Today I am resting. I don't lay another fat turkey, I don't fancy becoming ''des pondeuses soumises'', submissive laying hens, in other words subservient baby machines (I do plan to report on Kertesz's Kaddish one day), as Hugo Claus relates with such talent in the Sorrow of the Belgians: a must-read about life in Northern Belgium during the last war, seen through a child's eyes. What shocked me the most was not the views of the German lover boy over home-grown husbandry, or the book's sorrowful variety of adult-themed shenanigans, but the father of the kid-narrator being caught by his son stashing away and eating sweets (possibly from the black market) in secret. He wouldn't share any with his own son. Instead he lectures him about Jews clutching to Antwerp like lice, and thinks nothing of visiting disorderly houses. The child's voice carries such moral weight the selfish Dad's greedy offence sounds ten times worse than his racial rantings, his visiting of the prostitutes, or the mother's straying with a German officer, or even the almost refreshing gay Wehrmacht love story, all that whilst the war goes on. Who would have thought. It's a far cry from Brief Encounter, which I like very much too. It's all about duty, but the big question is to what/whom should duty be.
That reminds me of a story that was as popular as Enid Blyton's in my day, Carrot Top, Poil de Carotte, by Jules Renard, ''Jules the Fox''. It's the story of an emotionally abused red-haired child (they used to be a pet hate or a phobia in pre-Ed Sheeran prehistoric days), who is stuck with a repressive mother and an indifferent father. He gets blamed for everything, among other things catching lice in the stinking boarding school he's been packed off to. He does get some respite going to his old bachelor uncle for too rare sleepovers. The bed he has to share with Nunkie, who's not exactly swimming in it is too warm; people used to pile up eiderdowns and bedcovers on them, as it wasn't the done thing to lit open fires for the night, proto-health and safety oblige, and the uncle's hairy legs scratch the kid's in the single bed of the house, but Carrot Top doesn't mind the discomfort as long as he is far away from his terrifying mother. The childless uncle guesses what's going on in his nephew's life, and does declare: '' she scares you that much, doesn't she; when I think I would lick the ass of a monkey, if that monkey happened to be my child''.
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