For centuries, the fortress of Luxembourg deterred the invading armies of the French, Prussia, Nazi Germany, Spain, and Burgundy to name a few. The city was surrounded by the thickly forested Ardennes and massive stone fortifications topped sheer cliffs. Hundreds of troops defending the city thwarted the attack of thousands, but not always.
Military strategists had called the citadel the Gibraltar of the North, and in the summer of 2011 an ambassador/friend had been appointed me, a punk poet, the pseudo-resident writer for an embassy overlooking the chasm of the Petrusse, the defensive casements designed by the famed French military strategist, Vauban. The decades of peace after WWII had allowed Luxembourg to become a safe haven for investments in the New World Order
The Ambassaor and I knew each other from London 1985. The Cafe de Paris. Leicester Square. I had been working the door at the Soho club. The blonde aristocrat showed up in a tight black rubber sheath with our mutual friend, Ingi. Our friendships has spanned the decades and the globe. London, Paris, and New York. She and her son had even come out to Thailand to meet my wife and daughter. The rubber dress had melted during a posting in Africa.
I had always told everyone that we were just friends and that was the truth. Once I heard the offer, I planned my departure. My late father had left me a small inheritance. I wanted to write a novel about hitchhiking across the USA. 1974. I had a road map of the USA and had often daydreamed of that trans-continental voyage. No photos. I never owned a camera back then. Only memories. Enough for a homage to Jack Kerouac.
"Bring your evening wear. You will have many occasions to sport it."
The Jones of New York tuxedo lay folded in a box on the top floor of the Fort Greene Observatory and still fit, albeit a little snug.
AP was impressed and said, "I haven't worn my tux in years. You want to borrow my tie."
I rejected his offer. I had never learned how to tie a bow tie. At 49, my fingers were not up to learning new tricks.
Friends in both the USA and Europe warned Luxembourg was Europe’s most boring city. The ambassador said the same. I already knew boring from living in LA in 1995. One year. No jokes. No stories. I could handle boredom, plus the Luxembourg airport was a 15-hour flight from my family in Thailand. Eight hours closer than JFK.
Nothing was keeping me in New York. I packed my bag and got a ticket. My plans. Write BACK AND FORTH and in the New Year continue East to Orient and my family. It was a good plan and two weeks later I was gone.
A week later the ambassador’s driver greeted me inside the terminal. A sign with my name. Marc explained in French that at the moment Madame l'Ambassador was attending a meeting at the EEU headquarters. I was all right with that and speaking French. I had lived in Paris for years. German was my third language and Latin was my first second language, thanks to being an altar boy in a parish outside Boston. Marc said my accent sounded strange.
Pierre, a successful Paris writer, once said, “You can’t speak French, but you speak it, as if you can.”
He was right. I spoke all languages with a Boston accent. He was right. I spoke all languages with a Boston accent. Thai and Malay were fifth and sixth tongues.
”Madame will be back at night.”
She had warned that her duties ate up much of her days. I told Marc, as we walked to the Embassy's Jaguar outside the terminal I said, "I'm a writer. I'm used to the solitary life. Let's go."
I hadn't slept on the flight to Paris nor the short hop to Luxembourg. I looked forward to a warm bed. I explained to Marc that I had been to this city in 1983 thanks to an inexpensive IcelandAir flight. $99 one-way.
I recalled landing at dawn. The empty Reykjavik terminal. Not one person in the seats. A gray sky and a view of a flat water bog. Nothing of the onward flight, but I remembered an eternal flame honoring the nation’s war dead on the walk from the center of town to catch a Paris train from the main terminal. Nothing else.
This morning drive to the residence lasted fifteen minutes in the gleaming Jaguar with diplomatic plates. We passed gleaming corporate and bank buildings, signifying Luxembourg’s importance as a European financial center.
Mid-morning traffic was light on the motorway. No traffic jams within the city proper. The embassy was a Gothic mansion situated atop a cliff overlooking a deep chasm. The air was autumnal, and I stepped onto the white pebbled driveway. The stones crunched beneath my feet. A large tree shaded a forlorn, yet tidy, garden. The walls guarded a fifty-meter drop to the Petrusse River. A weak trickle from this height and I surveyed my surroundings.
