The other day, Manuel and Anne invited me to join them to a barbecue in the middle of the Ardennes: the only remote area in Belgium, a haven for boars, pine trees, actual snow in the winter, lakes, old houses and sordid stories to be told around campfires. I had had a ten hour shift day and grabbed a redbull to drive the 1h40 from Brussels to mystery land. I eventually got to the place, a beautiful old family house squashed in between a lake and a dark forest. We were a small group composed of performance and installation artists, musicians and a large chap who had started his own manufacture of sauces, all sorts of sauces, but mainly the kind of sauces one needs for a Belgian barbecue that is: mayonnaise, cocktail, tartare, andalouse and poivre. It sometimes seems like barbecues in Belgium, which solely occur when the weather permits it, which means generally a week or two a year, are really all about the sauce. Whatever meat, potatoe, salad goes with it is an accessory to the –always mayo-based- wonders of sauces.
The theory was clearly demonstrated when one of the guests, growing a little impatient and hungry, grabbed a slice of bread and started spreading mayo all over it. Anne cringed and had a little cry of distress which she soon enough managed to contain. Anne is French and consequently despises sliced bread (first motto: baguette) and clearly misunderstands the Belgian obsession with mayo (second motto: butter preferably mixed with big chunks of natural salt). Of course when one does it, everyone follows, it’s like a pack of cigarettes thrown in a 35 year old party, no one brought any, everyone’s trying to quit, but if someone lights up, ten people follow the flow.
We eventually met the chap who is behind the organic production of mayo, a giant man who had just resurrected after a weed induced three-hour nap. Manuel had cautioned me : "Be prepared, he looks like a fritkot* owner", he appeared to be rather nice and told me all about his sauces, a conversation which my inherently perverted mind tried hard not to misinterpret.
After a first serving of food, Anne, Manu and I migrated to the campfire with a bottle of vodka. Manu started playing an endless blues, which brought Anne and I to some sort of trance which made us say and sing the most inappropriate narration, involving artists adopting and experimenting new performance techniques with African orphans. I don’t think it was such a big deal but Anne is convinced that we shocked everyone, which I have decided to deny because the conversation, as diplomatically incorrect as it was, made me laugh immensely, and I was in bed at midnight with a huge smile on my face. And that: that is a good thing.
Anyway, I was glad that Manah, our host, had showed me earlier that evening where I was to sleep. Indeed the house was a huge maze, where rooms opened up to another bedroom, to a corridor, and a room, another bedroom and a bathroom. Locks, double doors for heat, sinks hidden in closets, old squeaky floors.
The next day we walked around her family property and ended up at this pond. The weather was muggy and we were all sweating and hoping for a thunderstorm to loosen up the air. A cold pond was exactly what was needed by this temperature and we slowly made our way into the dark water, swam under willow trees, stood up in the thick and tickling silt by the reeds. It was delicious. There was something melancholic about the whole scene that was certainly exacerbated by Mr Sauce getting on a rowing boat and slowly navigating around the lake while singing opera, projecting his deep voice on the surface of water, the notes echoing through the branches of the willow trees. Everything was still for a while, some of us were gently enjoying the water, others were sitting on the jetty dipping a toe in the sepia colored liquid. Manu and Anne were curled up in the grass nearby and all we heard for a while was the voice of the giant man rowing on his small blue boat.
*a fries stall.
