MY FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL III
I thought that the world came to a stand still, and let, out of fear a very loud fart. “First sleeping and then letting the whole class stink, sir”, shouted the teacher frighteningly loud. I was so ashamed that I almost sank into the ground. I did not know what to answer. “A lot of manners you did not learn at home, it looks like”, said the bull with a false grin on his face. The whole class shook from children’s laughter. I felt myself becoming smaller and smaller and should not have minded an outburst of tears but stayed strong.
To my relief, the class door swung open and everybody’s attention went to the person standing in the open door.
The same teacher, who directed me earlier to my classroom, stepped inside. Our bull acted very mannered and extremely humble and ordered the class to stand up. The old man in dust coat with outstanding grey hair, went to the middle of the class and sat down on the big desk and we were allowed to do the same.
He introduced himself with a soft friendly voice. He was the headmaster and also the teacher of the sixth and seventh grade. We were allowed to call him Master Driesen.
Master Driesen asked on each of us our name and what we want to become when we grew up. The most want to become policeman, there were also a couple of pilots, soldiers, firemen and a train driver. The rest of the class planned to become the same as their fathers or did not know.
When the question came to me, I answered self sure. “art painter”, because that was what I wanted to become for a long time. The head master bended a little bit over and directed his voice to me, “artists don’t bring much of bread on the table”, he warned me with a big smile, “they only get famous after they die”.
I smiled back, but did not understand a thing of what he meant with what he said. I knew the word art painter from home. My lovely brother called always, “art painter of my ass”, every time I was sitting with my color box on the table, and grandfather dared sometimes, when he was in a good mood, or half drunk and sat next to me on the table, rolling a cigarette, let drop out of his mouth, that I was a real art painter.
That I wanted to become a professional artist was because of the fact that I could live myself out in drawing, fully. Whatever came up in my head, I put it on paper, and that could really be everything and anything. But I was on my best in drawing bloody battle fields and other war scenes. I have to credit this, for most of it to my grandparents, uncles, aunts, our neighbors, the butcher and his madam and also to my mother and her friend, the daughter of the butcher. All their war stories, regardless, first or the second war, contributed to my ability to create one big imaginary war, in my fantasy world. Especially at the time, we did not have television yet and we sat together with family, mostly after dinner or in the early evenings, they did not stop telling stories about the Wars, and this on a daily basis you can say. Both the wars were high points in the lives of the two oldies and the rest of the family.
Honestly spoken, I was enormously jealous of my grandparents and company. They were the lucky ones who not only experienced one but two wars. While, I did not get the chance to be even in one.
My brother did not want anything to do with wars, because he said he had had his stomach full of it. He could get very angry when they dug up the war, to teach us something or put once more, deep in our minds how good we had it and how unthankful spoilt brats we were. Grandfather mentioned many times that it should not be bad, that we saw also once black snow. Then we should not have such big mouths. But honestly, I did not think that they themselves were ever in a situation, where they did not have any food to eat. Anyway, they never mentioned that they were once hungry, when they talked about the war. They could not get everything they liked and sometimes the food was not so tasty, but being on the brink of starvation, they never were. Grandfather, knew always ways to find eatables.
For me personally, it was not boring listening to all these stories, they could go forever for my sake. I enjoyed it from beginning till end. I could go so deep in them that I saw myself in the trenches of the IJzer, on the battle field of Stalingrad or on the run for the German invasion.
My urge to relive all these adventures my grandparents and company claimed to have experienced, dare to run sometime out of hand, like that day in the middle of the just past summer holiday.
We had finished our dinner and were sitting there for a moment doing nothing when grandmother, who was clearing the table, started for one or the other reason telling us the story, how she and her family went on the run from the Germans in 1914.
It must have been on a sunny Sunday. My grandmother, her parents, brothers and sisters were all sitting together on the table for their lunch. The family sang, as they used to “Ave Maria in the highest”, or something in that genre, while the fried chicken, the boiled potatoes and the accompaniments were put on the table.
However, before they could take one bite of their Sunday special chicken meal, a neighbor stormed, completely over his nerves, in the living room. “Get ready to run, the Germans are coming”, he shouted breathless.
Everybody stood up from the table, got as many things together as they thought they needed for their exodus, left in complete chaos the house and made, falling almost over each other, the cart and horse ready. Not even one half hour later, the gang was on the way, direction France.