“Very smart.”
Marc guided me upstairs to an attic room, probably once a servant’s quarter in the past century. The single window gave a view of the blue sky. Not a cloud over the slanted rooftops. Across the street, the eternal flame.
”No one else is staying here at the moment. Only you and Madame l'Ambassador and her dog Dido."
"Perfect." I was given the front door codes and a key. Marc might see me later. I shut the door and crashed into bed. Now unofficially the writer in residence. Officially asleep.
The first weeks, Madame l'Ambassador and I made the evening rounds of parties, cultural events, and diplomatic ceremonies. She was the most beautiful woman in that city and good company. The intelligence agents attached to the various embassies tried to divine my purpose as ‘writer-in’residence’. I recited poetry to them. None of them truly listened. I had yet to wear my evening suit.
Every day I wrote about a hitchhiking trip in the summer of 1974. Boston-the Rockies-Reno-Santa Cruz-Moonlight Beach-Needles-Tulsa-the White Mountains. 1974 and Cross-Country America were far away in time and distance from the clifftop embassy of 2011. The title of the hippie homage to Jack Kerouac. BACK AND FORTH.
The city proper was very orderly, as if the cleanliness had been inherited from the Swiss. Nothing was out of place. Pedestrians obeyed the traffic lights. Motorists too. The city was also very small. Walking from one end to another took about an hour.
In the stores and cafes, the servers were distant, as if I didn’t belong there. Most were migrants from Eastern Europe. Their second language was Lëtzebuergesch, the national Moselle Franconian dialect. It sounded unlike German and more like Klingon from STAR TREK. They never asked my name. I stopped leaving a tip. Service was included in the bill.
I repeated my daily routine with an appalling sameness. Wake up. Write. Have a coffee at the cafe. Write. Eat. Write. Walk. Eat with the Ambassador. Sleep. BACK AND FORTH had crossed the Mississippi into the fields of corn.
Most mornings the ambassador was already gone by the time I came downstairs. I took my coffee at the next-door cafe. I introduced myself to the staff every morning. They never offered their names. After a week, I just greeted them with ‘chus’ and ordered a coffee. Frosty. Germany was a next-door neighbor. This wasn’t France.
My regime. Wake up - write - eat - drink - events with the ambassador - sleep.
Repeat-repeat-repeat.
I enjoyed myself in purgatory. Luxembourg had excellent pastry and the Bitburger beer was cheap and plentiful. The ambassador possessed a good library. I read a lot of literature, Mishima, Graham Greene, and Balzac's epic, A HARLOT HIGH AND LOW, how a scoundrel priest attempts to subvert high society with the beauty of young lovers seeking fame and fortune. His writing almost persuaded me to stop mine. I was too stubborn to quit until I typed THE END of BACK AND FORTH.
Throughout September, I traveled on day trips by train to the north out of the city folowing the Alzette River. Fortified chateaus dotted the hills. Pine forests abounded on the slopes. The prosperous towns were quiet day and night. War hadn't visited this country since the winter of 1944. The Battle of the Bugle.
On the weekends, Madame l'Ambassador joined me for biking through the nearby forests. Hilly terrain. Train out. Bike back. Sometimes train out. Train back. I knew my way up the Alzette Valley . All else was a mystery.
We attended openings at the Mudam museum, whose collection is dedicated to contemporary art. Luxembourg was the richest nation in Europe, but the museum has no money for major acquisitions. The curator had a good sense of ecletic art.
The Musee was located on the opposite heights from the city, next to the walls of Fort Thüngen, whose fortifications had guarded the eastern approach from invaders. Few tourists ventured this far out of the city. Five minutes by car. An hour afoot. I had walked it a few times, pretending I was a 17th-century poet. I never ran into another soul on the path, which were intersected by railroad tracks. Too dangerous for most. I never risked my life.
