• José Saramago
• Harvill (first published 1999)
• 

You can imagine the sort of outraged comments this book will have provoked from many zealous Christians. If online bookseller Amazon certainly intended customer reviews to help sell books, there’s a danger here of their pages turning into a forum for religious debate. “The Bible storyline is flagrantly ignored, replaced, changed, and enlarged,” spits one reviewer at the American website, “with Jesus, instead of being the ‘perfect sacrifice’, being a pretty good guy who falls into sin just as easily as your or I”. The same reviewer later adds, “If the gospel is true, and I believe it is 100% true, we had all better be deadly serious about what it says.”

Those who have read more of Saramago will know that ‘deadly serious’ is a state into which the author never allows himself to transgress. It must be said, however, that he is frequently less playful in The Gospel According To Jesus Christ than in others of his works, signalling that he may well be mindful of the paths he treads here.

Indeed Saramago shows himself to have a detailed knowledge of the synoptic gospels, the geopolitics of the period and even an appreciation of the social mores. Whilst his rendering of the biblical world offers up cruelty, hardships and instability, this never obscures its immediacy for the reader.

Before I set out into the author’s desert, in the midst of which he reminds us we may all speak freely, I expected to encounter blasphemies through the course of some sort of alternative narrative of Jesus Christ’s life. In this way, the novel’s path would bear comparison with those already fashioned by Norman Mailer or Nikos Kazantzakis.

What surprised me instead was how Saramago actually more or less stuck to the original plot of the gospels. There are a few fascinating deviations, most of which serve to emphasise Jesus’ humanity, but in general the preference is for biblical course of events.

Saramago presents his most studied profanations in Jesus’ dealings with God and the Devil. In the novel’s climax, all three can be found together in a sort of holy council. For the author, God is an implacable, almost arrogant God who acknowledges and downplays the existence of other deities, treats humanity with harsh indifference and seeks only His Own Greatness. The devil, conversely, comes across as a reasonable sort of figure who recognises the implicit necessity of his own existence in order to maintain the status of the Other.

Ultimately, however, the success of the novel is to be found in the marvellous illustration of human relationships, moulded by the conditions and circumstances of the times. Even if Saramago tends to zigzag rather wildly between “authorised” history and dramatic invention when the story accelerates in the third act, you have to admire his steady handling of family and guilt issues earlier on.

Every year on the first weekend in April, the Ronde van Vlaanderen cycle race files through the lanes and villages of Flanders.

If this sounds like a Sunday idyll to you, think about the heavy, freezing rain permeating your clothing whilst you’re buffeted by strong crosswinds from the North Sea.

Then contemplate pulling your bike through 264 kilometres of slippery roads and up steep, cobbled climbs harangued by deafening crowds.

Sometimes it’s hard to recognise the winner as he crosses the finish line, his every feature covered by a thick layer of mud.

Muur van Geraardsbergen

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The great Wall

The little town of Geraardsbergen straddles the river Dender in a quiet corner of East Flanders. Today around 30,000 locals call it home, yet in 1068 it was one of the first places in Western Europe to be deemed a city. In 1381, the Hainault nobleman Walter of Enghien sacked and burned it after the residents showed defiance toward his siege.

You might be forgiven for wondering just what is all the fuss about Geraardsbergen?

Well, the answer might not be the town itself but what it stands on, in these parts a rare thing and a continued source of fame today. For unlike most other towns and villages in Flanders, this one has a hill.

The Muur (”Wall”) of Geraardsbergen is 110 metres high. A mere adolescent pimple by Alpine standards, of course, but in a land of uninterrupted plains and pancake flat polders, a major strategic advantage. In the kingdom of the blind and all that.

And whilst ancient warriors no longer do battle on it, a cohort of bike riders has replaced them, followed by a legion of cycling fans.

No pain, no gain

Geraardsbergen’s other peculiarity is the Mattentaarte, a strangely familiar sort of cake that’s baked locally. The Mattentaarte bears some resemblance to the Muur itself as it rises stoutly but suddenly from the plate like a shallow sided volcano. The view from the top of the cone covers several miles of the Flandrian countryside in all directions.

During the race, the riders will never see the view. The crowds at the summit form several bodies deep beside the road and up the steep verges on either side. Like the mountain stages of the Tour de France, here they part at the last moment in a peristaltic wave as the riders thread their way through to the top.

The Muur is almost always the penultimate climb of the route and it can often decide the race, thinning a larger group and splitting up breakway companions. Reputations are made and sealed here. Edwig van Hooydonck made the final cut in 1989 and broke away to win, establishing himself on the professional circuit. In 1995, the Flemish Johan Museeuw tore away alone on the Muur and never looked like being caught again. This was the second of his three wins in the race. Meanwhile, the ever-controversial Franck Vandenbroucke fell on the Muur in 1999 and could only manage second at the finish.

