Willem Hermans - The Darkroom of Damocles

‘I say, Filip, do you know what I think?’

He went over to the divan and sat beside her.

‘What do you think?’

‘You’re a nice boy, but it’s as clear as daylight! She’s gone to the nephew, of course, that nephew of Nauta’s, the nephew-cum-son-in-law! She must have known where he was!’

Now Osewoudt burst out laughing, thinking: mustn’t laugh, mustn’t laugh, not now, and he tried to picture Elly standing somewhere with her hands up, surrounded by German policemen. But he couldn’t stifle his laughter. Between gasps he managed to say: ‘What if she was stopped on the way without an ID card?’

‘Oh, come on, I’m sure she didn’t have far to go. The nephew must have rented a room nearby! Where else could she have gone? Plenty of rooms to let around there anyway. She’ll get herself another ID card, I’m sure.’

Marianne fumbled behind her back for her bag and slid it forwards. She took out Elly’s identity card. She held it at arm’s length, studying the photo.

‘Not very pretty, is she?’

‘No?’ Osewoudt wanted to take the card from her, but Marianne clung on to it. ‘I didn’t look at her properly,’ he said. Marianne’s thumb and his thumb in parallel. Elly’s portrait in between.

‘She looks rather dim.’

‘Yes, and so puffy.’

‘No sense of humour in those eyes, not a flicker.’

‘Not like yours.’

Marianne raised her eyebrows.

‘You flatter me. I only hope you’re right.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘What would I do without a sense of humour? Seriously, Filip, sometimes I’m afraid I’ll lose it.’

‘Oh, come on,’ he said, his head almost resting on her shoulder. ‘We mustn’t lose our sense of humour!’

He let go of Elly’s identity card and Marianne placed it on the divan beside her. He kissed her on the temple, nuzzled the hair above her ear. ‘We’ve got to hang on to our sense of humour,’ said Osewoudt. ‘The best way of doing that is: make sure you don’t know too much about people.’

‘You’re absolutely right. There’s not that much you can discover about other people anyway.’

She let him hold her hand.

‘Especially at a time like this,’ he said. ‘Knowing a lot about someone always backfires. The best thing would be for everyone to change their names.’

‘Oh, Filip, I wouldn’t want you to change your name. I think Filip’s a nice name. Filip …’

He was now leaning his full weight against her and she was slowly yielding. Then he asked: ‘I hope my name isn’t the only thing you like about me.’

She began to laugh, her lips quivering and drawing away from her delicious teeth, and yet there was a touch of disdain in her laughter, as if she wanted to say: how silly to be carrying on like this. Or maybe: men are always after the same thing. With his head he pressed her head into the cushions, his lips on her lips, and his tongue found the warm softness of her mouth. His hand slid under her blouse and he felt her ribs beneath a thin vest. Averting her face, she said: ‘I suppose I ought to say you’re a bit fast, but who knows what tomorrow will bring.’

He slid his hand upwards and cupped her breast.

‘Time runs so fast we have to be fast to keep up,’ he said.

He swung his legs off the divan and sat up. He could feel his eyes narrowing, his ears ringing.

‘I want you,’ he said, taking her hand and pressing it to his crotch without quite knowing what he was doing.

Marianne was still smiling, but her smile had grown sad. Yet she said: ‘You never know, maybe you can get what you want.’

In his mind’s eye he pictured himself as a towering figure, demon and hero, or at least as a fairy-tale prince.

He unbuttoned her blouse and her skirt. She let him take off all her clothes, but he kept his on. He lay on top of her and thought: she is naked but I’ve still got my armour on. What would I do without my armour? He lifted his head to look at her face. Her eyes were hooded with arousal, but her lips were parted in a smile that now seemed pitying. Not wanting to see this, he smothered her smile with his mouth and thrust his tongue between her teeth. It was as if he held her body taut between two hooks, or between two poles of a battery, and he sent a high voltage current through her frame, making her jerk convulsively and moan as though under torture.

She lay with her back to him. He sat hunched on the divan, adjusting his clothes. Elly’s identity card had fallen to the floor. He picked it up and slipped it in his pocket.

Then he leaned over Marianne and planted a kiss on the small of her back.

‘You have the loveliest bottom.’

She rolled over towards him.

‘Do I? Go on, tell me all the other things you like about me.’

He gazed at her from head to toe. Abruptly, his eyes widened and he laughed.

‘Hey! So the colour of your hair isn’t natural either! I had no idea you’d bleached it.’

‘No?’

‘Didn’t you think black hair suited you?’

He laid one hand on the hair that was still natural. With the other he ran his fingers through the blonde hair on her head.

‘Black hair would look very good on you, too. Very good. Good enough to eat.’ He kissed the dark hair, nibbled it and said: ‘I’ll graze it all off if you’re not careful.’

‘I didn’t bleach my hair because I didn’t like the colour.’

‘No? Then why?’

‘Do you mean to say you don’t know? Don’t think you can fool me!’

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at. And I don’t want to know either. I thought we’d agreed that it’s best not to know too much about people.’

‘Oh how discreet we are all of a sudden! Go on, take a good look at me, Filip, take a good look and tell me you can’t see why I bleached my hair.’

‘I can’t look at you for so long in cold blood, it gets me too excited.’

But she pushed his head away, drew herself up and remained sitting upright.

‘Do you really mean there’s nothing about me that makes you wonder?’

‘Of course I do! That’s no reason to get cross now, is it?’

She began to laugh, looked down at her body and then at him, but although she was still laughing her eyes were so sad that she seemed to have long since died, and she murmured: ‘Can you really not tell that I’m Jewish? Had it not occurred to you?’

Her voice grew louder and very matter-of-fact.

‘My father, my mother and my two brothers were rounded up by the Germans. I was already a lodger here at the time, and now I’m in hiding. Are you telling me you really didn’t know? Be honest, didn’t you guess ages ago?’

Osewoudt pulled a face.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘the worst is over.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Any day now the Americans will force a breakthrough in Normandy, and then there’ll be no stopping them.’

‘Do you think so? It’s already a fortnight since they landed, with all that hoo-hah about the Germans being taken completely by surprise and the Atlantic Wall being a fiction and so on and so forth. And where has that got us?’

‘You shouldn’t be so pessimistic. A week’s not a long time.’

At five past ten on a Saturday morning a figure in a pale beige gabardine coat emerged from Amsterdam Central Station. He wore glasses. He looked about him and noted that the trees were already tinged with yellow. He looked up at the clear sky. The sun shone, a fine day after all. These damn glasses keep getting dirty, he thought, took the glasses off and fumbled under his coat to extract his handkerchief, but thought better of it and put them on again without cleaning them. The glasses had a heavy black frame.

The man wore a dark green hat. In his inside pocket he carried identification in the name of Filip van Druten, occupation: detective; hair colour: black. The hair visible under the green hat was black.