As a founding member of NATO, Luxembourg's small armed forces had honored their current commitment to the Pact. A small contingent served in Iraq. No deployment of combat forces. I couldn’t fault them. Eight years later, chaos ruled that country with success, but peace thankfully reigned in Luxembourg. At an embassy party, the head of the armed forces asked to borrow ten Euros for a raffle ticket. I never asked for the money back. It was good to have a nation in your debt.
Outside of the embassy Ispoke with few people. No one greeted me with 'Addi' the Luxembourg word for hello. Only me to them. I had no friends. Strangers were strangers in Luxembourg. I succumbed to aloneness. Writers are used to apartness. We are rarely lonely, lost forever with our thoughts.
Dido, the ambassador's dog was a good companion in the embassy garden during the afternooons. She chased the numerous crows into the trees and then rested her head on my lap, as I wrote in my journal. Nothing much of consequence.
In BACK AND FORTH, the main character of had reached San Francisco. I was surprised how much I remembered about that trip. Standing beyond Golden Gate Park at the ocean's edge, I gazed right to the Ocean House. Like this terrace, I suspected nothing had changed over the years. I patted Dido’s head and put away my pen.
To the west of Luxembourg lay Belgium. Once out of the Ardennes, the countryside was as flat as Kansas and Jacques Brel had famously sung of his native land, "La plat pay qui est miene." I knew one person in his ‘flat country that is his’.
Vonelli and I hadn't seen each other in years.
The Florida native had been working in Europe ever since the 1960s. First as a pianist in London. We had met at le Privilège under le Palace Disco on Rue De Montmatre. He had said he dealt in art. We all believed him. We had never seen him do anything else and his apartment in the Bastille was always filled with art. Mostly of it came and went. Some stayed. His favorites. He was a good laugh.
I called the art dealer, and he invited me to visit him in Charleroi.
"Charleroi?"
"You know of it?"
"Yes." I had heard a little. None of it good.
I was about to find out why, because I accepted Vonelli's invitation. He had always been a good host and I was tired of spending my days alone. Apart I told myself. Not alone. Sometimes with Dido. Never the cat.
I was about to find out why, because I accepted Vonelli's invitation.
He had always been a good host and I was tired of spending my days alone.
Apart I told myself. Not alone.
When I told Madame l'Ambassador of my impending trip, she said, "Why not Paris to see old friends. Charleroi has a reputation for being the ugliest city in Europe. The painter Rene Magritte. His mother committed suicide in Charleroi. I think she threw herself into a canal."
“Something that ugly has to be seen to see the beauty of the world.”
“Just don’t throw yourself into the canal.”
Only high places inspired my leap into the void. I hadn’t done so off the embassy’s garden terrace. A long drop. I couldn’t do it to the Ambassador. My family or Dido.
"I'd expect nothing less from the ugliest town in Europe, but as Serge Gainsbourg famously said, "Ugliness has one great advantage over beauty: it is not diminished by the passage of time.”
"And Serge was not a handsome man."
We both loved his 1971 concept LP BALLADE OF MELODIE NELSON. The best twenty-seven minutes in French Pop music with Alan Parker on guitar and on session bass, Dave Richmond. I was happy the whole LP was on YouTube. It was so 1970s Europe. We later saw a concert of Jane Birkin. She and he were friends to the end. No matter what. She never considered him 'ugly'.
"But Jane Birkin loved him."
"Yes, she did."
The love of Beauty and the Beast.
Madame l'Ambassador's daughter TGV-ed up from Paris and, upon hearing about my trip to Charleroi, she asked incredulously, "Why are you going to that hellhole?"
"To see a friend."
"Must be a good one."
"You're probably right about that."
"What's he do there?"
"Art.” I was good at keeping secrets, if I didn’t know what they were.
People back in Paris had whispered that the Floridian expatriate was a CIA spy.
We had met in Paris, the eternal city of light. He had been dealing in art. He played piano. I introduced him to two of his female loves. He let me crash on his couch in his apartment off Rue Basfroi.
I loved that city and wondered why I left in 1986. The answer was always the same. Un couer brise.
