but incredibly lazy," and a teacher had even once described me as "sensible and lethargic" - a word I had previously learned through a Tintin comic strip. That woman also described me as a boy with too much imagination and too little ambition. The latter, about that ambition, was certainly true and it always upset my father, who however was not an overachiever himself, yes, he even often laughed at all those crazy career hunters. My dear mother, on the other hand, mostly heard the complimentary side of the story and attributed my great intelligence without blushing to my origins, especially her side of the family, especially her mother Marga from Zeeland (Holland) and my genius godfather Fons.

But actually, without a doubt, I earned a place on the highest stage of the class every year, provided I had made some effort. The first intelligence test had already shown that. And yet I was always stuck somewhere in the insignificant middle ground. Because it didn't really interest me, that aspect of school life, that way of developing and acquiring knowledge. I was alive, certainly, but I was lazy rather than tired, and above all: my interests were on a totally different plane. No matter how far back my memory went, always my young attention had been absorbed by my buddies in class, just by boys, the pretty boys. Every year, every trimester, there was some guy in school who got my special attention, possibly my special affection - a cute gabber in my own class, but also on the playground or in the cafeteria - and whose presence was far more important than the blackboard and the textbooks. If I could at all, I would then make sure that he happened to come into my field of vision, without really doing much - because I didn't have the character for that, I did have the imagination, thankfully.

Note that I was completely unaware of this, except in senior year; with some good will, one could call it the hidden agenda, the blind spot of my school days. It was an emotional and mental activity that absorbed me completely; it was really the only thing that drove me to bike to school every day, cheerful and in a hurry, through all weathers and wind. In fact, this inner motivation, this ever-present desire was so strong that in the penultimate year I only narrowly escaped a re-examination in physics, because in those special classes, in that half-dark room, for several months I had a heartthrob as a neighbor. His name was Klaus. Normally, in the regular lessons, the always quiet and older Werner sat next to me, but this Klaus in physics ... he was a single, petite boy with a fine girl's face, who nevertheless indulged in jujitsu in his spare time. We often sat so close that I could feel the clammy warmth of his presence radiating against me and could sniff the bawdy scent of his body - as long as it didn't have the chemical tinge of the popular all-in-one cream Avadena, because I didn't think that belonged to the natural, flawless skin of Prince - or Princess - Klaus.

The peculiarity of this buddy was, that he needed a sparring partner - or what's it called - for his brutal grips, and he used me for that at lunchtime, somewhere in a far corner of the playground, a little out of sight of the others. For weeks this intense "sporting" contact lasted, until he suddenly thought it was enough and put a stop to it. Not completely unexpected, I could guess why. But honestly, under those circumstances, what would I still grind about Mr. Peirs of physics, about the magnetic field, Ohm's Law and other facts of his physics? I knew perfectly well what magnetism was and the rest I would read at home in my series of books from Look It Up.

And there was also no one from the outside world, from the school or from our family, who had even an inkling in the right direction, except for the gifted apple of my eye himself, my Klaus from physics - so he might, afterwards. And myself too, of course, but barely consciously. A certain apprehension it was, and no more.

Right after HSTO A6-A2, I had then started working at the paper mill as a vacation job. My father was still working there then and it was a simple trick for him and for his bosses to find a job for me there. It became loader and unloader. A real job where work