Episode 7: First impressions
During what were going to be his last hours, Claus chose to get to Brussel Centraaaaal by train. "Downtown Brüzels, ouan vey, pliiz!" he said to the half asleep clerk in the booth.
"Yes Madame", he answered, and gave him his ticket, without return …
It was only 20.00 as he sat alone on a humid bank to wait for the train that was going to bring him to his new life, but he was all alone in what seemed to be the equivalent of a medieval dungeon in the sad underground of the Zaventem airport.. The harsh treatment that he had just undergone trying to prove the impossibility of his past life to the customs officers had not reduced even a bit his unjustified optimism for his future.
In his small luggage he had a toothbrush, the inflight magazine of Schnellair (he had found the picture of Manneken Pis very sexy and kept it) and his ice skates. His purse was empty and he felt dizzy from the plastic sandwich he had been offered as dinner in the airplane. But he had to put something in his stomach before going to sleep, which of course put him in front of the second dilemma of his last evening as a human being:
Where would he sleep? He knew absolutely no one in Brussels. But he was certain something good would come up…
Because this is what happens when one becomes over-optimistic in the wrong place: one thinks that when one pursues an ideal the Universe will conspire magically in one's favour. Or at least so he had read in a book of Coelho he had borrowed in the Public Library of Kosmosibirsk. Poor Claus… He had no idea that in Brussels, on the average cloudy day, cosmic forces to and from the Universe do not pierce through. Moreover, he tragically ignored what a silly writer Coelho is...
He decided not to wake up the homeless sleeping in the corner of the wagon to ask for a hotel, what would he know anyhow? His rancid, unmistakeable homeless person's smell was also a reason for his not asking. Without really having a clue, he decided to get off at Schuman station. It was near to the EPSO selection centre where he had to present himself the next morning and the rest could wait, he thought.
He could not have been more wrong…
As soon as he got off the train, he was directly harassed by a group of young Moroccans. They surrounded him and started verbally abusing him. He WAS dressed strangely but he still did not know it. They were five of them, all with a crewcut (the short, circular haircut of the US army they otherwise loath) and expensive clothes, all around 16.
"Téki, toi?" said the first one after getting his dark face dangerously near his.
"Claus. My name is Claus", he said. And for the first time he understood how prophetic had been his "…and I am a person with problems". He was scared stiff…
"VOUS AVEZ ENTENDU LES GARS? C' EST CLAUS!", said ironically Ahmed, and everybody had to laugh, even poor Claus…
Then Ahmed punched him right in the face, grabbed his cheap Chinese sack and when Claus fell, after kicking him more than enough times, fiercely declared:
"Ca m' innerve, les pedés et les juifs!"
"Oui Monsieur", was all that poor Claus could mutter.
And they left. And all he could do after a while was carefully limp past the closed Leonidas chocolate shop in the station and climb the dirty, urine-smelling staircase into fresh air and below a glass building and a strange statue that seemed suspended above his head... He ached, blood was coming out of his eyebrow, but he was otherwise OK. He only regretted one thing: his ice skates were gone with his stolen sack…