Osewoudt said: ‘All right, all right.’ He undid the last button himself and laid the coat over the back of a chair.
‘How did you introduce yourself?’
‘I said what you told me to say. I said: Henri sends his regards. I’ve brought an envelope for Elly. Wasn’t that what you meant? That was what you told me to say, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s fine. And did you get to see Elly?’
‘No, she’d left a few days earlier, Mr Nauta said. He explained what happened. She arrived there on the Monday evening with a nephew of his, and the nephew was married to his daughter! Can you imagine? He said his daughter’s much older than the nephew; I had the idea he wasn’t very fond of the daughter, he thought she was mean and could imagine why his nephew would go off with someone else.’
‘What was the nephew called?’
‘He didn’t say. What’s it to you anyway?’
‘Oh, nothing. Carry on. The nephew brought the girl to his house, then what?’
‘I wish you’d sit down. You’re not in a hurry, are you? No one ever comes to visit me here.’
Osewoudt sat down. Marianne dropped on to the divan. She folded her legs beneath her and rested her hand on them. He saw that she was wearing smart stockings; he took another good look at her, thinking she must have dressed up for him. Cautiously, he sniffed her perfume. Cuir de Russie.
‘So Mr Nauta didn’t know when Elly would be back, then?’
‘No. It went like this. He said: I’m not prejudiced, I didn’t mind putting them up for the night. I wouldn’t have known where else to send them anyway. It was already close to eleven when they arrived. But I didn’t feel like having them for weeks on end, he said. He said it wouldn’t have been fair on his daughter.
‘The nephew left fairly early the next morning. The girl stayed. She didn’t go out all day. By eleven that night the nephew still hadn’t come back. The girl then knocked on Nauta’s door and asked if his nephew, or rather his son-in-law – I don’t know how she referred to him – had said anything in particular. When he’d be back, for instance.
‘At that point Mr Nauta apparently began to lose his temper. He said that he wasn’t prejudiced, but that there were limits. The man wasn’t prejudiced, he must have told me that a hundred times! Right then, no prejudices, but there were limits! The poor girl took the hint and left the next morning.’
‘He sent her packing without an ID card?’
‘Yes, I think so. She probably hadn’t mentioned that she didn’t have one. Whatever. What are you getting worked up about?’
‘Wouldn’t you be worked up if you’d gone to a lot of trouble to get a good ID card for someone and they went off without it, just like that?’
‘It’s annoying, of course.’
‘What did you do with the ID card? Did you give it to him anyway?’
‘No, I’m not that stupid. Nor did I tell him about the Elly girl not having an ID card. Because people are bad and you don’t find out just how bad until you’re living under German occupation, like now. Don’t you agree, Filip? I thought if I told that man she had no ID he might phone the police! Whether he’s prejudiced or not! Or he’ll let it slip in conversation with his daughter, and then the daughter …’
Osewoudt drew a deep breath and said: ‘It was very sensible of you not to mention that. Did you pass him the other message, about Ria and her mother-in-law having been arrested, I mean?’
‘No, you said I was only to tell him that if there was something strange going on with his telephone. So there was no need to.’
‘It was more than just a password,’ Osewoudt muttered.
‘What did you say?’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Oh yes you did. Did I do something wrong? But I’m positive I said exactly what you told me to say! I didn’t make any mistakes! I’m very careful about things like that.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘But of course I believe you.’
‘I say, Filip … did you ever meet this Elly girl, by any chance?’
‘Never set eyes on her. Why do you ask?’
Marianne turned her hand briefly palm upwards, then laid it on her leg again: ‘If you knew her you might be able to track her down. Mightn’t you?’
Osewoudt got up from his chair. He looked at the three Japanese cups ranged on a sideboard of brown oak, he looked at the picture on the wall above: Whistler’s Portrait of the Painter’s Mother, complete with a prose poem beneath. Well, well, Uncle Bart, so you threw her out, he thought. So much for not being prejudiced.
‘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 h
is 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.
This was how Osewoudt pictured himself as he took the familiar route to his Uncle Bart’s house.
Ten minutes later he called from the bottom of the stairs: ‘It’s me, Henri!’
He removed his glasses on the way up, but kept his hat on as he entered Uncle Bart’s small room.
Uncle Bart crossed to the stove, the coffee pot in one hand, a cup in the other.
‘I thought it was some gent with glasses, but it’s you.’
‘A gent with glasses? You must be getting awfully old! You should have your own glasses checked some time.’
Uncle Bart set down his cup of coffee on his desk.
