When I had ended, he summarized what I had said, but was still fishing for more.
‘So you were brought up by your mother?’
‘More or less.’
He frowned.
‘You said your father worked at the State University of Ghent?’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
His chair creaked. Or was it mine?
‘But you were raised a Catholic?’
‘More or less,’ I lied.
He frowned again. I could tell he had to stop himself from asking more questions on that subject. He managed with an effort; though one more personal question did make it past his lips.
‘You don’t have any siblings?’
I hesitated.
‘I had a younger brother.’
‘Ah … ’
‘Died a long time ago,’ I said.
‘That’s very sad,’ he said.
I said nothing.
‘I trust you honour his memory? Flowers on All Souls’ Day? An annual mass for him?’
I wasn’t really sure—maybe Mother made the arrangements. He looked at me, sensing my doubt. There was a short silence.
‘You understand I would like to tell the parishioners something of what you have just told me on Sunday?’
‘Be my guest.’
‘You will be there, of course?’ he asked.
‘My parents are visiting that day.’
A blatant lie.
‘That’s regrettable. Another time, perhaps,’ he said.
He stood up, I opened the door for him. We wished each other good evening without shaking hands. Only once I was back on my chair going over the conversation again did I realize he had not asked his question. I wondered whether he had forgotten, but realized it was highly unlikely. He struck me as a man who was always prepared and never forgot things. Perhaps I had already provided the answer.
-
ON MY TENTH birthday, I was given the most magnificent birthday present ever: permission to cross the border. To slip through a gap in the hornbeam hedge behind the shed and go into the woods. I had badgered my parents about it for years until suddenly, out of the blue, they allowed it. My mother’s consent was only half-hearted. She fussed with the ribbon in her hair and looked at me with a worried frown while Father was telling me, handing me a brand new pocket knife to boot. He was enjoying the moment. I leapt up and ran round the kitchen table to hug my parents. My father went on to explain to me how to reach the path into the woods. Starting from the hedge, I was to walk straight ahead for one hundred paces. He had nailed small wooden panels to the trees, which I should follow to the gravel path. At the junction, he had driven a willow post into the ground and painted it white. That way, he said, I would never get lost—the path was a loop, all I had to do was follow it and I would always end up back at the post. Mother had prepared a rucksack with sandwiches and a filled canteen. Overjoyed, and as excited as a puppy about to escape through a hole in the fence, I searched for the breach in the parapet which the hedge had always been for me. I soon spotted it: the moist, white stumps of pruned twigs like the innards of the hedge. That was Father’s doing. I crawled through, followed the panels, found the post and set out to explore the woods on my own for the first time in my life. I still remember the way my shoes sank into soft forest soil, the scent of humus, live foliage and mouldered wood I inhaled, punctuated by birdsong.
At lunchtime, I leaned against the trunk of a beech tree to eat my sandwiches. Then I saw him. Out of nowhere, he had appeared just ten metres away from me: an old roebuck, a three-pointer, glorious in his sand-coloured summer coat. I watched, dumbfounded, as he calmly nibbled at the shoots of a bramble bush, white chin in the air. I stopped chewing so as to avoid any movement that might spook the animal. But a wasp landed on a dollop of jam that had fallen from the sandwich on my trousers. I shook my leg. The buck’s coat shuddered, chasing away flies. He saw me. The wasp stung. I slapped the insect from my trousers with a sharp swipe of my wrist. When I looked up, the buck had disappeared. Disappointed and with a painfully swollen thigh, I got up and went to the spot where he had been nibbling. There was a fresh pile of droppings, moistly glistening. I saw the tracks his hooves had made in the soil. Then I thought of my brother, and imagined telling him about this magical encounter that night. He would be jealous. I wanted to take him something. Owl pellets were easy to find.
I walked on until I reached an exotic-looking tree whose split bark gaped open like a jacket. Deep purple leaves with thick veins hung limply from its branches. I jumped to the lowest branch, held it down with one hand and carefully plucked off one of the leaves at the stem. The gift he would like most, however, was the skull of a bird—a crow, I reckoned—bleached and with its beak still attached. It was lying at the foot of a silver birch as if on display, there for the taking. I carefully packed it into my lunchbox.
The wood was getting darker, only the treetops glowed in the weakening rays of the sun. The undergrowth rustled here and there, wildlife getting ready for their nocturnal hunt. Reluctantly, I started for home. I’d promised to be back for supper, and was too grateful to my parents to betray their trust.
-
THE SCENT OF waning summer saturating the air never ceased to enchant me. The sweet aroma of plants and trees, in which life was already going dormant as the flow of sap slowed down. Forest animals, who also sensed the threat of the approaching cold, fleeing to safer places or burrowing deeper into the soil. The fading buzz of a wasp looking for forgotten apples, the screeching geese flying in formation overhead, the daddy longlegs awkwardly sticking to the bricks. It charmed me, reminded me of the past. Elverdinge’s Forest Lane especially, with its tall poplars whose foliage was thinning by the day. I took care not to step into the muddy puddles with my only pair of shoes, or get mud on my trousers. The lane belonged to the private estate of an aristocratic family. At this time of the evening, some of the windows of the castle in the distance were already lit. I imagined a library full of bookcases that reached up to the ceiling. And a fireplace with man-sized sandstone pillars on either side. Crackling logs. Perhaps the countess, lounging in an armchair in her nightgown, reading a book while the count, watching her, was lost in a reverie of what else the evening would have in store.
I put my foot in a puddle, cursed. Water seeped into my shoe, soaking my sock. The moon was now in full view: proud and bare, covered in spots, its reflected light floating eerily in the branches of the poplars. At every step, the sodden leather made a wet squelch, and it struck me that robbers in the undergrowth would hear me coming miles away. This is what it must have been like in the old days: hoofbeats on the cobbles, cartwheels creaking over the potholes and bumps. And darkness all around. Then a flash from a barrel. Or a spear in your chest. I hurried to Vlamertinge Street and turned right, until I could see the houses again. Then left, toward the church. I could hear the din coming from the Pumphouse pub from afar. It was Saturday night, and judging by the noise, the pub was packed. I thought I saw someone standing outside—a shadow beside the door, leaning against the brick wall. Probably someone in need of some fresh air, or sobering up. As I slowed my pace, I noticed him politely saying goodbye to some punters leaving the pub. He wasn’t tall, but his bearing commanded respect. He saw me approach, followed me with his eyes. Then I recognized him. It was the same man who, at my arrival a fortnight ago, had sat the elderly man on a chair outside the door. I said hello. He nodded at me. I walked on without looking back.
When I arrived home, Spiney wasn’t foraging in his favourite spot. There was no sign of him underneath the board, either. After frantically searching every corner of my weed garden, I finally decided to wade through the tall thistles, to places I had never set foot on before. I was convinced he had fallen prey to a fox. Or maybe a farmer, alerted by his dog’s continuous