Brussels Noir

by Michel Dufranne

  Around the same time, Georges Désir stepped down as host of Visa for the World. He became a founding member of the FDF, a new political party that vowed to defend the rights of Brussels’s citizens. He was elected mayor of Woluwe-Saint-Lambert. If Léon hadn’t fled the city in order to scatter his seed among a few Moso women, he might have had the chance to work under his favorite TV host. Life can sometimes be so cheeky.

  Joseph launched his small-time narcotics business. The balcony on avenue Speeckaert was soon abandoned in favor of a much larger crop spread over various green spaces in the municipality. The first plot was staked in the old cemetery. Five hundred meters from there, behind the city museum in Roodebeek Park, he cultivated a few more plants. The harvesting and selling usually took place after sunset, since Joseph was determined to devote his days to a legal professional activity. He answered an ad for a position as a gardener. At the first interview, he talked about his passion for cacti and neglected to mention the one for cannabis. He was taken on at the Château de Laeken. Joseph joined a team that cared for the tropical plants in the palace greenhouses. The twenty-six-hectare estate also had to be mowed, raked, and watered regularly. Gradually distancing himself from the steamy atmosphere of the greenhouses, Joseph focused more and more on the maintenance of the gardens. The immense lawns and ponds were bordered by woods rarely visited by the sovereign. And so began the cultivation of cannabis on the royal estate.

  The king was a shy man who didn’t laugh much. And the only respect in which the queen was at all imaginative was in her curly permed hairdo and collection of ridiculous hats. At sunset, they walked their dogs along the paths of the estate, greeted the gardeners, and returned to the palace.

  In 1993, near the end of July, the king, fragile of heart, collapsed in Spain between a card game on the terrace and a poolside glass of rosé. His reign had lasted forty-two years. For weeks, a flood of tears swept all across Belgium. The mourning of the Belgian people was accompanied by a rise in the consumption of cannabis. Joseph Brotchi made good money and bought salmon croquettes for his mother’s cats. Sixteen years in the service of the king’s lawns, botanical gardens, and shrubbery came to an end.

  In the evenings, Joseph went back to his mother’s house. With no more clients, she spent her days petting her cats and anesthetizing herself in front of the Bavarian adventures of Inspector Derrick. After supper, Joseph went back to the old cemetery or to Roodebeek Park and sold his most recent harvest. The home he shared with his mother and her foul-smelling menagerie was not a propitious environment for a burgeoning relationship. Joseph adjusted to the situation and started having flings with a few of his customers. He discovered that he had a strong liking for torn fishnet stockings and darkly made-up eyes. He brought a few of these silly birds into his bedroom and stroked their feathers, oily with the tar of disillusionment. They would lose themselves in a cumulonimbus cloud of cannabis smoke and sink into the royal gardener’s arms. These brief romances suited Joseph. Maryvonne insisted on mending the ripped jeans of these young women, who were horrified by such an absurd proposition. His poor mother didn’t understand that times had changed and it was more elegant to wear a torn-up garment than a repaired one.

  The new king, the younger brother of the deceased, did not move into the estate. The monarch and his royal spouse remained in their belvedere. Their son, the prince, took possession of the castle, and it became the nest where his princess hatched four little ones. At the end of the day, the prince would go for a walk alone in the park while the princess looked after the kids. He liked to fly his helicopter and practice landing on the vast lawn that sloped toward the pond. Joseph observed him from a distance. He sensed the profound sadness of this young man who’d been conditioned for so many years to become the chief of state. No faux pas would ever be allowed him, no word spoken louder than another. Joseph was sure of it: this prince needed to shout, to run, to turn somersaults on the lawn, to have a few grand adventures. But alas, heredity had locked him into the role of figurehead. The prince was exhausted from awaiting his hour.

