Life Embitters (31 page)

“This country’s charm is very relative, Mlle Marta!” I exclaimed with a laugh.

“It would have been worse, if it had rained …” she retorted spiritedly.

“Naturally, it could always be worse …”

We walked slowly towards Calais. It was the heart of summer and was starting to cool down. For a moment I thought that this drop in the thermometer
might do me a favor. When the thermometer goes down hearts grow warmer and bodies tend to gravitate towards each other. Human societies originate in such reconciliations. However, my hunch turned out to be wrong. I was stuck with the thought that the thermometer hadn’t dropped enough. When it was time to say goodbye I told Marta I thought I’d spend a day in Ypres on my next trip.

“The war cemeteries are in Ypres,” she said. “However, that’s up to you if you want to go … It’s one option among many.”

I said I’d be delighted if she’d accompany me. She replied that she agreed in principle and that a final decision depended on the work she had.”

“Sewing?”

“Oh, no! I’ve left that for later, like all ideals.”

“The underground world?”

“Let’s leave that to me …” she answered after a hesitant pause.

When we met up again, I mentioned her gracious promise to spend a day with me in Ypres. She listened very politely, but I could sense the idea didn’t fill her with enthusiasm. She said she’d be most probably going to Flanders.

“Do you know Bruges?” she asked me. “That’s my country. Perhaps I’ll have a house there one day, on the outskirts, by the canal …”

This young lady was obsessed with domestic life.

I couldn’t claim to know Bruges really well. When I enrolled in a course on Erasmus and His Times given by Professor Busch at the University of Louvaine – I went there two or three times mainly to see the Memlings on show in different places in the city – Marta’s surprise question reminded me of one of the more pleasant memories that exquisite artist, one of the most delightful in the Western tradition, had left me. I also remembered that I had corresponded with Professor Busch and that I’d sent my letters to
Bruges where I assumed he lived while researching his studies of Erasmus and Vives, on who he was a renowned specialist.

“I suspect, Mlle Marta,” I said, “that I have a friend in Bruges, a Dr. Busch, the Erasmist …”

I expected Marta to react with indifference to this quite banal item of information, but I saw it had intrigued her.

“But do you really know Dr Busch?” she asked, showing an unusual interest. “Do you really know him?”

“I attended a course of lectures about Erasmus he gave a year ago. I had the opportunity to meet him then. We had the occasional conversation. Then we corresponded. That gentleman was interested in things about Lluís Vives, who was from Valencia, and Valencia, mademoiselle, is a town in my country, you know?”

“That’s strange! You can’t imagine how much I’d like to meet this friend of yours. You say he is an Erasmist? What does it mean to be an Erasmist?”

“It means that he devotes himself to a gentleman who died many years ago, Erasmus, Erasmus Rotorodamus.”

“Bah …! Dr Busch is a big deal …”

“He’s a big deal, you say? What do you mean exactly? Are you hoping to marry him?”

“I don’t mean anything. Dr Busch is a German, a German with a well-concealed toupee.”

“In Belgium he’s thought to be a Belgian.”

“That’s perfectly compatible …”

Marta remained thoughtful, in a state of complete suspension. After a long pause, she suddenly said with a chuckle:

“Why don’t we go to Bruges? If you introduce me to Dr Busch, I promise to show you the city.”

“There’s an express that leaves for Brussels at nine
A.M.
”

But this train didn’t interest Marta. She chose a much slower one that left an hour earlier, because – so she said – she was looking forward to enjoying the landscape.

We met at the station at the time we’d agreed and took a train as far as Dunkirk. From Calais to Dunkirk the train runs alongside the dunes and sandbanks in the Channel. A desolate, desert landscape: strikingly monotonous and depressing. Then we took another train to Bruges via Diksmuide and Kortemark. It was quite a slow journey – somnolent would be the word. The grayness of the day intensified all that. We saw a large slice of western Flanders – what wonderful countryside!

After Dunkirk the quiet chug-chug of the train seemed to intensify the vibrations from Marta. Lolling back on her seat in the compartment – next to my left arm – her mouth slightly open, both entranced and aroused by the views, nose tilted slightly upwards, legs outstretched and eyes drowsy, she seemed in thrall to the outside world. I could hear her deep, quiet breathing. The train was progressing through Flanders’ fields, and the presence of that rather weary body so close to mine made it feel as if I was putting my ear and cheek to the pale earth and listening to its deep, regular heartbeat.

