The sea that also plays with pieces of shells.
Johan Daisne, winter, early 1949
Everything has many faces.
Don Fabulist, winter, early 2010
For Christoph Bruneel from l’Âne qui butine (www.anequibutine.com)
what now follows is both pure fiction but also exaggerated truth
The winter still clung to the flat landscape when Finbar arrived in Ostend and moved into the Hotel du Parc with what time he had left, his head bursting. A benefit gig for the homeless of Haiti for ten drunks at the bar was finally behind him. The poetry music of ‘Uncle Johnnie’s Wreckage band’ still hung around the station in the freezing cold air.
Three months earlier Finbar, at that time still called Johnnie, injured himself when he slipped in the Ardennes. A car that wouldn’t start. Johnnie played muscleman and lost his footing pushing it. Since then, the pain in his elbow shot straight up to his head. Playing the accordion… never again.
Room 104 in Hotel du Parc. No internet. Finbar’s expedition in his mind was stranded. He threw his bag full of undecipherable notes into the corner. Naked and covered in itchy spots he looked down at the square like a goldfish gasping for air. Where carriages once stood there were now taxis, carriages from a train waiting for its first journey in the morning mist.
Finbar crawled into bed.
The rust-coloured sea awaits at the Venetian galleries, he thought. I must be hypersensitive; I even feel the emptiness left by the organ grinder. His Verbeeck organ with the monkey with outstretched arms.
Music from the film The Third Man, with Orson Welles as Harry Lime and Anton Karas on the zither flowed hauntingly through Finbar’s mind.
What was that slogan that Finbar had seen that day? An investment that keeps you from having sleepless nights. He didn’t count sheep, he counted fish stalls: Sandra and Manon’s, Gino’s, Lima’s – at Neptune’s he’d bought whelks and thrown them to the seagulls right in front of the policeman.
‘Don’t fine me officer, I’m from Antwerp and I don’t know any better.’
Might as well count the bars. D’oede Tied, ’t Zeezotje, Fats Domino, The Dingle Pub, Chez Néné…
Finbar slipped back to times long ago. In his sailor suit he begged for an ice-cream at a gaudy-coloured ice-cream cart. He waved at the shrimp boats and looked at the bathing machines. He saw himself twenty years later: he had a wild night at Het Witte Paard.
Ostend. Pearl of the Belgian coast, Queen of the bathing resorts. Finbar woke up with a start, listened to the night – nowhere was the silence behind the noises so audible.
Wonderful, thought our hero, but it seems years since I had something to eat. Next to him lay an invisible woman with her back turned to him. Finbar buried his head in her pillow. He whispered a haunting song until he fell asleep as if he was leaving this world behind.
Finbar slept. Outside, on the Vissersplein, a seagull muddled through the night, limping on the black keys of Ensor’s harmonium. In the surrounding streets skeletons played billiards, marionettes flirted with death. Ostend sunk through its chair of shells.
When Finbar awoke again he was amazed that he was still alive. His sheets were damp. He had danced with figures from Ensor like Préciosette and Nacrette-Saphyrette. The flute playing of Fifrelin had given him a headache.
Who cares a damn about Valentine’s Day, thought Finbar. And: at the end of May, Adamo is coming to the Kursaal, no Chippendales this year. First I’ll go and visit Ensor, salute his death mask. Afterwards I’ll take Cupid, these days the Maecenas of the tradesmen, by the cheeks of its bottom.
Six o’clock in the morning and it was still dark outside. Ostend breathed softly, the murmur of the sea in her blood. Finbar waited for day to break. Tram after tram, the trams to De Panne droned in his head. He heard a tram ringing its bell. Ding ding. Minnelemming is the name my client gave me for Ostend, he thought. Finbar Minnelemming, that’s how I have to call myself here. Minnelemming is just about to board Ostend. He will fraternize with the last sea dragon. Liberate a caged mermaid.
Finbar shivered and curled up under the bedclothes.
I am an embryo in a mother shell, he fretted, and my head is much too large.
The trams rode through the streets in Finbar’s head. Thick, listless snowflakes fell onto the tram rails.
~
There lies Finbar. In his mind echoes of Antwerp where he rents a house that he can’t afford any more and where the bills are piling up.
Finbar dreams of Rubens who paints underwater, above him the sound of the boats. Nets in the water spontaneously give structure to his paintings.
‘You can hardly keep on cutting yourself up into pieces, boy,’ says Rubens, ‘spring half-term begins this weekend. You’re fed up with music school and working in the secretariat, aren’t you? How old are you? 11,049 sunsets? I can’t see my hand in front of my face. No juicy lady. Go to Ostend then, your mistress. Feel the sea on your bones.’
