Lightness, we need it.

Listening to Lord Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ podcast on Colette (1873-1954) the other day brought to mind Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984).  

How so?  

Lord of the Words Bragg

Bragg’s panel members were absolutely determined to read into Colette’s wondrous prose all manner of weighty and sharp points about gender, equality, class, history, power, and more.  When Colette wrote her sinuous and sparkling prose about sunflowers in a field, according to the savants, she was subtly undermine the patriarchy or denouncing it.  When she wrote charming vignettes about Claudine’s schoolgirl crushes on the film stars, she was subtly attacking social class.  And so for the prescribed 45 minutes, but this time I did not exercise the option of listing to the bonus five minutes afterward, so tedious and tendentious did I find the recitation.  

Colette at work.

When I thought about it later, Kundera came to mind.  As for the heavy-weights in Kundera’s novel, so for the Colette panelists, only meaning has any value at all. If Colette wrote about flowers because she liked doing it, was good at doing it, and found it satisfying as an end in itself, it does not have meaning at all to these scholars. They united in denouncing her most effervescent novel, Gigi (1944) categorically and repeatedly, including gratuitous ad hominem asides.  

It seemed to me as I listened, and it seems to me now in hindsight that the panelists were pursing their own agendas and not Colette’s.  That she wrote Gigi in German occupied Paris, living in constant fear that her Jewish husband would be arrested….  That did not enter into the discussion.  The lightness of Gigi was much needed when she produced it. That is remarkable.  

Before and during the war she published life-style articles and some stories in publications that were anti-Semitic, pro-German, collaborationist, and Vichy.  Again our panelists were silent. I expect she did so to eke out a living in hard times and from 1940 there were no other choices.  All that seemed much more important in her life than their abstractions about gender, class, patriarchy, capitalism, and other way stations on the tenure-track. Survival.  And to survive she looked to light side, the bright side.  

Nor was much said about her short but noteworthy career as a journalist of which she once said, in a lesson few journalists these days heed, ‘you have to see and not invent, you have to touch and not imagine…’  (By the way, she reported crime – robbery, rape, and murder – for a Paris scandal sheet, not flower shows.)

I read a long biographical introduction to a volume of her memorable short stories years ago, and cannot identify it today, but some of it stuck with me.  

Enclaves, exclaves, counter-exclaves… Lost yet?

Trivia of the week. Amaze you friends. Bore your family. Drone on and on.  See below. 

When is an international border not a border at all? There are enclaves, oh hum, yes, we all know that. But do we all know about exclaves, yes, and counter-exclaves.  Fascinating, yes?  

Belgium and the Netherlands were once a single entity called the Spanish Netherlands. Within that unity there were all sorts of medieval fiefdoms compounded by political matrimony and varied laws of inheritance, Papal territories, duchies, principalities, free cities, much of it tracing back to Charlemagne. Spanish hegemony had left all those pieces alone to concentrate on collecting taxes and flanking the French. In the centuries the lords and ladies had swapped acres here and there, bought and sold some, left others as inheritances, and traded land back and forth in their domains. Then in a long series of conflicts the Spanish left and later at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 Belgium and the Netherlands divided into two distinct, sovereign nations – one a monarchy and one a republic – with an international border between them.  Almost….

In 1815 not all of the rival claims to territory could be resolved and the great powers of the day, having divided the two, had no interest in such fine details in a couple of brand-new minor countries and left them dangling. Despite repeated efforts since then, a few of them continue to dangle to this day. Read on for enlightenment.

Baarle-Nassau is an incorporated municipality in the southern Netherlands near the border with Belgium, but NOT on the border.  It is about sixteen (16) kilometres from the border.  Yet some of it is in Belgium, yet it is wholly within the Netherlands and yet I repeat: some of it is ‘of’ though not ‘in’ Belgium. Sit down and take a deep breath. 

+ marks the border

Quiet in the back! It has nothing to do with diplomatic territory. There is no embassy in this hicksville. 

Based on medieval practice, royal decree, rule of law, sanctified by the Roman Catholic Church, there were numerous exclaves (look it up as above) of a Belgian municipality called Baarle-Hertog within Baarle-Nassau. For the purposes of this exposition from now on let us refer to the Dutch community as Nassau and the Belgian one as Hertog. Make a note of that for the final examination. The fraternity brothers will want to copy that later when they recover from Saturday’s hangover before starting on Sunday’s after chapel. 

