DWP - a travel story

BELGIUM

Belgium looked beautiful in the summer: herds of Holstein cows grazed in the green rolling hills of Ghent; tall evergreen trees trimmed the lush garden parks of the Grand Ducal; magnificent array of summer flowers carpeted the square of downtown Brussels; colourful gondolas plied the scenic canals of Brugges; the ruined castles in Namur majestically defied the passing of time; stately yachts dotted the marina in Antwerpen.

“I want to stay here,” I told Horace. We had stopped in Antwerpen on our way back to Brussels from visiting the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. We sat on the patio of a small brasserie in the town square, watching Antwerp pass us by. Horace slowly brought his mug of Stella Artois to his lips as he looked and smiled at me.

“Are you sure?” he asked in French.

“I belong here,” I said, as I slouched in my chair, my arms outstretched towards the sky. “It’s so inspiring here.”

I pulled out a folded piece of pink paper from my purse and waved it at him. I wrote a poem for him the previous night and read it to him that morning on the drive to Amsterdam. He carefully took the paper from me, gently unfolded it and silently read the poem. He smiled as he read.

“Your poem is beautiful,” he said. “I will frame it and keep it forever.” He slowly refolded the paper and carefully placed it inside his left shirt pocket. He tapped the pocket twice and his hand remained on his chest. “Next to my heart.”

He took my hand and lightly kissed the back. He looked at me for a long time. I loved Horace’s eyes. They turned a deep blue when he was relaxed and happy, purplish grey when he was angry or sad. That afternoon I thought his eyes reflected the color of the cornflowers in Van Gogh’s painting.

He slowly stood up but motioned me to remain seated.

“I will just be a few minutes. Stay here.”

He walked across the square and his lithe body disappeared through the crowd. I leaned back and sipped my wine as I watched the sun coming down the waters of the Escaut Canal, pale purple and gray feather-like clouds blending in the hazy blue sky. The boats had arrived and the mariners filled the patio chairs and tables of the numerous brasseries ready for their early evening aperitifs. Pigeons and tourists mingled in the middle of the square.

Horace and I had been lovers in Toronto for four years. He was married but not in love. I was single and had just avoided an impending marriage. A one night stand evolved into a full-blown relationship. When he went back to Brussels, I thought the relationship had ended. Three months later, he sent me a plane ticket to Brussels. Darinka, his wife, and her boyfriend wanted to marry. Horace never told me that his wife had already filed a divorce two years earlier. I would only find out when I arrived. Europe - only a fool would pass up the chance. After all, the invitation came from the man I was in love with. I told my boss I’d be gone for a month. I stayed for eleven.

Horace took me around Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. After six weeks I became bored. Alone, I bummed around France and Austria. After two weeks, he followed and took me back to Belgium. We stayed in Brussels where he worked during the week and spent the weekends in Luxembourg. I found work in Luxembourg as a receptionist at an antique shop. The American tourists loved to go there, “where the Oriental saleslady spoke American English”. The shop owner loved the sales but became nervous because I had a tourist visa only. He let me go after a week.

I met a Filipino singer whose girlfriend, Inge, owned a cafe. They let me work as a waitress and the patrons became intrigued with the exotic Asian who spoke broken German and broken French. Inge thought I attracted too much attention; she didn’t want to be in trouble with the authorities for hiring a tourist. Again, I lasted only a week. Horace didn’t really want me to work but I insisted because I was used to earning and spending my own money.

I settled down when Horace’s friend, Olga Mayer, hired me as her assistant. Olga translated English books into French and German and local books into English. The pay was meager but in Belgium, office work required one to speak French and Flemish. My French was bad and my Flemish non-existent. The work with Olga was easy; she only wanted me to proofread and did the odd typing.

Horace returned after fifteen minutes. He sat down, held my hand and whispered, “Je t’aime.” I kissed him lightly on the lips. He kissed me back. Then he slipped a small blue velvet box in my hand. I opened the box and gaped at the ring inside — a small diamond protruding from a circle of matte gold. I had admired it when we passed one of the shop windows a few moments ago.

“Stay here with me, please,” he said. “Marry me.”

“Mais ce n’est pas possible,” I said as he slipped the ring on my finger. “Tu as marrié encore! You are still married!”

“We’ll get married as soon as the divorce is final. I won’t need the money that Darinka will pay me for the divorce. You can have it and use it to go to school and learn French or Flemish if you want to work.” He paused waiting for me to say something. I continued to sip my wine. He tapped his left shirt pocket again and said, “Or you can just stay home and write more poems for me. You can do whatever you want.”

