Willem Hermans - The Darkroom of Damocles

‘Who do you know in England?’

‘No one.’

‘Who were you taking orders from — SIS? SOE?’

‘I’m not familiar with those names. I didn’t have much to do with England. They just sent me agents from time to time, for me to help on their way.’

‘So who are you, then?’

‘I am Osewoudt. But—’

‘My word! Are you Osewoudt? I thought I’d seen your face somewhere!’

‘I’ve never seen you before.’

‘No. But I’ve seen you.’

‘Where was that?’

‘Where? Warnings about you were put out five months ago! Your picture’s been in all the underground news bulletins. Even the normal newspapers in the liberated provinces have carried reports about you — a highly dangerous individual, they said, who’d delivered hundreds of good patriots into the hands of the enemy. That’s you, isn’t it? The beardless youth? Damn it, it’s just come back to me! That voice of yours! So high-pitched! The dangerous youth with the high voice — for the past four months or so people in the liberated zone have been talking about nothing else.’

The hatch was slotted into place. The whine of the engines rose in volume. The plane juddered into motion. It bumped up and down like a wheelbarrow on a stony path, making the prisoners topple off their benches and fall in a heap on the floor, heads knocked together. Suddenly the shaking ceased. Osewoudt looked about him, his eyes stung, his gut rose to his throat.

One by one they crawled their way back to the benches over the steeply sloping floor.

A bare room, stinking of stale cigarette smoke, a large desk roughly in the middle, a smaller desk to one side, bars over the big window looking out on a high, tarred wall.

Outside, a drizzle was falling, so light as to be almost indistinguishable from mist.

Osewoudt had lost count of the times he had found himself in a bare room like this, sitting on a straight-backed chair facing a desk, with welts on his wrists from handcuffs removed five minutes earlier.

Behind the smaller desk sat a young man in a mouse-grey suit. His hair had been cut in a way that gave him a thick forelock, the secret of which is exclusive to English barbers. He was smoking a cigarette in a long amber holder, his eyelashes were remarkably long. He inserted a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter before him. Now and then he smiled at Osewoudt, then stared ahead again, blowing perfectly circular smoke rings.

The large desk was unoccupied. There was nothing on it, not even a blotting pad. It was an old desk of cheap wood, splintered and worn at the corners.

The floorboards were uncarpeted. Around the desks the wood was stained with ink and trampled cigarette ash, near the fireplace it was blackened by coal dust, with large scorch marks from burning coals that had spilled out of the grate.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor.

‘The boss did not arrive early today,’ said the young man in English. ‘He seldom does.’

Osewoudt understood with some difficulty what he was saying, but did not trust himself to reply.

Then the door opened and a tall man in a brown tweed suit entered. He went up to the desk, on which he deposited a blue folder.

‘I am Colonel Smears, by the way,’ he said in heavily accented Dutch. ‘I am very glad of this opportunity to have a little conversation with you.’ Turning to the young man at the typewriter, he switched to English, saying: ‘Well Percy, how is everything this beautiful morning?’

‘Quite well, sir, thank you.’

The tall man blew on his hands, then slowly seated himself. He was bald except for a fringe of very long hair at the back of his head, which he wore swept up and plastered over his pate. His face was a shade of bluish pink, his eyes bulged and the whites were so yellow as to make the eyes themselves appear yellow, while the skin on his fleshy nose was red and taut like a rubber balloon. But most striking of all was his moustache. It was shaped like a sideways hourglass, and was the colour of brass after centuries of weekly rubbing with fuller’s earth.

He propped his elbows on the desk and swayed his trunk from side to side a few times, left to right and right to left.

‘Well, well, a fine day for the time of year,’ he said, reverting to his anglicised form of Dutch. ‘But we’ll start with a drop of whisky, just a drop.’

He ducked under the desk and re-emerged with a bottle and a tooth glass.

‘Just one drop of whisky in the morning works wonders!’

He filled the glass almost to the brim, then drank it down, slurping audibly. After taking a deep breath he exhaled so vigorously through his moustache that a cloud of alcohol formed in front of his face. Then he lit a cigarette without offering one to Osewoudt. The index and middle fingers of his right hand were darkly stained with nicotine; he was in the habit of holding the cigarette with the lit end cupped in his hand, so that the palm too was stained.

‘We shan’t keep you here long,’ he said. ‘You must return to your liberated homeland as soon as possible. I just happen to be interested in a few outstanding questions, which you may be able to shed some light on. Does the name Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel sound familiar, by any chance?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very good. How did you track her down?’

‘I didn’t track her down. She telephoned me. She had been given my address in England.’

‘In England? Back then? I’m afraid you weren’t quite as well known here then as you are now,’ he said. Then, turning to his assistant, ‘Got that, Percy?’

‘Yes, sir.’

But Percy did not touch the typewriter keys.

‘Thank you, Percy. So she had your address. How did you find out she was a British agent?’

‘She told me herself. She needed a bed for the night. I found her one.’

‘So you did, so you did. A fine bed, too, if I may say so, because she is still fast asleep. Forgive me for saying so, but I find your sense of humour a touch cynical.’

‘What are you talking about? She was denounced by a senior official of the Dutch Railways. He went to the German police after she’d approached him for information. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, was there?’

‘Of course there wasn’t. You are giving me information I have already gathered from other sources. But there is a subtle difference in your version. The fact is, you were at the time already working for the Gestapo. You went to see Mr de Vos Clootwijk, you said you were a German agent; you threatened him and forced him to go to the authorities — not that it was necessary, really, as your people were already in the know. You don’t mind me making this slight correction to your story, do you?’

‘Haven’t you seen the reports of what I told Captain Slum? For the past three months I’ve been interrogated by a different person every week. But it’s as I said it was: I took Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel to an uncle of mine in Amsterdam. On my way home afterwards I heard that my mother and wife had been arrested by the Germans. So I didn’t go home, I ended up with some people in Leiden who provided me with fake papers, including the German police card. When Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel was arrested after that bloke de Vos Clootwijk turned her in, I paid him a visit in Utrecht to give him what for. First I pretended to be from the Gestapo, only to get him to tell me the whole story himself. I showed him the fake police card Meinarends had given me in Leiden. I had originally planned to lure him out of his house and shoot him in the dark. Then I thought he wasn’t important enough. Now I’m sorry I didn’t.’

‘There are some slight discrepancies between his statement and yours. He claims you paid him a visit before Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel got in touch with him. It was from you that he heard she would be coming and also that the Germans would be watching for his reaction to her visit.’