With a similar basis in ancient ritual, church law, taxation, and inheritance Hertog in its turn contains within its constituents counter-exclaves of Nassau.  While there are several maps that show this situation, none that I found make it especially clear. But I have included the best of the ones I found.  

There are 22 separate Belgian exclaves in Nassau, some consist of a single residence, others are grassland, or one side of a street of shops. Within these 22 Belgian exclaves there are in turn 7 separate Dutch counter-exclaves, each within a Belgian exclave. Following so far?  If not go back to the beginning and move your finger along the text very slowly. The border of these claves, en-, ex-, and counter-ex, run through buildings, between houses on the same side of street, and along the loading dock of a wine shop, and so on. In one frequently mentioned case the border bisects the front door of a private home, which accordingly has two street numbers, one on each side, 7 for Dutch and 22 for Belgian.  

The total population of the two mingled communities is about 12,000, and these days its main source income is tourism as people come there to see the oddities. Selfies abound. A zig-zag international border runs down the main street so that two shops side-by-side are in different countries, complying with different tax laws, labor legislation, opening hours, social laws that define pornography, and so on.  

The town has one bank and the border runs through it! Business is shifted from one side of the border inside the bank to the other as required.  And, yes, before the Euro all the commerce took place in two currencies, Belgian Francs and Dutch Guilders. Daylight saving times also differed. For the literal minded that meant it could be 7:00 am in the bedroom and 8:00 am in the kitchen.  

A stamped letter to a Dutch address 20 meters down the street mailed in a Hertog letterbox goes to Brussels to be sorted, then to Amsterdam, and then back to Nassau in a week. In contrast the Dutch postal system is not centralised and a letter from Nassau to a Hertog address with a Dutch stamp put in a Dutch letter box is sorted locally and delivered that day to the Belgian postoffice which then delivers it to the door.  

Albeit a jigsaw puzzle, surface jurisdiction is clear, but underground is another matter.  If a new apartment building is put in a Dutch counter-exclave within a Belgian exclave, the apartment building will produce more sewage, must the Belgians in the surrounding exclave pay for the pipes to be upgraded too carry it?  And if they do, then the pipes must meet Dutch standards at both ends to integrate from the apartment house to the surrounding Nassau.  And so on. The same would apply to an apartment block built in a Belgian exclave.  

As to standards, the Dutch have strict zoning laws that lead to architectural uniformity, whereas the Belgians have no such scruples. One street will be Dutch uniform up to the border and then the houses will be ranch style next to terrace next to mock Tudor and so on. Then there is the state religion in Belgian but not so in the Netherlands. That effects church bells, church levies, Sunday opening laws, film censorship, and charity laws. 

If a builder’s project straddles a boundary, then the building must satisfy two sets of building codes, labour laws, taxation…  The result is that builders try to avoid that.  The wine shop mentioned above is a case in point. The building is regulated by Nassau while loading dock comes under Hertog.  In the case the bank both sets of regulations apply since the border bisects the bank rather than dividing into front and back.  And you thought a development application for the local council was a pain.    

There have been two mayors, two high schools, two of everything in this small town. 

By convention, the location of the front door of a house, shop, building determines its nationality (and hence exposure to property tax, access to services, etc). If the front door is in a Belgian exclave though bulk of the house behind it is in the Netherlands, the whole property is treated as Belgian. Some property owners have arranged the front door(s) to be flexible so that it can shifted from one side to the other when taxes change. 

During recent COVID lockdowns the Belgian and Dutch governments made slightly different rules, and they were dutifully reflected within the borders of Hertog and of Nassau.  A Dutch restaurant was closed but the Belgian one next door remained open.  

To deal with all the anomalies, at town hall they do a lot of talking at a conference table with the border drawn down the middle. But in what language do they talk, a question that became in whose language do they talk?  Though local Belgians are Flemish and speak that language, the officials representing them have long insisted on speaking French. That insistence on French is partly a retaliation against the Dutch snobbery about Flemish as a dialect (of Dutch) that they cannot understand, so crude is it.  After a time, the two sides settled on negotiating in English. 

