Time warp // À la Bécasse
This is an except from Pinjtes Vol.1, a zine celebrating Brussels’ café culture by me and Brussels-based illustrator Selkies.
“The past differs from the present in one essential way - it never flows in one direction” - Georgi Gospodinov
Whenever I turn in under the bright red neon bird, between the cannabis shop and the waffle stand, I’m never sure what I’m going to find behind the closed doors at the end of the narrow harlequin-tiled alleyway.
Maybe they will be locked. Maybe the bar will be full and I will have to return empty-bellied to the Rue de Tabora. Or maybe, like tonight, the bar is dead empty, save for a foursome near the entrance and a duo behind the counter in pea soup-coloured beer-server smocks.
I feel bad for intruding, but take a seat anyway, at the far end of the room beside a bricked up hearth stacked with fake wooden logs. Above me is a large white clock the ornate metal hands of which have stopped at just before half eleven.
There’s a cat somewhere. I can hear it mewing, but I can’t see it. It’s hidden by the thicket of tables and chairs that crowd the room, a room that’s been dressed as an old beer hall. There are porcelain plates on cream walls hanging alongside family portraits, brass crests and reproductions of the eponymous bécasse bird above (imitation?) oak panelling. Wrought iron chandeliers glow with electric filament bulbs, alongside a bright green exit sign over the door.
Abba is playing indecently loud on the radio when my beer arrives in a ceramic jug the colour of dark chocolate. I had hoped for one of the bright white and blue ceramics stacked on a shelf over the bar, the largest of which is the size of a small child.
The other group of drinkers are finishing up and paying for their drinks, asking after the house cat. Sitting alone, I think of the information panel in the alley, which explains the Bécasse used to be on the street but was gradually built around as the city evolved, leaving it on a recessed dead end with the bar at one end and the St Nicholas church at the other. Did the city planners forget about it? It certainly feels so.
I remember the first time I was here, when I had barely arrived in Brussels and I did not yet know any better and I was enticed into the alleyway by the bright neon arrow over the alleyway entrance. A different time, when I was younger and time went easier on me.
I empty the jug into my glass, and the beer is dull and sparkling, gently so. Just like the Bécasse.