asanova Restaurant Book: Gaston's Story Chapter 3 The older Walter and I grew, the more obvious it became that two brothers couldn't be more different. One day, my mother prepared a special lunch with the Belgian endive that she sold in her store. Even then, Belgian endive was expensive because of the extra care and time it took to grow them. My mother's favorite way of preparing endive was to stuff them with a mixture of minced ham and onion, tied together with a string, and braised in a little stock. She loved them, and I did too, so I dug into my serving of stuffed endive right away. I immediately knew something was wrong, and started choking. I could feel the tip of the string at the back of my throat, so I reached in and slowly pulled it out. The string scratched like barbed wire. Our parents didn't believe in wasting food and never allowed us to leave the table until our plates were clean. So I knew that I had to go ahead and finish off my serving of endive, even though I had certainly lost my taste for it. On the other hand, after witnessing my struggle, Walter simply refused to eat another bite. Walter was a picky eater anyway. He was so skinny, we called him "le squelette" or "skeleton." He crossed his arms and pressed his lips firmly together. This infuriated our father. We finished our meal, and Walter still sat there, his plate full. "Walter, eat your food," ordered our father. "I'm not hungry." Walter replied. "Then you can just take your plate into the cellar and stay there until you are hungry." Our father led Walter to the cellar and locked the door. "When you've eaten everything you can come out," he said. Walter sat on the bottom step alone, facing a mountain of coal that reached the window near the ceiling. Through the window, he could see the feet of people walking by on the sidewalk outside. Walter wasn't about to give in, so he sat, growing more and more angry. Finally, he buried his food in the coal pile, picked up a coal lump and threw it through the window, shattering the glass. He scrambled up the coal to reach the window, pushed open the window grate, and crawled out on the sidewalk. Smeared with coal dust, he walked in the front door of the grocery store right past our parents, and climbed the stairs to our room. No one said another word about the uneaten endive. Walter was defiant and wild, but at the same time very sensitive. When we moved to our new store a couple of years earlier, Walter was only six, but he was eager to help. My mother gave him a small bag of rice to carry across the cobbled street to the new store. Half way across, he stumbled and dropped the bag, which broke open, scattering rice all over the street. Walter was so embarrassed that he ran back to the house. He wouldn't leave until the move was complete. *** Belgium is famous for its chocolate, and we ate a lot of it. At four o'clock every day, our family sat down for an afternoon snack. Sometimes my mother would have waffles for us, but often we had chocolate sandwiches. These were considered a healthy snack and were easy to make. All you had to do was shave chocolate slivers on bread. White bread, which was a luxury, was best. There were two major brands of Belgian chocolate bars: "Chocolate Jacques," which was made in Verviers, about twenty miles away, and "Côte d'Or." We liked Chocolate Jacques bars the best because of the picture cards we'd find between the outside paper wrapper and the silver foil. We collected the pictures in elaborate leatherette books provided by the chocolate company. Each page in the book had a short paragraph about each picture and a rectangular space where we would paste the pictures as we found them. The books were hefty - each holding a potential collection of 50 or 60 pictures. There were several books, each with a different theme: flying machines, automobiles, and - our favorite - wild animals of Africa. Since our mother had a grocery store, Walter and I had a convenient supply of chocolate bars. We figured that she wouldn't miss five or six bars a night. Stealing the chocolate was like playing cops and robbers. I was the lookout, standing at the top of the stairs and listening for any sign that our parents were awake. Then I would give Walter the signal to go down the stairs - avoiding the creaky steps - and enter the dark store. It was a simple in-and-out job. He carried the loot to our hideout on the top floor, and we greedily opened all the bars and ate our fill of chocolate. It didn't take many weeks to find the rhinoceros, elephant, monkey, giraffe, and about thirty more. There were still twenty empty spaces, but the one we wanted the most was the King of the Beasts - the mighty Lion. The problem was, we were getting sick of all that chocolate. Walter came up with a brilliant solution. Our bathroom had an old-fashioned claw foot tub. To make it appear more modern, the outside of the old tub had been encased in plastic sheets of imitation tile. There was a hole cut into the plastic for the water pipes with a little extra space around them - just the right size for chocolate bars! For months, we continued our nightly raids searching for the chocolate bar that held the Lion and cramming the uneaten chocolate in the hole. After months of trying, we finally lost interest and quit. A year or two later, when I was in middle school, I walked home wearing my beret at just the right angle and carrying my briefcase under my arm - never by the handle, because that would not be cool. As I turned the corner, I saw a truck parked in front of the store. It was the plumber my parents had hired to repair a pipe in our bathroom. When I went upstairs, I found that the plumber had pried the plastic sheet away from the tub and discovered a nasty surprise. Beneath the claw-foot tub was a molten chocolate mountain with moldy blue and green "hair" growing from it, like a radiation experiment from Madame Curie's lab. Our parents were not happy about this discovery. *** I loved school and always stayed late to complete my homework, but Walter thought school interfered with more important things, like playing marbles. In Belgium, when you reached middle school, you had to decide whether you would be continuing your education or leaving school to enter a trade, usually as an apprentice. In our family, our father became a blacksmith after completing grammar school. Rita, Gilbert and Denise also choose not to continue school past the age of 14. My mother, on the other hand, wished to attend business school, but she had started working at a young age to support herself. It did not matter to my parents which direction my education took, and I decided to enter the competitive academic track. I wanted to eventually attend the university in Liege, the closest one to Malmedy, and study to become a literature professor, or perhaps, an electrical engineer. Unlike me, Walter headed out to play the minute the final school bell rang, and our parents never insisted that he do his homework. Needless to say, Walter didn't do well in school. When Walter failed the fourth grade, our father sat him down and said, "Walter, you don't have to excel in school, but you must learn to read and do math." After that, Walter started making an effort. Reading was never his strong suit, but he discovered he had a flair for math, especially when it came to money. It was clear he had inherited our mother's head for business. Walter noticed that when my mother ground coffee, there was always a small pile of coffee grounds left behind in the machine. Day after day, he brushed these grounds into a paper coffee bag, until he had a full pound. He sold his pound of coffee in the store at a discounted price. It was like finding money. Walter also made money by collecting lead and iron scraps he found in the deserted buildings throughout the town. Every week, the rag man came through the streets, calling loud, in a sing-song voice, "Anyone have rags today?" Housewives would give him their extra rags that he would resell for recycling. Rag men were common after the war; resources were scarce so nothing was wasted. Walter knew that the rag man also resold metal and used tires, so Walter was always waiting for him at his truck with what he and his friends had collected during the week. Walter spent most of his money on candy, but he really wanted art supplies. For several years, he had been practicing drawing with charcoal - not the soft type you buy in stores, but bits of charred wood from burned crates. Walter's lucky day came when he visited Rita and Pol soon after they were married. They were all spending the afternoon enjoying drinks at the local café when Pol gave Walter a handful of francs to play the pinball machine. After thirty minutes of winning a few games and losing some, Walter hit the winning numbers with a payoff of 100 francs. The next day, Walter went to the art supply store where he had seen the art set he had been dreaming of. He bought the complete set of oil paints, a few small canvases and brushes. These were all professional quality. He was serious about becoming an artist. *** Chapter 2 Check back soon for additional chapters!