Finbar arises out of the Scheldt, drifts like a zeppelin over scorched black domes. They become copper green again, turquoise in the evening, the stones emitting light. Who still looks upwards? Next stop: HEAVEN.
It’s nice to know that Frieda can fix your teeth immediately, thinks Finbar. Camera surveillance everywhere. Back to Mother Earth.
Western Europe. Flanders. Finbar skims over the polders, towards the coast…
‘Add some dung and it’s organic,’ calls an eel catcher after him. Ostend can’t be far any more.
There’s Lissewege. In 1940, during a heavy autumn storm, the mill went crazy. White mill, black mill.
Finbar knows: a fly likes nothing better than to sit on a red cow. Hs sees a nice one. He flies under her hoofs with the sparrows.
He hears Pier Komiek in the wind. ‘Holy Cecilia, she saw the angels flying, playing music. I’m starting to see a lot of blacks recently. I think it’s all down to the Earth warming up. Camiel de Basser, now he could bark like a dog. He’s also as dead as a door nail.’
There’s Zwankendamme, a village in a grip, the rail tracks are advancing.
At last the sea, thinks Finbar. Just as the sea should look. Only a painter like Spilliaert could catch this interplay of lines.
Finbar navigates the grey-black clouds. Time goes backwards. A boiler explodes in the waves. Now forwards, from the Gay Twenties to the Atlantic Wall. The casino of Ostend razed to the ground, machine-gun nests set up. Hotel du Parc, the occupiers take it over as their command post. Are you a Walloon in the depths of your heart and do you want to work on the breakwaters? Report to the Brasserie.
Flee from the Gestapo, Romain, flee if you can. Before you’re a broken man, shot to pieces. Sand flies up, then settles.
Finbar lands back in his bed and gets Ensor on the line. ‘My name is James, James Knochebein. Mister Bones. Where is my paint? Siren! Hmmm, good paint… Aaahh…’
Telephone. ‘Finbar? Molrat here. You’ve been lying there, stinking in your bed for a night a day and a night. I’m paying for the room, three stars and ten days, it’s time to get up. Don’t forget, your name is Finbar Minnelemming. I’m Molrat Malrot, you can call me Molrat. I expect you at 10 o’clock in the Brasserie. Brasserie du Parc is right under your lazy ass. Our mission is about to begin.’
~~
Every voyage of discovery with Molrat began with the same ritual. Molrat would be waiting for Finbar at a table. Grey cap. No newspaper or magazine in his hand, nothing that made one think of the passing of time. Molrat would always be reading a book at least forty years old, which was the rule. Molrat was all ready to go, because he had the ritual coffee complete with silver filter before him.
Finbar looked at the frayed eyebrows of the professor: black as coffee. Molrat never asked questions. They met each other every season in the tension between professionalism and friendship. The expeditions, paid by Molrat, investigated the core of language and brought time to a standstill. Sentences were torn open, words sprang away like fleas. Molrat lived at the Flemish-French language border; he suffered from language schizophrenia. If you said the word ‘concept’, he understood ‘compte sept’ and counted to seven. If you wanted to curse him and spoke irritably about ‘maudire’, he would ask which word he had to say: ‘mot dire’ (say word). If you showed him a fossil then he’d say amusedly: ‘Wrong idea, this doesn’t look like a “faucille”, which in fact means sickle.’ Or was it maybe faux cil (false eyelash)?’
‘Finbar, the privateer who had his hair cut short. Coffee? You look pretty rough.’ ‘A filter coffee would be nice, professor. I’ve been lying too long in a shallow grave.’ ‘Professor, no, Molrat is sufficient. You know that well enough, my friend, Minnelemming. Nice name, don’t you agree? Fits you perfectly, Finbar. Ever since that dancer ran off with your money you’ve been yearning for love, so much so that you’d jump off a cliff into the crater of a volcano. I don’t want a young thing, even though I’m nearly half a century old.’
‘I am dead because I have no desire anymore.’
’Who wrote that?’
‘René Daumal, a forgotten writer, 1943. You have a nice wife, profiterole Molrat. She works hard. And you lead a healthy and balanced life. You restore old books, which is very noble. And you’re not exactly a moron.’
‘Dice? Bile?’
Finbar didn’t bother to analyse this Babel-like confusion. He regarded Molrat: ‘On our previous expedition through Brussels we discovered the negative sides of great men and how unimportant people can become great men.’