Even before they were good and well on the road, the elderly nun, an aunt of my grandmother, fell from the cart and got stuck under a military truck. Not much long after, she died of her injuries, grandmother never mentioned anything about what they did with the dead body.
After a few weeks on the run, the family Wauters, fifteen altogether, were seriously tired and strongly doubted, if it was all worth the hardship. It looked the closer they came to the French border, the more chaotic the situation got. Wherever they went, they had to face one or the other misery and on top of that they all got under flees and louses. More than reason enough to turn the horse and get back home.
On return, they noticed to their surprise that the dining room looked just the same. The table was still set for lunch just like they left it, even the forks and spoons were lying there, where they dropped them in their big panic. The only difference was that there stood quite a big bush of green hair on the chicken, vegetables and the potatoes and also the brown sauce did not look eatable anymore.
In spite of forgetting to close the front door in their hasty departure, it seemed nobody entered the house in their absence.
Grandfather told that in the evenings and nights, the Germans with pin helmets and long spears, patrolled the streets on horses. They called these guys “pikkeniers”, and if these pikkeniers saw somebody looting, they pinned them on their spears. The Germans were quite disciplined about these kinds of things, according to our old man.
This story inspired me so much that I decided to go on the run to France myself the next day, because for me this was an adventure I wanted to experience.
Before I got the chance to escape from the back door, my mother stood on the front door. She brought with her my sister Magda and my little brother Georges. For me Georges came falling out of the sky.
Not too long ago, one cold winter day the door bell rang. I ran in front of grandmother to the door and opened it before she could. My mother stood there with a pram on very big wheels. She took a sleeping baby, packed in a light blue woolen blanket, out of the pram and said to me, “this is your new brother, are you not happy? She handed over the baby to grandmother. Without I could see how he looked, I nodded yes but was not so sure. In general I was not so fond of babies and secondly, I did not understand where she got him from.
Grandmother and mother had to speak about some important things so they sent me and my sister into the garden, under the threats that we could get on our thunder, if we dared to make ourselves dirty.
Before I left with my sister through the back door, I informed grandmother that I was going on the run from the Germans to France and I asked her if I could get some clothing for on the way. To get rid of me, she gave two old sweaters. I pushed them in a small jute bag, of which we had mountains of, in the stall next to the toilet.
I also tried to get done from grandmother to prepare some sandwiches for the journey, but she told me to go to the moon. I knew from before that she should refuse, because she always refused, but anyway, it was worth to try. Not at all disappointed, I disappeared with my sister in the garden.
Through the hedge, which separated our garden from my great grandmother’s, who was my grandfather’s mother by the way, I could see the old woman hanging up her wet laundry on the clothes line located on the edge of the oasis of flowers and fruits. While watching her I got, what I thought, a bright idea and jumped in action.
Discreetly, I crawled on my knees through a hole in the beech hedge, I and my brother made long before. My sister crawled with a big smile on her face telling, she is having the fun of her life, behind me. We hid ourselves for a moment, behind a blue berry bush to see if grannydonk did not notice us. From there, I and Magda ran crouching, as fast as we could to the glass verandah, in front of the garden, next to the kitchen. There I hid my sister behind a big Chinese vase, which was standing in a corner, and told her to be quiet till I came to pick her up.
From where I stood, I could not see if Grannydonk was still busy with her laundry. Hoping that the old woman stayed in the back yard a little while longer, I crept inside the kitchen and from there straight to the basement. I knew, because it was not my first secret visit to the basement, that there were bottles lying filled with wine, made from fruits out of our own garden. Many summers, I helped my great grandparents and grandparents, when they were bottling the wine. But it has to be said that my help was not always appreciated and it happened more than once that my ears were just so red as the wine itself. Grandpadonk when he was not dead yet, let me taste, more than once, some wine in secret. I drank it with a smile to look big, but I did not like the taste so much then, most probably because I was still a snot nose.
Half in darkness, I took the first bottle closest to my hand and put it between the sweaters in the jute sack. Next I ran as fast I could back upstairs to the kitchen and stole half bread out of the stock room where Grannydonk kept her eatables. From there I crept very alert, through the kitchen door, back outside. Happy relieved, I noticed that Grannydonk was still busy with her laundry. Grannydonk was not the real name of my great grandmother, it was that everybody called her so because she was a granny and living in the Donk. For the same reason, why we called my great grandfather, Granpadonk, when he was still alive.