I let out a nervous laugh. I examined the wine in my glass. “This wine is no good,” I said, avoiding the proposal. “Look, it has sediments!” I complained. Without looking away from me, he took the glass and poured the wine on the ground, scaring two pigeons away.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” I said as I stretched my arm and admired the beautiful ring on my finger. I smiled at him. After a few seconds, I said, “But, I’ve overstayed. One day the police will come and arrest me and deport me.” I took my empty glass and sipped air.

“I won’t let that happen. Please stay longer.” His deep set eyes stared intently into mine. I could only smile. “Je t’aime,” he said.

It seemed to me we made love incessantly that night, or maybe we just talked but I could swear we never slept. At two in the morning we decided to go to the rooftop where we watched the stars, told stories from our youth that we otherwise would not have remembered. We sat, held hands, kissed and as dawn kissed the darkness of the evening sky, we decided to go back inside the house. We had been asleep for only a few hours when the telephone rang.

Nicole, his daughter, was calling from the hospital. Darinka had an accident. She and her boyfriend Ivan were driving home from a party when their car hit a truck head on. Ivan, who was driving, died instantly. Darinka was alive but the car’s windshield smashed into her face, pieces of broken glass lodged in her face and eyes. She would not see again.

Horace placed the receiver back in its cradle with surprising calm: the square jaws tightened, the mouth taut; the purplish blue eyes red-rimmed from not having enough sleep. He didn’t look at me.

“I need to go to hospital,” I remembered him saying. My immediate mental reaction was to tell him he needed the article “the” before the word hospital. Instead, I nodded in agreement.

When he had gone, I remembered something that he had told me last night. He and Darinka had known one another since they were little children in Prague. As teenagers, they became dance partners, winning competitions, first local then national. They spent their growing days practising routines and competing. They were at a dance competition in Brussels, ready to take on Europe, when the Soviets invaded Prague. They couldn’t return home. With no one but each other, they married. She worked to send him to engineering school. When he graduated, he worked and sent her to medical school. They had been together for most of their lives. We had known each other only three years.

I got out of bed and washed my face. When I looked in the bathroom mirror, the image of the diamond ring in my hand sparkled even in dullness of the bathroom light. I rubbed it, like willing a genie to come out so I could make a wish but what would I wish for? I went back to bed and drifted in and out of sleep.

Horace came back in the early evening. As soon as he saw me, he embraced me and clung to me, unspeaking, for a long time. When he let go, he had tears in his eyes.
“What happened?” I asked.

“She’s blind. Forty-five years old and she’s blind.” He sat down on a nearby chair, buried his face on his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. “She wants me to take her back. She won’t finish the divorce,” he said in French. He said he did not know what to do. His children, Nicole, Stephane and David, begged him to take her back. He said he so desperately wanted to marry me. He said he loved me he didn’t want me to go. He said he did not know what to do.

The next few days, Horace walked around like a zombie. Work, hospital, home. He would call me, to tell me he loved me. Sometimes he won’t even say anything. He would let the phone ring then hung up as soon as I answered. I knew he had a difficult decision to make.

“The police stopped me today at the grocer,” I told him one night. He momentarily looked up from the papers he had been working on, one bushy eyebrow raised, his eyes had taken on a passionflower blue, the redness from fatigue during the last few weeks had ebbed.

“Why you didn’t call me at office?” he asked. “What happened?”

“They asked me for my carte d’identite,” I lied. I stood in front of him with my head bowed, shuffling my feet like a child who was being reprimanded for something done wrong. “I think I must go,” I said when I lifted my head up. “I can’t stay here when Darinka comes home.” He looked away and shook his head.

“Non! Non, I made arrangements for apartment. We can stay there,” he said. “For police, I call Laurent, he knows people. Don’t worry, mon petit lapin.” He hugged me. We clung to each other and for a long time wouldn’t let go.

I bought a ticket to return to Toronto. I called him from the airport. I told him the police arrested me and I was being deported. My flight would leave in two hours.

As I handed my boarding pass to the airline clerk, I heard him call me. I looked back and I saw him going up the escalator, pushing people out of his way, walking up two steps at a time. Laurent was running behind him. I continued to walk towards the gate. He followed, leaving Laurent behind to explain to the airline clerk and the security guard.

“You forgot your ring,” he said when he caught up with me. I deliberately left the ring, I didn’t think it was right for me to take it. “I want you to take a part of me with you. I understand your decision. I wish...” At least that’s what he meant to tell me, he spoke in very rapid French. He slipped the ring in my finger. “Je t’aime,” he said.

“Je t’aime aussi,” I replied as I stood up on my toes to kiss him.


From 30,000 feet, eyes blurry from tears, I take in the view of the verdant landscape below. Belgium looked beautiful in the summer.