‘Words speak louder than actions,’ said Molrat. ‘Didn’t you read my report? The Vossenplein in the heart of the Marollen district, now that was a treasure. I’m still expecting 3,000 incredibly interesting words from you about that mission. You can write a story line but it’s not vital, we’re not writing for frankfurters and consumption intellectuals. As long as something happens to the language, to the consciousness. Get the sensors ready. Take a look at that painting in the corner of this room, it has a magical, realistic tint to it. You look like the young man in the painting, a younger version. Dark tones. A summer’s evening. A mysterious female figure. Is she going to suffocate you ? Halo, with one l, an aureole around your head. What do you see? Are you Gestapo saint or a bruised catamite? History is alive in this Brasserie, my friend. The stairs leading to the ‘lavatory’ downstairs are worn out. And the two waiters: what a delight, what a spectacle. They really enjoy the part they play. Especially the smallest, he’s a real mischievous fellow.’
‘Come on, Molrat, let’s go and sit in the room next door. I saw two women ogling us, and I don’t want to pass that up.’
‘Lavoir. Laundry. Je veux la voir. I want to see it. L’avoir. To have them.’
In the other room Anne and Sandrina are giggling at the two explorers, yet Molrat points at the floor. ‘Domino patterns. 4 x 4. Splendid. A book in the making takes its place between Molrat and Minnelemming. Basic idea: newfangled shrimps well and truly sewn with crescent and anvil for a revolutionary recipe accompanied by –‘
‘Tonic. Diet Cola,’ said the tallest waiter solemnly.
A heavily-built man in a large mink coat came in, looked angrily at Molrat and Minnelemming.
‘A Leffe. Blond. And a Bolleke,’ called out the smallest footman with comically raised eyebrows as if he was painting the two ladies he was serving.
‘Seven taps,’ said Molrat. ‘The young man behind the bar, the one not wearing a black waistcoat, look at him leaning against the first tap. He’s gazing like a fisherman at indefinable fishing grounds. Seven taps, but if you ask me there are only five different beers on tap. Interesting.’
‘Interesting, you say… What are you reading, Molrat?’
‘Achter de vormen steekt toch altijd hetzelfde, or something. A less well-known book from a writer who is disappearing into obscurity. Not bad, not bad. Listen, put your hands over your ears. Can you hear the sea? It washes up words, grinds the spinning top of language. Yo-yo. Yodel. Yoga. Yogurt. JOHAN. Date. Day. DAISNE. Sheaf. Shed. Sherry. Shelf. SHELL. Ground. Gripe. Grand. Great. Grid. Grip. GRIT. Look, this little book is a Marnix paperback from 1967. Two shells and a bit of grit, that’s what it’s called. A story by Johan Daisne, just 67 slender pages. On the cover there’s a large and a small shell. Look at the back flap, at the signature. O la laa...’
Finbar read: ‘Two shells from twenty years ago, / only in one’s youth can one write that, / a shell of his, a shell of hers, / and that nobody will remain / than what one wrote once.’
Molrat continued: ‘Until the book is published again / exactly after that passage of years / and the heart once again crawls out of its shell, / out of his as well as hers…’ ‘Sounds pretty old-fashioned.’
‘It’s nice, though, Minnelemming. The years that pass by. And ‘the gritty shells that copulate further’. Magnificent. Then Mr Johan calls out that ‘not only in novels do things never end’. If I was you I would order an Abbey beer, wouldn’t you say? Abbey beer with a capital A.’
Molrat beckons the waiter. Strutting in his black-white clothes he calls cheerfully: ‘Consummation per consumption!’
Pères Trappistes marched on. While Molrat drank greedily, Finbar looked around the café. He saw a raven-haired sunbed woman with a little white dog on her lap.
A little pussy licker, he thought, a cross between a poodle and a vacuum cleaner.
Customers in fur coats with strings of pearls read newspapers on sticks.
More people came in. The owner, who up until then had done nothing except stare at the two waiters, stood up and also started working. He passed the plates to them.
Toast Maison. Mushrooms.
‘du Mans’ baguette.
Brie de Meaux, hot on white bread.
Salami Napoli.
‘And a coffee. And a Kriek!’
If the Brasserie was a waiting room for the crematorium that morning, at noon things were getting really busy. The tall waiter knelt in front of the poodle dog. The lady in pink cooingly ordered a glass of white wine. She still had a full glass in her hand.
