Episode 8: Welcome to our lovely hotel and have a nice stay!
He crept to the Crowne Plaza Hotel, over the Maelbeek bridge, had a look at it and thought:
"Oh my God! I am back to Kosmosibirsk!", an exclamation you may want to confirm yourself if you ever come across this hotel and its sorry state that impressed even our battered Claus.
But he decided he had no other choice and walked inside.
"Ah non, 'y en a marre! Pas de pédales ici! Fous le camp! Tout de suite, ou j' appelle la Police!", was the polite greeting inside the over-expensive hotel. It somehow hurt more than the fist of Ahmed on his face…
Claus went blank. Everything was not going really that well, he had to admit. Still, he did what every hopeless person would have done in his case: armed himself with patience and slowly explained what had happened and that all he wanted was a room for the night.
He was reluctantly given probably the worst room (a pleonasm of course, all rooms were equally sad in this hotel) on the first floor, right above the noisy avenue. But he felt so relieved to be rid of Dirk and Ahmed and Rachida (the hotel receptionist) that he fell almost immediately asleep.
And he had the most beautiful of dreams…
He was young again. It was winter, his parents were there, in their old house. It was warm, a fire was burning and a Christmas tree had been decorated. A smooth, soothing Christmas melody was being played in some old gramophone. His mother came near him and kissed his hair, and this felt like the best smell he had smelt coming out of their kitchen when a Christmas cake was being prepared. Strange, how humans can remember not only a picture or a sound, but a smell and a touch as well…He felt eternally reassured. He thought he had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life, and so proud that it was HIS mammy! Then she came even closer to him, he could smell her perfume, and in the most perfect complicity whispered in his ear just three words:
"I love you"
and winked to him.
There are few persons that can paralyse us in only three words. His mother was one, and he had just discovered it. He had never been happier in his life! And he would have liked this dream to last forever…
Then his father appeared, in his Sunday clothes. He bent over him, a tall guy that he was, and doing that his expensive silk tie fell on and barely caressed his young, hairless face filling him with the ultimate reassurance, the immense strength of a manly presence that would be there, whatever might happen to him, to protect him.
"I am proud of you, my son"
he said, and although Claus remained speechless, this gave him a Mickey Mouse smile. Then his father's huge palms surrounded his blushing cheeks and he fondly kissed them.
It was the only kiss he ever got from his father. Sadly though, during a dream in an ugly hotel, in a cold and dark place where the only people he knew had been his aggressors...
He then stood up from his uncomfortable bed, opened the window and went night walking, skating for one last time, but this time without his beloved skates that had protected him for his whole life.
In the last seconds of his life, when people somehow view their whole life in a fraction of a second, right before the bright light in the tunnel, he heard as he fell on the cold pavement a voice singing:
"Felt the quick push,
felt the air rush,
felt the sidewalk,
fell in line".