The Darkroom of Damocles

by Willem Frederik Hermans

  ‘Colonel! This is an inexplicable misunderstanding. My name is Osewoudt, I’m from Voorschoten. I slipped through the German lines last night, and I …’

  The lieutenant opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel motioned him to silence. Then, looking over Osewoudt’s head and without paying him the slightest attention, the colonel said: ‘Lieutenant, I think it most inappropriate for this man to be held here wearing female attire. What will the troops think? He must be issued with men’s clothing at once.’

  He turned on his heel and made for the door.

  ‘Colonel, surely you wouldn’t want to lay yourself open to ridicule? It’s not what it seems – please, couldn’t you listen to me for one minute?’

  The corporal shut the door; Osewoudt heard the bolts being slid across. He ran to the door and shouted through the keyhole: ‘Colonel! It’s not my fault I’m in women’s clothes! I never pretended to be a woman! Please listen to me! I’ve been locked up here for the past five hours! It’s all an idiotic mistake! I am not a spy! I really am Osewoudt, honestly! I’m not a cross-dresser! Let me out! I can explain!’

  Nothing happened.

  He went to the window and looked outside. All was quiet. There were a few soldiers idling about, whose boredom was so great that it seemed to affect the entire neighbourhood. The road was littered with scraps of orange paper, the Dutch flags on the buildings hung motionless in the calm of dusk.

  He heard footsteps. The sergeant and a soldier crossed from the barracks to the main gate, where they climbed into a jeep. The vehicle started, drove out through the gate and disappeared.

  A quarter of an hour later the jeep returned. The sergeant and the soldier alighted. The soldier held a package wrapped in newspaper.

  Soon after that the bolts were slid back and the door opened.

  ‘Is there no end to this?’ said Osewoudt. ‘Are you quite mad?’

  The soldier threw the package on the bunk. The sergeant laid a khaki vest, khaki underpants, a khaki shirt and two khaki socks beside it.

  ‘Take off the skirts and put on this lot. The rest is of no concern to me. Got that?’

  They backed out of the room and bolted the door.

  Osewoudt undid the newspaper. Out came a rather crumpled suit: double-breasted jacket and matching trousers. They were not new, but had not had much wear either. The fabric was purplish with large blue checks; it looked fairly thin, but was stiff and hard to the touch. It gave off an almost numbing smell of mothballs.

  Osewoudt took off the skirts. He flung the nurse’s uniform into a corner and pulled on the khaki underwear. The shirt was also army issue, but the epaulettes had been cut off, and there was no tie.

  The trousers fitted him perfectly and stayed up despite the absence of a belt. Straightening the jacket over his chest, he heard something rustling in the inside pocket. He put his hand in and drew out a fairly large sheet of paper. There was the American flag in full colour in the top left-hand corner, and a notice printed in blue:

  GIFT FROM THE UNITED STATES WOMEN’S LEAGUE

  The Young Ladies’ Circle at Knoxville (Tennessee) congratulates the citizens of all nations oppressed by the German barbarians on their liberation by the Allied troops.

  LONG LIVE THE UNITED NATIONS!

  It was completely dark outside when two hefty Negroes came to fetch him. They wore gleaming white helmets and blancoed belts hung with hefty revolvers in hefty white holsters. Osewoudt went with them without being told to. They said nothing, merely made chewing motions.

  One MP walked in front of him, the other behind.

  ‘You’re mad, all of you!’ Osewoudt yelled at a Dutch soldier he saw standing in the corridor.

  ‘Steady now,’ muttered the Negro behind him.

  They came to the forecourt. The two MPs now went ahead together, as if trying to distance themselves from him. They made straight for a jeep, which was waiting with the engine running. One of them climbed in behind the steering wheel, the other heaved himself into the passenger seat. He was too massive for the vehicle, and his right leg hung over the side. He waved his thumb over his shoulder, without looking round. Osewoudt understood what he meant and felt his muscles stiffen. Should he get in? His eyes bored into the darkness, hoping for an answer. Then he saw a second jeep. It was waiting about ten metres behind the first one, and it, too, was occupied by two white-helmeted figures. The windscreen was down and a small machine gun had been mounted on the bonnet.

  Clambering over the wheel, Osewoudt got in behind the Negroes. The jeep set off at once, drove through the gate and turned on to the road, where it rapidly picked up speed. Osewoudt crouched on the floor. He looked back, the wind tearing at his hair. The second jeep was following closely.

  When they reached the other side of town, the second jeep was still following. Now and then the moon shone through rifts in the clouds. It was too dark for him to see where they were going, but he surmised that they would be heading for the Belgian border. The second jeep switched its spotlight on at intervals, and then Osewoudt saw his own shadow playing on the shoulders of the Negroes in front of him.