With my hand I signaled my sister to come from behind the enormous Chinese vase with a lot of gold on the rim and at the bottom, beautifully decorated with Chinese landscapes, captured between tiny red and blue flowers, most probably also Chinese.
Softly, I whispered in the small girl’s ear that the time has come for us to go on the run. If it were not the Germans who were coming after us, it would surely be Grannydonk and you may guess, who I was most afraid of.
Between the house of Grannydonk and that of the old widow, who had a nose of a witch, and whom we therefore, also called the witch, was a spacey stock house with a high ceiling and a very high double gate. Here Uncle Rene, my grandfather’s brother, stocked big packets of shiny A4 typing paper and reams and reams of brown packing paper so heavy that I could not move them even a centimeter. The wooden dark brown painted gate was never locked, so it was very easy for me to get out on the street from here.
Because of that cry face they saddled me up with, my trip to France was not exactly going like I wanted it. Sister dear whined a little bit every ten meters of the way because if she was not starving of hunger than she was dying from thirst. It did not make any difference how much bread I pushed between her teeth or how many sips I gave her from the brown bottle I took from the basement, she stayed provoking me with her childish behavior.
How long I pulled that damn thing of a sister behind me in the direction of Mariaburg, I did not know, but we had already left behind us the petrol pump of BP and the glass house, a modern villa with enormously big windows, close to the age old windmill, which had lost its vanes. I started thinking about how and where we were going to spend the night. Maybe, somewhere in a stall on a mountain of hay, just like they did in the First World War or simply in a trench on dry leaves, next to the road, which looked more convenient because I did not see any stalls around.
Anyway, it did not take long that it became clear that camping overnight like a refugee, was something I could put out of my mind, because to my great frustration, my dearest sister started filling her, before white but afterwards kind of yellow-brown underpant, hanging down till her knees. I almost vomited when I saw the brown crap running down her legs, over the white socks, in her Sunday shoes. On top of that the girl started stinking so horribly that I did not have any other choice, but to call off my escape to France. I could hit myself on my head, because I had to know from before, that this shit girl was good for nothing, just like any other girl from her age, if you ask me.
On the corner of the Kapelsesteenweg and the Prinshoeveweg, we were picked up from the street by mother and her companion, Klem, who was also the father of my dearest Magda and baby Georges. First she scolded me for all that was rotten on this earth then she attended me on the fact that there were not many parents who had to look after such a horrible, bad child as I was. She could not believe that it was me she brought into this world. And while she threw one reproach after the other to my head, she started slapping me from one till nine.
They were looking for us for hours already, she snarled through her nerves and in Klem’s eyes I clearly saw, when he took Magda from the ground and held her far away from his face, that he did not want to be a friend of mine.
Something like this I could permit myself just once, mother made very clear, while she took me roughly by my neck and dragged me, without taking any interest in the fact that I could not take such big steps with my short legs, like she did, towards home.
When we arrived, I could go immediately, without any food, to my bed. I did not care much, I expected it. Anyway I still had half of the bread or at least what was left over of it, hidden in my pants.
On waking up next morning, I got to hear from grandmother that my sister was hospitalized. The doctor had to pump her stomach empty,. The old woman said, that I almost poisoned my sister. This looked for me a very strong accusation and thought that grandmother was talking as a chicken without head, because how in God’s name was I supposed to know, that the bottle from the basement contained holy water from Lourdes, instead of fruit wine like I thought.
That holy water must by lying there in the basement for 50 years or longer, I heard Grannydonk saying. This did not make any difference. For me, it was holy water which cured, anyhow. How one could get sick by drinking this water, I could not understand.
I knew from grandmother and Grannydonk, they told it themselves in God’s name, that in Lourdes in the cave next to the sculpture of the Virgin Mary, lots of walking sticks and crutches were hung by handicapped people who were miraculously cured by taking a bath in the same water I carried with me in the brown bottle. So how could somebody get dead sick by drinking this holy water, they had to explain. But instead of getting an explanation, they told me that I better could keep my stupid mouth shut and get out of their sight, if I did not want to get from the belt or the walking stick.
Little Magda was allowed to leave the hospital the next day. Nevertheless, I did not see her for a long time. I did not know if it was because of my previous disasterous adventure, or the quarrel between grandfather and mother. Grandfather was seriously angry with his daughter because first she married ‘a French speaking from North of Belgium’ which was the worst thing that could happen to our nice Flemish family. And when they got at long last, a little used to on that outsider, she run away from him with another ‘good for nothing’.