J’s sister came to stay and after trying the lambic and gueuze at À La Bécasse on Rue Tabora the previous week, she fancied a visit to the Cantillon Brewery near the Gare du Midi.

Cantillon is the last active brewery in Brussels and it is still a family business, occupying the same building on Rue Gheude. Several products are brewed: lambic, gueuze and a small range of the latter re-fermented with fruit.

Cantillon Brewery

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Gueuze is arguably Cantillon’s best known output. It is a blend of three vintages of lambic, a flat type of beer in which most or all of the sugars are used up during fermentation. The overall taste is sharp and bitter, significantly moreso than other famous brands which tend to be rather softer.

August is the month during which fruit gueuzes are brewed at Cantillon. Just entering the main door, you could smell the fermentation process going on in somewhere in the dark, cavernous interior just like it has throughout the last hundred and odd summers.

Cantillon’s most typical fruit gueuze is kriek made from cherries. Also suitable for fermentation are peaches and, to produce the brewery’s famous Rosé de Gambrinus, raspberries.

I have waited several years to see this painting, on display at the Royal Fine Arts Museum in Antwerp. It depicts a resplendent, charged image that somehow escaped the censure of conservative times despite being, to modern eyes anyway, a deeply irreligious religious painting.

Dominating the composition is the heavenly Virgin, whose allure is altogether earthly and betrays nothing virginal. She is aloof, composed and self-aware, with the baby’s presence on her lap languishing somewhere between ambivalence and burden.

Since Byzantine times, the established motif requires her gaze to express wonder and love for her offspring. Instead she draws attention to that perfectly rendered shape above the child. Is it a vital source of spiritual nourishment or a worldly source of attraction?

Her dress is sumptuous and cleverly calculated to show her untypically feminised figure. She is luminous, flawless, almost diaphanous. Her pale glow contrasts elegantly with the vivid, fleshy cherubic host at her flanks. These Christian symbols of Heaven, of course, had classical beginnings as symbols of love.

Jean Fouquet, the majority of whose surviving oeuvre consists of richly decorative book illuminations, shows himself here to have been a painter of notable skill. His experience in Italy and later in Flanders influenced his mature, unique style.

This painting boasts remarkable colours which, even when placed among the works of a Flemish tradition renowned for vibrant tones, still dazzle the viewer today.

Perhaps in a reflection of his art, the Frenchman walked in worldly circles. Though little is known of his life, it is recorded that he was court painter to the Crown of France late in his career.

The Virgin in the painting is thought to be modelled on Agnès Sorel, a favoured mistress of King Charles VII. Sorel’s intelligence and extraordinary beauty seems to have been offset by, in the opinion of her enemies, profligacy and excessive influence on the King. She died suddenly, perhaps having been poisoned by mercury, in 1450.

The painting is actually the right portion of a diptych, the other half of which can be found today in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. If the two portions were reunited, St Stephen and Étienne Chevalier would both be gazing upon the ‘Virgin’ Sorel with a mixture of contemplation and solemn admiration.

Chevalier was a lover of Sorel whilst the Saint, who according to the church was the first Christian martyr, lost his life because of blasphemy.

A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words.

Temporary accommodation

Renting by the month in the early period was a sensible option, though reasonably-priced temporary accommodation in Brussels is both expensive and surprisingly difficult to find.

Relocation: the final haul

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It wouldn’t take that much of an investment to corner the market in a line of business for which there must be extraordinary demand here.

We used Brussels Business Flats‘ Eurosquare serviced apartments on Rue des Eburons.

In the event, an excellent location was somewhat outweighed by living adjacent to the constant stale cooking smells of numerous Indian IT placements, a poor quality Internet connection as an expensive optional extra and having to wait 10 days for a change of towels (the rule, not the exception, by the way). Indeed, the overall high cost hardly seemed worthwhile, even without considering the mould and the cockroaches that forced us to leave.

At the time of writing, the promised refund has yet to materialise, though we are actively pursuing one.

Choosing a rental property

Property is relatively abundant in Brussels. While J completed her first few weeks at work, I was walking the streets and getting a feel for the city. What seemed like unfocused wanderings at the time were later transformed into and solid local experience and near-impressive driving knowledge.

