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‘The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.’
HANNAH ARENDT, The Life of the Mind (1978)
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1
The most hated woman in Belgium. That’s what they call me. Much more hated than that woman who murdered her five children. Most people have already forgotten her. Not me. Meanwhile other mothers have murdered their children, though not as resolutely as her, not as unerringly. She is and will remain the queen among murderess-mothers, the gold medallist, the Medea of our age.
I don’t deserve a medal. I deserve hatred, scorn, poison. People send me letters in which they describe in great detail what they would do to me if they had the chance. A long, lingering death under torture is what I deserve. Starvation. They enclose photos of emaciated Jews. ‘This is what you’ve got coming the moment you set foot out of prison!’
Don’t read them, says Anouk, and Sister Virginie also urges me not to. Ignore them, especially now. Save your strength for the day when you are released, the day they say is fast approaching, to the rage and frustration of the whole country. I must think of the good things, the good things Anouk wants for me and Sister Virginie also wants for me. Dear, faithful Sister Virginie, who in this hell takes pity on me like a mother, following the example of the Virgin Mary, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortress of the Afflicted. And she also took pity on my Mummy—God rest her soul. It was her idea that I should ask Mummy to pray at her house every day at eight-thirty in the evening. At the same moment I prayed in my cell, and so we were united in prayer. Poor Mummy, who was taken from us far too early. It is always too early, says Sister Virginie, for those we love. How lucky I am to have her, poor orphan, abandoned by everyone, except by her and by God. I do not always feel Him. Forgive me.
And forgive me for reading everything.
M also reads everything that appears about him in the press. So I read in the paper. He cuts it out and puts it in a folder, like me. He will notice that recently more has been written about me than about him. A lot more. It will make him furious. Seething with rage.
Soon I’ll be free and you won’t, M.
This time I shan’t come and visit you. I shan’t sit opposite you. I shan’t listen to what you’ve got to say. The jobs you’ve got for me, the role you’ve devised for me. I shan’t even think about you.
‘You owe everything to me. Without me you’d be nothing.’
And I believed him.
I have a poor self-image, says psychotherapist Anouk. That’s why I’m an easy prey for bad men. Was an easy prey for bad men.
I don’t want to hear another word about him. Other things concern me now, such as the question: why are murderess-mothers not hated?
On that subject I don’t want to miss a single word. Unfortunately those words dry up in the blink of an eye. You have to be as quick as lightning, and I’m not as quick as lightning, I never have been. Even the champion Geneviève Lhermitte scarcely gets the ink flowing anymore. At the beginning you couldn’t turn on the television without there being a news item about her. In every tree in the country a bird chirped her name: Lhermitte, Lhermitte, Lhermitte. The papers brought out special editions with photos and interviews and plans and details. A fresh load of horror! Was there no end to it? people wondered in desperation. No, there is no end to it. That’s why we must pray for redemption.
Now the commotion has died down. She has in fact acquired formidable competition, although for now she need not fear demotion. She is still the tops, and I, the most hated woman in the country, the woman whose name is not and will not be forgotten, think of her. Not a day goes by without a thought of her. Call it an honorary salute.
Does she think of me?
If there is one thing there’s no shortage of in a prison, it is time to reflect. Some days that is hell. All days.
By which I don’t mean it’s quiet.
God, my ears!
Rest is for the rest home.
But there too there will be the slamming of doors, and the wheeling of squeaking trolleys down the corridors. ‘Soup, lovely soup!’ If the old folk refuse to take their pills they are shouted at, or if they’ve wet their bed, or shat in it. Those old folk don’t make much noise anymore. Their lungs are full of water. Blub blub. And if they do threaten to kick up a fuss, they get a bag over their head. Not a plastic bag, because then they will die and the rest home won’t earn anymore from them. But you can pull a pillowslip over their heads, or a laundry bag. It’s the same with parrots. They think it’s night.
I always wanted a parrot. A green one that in the mornings would say to me: ‘Hi, Odette. Sleep well, Odette? Fancy a cup of coffee, Odette?’
‘Oh no,’ said my mother, ‘no parrot in my house!’ A dog was OK. After lots of moaning and pleading. She chose the name: Fifi. And she decided which rooms the dog could go into, and from which rooms she was banned. And when Fifi died, she said: ‘That’s that. My house isn’t a zoo. No zoology.’
It was her house. She had saved for it, together with my late father, God rest his soul. He was goodness itself, says everyone who knew him, with a heart of gold. And how different everything would have been if he had been granted more time on earth.
If I ever have a house of my own, a house I can furnish as I like, and where I can do what I like, and where no one comes and bosses me about or checks up on me, a house that is really my own, I’ll buy a parrot. And I’ll call him Coco. Coco Chanel.
I mustn’t laugh, I mustn’t laugh, I mustn’t laugh.
Next thing it’ll be in every paper: ‘She has no remorse. She’s laughing!’
And my poor Mummy, who at the end of her life was in a rest home and was too weak to visit me. Ma pauvre petite maman chérie! I would have so liked to look after you, as you looked after me. You never abandoned me, however difficult it was for you. I didn’t want to abandon you either, but I couldn’t visit you, I wasn’t allowed to. Even for your funeral they wouldn’t let me out. That was so awful, Mummy, not being able to say goodbye to you. I have known lots of black days here, but that day was jet black. What misery! Dear Mummy, what terrible things have happened to us? One catastrophe after the other. Who could have imagined it? Do you remember how happy we were, you and I? Sometimes it was difficult. You were having a difficult time, I was having a difficult time, we both suffered with our nerves, and we missed Daddy—oh, how we missed him!—but we had lovely moments too. And they won’t come back. That is so cruel, Mummy. I’d so love to be little again, your little one. But now I have little ones of my own, three little ones, who are not so little anymore. How fast it goes!
Do you remember our delight when my first child was born? How full of hope we were, you and I. You didn’t even have headaches anymore, ‘I’m cured,’ you said. ‘That little mite is my medicine.’
I