Finbar looked at the photo of Daisne on the back flap of Molrat’s little book. The photo was taken by Piet Selhorst. ’Here’s your likeness, Molrat,’ he said, ‘though without cap. The style. The eyebrows!’
Molrat took two pencil cases from his bag and looked at the photo.
‘Glasses. So, he has bad eyesight,’ said Molrat. ‘Cigarette. So, he does smoke. Wristwatch. Time is drinking because he has a beaker in his right hand.’
He started to describe Daisne in his log book: His eyes don’t smell anything, his watch doesn’t tell the time and his goblet is always full.
‘It will be a silver-grey day, Minnelemming. Look at this biotope. Splendid. Splendid. What a colourful affair. That couple who are trying to speak French. What would you like to drink? In Daisne’s book they drink shorts like milk, all disasters come from milk, he writes. And with the oysters they drink ‘sea milk’ in small glasses. Here, look, here it is: Milk was ordered once again, but even before the cows had been milked – 'What do you want to drink, Minnelemming? You don’t drink!’ ‘I don’t drink?’ said Finbar. ‘In the hotel lift I phoned up the maintenance service ‘for every brand of lift’. I congratulated the employee from the bottom of my heart with their number D0634. The devil finds work for idle hands; you know that better than anyone else.’
Molrat smiled sardonically, happy with Minnelemming’s reaction. He sipped at his third Tripel and thanked the waiter. ‘Mine I thank you. I think you’, he slurred.
Finbar picked up the paperback again and read the second paragraph on the first page.
A lot of people were there. Leduc could only look across a part of the room, and his eyes now began to throb while they shot from one table to another. And then they stayed where they were, scorching, and he heard the scraping of his own breath no more. The third paragraph. The dreaded, the impossible had happened: he had recognised straight away what had become unrecognisable.
‘My dear Molrat,’ said Finbar, ‘I don’t want to be a chimera that makes its own reality. I want to experience something in this reality, finally feel something. The start of a new story, perhaps a new love. I’m fed up with your language gymnastics. I’m tired, infinitely tired.’
‘You’re continually ill. Never at ease,’ said Molrat. ‘Don’t go and break the magic. Contemplate what you call reality. It’s a range of worlds. This is the Seaside Cake. Look how that couple are pushing the coffee through the filters. Look, they’re both doing it. They lay their hand flat on the filter and bang on it with the other hand. They keep on banging it. Out task is to register. The waiter was just talking about a windy shower. The windiness crops up regularly in conversations and you don’t note down anything. Nothing.’
Finbar looked outside and saw a bathtub on wheels standing there filled with bubble bath bombs. Passers-by poked in the bubble ball bath as if it was the catch from a vehicle on Mars. A young woman picked up a bubble ball and put it in her coat pocket. And another. She looked at Finbar mischievously.
God, she’s beautiful, he thought. Trendy hair-style. Those eyes...
With a clear darkness of earnestness in her gaze.
When he looked up from the book the land mermaid was gone.
‘Ostend is bubbling,’ said Molrat. ‘I note. Bubble bomb. Burst bubble. Balkan. Culture finds a capital here. Meanwhile, two balls are lying right in front of you that you haven’t even noticed, Minnelemming. All you think about is oysters, tears from the sea. Let’s go. En route. Off to do some serious work.’
~
In Stad Kortrijk, ‘Renee’s restaurant’, Molrat and Minnelemming consumed a fresh-caught sole. Molrat gave Minnelemming his wallet. Minnelemming paid the bill.
Once outside again, Molrat rubbed his belly. ‘A sole should swim in the sea or in butter,’ he said. ‘Or in the stomach, that’s when you really feel great.’
They went around the corner, and around another, until they came to the seafront. Bistro Beau-Site. And some more white wine.
Tea-room Melody. Kitsch à volonté. Owner Freddy and his wife Monique treat their loyal customers to Grand Marnier. Finbar tried to register the conversation. Molrat scraped away the succulent sounds of the Ostend dialect to discover the deeper meaning of the conversation.
‘Zo ’n piet. Ze trekken d’eran. Schudden d’ermee. Da dienk komt rechte,’ said an old woman who was imitating a man with horror. ‘Ton moe j’ e geluudsdemper en.’
‘Translate, Minnelemming,’ said Molrat.
‘A penis like this. They grab hold if it, give it a shake. Bloody thing comes erect. Then you need a silencer.’
‘Quite correct, Minnelemming. We’re on to something. To work. I note, you translate.’ Another woman stood up, holding a liqueur glass. ‘Nin’k, ‘k wiln no Barcelona voaren. Stierengevechten en al. ‘k En ier ook e volière tussen de twi bèèn.’
