#148: Morbid City

Le Pavé, Place du Jeu de Balle, 8am

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Here’s a short excerpt from the latest edition of the award-winning zine Brussels-based illustrator Selkies and I produce about Brussels café culture. If you missed out on a copy at the launch in December and live in Brussels, drop me a line and we can do business ;).

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The morning talk at the Pavé is death. “Frédéric, c’est fini. Il est mort.” Didn’t even make his pension, the ruddy man at a nearby table says to the barman.

Dédé’s not dead, comes the response. He’s just in France.

This early and this dark, there’s only them, me, and the regular traffic of flea market stallholders making use of the facilities at the back of the bar. At this time of day the barrier between bar and flea market is thin; a musty fug, of the kind that lurks around neglected antiques, hangs over the Pavé. The walls are covered in sepia posters, advertising the 1908 Esperanto international congress and Ostend-Dover ferry day trips, and stop signs for trams that no longer run are propped up next to a drooping Thriller-era Michael Jackson mask.

A stallholder comes in, lingering near a battered Laughing Cow enamel advert.

“You want a beer?”

“Ta gueule, connard.“

“A coffee for the monsieur it is.”

The red-faced man chimes in again. Another stallholder dead, he says, and with a kid studying psychology and everything! “Only the Moroccans are not dying,” says the barman. “Just the Belgians.”

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