who would listen. The second Mrs. Goldfarb had locked Mr. Goldfarb out of the house. When he had returned from his day at school, perspiration drenching his face as it was now the hot season, he found no way to enter his home. Madame had barricaded the doors and was deaf to his calls. Etienne had been returning from the market when he saw the sight. He was now concerned his patron could succumb to heat exhaustion, as he was hammering and hammering on each and every door and window, all to no avail, but with the sweat now soaking his three-piece suit.
The players decided they had to intervene. If they could not penetrate the ramparts on Mr. Goldfarb’s behalf, they could at least bring him back here where he could have a cold beer and a sympathetic ear.
Antonio had driven the minivan from the store, so there was room for everyone as they drove the few blocks to the colonial style house that had been occupied by Goldfarb for years and years and years. Pulling into the drive, they spied their prey sitting in a heap on the stoop; his coat still on but his tie loosened around a sweat-soaked collar. He was so still they were worried he may have expired, but when they shook his shoulder, he revived and meekly accepted a ride to Philip’s, apparently having lost all will to access the habitation now apparently overseen by the second Mrs. Goldfarb.
When finally seated in one of Philip’s armchairs, Mr. Goldfarb resembled a blow-up Saint Nicholas that had suddenly lost all its air. In fact, like air hissing from a leak, his lungs seemed to be voiding their very essence. Nonetheless, when a frothy pint of beer was passed before him, he eagerly took it, instantaneously consuming the entire contents. After a third pint, Mr. Goldfarb’s hooded eyes fluttered and he looked as though he could speak. With the four men perched over him like a kingfisher at the fishpond, and Etienne shadowing them in the corner, unwilling to leave his long-time patron, Mr. Goldfarb uttered but a word, “Damn!”
It took yet a fourth pint before the tale could be spun.
Goldfarb knew it was in the offing. She was still a prime specimen and he offered little to keep her close to home and hearth. Heretofore, the long parade of young men had been able to assuage the urges, while she still found safety and security in remaining the second Mrs. Goldfarb. However, as was bound to happen, she finally met a man who was not just there to satiate her but who said he really loved her; he wanted to marry her and build a house for her. This seemed so little to ask. A normal life was now so attainable—no more galavanting, no more evenings on the terrace. The opportunity for a real home with someone to whom she could relate and with whom she could communicate. Was it too much to ask? She certainly did not think so and had said as much to Goldfarb that morning. She only wanted her freedom and a stipend that could help with building the new house. She was not greedy and she bore Goldfarb no ill feeling. But it was time for change.
Yet, upon hearing the early morning news, Goldfarb, as usual a bit hung over from his nightly concert with his whiskey, had reacted violently and negatively. No! Never! Never, never, never! She was his. She had come to him as almost a child. All she had, all she knew, all she had learned was thanks to him. She was not only his wife, she was his product. She owed him. She could not abandon him—absolutely not.
However, now among his own, he saw the futility of his actions. He could not control her. He could not refuse her. He had no choice, he had to acquiesce. Maybe his first wife would come back. Then another “Damn!” He remembered his first wife was now living with a young tennis pro. What would he do? He was too old to think of a third Mrs. Goldfarb.
Even though Goldfarb was not close to the group, he was a member of their wider expat community. They wanted to help him as they wanted to believe he would help them if the tables were turned.
They called Etienne to a group huddle and then approached Goldfarb before he could down his sixth pint. Etienne, who has been living at his farm outside town and coming to work every day by bicycle, offered to move into the boy’s quarters at the Goldfarb house if le patron agreed. Etienne’s oldest son wanted to marry but could not as he had no house of his own. This son already did most of the farming, so Etienne could give his country house to the boy, who could then marry while Etienne and his wife moved into town, albeit into accommodations that were not their own. His other children were nearly grown and could live on the farm as they had been doing, their older sibling now the head of the household.
They had to repeat this proposal three times before Goldfarb grasped what was being suggested. Yet, once he did seize the idea, he accepted immediately, offering to spruce up the quarters before Etienne moved in.
In this way, another in the continuing dramas had been contained, but at the cost of a game of poker.
❦❦❦
Brother Mike had little contact with Goldfarb and could only assume the arrangements with Etienne had taken place as planned: the second Mrs. Goldfarb was now missus somebody else and Goldfarb’s suit had finally dried after the ordeal of restructuring his household.
Brother Mike understood, moreover, that situations like Goldfarb’s arose more often than most knew. Men often entered the Foreign Service fresh out of their tertiary studies. Many—married and even fathers at this time—had had little opportunity to, as they liked to say in this part of the world, “play life.” While they may have been long on education, they were very short on life experiences. When they came here, they found a lot of their traditional social barriers absent or replaced by new and often more liberal codes of conduct, certainly a concept well appreciated by Brother Mike.
Here there were frequently totally different value systems and protocols. Marriage, age, sex, friendship, respect—all were subject to new interpretations. Brother Mike had seen his European brothers completely burn out on the excesses of a less encumbering and more open life, even though the social liberties here in the central part of the continent were said to be stringent by comparison to those further to the west.
Brother Mike often wondered about these social norms, thinking frequently of the time he was driving to the country’s capital and was overtaken by the shiny black Mercedes of the Archbishop, with his Holiness seated regally in the back, his wife next to him, her headscarf piled high in the rear window.
4
Slowly Brother Mike became more acquainted with Philip and his family. With only two windows a week, the process was at times almost imperceptible, but somehow enjoyable, like peeping through a keyhole at the lives of others. He wondered if Father Alphonse from his church back home had felt this way when he had heard his confessional?
Philip had come “out” to the real world, as he liked to say, as soon as he finished his internship in a prestigious hospital in Bruges. His story was very similar to Brother Mike’s own. Philip’s father had been a common laborer, working for the city, basically filling potholes and cleaning ditches. To make ends meet, his mother worked part-time as a cleaning lady, leaving their small, nearly bare home for the extravagant and rambling estates of the rich. He had one older sister who worked in a yardage shop after finishing secondary school. He was the star of the family. They had all pooled their resources for him to be able to attend the best schools and achieve the finest education. They were, thus, shocked and even wounded when, upon receiving his medical degree, he announced he wanted to go to work and live in Africa. He left with his family ties frayed, some to the breaking point.
But Belgium and his Belgian life faded as he immersed himself in his new career and his new environment. He found he had a great, nearly unquenchable appetite for two things: his work and beer; a close third was the ladies. As the first ophthalmologist in the country, Philip, or Doctor Bwana Phil as many of his patients called him, had many waiting at his doorstep. With great pride, he treated each equally and was as thrilled today to help someone see better as he had been when he helped his first patient (an 80-year-old man from a far-off village in the mountains of the North) all those years