  The old Etterbeek cemetery was converted into the magnificent Meudon Park, with a fountain and a playground for children. The hemp gardens were flattened beneath the tracks of bulldozers. Joseph had to concentrate his horticultural activities on Roodebeek Park and the royal estate. In July, the pistils of the Mary Jane flowers darkened, indicating that harvest time had arrived. One day, the prince came upon Joseph filling large trash bags with the harvested buds. The gardener didn’t try to cover up his business. He confessed everything in detail: the parks of Woluwe, his mother, the cats, his father in China. The prince followed suit: his wife, their children, his rebellious brother, his father the king, a half-sister he’d only just met, the training for his future title, and the agony of not knowing when it would begin. They told each other all their woes, passing three joints back and forth, and Joseph taught the prince how to roll. The sun had set behind the Atomium long before they finally went their separate ways.

  They saw one another often after that. They would talk for long hours in front of the pond. The prince helped Joseph with his harvest. And in no time, he could roll a joint with as much skill as any Belgian.

  The prince led commercial delegations abroad. He was never at ease in front of a microphone, a crowd, or a camera. His words escaped him. His hands became moist, his legs went wobbly, and his complexion paled to gray. Some thought he was dumb, or even retarded; the people, often cruel, refused to accept that their prince might simply be timid. He was heir to the crown and could scarcely string together three sentences. The most awful slander spread through the streets of the kingdom. When it made its way back to the palace via the pernicuous press, the prince was horrified. Fortunately, Joseph was always nearby with his excellent hydroponic weed to help His Royal Highness relax. His wife, the princess, was blossoming in her role as a mother. The people were impatient to see her crowned queen. The prince’s father was aging gracefully, not showing a hint of impatience to give up the scepter. What would it take for him to abdicate the throne? Would the prince have to wait to be as old as a pope before he became king? For his fiftieth birthday, Joseph gave him a cake with fifty joints stuck into it like candles. They laughed and did somersaults in the grass, and the prince fell into the pond.

  * * *

  Joseph had hardly noticed the years go by. His hair had begun to fall out along with the autumn leaves, and his mustache was turning gray, but otherwise, life outdoors and the products of organic farming had kept him in good shape.

  One afternoon, after having swallowed a ham sandwich with a little Devos & Lemmens mayonnaise, Maryvonne nodded off while watching Inspector Derrick—who was following an apple-green Volkswagen filled with young heroin addicts and prostitutes—and did not wake up. Joseph found her with the remote control in hand. Three cats were asleep on her cold knees. Another was finishing off the pot of mayonnaise that Maryvonne had forgotten to close. Joseph cried and cleaned up cat vomit for forty-eight hours. He buried his mother in the Wezembeek-Oppem cemetery, as local Woluwe custom dictated. He continued to feed the cats and clean their litter boxes.

  That year, George Désir, after thirty years of service to the city of Brussels, was no longer represented on the voting ballot, and Woluwe-Saint-Lambert elected a new mayor.

  Joseph was heading toward his sixtieth birthday. Often, in the evening, after having filled the cats’ bowls, he went to meet his friend Fat Dan for a drink. With the arrival of the Congolese to the neighborhood, then the Polish, and the rise of cell phones, drug dealing had become a less artisanal business. The local Mafias sold everything and anything. Chemical products had poisoned the weed and made smokers sick. Joseph began to fear his customers. Scores were settled with fists or knives. Joseph Brotchi no longer understood young people; they no longer interested him. Not even the girls. Fuck-buddies—often floozy, slightly rundown forty-somethings—had taken the place of his former girlfriends. The good old days of punkettes with tor
n jeans and darkened eyelids had faded into vague memories. Joseph frequented single mothers, divorced, abandoned. He was the second wind, the hint of spontaneity in the routine lives of these weary women.

  After he found a young mafioso laid out stiff beneath some bushes one night, Joseph decided to leave the profession. He kept only his crops in the royal estate.

  A bar named the Tap had opened its doors in Meudon Square. The terrace was near the entrance to the park that Joseph no longer frequented. Fat Dan, who operated the photocopy machines in the Tour des Finances, spent his evenings grafted to the zinc of the bar. Together, they drank Ramée blondes and talked about getting laid. They had a knack for transforming the monotony of their daily lives into radiant legend.

