Brussels Noir Page 2

  Meanwhile, between Mike and my husband, a certain complicity set in as early as the first evening. Jean has a basic understanding of English, which allowed him to chat with an ease that Virgile and I did not have. Each night, as usual, Virgile would go upstairs to his room as soon as the meal was finished, which I deplored. As for me, after clearing the table and drinking a cup of tea with Mike and Jean, I would leave them to talk together—I might even say “between men,” so naturally did the rapport seem to have formed.

  At first, this curious friendship did not give me pause. Jean seemed happy to have found in Mike an interesting interlocutor, despite their generational difference. I understood that this relationship was precisely the one I had hoped to see develop between Virgile and Mike—and even more, dare I admit, between Virgile and his father—but what would be the point of questioning it? Men are ambiguous and complicated beings, and I long ago gave up trying to understand them. Lying in bed, I could hear them laughing and chatting freely about I don’t know what.

  Virgile has never been much of an extrovert. It’s not in his nature. He doesn’t often go out with children his age and, aside from a few classmates he only rarely mentions, I have never known him to have real friends. He has always been a withdrawn boy. From childhood, he showed little interest in the company of his fellow students, and whenever a few of them did come to play at our house, I constantly had to intervene to keep them from tormenting my son. Over the years, he has grown increasingly solitary. It must be said that from very early on, he showed an unusual maturity for his age. The other children seemed so babyish in comparison. I did what I could to protect him from the surrounding idiocy, and helped him see the richness of his difference in a positive light. I was constantly trying to warn him against the perversity—jealousy, mainly—of many of his schoolmates. It’s a sad fact that the flaws of human nature manifest themselves early in life, even in young children. I was quick to teach Virgile that sometimes it’s better to be alone than in bad company.

  I had thought I could count on Jean’s support in helping our son become friendly with Mike, or at least in giving the two of them a chance to get to know one another. But instead, my husband monopolized every conversation at the dinner table, and once Virgile withdrew to his room, Jean never asked him to join them to finish out the evening. Mike’s arrival had given me hope that Virgile, through contact with him, might open up a bit more to the outside world.

  It’s important to know that Saint-Gilles is divided in two. La Barrière serves as a symbolic border, a roundabout with constant traffic from which arterial roads extend like tentacles: avenue du Parc on one side, rue de l’Hôtel des Monnaies on the other. The upper end of the municipality offers calm, well-tended streets arranged in a regular grid pattern, where functionaries, students, and retirees walk peacefully alongside one another. As for the lower end, it’s another story entirely. The course of those streets, like the ambiance surrounding them, is brutally winding, incoherent, nearly treacherous. A jumble of architectural styles, few if any single-family homes, only buildings overflowing with a chaotic population. And the prize at the end of this labyrinth of urban shadows: the Parvis. I have never understood the enthusiasm this place inspires in my fellow citizens. I can’t deny a certain charm; I sometimes go there on Thursday to stock up on natural products, both at the outdoor market held on that particular day, and at Manuka, the organic grocery I wish was located closer to my home. It is, in fact, the only business in the neighborhood that finds favor with me, as well as with my palate. As for the rest, the cafés, bistros, and bars are havens for Saint-Gilles’s most erratic residents. Artists, the unemployed, and immigrants all brush shoulders in the noise and confusion. The church that stands there long ago lost its aura; its role has been diminished to that of a cheap ornament. Worst of all is the Clos Sainte-Thérèse, a daytime homeless shelter that attracts individuals as filthy as they are malicious. An infected wound. An abscess. It’s impossible to walk by without being harassed by the scum of society, their arms extended to ask for a coin, yet showing no signs of deformity; arms they might instead use, it seems to me, to earn an honest living. An unbearable sight, this degeneration, one I always took care to protect Virgile from when he was young, even if it meant making a detour by way of the rue du Fort to avoid the Parvis. Until now, I have always been able to keep misery at a distance from our household.

  Michael Hampton undermined all my efforts. He destroyed the most powerful armor that exists: ignorance.

