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Jean Back: European Clouds


[About the short story]
 
Match, Much, Match: the supermarket in Dudelange. We are going to Match, we need goods for a barbecue, mitch match, today the weather is beautiful, not a cloud in the sky. Makes me want to laugh, so beautiful!
 
"Get me some marinated pork chops, a bottle of wine, but not the expensive one, you hear?"
 
I hear. I drive. Listen to music. Park under the trees.
 
Match, a grey brick building, an ordinary functional construction with chewing gum dots near the entrance and shopping carts on a bar. And pigeons on the roof: coo rook, coo rook. Two minutes from home with the car. Ordinary, but practical, that super market. Good. It is a clear autumn day. Just like on 9/11 in Manhattan, at eight o'clock in the morning. The sun had been shining just before. Like now, bright, but not warm. I walk along the aisles, searching, finding, flipping my wares through the self-checkout. A beep, the wine, beep, the pork chops, beep, the olives, beep, the brandy, beep, the juice, beep, a package of yoghurt tubs, 0% fat, beep, beep, the cashiers have been abolished, only one overseer has survived, waiting for me not to manage the beeping. I do manage, there is a final beep, the chromed rod gives way, I push the full cart into the parking lot. An elderly man is standing in pigeon droppings. Playing accordion. I slam the boot shut. The key is inside! Next to the purchases. Even the leaves on the plane tree appear to laugh. I am standing like an idiot next to my locked car and have to wait. For our youngest to bring me the spare key. That will take a long time. I could walk home. Come back. I wouldn't need more than five minutes, tops. I keep the phone ringing. He is still asleep. Or his cell phone is switched off. That can't be! But I have time. Out of sheer laziness I stay next to the lamppost, looking and waiting and listening to the man playing the accordion, because I like accordion music, because that kind of music reminds me of René de Bernardi, at the erstwhile dancing club Beim Heuertz: dance parties, thé dansant, smootch slow and English Waltz. And also reminds me of Astor Piazzolla. Now the man plays kitsch, love and heartache: a Freddie Quinn song, Capri, Lili Marleen, after that Waves of the Danube. In the shade of Match's brick wall, a woman is sitting on the ground, holding out her open hand.
 
"It's a Romanian, just look."
 
"Dirty Romanians. Full of lice and fleas. Stealing our cars. Fucking bastards."
 
"They're in the EU."
 
"The EU is going bankrupt. Should stay home. Gypsies, the lot of them."
 
A conversation behind my back.
 
"Recently, they had an open-air movie in that culture centre. In the evening. The music was so loud, I'm telling you, I called the director of that shithole. I couldn't hear the telly anymore, that's how loud your open-air is, I told him. And whether they were playing again these movies for the Portuguese? And there he told me, the director, that this time it was an Italian film. Asshole, I said, and I hung up."
 
"What?"
 
"What's right is right."
 
The open-air lady is in her fifties. Red glasses, green umbrella. Her friend is tall in stature. Early sixties. Flat shoes. Violet scarf. The beggarwoman is now playing with her children. I throw two euro into the man's hat. The accordion's bellows contract and expand. Marina, Marina, Marina. A couple of clouds are sailing high up in the blue. What nationality are the clouds? Are they French, when they're hovering over the Elysee? Spanish, when they're hanging over Seville? What does a Swiss cloud look like? A Belgian one? Are the clouds Portuguese when they drift over Dudelange? Luxembourgish, when they arrive in Porto? The open-air lady outed herself as a purebred racist. Inadvertently. She probably thought that I didn't understand Luxembourgish, because I was wearing an F91(1) cap on my head. With the visor and the logo to the back. The trees are standing still around the square. The wind is keeping quiet. Our youngest is still half-asleep when he finally picks up the phone.
 
The beggarwoman is leaving her spot. The children are running after her. Turning cartwheels. Yanking each other's pullover, giggling, larking about as they pass by me. The accordionist is playing When the wind whispers over the plains. The spare key is gliding out of the window of my wife's car: "So long, daddy."
 
In two weeks, we'll have elections. Practical, square, democratic local elections. The open-air lady and her friend have disappeared into the grey brick building.
 
Also on today's barbecue menu: three bottles of Chianti, two packs of olives from Portugal, one Romanian brandy and at five o'clock there's Barça playing against Red Bull Salzburg. Olé!
 
1Football club from Dudelange. Their first team is most often composed of international players
 

 

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