The European Union has avoided this problem, leaving it to the locals. Evidently they have found a way to deal with the blind-eyes of the central governments.  

One wonders about the role those exclaves played in World War I when Belgian was conquered by Germany while the Netherlands remained neutral. When both countries were occupied in World War II, it unlikely that the Occupier paid any attention to these niceties, but…  Well, maybe. And as soon as the uniformity imposed by the Occupier was removed, no doubt both parties reverted to their old ways. (I had long been convinced by the argument of the [Louis] Brandeis Brief that if people’s behaviour was changed by law, over generations their thinking would change. The laboratory of Yugoslavia demolished that belief where the old ways emerged.) And today one might wonder how policing occurs in this divided jurisdiction.

On the lighter side, a sit-com set in this burg would have endless possibilities for canned laughter from one side or the other.  

Homework starts with the entry in Wikipedia. Then try B. R. Whyte,  ‘En territories belge et à quarantie centimètres de la frontière (2004),’ a study of the Belgian and Dutch enclaves of Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau.  

There are many videos on You Tube but the most informative is Stefan’s from History Hustle. Search for ‘The world’s Strangest Borders between Belgium and the Netherlands: Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau.’ 

P.S. There are many other oddities, I since discovered in Central Asia among the one-time Soviet republics and in the Gulf of Persia between Oman and the United Arab Emirates.  You have been warned!  Maritime boundaries are even more vexed. 

A Three Dog Problem (2021) by S. J. Bennett

GoodReads metadata is pages 288 rated 4.23 by 48 litizens.  

Genre: Krimi.

Verdict: Deft.  

A very disagreeable housekeeper trips over a whiskey bottle and dies.  Good riddance and all that.  The tabloid press goes even more bonkers than usual.  In distant Sydney the sanctimonious tones of the ABC are sounded since this housekeeper once talked to a Strine. It’s world news because the house the victim kept was Buckingham Palace and her employer is one Mrs Elizabeth Mountbatten née Windsor, Queen of all the Englands, and more.  

All those Buck House officials lift the carpet to sweep the housekeeper (deceased) under it on the way to their knighthoods.  Trouble is someone is standing on the carpet. Indeed, it is Her Self the Majesty who would like to know just how one trips over a whiskey bottle in a place where one has no business and one is not a drinker of spirits, and one is roundly disliked by so many.  What really did happen?  Of course, this one cannot be so direct. Circumspection is thy name, Queenie. 

And while she is about it, HM would also like to know how a painting given to her personally many years ago by an obscure Tasmania artist went from her bedroom wall to a Royal Navy wardroom. Drinking tea there after cutting yet another ribbon (must 50 this year already!) when she noticed it.  Too polite too inquire then and there, she went back home to check. Sure enough, not where it used to be.  So hard to keep track of one’s 7,000+ paintings.  

Do these two mysteries intertwine, the errant painting and the corpsed keeper? All those prim and proper (blinkered) officials in Buck House will never notice. Still something is not quite right about either the wandering painting or terminated housekeeper. No, this is a job for someone who cannot say ‘no,’ the junior Assistant Private Secretary (APS), late of the Royal Horse Artillery, gets the assignment. The instruction are ‘Find the route that painting took from the royal bedroom to the naval wardroom, and find out who put the whiskey bottle there to fall over (if that is what happened). And do so with such deft discretion that no one knows you have done it. Should keep you busy a day on two on top of all your other duties.’   

QEII cannot do anything herself since she is scheduled twenty-four hours a day and under scrutiny from staff every one of those hours. Any deviation would be an earthquake. The portrayals of royal life are many and fascinating in these pages. The gravities on Her Britannic Majesty exceed those borne by most astronauts. The pecking order among the Buckingham Palace staff is positively Byzantine with invisible lines of demarcation guarded day-and-night by fanatics. The buck-passing and blame-shifting are constant. Is this is the incubus of McKinsey management.  

The Palace officials (all stiff upper-lipped chaps) seem relieved that the obnoxious housekeeper is no more, and are happy to move on with no further unpleasantness. That is in the great tradition of McKinsey Management, blame the victim. Absent fuel, the tabloids find something else to lie about. Check Pox News or the Moloch Press for the latest in fiction. The chaps have even less interest in an odd painting of no market value that does not belong to the nation but to Elizabeth Mountbatten. No, to achieve satisfaction, HM will have to see to it herself, but – of course – she cannot be seen to be seeing to it. Good thing she has had years of practice of not being seen to be seeing to things, and getting them done. They call it reigning rather than ruling.

