And I thought that just as Adriaan had remained the same, Gaby too must look as she did in the photograph, her beauty undiminished, as formidable now as she would have been ten years earlier. I was still standing before the photograph when Adriaan returned. He stood behind me and said that the children were now in Portugal with his wife. But perhaps you know this already, he said and then was silent. I turned to face him and then I was no longer thinking of Gaby or the children or the photograph. He pulled me toward him and I reached for him too. In the weeks that followed, some of the items belonging to Adriaan’s wife discreetly disappeared, not all at once but piece by piece. The photograph, however, remained.
4.
I looked across the restaurant table at Adriaan. The wine list was open before him, and he tilted it toward me inquiringly. I said that it had been a long day. Let’s order a bottle then, he said and signaled for the waiter. Do you know what you want? I nodded, I had only glanced at the menu but we had eaten at the restaurant several times before.
Once the waiter had taken our order Adriaan looked across the table at me again. How is Jana? Adriaan had not yet met Jana—they would meet for the first time that weekend, Jana had asked us to dinner precisely for this purpose. I had hesitated to introduce him to Jana, despite the fact that we had met through her, at least indirectly, at an opening at the Kunstmuseum not long after my arrival in The Hague. Jana had invited me to the event, and after introducing me to a group of people had subsequently been swept away, for obvious reasons she knew a great many more people there than I did.
I remember standing in that cluster of strangers, holding my drink and unable to follow the conversation, which began in English but then slipped into Dutch. At the time, I knew too little still of that language. I noticed Adriaan, because he seemed at ease and because he also said nothing as the conversation accelerated around us. I was silent for so long that I began to wonder if I could slip away, it was strange to remain at the edge of the group saying nothing. At that moment, Adriaan asked if I wanted another drink. I said yes, and then as he took the empty glass from my hand he paused and asked if I wished to join him.
I was relieved to leave that company. We walked through the gallery full of Mondrians and he said that he was very fond of the museum and its collection, it was one of his favorite places in the city. The openings were always strange to him, though, the galleries full of people talking to one another and ignoring the art altogether. Of course, he was doing the same thing right now, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. I laughed and then he introduced himself. As we continued walking through the gallery I said that I was new to the city and did not yet know the museum. He said that in that case I was lucky, there were many wonderful things to discover.
The encounter was not very much more than that, but after we had parted ways he returned and asked for my phone number. I remember that he made the request in a manner that was entirely natural and I also remember the jolt of pleasure I felt as I saw him coming back through the crowd. I gave him my number and later that evening he sent a message. He asked if we could meet again and I sent a single word reply: Yes. Such a response was not in character for me, not in its brevity and not in its unequivocal nature, it was as if I had been influenced by the directness of his own correspondence. That was, I thought, the prospect offered by a new relationship, the opportunity to be someone other than yourself.
When I told Jana about Adriaan she seemed almost perplexed, or perhaps it was some other feeling that crept upon her—in her expression I saw her image of me shift. She had not thought of me as the kind of woman who paired off with a man so quickly. It was only for a brief moment and then she was her usual self, she asked his name and then said she didn’t know him but looked forward to meeting him. I thought her voice was overly bright, I told her that I didn’t know that it would come to that. But it did come to that, over the course of the following weeks and then months and when Jana had suggested dinner it had been impossible to refuse.
Now, as I looked at Adriaan and he asked how Jana was, I was struck by how little thought or anxiety it seemed to cause him, the idea of meeting her. That again illustrated the differences in our character, such things were never so simple to me. My mind moved in circles, I had been apprehensive about bringing them together, but in his ease I was now reassured. She is fine, I said. I was there last night for dinner. It was odd, something happened in the street, there were police.
Was anybody hurt?
I don’t know.
At that moment the waiter arrived with the wine, and then with bottled water and a plate of amuse-bouches. Adriaan waited with his face fixed in a patient grimace, he no longer experienced these small attentions as anything other than a ritual to be endured. When at last the waiter had gone, Adriaan leaned forward and placed his hand on mine, as if to reassert our solitude. The gesture was reassuring rather than erotic, the touch of a friend or even a father, although it could turn on a dime, its intention mutable.
In any case, he said. Please don’t move to Jana’s neighborhood.
His voice was simultaneously concerned and a little playful, as if the words were a form of flirtation or invitation. I thought of his own home, the furnishings that had been chosen by his wife, the closed doors of the children’s bedrooms. The house had once belonged to his parents, and despite the fact that it had been extensively renovated, converted into two apartments because the place was too big for a single family, it remained the house he had spent the long years of his childhood in. That comfort was alien to me, we had moved so frequently when I was young that there was no one place I would think of as my childhood home, we were mostly arriving and then leaving, those years were all motion.