As with any other location, it was essential to establish what factors were most important. Many of the expat websites harp on about family requirements, so that stuff didn’t apply, but that didn’t mean you’d want to live just anywhere. Three key factors for us were:

1. Taxation - communal taxes vary widely, within Bruxelles-Capitale there are 19 communes and, as it turned out in our case, the choice of a particular street within a desired quartier can put you in a different commune to a neighbour three doors down
2. Public transport - coverage from the “faster” services is patchy in some areas of Brussels particularly when you consider what’s important to you
3. Somewhere sympa - in some quartiers there isn’t much entertainment, whilst in others you’ll be an unwilling spectator at the annual street riot

Up to 30% of Bruxellois are foreigners, it is said. The number of rental agencies that speak your language will be significantly less. At the time of writing, my written French was better than my spoken, so I conducted most of our dealings with agents by email. Every Belgian can get tetchy about languages too because of the long story on that particular subject (a separate item will be necessary to discuss), so it was important to assess from websites and blurbs whether the landlord or agent was a Vlaams or Wallon and manage accordingly (I used English with the former and French with the latter).

A culture of cutting out middlemen also thrives in Brussels, so it was worth looking out for the orange A LOUER/TE HUUR signs in windows, though in practice I was usually too chicken to follow up on the mobile phone numbers for adverts in French or Dutch.

Accordingly, the Internet was the most efficient method of finding apartments in the initial stages. Immoweb was the best site hands down in terms of usability and choice (good mix of private and agency properties), and the one through which we eventually found our apartment.

Official documents

Even if you, your employer, your landlord and your local government representative all speak English and your business is conducted as such, any official documents between you have to be agreed in one of Bruxelles-Capitale’s official languages. In other words, French or Dutch. Outside the Capital Region, it’s French for Wallonia and Dutch for Flanders of course.

This means that, if you’re not fluent in your local official language, you’re going to need a lot of help. At the time of writing, I could read and write French pretty well even if my spoken language was relatively poor. This turned out to be essential.

Types of lease

Research informed us that leases in Belgium are all longer term than the UK. In some areas, particularly in and around the European Quarter, you can find 12 month tenancies geared towards professionals but these are few and far between and the knock-on effect is that shorter periods tend to attract a higher monthly rental figure.

Three year and nine year leases are the most common and the latter is preferred since it usually has the more lenient terms for early termination by the tenant. Typically, a nine year lease will demand three months’ rent from the tenant if he/she decides to leave in Year 1 of the lease; two months’ rent will be due to leave in Year 2; one month’s rent will be due in Year 3. Thereafter, leaving before the natural end of the lease will not attract any penalty.

In our case, we managed to find a three year lease with the same terms of early termination as those of a nine year lease. It is important to check carefully.

Rental guarantee

To lease an apartment in Brussels, as in the rest of Belgium, you need to have a rental guarantee.

The rental guarantee secures the lease in the form of an often hefty sum of money (in our case the value of three months’ rent). The money goes into a blocked account at the bank in the name of the tenant, then a further legal document is provided by the bank and signed by both parties to the lease. Because this process is pretty much unique to Belgium, only Belgian banks are likely to be able to arrange it.

Since the rental guarantee secures the lease and both parties must sign, it usually has to be established contemporaneously with the signing of the lease. The prospective tenant therefore needs to arrange the appointment with his/her selected bank in advance as soon as he/she knows when the lease signing will happen.

Subject to the satisfactory ending of the lease according to its terms, the sum of the rental guarantee will be released to the tenant by the bank and any interest earned will also be due!

Registering at the Commune

Communes in Brussels tend to consist of one part Alice In Wonderland and two parts Kafka’s worst nightmare. The lovely sounding maison communale or gemeentehuis turned out to be a hulky neo-Gothic construction in the tradition of Dutch guildhouses and London’s St Pancras station, designed to aggrandise even the pettiest of public powermongers and to frighten the statusless and the newly-resident.

And the scare stories are numerous. Down in St Gilles/Sint Gillis, a colleague of J was recently subjected to the evil afternoon angst of a local administrator, on top of several hours in an echoey waiting room and the usual eyeball-bursting ordeal of forms and signatures.

In our Transylvanian charnelhouse, behind every creaking door lurks a beady-eyed official waiting to suck your life-force from you, even if all you want is a temporary parking permit.

Parking permits for residents and for moving house

Traffic is horrendous in Brussels. And parking on your own street could be described as an opportunistic slalom, even if you have a parking permit for residents (carte riverain). To obtain one means a trip to the dreaded maison communale where a frosty reception consisting of misanthropy and creeping suspicion awaits you. The agony can be assuaged by combining this with communal registration. Proof that you own the car is required. For company cars, you’ll need a letter from your employer.

