The Life and Times of the Curious Cockroach

Location: apartment bedroom in Brussels, as far away from electrical outlet as possible
Fun Fact: “Duivelszoon” means “son of the devil”

While I was making carrot soup in the communal kitchen today, Monsieur Duivelszoon (the landlord) popped by the house after work. He was wearing a suit with black polished shoes. I hadn’t seen him for a good few weeks, and last time he had been wearing the exact same outfit.

We had a lovely conversation. Monsieur Duivelszoon told me, with much enthusiasm, that he was a nuclear scientist by day “and landlord by night”.

I inquired as to why he felt the need to rent out a student house, when he already had such a fulfilling career. He glanced at one of the soggy carrots I had been mashing in a bowl, and simply said “I just love young people!” Then his pocket started emitting a “Damnation Alley” ringtone, so he had to run. (As I had just found out, this meant that Monsieur Duivelszoon’s fellow nuclear scientists were onto something big, and were paging him). I didn’t have a clue what “Damnation Alley” was about, but it sure was a catchy tune.

The next morning I came down to the kitchen to have the rest of my carrot soup before going to class. A couple of sleepy housemates were already there, smoking by the doorway and using their coffee cups as ashtrays. I told them that Monsieur Duivelszoon had made an appearance yesterday, and that told me how much he loved young people.

“Yes!” said Enrique, and took a puff of his cigarette.“And previous week he say to myself: ‘I love how young brains works.’” Limited as Enrique’s English comprehension may have been, what he said was actually quite likely.

“He loves how young people’s brains don’t work, more like!” exclaimed Georgette, who was always the lefty politically-minded one of the bunch.

“Why else rent out overpriced rooms to students, and then refuse to come in and fix the damn cupboards and replace the light bulbs once in a while?” she said as she jabbed her cigarette into her cup one final time.

Georgette wasn’t exaggerating. Monsieur Duivelszoon was indeed a slippery character, who would only answer emails that had to do with going out to the student pub or visiting his vineyard (I never did understand how he got grapes to ripen in the Belgian climate, but I suspected he fiddled around with grape genes as a hobby). Any emails concerning light bulbs, the broken cupboard doors, or how the shower above my room leaked right onto my electrical outlets, he would simply ignore.

Then he would reappear weeks later, still wearing a suit but with his hair slightly disheveled, and say something like: “how are my lovely students doing? Sorry I’ve been so unavailable lately. Been called down to Tbilisi, you know, they needed me to avoid another Chernobyl all the sudden. And to think, just when I was about to pop by and fix these cupboards.”

But as soon as the word “cupboard” left his lips, his pager would ring Damnation Alley again and he would be skipping out the door before we got a chance to open our mouths to protest.

At times Monsieur Duivelzoon drove us mad, yes, but inadvertedly he helped unify us. All fourteen of us. Because no matter where each of us came from, or what our habits and beliefs were, death by leaky shower/electrocution was something we all wanted to avoid. And quite understandly so, no?