Willem Hermans - The Darkroom of Damocles

‘It means,’ said Osewoudt, ‘that this part of town is unsafe for Germans, which makes it all the safer for us.’

Uncle Bart answered the door himself.

‘What, no housemaid these days?’ Osewoudt asked.

‘No, there’s no one left,’ said Uncle Bart. ‘What did you expect? That I’d just carry on, sell all my feathers to the Germans? My feathers on every German whore’s hat? I’d rather starve.’

‘So who does the cleaning?’

‘No one. I’ve shut all the rooms. I’ve moved my bed into the office. I have everything to hand, stove, table, bed. What more does an old man need? Come on in.’

They sat down in the narrow little office on the first floor. Uncle Bart had grown a moustache and his breath was so vile you could smell it even when he wasn’t speaking, or maybe you smelled it constantly because he didn’t keep his mouth shut for more than a second.

‘So you’ve done a runner with a girlfriend, Henri. Doesn’t surprise me in the least. I know exactly what you’ll say: that you’ve had it up to here with Ria, she’s so much older than you … Didn’t I tell you? I always said you shouldn’t get married. Yes indeed, your old uncle here has done a fair bit of reading and studying in his day. Didn’t waste his time in the cinema, the way young folk do nowadays. The laws of natural selection can’t be broken with impunity! Darwin knew that back then. What am I saying? Schopenhauer! What’s the age difference between you and Ria again? Never had proper relations with her, I shouldn’t wonder! Don’t look at me as if you think your old Uncle Bart’s lost his mind! I know full well no other father-in-law would dream of saying such things to his philandering son-in-law! But that’s because most people don’t use their brains, because they refuse to think about nature! Me — I don’t care whether I’m your uncle or your father-in-law, all my life I’ve tried to observe the world with the unprejudiced eye of the naturalist! That has always been my goal!’

He leaned forward and gave Osewoudt two hard slaps on the knee.

‘She seems a nice enough girl to me,’ he went on. ‘Indeed, a nice girl!’

He shifted on his chair to get a better view of Elly.

They climbed the dark spiral staircase.

‘Is he an uncle of yours?’

‘I call him Uncle, don’t I?’

‘But is he your wife’s father?’

‘That too.’

‘He’s very broad-minded. Or is that because of the war? In England they say the war’s brought down the moral standards of the Dutch.’

‘He was like that before the war. He’s in a world of his own. If he had any idea of what’s going on he’d be the strictest moralist of them all. Falling standards has nothing to do with it in his case. In my case, it might.’

He pressed himself to her back and put his arms around her. His hands were on her breasts. She thrust the back of her head against his face. As one, they climbed the last two steps, then stood still for a moment in the dark, by the door to his old bedroom.

‘In my case there does seem to have been a loss of moral standards,’ Osewoudt repeated. ‘I would never have gone in for any of this in the old days.’

He felt her nipples harden between the tips of his fingers; he pushed her against the door of his room, which was not properly shut and so swung wide open. They stumbled and fell across the bed, on which lay two flat cardboard boxes that gave way under their weight with soft plopping noises and a smell of mould, dust, and stale herbs.

He pushed up her skirt, she lifted her legs and crossed them over his back. A loose floorboard thudded dully like a diesel engine, great green bicycle wheels rotated in the gloom. The girl’s mouth felt so much bigger than it actually was. Oh to be slurped up by her, followed by the thought: this girl has come all the way from England to get shagged by Resistance heroes.

He got off the bed, stuffing his handkerchief into his trouser pocket.

When he had switched the light on he saw brown cardboard boxes stacked against the wall, Elly on the bed with one hand pulling her skirt down and the other shielding her eyes from the light, and protruding from either side of her the burst cardboard boxes leaking hundreds of small, red birds’ feathers. They were still drifting to the floor.

Osewoudt shut the door. Elly lowered her arm, burst out laughing and then sat up. She swung her legs off the bed.

‘The things a girl will do to avoid suspicion!’

‘This war turns everything into a performance,’ Osewoudt said. ‘Come on, get up. This place is a mess.’

He pulled her to her feet, took the boxes off the bed, knocked them back into shape and added them to one of the stacks against the wall.

Elly swept up the scattered red feathers with her hands. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

‘You’re crazy, that’s what I think you are. Was that what you wanted to hear? Or something else? Forgive me, but I haven’t known you long enough to form any other opinion.’

She caught him by his jacket lapels.

‘Never mind. Time passes much faster these days. If you think you don’t know me well enough, just ask me questions — anything, the kind of thing you wouldn’t normally ask people until you’ve known them months, or years. What else do you want to know about me?’

‘That aunt you stayed with last night, is she married?’

Elly blinked a few times, as if this were a problem she needed a long time to solve, then looked away while soundlessly moving her lips and crumpling his lapels. Then she gave them a sharp tug.

‘Do you want to know the address?’

‘I just want to know if she’s married.’

‘Yes, she’s married, but her husband happened to be out of town.’

‘That makes no difference. Your aunt isn’t likely to keep it from her husband. Is she in the Salvation Army by any chance?’

‘Salvation Army? Salvation Army? What on earth? In the Salvation Army! Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘Nothing,’ Osewoudt said. ‘I’m only asking because of the photo. You know, the one you gave me. I met a Salvation Army woman a while ago, and she had exactly the same one. I can’t see why the people in England would give the same picture to every person making contact with me.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Clearly it is. The people who sent you over here are a bunch of incompetents. They give you useless fake identification and a bag full of silver guilders no one would be seen dead with in Holland these days. They didn’t even take that funny-looking pencil off you. Go on, open your bag. Show me what else you’ve got in there!’

She emptied the bag out on the bed. There were nineteen silver guilders, three zinc quarters, two zinc cents, six food coupons, five new hundred-guilder notes and ten new hundred-Reichsmark notes.

‘Where did you get the zinc coins?’

‘They’re change from the guilder I paid on the tram to get to the terminal at Voorburg. Otherwise I haven’t spent anything. I was at my aunt’s house until this afternoon.’

Osewoudt unfolded the identity card and held it up to the light.

‘You’re right, it’s a rotten fake.’

He folded the card again and pocketed it. He also took the silver guilders. He scrunched up the paper money and put it back in her bag. Then he reached for her coat.

‘You never know! There might be a label of some London shop sewn into it! That would be good. Save the Germans a whole lot of time if they started wondering where you came from.’

He examined the coat closely, the outside, the lining, the inside of the loop at the collar, but there was no label, number or name anywhere.

‘The stitching is different,’ he said. ‘It looks peculiar, un-Dutch somehow. Could be the kind of stitching they use for army uniforms.’