The Darkroom of Damocles

by Willem Frederik Hermans

  A diminutive freak, a toad reared upright.

  His nose was more of a button than a nose. And his eyes, even when not focussing, seemed forever narrowed, as if he could only leer, not look normally. His mouth recalled the kind of orifice through which the lowest forms of life ingest their food, not a mouth that could also laugh and talk. And then there were his round cheeks, and the pale silky hair he kept cropped short in the vain hope that it would stick up.

  ‘What are you doing here? Why are you looking in the mirror?’

  ‘Oh, is that you? Nothing.’

  Ria grasped his head, saying: ‘Got something in your eye then?’

  ‘No, just looking in the mirror.’

  She gave him a kiss and thrust her groin against him. He now knew that she was too ugly to attract any other man, and also that she would otherwise have dumped him long ago. He also knew that she wouldn’t get pregnant, because there was no way she could.

  There was not a single part of her body that was not hard and bony to the touch. Her hair was the colour of wrapping paper, her chin long and jutting, and her teeth were also too long. Her teeth were always on show, even when she wasn’t smiling, and she never smiled. They overlapped slightly, and rested permanently on her lower lip. Her teeth did not enhance her mouth, nor did they make it look fierce, they merely clamped it shut, rather like the clasp on a purse.

  ‘It’s definite now, isn’t it Papa, that they’re discharging Henri’s mother from the institution next month?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then Henri and I have something to tell you. We’re getting married!’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Henri and I have decided to get married, Papa. Henri wants to carry on his father’s business. We’ll take his mother to live with us over the shop.’

  ‘But Henri! Have you suddenly changed your mind about university?’

  Osewoudt said: ‘Suddenly? I gave up on the idea a long time ago. I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I’m eighteen years old and I want to stand on my own two feet. Who else will look after Mother?’

  His voice was still high-pitched, like a child’s.

  ‘But Henri …’

  Aunt Fie began to weep.

  ‘Ria!’ she sobbed. ‘You’re throwing your life away! You’re seven years older than him! And he’s your first cousin!’

  ‘Oh Mother, you can’t talk! You think I don’t know, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t know what?’

  ‘That I was already two by the time you and Father got married! Took the pram with you to the registry office and left it with the porter!’

  ‘You don’t understand a thing, Ria. Your father was an idealist!’

  ‘Listen, Ria,’ said Uncle Bart. ‘At heart I’ve always been against rules and regulations. And I still am!’

  ‘Oh Father, leave off. Who cares what anyone is at heart? Rules or no rules, you got married all the same!’

  ‘And I’m telling you it’s not going to happen!’

  Aunt Fie stood up and left the room.

  Before the month was out she died from a heart attack.

  Osewoudt and Ria were married on 25 August, 1939. Six days later the radio announced that Hitler had invaded Poland with aircraft and tanks.

  The tobacco shop was refurbished and painted at Uncle Bart’s expense. An electric connection was installed in the door frame to make a bell tinkle each time the door was opened or shut. The sales area was so small that the counter, which was by no means large, left scarcely any room to spare. All the woodwork was painted dark brown. The sliding doors to the back room were fitted with leaded panels of frosted glass. As a finishing touch, Osewoudt screwed a small plaque saying HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN ANYTHING? to the inside of the shop door, just above the handle.

  They ate and sat in the back room. Upstairs were three small rooms, one for Ria and him, one for his mother, and the third for a student lodger. Moorlag had started out as a cabinetmaker in Nieuw-Buinen, but had felt so drawn to studying theology that he had taken a room in Voorschoten, from where he could commute to the university. He didn’t want to live in Leiden itself because he hadn’t yet matriculated, which disqualified him from sitting exams. Taking lodgings in the university town at this point seemed to him sacrilegious. He was over thirty, studied day and night, but had failed to matriculate three times.

  Sometimes the three of them would go for an evening stroll, and once in a while Moorlag came along too. They went up the narrow high street, greeting the other shopkeepers left and right, stepping out of the way of the blue tram when it passed. When they reached the north end they sometimes went as far as the silver factory, but never further.

