‘There are masters and there are servants, leaders and followers.’ And he said he hadn’t chosen to be a leader. A leader sacrifices himself. Day and night he works for the followers, even if the followers are too stupid to realise. In exchange the leader is entitled to respect. For example his satchel is carried for him. The tastiest food is for him, and the most fertile women. Where did I get the nerve to thrust a mop in his hands? What was the next step? An apron? Rubber gloves? He wasn’t going to be turned into a girl. He wasn’t the boy.
I was the boy. The boyesse.
A boyesse whom you could put through her paces at the fair.
They could exhibit Geneviève Lhermitte at the fair too. Five in a row. What mother could contend with her?
Suppose M’s mother had done it. She needn’t have killed all five. She could have stopped after M. She could have spared the future postmen, so that they could start delivering letters. Couldn’t she have killed a single one? Was that asking too much?
She did not care about her children. Certainly not about M. Some women have children, but that doesn’t make them mothers. M’s mother could have had a hundred children, and she still wouldn’t have become a mother. Never a good word for M, never. Nor for the others, but definitely not for M. He’d taken her youth, she said. It was his fault that she had been denied the carefree enjoyment of her young years, her best years. As if he had asked her to get pregnant! The other four she could manipulate. Not him. Bitching from morning till night. She wasn’t embarrassed about me. A normal woman wants to make a good impression on a new daughter-in-law, but she…
She certainly liked being pregnant. Why else would she have child after child, without concerning herself about them? Children didn’t interest her. And their father didn’t interest her either. Sex interested her, yes, but she could have taken precautions.
With each child the father wondered if he was the father. And then they’re surprised when M…
She liked them young too, didn’t she? In the Congo she was caught with one of her pupils, by her own husband. The boy was under age. If it had happened here, she would never have been allowed to teach again. But as it was the Congo, everything was possible. Those whites protected each other. If ever there was networking, it was there.
The father wasn’t any better. Now he says that she started it, but who believes that? To begin with he was out there alone. M was safely in Mummy’s tummy. They both thought it better if M made his entrance in Belgium. Cooey, here I am.
What does a man alone do in the Congo? He says he set up a chess club. Everywhere he went he set up chess clubs. If they’d sent him to the moon, he would have set up a chess club there. But no one plays chess twenty-four hours a day.
And supposing that she started it, even then he didn’t have to follow her example. Have I ever followed M’s example?
After all those years he still couldn’t stop talking about his African princesses, not even to me. What father-in-law does that? And you had to say ‘kuyuku’ to them. Then they would come. And you could fondle their breasts. They were as hard as wood. He maintained.
As if those things interested me.
I had said to M that we should invite his father over. Gilles should get to know his grandfather. I felt. I also knew that my father-in-law would not be organising any Santa Claus parties for his grandchildren, or taking them to the Efteling and Walibi, but there had to be someone to whom Gilles could say ‘Granddad’. The first thing he announced when he came in was that he didn’t wish to be called ‘Granddad’, or ‘Pappy’ or ‘Pop’. The grandchildren should call him by his first name. Why? No explanation. And then he started talking about the mulatto women he had had. And about their ebony breasts.
M liked white women. The whiter the better. That’s why he went to Eastern Europe so often. To the Caucasus, where the white race has its roots. The Caucasian race. M did not want any black women. Or women with hard breasts. What normal man wants a woman with hard breasts?
All those men who went to the Congo had only a single aim. But they were never punished. No, no. They were heroes.
When M’s mother’s nerves got bad, she started hitting out. She hit people straight in the face. M was also hit by her. M! He didn’t hit back, ever. ‘I ignored it,’ he said. ‘Surely you don’t think she’s ever hurt me?’
But she could have hurt him. The woman could floor anyone. She had a black belt. Fortunately I did not know that the first time I saw her. I wouldn’t have dared to shake hands with her! She started in the Congo. There was a judo club there. It turned out that she had talent. My father also tried, but couldn’t do it. She could. Mama M had not been idle in the Congo. She used her time as a colonial well.
If only they had stayed in the Congo! M could have been Mr Big there, with ten women on each finger.
She gave judo lessons at home. Special mats were put down, said M, but the whole house shook when yet another person was thrown to the floor. Wham!
‘And why didn’t you learn judo?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t need it,’ he replied.
The woman was always out and about, and her husband too. Evening after evening the children were left alone. He went to play chess and she went to judo class. They had no time to read their children a story and they had no time to go to the parents’ evenings, but for the chess club and the judo club they had all the time in the world. And then they’re amazed when things turn out badly. They had nothing to give their children, nothing at all.
The two of them lived as if they had no children. She didn’t have to murder her children. Why would she have murdered them?
Is it possible that murderess-mothers kill their children because they love them? Love them too much? If that is true, then maybe it’s too dangerous to love your children a whole lot, then it’s better… No, you can never love your children enough. Those mothers don’t love their children. They think they love them, but it’s not love, it’s… I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t love, it isn’t love, it isn’t love.
M could sometimes respond so feebly when I was loving with him. As if he didn’t understand. Actually he didn’t respond at all. He wasn’t angry and he wasn’t happy. He was nothing.
When we were first together I used to buy him presents, but he did not seem to know what to do with them. I had to unwrap them myself. Otherwise they would have stayed where I put them down, wrapped and with the ribbon round them. My first present to him was a deodorant, because well, I felt his personal hygiene could do with improvement. ‘Why are you giving me that?’ he said. I thought I had insulted him. I apologised and said that I certainly didn’t want to suggest that he didn’t smell nice. He smelled nice, but he didn’t wash enough and went round for too long in the same clothes. Men paid less attention to that. Because in addition he did physical work, he sweated and so I thought that deodorant might help, although there was nothing wrong with his sweat as such. The smell of sweat could even be a turn-on sometimes. In the middle of my explanation he turned round and left. I stood there with my deodorant. I didn’t know what to do with it. It was a deodorant for men. I wasn’t going to use it. I put it on the draining board in the kitchen. A little later it had gone. He must have taken it, because I didn’t touch it and there were no goblins in our house.
I bought a belt for him, a dark-blue one in supple leather and a nice copper-coloured buckle. Made in Italy. Again the same reaction: ‘Why are you giving me that?’ I thought he felt the buckle was too flashy, or that blue wasn’t masculine enough. I’ll give the belt to my cousin, I thought. He’ll like it. That evening I saw him wearing the belt. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘you do like it after all.’ He didn’t react. ‘The belt,’ I said. No reaction. ‘That blue suits you.’ Still nothing. It was as if he didn’t want to admit that I had given him the belt. He was pretending that he had always had it. He wore it for years. When he changed trousers,