Dear Emily,
The country of Belgium is
having an election. On the 22nd the people will decide between the
men from the Blue Party, whose leader believes in employment and speaking
French, and the men from the Red Party whose leader believes in work and
speaking Flemish. While to a non-resident the question might seem immaterial,
after all Belgium has managed to function perfectly well for about a year
without a government, the citizenry seem very excited about the upcoming
election and who can begrudge the excitement of citizens.
Posters are plastered up everywhere - outside houses,
shops, and restaurants. Billboards, Red and Blue, clad the taller of the
buildings and from them bear down the faces of the potential potentiates of the
plurality of provinces. Wealthier neighbourhoods support Blue, poorer
neighbourhoods support Red; the colour coordination seems reassuringly like our
own.
For those disturbed by any perceived similarity between
the parties I was delighted to discover a third way. The Pink Party. While I
have no idea what they believe in, I know that they have a van, are running a
candidate in our province, and are not supported by those who support the Red
or Blue Parties.
There are also advertisements for a charity that supports
the blind in all of the metro stations of Brussels. Done in the style of one of
the party posters they bemoan politics based on linguistic differences and
suggest standardising on braille instead.
Communication has been a theme of this holiday. I am
writing to you from my bedroom in a Cistercian monastery where silence is the
lingua franca. The silence has a lushness to it, it is enveloping, one could
quite easily become lost in the silence – two hundred monks already have, sunk
into it, it is a most majestic absence
But it is not true silence. Listen closely to the silence
and a hundred thousand things are clearly audible. In the silence one’s hearing
sharpens immensely. I can tell that there is a woman walking in a passage below
me at the other end of the guesthouse, I can tell that she’s short and thin,
that she’s in good health, that she’s walking towards me. The man in the room
across from me is writing something in biro. Three of the swallows that nest
under the eaves of the smaller chapel are in flight, the light breeze is
rustling the leaves of the three hundred year oak in the ruins of the old
abbey.
My own nib sounds like a rodent tentatively appraising
food. And when I stop writing and concentrate inwards I can hear noises that
are deafening. I can hear blood as it’s pumped around my head, I can hear my
eardrums themselves each time they vibrate in an attempt to capture a noise. I
am no longer using my ears to hear, I am using touch, sensation, contraction
and loosening of muscles, I can hear my body and it’s sublime.
Only in the mornings do we talk, and in the mornings
meaning is lost in the noise. Belgium has three languages. Us forty guests have
maybe ten, and the sale a manger, a great stone hall whose windows display
fantastic beasts and scenes of the resurrection, echoes in Italian and German,
Dutch and Afrikaans, Spanish and Portuguese, English and French and Flemish. We
search together for common tongues, French is the most widely spoken and so the
most often heard. Yet the French spoken here is different entirely: It is more
accent tolerant than that of France, words are substituted for other Belgian
languages – ‘fromage’ becomes ‘kaas’ for instance – and word order is often
German or English. It no doubt appals the French guests and also the monks who
deliver all their prayers in French, but for me whose French is – as you well
know – lousy it’s a much easier language. It’s a relief also for Joe whose
French is worse even then mine, we used sit across from each other in GCSE
French back in school all those years ago. This easier more liberal French is
naturally of no use to the Americans who don’t speak anything other than their
bastardised English.
We’ve adopted two American kids at the monastery,
eighteen year olds, who despite some impressively dogmatic belief in scripture
(but very little textual understanding or background knowledge of it) seem to
be finding the whole ‘being in Europe’ thing rather difficult. One’s called
Felix who’s here because he’s “struggling with his attraction to men” (this is almost
the very first thing he told me!) and the other’s Alex who’s there to support
him and find God or some such thing. They don’t drink, smoke, or have impure
thoughts (except Felix who’s fighting them valiantly), they’re quite dull
really but they’re sort of sweet in their own way.
We don’t get any news here, there’s no radio or
television naturally but also no newspapers, and so I have no idea what’s
happened in the world in the last few days. It has the curious effect of making
time not seem to pass. I may miss the results of the Belgian election, although
I’m sure if they manage to form an elected government while I’m here that the
moratorium on outside knowledge will be temporarily lifted; us Catholics are very
keen on miracles. Keep me abreast of anything interesting in world and UK
affairs.
Anyway
I’m conscious that this letter’s becoming a tad long so I’ll sign off here and
wish you the best of luck with your own holiday. Oh and thanks for the birthday
text, a monk brought me beer and biscuits yesterday as well.
Love, Daniel
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