Obligatory “this has happened 40 years ago”.Throwaway, because I don’t want people of my life back then to find me.
I meant to talk about this for a while, and though I (M64, 24 at the time) never said anything to anyone in person, I think reddit might be the best place to get this out of my chest and maybe use the kindness, or judgment of strangers, to get a sense of where I could have done something different.
I’m from Belgium, originally, the tiny town of Leughnaer with many French speaking people and a minority of Flemish people who speak their own kind of Dutch. I was training to become a schoolteacher at the time, while also helping my dad in his small shoe repair shop. He wasn’t that keen on letting me leave the family business, especially since it was a kind of family tradition. It was that sort of small town, that sort of small, close-knit community. But I have to say, I wasn’t interested in keeping shoes air and watertight with the fancy knots and leather work he meant to teach me, nor was I interested in staying in Leughnaer for long; now my friend (M27) was of a different mind about it. He loved the place and the people, and to him taking classes to become a teacher meant he was going to stay in Leughnaer, teach children there, and keep Flemish people at bay ;
So. I’m told I’m not supposed to talk like that, that there are words you can’t use anymore, but Leughnaer at the time had the weirdest influx of beggars. Usually those little towns have one or two at the time. We knew Mickaêl, the old dude who smelled like urine and cheap cigarettes who constantly asked people for money and made leering remarks at women. But he was part of that place. One winter, when it got quite cold, he slashed the tires of a police car and they took him away for two months, then, they released him on the streets. So he started doing it every year.
One year, during that time when Mickaël was away, and other common beggars were gone. That’s when they started showing up.
Most people in Leughnaer used to speak French. Now, I’m not a political person, nor someone who paid much attention to the news, but it used to be that Wallons, the French-speaking people and Flemish people had a rivalry in Belgium, but the air became weirdly hostile towards those new beggars. They spoke exclusively Flemish. We called them by the name we knew they’d recognize themselves, we called them bedelaars.
They weren’t many at the beginning, they were maybe, 2 or 3, and though we instantly noticed a difference, with other beggards, we didn’t pay too much attention to them. Before they started speaking, we knew they were Flemish. Soon, in about two months, a fall’s time, they were ten. Those Bedelaars didn’t smell like Mickaël. They smelled of pavement and dirt. I never kissed the pavements, like my father did when he was drunk. Those blocks of stone, you find in many old towns and cities in Europe. That and the dirt, that swells under the pavements during rainfall, but that’s what he told me they smelled like. Those Bedelaars weren’t begging per say. Not begging at all. The most upsetting thing they were doing was standing. Whenever we walked on the street they stayed on, they stood and looked at us. Not just looking at us as we were passing, just standing, turning their heads and whole bodies on our passage. My friend started to insult them; I don’t want to say I didn’t join him every once in a while, but he was truly vile in the things he told them every evening when we were walking past them. It became a game for him. He told me “We’re about to release some tension, call out some Flemish Bedelaars”. Again, I was not wrapped in the politics of the time, but my friend seemed to harbor a deep resentment for Flemish people. He said the Wallons, the French speaking people, used to be on top of the world, but now Flemish people were getting back to us and becoming richer, more important in the politics of the country. I just nodded in approval, not knowing what to say.
My friend used to tell them “Je veux pas te nourrir, sale Bedelaar. Reste pas là, tu pues la merde, Bedelaar. Va niquer ta mère, Bedelaar. les gens de ta race, je les encule” and such things that I can’t translate, because I am ashamed, but you can look it up.
Every night of the week, we took a 20 minute-walk from my dad’s shop and my friend’s clerk job to the school that was past the church. Streets Lights at the time were of that seeping yellow. Coloring everything with their piss-hue, from those red bricks that I miss so much, to those ugly, angular cars we had in Europe in the 80s.
On a particular night we were a little later than usual, and given the non-perpendicular grid of our town, we could have cut to a small curved street, in the back of the church, to get to the school faster. But my friend insisted that we use the regular way. He was adamant about it. Almost as if it had become a necessary part of his routine. When we crossed the street, turned left to the Bedelaars’ spot, we stopped. We were wondering How many Bedelaars were there the night before? And how many Bedelaars were enough to make us feel queasy? That number lives around when you stop being able to count Bedelaars on your fingers easily, when you take the corner, laughing with you friend, and that suddenly you can feel his breath stop short as he takes a pause, and the joke he was about to tell lingers on, unfinished.