It could have been, because of a woman.
She was a married woman now. Her husband was a very successful publisher. I was on page 153 of my novel. Success ever distant than Reno, Nevada, where I had lost my travel money in 1974. Jack Daniels and Blackjack had been a wicked mix. My missteps were many in this life. I have survived all of them.
Still I was a very well-unknown writer. People were waiting for my work. I was too. In some ways I was happy. More often than not. I wished I had a little more money and played the local lotto without any success. At least Dido, the dog, kept me company. Faithful to the bone, although food, his mistress and family were her #1 loves.
I missed my family in Thailand and planned to see them at year’s end. A thirteen-hour flight from Dusseldorf to Bangkok. I had yet to reserve the flight. I had a date. December 21. THe winter solstice.
Over the next few days, Madame l'Ambassador's dog looked at me funny, as if she seemed confused as to why I would leave her, and I told Dido, "I'll be back for the weekend.
She licked my hand.
Dogs will believe anything.
Madame l'Ambassador's cat couldn't care less about my staying or going. The bed was her throne. She regarded me with the same distance as the cafe’s bar staff. >
A day later, I caught the morning train to Bruxelles. Dido walked me to the gate. The maid, Marc’s wife, held her by the lease. Dido sat. He was a well-trained dog.
”Je reviens.”
Dido didn’t speak French or understand my accent. She wagged her tail and I walked outside. The eternal flame on the other side of the street burning on a bright day. I crossed the bridge. This side of the city was more working-class than the center. XXX shops and Bratwurst stands. I remember nothing of it from before.
The station hadn’t changed much since 1985. A comfort. Young thugs clumped on the stairs. A threat to no one in particular. A visible police presence unlike the city center. I bought the International Herald-Tribune. The front page promised more horror. I stuffed the newspaper in my bag. I was traveling light. The westbound train pulled out of the station on time. It arrived at every stop on schedule and left at the exact minute of departure. This wasn’t Switzerland, but it beat Amtrak in my home country, which rarely left on time.
I changed trains at Namur, another old fortress city. Charleroi was thirty minutes away to the south. The local train passed through Floreffe, Solvay, and Chatelet following the Albert Canal. Belgium was different from Luxembourg. Even more working-class than around Luxembourg train station.
Rusting trains resting in a railyard announced the outskirts of my destination. Their steel weren’t going anywhere other than a steel furnace.
Once there had been twenty blast furnaces in Charleroi. Tens of thousands of jobs. Now like the Rust Belt in the USA, the heart of the industry had been off-shored to the 3rd World. They were never coming back here or Gary, Indiana.
Vonelli waited at the station. Well-dressed in a casual jacket and gray flannel slacks. Once the passengers had depaarted vrom the terminal, the only other person within eyesight. was a comatose junkie on a bench. The station grounds felt like a plague had hit Charleroi, the antithesis of Luxembourg.
Vonelli and I greeted with a firm handshake. The art dealer was only a few years older than me. He appeared in good health. A smile on his bearded face. I had never seen him without a beard. I never had one.
"Come on, I'll show you the sights."
”Of the ruins.”
"The city government had spent a lot of money on the terminal plaza," he explained, then added, "It's mostly used by junkies and glue-sniffers, as you can see."
”No people." I had lived in the East Village for the end of the last century. I was very familiar with distressed towns and gutted cities from New England.
The walking dead were everywhere, and there wasn't a single policeman in sight on the way to the city center.
Charleroi belonged to the underclass. The coal mines had been shut down in the last century. Jobs were few and far between. Getting on ‘chomage’ or relief was considered career advancement.
< p> We stopped for a trolley. No one was on it. Vonelli explained the politics.
"The city tore up the main shopping street five years ago. They never finished it. The last four mayors are in prison for stealing the money for the project. A fifth fled the country. Charleroi is known to be the most corrupt city in Europe."
"They did an even better job on the tram. 150 million Euros and only one mile of rail. All of it concrete walls with graffiti."
"Cool." I sort of liked Charleroi, surviving despite a bad reputation and bad leadership. A change from the wealthy ennui of Luxembourg. Things were happening. None of them good.
