Ward Ruyslinck (1929–2014)

In an attempt to escape from the war, and cross over into France from Belgium, a family is caught up and confronted with war violence they might never have encountered had they stayed at home.

The story begins with Waldo Havermans and his father and mother cycling ahead of the German invasion of Belgium to cross the border into France. However, the border is closed and the refugees are bombed by a German war plane. Waldo's parents are both killed in the attack. Waldo is taken to a hospital, show more where a Belgian soldier picks him up to take him to a refugee camp near the coast. At a resting point, Waldo meets Vera, a school friend. They decide to stay together, and find their way home. Traveling through the countryside, the danger of Germans and the war surrounds them. Encounters with a local farmer and Vera's uncle are much less warm and friendly than expected. Fear and danger are around every corner. Uncle Andreas turns out to be a collaborator with the Nazis. Eventually, they are picked up by four Germans, and taken to a small forest where Vera is raped and murdered.

The story is narrated by the ten-year-old Waldo, who does not really understand death. Various allusions to sexuality, girls' giggling in the back of an army vehicle, Uncle Andreas exploits with a prostitute seen through a key hole, and the rape of Vera, left to die, are over an above young Waldo's comprehension. The war machine and the infernal German soldiers are seen as all powerful and inescapable, chasing Waldo all over the country, and catching up with death and destruction. The omnipotence and omnipresence of evil leads Waldo to the sinful conclusion that God is responsible for the evil he has seen and the death of his parents and Vera. show less

This is one of the very best 20th century noels I have read. It is carefully constructed, with characters that are both sharply delineated and interesting, and the tone is warmly and deeply compassionate throughout.

The Deadbeats - Belgian author Ward Ruyslinck's 100-page novel of sombre precision, literary counterpart to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings or the above Emil Nolde watercolor. We travel back to the windswept Flemish countryside during the 1950s where Silvester and Margriet, both forty-three, subsist on the outskirts of town in their isolated, rundown, drafty shack of a house with its broken tile roof and creaking walls. As a way of sharing the mood and flavor of this arresting work, below show more are direct quotes from the text along with my comments:

"He shut his eyes and scarcely listened to what she was saying. The war. Everything reminded her of the war." ---------- Back in the years of the war, Margriet witnessed explosions, the cracking of rifles, soldiers conducting a raid on her town. Traumatized by the war, Margriet now lives in constant fear of war. A strong wind, a gentle breeze, thunder, a car backfiring, pink clouds, the scar on a man's face will trigger skittish Margriet to flashback to the war and look in all directions for soldiers on the attack.

"He pulled his blanket over his head and lay dozing in the stuffy warmth with his knees drawn up. The thin, worn blanket let some light through and it was as if he were lying in a shady green grotto under the sea." ---------- An alternate translation of the book's title, De ontaarde slapers, could be The Degenerate Sleepers. Silvester would like nothing more than spend his remaining days in bed, preferably sleeping, the next best thing would be to simply rest and occasionally daydream. Silvester expects nothing and desires nothing. Why can't the world go away and leave him to his pillow and wool blanket?

"Then the wind, which had not been heard for some time, came rattling under the door and howling under the tiles with a sad noise like a dog dying." ---------- The wind howls like a wild animal, a professor has a mole's face and owl-like spectacles, tombstones remind Silvester of the black dripping backs of seals, a clerk is a grasshopper of a fellow - as if to emphasize the connection with base animal nature, creatures who crawl, fly, swim or scamper are Ward Ruyslinck's prevailing metaphors.

"He knew that the good went unrewarded and that the bad escaped punishment, and this knowledge had made him adverse to social order and organizations, the work of human hands." ---------- Hang easy, dangle loose. Silvester is Belgium's answer to 1950s American beatnik culture. It isn't as if our Flemish slugabed has any desires or expectations - he does not; rather, since there's little justice in the prevailing order, he wants nothing to do with work world or the social tug-of-war - unions, strikes, riots and the like. He sees himself as "the sheep that had left the fold because it could not bear the thought of being sheared and branded; or perhaps just because it wanted to die in solitude."

"What did you do before you were unemployed?"
"I was unemployed then too," Silvester explained.
A little skinny woman near Silvester giggled at this reply, but the official looked at him darkly from his pale face and his lower jaw was trembling." ---------- Silvester goes to the Labor Exchange window to receive a government handout. However, he must stand on queue with others waiting for their turn. Perhaps predictably, the officious clerk will exercise his power by attempting to put people like Silvester in their place.

"It was a strange sight, the sombre hearse with the rain-soaked wreaths, the two rocking carriages in which the mourners were sitting, and last of all, like an outcast from the family, the lonely figure who had joined this sad cortège." ----------- The author injects an element of humor when, in order to avoid the wind and rain, Silvester seeks cover behind the last buggy in a funeral procession. The townspeople spectators smile and nudge one another when they recognize scruffy Silvester with his red beard and torn leather jacket. Incidentally, I suspect the image of Silvester walking at the tail end of this funeral procession has remained with readers of De ontaarde slapers ever since its first publication.

"All at once he began to enjoy this invention so much that for a moment he could see endless possibilities for his imagination." ---------- After a time, the coachman invites Silvester to sit in the carriage. Thus the novel's antihero is given an opportunity to talk of his association with the deceased and spin other fabrications, not unlike the fanciful tales he creates while lying in bed. No doubt about it: Ward Ruyslinck gives Silvester a fertile imagination. If circumstances were a bit different, perhaps Silvester might even be a poet or artist.

"He saw now, and experienced as a positive new truth and astounding revelation, making for a moment the dark void within him light and airy, that even pylons and refuse-dumps were not simply ugly." ---------- Silvester has a fresh vision of beauty and joy while up on his roof fixing a tile.

"He shook his head, looked up at the cloudless sky and thought how strange it was that he was standing here below, bound to the earth by gravity, and that he could never get away, never, never, never . . . . " ----------- An ironic foreshadow of unexpected catastrophe.

If you can manage to put your hands on a copy of this long out-of-print Belgian dark jewel, I can assure you it will make for one unforgettable read.


Raymond De Belser, pseudonym Ward Ruyslinck, Belgian novelist, 1929-2014 show less

A short work, novella in length, set in, assumed to be, rural Belgium sometime after WWII. The two main characters are Silvester and Margriet, childless couple, married 22 years, who spend their day and night lying in bed, eating dry bread and living off the government dole. Margriet lives in terror of another war. Silvester lives fairly happily in his head. He is mostly content with things as they are. They really are deadbeats, they don't have a clock or a calendar, no work and no show more ambition. The title really fits them. There are some good quotes that I will either find now or add later but the author also uses a lot of animals to paint pictures, such as;
"The wind had been blowing from the west for four days, rolling in a dark moaning flood over the flat expanse behind the town. It howled like a wild animal in the neighbouring plantation, above which the crows flapped restlessly with slow, heavy wingbeats, and on the football field it whipped under the corrugated-iron roofs of the stand with a thunderous noise."
"He saw her drooping shoulders and long scraggy neck, and it was as if it were not his wife he was looking at, but the wind in the shape of a dog--a big, rough-coated, tame mongrel, with its forepaws on the window-sill."
"He looked at the women's waving veils, at the few open umbrellas floating in front of him between the rows of tombstones; they reminded him of the black dripping backs of seals." show less