It was not the case with Adriaan, and I thought it was for this reason that he seemed so little troubled by the material remains of his marriage, all those things I would have removed at the moment of my desertion, out of pain and pique—the chair purchased by Gaby, the books on the shelves and the art they had selected together. He did not feel the complexity of those objects and their history, no matter where he was he never looked anything other than a man at home. I smiled and squeezed his hand in return. That tranquility was what had drawn me to him, but at the same time I understood a little better the determination with which Gaby had decorated the place and filled it with her belongings, the degree to which she was trying to occupy a foreign territory, in that action I was able to see beyond the failed marriage, and further into Adriaan’s past.
* * *
—
Later that night, after we had returned to his apartment and fallen asleep in what until recently had been his conjugal bed but was now indisputably ours, I awoke. It was the middle of the night and Adriaan was fast asleep, his long limbs bare on the linen beside me. I reached over and touched him but he did not move, his skin smooth and still. After a moment, I rose to my feet and left the bedroom, closing the door gently. The darkness of the hall pooled around me. I fumbled for the light switch and went into the kitchen. I poured a glass of water. Idly, I looked out the window at the street below. It was mostly empty, at the far end I could see the outlines of a man and a woman. They were leaning into each other as they walked, moving a little and then stopping, moving a little and then stopping. At one point, the woman turned her head and glanced around them. I leaned forward, pressing my face to the glass.
The couple linked hands and hurried down the street. Another second and they had disappeared. Their manner had turned furtive, as if they sensed that they were being observed, and I wondered if they had seen me watching from the window. Perhaps they were involved in something illicit, or something that newly appeared so to them—the way we understood our own behavior shifted according to whether or not we thought we were being seen. I moved away from the window and went into the living room. I found myself again staring at the photograph of Gaby and Adriaan and the children—the children, whom I had not yet met, and whom I
could not entirely envision. I wondered at the life they’d had here with their parents, how they had filled these rooms, what they missed now they were so far away, in another country altogether. I wondered if they knew their father was seeing another woman, and if so how they might feel: angry, wary, indifferent.
The idea of meeting them was difficult to grasp, I could not imagine how such an encounter might unfold, myself and these now teenaged children. There was a noise in the bedroom and I looked up from the photograph. I heard Adriaan get up from the bed. After a brief silence he called out. I’m here, I said, and I quickly moved away from the bookcase, I couldn’t sleep. He appeared in the doorway. My darling, come back to bed. I stared at him, he had never used that particular term of endearment before. His voice was affectionate and familiar and the thought occurred to me at once: he must have said these words to Gaby, that designation must have belonged to her, My darling, come back to bed. A shiver of apprehension moved through my body. I stepped closer to him, his eyes were hazy with sleep and for a moment I wasn’t certain that he was awake. It’s me, I almost said, and opened my mouth.
He put his hands on my shoulders, his touch clumsy, and I stiffened. What time is it? he asked. His voice was calm and impersonal, as though he were speaking to a stranger. It’s two, I said. He nodded as if digesting this information, his eyes almost closed again into slumber. I couldn’t sleep, I added, I didn’t want to wake you. He yawned and then suddenly leaned forward and kissed me on the neck and then mouth, his hands on my back and then slipping down. Come back to bed, he whispered again, his breath in my ear.
In a minute, I said and pulled away. What are you doing, he asked, his voice still slow and drowsy. Is something wrong? I shook my head. I just couldn’t sleep, I repeated, it’s nothing. I’ll be there in a moment. He nodded and kissed me again, as if we were a couple living together, as if this were already routine—she suffers from occasional insomnia, whereas I sleep like a log, I could sleep standing in a train carriage, it must be very irritating for her—perhaps that had been true of him and Gaby, perhaps he had said those very words in describing their marriage.
He retreated from the room. I watched him go and, once I was sure that he had returned to bed—the soft creak of the springs, the sound of a body shifting on the mattress—I looked up at the photograph of Gaby on the bookshelf. I realized that I had the wishful habit of thinking of her in the past tense, as if she and everything she represented were firmly contained, although I knew that was untrue, she is still with us. Even this life that was everywhere around me, the life she’d had within the walls of this apartment, was not necessarily confined to the past, it could jolt itself into the present with a mere phone call, a single airplane ticket, a moment of somnambulation.
I returned to the bedroom. Adriaan rolled over and faced me, he wasn’t asleep at all. He looked more alert than he had earlier, and when he looked at me I knew this time that he was seeing me and no one else. Is everything okay? he asked tentatively. I got into the bed. Everything is fine, I said, I had some water, I feel much better. And he nodded and pulled me close, his body warm. Good, he said. He already sounded as if sleep were approaching, he had been quickly reassured. Good night, I said, but I didn’t know if he heard, he was slipping away again, his arm across my chest and his head heavy upon my shoulder.
5.
The next morning we shared a breakfast of cheese and bread in the apartment, Adriaan made coffee using an expensive machine that generated a great deal of noise and then produced a coffee capped with mountains of milk foam. As he handed me the cup I asked if Gaby was responsible for the machine. Who else? he said and we both laughed.