After the headmaster wished us, with a friendly smile on his face, a lot of learning pleasure, he left. The boy sitting most closest to the exit, closed the door behind him. Our teacher continued with the class.
To be continued……soon……
With his lower back leaning against the edge of the teacher’s desk, the badly shaven face explained us what all we could expect in the coming school year. It was mostly going about reading and writing and learning to calculate.
To each of us the teacher distributed a paper smelling of stencil spirit. I knew that smell also because when my brother came from his school and opened his schoolbag on the table to start his homework, the same smell wafted and prickled my nostrils, every time again and I loved it.
We had to give the stenciled paper to our parents, or in my case, grandparents, so that they knew what more school equipments they needed to buy. It were things which were not supplied by the school freely, if I understood well.
The bell, which hung outside high on the wall of the fifth grade, clanged precisely at 12 O’clock. We got the permission to take, in all silence, our bread boxes, in my case bread bag and drinking flask, out of our schoolbags. It did not happen a minute too late, because I was already turning green from hunger.
I took the paper bread bag, wherein grandmother had packed two sandwiches and my plastic flask, out of my school bag. I put the flask carefully in front of me and took out the sandwiches. The aroma of apple syrup caressed my nose hair. I felt like being in sweet syrup paradise and wondered what if Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden, got apple syrup instead of an apple? They, most probably, should not have waited till they were thrown out, but would have run without delay, with the devil to the garden of apple syrup.
In no time I gobbled the sandwiches and licked, totally satisfied, the remains of the deep red sticky syrup from between my teeth.
Grandmother had filled my green flask with coffee and milk, just like she did for grandfather. However, his flask was much bigger than mine and made of aluminum, full of dents and bumps and closed the same way as the bottles of table beer, which the brewer delivered every week. I hoped to get once a similar drinking flask, made of aluminum, full of dents like my grandfather, because it looked very macho, something I could show off with, on the street.
Chocolate milk would have been a better idea but nevertheless, the coffee with milk and a slight flavor of plastic, tasted heavenly. I really enjoyed every sip I took, as if it was an angle, who peed on my tongue.
Even before we finished our meal, the teacher warned us, as if he thought he could spoil our appetite with it, that he, the bull, in person, would examine every bench and if he found one crumb or wrapper under it, we could expect that there will be dire consequences, because he did not like to see a dirty class room.
With the side of my hand, I gathered the crumbs together at the corner of my desk, with my right hand I kept the bread bag under the corner and with my left, I maneuvered the crumbs in the bag. I saw grandmother doing it many times but honestly, with her it looked to go much easier. Nevertheless, I could get most of the crumbs in the bag, folded the bread bag together and put it away.
My class mates were eating as fast as they could to get out on the play ground. I, on the other hand, wanted to stay inside to enjoy all the new stuff I saw around me. But the master, who most probably wanted to join his colleagues standing on the door of the sixth grade, sent me out with the words, “buzz off in a hurry, because I am not sitting here for your pleasure, boy”.
Leo from the vegetable shop, stood between the two windows of our class, looking around with his mouth wide open. I put myself next to him at a safe distance from the wall, because I noticed that the teachers were keeping an eye on us. In funny tone I told Leo, “close your mouth, before a bird make a nest in it”, because he really looked like an idiot with his open mouth and the dark spectacles of his.
My socks are rolling always down”, I said to start conversation. Leo looked over his spectacles to my miserable socks, grandmother knitted. “That is because you don’t have elastics”, said Leo wisely while he rolled up his grey socks to show me the elastics he was wearing. That kind of white elastics I knew very well but I did not like them. Those stupid things stopped your blood circulation and itched like hell.
I did not get these bands Grandmother made from elastics out of old underpants anymore, because I did not wear them anyway and lost them all the time.
New socks don’t crawl down”, I told Leo. “Mine are not new, they were already worn by my brother and before that, maybe by others too”.
Knitting and repairing socks were one of grandmother’s favorite time pass activities. Every afternoon and sometime even in the evenings, you could see her busy with it. Most of the time, she knitted socks for my brother and grandfather. I, on the other hand, got mostly the repaired ones, which did not fit my brother’s feet anymore. And this did not count only for socks but also horrible under wears that itched so badly that it made me almost crazy, and sweaters who had different colors on the cuffs and waist because when you grew she made them longer, by knitting parts on it with wool from older sweaters.
