Erwin Mortier - My Fellow Skin

So they got to me in the end — the priest, Mr Bouillie and all the other staffroom creeps. A whole school year had passed, a summer had lit up and been snuffed out again, and I hadn’t even noticed. At this rate it wouldn’t be long before I fell asleep altogether. Then, when I woke up again I’d be just like Roland. I’d lure new boys behind the cherry laurel and send them packing a few minutes later with tears in their eyes, having done goodness knows what to them, I’d punch people left and right and my halting voice would become a growl, I’d be good at football and get flustered when Roswita cheered me for being a fine runner.

His bed had not been slept in for several nights. He was staying with his parents for the half-term holiday. His mother was on leave from the institution everyone was so secretive about. There was the same sense of mystery surrounding the postcard she had sent from there, elegantly phrased in French but containing several spelling mistakes.

My father had said, “He’s a poor sod, Roger is,” and sighed heavily. My mother.

*

They called from the bottom of the stairs that they were going to visit the graves. It was November, and the mist would be catching on the chrysanthemums in the cemetery and making them soggy.

I stayed at home, lounging on my bed, flicking through exercise books and drawing monsters in the margins. Willem was away on a trip to the mountains with his parents, which he’d been greatly looking forward to. He couldn’t wait to get away.

For all our efforts to look as if we were chewing the cud like the rest of them, our contrariness did not fail to attract attention, and there were moments when he too lost his cool, especially on the day we were summoned to the principal’s office during break. Hardly an embodiment of divine authority in his bespoke suit, yet he exuded the stony severity of the Ten Commandments. A barely perceptible wrinkle played on his brow that afternoon as he sat himself down between the two of us on the leatherette couch. He fiddled with his tie pin, clasped his hands and looked grave.

“Gentlemen,” he began.

“Yes, Father?”

I sensed the superior, measured scorn that was spreading through Willem, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling he was on his guard. The way he leaned back in the fake smell of the couch was a touch too devil-may-care, as was the relaxed expression on his face while he listened to the priest’s obscure discourse on the subject of community spirit.

School did not minister to individual needs, those of individual boys in this case, it was best compared to a busy beehive. We were not to view our teachers — benign, devoted souls to a man — as our masters, but as older brothers who wanted only what was best for us. Mr Bouillie felt the same. The priest rambled on about the pillar of our establishment shedding bitter tears on our account, so much did it pain him that certain boys never showed up for extracurricular games or sport on Wednesday afternoon, that they never volunteered for dish-washing service, nor did their bit to keep the library open on Tuesdays, let alone on Fridays from four to six p.m.

“You want to be more outgoing, the pair of you. Do you understand what I’m saying? At your age… sticking together all the time… And there is so much more beauty and wisdom waiting to be discovered out in the world. Look, we’re human, all of us… so am I,” he said, pausing for emphasis. “You are young. Young and inexperienced, and the pure bond of friendship is a thing of great value, but still…”

It was as though he had hinges in his body that needed oiling. Doors were scraping over floors and getting jammed halfway, and he couldn’t bring himself to force them open with a thrust of his shoulder.

“We all have strong feelings at times. And when one is young one is extra susceptible. Let’s see, a fitting metaphor would be…”

He selected a Havana from the cigar box on his coffee table, lit it and balanced it on his lower lip, thought hard, blew out little puffs of smoke, and embarked on an ethereal parable about the light of love and flowers in bud needing time to unfold their petals, and what a shame it would be to disturb this tender process in any way. Of course, we were young and feckless, he had been young himself, and no less mischievous than us… It would be a pity if our high spirits caused us to nip each other in the bud.

I hadn’t a clue what he was getting at, but I heard a little snort escape from Willem’s nostrils. His cheekbones flushed briefly, from shame or anger I could not tell. He was certainly not jiggling his knees.

“So much for that, then,” the priest said at last.

He gave us each a manly slap on the thigh and rose to his feet. “I know you’re good boys at heart…”

He accompanied us into the corridor, visibly relieved at having acquitted himself of what must have been a delicate task.

Just before starting across the school yard, Willem turned round — he seemed to have been waiting for this moment — and told the priest that his father had said he’d be getting in touch soon, something about the spring fund-raising dinner for the purchase of two new vaulting horses for the gym.

“Yes indeed, we must see to that,” replied the priest. “The poster has to go to the printer’s. I’ll ring him myself.” His tone was level, but for some reason Willem’s remark had touched a raw nerve.

We returned to the classroom. The bell for the end of break had already sounded, the yard was deserted.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

He just grinned and jostled me up the stairs. Everyone stared when we arrived in class.

*

After the summer holidays we were no longer in the same class. Without his presence the lessons became compact eternities. Boredom coiled itself around my neck like a thick scarf being pulled tight, throttling me slowly. I yearned for the four o’clock bell, yearned to go and wait for him on the edge of the wood, but in the meantime I had to struggle to stay awake in ever deeper dungeons of apathy, stealing looks out the window at the cavalries of clouds breaking ranks and straggling across the horizon, their lances broken and their banners torn to shreds; or glancing round the classroom at the others, all of them busy taking notes and shooting their hands up imploringly as soon as the teacher asked a question, at which my facial muscles would go rigid with contempt.

I’d have spat out the whole world and all the doomed creatures with it, including myself, if I’d been able, like getting rid of a gob of phlegm. I longed to be little again, when I was no more than a membrane upon which the days tapped their tattoo of impressions for me to take or leave. The days of screaming for my milk, and yawning. Going to sleep and waking up. Feeling the blaze of summer in my legs, lifting a tile in the cellar and discovering a salamander underneath, licking its chops like a dragon, then quickly dropping the tile back in place and running away crying, “Papa, Papa!” After dusk, when a hush descended on the outdoor world, there’d be the Aunts indoors, spreading their bats’ wings and detaching themselves from the corners where they spent their days upside down and fast asleep, and I’d salute the sweetness of the night as it deepened into black, as black as the pages in the photograph albums which preserved my image under a sheet of tissue paper.

I thought of my father and my mother. His creations: man and woman. He read the paper, she did the dishes. She complained, he soothed. The sexes are complementary, but different, Mr Vaneenooghe had explained in class, and he had written the word on the blackboard: com-ple-men-tary. The story of the Creation revealed a profound truth, he had declared in conclusion, but I remained unconvinced.