We started counting. It didn’t feel like 4 to 5 people were standing to greet us. No. It felt like a group of thirty + people aware of our presence, and they all silently rose, turned their chest towards us, and stared at us.
Both sides of the streets looked crowded as though it was daylight in the busiest street of the town, with all the shops open, but it was so quiet we could hear the faint buzzing of those piss-hued lights. We noticed, some Bedelaars were standing on the hood of cars. There was one Bedelaar who stood very still, almost like he had stopped breathing altogether, while others retained the appearence of being living, breathing people.
We started walking carefully in absolute silence. As we reached next to the gate of the church, we noticed almost a hole in the crowd of the Bbedelaars on that side of the steet. One bedelaar looked at my friend, and then looked up. And we saw him. The one Bedelaar. Standing on top of an arch, right over the main gate of the church. Not standing as such, more like leaning towards us, left hand not grappling to maintain his grip, merely laying flat on the column on the left.
A moment passed. My friend and I would not move, but I could feel his fear mounting. He yelled “descends de là, connard de Bedelaar”! “get off from here, you Bedelaar asshole” but the usual delight and mockery of his taunts was gone. There was a tinge of violence, and an unmaskable quake of fear, in his intonation
Immediately, the Bedelaar’s hand that was resting on the column started moving closer to his body. And for a moment, it felt like the Bedelaar was leaning towards us cheating common laws of physics, inching closer toward us, and I could see the white of his eyes, as with a trick of light, catching the moon-light, gleaming back at us, piercing through that yellow hue. And then, almost as if physics had finally won the fight against the irregular stance of his suspended body, he collapsed right in front of us in a resounding thud-and-a-crack that rippled through the crowd in a fainting echo.
“Putain…” said my friend”. The Bedelaars next to the corpse bowed their heads, looking at the body, then, slowly, back at us.
Then they ran towards us. Two of them, and their scent, and their nails clawed at me and my friend and we immediately fought back. We knocked two of them down, but more kept coming. I noticed straight away that they were targeting my friend, more than me. So I used the opportunity to evade. My friend yelled at me, so I went back and pushed Bedelaars aside, tears forming, unable to process what was happening, merely acting to save my life and thinking about my friend’s. Part of the worst of it was the absolute silent, safe for the sound of bodies crunching against each others as they lept, and my friend’s cries of absolute terror and his constant insults. As I was trying to help him escape, I noticed that they were not even fighting me as I was hitting them, merely moving out of my arms, dodging me. But there was so many of them. A moment’s passed where the crowd was massed around and over my friend, as I was standing above bodies, trying to help him.
After a few moments of quiet struggling, not even seeing my friend anymore, I tried to go away but more Bedelaars were closing the access to the street, almost standing guard. I noticed the small door of the church was open, on the back street. I made a run for it. No Bedelaars were following me. And I could still hear my friend crying for help.
I dodged a few of them, piling around my friend clawing at him, not biting, or punching, merely clawing in a disarticulate manner.
And I still don’t know that I put enough thought into it, but the choice appeared, to me, frightingly simple. There was nothing I could have done. And I was still affraid for my life. So I chose to shut the door.
An hour passed, dreadful and long, and I could only hear the sound of the crowd shifting and pushing and clawing away. My friend had stopped yelling.
Then I heard a distinct banging on the door. And my friend’s voice. It was low, tired and raspy. “Ouvre, putain, ouvre, c’est moi! Ouvre putain ils sont en de train de me tuer!!”
So I opened the door and saw his body swollen and bloody. He had lost a couple teeth, but more than that, they were still tugging at him, squishing him, slowly killing him. None of them seemed to make a go for the door of the church or to pay attention to me anymore. So for a second, I thought hard about it.
And closed the door in front of him. Didn’t say anything.
The next morning, all Bedelaars were gone. I exited the church, and saw people going about their business, not even paying attention to me. My friend had disappeared and there was no trace of the Bedelaar’s body.
The following days, I was questioned by the police, family friends. I said I thought it was possible that Bedelaars had taken him. But that I didn’t know. They called me a racist for using the name and saying that. I insisted then that I didn’t know, that I wasn’t with him that night.
Closing the door.
Keeping quiet all those years.
Both actions I regret, though I still don’t know what I could have done differently.