I had walked past the modernized Pomphuis so often, yet I had never entered the restaurant. I had automatically assumed that the prices would be too high for my modest income. One glance at the menu told me that my assumption had not been entirely unjust, but since Maggy had insisted to buy me dinner, I tried to ignore the prices and focused on the delicious dishes on the menu. I told Maggy that I had watched a documentary a while ago about the renovation of this harbor-based building from the start of the twentieth Century, by the Iraqi architect Hadid, who had passed away by now.
‘It really is a nice building,’ Maggy nodded. ‘It’s great that they managed to preserve the industrial atmosphere so well. And then those tall windows.’
The windows were gorgeous, indeed, and they made the large room with its high ceilings bathe in light. ‘Have you ever had dinner here before?’ I asked her.
She suddenly stopped moving. ‘Myeah. With Gino.’
‘Gino?’
‘My ex.’
‘Oh.’ The name did not ring a bell at all.
Maggy stabbed at a pea with her fork, which was not easily caught, however. ‘That was during the period we – didn’t see each other that often.’
For a moment, an uncomfortable silence descended. I started when Maggy laughed out loud. ‘He was a crazy guy, that Gino. Gosh almighty.’
‘How so?’
‘God, he was just so, so – different, you know? He taught meditation classes for pregnant women, went everywhere on his cargo bike and his clothes were made of hemp. And he could dwell on topics such as philosophy, religion and literature for hours, yet normal small talk with people just didn’t work for him. Half of the time, I had no clue what he was talking about. At first, that was exactly what attracted me to him, but after a while, I started to wonder why a normal guy couldn’t be interested in me for a change.’
‘Maybe it’s because you’re not normal either.’
She took a large gulp of wine. ‘That’s never crossed my mind, believe it or not.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you know what the straw was?’ She gestured to a waiter to fill up our glasses again. ‘That he one day wanted to help me get rid of my depression with some Indian ritual.’
‘A what?’
Maggy waited until the waiter had disappeared again before she answered: ‘An Indian ritual, I swear.’ One day he announced incredibly enthusiastically that he had discovered a solution for my depression. The husband of one of his pregnant meditation women was a real shaman.’ She made air quotes with her hands. ‘So, after a lot of pushing, I went with Gino to this guy. Turned out he played shaman in his garage. It stank of motor oil and there were cobwebs in the corner. I had to sit down on a chair, while this shaman started dancing around me, feathers on his head and mumbled a bunch of things in some language he had made up.’
I roared with laughter. ‘No way! You weren’t able to contain your laughter, were you?’
‘Trust me, it was all so alienating that laughing was not on my mind. It was incredibly scary. That man claimed that since my childhood, a curse has rested on me, most likely due to something I had done in a previous life, and that he would lift this curse. And then he suddenly started making a fire, to cleanse the bad spirits with smoke. I thought we were all going to choke in that miserable garage, but Gino kept saying that I was overreacting, that the shaman knew what he was doing. That same night, I broke up with him. He didn’t even understand why and kept saying that he had helped me.’ She tapped with her index finger against her temple. ‘Only then did I realize I had been seeing a complete lunatic for months. It really makes you think, doesn’t it? The fact that it had taken me that long to find that out.’
I laid my hand on hers. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. Love makes you blind.’
We then both laughed so loudly, that several people around us turned to look, all of them looking annoyed. This was clearly not the type of restaurant where you went to listen to other people’s laughter.
‘And did you have to pay for that Indian dance?’
Maggy tilted her head. ‘What do you think? And it wasn’t particularly cheap either. Before he started his exorcism, I had to sign a paper that said he declined any responsibility and that it was all pure entertainment. See, something like that really doesn’t make you feel safe.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘You know what was most frightening about the whole situation?’
I shook my head, still laughing.
‘That this man had just impregnated a woman. What got into her head that drove her to make children with a man who thinks he’s some Indian voodoo doctor who can heal people with a circle dance?’
‘Maybe she thought she was Pocahontas.’
Maggy choked on her wine.
‘Imagine that their children want to dress up as cowboys during carnival...’
Some more angry glances were directed at us, but they had the reverse effect: we couldn’t stop roaring with laughter. The rest of the evening, Maggy and I continued the small talk, as though we were best friends again who saw each other every week. It was the first time in years that I had the feeling she was truly cheerful and didn’t just pretend not to ruin the mood, like she sometimes told me during our student time when we returned home from a party where she seemed to have had a good time. After a delicious three-course meal with a few glasses of white wine, we sunk down in our chairs, contently.
‘There was too much chocolate in that cake.’
‘Too much,’ I laughed.
She looked at me, her expression fake shocked. ‘Don’t say such a thing. There’s no such thing as too much chocolate.’
The waiter asked us if we wanted anything else. ‘Another one of those three-course meals,’ I said spontaneously.
For a moment, he seemed to doubt whether or not we were serious and I didn’t blame him. Once Maggy and I were on a roll, we could eat incredible amounts of food. Once, we had almost given the chef of a macrobiotic restaurant a heart attack by both ordering two chocolate mousses for ourselves for dessert.
‘Or maybe you’d like a cup of coffee?’ he asked with a demure face.
‘Coffee sounds like a great idea. To make room for that three-course meal.’
‘This time I’d like soup instead of a starter!’ Maggy backed me up.
The waiter turned his head left and right, looking at our beaming faces, grinning as though he was hurting somewhere, before disappearing promptly towards the kitchen. Earlier, it had been busy, but by now, people were slowly starting to leave. I loved being part of the last guests in a restaurant. We enjoyed the waiter’s facial expression when we both ordered another cup of coffee and, with a wink, asked him whether he could give two instead of one of those delicious chocolates to it.
Outside at the Pomphuis, we had a nice view on the modernized harbor building.
‘Peculiar piece of architecture,’ I mumbled.
‘I think it’s lovely! It both represents a ship and a diamond. It’s the first thing people see when they get off their cruise ships.’
‘They sure try hard to modernize Antwerp, even the zoo and the Groenplaats are getting a makeover. Actually, it’s mind-boggling how much this city has changed since we were children.’ I quite liked all of it, especially neighborhoods such as the Koningsplein and the Eilandje had absolutely improved, but I had always been somewhat nostalgic of nature and I liked holding on to familiar things.
Maggy seemed to be in a nostalgic mood as well. ‘The koekenstad, city of biscuits, that’s how we used to call it as a child.’
‘God, we’ve gotten old.’
We both laughed about it, but it wasn’t heartfelt. The past years, I had had the feeling that world had been passing by me, even though that probably had more to do with my condition than with my age. That was going to change now. I could feel it, that I had already taken the first step back into the real world. Apparently these supplements also influenced my social life. I had isolated myself from my family and friends, the previous years, and being unemployed had surely not helped with that. Sometimes I had felt ten years older than I actually was. We walked along the docks, watched a large container ship which slowly sailed past us, waved at the crew on the deck like little children. We laughed as they waved back and walked on, arms hooked together. The city of biscuits greeted us with light and laughter.