‘No, I want to go to Barcelona. Bullfights and all the rest of it. I’ve got an aviary between my legs,’ Finbar translated.
A quarter of an hour’s recording by Molrat and Minnelemming.
‘Ik ent altied beseft en nu goa je gie ’t begunn’n verstoan.’
‘I always realised it and now you’re going to start understanding it.’
‘I don’t understand a word of that,’ said Molrat. ‘Minnelemming, I give up.’
Three Irish Coffees later. Molrat paid. ‘I don’t have any euros, I have currency. I was here on Christmas Day. The same waitress served me. Wonderful service. She’s severe and has a good memory. Brilliant.’
‘Once again, sir, with your long pony-tail, out of this world hospitality,’ said Molrat to the landlord of the tavern. ‘Madam landlady, you have an extraordinary decor.’ Using his hands, Molrat modelled her voluptuous figure in the air.
‘Minnelemming, we have to move on once again, whatever the case. Consecrate the sea. Over there, a green buoy. The last of the sunlight on the ice water.’
‘Ich bin ein bastard!’ he wheezed once outside. ‘It’s a lovely day, colleague. Not dark. Once there was a café on every corner, so be happy, otherwise you’d have had to go into all of them with me.’
All of sudden Molrat looked wildly around him: ‘Blue birds! Blue birds!’ And then with a penetrating gaze at Finbar: ‘You’re also a blue bird, watch out, or you’ll be a dead seagull soon.’
~
Molrat and Minnelemming went to the Saint Peter and Paul’s church. An old man was sitting in front of the main door: kneeling and praying, shaking. Crusts on his bald head. A few miserable coins in his cap. Finbar gave him all his small change.
Fraternization in ’t Kroegske, with innkeeper Iwein.
Lapse in ’t Mespuntje.
‘Fuck. What a mission, Minnelemming. Poetry wiped on the anus of culture snobbism. We have to learn to shit. Bam. We are Thursday, in fact, thunder day!’
Molrat took out a white piece of paper, furiously began to draw. ‘The being of Ostend, I’ll draw it. Bloody hell!’
An hour later the members of the expedition swayed along the sea front. Molrat hooked his arm in Minnelemming’s. Molrat looked deathly pale. ‘We leave the West bank of Jordan,’ he slurred. ‘We have to get to the other side. Es muss sein… Es muss MOUSSAKA sein.’
Quite some way further on Molrat puked his guts out. He coughed and pointed at the flashing light of the lighthouse: ‘Damn, next mission is to Dinant, on the Ros Bayard… Then we’ll be Ritsaart and Writsaart. Here, the seagulls simply jeer at us.’
~
East bank, Hendrik Baels quay. The taxi with Molrat and Minnelemming stood parked in front of The Sailor. Molrat stormed into the fisherman’s bar. ‘Why are you people sitting here doing nothing, is the fish market closed or something?’ He started to sing at the top of his voice. ‘A young girl walked over the bridge, she called out FISH, FISH, I’VE GOT SO MUCH HAIR ON MY PUSSY THAT IT’S ALL SOFT AND WOOLLY. Dry fish! Boiled crab! Scottish sch- schull, you think you know how to fish? Take a look at this, I’ll teach you to piss!’
Finbar was too late to stop him. Molrat had already unzipped his trousers. ‘There we go!’
‘He’s out of his mind got on the wrong side of a windmill,’ said Finbar apologetically to the regulars. Two men at the bar grabbed hold of Molrat and bundled him into the taxi.
Finbar gave the driver a 20 euro note. ‘Drive him to the station,’ he said. Molrat squeezed his eyes shut and gave Finbar his drawing. ‘My mission is full… fulfilled,’ he lisped.
‘Everything’s fine. Go home, Molrat. I’ll continue this journey on my own and preferably in my own time. Thanks for the hotel, this time I’ll pay you back everything. My version of this Ostend mission follows. Adieu.’
~~~
Translated by Simon Shrimpton-Smith
A post-war virgo, Simon Shrimpton-Smith came to Belgium for a weekend thirty-odd years ago, and has never looked back since. His interest in language and languages led him, after a career in music publishing, to become self-employed in 1988 as a English voice-over, translator and subtitler, primarily in the audiovisual sector, though he also works for the national broadcaster (VRT) and other networks. “The joy of reading is only more enhanced when it is one’s own translation, be it a story, documentary or corporate script”.
Podcast read by Simon Shrimpton-Smith
