Belgian 'Humour Noir'

Dinners at Nicole’s place tend to be pretty strange maybe because they usually involve neurologists, therapists, neuro-psychiatrists, a current boyfriend, an ex-husband, and a couple tortured young souls, me included. This time I came with a +1, my friend David visiting from Jerusalem. The placement around the table was organized in such a way that Nicole’s current companion, Kenneth, a Chilean architect who hardly speaks English and despises all that is American, was sitting at the far opposite of David, and American writer of Russian Jewish descent whom I studied with in LA. The conversation immediately fused around the theme of paedophilia within the church. Everyone was speaking simultaneously about the reasons why and how someone might be brought to have sexual relationships with children. Most of the conversation ended up being fairly absurd, some might say vulgar or maybe completely inappropriate. I noticed that even though we were surrounded by doctors and intellectually proficient human beings, no real conclusion was reached. I just remember the dialogue suddenly falling into the realm of homosexuality and Nicole announcing that: “Lesbians are women who still believe in fairies and witches”, which caused a general burst of laughter and served as a wonderful transition to the blackberry pie for dessert. We soon discovered the blackberry had stained all of our teeth and tongs and the entire group briefly transformed into a bunch of 8 years old giggling about their vampire-esque purple mouths.
Kenneth who had chosen to drink wine instead of socialising that evening eventually attempted to communicate by ways of the French language and uttered a comment which was received with a slight wave of disapprobation. Being fairly experienced in the ‘Nicole gatherings’ and the generally hectic nature of its conversations, I have an especially trained ear to eavesdrop while, in this case, violently discussing the ethical concept behind Europe with my sceptical American friend. Having missed the punch line of Kenneth’s blabber, I asked him to repeat himself. After a little hesitation he said in French: “The funny thing about David, is that if we decided to kill him tonight and bury him, let’s say in our yard, no one will ever know about it!” my left eyebrow reached for the sky while my right eye directed a refrigerated glance towards the man. I turned back to David and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened. In an effort of diplomacy, Nicole said something along the lines of: “L’humour noir tout a fait belge quoi!” which I chose to ignore as well.
A little later in the car, while debriefing on our evening and on our way to another party, I described the incident to David, who had been left unaware of the exchange due to Kenneth’s rather unintelligible French. David was slightly shocked for a second then the writer in him immediately took over and he said: ‘ The worse is that he is absolutely wrong, if he did kill me and buried me in his garden, people WOULD know about it and he would be arrested in no time. Think about it…’ then proceeded to describe to me how and whom and what would’ve ensued.