  Sometimes, walking home from the metro station, Joseph passed in front of the Sainte-Rose boutique. The Martiniquaise panther had returned to her island, and her daughter Moana had taken over the shop. The girl, whom the residents of the neighborhood had seen arrive at three years old, was now over thirty. Even more beautiful than her mother, the caramel-skinned young woman didn’t have to endure racist remarks or abject rumors. Moana was adored by Saint-Lambertians, especially the men. Her two improbably long legs disappeared under tiny skirts, suggesting a Creole paradise that troubled Joseph. Her little nipples in their too-tight T-shirts pierced the gardener’s heart. Moana was still a young woman, while Joseph had long ago become a monsieur. Joseph was quite aware of this and behaved with Moana as no more than an older friend, a little seduced, perhaps, but well-behaved. And yet, he would have killed for a chance to taste the cane sugar of her sex. He would have chopped all his mother’s cats into tiny pieces if it would mean he could spend one night under her gentle caresses of the South Seas. But Joseph Brotchi was a sensible guy. He went home to collapse on his couch covered with cat hair, to suck on a joint and forget about how quickly life was passing him by.

  * * *

  Joseph’s cell phone vibrated. He grabbed it and read the text: Meet at the pond in 5 min. Joseph turned off his phone, leaned his rake against the trunk of a beech tree, and started walking down to the pond. The prince, in a white shirt and jeans, appeared a few seconds later.

  “I’m leaving Monday. Economic mission in Brazil.”

  “Lucky you!”

  “Yeah, well . . . you know, I really don’t like giving these speeches. I’ll have to do it in Portuguese. I have to rehearse and rehearse, like an actor. If you knew how it’s stressing me out . . . Anyway, come on, let’s roll a nice fat one.”

  Joseph took out a baggie of Black Widow grown on the estate, as well as a packet of tobacco, from the pocket of his green work overalls.

  “Roll it yourself, Highness. You’re better at it than I am.”

  The prince fashioned a little L joint with a dexterity that would have astonished his slanderers. “Can’t stay long. The wife’s waiting for me to start supper.”

  The prince lit the tip of the cone and took a long puff that whirled deep in his bronchial tubes. Then suddenly, with a quickness that Joseph didn’t know the man possessed, he grabbed all the evidence—the bag, the pouch of tobacco, and the lighter—and dropped it into the gardener’s hands. Like a dog who senses a storm coming, the prince had detected the presence of his Chief of Protocol. He’d had just enough time to stick the joint into Joseph’s mouth.

  “Your Highness, the princess sent me to inform you that the meal—” The Chief of Protocol went silent. His eyeballs doubled in size. Joseph thought they were going to spring from their sockets and roll down the lawn all the way to the pond.

  “Your Highness, the gardener . . . the gardener is smoking.”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s smoking . . . drugs!”

  The prince, who’d just spoken of honing his acting skills during meetings abroad, did his best to appear convincingly innocent. “Oh, my, are you sure?” He turned to face Joseph. “My Chief of Protocol tells me you’re smoking narcotics, Monsieur Brotchi . . .”

  Joseph was dismissed from his post as royal gardener, and in order to avoid a scandal, he was given a healthy severance payment. He remained friends with the prince and they called each other often.

  * * *

  The Tap became Joseph’s second home. He went there every night. Fat Dan gave detailed reports of his peregrinations in the many-storied Tour des Finances. He was basically an easygoing guy, but if there were two things he didn’t mess around with, it was photocopy machines and their maintenance. What would become of the ministries if the photocopy machines disappeared? It was quite simple: the country would come to a halt. It would be the collapse of the entire system. One night, Joseph ventured to compare the filling of toner cartridges with the upkeep of the royal grounds. The layer of fat surrounding Dan’s heart was pierced straight through by the dagger of his friend’s assumption. How could Joseph suggest that the maintenance of photocopiers, the true guardians of the country’s stability, was of no more importance than the mowing of a lawn enjoyed by a single, useless family that would surely end up being decapitated one day? Joseph didn’t like to hear people speak ill of the prince. The man was his friend, after all, and he understood like no one else the pain of being so well-born and so unfortunate all at once.

