The Magpie

Lukas told me that his life in Ghent began at the Abbey of St Bavo – just across the bridge from our current home. He told me that when he first arrived in Ghent he could find nowhere suitable to stay, and after spending a few weeks at a youth hostel, discovered that the monastery had single rooms available to rent for those who had nowhere else to go.

In the end, Lukas told me that he spent six months in the Abbey of St Bavo. He complained a lot of the fathers there – of one father in particular. Apparently he took a strong dislike to Lukas, and was the one who in the end, kicked him out. I’m not sure for what reason. Another lost soul – the famous Virgil – also spent many months in the same sanctuary. He too disliked Father Michael. “You are not a Christian man,” he told the Father before he left. I remember one of the first things that I heard about Virgil, from Artay’s lips, he said: “what I like about Virgil is that he is a man of immense power, but he never uses it.” A very kind introduction from a very good friend. Artay and Virgil’s relationship first struck me as an anomaly and now just fascinates me.

It is during those months spent in an isolated fashion at St Bavo’s where, so Lukas told me, he devoted himself to getting rid of a few unfortunate habits he had picked up in Brussels, that he learnt to play guitar.

It happened like this, he told me, it suddenly occurred to him what he wanted to do in the next few years. He wanted to go travelling – around Europe – across the whole world. But how would he do this? Well he would become a street musician, leading the hand-to-mouth existence of someone who played music for their living. But first thing’s first: he needed to learn to play the guitar.

Lukas was already a very accomplished pianist and had attended a conservatorium in Brussels for several years. He had learnt the rudiments of the guitar when he was a teenager. So he was not your average learner, but even despite these things, his progress was remarkable. It was during hours of work in this very desolate and lonely time of his life, that as he put it in his words, he “learnt to play the guitar”. At the very least, it is during this time that he put together his ‘set’ – the sequence of eight songs – that could not have possibly be more heart-breakingly beautiful than they are. What music does he play? Well, the music of the manouche. Those strollers of the mountains and hills – the free spirits, that wed the spirit of their beauty and living to a very particularized article of high culture – jazz music. What happens when beautiful free people alight upon jazz?

Magic.

The story lacks no poetry, by naturally my imagination supplemented whatever else remained. I imagined Lukas curled upon his bed in a spirit of feverish renunciation. I imagined the iron bed frame, the austere, narrow room, the hollow metal clatter of cutlery upon mess tins in the monastery canteen, the murmurs and slow shuffles along  corridors. Archaic images of charitable institutions orphanages, poor houses and sanctuaries for the sick & dying throughout history loomed before me: I imagined petty arguments, friendships, the long silences, the aloofness of the fathers; the vast experiential gulf between those who sought refuge and those that offered it.

Afterwards he told me that he could not have pored the necessary degree of concentration that he needed towards the project, in any other environment. I believed him. When he finally left the monastery, with all his friends and enemies within, he was a guitar player. But he was still homeless. He laughed when he told me of his first meeting with Artay, and that he just crossed the bridge and saw the lop-sided “Te Huur” sign in the front window, and he knew he could live in no other house. He had fallen in love with Prinsenhof, no other area would do. He told me that he had to argue his way into the house. No one else would live here except for me! Lukas had exclaimed when he saw the paint pots and fallen plaster everywhere. Rent me a room Artay.

I have often imagined that conversation since then – of the first meeting between the two men. I imagined Artay looking deeply into Lukas’ eyes, taking it all in, his loneliness, his goodness, his honesty. In the end Artay gave in – he decided to trust him. That is how Lukas happened to be living in 10 Zilverhof when I arrived two months ago. That is why Virgil and his friends always describe Artay as a great man. That is how it all started.