Faded jeans, sturdy boots and a rough leather jacket, nothing took away from the sensitive and intelligent look on the girl’s face. A dainty scarf around her neck, like a headscarf, made her look very young. The tour conductor seated me next to her in the bus, perhaps because she was also alone.
The bus was picking me up from my hotel in Brussels, Charlemagne. It came as a surprise to me that everyone there was more comfortable with French. In the era before smartphones such surprises were a part of the journey. I didn’t know that the hotel was located in the French quarter. The night clerk at the reception barely understood English. I had to wait till the morning clerk arrived, to fix a day trip to Bruges, in the Flemish Region. It wasn’t yet winter but it seemed like daylight only after 10 in the morning. By five in the evening, darkness set in.
The girl didn’t speak much English but she was a journalist who communicated as much as she could. Her name was Sara and she was from Argentina. I wondered if her family had at some point migrated from Syria, or maybe Lebanon. For some reason I thought she was of middle-eastern origin. Hoping to be diplomatic, I asked her if she was ‘Shia’ or ‘Sunni’.
“I am an atheist,” she said.
I smiled. “Put that way it sounds like another religion.”
She did not approve of my amusement and asked with a slight taunt in her voice, “What is your religion?”
‘Hindu’ was a complex concept. I was neither an iconoclast nor was I ritualistic. Not even agnostic. Thinking a little I said very slowly, “Truth.” It was her turn to smile. “Knowledge, even beauty,” I added. She did not press further and we settled down comfortably.
Bonding over chocolate
Both of us spoke a bit about Dutch colonialism. My mind, however, also visualised dark chocolate, delicate lace, sparkling cut glass and bone china with exquisite designs. We stopped at a chocolate factory and a lace outlet. We tasted some chocolate and concluded that chocolates and the refrigerator were enemies. The lace outlet was not so generous.
By some tacit agreement, Sara and I stuck together. At lunch, she steered me to a small place where she picked up a hotdog and me a sandwich. We were both on a tight budget. We felt the bus slow down during a short snooze after lunch.
“Bruges means bridge,” the tour conductor was saying when I woke up to what I thought was a dream. “It is pronounced brugg ,” he said. The town looked like a page out of a fairytale. The canal, the cobbled paths, the tall steeples and artists with their easels dotted the waterfront. The town square still looked as though it belonged to a different century. .
The guide was hurrying everyone towards the canal. A boat ride around the canal was one of the high points of the tour. A stop at a comic museum and a brewery was what he was baiting everyone with. Sara was unmoved and I didn’t want a boat ride after lunch, I had seen Tintin, and was in no mood for beer.
A masterpiece beckons
With an hour to spare, we decided to walk around ourselves, and do some exploring. Climbing the belfry was an option but we may not have had enough time. So, we just walked around watching tourists bargaining hard with artists who offered to draw a quick pencil sketch of anything one fancied. We walked into what looked like a library. Without the guide we were a bit lost. What we saw on the wall left us gaping. “It is a Raphael,” said someone from behind, “an original Raphael.” Even before we could get a fill of the painting, he pointed to another building. “Don’t miss that one, it will close soon.”
The building was nondescript and Sara wasn’t quite eager. Reluctantly, we hurried. Midway through, Sara slackened her pace and went off about how all the churches here were built on plunder from Africa.
As we entered I thought she was clutching my hand. We saw it. Not on the altar. It was just there.
The Madonna looked enigmatic. With her was a beautiful boy child, completely nude. She was both supporting the child and letting him go. Every muscle in his body quivered. This was a Michelangelo. This was the Madonna with Child. The Madonna of Bruges.
The Pietà at the Vatican had brought a lump to my throat. I felt tears sting my eyes this time as well. Did the mother know she would live to see her child nailed to a cross? The equally overwhelmed Sara squeezed my hand and in a choked voice said, “My family is Catholic.”
Jamuna Rao loves words, those of others as well as her own. She publishes for a living and writes to give herself a life.
