on the edge of an unmapped square in Het Zuid: pale limestone facades two and three storeys, cornice gilding gone green-brown with weather, a corner building's open butcher doorway exhaling cold air into the warm afternoon, pavement tables mostly empty — bread sleeve just set down on the table, watching a woman cross the square — the Flemish she didn't catch still settling, plate untouched
The train from Brussels was forty-five minutes of flat green and then Centraal Station: cream marble floors, iron vaulting gone dark with age, the light coming in from the dome in a way that made the whole concourse feel like something was being announced. I walked out into warm air and the smell of diesel and something sweeter underneath it I couldn't place.
The iron vaulting and dome of Antwerp Centraal's grand hall — cream marble floor below, dark ironwork ribs arcing overhead, light falling in shafts from the glazed dome
I dropped my bag, changed into the linen shirt because it was the first thing out, and walked south.
Het Zuid took twenty minutes to reach. The facades were pale stone, some of them gilded at the cornices, some just worn to the color of old paper. A corner butcher had the door propped open — cold air and raw fat and the high note of something brined. I stopped at a place on a square I hadn't found on any map beforehand, sat at the one table with a clear line to the street, and ate a plate of cold cuts with bread that came in a paper sleeve. The woman who brought it said something in Flemish I didn't catch. I nodded. It was a reasonable response to whatever she'd said.
A plate of cold cuts — thin-sliced charcuterie, cornichons — beside a bread roll still in its paper sleeve, on a small bistro table
The overcast was doing something to the temperature the morning hadn't warned me about, so the jacket went on between Sint-Andries and the embankment.
By seven the light off the Scheldt was coming in flat and orange. I took the jacket off. A man was fishing from the wall — rubber-soled boots, dark green, the kind sold in agricultural shops. A white bucket near his left foot, lid on. A rod that hadn't moved in the time I'd been watching.
on a broad granite embankment wall above the Scheldt: the river wide and flat beyond, the far bank a low industrial silhouette, the stone of the wall itself warm from the day and just beginning to give it back — standing still at the wall's edge watching the fisherman — his rod has not moved, the white bucket with its gray-repaired crack sits at his left boot, she has been here long enough to notice the repair
The river is wide. The city turns its back on it slightly.
I stayed until the warmth had left the stone under my hands.
The bucket had a crack in one side, repaired with something gray.
at the threshold between Sint-Andries and the embankment district: a narrow side street opening through a Flemish townhouse archway onto the wider embankment boulevard beyond, worn brick arch framing the far pavement and a sliver of orange river-light at the end of the perspective — stopped just inside the arch as the temperature drop registers — one hand at the shirtjacket lapel, about to pull it closed, reading the light change at the far end of the tunnel
What she wore
day1-scene1
I put on the ivory skirt because it was the first thing out of the bag and somehow that felt right for arriving somewhere I didn't entirely have a plan for.
day1-scene2
The shirtjacket went on when I hit Het Zuid and realised the overcast was doing something to the temperature that the morning hadn't warned me about.
day1-scene3
I took the jacket off when I got to the embankment because the light off the Scheldt was doing something and I didn't want anything getting in the way of just standing there.