Willem Hermans - The Darkroom of Damocles

‘You’re just saying that to get rid of me. What do you expect? That camera was swapped for cigarettes with some Canadian soldier ages ago. It’ll never turn up. And anyway, if it did turn up the film would never still be in it.’

Selderhorst stood up, groaning with fatigue. He took a sheet of paper and picked up a pencil from his desk.

‘What did that Leica look like?’

‘I can even remember the exact serial number,’ Osewoudt said. ‘It was a Leica IIIa, number 256789, and the lens was a Summar 222456.’

Selderhorst wrote down the numbers and then held the paper under Osewoudt’s nose.

‘That right?’

From the daily newspaper Het Vrije Vaderland , 18 October, 1945:

HERO OR TRAITOR? (from our special correspondent)

Of all the insalubrious episodes that have inevitably come to light during the post-war administration of justice, the mysterious case of tobacconist O. is by no means the least significant. We have the impression that the investigation, in so far as it has been effectively conducted at all, is sorely lacking in logical reasoning.

O. took part in various underground missions during the German occupation. Keen observers did not fail to notice that sooner or later everyone who had dealings with O. fell into German hands, while O. himself always managed to escape in miraculous fashion. Indeed, shortly after his arrival in the liberated provinces of our country in April 1945, he was taken into custody by the Allies on suspicion of high treason.

O., for his part, denies everything, claiming that a man named Dorbeck was behind it all. This Dorbeck has never been found, despite repeated efforts to trace him. According to O., Dorbeck is a Dutch officer working for the British, and by coincidence they resemble each other like two peas. No lack of coincidences in this affair! A third mysterious figure has since surfaced: one Egbert Jagtman, likewise a Dutch officer and likewise bearing a striking resemblance to the apparently chameleonic O. Because a photograph published in the press (of O.? of Dorbeck?) was recognised by none other than Jagtman’s dentist! Prior to that, O. had already claimed to have sent secret documents to the said Jagtman’s address, which he alleged had been passed to him by Dorbeck.

Whatever the case, it is now generally accepted that Jagtman himself is no longer alive and that a body found in a German mass grave is indeed Jagtman’s. Is it fair to infer from this that the third pea in the pod, so to speak, has been eliminated? Possibly.

There is more.

According to O., Dorbeck asked him to develop some photographs, which he, after having heard nothing from Dorbeck for four years, posted to him. Only four days after doing this, O. was contacted by a young lady by the name of Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel, who called herself Sprenkelbach Meijer. She identified herself with one of the pictures O. had put in the post, claiming that it had been given to her in England. But the photo had still been in O.’s possession three days earlier. She also claimed to have been put ashore the previous night at Scheveningen, where she had gone to stay with an aunt. But by June 1944 Scheveningen had already been evacuated by the Germans, and the beach was heavily guarded in anticipation of the Allied invasion. Moreover, at that time communications between England and occupied Dutch territory were hardly good enough for a photo to be able to travel there and back in two days. A mystery … Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel was in effect a British agent, but how she had obtained the picture O. could not explain. Did the man called Dorbeck exist after all? Was it he who played it into Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel’s hands (in Holland, presumably), instructing her to tell O. that it came from England? Theories abound, but what is the truth? Not long after this, Elly B. S. was caught by the Gestapo, and later shot. To make matters worse, it transpired after the war that the Germans possessed multiple copies of the relevant photographs …

Whatever the case, the possibility of Dorbeck’s existence should not, in our opinion, be ruled out.

But then where is he?

The answer to that question appears not to be forthcoming from the authorities. We, for our part, believe it is incumbent upon us to take the matter in hand.

Women

Numerous women are implicated in the present affair. One is O.’s girlfriend, named Mirjam Zettenbaum, who went into hiding during the war as Marianne Sondaar. She is now residing in Palestine and efforts to contact her appear to have been unsuccessful. Why is this? Why has she not come forward to clear her former lover’s name?

The judiciary have shown remarkably little concern about this situation, possibly with good cause, as we shall see.

Mirjam Zettenbaum owes her life to the treachery of O.

She was apprehended by the Germans in Leiden along with O. Being Jewish, she was promptly imprisoned in the Westerbork concentration camp, and her fate in a German Vernichtungslager would have been sealed had O. not saved her.

O. saved her life — this is, by all accounts, not in dispute. For the Germans had come to the conclusion, on the basis either of O.’s statements or their own findings, that the arrest of O. had not dug out the root of the plot. They believed (or knew???) that although O. was behind bars there was still someone at large who matched O.’s description! So they said to O.: tell us who this person is, and we will ensure that your girlfriend Marianne comes to no harm. Thus they persuaded O. to betray Dorbeck.

There can be no doubt about this, in our opinion. O. led the Germans to the address where Dorbeck was staying. The house concerned was rented by a student of theology named Moorlag, an old acquaintance of O.’s: he had previously been a lodger with the O. family at Voorschoten. No one in the world knew O. better than this Moorlag, but he too is dead. His body was found in the street a few days before the liberation, round the corner from where he lived in Amsterdam … Coincidence? By no means! Moorlag is dead, and Dorbeck certainly existed, but he too is dead ! Both betrayed by O.

Hidden truths

That the judiciary has failed to make these simple deductions may seem strange, but it is well to bear in mind the following. No prisoner ever tells the whole truth during interrogation. Nor will those conducting the inquiry, in their turn, reveal all they know, in the hope of drawing out the suspect. Thus O. lied to the Germans, the Germans lied to him, and afterwards O. did not tell the whole truth to the British or the Dutch, while the Germans, of course, do nothing but lie when interrogated by their former enemies. They have no interest in helping the Dutch authorities, or in bringing to light the historical truth, their sole commitment being to save their own hides. Consequently we recommend taking no statement whatsoever at face value, but rather bringing reason and logic to bear in fitting together the pieces of this puzzle.

Love

The Germans kept their promise to O.: his girlfriend was not sent to Germany. They expedited O. himself, disguised as a female nurse, to the liberated south. He was driven there by a uniformed German officer in a small car: a DKW. This car was later found in Dordrecht containing the body of the officer, who had been stabbed to death by O.

These facts were conveyed to us by the priest of the church of St Ignatius at Dordrecht, with whom O., still disguised as a nurse, had sought refuge. What better way would there be for O. to remove all suspicion from the minds of the Allies than by killing the German officer?

However, this is not all. On his journey southwards O. paid a visit to his tobacco shop in Voorschoten, where his legal wife Maria Nauta, his first cousin and seven years his senior, was still living. This woman had a relationship with a Nazi sympathiser named Turlings, which was common knowledge in the locality. On the day of O.’s journey, his wife was found dead in her shop. She had been stabbed. Local residents reported having seen a German officer and a nurse leaving the scene in a car prior to the discovery of the body.