every little trifle they had. No, that’s impossible, you can’t work that way. I’ll get right to the point, God.’
Melanie Vandersanden-Plottier believes that God can explain everything and that he kneads her fate in the palm of his big, superhuman hand just like a meatball. He has the last word, although he tends to keep his mouth shut. For years he was silent about the deaths of her son Alain, who died too young, and her beloved husband André. Melanie is no hypocrite. She’s more a desperate believer, with great pain locked up behind the leaden door of her heart.
It’s a grey Wednesday morning in 1990, only a few months after the Berlin Wall came down five hundred miles farther to the east, a few weeks after Gloria Estefan was released from the hospital across the ocean after her accident, and a couple of days after the enormous Hubble telescope found its place in the universe in order to look down on earth, and Melanie is sitting on the toilet in the smallest room in the house. Melanie is a Flemish woman who always flies the lion standard on holidays, a woman who makes deals with God like a Mafioso with the judge of the most supreme court, a sturdy woman who trudges through the wilderness in her head and sees in it a damp, black-and-white Congolese rain forest.
‘Almighty God, now you really have to help me. It’s an emergency. And between you and me, you haven’t been all that helpful so far. If you help me this time I’ll forget all that. I mean it.
‘I’ll forget how you turned your back on my dear little Alain. I remember his birth as if it were yesterday. People didn’t know anything back then. I didn’t even know what it meant to be pregnant, not the first time and not the second time, either. Chubby as I am, chubby a second time. I’ve always been a good eater. Everyone said to me: Melanie, we don’t understand where you put it all. And I was so proud. I just helped myself to another hunk of bread. After that it turned out I was pregnant. I was going to bring another little one into the world, a brother or sister for Stefaan. During that labour I thought I’d die. I lay there for twenty-five hours praying my heart out. You may still remember that, God. It was such a beautiful spring day, although you may not remember it because of all the births in the world happening one after the other.
‘When Alain was born I saw right away that he was a special little man. Those rubbery little hands and feet, just like jellybeans. I was crazy about that little guy. After he was born it took forever for my milk to come in, literally. I had lost blood, towels full of blood. Fortunately I had built up some reserves, but because of the blood loss I didn’t have enough milk. I just kept yammering the livelong day: I’m going to die, my baby is going to die. I don’t know what came over me, but I just felt like it was going to end badly. Except I didn’t know it would take ten years. When Stefaan was born I was just plain happy, and you see, he’s still alive.
‘Everything was fine for a long time. Too fine. André and I couldn’t believe how happy we were with those two boys. They were like two peas in a pod, those two. They did everything together, while most mothers with two sons have to make sure they don’t knock each others’ heads off. Not them. Big brother and little brother, and no one could come between them. Stefaan was the clever little boss, maybe too smart for this world. He’d let people push him around, and I’d have to say: Stefaan, stand up for yourself. Alain was another story. He was the charming klutz who could never sit still. He was always on the lookout for danger. If he passed a tree, he’d climb to the very top and then start screaming, or he’d only get halfway up because the branch broke off. If he saw a hedgehog, five minutes later he’d be pulling the spines out of his backside. If you let him help you in the kitchen, he’d cut all his fingers at once with the potato knife. There’s a big room for worries in a mother’s heart.
‘Alain was ten years old when he went to heaven to keep you company. We lived on the paved road at the time. It was called the paved road but there was very little traffic on it. Stands to reason, since there were almost no cars back then. There were the farmers’ horse carts and mail coaches, that’s about all. There was one person in the village who did have a car. Desmet, the brick manufacturer, with that cigar of his always sticking out of his bulldog mug. And on that horrible, hateful winter day, that car stopped in front of our yard and the door opened. To our utter astonishment Stefaan got out and put an end to our happiness with just a couple of words. Yes, God, I’m telling you the truth. Sometimes I wished I had never been born. Then I never would have lost my child. And the worst of it is: life just goes on. No sooner had Alain been laid in the ground than the neighbour lady came over with sugared almonds. And wouldn’t I like to come see her sister’s little one, to take my mind off my troubles? Wouldn’t that make you crazy, too?
‘After little Alain died I didn’t say a word for five years. It was not an easy time. Because people begin to think: she’s just not opening her mouth, the sourpuss. All she wants to do is sit around and mope. She likes it. But that’s not the way it works. I didn’t like it at all. I had to do it to keep from doing something worse, to keep from screaming. Sometimes I can sit so still that I think it never happened.
‘Don’t fret so, my sisters would say. You have to talk.
‘There’s the door, I’d tell them.
‘You just can’t explain something like that. There you are, literally empty-handed. You hand over the coffin, thank every Tom, Dick, and Harry for coming, and then the next day comes, and the next, and the next. And you say to yourself: Melanie, don’t let on how you feel. Just grin and bear it.
‘And yes, I cultivated a couple of bad habits to help me carry on. But does that bother anybody, I ask myself. No. And people are less bothered if I keep my mouth shut.
‘I hung up Alain’s photo. The focal point of our house, which everyone uncomfortably avoided. I burned my eyes on it every day. Even that doesn’t work anymore. All I see are the outlines of the frame. No, dear God, grief doesn’t wear out. Grief is not a carpet.
‘André had such a hard time. He couldn’t take it anymore. He was a proud man, my André. You can go ahead and say he was just a peasant, God, but on Sunday you could never tell. At least not when he was still in good shape. Six o’clock in the morning in his three-piece suit, walking through the fields to church in his bare feet, dress shoes in his hand to keep from wearing them out, and his watch in his vest pocket. One of those big, beautiful watches, that makes such an impression, you know.
‘His fingers might be blue from the cold, he might have tipped over the only glass of beer he’d had in weeks, his child might be dead, but I never heard André complain. I mean never. Look, God, I complain too much and I know it’s not getting me anywhere, but isn’t it possible to complain too little? Isn’t that a sin as well, not to do enough bad things? It was his downfall, because he locked it all away inside and it sank like lead until it pushed him down so low that all he could do was follow, into the ground, into the grave.
‘Dear Lord, you propose and you dispose and all I can do is resign myself.
‘Sometimes, dear God, I’m really afraid for Stefaan. I just can’t make him out. He can be so preoccupied and abrupt, even though everything’s going his way. With his good looks and his chic, upper-crust lady, with his little Saaaraaah and his enormous villa. Maybe he’s had too many lucky breaks, that can’t turn out well. Everyone has to have his helping of affliction. Everyone. Except for stars like Michael Jackson, such a cheerful black boy. Yes, well, those people aren’t real. It’s all plastic, all for show. Anyway I liked the sound of him better earlier on, with all his little brothers.
‘But I’m rambling, dear God. I want to talk to you about something else: tomorrow Sarah is going to be ten years old. That’s how old Alain was when he died. I know there’s some poisonous gift being passed down in this family. It’s our fate.
‘Now I want to ask you, merciful God: leave Sarah alone and take me. You know that