  ‘Mother, isn’t it rather tiring for you?’

  ‘What gave you that idea, my boy? I’m not an old woman.’

  ‘Of course not, but we’re all ready for bed,’ Moorlag would say.

  Then she would give in.

  Moorlag had a soothing influence on her. She sometimes got up in the middle of the night to wander around the house wrapped in a sheet, her face covered by a mask cut from an old newspaper. In a tone as if she were doing the dusting she would say: ‘There it is again, I’ll just chase it away.’

  On such occasions Moorlag was able to get her back to bed again with a few words.

  What was she chasing away? Osewoudt didn’t ask. He had never discovered how she had killed his father. She was an ordinary fifty-year-old woman with a girlish face covered in wrinkles and a mouth so thin it looked like just another wrinkle. She talked a lot about his father, and always quite matter-of-factly.

  ‘Then your father would say: you only get to kiss the queen if you use stamps costing five cents and over. Because the queen isn’t on the cheaper ones, he said. A kiss on the right, he said, because the left cheek’s on the front of the stamp. Always one for a laugh, your father.’

  Her chortling reminded him of the squeak of chamois leather on a wet windowpane.

  On Sundays he sometimes took Ria and his mother to Ypenburg airfield. In the evenings they would listen to the radio. No one had much to say. They didn’t speak during meals. Shifting around on his chair, Osewoudt lifted the food to his mouth. His mind was focussed on strange visions: across the room there were railway tracks on which he made long trains thunder by. He imagined aeroplanes with roaring engines waiting outside the shop, or enormous field guns with jolting barrels firing non-stop.

  Osewoudt turned nineteen, and had the feeling that everything that needed doing had already been done. All the obstacles that would normally have stood in his way (other people spend a lifetime overcoming them) had already come down: his father, his aunt, both dead. Ria was a woman with whom he had done everything he could think of, including getting married.

  He was turned down for military service: he was half a centimetre too short.

  Once a week he spent an evening at his judo club in The Hague and another on drill practice with the Home Guard. He learned how to load an old rifle, he learned to drive a car, and on one occasion he got to fire an old revolver.

  ‘Henri! Who can be phoning us in the middle of the night?’

  The alarm clock said quarter past four. Outside it was already light. There was plenty of birdsong but also the drone of aircraft – several of them.

  Now he heard the phone ringing, too.

  ‘How should I know?’

  Osewoudt got out of bed and went downstairs. As he stepped into the shop he saw a big lorry full of soldiers drive past. The phone rang again.

  ‘Osewoudt tobacconists.’

  ‘Osewoudt, this is your Home Guard commander speaking! Get your uniform on and come to the town hall as quick as you can! It’s war! The Germans have attacked, they’re dropping parachutes all over the place. Come at once!’

  From the bottom of the stairs he shouted: ‘Ria! The Germans have attacked! They want me at the town hall!’

  He went to the back room and took his uniform from the cupboard. The uniform was dark green, like
a forestry man’s. A German helmet went with it, army surplus from the Great War.

  Walking down the street, he hoped the Germans had adopted a new style of helmet in the interim. If they hadn’t, who knows what might happen to him?

  Three big, black aeroplanes appeared, flying low. Not far off he could hear the pounding of field guns. There were a lot of people about, talking and pointing at the sky.

  Until late afternoon he stood guard at the post office, where crowds were gathering to draw out their savings. From time to time the Germans left big white mushrooms behind in the blue, cloudless sky. The people pointed. Dutch soldiers on motorcycles came past on their way to investigate. The blue trams continued to run as usual. All Osewoudt was allowed to do was stand guard with an old rifle, on the sidelines as usual. In the blazing sunshine, to the accompaniment of birdsong, he was obliged to visualise the monstrous guns for himself. No one had any intention of attacking the post office.

  Afterwards, when he got home, he gummed strips of brown paper crosswise over the shop window.

  An army lorry pulled up outside. The soldiers jumped down and came into the shop. Osewoudt gave them everything they asked for and refused to take any money.