To be continued……soon……
To my relief, the class door swung open and everybody’s attention went to the person standing in the open door.
The same teacher, who directed me earlier to my classroom, stepped inside. Our bull acted very mannered and extremely humble and ordered the class to stand up. The old man in dust coat with outstanding grey hair, went to the middle of the class and sat down on the big desk and we were allowed to do the same.
He introduced himself with a soft friendly voice. He was the headmaster and also the teacher of the sixth and seventh grade. We were allowed to call him Master Driesen.
Master Driesen asked on each of us our name and what we want to become when we grew up. The most want to become policeman, there were also a couple of pilots, soldiers, firemen and a train driver. The rest of the class planned to become the same as their fathers or did not know.
When the question came to me, I answered self sure. “art painter”, because that was what I wanted to become for a long time. The head master bended a little bit over and directed his voice to me, “artists don’t bring much of bread on the table”, he warned me with a big smile, “they only get famous after they die”.
I smiled back, but did not understand a thing of what he meant with what he said. I knew the word art painter from home. My lovely brother called always, “art painter of my ass”, every time I was sitting with my color box on the table, and grandfather dared sometimes, when he was in a good mood, or half drunk and sat next to me on the table, rolling a cigarette, let drop out of his mouth, that I was a real art painter.
That I wanted to become a professional artist was because of the fact that I could live myself out in drawing, fully. Whatever came up in my head, I put it on paper, and that could really be everything and anything. But I was on my best in drawing bloody battle fields and other war scenes. I have to credit this, for most of it to my grandparents, uncles, aunts, our neighbors, the butcher and his madam and also to my mother and her friend, the daughter of the butcher. All their war stories, regardless, first or the second war, contributed to my ability to create one big imaginary war, in my fantasy world. Especially at the time, we did not have television yet and we sat together with family, mostly after dinner or in the early evenings, they did not stop telling stories about the Wars, and this on a daily basis you can say. Both the wars were high points in the lives of the two oldies and the rest of the family.
Honestly spoken, I was enormously jealous of my grandparents and company. They were the lucky ones who not only experienced one but two wars. While, I did not get the chance to be even in one.
My brother did not want anything to do with wars, because he said he had had his stomach full of it. He could get very angry when they dug up the war, to teach us something or put once more, deep in our minds how good we had it and how unthankful spoilt brats we were. Grandfather mentioned many times that it should not be bad, that we saw also once black snow. Then we should not have such big mouths. But honestly, I did not think that they themselves were ever in a situation, where they did not have any food to eat. Anyway, they never mentioned that they were once hungry, when they talked about the war. They could not get everything they liked and sometimes the food was not so tasty, but being on the brink of starvation, they never were. Grandfather, knew always ways to find eatables.
For me personally, it was not boring listening to all these stories, they could go forever for my sake. I enjoyed it from beginning till end. I could go so deep in them that I saw myself in the trenches of the IJzer, on the battle field of Stalingrad or on the run for the German invasion.
My urge to relive all these adventures my grandparents and company claimed to have experienced, dare to run sometime out of hand, like that day in the middle of the just past summer holiday.
We had finished our dinner and were sitting there for a moment doing nothing when grandmother, who was clearing the table, started for one or the other reason telling us the story, how she and her family went on the run from the Germans in 1914.
It must have been on a sunny Sunday. My grandmother, her parents, brothers and sisters were all sitting together on the table for their lunch. The family sang, as they used to “Ave Maria in the highest”, or something in that genre, while the fried chicken, the boiled potatoes and the accompaniments were put on the table.
However, before they could take one bite of their Sunday special chicken meal, a neighbor stormed, completely over his nerves, in the living room. “Get ready to run, the Germans are coming”, he shouted breathless.
Everybody stood up from the table, got as many things together as they thought they needed for their exodus, left in complete chaos the house and made, falling almost over each other, the cart and horse ready. Not even one half hour later, the gang was on the way, direction France.
Even before they were good and well on the road, the elderly nun, an aunt of my grandmother, fell from the cart and got stuck under a military truck. Not much long after, she died of her injuries, grandmother never mentioned anything about what they did with the dead body.