At the time of writing, we are doing our very best to suppress the fear of what will happen when our company car is recalled for replacement in a few months’ time. A new number plate will mean a new permit…

If you’re moving house (déménagement) to a busy street, you’ll need a temporary parking permit, available somewhere in the labyrinth of the maison communale for a variable cost depending on the particular commune. The always reassuring no-parking signs can be placed in the relevant position on the pavement or the street which will notify drivers to keep the area clear during the time of your move.

Services and utilities

When we first arrived, we didn’t think to record the meter numbers and their values. In the UK the landlord or his/her agent always provided that information and in Brussels it got lost in a hundred other tasks.

A week or so after moving in, and therefore a week or so later than appropriate, I called a supplier (gas and electricity are now privatised, water is supplied by the Region) and struggled through with spoken French until the values for the meters were requested, which I didn’t have of course.

As I stuttered with the scant details I had, the very image of pleasant customer service was painted over with the increasingly rough strokes of cranky Belgian impatience. Woe betide that young fellow if he should ever move his scrawny, parochial, backwater backside abroad himself. Then, when the wellington boot’s on the other foot, he’ll see how difficult it is to be a foreigner.

Another typical Belgian response, this time on the Internet, is the ubiquitous error message. Try to find any vaguely important information from your local government, utility company or employer and you will be advised that you do not have permission, the page was not found or your account has expired.

Some guesswork allowed me to paper over the cracks of another failed online enquiry, this time at the Bruxelles Propreté website, where I was trying to complete the simple task of finding out which days my household rubbish would be collected. There was a database error on the query, so I clicked the link for the Contact page, which led to an ASP.NET error, so I ended up writing an email using a guessed address.

Rubbish is collected twice a week by the Region. One of these collections will take your white bags (household, non-recyclable) and the other will take white, yellow (cardboard, paper) and blue (plastic bottles, containers and cartons). However, use the wrong bags and nothing at all will be collected. The correct bags (carrying the Capitale logo and blurb) are available from all decent supermarkets in Brussels.

• José Saramago
• Harvill Secker (2008)
• 
• Author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998

As translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Saramago is the sort of wise old gent we’d want present if we could still demand bedtime stories in adulthood. Death at Intervals has all of the charm, quietly controlled meanderings and simple sagacity of a writer who’s plainly enjoying his literary prime.

Based on a “what-if”, the sort of open question of which screenwriters are fond, this is another of Saramago’s metaphysical fables in which Death decides to take a break, such that the order of human society starts to collapse. And Death is female, a fact of which Saramago convinces us in his typically laborious, yet always affable, style.

Just as in The Double, the writer delights once more in telling the tale of an illogical cause and its logical effects. For, in Saramago’s world, a doppelgänger will fancy your wife, the Devil is quite pleasant and a whole population will spontaneously choose not to vote.

• Chuck Palahniuk
• Vintage (first published 2007)
• 

With Rant, the endlessly inventive Palahniuk may have finally run out of ideas. The author’s formidable back-catalogue, which includes Fight Club, Survivor and Lullaby, illustrates his original, if extreme, prognosis for American society. What makes reading Palahniuk such a thrilling experience, that his characters’ realities are so close to ours, is missing in Rant, in which the author resorts to a rather half-baked examination of time travel.

The device used to tell this piece of hokey urban folklore is an oral history. In short soundbites, characters reminisce about the protagonist as if being interviewed. Without his usual mouthpiece in the form of a first person narrator, Palahniuk’s idiosyncrantic, often polemical style is muted.

Yet whenever called upon to offer criticism of the powers that be, the author’s sardonic wit and novel language burst through. Palahniuk shows himself always equal to the task of challenging the torpor of American society, mining a rich source of angst in the process. So if Rant was intended as a stylistic departure, many of his loyal readers will probably expect a glorious return.

Such was the headline at the El Pais website this morning.

There can be little doubt that Spain was consistently the best team on the field in Euro 2008, playing their entertaining brand of fútbol total.

In a thrilling climax to a tournament full of surprises - exciting turns from Russia and Croatia, spectacular deadline management from Turkey, Germany actually reaching the final - the crowning Spanish success spelled the end of a forty four year drought of major championship titles.

Perhaps this is also a changing of the guard at the head of European football. Whilst Italy and Germany both looked stale, the Dutch failed to live up to early expectations and France, bof, il vaut mieux ne rien dire.

Better for football, better for Europe.

Source: North Sea Jazz Festival

Today I can confirm that, after a bit more of this lovely sunshine (hopefully), I will be starting a new job in August 2008.

I have been given the rather unusual title (for me, anyway) of Senior Analyst Programmer by my new employer Unisys.

I will be working on a number of redevelopment projects for one of Unisys’ principal clients here in Brussels.