Difference between revisions of "Madame C/Mevrouw C"
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== [[Wilhelmina_Coops|Madame C.01]] == | == [[Wilhelmina_Coops|Madame C.01]] == | ||
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In the autumn of 1932, I was still very young. I arrived in Brussels as au-pair but instead of helping in the house, I ended up assisting the professor finishing his book. At the time I arrived, the work itself was completed but his handwriting was hardly decipherable and the printer had a difficult time working with the manuscript. It was my job to correct the typeset proofs. Often there were words that neither the printer, nor I could decipher, so we had to ask. But often the professor did not have time. So I did my best to make the text as legible as possible. | In the autumn of 1932, I was still very young. I arrived in Brussels as au-pair but instead of helping in the house, I ended up assisting the professor finishing his book. At the time I arrived, the work itself was completed but his handwriting was hardly decipherable and the printer had a difficult time working with the manuscript. It was my job to correct the typeset proofs. Often there were words that neither the printer, nor I could decipher, so we had to ask. But often the professor did not have time. So I did my best to make the text as legible as possible. | ||
Revision as of 16:41, 24 February 2016
Madame C.01
In the autumn of 1932, I was still very young. I arrived in Brussels as au-pair but instead of helping in the house, I ended up assisting the professor finishing his book. At the time I arrived, the work itself was completed but his handwriting was hardly decipherable and the printer had a difficult time working with the manuscript. It was my job to correct the typeset proofs. Often there were words that neither the printer, nor I could decipher, so we had to ask. But often the professor did not have time. So I did my best to make the text as legible as possible.
On the last proof that the printer delivered, the professor wrote to me:
“After five months of work behind the same table, here it is. Now it is your turn to love the book, the pre-book and the spoken word, and to develop a good sense of documentation, of institution, and of Mundaneum.”
Madame C.02
She serves us coffee from a ceramic coffee pot and also cake bought at the bakery next door. 'It's all written in the files' she reminds us repeatedly, and tells us about one day in the sixties, when her husband returned home, telling her excitedly that he discovered the Mundaneum Archives at Chaussee de Louvain in Brussels. Ever since, he would return to the same building, making friends with the friends of the Palais Mondial, those dedicated caretakers of the immense paper heritage.
“I haven't been there so often myself”,
she says.
“But I do remember there were cats, to keep the mice away from the paper. And my husband loved cats. So in the eighties, when he was finally in a position to save the archives, the cats had to be taken care of too. And the cats were written into the inventory.”
We finish our coffee and she takes us behind a curtain that separates the salon from a small office. She shows us four green binders that contain the meticulously filed papers of her late husband pertaining to the Mundaneum. In the third is the Donation act, dated 4 april 1985 that describes the transfer of the archives from the Friends of the Palais Mondial to the Center for public reading of the French community.
The cats are nowhere to be found.
Madame C.O3
In a margarine box, between thousands of notes, tickets, postcards, letters, all folded to the size of an index card we find this:
"Paul, leave me the key to the house, I forgot mine. Put it on your desk, in the small index card box. C."