He didn’t say anything about the previous night, and his manner was so perfectly natural that I wondered if it had happened at all. After we ate and dressed he drove me to the nearby bus stop. He kissed me and said that he would text me later. As I got out of the car, I saw the bus at the far end of the street. I leaned over and said goodbye again through the open window. He smiled and kissed me a second time. The bus was fast approaching, but I stood for a moment and watched until his car turned the corner.
It was drizzling again. I ran across the street and joined the other passengers, their faces stoic beneath the shadow of their upraised umbrellas, the scene like a painting. We boarded the bus in an orderly line, in the atomized fashion of commuters. There were no seats available but it didn’t matter, the Court was only a few stops from Adriaan’s apartment. As I disembarked, I saw that there were a handful of demonstrators gathered outside, supporters of a former West African president currently on trial, in what was one of the higher profile cases at the Court. As I entered the building, one of the demonstrators pressed a flyer into my hands with a small gesture of supplication.
Perhaps because of this polite but insistent demand, I began reading the piece of paper as I crossed the lobby. It was covered in English and French text, the tone of the prose strident: The arrest and trial of the former president was nothing short of illegal, the paper declared, the entire affair completely underhanded. Imagine the emotions of the former president, given no opportunity to contest the legality of the arrest and simply handed from one set of enemies to another! This was the true face of neocolonialism, this apparatus of Western imperialism, this Court. The case against the former president was paper thin, built by the U.S. State Department and the Elysée, a question of policy rather than justice. A coup d’état, executed by men in white gloves, for which the Court was simply the façade—
I stopped reading, folding the piece of paper and slipping it into my bag. The claims were not unfamiliar to me or to anyone who worked at the Court. The record was unfortunately blunt: the Court had primarily investigated and made arrests in African countries, even as crimes against humanity proliferated around the world. It was true that the record did not reflect the complexities of the Court’s jurisdiction, nor its limited means of enforcement. It was true that the record did not include the numerous preliminary investigations the Court had made into situations around the world, including Western powers. But a narrative becomes persuasive not through complexity but conviction, and as I entered the elevator and then the offices, I looked at my colleagues and wondered how they felt, the first time they had been handed such a flyer, what their reactions might have been.
The matter was quickly pushed from my mind when, almost as soon as I arrived at my desk, I was told that Bettina wished to speak to me. I hurried across the floor and knocked on the glass door of her office, she glanced up and motioned for me to enter. Bettina’s official title was Head of the Language Services Section, she had been the person to interview and then hire me. She oversaw a relatively large number of staff—ten interpreters, in addition to the translators who provided services to various departments of the Court. She was not unkind and might even have been essentially warm in character, it was impossible for me to know. She was not only my direct superior but was also under considerable pressure at all times, the expression on her face was often a grim rictus of apprehension, she was only waiting for things to go wrong.
Now, she asked how I was while continuing to frown at her computer screen. After a brief pause I said that I was well. She nodded and then without further ado said that what she was about to tell me was confidential, at least for the time being. She finally looked up at me, I was still standing in front of her desk. Please, sit down, she said apologetically, I realized as I met her gaze that she was more than usually harried.
She began again. The Court had succeeded in extraditing a well-known jihadist who stood accused of four counts of crimes against humanity and five counts of war crimes. The authorities surrendered him earlier that day, and he was being transported to a plane as we spoke. This is strictly confidential, she said again, even at the Court only a handful of individuals are aware of the arrest, the warrant was issued only a few days ago. I must ask you not to share this with your colleagues. The situation is vola
tile.
She stopped, as if to gather her thoughts. We expect that the accused will land in The Hague just after midnight, at which point he will be transferred to the Detention Center. I would like you to be on hand, in order to provide interpretive services. He will need to be read his rights, and of course there will be other issues, he may have questions or requests or practical matters to communicate. It’s very difficult to predict the mood of the accused once they are detained, often they are in a state of shock or denial.
We expect the accused will speak French, she continued. That is the official language of his country and we do not anticipate that there will be any issues of comprehension. She handed me a file. You shouldn’t need that tonight, she said apologetically. But if you have a moment to review the material that would be good. He will be tired, I hope you will not need to be there for too long. Of course, you will be reimbursed any travel expenses, take a taxi if need be. Her gaze shifted, I could detect a certain excitation in her manner, I saw that her hands were trembling very slightly.
Again, Bettina said and I looked up from her hands. Again, this is strictly confidential and is not to be mentioned to your colleagues, or indeed anyone. The Court is proceeding with caution, as you know it is a pivotal time for the organization. I nodded. I knew that an arrest meant that the Court would be full of observers, that the live feeds would be closely watched, each word spoken heard many more times than usual. You will need to be there at one in the morning, Bettina said. She looked down at her papers, and then said, I wonder what he will be like? She did not seem to require a response to this question, and I turned to go.
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