It looked a little like the East Village in 1976, although the vacant lots were industrial-sized. There were no punks. Only junkies and meth heads on permanent drug holiday.
"Nobody wants to live here."
I mentioned Fabo's disdain for his hometown to Vonelli, staring at the massive coal mounds dotting the cityscape.
"Those terrils aren't going anywhere. Sometimes people climb them and get killed in coal ash avalanches. So don't even think about going to the top of one."
"This town is a wreck," I said with admiration for the wasteland. The end of the world had come early to Jacques Brel’s ‘let plat pays qui est a mien’.
"The city had collapsed after the closure of the steel mills and coal mines. The only jobs now are graft or welfare or thievery and dealing guns or drugs."
"Like Detroit." I had never been to the Motor City. “Or the Bronx or East Village in the 1970s.
"Only smaller. But heading in the same direction.”
At least the wall graffiti was poetic. A Rimbaud poem written on a train in 1870 escaping from Abbeville, the home of his parents. Destination - Charleroi.
Du jambon rose et blanc parfumé d’une gousse
D’ail, — et m’emplit la chope immense, avec sa mousse
Que dorait un rayon de soleil arriéré.
Even I can translate the lines.
In winter, we'll travel in a little pink carriage
With blue cushions.
We'll be cozy. A nest of mad kisses lies
In every soft corner.
"Come on, we'll go to my place and have a proper Belgian lunch." Vonelli led me across the Sambre Canal, and we caught a taxi to Montigny, a Walloon conclave in the hills.
His house was a mansion on ten hectares bordering an autoroute. The rush of cars and trucks very audible. Vonelli said, "Charles Trenet, the French singer, said that he thought of the noise like the distant surf. A constant hush of traffic. Actually I'm getting used to it."
"I probably could as well." I was half-deaf in one ear, but I could hear Charles Tenet’s song LA MER in my head with both ears intact, plus as a child I had lived under the landing pattern for Boston’s Logan Airport. After a few weeks, I never heard them either.
We walked back to the house. He opened a massive iron gate. Chez lui was a bigger-than-big house with two acres of wooded property.
”This manse had once belonged to a doctor. The rent's a 1000 Euros a month."
" That wouldn't get you a studio in New York."
"Or Paris. So here I am. Charleroi. Your room's the first on the right at the top of the stairs."
The inside temperature was cool, not as chilly as my old house in the West of Ireland. Nothing was colder than the haunted schoolhouse in Ballyconeeley, except the sunken cemetery in the bog.
When I came downstairs, Vonelli suggested lunch at his local.
"Moules-frites?"
"Exactement."
The national dish was delicious combined with twice-fried potatoes or ‘frites’, which I dipped in mayonnaise a les Belges. I drank two golden Duvals along with the wine. Set for the afternoon. I played pinball with the locals. They knew my name. I liked Charleroi.
The total cost of our meals was 25 euros, complete with salad, dessert, and a carafe of white white. I was beginning to like Montigny too.
The next day Vonelli’s friend arrived from Budapest. The Charleroi Aeroport was connected with scores of cities throughout Europe. Igor brought the sun. The coal ash mountains remained ugly. Igor was a good cook and promised a goulash for dinner.
We sat in the backyard. Drinking beer. The best Belgium beers came from Trappist monasteries, which had been established in the 17th Century to feed the people and finance good works. A lovely sunny afternoon with the whir of commuter cars whisking through the trees.
We ate an early dinner. Igor was flying home in the morning. He had picked up a small statue from Vonelli. Neither of them mentioned anything about the transaction. His goulash was excellent. He drank wine by the living room fire. Coltrane. SOMETHING ELSE. The setting was so comfortable. Almost comfortable enough to forget Charleroi was down the road.
When I woke in the morning, Igor was gone.
"Back to Budapest."
It was just us.
I've always wanted to see that city."
Along with Prague and Vonelli said, " But for today we'll bike around the city and see all the wonders of Charleroi."