Flanders, Flanders … Is there a land more charming than Flanders? The country is as flat as a hand; like blue down, a barely perceptible veil of darkness sheaths the fields’ infinite shades of apple green. The languid, gracious land seems to half-smile. There are no woods or eyesores. Tall slender trees stand to attention along the canals, shadows from their unstill leaves tremble over the water. Changing and ineffable, the wondrous gray-green sky quivers and frolics, voluptuous yet melancholy in the dense, sleeping water. When brightness breaks through and day begins, the white of the houses warms up, red roofs turn a pumpkin color and the earth stirs slightly,
as if turning on its other side. A barge daubed with tar leaves a hazy trail of light. Seemingly from behind a half-closed door, a muffled sound spreads through the air. Fair-haired, well-fed, chubby folk come out to take a look. Women stick their heads out of windows and a spot of gold appears between small white curtains. For a moment. The sun hides behind a creamy pink cloud, a stray beam streaks a distant purple downpour and that vaguely opaque eyelid covers the earth once again and shrouds the glittering waters. Hours pass by in this eternal play between heaven and earth. The lapses into silence, the lovingly dense water, the sardonic indifference of the sky slip away in a gentle haze. Life is never changing: roosters’ early morning shrieks, animals’ afternoon ruminations, country people gossiping quietly, soft, gentle rainfall, the nighttime sea wind’s complaining whine, distant, burning lights amid the faint glow from cities … By the time we reached Bruges, darkness was falling. The days were beginning to shorten.

We walked down to the Hôtel de Londres in the station district – a hotel that seemed very comfortable. Marta said she was very tired and stayed in her bedroom. I went out keen to find out whether Professor Busch was about. I knew he used to go to the Claeys bookshop on the Place de l’Académie in the late afternoon, and I headed there. I’d not taken thirty steps along the street when I was enveloped by the silence of Bruges, that divine peacefulness. A hazy light was reflected in the mauve waters of the small canals and faded on the gray façades of the houses. I walked along the sidestreets around the Saint-Sauveur cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace, and then, along the Rue Sainte-Catherine to the Place de l’Académie that is quite close to the old Béguinage. I was surprised by the buttery smell floating on the streets and squares. It is – immediately – rather too dense a smell (for my taste). It is the smell that Belgium and Holland make. The atmosphere in the bookshop was extremely drowsy and tepid within its generally
severe, solid tone. I asked the young lady at the till about the professor and she said that this gentleman never failed to drop by the bookshop in the afternoon to browse and leaf through the new titles. I decided to wait. After twenty minutes I saw him come in accompanied by two ladies who spoke English – two ladies who right away made a strange impact on me, an impact I found difficult to pin down, though it was definitely strange. Given the unexpected company he was keeping I thought it would be tactful to wait for another opportunity to say hello. But I suppose the young lady at the till told him I’d shown an interest in seeing him. He came over, recognized me, and welcomed me extremely effusively – which I found rather surprising – and he introduced me to his friends, a couple of Miss Clarks (if I remember rightly) from Plymouth. These ladies, who were hardly young, though they were quite skinny, shook my hands in a stiff, frosty manner I felt they overdid.

Professor Busch was a small, thin man with a huge, completely bald head that rested on his shoulder; he looked well over sixty. A dark flame glimmered disturbingly in his warm, blue eyes. He had big flapping parchment-colored ears, sported a limp gray moustache, and his wry lips constantly fired out sarcastic rockets.

He dressed in black, extremely shabbily: a jacket that hung down on all sides, trousers with baggy knees, and a frayed tie with a half-made knot. He wore misshapen shoes and a hat that was battered rather than old. The blackness of his clothes underlined the deep pallor of his face. This color reminded me of how, at the end of his lectures, a pale patch of pink used to appear on his cheeks, like a patch of faded crimson. He must now be permanently weary because his cheeks were rosy pink.

“How long have you been here?” asked a very welcoming Professor Busch.

“I’ve only just arrived …”

“Are you by yourself?”

“I’ve come with a young lady who is longing to make your acquaintance.”

“A student? That’s wonderful!”

I had to respond, and I confirmed the professor’s hunch. I told him that she was indeed a student.

“I have to make a confession: you will find I’ve changed a lot. Yes, I’ve changed drastically. Now, for example, I like women. After living in limbo for so many years, not taking notice of anything, vegetating in my obsession for things, might we say, to do with culture, I now like to live life. I’m passionate about women. Especially students, if I’m going to be candid. They are usually adorable people. In a way, my aims in life have changed focus: before I liked culture’s object; now I prefer the subjects … Do you catch my drift? I only rue one thing: that I’ve come round so late.”