‘I was about to pour you a cup, too, but if you carry on snapping at me like that I may change my mind.’
Uncle Bart was already on his way to the wall cupboard for another cup. The hat felt heavy on Osewoudt’s head. He didn’t dare take it off, nor did he dare sit down. If I sit down he’ll only notice the hat and the fact that I’m wearing it indoors.
He remained standing, but started unbuttoning his coat.
‘I’m in a terrible rush, Uncle, I must be off again straightaway. It’s just that I have some really bad news to tell you.’
Uncle Bart turned to face him. He held the cup of coffee in his hand.
‘Why don’t you sit down? Keeping something under that hat of yours, are you? Well I never, he’s got a new hat!’
He stared at Osewoudt and Osewoudt noted that his uncle was poorly shaven, as usual, and he thought: I didn’t realise Uncle Bart was so old. He said: ‘Sorry about keeping my hat on. But I’ve come to tell you that Ria and Mother have been arrested by the Germans.’
‘What did you say? Why would they do that?’
Osewoudt shrugged. Everything here smelled of lonely old man. The book lying open on the desk was by Hegel; beside the book lay a stub of aniline pencil used for making notes in the margins, which were veined with multicoloured scribbles: red, black and blue, resembling the cross section of a tumour. That’s forty years he’s been reading the same book, forty years he’s been writing in the margins.
‘Go on, boy, answer me. Why were they arrested?’
‘Why? They didn’t tell me! I wasn’t there! If I’d been there, I wouldn’t be here to tell you! Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘But surely you could have gone to the police station to find out what was going on?’
‘Me go to the station? Me? What do you think! They’d have locked me up immediately. I can go to the police, but I won’t come back! That’s the way it is these days, understand?’
‘There’s no need to shout! You’re behaving as if it’s my fault! It wasn’t me that ran off with some floosie, remember!’
Osewoudt went up to him and grabbed his arm.
‘Come now, Uncle Bart, I didn’t run off with anyone! You don’t get it. Is Elly still here?’
‘Elly? You have the cheek to ask me where Elly is? Your wife and mother arrested and all you want to know is where that girl is? Come all the way here to wind me up, have you, acting as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth? Good grief, has everybody run mad? Eh? Henri? What have I done to deserve this?’
‘You don’t get it, Uncle. But I really need to know where Elly is. Now, this minute.’
‘All right then! I’ll tell you! She went chasing after you the next day. Just as well, too, that she left when she did, becaus
e you know me: I’m not prejudiced, never have been, but there are limits!’
‘She didn’t come after me at all – I haven’t seen her since, I swear. And it’s not true that I ran off with her, as you put it.’
‘Are you saying you’re not fed up with Ria? That you came here with a girl you didn’t even fancy?’
‘Uncle, listen to me, please. If it had been like that do you think I’d have come to you of all people for a place to stay?’
‘Stop arguing with me,’ said Uncle Bart. Clutching his side, he staggered to the desk and sank on to his chair. ‘Good grief! My poor sister! What a life, what a way to go! But surely that’s not possible! Even the Germans wouldn’t be such brutes as to lock up some unfortunate old woman for killing her husband years ago in a fit of insanity? They certified her as being of unsound mind!’
For killing her husband! Should he disabuse old Uncle Bart? Offer him a more likely explanation? Never! The less he knew the better!
‘Oh, Uncle Bart, you have no idea what the Germans have been getting up to, ever since 1933! People who’ve served their sentences for past crimes and who’ve been perfectly law-abiding ever since are being sent to concentration camps and done away with! Berufsverbrecher, professional criminals, that’s what they call them!’
‘I don’t care what they call them, you must still do everything you can to secure your mother’s release. It’s your duty!’
Osewoudt sat down and slurped his coffee. Turning things over in his mind, it struck him that his uncle’s assumption might not be so far-fetched after all. The Germans might indeed have come for his mother and not for him! What evidence could they have against him? Why would they have come to get her on Tuesday morning, at a time when Elly was presumably still safe with Uncle Bart? Even if Elly had already left by then, even if she’d been stopped in the street and the Germans had wrung his address from her, that still wouldn’t explain their coming for his mother and Ria on Tuesday morning!
‘Was there anything in the papers about it, Uncle?’ he asked.
‘About what?’
‘Have the Germans made any announcement about detaining former criminals and the insane? Was it on the radio? You listen to the radio every day, don’t you? Was it in a broadcast from London by any chance?’
The Darkroom of Damocles Page 9