  They drove through unlit villages, they passed armed checkpoints unhindered, they pulled up at a sign saying STOP! CUSTOMS! after which a red-and-white barrier was raised to let them through. The road became bumpy and potholed, the landscape flat and desolate. Afterwards they drove through a wood and finally came to a moor, where a fair number of army trucks, tanks and field guns were assembled. The jeep stopped a little further on. The Negroes got out, signalled to Osewoudt to get out too, and took no further notice of him. He climbed down and stood beside them.

  The driver offered a cigarette to his companion, and then also to Osewoudt. He struck a match and had to stoop to give Osewoudt a light. Then both men turned their backs on him. Soldiers sauntered about here and there.

  There was not a normal building in sight, but a high tent had been erected, as well as two sheet-metal hangars with small windows, weakly lit from the inside. The muddy ground was covered with strips of metal tracking.

  Osewoudt shivered in the cold night air. The jeep that had brought him drove off. From the tent emerged a number of men in civilian suits and overcoats; he counted nine. Helmeted soldiers marshalled them into a line beside Osewoudt, at arm’s length from each other. One of the soldiers held a flat case in front of his stomach, like a tray. With the air of a surgical assistant, he trailed after a sergeant, who stopped behind each prisoner, pulled his hands behind his back, took a pair of small steel handcuffs from the tray and snapped them shut with a loud click.

  The dark sky was thick with the roar of engines, and some distance away a plane landed. It taxied towards them over the metal tracking, a spotlight set in the blunt nose flooding its path. It came to a halt, but the engines were still running. The sergeant said something to the prisoner at the far end of the line, then walked to the plane. A hatch in the body swung open. A ladder was fixed to the inside. The prisoner mounted the rungs, followed by the others. Nothing was said. Osewoudt was the last to climb up. The gale from the propellers whipped his thin suit while he struggled not to lose his footing on the narrow rungs.

  The plane’s interior was lit by small light bulbs. The hold had been knocked together out of rough planks, like a chicken run. The prisoners sat on wooden benches facing each other. They talked among themselves; no one ordered them to keep quiet. They even shouted to make themselves heard above the roar of the engines. They spoke languages Osewoudt didn’t understand. After a while the man sitting next to him suddenly addressed him, in Dutch.

  He was lean and grey-haired, and looked as if he might be a doctor or a dentist. He wore a spotless white raincoat.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘What is it to you?’

  The man leaned towards Osewoudt confidentially.

  ‘I’ve been in this business years. I was already working for the British in the Great War. Never got caught by the Germans.’

  ‘What ar
e you doing here, then?’

  ‘It’s all nonsense! As soon as we get to England I’ll get in touch with my contacts. The day after tomorrow I’ll walk free.’

  ‘Ah, so you know where they’re taking us?’

  ‘Manchester, of course. Section LI4. Check-up, that’s all. Plain sailing as far as I’m concerned. No problem!’

  ‘They made a mistake arresting me, too!’ Osewoudt cried.

  ‘They’re always getting their wires crossed! Especially the Americans, they’re hopeless at this kind of work. Rank amateurs.’

  ‘It was the Dutch who arrested me. I had just slipped through the German lines in the night, and the first thing they do is arrest me. I only escaped from prison four days ago – the Germans had me locked up for nine whole months. I go straight to the headquarters in Breda and what do they do? Rearrest me. It’s too absurd to be true. But I’ll set it all straight once we get to England.’

  ‘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 pol
ice 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.’

  ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘Well now, aren’t you getting rather carried away? Why would a senior Railways official lie about something like that?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he? What I’ve told you is the truth.’

  ‘Telling the truth is one thing, establishing it quite another.’

  ‘I told Captain Slum all about the set of photos, too.’

  ‘Of course you did. Have you got that, Percy?’

  ‘Most certainly, sir.’

  He tapped a few keys with one finger.

  ‘Thank you.’

  At this point Colonel Smears had a coughing fit. His right hand, with the cigarette stub pinched between four fingers and thumb, rested on the desktop while his left was clapped limply to his mouth.

  ‘You are the highest authority to have interrogated me,’ said Osewoudt. ‘I am entirely innocent. I am merely trying to answer your questions as fully as I can. For my own sake.’

  The colonel cleared his throat noisily, leaned back in his chair and wiped his moustache with a large white handkerchief, which he inspected closely after each wipe.

  ‘Well now, this uncle of yours. Where is he?’

  ‘He was arrested by the Germans.’

  ‘What, him too? Along with Elly Sprenkel?’

  ‘No, a short while later.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘How should I know? He’s dead, probably, or he may still be stuck in Germany somewhere. You are in a position to track him down, not me.’