After a few weeks on the run, the family Wauters, fifteen altogether, were seriously tired and strongly doubted, if it was all worth the hardship. It looked the closer they came to the French border, the more chaotic the situation got. Wherever they went, they had to face one or the other misery and on top of that they all got under flees and louses. More than reason enough to turn the horse and get back home.
On return, they noticed to their surprise that the dining room looked just the same. The table was still set for lunch just like they left it, even the forks and spoons were lying there, where they dropped them in their big panic. The only difference was that there stood quite a big bush of green hair on the chicken, vegetables and the potatoes and also the brown sauce did not look eatable anymore.
In spite of forgetting to close the front door in their hasty departure, it seemed nobody entered the house in their absence.
Grandfather told that in the evenings and nights, the Germans with pin helmets and long spears, patrolled the streets on horses. They called these guys “pikkeniers”, and if these pikkeniers saw somebody looting, they pinned them on their spears. The Germans were quite disciplined about these kinds of things, according to our old man.
This story inspired me so much that I decided to go on the run to France myself the next day, because for me this was an adventure I wanted to experience.
Before I got the chance to escape from the back door, my mother stood on the front door. She brought with her my sister Magda and my little brother Georges. For me Georges came falling out of the sky.
Not too long ago, one cold winter day the door bell rang. I ran in front of grandmother to the door and opened it before she could. My mother stood there with a pram on very big wheels. She took a sleeping baby, packed in a light blue woolen blanket, out of the pram and said to me, “this is your new brother, are you not happy? She handed over the baby to grandmother. Without I could see how he looked, I nodded yes but was not so sure. In general I was not so fond of babies and secondly, I did not understand where she got him from.
Grandmother and mother had to speak about some important things so they sent me and my sister into the garden, under the threats that we could get on our thunder, if we dared to make ourselves dirty.
Before I left with my sister through the back door, I informed grandmother that I was going on the run from the Germans to France and I asked her if I could get some clothing for on the way. To get rid of me, she gave two old sweaters. I pushed them in a small jute bag, of which we had mountains of, in the stall next to the toilet.
I also tried to get done from grandmother to prepare some sandwiches for the journey, but she told me to go to the moon. I knew from before that she should refuse, because she always refused, but anyway, it was worth to try. Not at all disappointed, I disappeared with my sister in the garden.
Through the hedge, which separated our garden from my great grandmother’s, who was my grandfather’s mother by the way, I could see the old woman hanging up her wet laundry on the clothes line located on the edge of the oasis of flowers and fruits. While watching her I got, what I thought, a bright idea and jumped in action.
Discreetly, I crawled on my knees through a hole in the beech hedge, I and my brother made long before. My sister crawled with a big smile on her face telling, she is having the fun of her life, behind me. We hid ourselves for a moment, behind a blue berry bush to see if grannydonk did not notice us. From there, I and Magda ran crouching, as fast as we could to the glass verandah, in front of the garden, next to the kitchen. There I hid my sister behind a big Chinese vase, which was standing in a corner, and told her to be quiet till I came to pick her up.
From where I stood, I could not see if Grannydonk was still busy with her laundry. Hoping that the old woman stayed in the back yard a little while longer, I crept inside the kitchen and from there straight to the basement. I knew, because it was not my first secret visit to the basement, that there were bottles lying filled with wine, made from fruits out of our own garden. Many summers, I helped my great grandparents and grandparents, when they were bottling the wine. But it has to be said that my help was not always appreciated and it happened more than once that my ears were just so red as the wine itself. Grandpadonk when he was not dead yet, let me taste, more than once, some wine in secret. I drank it with a smile to look big, but I did not like the taste so much then, most probably because I was still a snot nose.
Half in darkness, I took the first bottle closest to my hand and put it between the sweaters in the jute sack. Next I ran as fast I could back upstairs to the kitchen and stole half bread out of the stock room where Grannydonk kept her eatables. From there I crept very alert, through the kitchen door, back outside. Happy relieved, I noticed that Grannydonk was still busy with her laundry. Grannydonk was not the real name of my great grandmother, it was that everybody called her so because she was a granny and living in the Donk. For the same reason, why we called my great grandfather, Granpadonk, when he was still alive.
With my hand I signaled my sister to come from behind the enormous Chinese vase with a lot of gold on the rim and at the bottom, beautifully decorated with Chinese landscapes, captured between tiny red and blue flowers, most probably also Chinese.