  ‘There’s no need for you to do that!’ said a lieutenant.

  ‘Why not? Just doing my bit. What would you like for yourself? Have these cigars.’

  The lieutenant looked at the price and gave Osewoudt one guilder. Then he said: ‘You develop and print photographs, don’t you?’

  He pointed to the cardboard sign hanging on the shop door. The sign had several snapshots pasted to it, and announced that rolls of film left in the letter box would be developed, printed, and ready for collection in forty-eight hours.

  The lieutenant took a roll of film from his pocket.

  ‘Just leave it to me,’ said Osewoudt. ‘I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise the pictures will be ready the day after tomorrow. What’s the name?’

  ‘Dorbeck. With ck.’

  Osewoudt wrote ‘Dorbeck’ on the film, with ck.

  ‘My name is Osewoudt, with dt,’ he said, putting the roll in the drawer under the counter.

  ‘Then our names have something in common.’

  The officer shook hands with Osewoudt, looking him straight in the eye. Osewoudt noted that the man’s eyes were exactly level with his. They were grey-green eyes, and seemed surprised at what they saw. He had never felt anyone’s eyes on him in this way, except when he looked at himself in the mirror.

  ‘You’re the same height as me,’ Osewoudt said, ‘and I was turned down for military service.’

  ‘So was I, almost. But I stretched myself.’

  Dorbeck laughed. His white teeth were so even and close-set they looked like two transverse blades of ivory. His hair was black, and a shadow of stubble tinged his jawline with blue. This made his face look even paler, although there were spots of red on his cheekbones. He had a voice like a bronze bell.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘They don’t need to be ready the day after tomorrow, as I shan’t be back by then. But I’ll be back, you can be sure of that.’ He walked out of the shop and jumped into his lorry.

  Osewoudt followed him with his eyes. When he turned round he saw Ria standing between the sliding doors.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Oh, nobody in particular.’

  ‘He looked exactly like you, the way a photo negative looks like the positive.’

  ‘He was passed for military service and I wasn’t.’

  ‘No wonder. You look as much like him as a pudding that hasn’t set properly looks like a … let’s see … like a pudding that has set properly. What a scream! Did you let them all go off without paying?’

  ‘What business is that of yours? You take money from the till without asking.’

  ‘Yes, I do! It’s my father’s money! I can do what I like with it! Who do you think you are? What would you and your mother live on if you hadn’t married me?’

  The Germans arrived in the backs of dusty lorries. The blue tram service had to stop running. The Germans wore the same steel helmets as in the Great War. They confiscated the Dutch Home Guard’s helmets, as well as their uniforms, pistols and old rifles.

  Soon the blue tram was running to its normal schedule again. Everything returned to normal, only things were somewhat busier for a while.

  Two days later a Dutch army officer on a motorcycle stopped in front of Osewoudt’s shop. When he dismounted, Osewoudt saw it was Dorbeck.

  Dorbeck dropped the motorcycle halfway across the pavement and went into the shop.

  ‘Sorry, your film isn’t ready yet,’ said Osewoudt. ‘I don’t do the work myself, it’s done by somebody in The Hague, but he hasn’t called – because of the war, I expect.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  Dorbeck sat with one thigh propped on the counter.

  ‘Is there anyone back there?’ he asked, glancing at the sliding doors.

  ‘No, my mother’s in bed and my wife is out.’

  ‘Good. I thought of you because you’re the same height as me. I need you to lend me a suit. I want to get rid of this uniform. I can’t go and give myself up as a prisoner of war. I know Holland has capitulated, but that doesn’t mean to say I have. I’ll capitulate in my own good time.’

  Osewoudt went to the room at the back where the wardrobe stood. Dorbeck followed him, already undoing the buttons of his tunic.

