“All my boys are fighters like Manilla, all my boys they want to make a million.”
It’s the first thing I’ve heard here that’s in my native language. Accompanied by a pretty uninspiring beat; you could just about dance to it. It’s emanating from a shop called Rox, which sells cheap women’s clothes I can only presume are fashionable. I don’t belong here but I stay standing in front of the window, in expectation of something that definitely isn’t coming; analyse the lyrics. Do I try to picture the way boys fight in the capital of the Philippines? Or is this a textbook example of the way people speak variations of the same language, the way meaning gets lost in translation, as the American poet once said of his own craft? Manilla in Southern Dutch –Flemish is apparently a pejorative… – becomes Mandela in Northern Dutch and makes the message of the song a touch more intelligible, even if no less strikingly trivial.
I’m lost.
On the steps of the hotel boys were drinking beer and passing joints around according to the outcome of word games. They’ve taken over the Spui, know where they need to go to feel at home. This is how man organises his life. By making choices and defending them with arguments that guarantee peace of mind. Creatures of habit. I eat Burger King and not Maccy D’s because…. Because I’m used to it. Back home in Brussels I hung out in Sint-Katelijne Square because …. Because once upon a time someone started to. And now I’ll never stop.
There, then, in a time that seems not so long ago as it most likely is, I had much the same hobbies as the boys behind the Mercure Hotel, in which from the square below I can see the light in my room shining, five up, second window from the left. If someone wanted to, they could make the argument that nothing much has changed and that most of my life still consists of killing time in the company of friends or alcohol. Still I know that I’m different from them now; I no longer enjoy that same freedom from care. I have decisions to make. What’s my aim? How can I quell sadness? Where will I set up my base of operations in Den Haag? What will become my Stanny, my Au Laboureur, my De Raaf? Where shall I make a last ditch attempt to build my nest?
There’s a Grote Markt here, just like in Brussels. They share the same features: cobbles, heated terraces, legends, heritage, draught beer, the list goes on. Here, on the square whose name sounds so familiar, I drop anchor in a pub called September, which meets with my approval because the Grolsch there tastes just as bad as the competition’s and the ninth month is the one in which I was born. This year I got nothing but junk for presents so I treat myself to an oyster since here they cost less than a pils. I buy a pils too to wash down the oyster and ask myself what people think when they see me sitting in the pub that meets with their approval, the others with their disapproval. Who is the man who keeps his hat on, who eavesdrops, who isn’t waiting for anyone and doesn’t seem to have anywhere to be? He radiates a peculiar reserve. “His choice”, they decide almost immediately. One that he defends with irrefutable arguments like “yes it is” and which, for sake of convenience, we just have to accept.