Softly, I whispered in the small girl’s ear that the time has come for us to go on the run. If it were not the Germans who were coming after us, it would surely be Grannydonk and you may guess, who I was most afraid of.
Between the house of Grannydonk and that of the old widow, who had a nose of a witch, and whom we therefore, also called the witch, was a spacey stock house with a high ceiling and a very high double gate. Here Uncle Rene, my grandfather’s brother, stocked big packets of shiny A4 typing paper and reams and reams of brown packing paper so heavy that I could not move them even a centimeter. The wooden dark brown painted gate was never locked, so it was very easy for me to get out on the street from here.
Because of that cry face they saddled me up with, my trip to France was not exactly going like I wanted it. Sister dear whined a little bit every ten meters of the way because if she was not starving of hunger than she was dying from thirst. It did not make any difference how much bread I pushed between her teeth or how many sips I gave her from the brown bottle I took from the basement, she stayed provoking me with her childish behavior.
How long I pulled that damn thing of a sister behind me in the direction of Mariaburg, I did not know, but we had already left behind us the petrol pump of BP and the glass house, a modern villa with enormously big windows, close to the age old windmill, which had lost its vanes. I started thinking about how and where we were going to spend the night. Maybe, somewhere in a stall on a mountain of hay, just like they did in the First World War or simply in a trench on dry leaves, next to the road, which looked more convenient because I did not see any stalls around.
Anyway, it did not take long that it became clear that camping overnight like a refugee, was something I could put out of my mind, because to my great frustration, my dearest sister started filling her, before white but afterwards kind of yellow-brown underpant, hanging down till her knees. I almost vomited when I saw the brown crap running down her legs, over the white socks, in her Sunday shoes. On top of that the girl started stinking so horribly that I did not have any other choice, but to call off my escape to France. I could hit myself on my head, because I had to know from before, that this shit girl was good for nothing, just like any other girl from her age, if you ask me.
On the corner of the Kapelsesteenweg and the Prinshoeveweg, we were picked up from the street by mother and her companion, Klem, who was also the father of my dearest Magda and baby Georges. First she scolded me for all that was rotten on this earth then she attended me on the fact that there were not many parents who had to look after such a horrible, bad child as I was. She could not believe that it was me she brought into this world. And while she threw one reproach after the other to my head, she started slapping me from one till nine.
They were looking for us for hours already, she snarled through her nerves and in Klem’s eyes I clearly saw, when he took Magda from the ground and held her far away from his face, that he did not want to be a friend of mine.
Something like this I could permit myself just once, mother made very clear, while she took me roughly by my neck and dragged me, without taking any interest in the fact that I could not take such big steps with my short legs, like she did, towards home.
When we arrived, I could go immediately, without any food, to my bed. I did not care much, I expected it. Anyway I still had half of the bread or at least what was left over of it, hidden in my pants.
On waking up next morning, I got to hear from grandmother that my sister was hospitalized. The doctor had to pump her stomach empty,. The old woman said, that I almost poisoned my sister. This looked for me a very strong accusation and thought that grandmother was talking as a chicken without head, because how in God’s name was I supposed to know, that the bottle from the basement contained holy water from Lourdes, instead of fruit wine like I thought.
That holy water must by lying there in the basement for 50 years or longer, I heard Grannydonk saying. This did not make any difference. For me, it was holy water which cured, anyhow. How one could get sick by drinking this water, I could not understand.
I knew from grandmother and Grannydonk, they told it themselves in God’s name, that in Lourdes in the cave next to the sculpture of the Virgin Mary, lots of walking sticks and crutches were hung by handicapped people who were miraculously cured by taking a bath in the same water I carried with me in the brown bottle. So how could somebody get dead sick by drinking this holy water, they had to explain. But instead of getting an explanation, they told me that I better could keep my stupid mouth shut and get out of their sight, if I did not want to get from the belt or the walking stick.
Little Magda was allowed to leave the hospital the next day. Nevertheless, I did not see her for a long time. I did not know if it was because of my previous disasterous adventure, or the quarrel between grandfather and mother. Grandfather was seriously angry with his daughter because first she married ‘a French speaking from North of Belgium’ which was the worst thing that could happen to our nice Flemish family. And when they got at long last, a little used to on that outsider, she run away from him with another ‘good for nothing’.