That there seems to be a systematic and extensive campaign of stalking and harassing women employed in Buck House soon becomes apparent to everyone except those stiff-lipped chaps who run the place. Even the none-too-perceptive police officer who had a look at the house keeper’s cadaver grasps that and says so, but the chaps don’t hear what they do not want to know. What happens under the carpet, stays under the carpet, that seems to be their mantra. Once under the carpet, everything is under control.   

S J Bennett

This is the second in this series I have read and lapped up. Though I admit there is far too much padding with descriptions of clothes, furnishings, and food. When that description is in Buck House it is part of the atmosphere but it carries on as the APS goes out and about and it does go on. And on. Every where she goes, we get the full-IKEA, full-Elle, and full-Gourmet accounts. Treacle.

While whingeing I add that I found the plot tangled beyond my comprehension. Still I enjoyed the ride and the insight into the life of Buckingham Palace. HM’s affection for the valueless painting is explained in a charming aside. The title, by the way, refers to the appropriate number of dogs to take on a walk if one wants to think through a problem. Fewer than three and they expect to be entertained by ball throwing; more than three and one spends the whole time minding them.  Three is just right: Enough to entertain themselves but not so many as to distract one from cogitation. This is just one of the many charming nostrums to be found in the book.  

Maigret and the Coroner (1949) by Georges Simenon.  

Maigret and the Coroner (1949) by Georges Simenon.  

GoodReads metadata is 176 pages, rated 3.61 by 544 litizens.  

Genus: krimi; species Maigret.

Verdict: Fresh though #32 in the series.

While on a busman’s holiday travelling the United States to observe policing, Detective Chief Inspector Maigret finds himself in Tucson (Arizona). Wherever he has gone on this study tour a local law enforcement officer has been assigned to squire him around. While each officer does the duty, none particularly wants to be a tour guide, nor did Maigret himself welcome that task when Inspector Pike from Scotland Yard came calling. Sympathising with his host(s), he tries to be agreeable.  

In Tucson the FBI agent who picks him from the train station soon parks him in a coroner’s court to observe the American way, while the agent goes back to work. In his European suit and necktie with pipe Maigret is one conspicuous fish out of water. As he watches and listens, he finds it difficult not to interrupt with his own questions.  He knows enough English to follow the testimony but, well, he probably could not formulate his questions properly anyway.  

The first half or more of the book is the parade of witnesses giving contradictory statements related to the night Bessie Mitchell died, mangled by a railway train out in the desert. Was her death suicide, accident, manslaughter, or murder? That is the question.

The inquest continues and Maigret is soon hooked, and that pleases his host.  At night in his hotel room Maigret writes summaries of the day’s testimony for review, a task usually left to Lucas back in the office on the Île de la cité.  Even so there remain questions that have not yet been asked.  

Maigret observes the natives with an anthropological eye: they are clean, polite, addicted to Coca Cola, and there is the racial variety of white, black, red, and yellow among the jurors, witnesses, and audience. He is also painfully aware that others are observing him, too. But he simply cannot appear in a courtroom without a necktie and coat!  Despite the 45C temperature which has killed the AC. (At least he is not wearing the sweater Madame Maigret insisted he take.)

Five young air force men were with Bessie at one time or another during the night she died, and they are much in evidence with their shaved heads and stiff posture. Maigret is surprised that the inquiry does not focus directly on them, but every now and then he senses an underlying pattern in the interrogations that reassures him that there is purpose within the apparently haphazard proceedings. 

His efforts to strike up conversations during recesses with others in the audience do not take, and he mutters to himself. The usual masterful Maigret is treading water.  

The end is ambiguous and this reader felt that a number of the threads, like the dented car, were not resolved. Yet the trip was so much fun for being different that there are no complaints.   

Simenon spent months in Arizona where he lived in a rented house and typed his Maigret stories more than once. Perhaps while there in residence he did attend a coroner’s court.  It is certainly a change of pace for both Maigret (and Simenon) to observe, comment on, and participate in American life.