I stared at him and thought I must be hallucinating. It was a really drastic change. On the one hand, he seemed more on edge, worried about putting on an open-minded front, about appearing to be lively and curious, and at the same time I thought he’d aged considerably, and felt old fogeyish – out-of-kilter and enfeebled in a way. Good God! In Louvaine I’d always seen him as a man difficult to befriend, given his solitary ways and aloof, remote demeanor. He was the kind of man who never initiated a conversation and who only spoke – and then little – when spoken to. True, he had somewhat of a reputation for being bohemian and eccentric and was thought to suffer from delicate health. Some people claimed he spent months not getting out of bed, shut up in his house, always working away. He was considered to be a highly reputable scholar in the field of the History of the Reformation, but, curiously enough, whenever anyone referred to him as professor,
he half-closed his eyes and a small smile – ironic rather than vain – would spread over his face.

“I must also confess to something else. I’m thoroughly resolved. I want to abandon this country. It is an unbearable backwater, a total wilderness. I’ve put up with it far too long, and it’s time I left. Would you be so good as to tell me what makes up a Belgian? Your Lluís Vives was intelligent. He turned himself into a Belgian and was totally mediocre, whatever people say. I want to go to live in England. I am in fact in discussion with the Clark ladies about establishing myself somewhere or other in those islands, probably in Plymouth. Plymouth is an arsenal – and I happen to be fond of arsenals. I want to abandon this country, just as I want to abandon this sad, dead weight known as culture. Can you think of anything more inane or totally frustrating? I have wasted my life, dear friend, and I’m calling you dear friend, because Professor Busch is over and done with …”

While he spoke – becoming ever more excited – I looked him over carefully and everything confirmed the change he had undergone. He was making an effort to seem fresh and revivified, but suffered from all the ailments of old age. He was visibly struggling to keep his head erect, and sometimes injected so much energy into what he was saying that the ends of his jacket flapped wildly in the way thirty-year-old men can engineer. Nonetheless, his face was drawn and tired, the crimson on his cheeks had turned the color of ripe tomatoes, his eyes were bloodshot, and his splendid forehead looked deeply troubled. All of this came as a surprise because I imagined the professor would have organized his old age in a spirit of placid conformity, with no rancor whatsoever. And here he was as scatterbrained as a complete lunatic.

“I’ve spent my whole life not taking interest in anything,” he said, very heatedly, “I’ve lived on the margins of what we might call everyday life.
Well, that’s over and done with as well. I’m now interested in anything that happens, particularly politics. I’m a militant pacifist and am considered to be a dangerous subversive. They are right to think that. The society in which we live needs to be improved, to be rationalized. If we don’t see to that, the horrors we have just witnessed will be repeated hundredfold. We must fight against this society on all fronts, with all the weapons at our disposal. I do so, and do so consciously …”

I must have looked so astonished and then all of a sudden he addressed the ladies present – who were listening to him most attentively – and begged them to forgive his oversight in speaking French to me. As it was late – past seven o’clock already – I took the opportunity to say goodbye. Professor Busch gave me his address. I said I’d introduce him to the young student the following day. We decided to have lunch together.

“Yes, that’s possible,” he said, “because the ladies will leave for Ostend tomorrow.”

These ladies bowed stiffly, as if from a haunted castle.

As I returned to my hotel, I remembered my time in Louvaine, and some of the details of my contact with Dr Busch shifted into focus. He lived alone, with a housekeeper who looked after him. His large, dark flat, full of books and papers, was poorly lit and rather funereal. His study overlooked an old, salamander-green garden, full of moss and fern, together with a few withered trees. I think he rarely had visitors, but the fact that I practically came from the country of Vives furnished me the honor of the occasional invitation to his house. It was late autumn, and the garden was a rusty color, as if covered by a film of vinegar. He welcomed me in his slippers, in front the fire. By night, in that gloomy room, the hot coals were reflected on the corners of the polished furniture, the shadows from the fire made flickering, twisted shapes on the walls, and the long shadows of his slippers lay still on
the ceiling. If there was a moon, the branches swayed the other side of the windows, a patch of light settled on the frozen grass in the garden, and the brightness, now soft and gentle, sometimes reached as far as the small sitting room. That garden had a melancholy charm and really matched the mindset and tastes of its owner. I would imagine how that sleepy corner must change when the good weather returned. The brighter light must enliven the drowsiness in the air; some tiny campanulas leapt up and dotted the drops of water on the fern, and the water from the fountain trickled through the flowing beards of some aquatic herbs and over the damp moss … But what had happened to all that? The professor had turned his back on tranquility and had become a wild man on no small scale.