  * * *

  Once the early days of this growing complicity had passed, I began to feel uncomfortable supporting such a close relationship between a man long past fifty and the boy that was Mike. What was this about, anyway? And how could Jean act so childishly in front of our son? It seemed to me the roles had been reversed. I tried to share my opinions with my husband, but he hardly listened to me, claiming he had never prevented Virgile from keeping company with them once dinner was over.

  Virgile and his father’s relationship is complicated. They love each other, of course, but Jean has difficulty expressing his emotions in general, and showing his son the tenderness he feels for him in particular. As for Virgile, he waits for recognition from his father with a vigilance that sometimes borders on obsession. They are alike, in the end: both equally reserved, too often allowing their pride to stand in the way of their relationship.

  One night, I woke up after just an hour or two of sleep. I could no longer hear any sounds coming from the ground floor, though Jean’s place beside me in bed was empty. So were the living and dining rooms. I am not the sort of woman to wait up all night for her husband to come home from the bistro. In fact, on that night, the idea that Jean had gone out for a drink with Mike did not even occur to me. I went into Virgile’s room; he was sleeping peacefully. I shook him awake. I wanted to talk with him, to ask him what he thought of Mike. Why didn’t they speak more to one another? Was he disturbed by this presence at the heart of our family? Did he feel we’d rejected him by taking an interest in this young Englishman?

  Virgile looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, then rolled over in his bed, mumbling, “Leave me alone, Mom.”

  When Mike and Jean finally came home—at eleven o’clock—they reeked of beer. I tried to tell my husband that this chumming around with Mike was unacceptable. What would people think of him? Going out at night to God knows what infamous dive, with a young man his son’s age! Not to mention that he was cruelly interfering in a possible friendship between Virgile and this boy. Had we not brought Mike here to give our son the companion he had so sorely missed as a child?

  This was our first fight regarding Mike. Jean insisted that it was normal for a man to relax after a long day at work, and that the Brasserie de l’Union was by no means an infamous dive. He did not see, he said, why I was making this into a federal affair.

  The Brasserie de l’Union! One of the Parvis bistros, the first you see coming from our house when heading along rue de l’Hôtel des Monnaies. The “place aux pigeons,” as many call it, in reference to the legions of birds that children and dogs chase for amusement there. So my husband had gone to compromise himself in this seedy, rundown bar, with its walls yellowed by cigarette smoke—to give you a sense of the decrepitude of the place—with its more than questionable decorative motifs, its deplorable service, its indigent clientele.

  “Stop looking so disgusted, Emma! You’d think I just vomited on you.”

  I pointed out to Jean that the terms relax and Brasserie de l’Union were mutually exclusive, and that as for his last remark, it did, in effect, rather accurately sum up what I was physically feeling.

  Jean looked at me with eyes full of pity. “My poor Emma . . .” Then he went off on an absurd liberal rant, arguing that the Parvis and the surrounding establishments had nothing licentious about them; that, to the contrary, life abounded there in all of its richness and passion, that social diversity was good for our municipality, and that my narrow, repressed pet
ite-bourgeoise attitude was very slowly beginning to break his balls.

  “Did Mike put these ideas in your head?” I asked, stunned by his words.

  “Leave Mike out of this.”

  “You’re drunk, my dear. You don’t have any idea what you’re saying.”

  “Actually, Emma, I’ve never been so clear-headed.”

  It was on this night that I became fully aware of the threat Mike represented to the unity of our household. Jean was not in his right mind, that much was obvious.

  This discussion marked the beginning of a rupture. I no longer recognized my husband; he seemed truly bewitched, enchanted by the siren song of a decadent youth. The nocturnal jaunts continued, without any regard for our household rules, or even the most basic level of respect. I deplored Jean’s attitude, and told him so without mincing words; I said that Mike was a harmful influence on our family, that the worm was in the fruit and it was incumbent upon us, as responsible adults and parents in charge of our child’s education, to extract it. Neither my objections nor our repeated arguments had any effect on his point of view, and even less on his behavior.