  With eyes closed and elbows raised, the rim of the glass between his lips, foam seeping into his mustache and nostrils, Joseph sipped his Ramée. He appreciated how the bitterness of beer could momentarily sap the bitterness out of life. His phone vibrated in his right pocket.

  “Oh shit!” he slurred. “It’s him! His Highness . . . I’m going out . . .”

  Joseph stepped outside to the pedestrian crosswalk. As he circled the roundabout, he listened to the prince and responded thoughtfully. Once he’d made three complete circles, he went back into the bar and sat down on the stool beside Fat Dan.

  “I can’t believe the prince just calls you up like that! On your GSM! And at the Tap!”

  “He didn’t know I was at the Tap. And that’s sort of the point of GSM.”

  “Well, fine, okay. But what did he want, His Majesty?”

  “Nothing. He’s just a little depressed . . . He’s fifty-two years old and he feels useless. All his life, he’s been preparing to become the king, but his father doesn’t seem to want to let go of the crown. What he told me is that if his father gave him a date, even far in the future, he’d be able to relax. But for now, he doesn’t know, so he’s spending his whole life waiting. I told him to go roll a big fat spliff; that’ll calm him down. I gave him one three days ago.”

  “Yeah, well . . . if I were him, I’d take full advantage of being on vacation year-round. I’d go to the Costa del Sol . . .”

  Joseph watched the foam dissolve in his glass. He tried to think of a solution. “Well . . . could we hire a psychic?”

  “You believe in that?”

  “I dunno . . . some of them say stuff that turns out exactly right.”

  “And do you know any?”

  “No . . .”

  Joseph kept thinking. The prince was counting on him. His neurons were swimming in gray matter when Moana’s pointy breasts appeared in his mind’s eye. The mysteries of the Belgian cerebral mechanism are impenetrable, though often predictable. “We could ask Moana.”

  “Moana? She’s a psychic?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But she’s Martiniquaise, or something like that. Apparently her mother was into voodoo stuff, black magic. We’ll have to ask her about it . . .”

  * * *

  Exhausted after a long day of tailoring the neighborhood grandmothers’ pants, eardrums ringing with the sound of sewing machine bells, Moana collapsed on her sofa. Her cell phone vibrated. She answered, and twenty minutes later she was sitting on a barstool at the Tap.

  Fat Dan was dripping with sweat. The photocopy machine operator knew what he was worth on the glamour market: his rating was very low, near absolute zero. When he found himself in the proximity of a woman he considered inaccessible, his sweat glands went i
nto overdrive. The well-mannered young seamstress acted as if everything was normal. After a few sips of Ramée had brought his body temperature back to normal, Fat Dan could finally speak without stuttering.

  “Moana, we were wondering if your mother practiced voodoo and if she’d taught you a thing or two. Like, telling the future, you know . . .”

  “Voodoo? My mother was a seamstress, not a witch! What on earth are you talking about?”

  “You can’t help us, then?”

  “Um, probably not . . . but what do you want to find out?”

  “The future. It’s for a buddy of mine . . . He’s going to start a new job, but he doesn’t know when. He’d like to know—”

  “Ah, okay! Maybe if we have a table-turning séance . . . I’ve heard that can work and it isn’t too hard . . .”

  “Isn’t that how you talk to dead people?”

  “Yeah, but dead people—they know lots of things that we don’t. Things about the future. When you’re alive, you live at the same time as everyone else, in the present moment. But when you’re dead, you’re dead for eternity . . . time is no longer important. The present loses all its meaning. And so they develop this incredible knowledge about the future.”

  Moana’s theory seemed solid. The boys were pensive.

  Suddenly, Fat Dan jumped to his feet. “Of course! The table! In Roodebeek Park! The museum! There’s a table there that turns!”

  Joseph placed a friendly hand on Fat Dan’s shoulder to try to calm him down. “Catch your breath, Dan! Take a sip of beer and explain it clearly to us. Because if it’s simply a table we need, you know everyone has one.”