"What a delightful idea." No one else was vacationing here.
We rode along the Sambre canal into the city. The bikes were old, but not as old as us. At least the road was all downhill from Montigny.
Vonelli was a good guide and explained, "Charleroi has been peopled since before history, but in 1666 the Spanish built a great fortress, which was passed back and forth to the Dutch, Spanish, and Austrians, until the French seized the city during the Revolution. Napoleon slept here before his defeat at Waterloo."
"I've been to that battlefield. Defeat and Victory are close friends." 1666 must have been Satan's year.
"People came here to work in the mines and mills. It's all shut now. The coal stays in the earth."
A good thing. I couldn’t imagine the pollution back then. I saw two men in the town square. One sported a scar on his skull, as if a Viking had attempted to kill him. He was high on drugs. He slipped on cobblestones and smashed his face. More blood. It reminded me of the Bowery. Not at all Luxembourg. I later called the Ambassador to let her know I was okay. She was glad to hear that.
The idle steel mills shone in the sunlight.
The empty railyards.
Nothing and no one seemed to work in Charleroi, and I said to Vonelli, "I feel like Charleroi. In a state of ruins, but you can tell it was something once."
"But not anymore." He gazed south to the range of coal terrils. The coal heaps were the highest mountains in this part of Belgium. "Let's head back to civilization."
Vonelli had a rough time biking uphill to Montigny. We walked a good part of the way. Neither of us was in a rush.
Back at Chateau Vonelli and I dined on left-over goulash, drank Tokaj wine, and listened to jazz by a fireplace. Dexter Gordon.
"Tomorrow we'll walk to the Abbaye d'Aulne. The monastery's abandoned."
"I wouldn't expect less from Charleroi."
I called my wife in Thailand on a phone card.
Angie, our daughter, needed money for school
She was # 1 in her class. I sent $200 by Western Union. I would send more soon once I was back in Luxembourg.
And my son Fenway was my spitting image.
Vonelli and I spoke about my family.
"You think you will ever go back?"
"In December."
"What about for good?"
My old crowd had left Thailand for Europe and Australia. Some stayed. Fabo was never coming back to Charleroi. Thailand was his home. I wished it could have been mine.
"Times are tough over there for farangs or westerners. I'd love to leave the West, but I need money to support my kids. Maybe one day." My father had left me a little. Money. Enough for two years, if I was careful.
Fabo was working a dangerous job at sea. While I was marooned in the West. A writer-in-residence without pay.
Seated in a comfy chair, I stared into a fire and listened Duke Ellington on the stereo. SWITCHBLADE with Charles Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums. Vonelli asked if I wanted to go upstairs.
"No, I'm good here."
Vonelli covered me with a blanket.
And I drifted into dreams.
Paris.
Gabrielle.
The East Village.
Ann. 1978.
Sri Racha.
Mem. Now.
My mind sleepwalked around the world, but I woke far from my heart’s destinations.
I was in Montigny. Ten klicks down the road from the ugliest city in Europe. I felt more at home than in Luxembourg, although I missed Alice. She had been a good girlfriend.
I lay on the floor. A pillow under my head. I had no idea how I had moved out of bed in the night. I rose to my feet. It was almost noon. I never slept this late. Drink and a lot of it. Vonelli was in the kitchen, preparing tea and toasting a baguette.
"Good night's sleep?"
"Not bad. I was a little haunted by my dreams. Reliving my life without a change. Not one bit. Almost like I was trapped by the past."
""You're not trapped here. Today we'll walk to the Abbeye d’Aulne."
Vonelli explained how the Abbaye had been founded in 657CE as a Benedictine monastery, "In 1147 it became a Cistercian Abbey, swinging between splendor and decadence, until it was destroyed by French revolutionary troops."
I had been brought up Catholic and had a vague idea of the differences between the two orders. The black-robed Benedictines believed in pray and work, but also good food. The white-robed Cistercians were more severe, but brewed a stronger beer to make money.
"Do they brew beer?"
"A good one."
It was a little past noon, and I said, "Then let's going."