  It didn’t stop there. On the evening they finally asked Virgile to join them, I thought the earth was trembling beneath my feet. Clearly it was their intent to provoke me. I hoped my son would decline the invitation. To my great dismay, Virgile, at first surprised, soon nodded his head, visibly delighted. I tried to oppose it, to make Jean listen to reason. I begged him not to lead our child into that sordid neighborhood where shiftlessness and vice, crouching in every corner of the street, lurk in wait.

  When the door closed behind them, I understood that a war had been declared.

  I slept very little that night, my thoughts racing. I feared this sort of outing would become a habit, and the following week, my fears were confirmed. After the third occasion, it was time to take action, and quickly.

  And so the next morning, once alone in the house, I got ready to go out. I chose my clothing with care and precision: elegant without being ostentatious, classic without being austere. I left home at eight thirty. I turned onto rue de la Victoire, hoping the street’s name would prove prophetic to me. I followed it to the crossroads at rue de l’Hôtel des Monnaies, passing, on the way, a group of schoolchildren led by their teachers toward the Victor Boin swimming pool or some other cultural destination. Then I cut across the square, heading to the Parvis. As usual, hordes of pigeons cooed while pecking at the bread that neighborhood retirees enjoyed tossing their way. I’ve never understood what elderly people see in these foul birds, these nests of microbes, these flying rats. Among their ranks were a few wild parakeets that pilfered the bread, seizing the crust between their claws at the exact moment when a pigeon made an instinctive, almost mechanical movement to plant its beak there. Then the parakeet would swoop off and land on a tree branch to feed with complete impunity. The dispossessed pigeon would continue its search without even the least show of indignity at this theft.

  Behold, the supremacy of skill over instinct! What a stupid thing a pigeon is.

  I arrived at the Parvis. Still gorged on its excesses of the night before, it seemed half-asleep even with the market held there—a few fruit and vegetable stalls, a stand selling various accessories for one euro apiece, and a shoe merchant—spread out between the Brasserie de l’Union and the Café du Louvre. Although it was the middle of November and somewhat cold out, a few smokers sipped their coffees on the narrow terraces of the bistros.

  As I neared my destination, I slowed my step, overcome by sensations of fear and disgust. In front of the Clos Sainte-Thérèse was a line of homeless or otherwise needy people, already twenty or so of them, waiting for the doors to open so they could receive what they were no longer able to procure for themselves. I studied their expressions, their postures . . . How was I going to do this? At that moment, I became completely disoriented. Though I had spent most of the night formulating my plan in the greatest detail, I suddenly had no idea how to proceed. In the snug warmth of my bed, things had seemed so simple. Now, confronted with the harshness of reality, I nearly abandoned everything.

  I gave myself time to stop at the bank, a few meters away, where I withdrew two hundred euros in notes of fifty and put them away in my purse. I then summoned my courage and walked back toward the group of vagrants. I would never have imagined that one day I would be forced to speak to this sort of creature, and my resentment toward Jean intensified.

  I could tell the choice was going to be difficult and, after a few interminable moments of doubt, resigned myself to proceeding by elimination. I thought again of the parakeets stealing the pigeons’ bread before they could get to it, and the obvious strategy came to me: among this flock of pigeons, I would have to find a parakeet.

  After five minutes, I had set my sights on one. He stood a bit apart from the group, his features marked by the hardships of life, a cagey look about him. Well past fifty, he gave off a combination of hostility and resignation which, I hoped, would serve my cause. He wore a light-green anorak that recalled the parakeets’ colorful feathers. I took that as a sign. Swallowing my disgust, I approached him, and once I’d offered him a hearty breakfast as well as remunerative work, he followed me without needing to be persuaded, just as I had foreseen.

