how you could get others to do the dirty work for very little money. You had to pick young people and have them live in. That cost virtually nothing. At table they ate together with the whole gang. Now and then you stuck some pocket money in their hands and voilà, the housework was done for a song.
You could fuck them too. Those black women liked nothing better. ‘Come here!’ you had to say to them. You pointed to them and said: ‘Come here.’ And they would come. Those Congolese women fucked like we breathe. They could go on calmly working while they were being fucked. When nine months later a child rolled out of them they still went on working. They picked the child up, licked it clean, tied it onto their back, bent over their plot again and went on hoeing. Or they submerged their mop in a bucket, rinsed it, wrung it out thoroughly and went back to work. And a baby was never murdered by its mother. Never! White women could take a leaf out of their book.
It was there that M saw how cheap people are, and how easily new ones can be made.
He called me his ‘pute’, or whore. It was meant as a term of affection. Or perhaps even a compliment. But I was less than his pute. I was a prostitute he didn’t have to pay. His free pute.
His brothers should have stood up for themselves. They let themselves be treated as his servants, unpaid servants. They had to carry his satchel. He stuffed it full of comic strip books, but that was no problem, as he had porters. Those lads were no good for anything else, he said. ‘Why do you think they’ve become postmen? They should be grateful to me, I trained them.’
Hahaha.
When his father told him to do the weeding, he called in his brothers. In life the art was to delegate, and to fool the naïve souls who wanted to be fooled.
He rented out the comic books at school at one franc a day. And from the proceeds he bought sweets, which he did not share with anyone.
He never shared anything with anyone. Ever.
His brothers should have demanded their fair share. They should have thrown his satchel on the ground. Carry your own rubbish!
The comic books were theirs too, but he acted as if they were his.
‘The eldest son is the only one who counts. He is conceived with strong seed. The best of the father and the mother goes to him. His brothers and sisters have to make do with the remnants. In the Middle Ages the eldest son inherited everything: the estate, the house, and the serfs. Those who came after him had to go into a monastery, or on a crusade. Or they had to contrive to marry a rich daughter. One with a dowry.’
Yes, M. Of course, M.
‘I’m the crown prince. Do you realise that?’
He didn’t seem to realise that I was also the eldest. I was the eldest and the youngest. But I was a daughter, of course, an only daughter. Une fille unique.
‘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
