Willem Hermans - The Darkroom of Damocles

‘So you don’t believe I got it in England?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? If it’s nothing to do with you, if you’ve never seen it before, why won’t you believe I got it in England?’

Another two paces and she in turn put her arm around him.

But Osewoudt drew back.

‘I can’t help you! I must get home! You’ll have to fend for yourself!’

He turned his back on her.

‘Don’t go!’ she cried. ‘You just gave yourself away! You must have seen that picture before, or you wouldn’t care whether I got it in England or not.’

When they boarded the tram together he had yet to make up his mind where he would take her. Amsterdam would be the best place for her to stay. But with whom?

He looked her up and down, then glanced around in the gloom of the tram car, which was lit only by a few bulbs largely covered in black paint. Was she wearing anything that might stand out? Wasn’t her white raincoat rather unusual, and what about that bag with the shoulder strap?

When the conductor came she opened the bag and handed him a silver guilder for the fare.

The conductor held the coin between thumb and forefinger and said: ‘Is this a real one?’

‘No!’ said Osewoudt. ‘You can keep it if you like, but here’s a paper one. A silly mistake, you understand, a mistake.’

The conductor held on to the coin for a moment longer, then accepted the note instead.

Osewoudt gave Elly a nudge.

‘Didn’t you say you were saving it to have it made into a pendant?’ he said, a little too loudly.

‘All right for some,’ said the conductor.

Osewoudt gave him a zinc ten-cent coin as a tip. The conductor moved away.

‘What was wrong with that guilder?’ she asked.

‘Where did you get that thing? Everyone handed in their silver guilders ages ago.’

‘I got it in England.’

‘They might just as well have sent you here with a label on your back saying MADE IN ENGLAND. How many of those guilders do you have?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Don’t ever spend one again!’

As they went into the railway station in The Hague, he said: ‘Wait there, by the ticket window.’ He ducked into a telephone box, dialled his own number and waited with pinched nostrils in readiness, his pulse pounding in his forehead.

‘Osewoudt tobacconists,’ he heard Ria say. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘This is …’

His eye fell on an advertisement on the cover of the telephone directory. Mijnhardt’s Tablets . He said: ‘This is Mijnhardt speaking, could I speak to Mr Moorlag?’ He kept pinching his nostrils.

‘Meinarends, did you say? One moment please, I’ll see if Mr Moorlag is in.’

He heard her lay down the receiver. Then came Moorlag’s voice: ‘Hello Meinarends, hello!’

‘Moorlag! This isn’t Meinarends. Don’t say anything yet, don’t give me away. I’ll speak as softly as possible, I’m afraid Ria may be listening. Can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I won’t be coming home tonight, I have to go to Amsterdam, I’ll be back tomorrow. I couldn’t tell Ria myself, you’ve got to help me. Stop her from getting upset when I don’t come home. I’ll be back, though, at least I hope I will. I have to find somebody a place to stay. She says she arrived here from England yesterday, identified herself with a photo that was still in my hands a week ago. So I don’t believe the photo came from England. But I can’t leave her in the lurch either. Wait for me at the station in The Hague tomorrow morning at quarter to twelve. If I’m not there, take my Leica and all the papers and hide them as quickly as you can. Do your best, Moorlag, help me!’

He did not wait for a reply but dashed out of the telephone box: their train, the last to Amsterdam, was leaving in two minutes.

‘Did you get the tickets?’

‘No, I thought you said I wasn’t to spend any money.’

He dragged her through the barrier; the stationmaster blew his whistle as they entered the carriage.

‘Don’t you have any paper money at all?’

‘Yes I do, but it’s all new. You’ve got me worried now. The notes could be fakes, maybe poor ones. There’s something else, too, which I probably shouldn’t tell you because it’ll only make you more suspicious, but it wouldn’t be fair not to, so I will. Back in England they gave me an ID card, obviously, but the people I stayed with last night said it was no good. I don’t know about these things myself, but apparently ID cards have a watermark, a lion I think, and the lion in the thing they gave me is far too small.’

Osewoudt laid his hand on her thigh and squeezed it hard, as if this might encourage her to keep quiet.

‘Let’s not talk too much here. People will think: what are those two whispering about?’

She put her arm around him and brushed his chin with the back of her hand.

Osewoudt looked at Elly, and drew her towards him.

‘I can’t believe you’re over twenty.’

‘I’m eighteen.’

‘You can’t stay with me.’

‘Well, perhaps I could do something for you in return, in spite of my money and my ID card being no good. Surely there’s something you’re short of?’

She turned her hand over and stroked his cheek with the tips of her fingers.

‘Not razor blades though,’ she said. ‘No shortage there, obviously.’

‘Razor blades! Who needs razor blades?’

‘I’ve never met a man with a closer shave.’

Osewoudt let go of her, almost groaning. But he took control of himself and said, with his lips close to her ear: ‘There’s no stubble because I don’t have a beard. I never shave — don’t need to. Feel.’

He pursed his lips and rubbed his chin along her ear.

The train stopped in Leiden.

‘Don’t you mind my not having a beard?’

She smiled, dimples appeared in her round, white cheeks, and her wide-eyed look became veiled, as if he had made some strange, sophisticated proposition and she was considering whether it appealed to her.

‘Well in that case,’ he went on, ‘tell me, have you ever met someone called Dorbeck?’

‘I told you before, I’ve met nobody. I just went to the address I’d been given, and when it turned out to be useless I went to my aunt’s.’

‘So you didn’t meet a man who looked very much like me — same sort of face, same height, but with dark hair?’

‘I do wish you’d stop banging on.’

‘I’m not. The thing is, you could have come across this person under an alias.’

‘You still don’t trust me. Is that what you’re getting at?’

‘It’s not a matter of trust. It’s just that I’d like to know if you’ve been in contact with a man who looks very much like me except that he’s dark-haired, the same as me but dark.’

‘Not that I recall.’

‘Strange. You arrived in Holland only yesterday. Not much has happened since, so little that you ought to be able to remember all of it without any trouble.’

The ticket inspector arrived, Osewoudt explained that they had to dash to catch the train, the inspector didn’t mind and wrote out two tickets, without adding a fine. Osewoudt paid for them.

When the inspector had left, Elly said: ‘This is the first time in my life I’ve been on a Dutch train.’

‘You mean you’ve never been in Holland before?’

‘No, I haven’t. Soon I’ll be seeing Amsterdam for the first time, too.’

The railway station was dark. So was Prins Hendrikkade, which they crossed, looking out for the occasional car with blacked-out headlamps like glowing rivets.

But the white sign saying FÜR WEHRMACHTSANGEHÖRIGE VERBOTEN at the approach to Oudezijds Achterburgwal was as visible as ever.

‘What does it mean?’