  We sat down at a café, La Maison du Peuple, a supposedly trendy establishment that, in the daytime, attracts neighborhood bourgeois bohemians and pseudo-artists, while in the evening it becomes the favored spot of students, divorced parents on their week off from the children, and forty-somethings in full-swing midlife crises. I waited for someone to take our order before explaining to my parakeet what I required of him, but despite the horde of waiters bustling about behind the bar, no one came over to ask what we wanted. The situation was becoming embarrassing. I hailed one of the waiters, who informed me in an annoyed tone that it was up to me to order at the counter. I did not remark on the absurdity of the procedure; there were more pressing matters to deal with.

  Once we’d been served, I took out a photograph of Jean and Virgile from my purse and placed it on the table, right in front of my parakeet.

  “These two men come regularly to the Brasserie de l’Union, just a few meters from here. You know the Brasserie de l’Union?”

  The man nodded his head while continuing to wolf down the pastries I had ordered for him. He was as voracious as he was untalkative.

  “They come with a third man whose photo I don’t have, but he’s not the one I’m interested in,” I continued. “What I’d like you to do is to simulate an attack on these two, on the younger one in particular. That’s right, simulate. I want you to frighten them. Really frighten them. But under no circumstances do I wish for them to be hurt. You understand? I’m asking you to stage the scene, not play it out. This is how I see it: when they leave the Union around eleven o’clock, they’ll walk back toward the upper end of Saint Gilles, passing by the place aux Pigeo . . . rue de l’Hôtel des Monnaies. That’s where you come in. Grab at them, provoke them, tell them to give you their money, whatever you want. If they refuse to comply, as I suspect they will, make your tone more threatening. Scare them as much as possible. Don’t touch a single hair on their heads, but threaten them with violence if they so much as set foot in the Parvis again . . .”

  Chewing with an unusual deliberateness, the man stared at me indifferently. He was clearly nonplussed by my request. Attempting to keep my calm, I reached back into my purse and took out the money I had just withdrawn, then placed it on top of the photo.

  “This is for you. You’ll receive it as soon as you’ve done what I ask.”

  I expected a more enthusiastic reaction this time. He said nothing.

  “Well?” I asked, trying to hide my perplexity.

  He took his time swallowing the last bite of his croissant before responding in a hoarse voice: “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not interested. I don’t know what you’re scheming, but the whole thing sou
nds like a pain in the ass. Find yourself another pigeon.” Then he took his cup of coffee, emptied it into his throat, and stood up. “Thanks for the breakfast.”

  Before I had time to gather my wits, he was gone.

  I won’t bother describing the intensity of my confusion and disappointment. Don’t anyone try to tell me these people are looking for work! Good-for-nothings, bums, deadbeats. Nothing more.

  I wasn’t going to let this discourage me, however. Abandoning my own drink, I too left the café and walked back toward the Clos Sainte-Thérèse. In the meantime, the shelter had opened its doors and the line of derelicts was now crammed inside. Entering this miserable place was too much for me to stomach; I had to wait outside. I watched the comings and goings for a good fifteen minutes before laying eyes on a second candidate. He was younger than his predecessor, seemed less damaged by life and more inclined to provide the service I would ask of him: his unrelenting gaze and crude swagger provoked in me, at first glance, an instinctive fear. A fear I had to overcome.

  Unlike the other one, he accepted my offer right away. We planned to meet at the same place the morning after the encounter, as long as things went exactly as I wished. I returned home in a state of extreme nervousness.

  * * *

  Lord knows that under no circumstances did I wish harm on my son, nor even on my husband. My intentions were pure: rather than wait for the threat to strike blindly, not knowing where or when; rather than give in to violence without a means of defense, and suffer its consequences, I wanted to control it. To keep it on a leash. In taking these steps, I did nothing but fulfill my role as a mother: to protect my child from life’s dangers and the ferocity of the outside world. To make him aware of the peril that surrounds him when he ventures into certain neighborhoods at an ungodly hour. To help him overcome the temptation to adopt an idle and decadent lifestyle. To sharpen his critical faculties and teach him to follow no one, not even his father, without reflecting on the possible consequences.