  ‘There was some trouble. What happened was this: I’m on my way to Rotterdam. There’s a bunch of sodding German paratroopers blocking the road. Shots are fired, vehicle kaput, my whole division incapacitated. The Germans make me hand over my pistol and take me with them. But then the bombs start falling and I escape. I flag down one of our trucks and get to Rotterdam. I walk down a street, don’t hear any more bombs, but what do I see? One house after another bursting into flames, just like that. I ask myself how this can be. Great crowds everywhere, people pushing prams loaded with bedding, people with pushcarts and bicycles. Everyone running and shouting. I spot two men in brown overalls. I know right off what their game is, and I stop them. Krauts, of course! They give me a long spiel. Say they’re paratroopers, that they were captured two days ago by our marines and taken to an ordinary prison, for want of a better place, where they were stripped of their uniforms and made to wear those brown overalls instead. When the bombing started the prison governor opened the gates, which is how they came to be walking the streets again.

  ‘Do you know what I told them? I said: what do you take me for? For an idiot who never reads the papers? The pair of you were smuggled into the country on some freighter before the invasion began! You’re saboteurs! You can start saying your prayers if you’re that way inclined, because you’re about to meet your Maker!

  ‘I happen to see three of our soldiers carrying rifles, and I get them to finish off those two jokers pronto. If I’d had my service pistol I’d have done it myself!’

  The wardrobe was still open. Dorbeck reached inside for a pair of shoes. His boots thudded to the floor. He knotted one of Osewoudt’s ties around his neck and went back into the shop.

  ‘Hey!’ Osewoudt called after him. ‘Don’t you want an overcoat? It gets cold on a motorbike.’

  ‘No need, and thanks a lot. Hide the uniform. I’ll send your suit back as soon as I can.’

  Dorbeck righted his motorcycle and started the engine.

  ‘Where did you get that motorbike?’

  ‘Commandeered it!’

  He laughed, the engine roared. As he rode off he threw Osewoudt a look over his shoulder.

  Osewoudt gathered up the uniform and the boots and took them down to the cellar, where he hid them beneath a pile of old packing material.

  Evert Turlings returned from the prison camp with a deep suntan.

  ‘Fine chaps, those Germans, Osewoudt! Another three months and they’ll have beaten England too! It’s the strongest army in the world! Hitler’s a genius! Who’d have thought he�
�d let all the POWs go?’

  The chemist’s son helped himself to a packet of cigarettes without asking, and tore it open.

  ‘I’m completely converted,’ he said. ‘They’ve taught us a lesson and we’d better take it to heart! We’ve seen what a rotten democracy is worth. The whole lot packing off to London, leaving the fighting army in the lurch. It was criminal to make us fight the Germans without weapons, without aircraft, without anything. And then running away the moment things go wrong! I’ve got the message. It’s the dawn of a new age, all the little states will have to go. We’re heading for a united Europe. A Europe led by Germany, of course. The Germans have shown what they’re worth, they’re entitled to take the lead. The more we Dutch get together with the Germans, the better it’ll be. Hitler’s good-hearted. The Germanic brother folk, that’s what he calls us. He praised the Dutch rank and file for their bravery, he’s released the POWs. There’s work to be done, he said, and he’s right.’

  ‘I’ve no head for politics,’ said Osewoudt.

  ‘You’re not the only one here in Holland. Did you read about that officer?’

  ‘What officer?’

  ‘In the paper last night. While Rotterdam was being bombed, a Dutch army officer ordered two innocent German POWs to be shot in the street, just like that. The very idea! Hitler’s too good-hearted, I’m telling you! That officer’s got a lot coming to him when they catch him. Shooting harmless POWs! Only a Dutchman would do that. Turns tail on the battlefield at the first shot, but doesn’t think twice about shooting defenceless POWs. He’d better give himself up as soon as possible. Otherwise the whole Dutch nation will be made to pay.’

  ‘Perhaps we’re not a very manly nation,’ Osewoudt said, lowering his eyes.

  Turlings slipped the cigarettes into his pocket and reached for the handle of the shop door.

  ‘I’ll be back! Bring you a couple of interesting articles from Volk en Vaderland, good plain-speaking stuff. It’s a month now since the capitulation, and it’s time to take a stand. Stop and think – that’s the watchword these days!’