We descended down Rue des Landelies to the Sambre River. A train bridge crossed the water. A bus could take us to the abbey. No one was waiting at the stop. The schedule reported one an hour.
"Do we wait?"
"It's faster to walk," said Vonelli.
"How far?'
"About three kilometers. Halfway there’s a good meal at La Guinguette. At the locks."
I did the math. Less than two miles. Maybe a forty-minute fast walk on flat ground.
"Why don't you go live in Thailand? asked Vonelli. He must have forgotten asking the same question last evening.
I was tired of everyone asking me this question, but this afternoon I had a different answer than yesterday.
"I wish I could, but Thailand is not all beaches and Buddhas. Making money out there isn't easy either."
I explained how Thai cyber police had shut my F1 business down over a licensing with Ferrari.Everyone said I was going to jail. Not the police. I pid a $100 fine just as they ha told me from the beginning. Going back was possible, but life there was tough without money.
Everyplace was and presently I was living off a dwindling inheritance from my father. Maybe for another two years.
Pi Poo or Grandfather Frank had traveled to Thailand in 2005 to see his granddaughter, Angie. Only two. She had been named after my mother. He was one of the two family members who came out to visit. No one else in my Boston family asked anything about my Thai family.
The other family member who came was my cousin, the Bishop. Back in 1999.
No barges plied the tranquil Sambre and a flock of geese accompanied us along the towpath. The water arced south. The gaggle waddled into a marshy lake.
500 meters farther along, we arrived at a two-story stone house by the lock. Water seeped through the boards. They were old. Working good as new.
"More than before."
The ex-spy led me inside La Guinguette.
The dining room was set for lunch. Vonelli and I were the only diners. Two old women sat at the bar. Drinking beer. It was the national pastime of Belgium.We ordered beers from the abbaye and moules-frites for the second time in three days.
The beer was strong. The first went down fast. Vonelli waved for two more.
We ate with our hands. The moules fresh out of the Atlantic. We spoke about his old girlfriend, Yorke. I had introduced them in Paris.
I had lived with Yorke on Ile St. Louis. Just as a friend. We sometimes called her Cruella, but she was nice to me and let me live with her for free. I took care of her dog, Angus. I was good with dogs. Better luck with them than with women.
We ordered another round of beers. The old ladies did the same. We raised our glasses to each other.
"You know I really liked her." Vonelli rarely spoke of love.
Yorke was a good laugh and I told Vonelli, "If I go to Paris, I'll say hello for you."
"You think she'd ever come up here?" He signaled for 'l'addition'.
"To Charleroi?"
"To see the ugliness."
Even ugliness had its beauty. Serge Gainsbourg appreciated that as the ugliest man in French music.
"Who can read the mind of a woman?"
We raised our glasses and finished our beers.
.
The lock was filled with green water. In the distance lay the ruins of Aulne. Ancient and at rest from the modern world.
"They really are ruins."
"There hasn't been an Abbe here since the French Revolution. Over two hundred years."
"The Black Robes mustn't have been popular with the mob." Any Benedictines had been banished by the Terror.
"No, everyone loses touch with people. Few of us have to explain why. Neither do these stones."
The church hadn't seen a roof in two centuries. Its desecration made me feel like a young atheist outside of Boston. I was not religious in the least. Vonelli neither.
But we were not as young as the bride and groom celebrating their marriage at the abbaye's auberge.
Two younger people starting a life together. Happy.
We walked away.
Just Vonelli and me.
"There's a bar close by."
Les Caves de l'Abbaye d'Aulne had a terrace. Vonelli and I eyed the ruins. Like us they had been something once.
We ordered more beer.
"I think I have a few more years in me."
"Me too."
Neither of us hazarded a guess about how many.
"This isn't so bad."
"What about Charleroi?
"It has a good hold on ugly," I said in truth.
"And a place of beauty." That was also the truth.
Depending on the light, beauty can be ugly, then again the light is always good after a few beers.
Especially for Fabo, because we both drank beer.
fotos by peter nolan smith, angelina hue, jocko weyland, tom blackwell