After the headmaster wished us, with a friendly smile on his face, a lot of learning pleasure, he left. The boy sitting most closest to the exit, closed the door behind him. Our teacher continued with the class.
To be continued……soon……
With his lower back leaning against the edge of the teacher’s desk, the badly shaven face explained us what all we could expect in the coming school year. It was mostly going about reading and writing and learning to calculate.
To each of us the teacher distributed a paper smelling of stencil spirit. I knew that smell also because when my brother came from his school and opened his schoolbag on the table to start his homework, the same smell wafted and prickled my nostrils, every time again and I loved it.
We had to give the stenciled paper to our parents, or in my case, grandparents, so that they knew what more school equipments they needed to buy. It were things which were not supplied by the school freely, if I understood well.
The bell, which hung outside high on the wall of the fifth grade, clanged precisely at 12 O’clock. We got the permission to take, in all silence, our bread boxes, in my case bread bag and drinking flask, out of our schoolbags. It did not happen a minute too late, because I was already turning green from hunger.
I took the paper bread bag, wherein grandmother had packed two sandwiches and my plastic flask, out of my school bag. I put the flask carefully in front of me and took out the sandwiches. The aroma of apple syrup caressed my nose hair. I felt like being in sweet syrup paradise and wondered what if Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden, got apple syrup instead of an apple? They, most probably, should not have waited till they were thrown out, but would have run without delay, with the devil to the garden of apple syrup.
In no time I gobbled the sandwiches and licked, totally satisfied, the remains of the deep red sticky syrup from between my teeth.
Grandmother had filled my green flask with coffee and milk, just like she did for grandfather. However, his flask was much bigger than mine and made of aluminum, full of dents and bumps and closed the same way as the bottles of table beer, which the brewer delivered every week. I hoped to get once a similar drinking flask, made of aluminum, full of dents like my grandfather, because it looked very macho, something I could show off with, on the street.
Chocolate milk would have been a better idea but nevertheless, the coffee with milk and a slight flavor of plastic, tasted heavenly. I really enjoyed every sip I took, as if it was an angle, who peed on my tongue.
Even before we finished our meal, the teacher warned us, as if he thought he could spoil our appetite with it, that he, the bull, in person, would examine every bench and if he found one crumb or wrapper under it, we could expect that there will be dire consequences, because he did not like to see a dirty class room.
With the side of my hand, I gathered the crumbs together at the corner of my desk, with my right hand I kept the bread bag under the corner and with my left, I maneuvered the crumbs in the bag. I saw grandmother doing it many times but honestly, with her it looked to go much easier. Nevertheless, I could get most of the crumbs in the bag, folded the bread bag together and put it away.
My class mates were eating as fast as they could to get out on the play ground. I, on the other hand, wanted to stay inside to enjoy all the new stuff I saw around me. But the master, who most probably wanted to join his colleagues standing on the door of the sixth grade, sent me out with the words, “buzz off in a hurry, because I am not sitting here for your pleasure, boy”.
Leo from the vegetable shop, stood between the two windows of our class, looking around with his mouth wide open. I put myself next to him at a safe distance from the wall, because I noticed that the teachers were keeping an eye on us. In funny tone I told Leo, “close your mouth, before a bird make a nest in it”, because he really looked like an idiot with his open mouth and the dark spectacles of his.
My socks are rolling always down”, I said to start conversation. Leo looked over his spectacles to my miserable socks, grandmother knitted. “That is because you don’t have elastics”, said Leo wisely while he rolled up his grey socks to show me the elastics he was wearing. That kind of white elastics I knew very well but I did not like them. Those stupid things stopped your blood circulation and itched like hell.
I did not get these bands Grandmother made from elastics out of old underpants anymore, because I did not wear them anyway and lost them all the time.
New socks don’t crawl down”, I told Leo. “Mine are not new, they were already worn by my brother and before that, maybe by others too”.
Knitting and repairing socks were one of grandmother’s favorite time pass activities. Every afternoon and sometime even in the evenings, you could see her busy with it. Most of the time, she knitted socks for my brother and grandfather. I, on the other hand, got mostly the repaired ones, which did not fit my brother’s feet anymore. And this did not count only for socks but also horrible under wears that itched so badly that it made me almost crazy, and sweaters who had different colors on the cuffs and waist because when you grew she made them longer, by knitting parts on it with wool from older sweaters.
To be continued……soon……
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