The Book of Revelation

by Rupert Thomson

  “You have told us what you did,” Snel said in a nasal voice, “but you have not told us why you did it.”

  “That’s not something I can explain,” I said.

  Snel looked at me askance, his chin aligned with his shoulder. “You can’t explain why you did it?”

  “No.”

  “According to information we received this morning,” Pieters said, “you assaulted the girl and attempted to rape her.”

  I shook my head. “I had no intention of raping her. It wasn’t rape.”

  “But you tore off all her clothes,” Pieters said.

  “Yes.”

  “If that isn’t rape,” Snel said, “what is it?”

  I stared at him as he leaned against the wall, both hands in his pockets. I couldn’t think of an answer to that question. Though my hands and feet were cold, I felt sweat collecting on the back of my neck and on my chest.

  “Why did you assault the girl?” Pieters said.

  “I told you,” I said. “I can’t explain.”

  Back in my cell I fell into a deep sleep. I dreamed that Stefan Elmers was married to a big buxom woman in a tight-fitting pale-pink dress and high-heeled silver sandals. To watch her walk across the room was to witness the most astounding feat of balance. Smiling fatalistically, he told me that he already had five children, and that his wife was now pregnant with the sixth. Then I dreamed that a man was cutting my hair. He botched the job completely, shaving my head in some places, but leaving clownish clumps of hair in others. Usually, I work in the zoo, he said. I woke to the sound of my cell door banging open. It was a policeman I had never seen before, bringing me some lunch.

  That evening Pieters and Snel interviewed me again. They wanted me to make a statement before I left the room. While the facts seemed beyond dispute, they were still puzzled by the motivation. If only I could give them a clearer picture of what had been going through my mind at the time. . . .

  “It might make your statement easier to write,” Snel said.

  He sat on the corner of the table, one leg dangling, one foot on the floor. He offered me a cigarette.

  I shook my head. “Thank you, but I don’t smoke.”

  “Did the girl make any advances?” he said. “Did she encourage you in some way? After all, you’re a good-looking man. . . .”

  He lit a cigarette with a crisp snap of his gold lighter, exhaling through his nostrils as usual, then stood up and walked to the far side of the room.

  “No,” I said. “She didn’t encourage me.”

  Pieters seemed surprised by my answer. His big square forehead creased as he leaned over his pad of paper and jotted something down.

  “What about this?” Snel said. “You saw her in the club and you liked the look of her immediately. You don’t know what came over you. You couldn’t help yourself.” He brought his cigarette up to the corner of his mouth and inhaled deeply. “You wanted her.”

  This was such an obvious and yet, to me, unlikely version of events that I must have smiled.

  “Did I say something amusing?” Snel was leaning against the wall now, with one hand in his pocket.

  “In a way,” I said.

  “But you can’t explain it?”

  “No.”

  “So you didn’t find her attractive?” Snel said. “You didn’t find her,” and he paused, “irresistible?”

  “No.”

  Snel walked back to the table, crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray and then sat down. “How do you feel about women?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  Snel leaned forwards. His hands lay folded, one on top of the other, limp as gloves. “Do you have a grudge against women?” He paused, and then distilled the thought. “Did you have a grudge against this woman?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a grudge exactly,” I said, “but it’s an interesting question.”

  “What would you call it?”

  I stared down at the table, its grey metal surface freshly painted, free of blemishes. I didn’t see how I could be of any further use to the policemen. I had gone as far as I could go. Why were they so obsessed with motivation? Were they trying to do me a favour by finding me an escape-route? Or were they intent on trapping me?

  “Well?” Snel lit another cigarette.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t go into that.”

  Some air rushed out of Pieters’ mouth, almost as if he had just been punched in the stomach. It was involuntary—part sardonic laughter, part disgust.

  “One final question,” Snel said. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I do.”

  “What will she think about all this?”

  My voice rose suddenly. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “No?”

  “No. They’re two completely different things.”

  Pieters turned sideways and muttered something rapid that I didn’t quite catch. Then he selected a form from the pile in front of him and slid it contemptuously across the table.

  “Here,” he said. “Write your statement.”

  •

  I must have woken up a dozen times that night. My right elbow had stiffened, and it was hard to find a comfortable position on the bed. Also, I was aware of doors slamming in the distance, and the constant murmur of voices. A police station is never quiet. I lay there under the fluorescent light and went back over my statement. I had been unable to avoid using words like “tore” and “ripped.” The word “dragged” had appeared too. The whole thing looked so much worse when you wrote it down. What’s more, I had been unable to give any reasons for my behaviour, although, at the end of the statement, I did say that I realised I’d done wrong, and that I deeply regretted any injury or offence that I had caused.

  After reading the statement, Snel looked up sharply. Is there anything you want to add? The way he asked the question made me think that I must have left out something important. But I couldn’t for the life of me think what that might be. Perhaps there was something about my expression of remorse that seemed inadequate, that didn’t quite feel genuine, but I couldn’t improve on it, so I just shook my head.

  I lay on my narrow bed and stared at the ceiling, feeling as if I had sleep-walked through the day. I had concerned myself only with my most immediate reality—the look of the police officers, the taste of a Danish pastry. Perhaps there was a kind of comfort or distraction in these details, but they were minor, inconsequential, and had no relevance. Now, though—finally, you might say—the gravity and hopelessness of my situation were beginning to filter through to me, and what happened in the middle of the following day stripped away any last remaining layers of delusion I might have had.

  I had just woken from a light sleep when a policeman unlocked the door of my cell and told me that I had a visitor. I would be allowed ten minutes with her, he said.

  Her.

  I swallowed nervously. My face flushed and, for a few moments, the floor seemed to tilt, as if I was falling forwards.

  Juliette was already sitting at the table when I walked into the interrogation room. I hesitated behind her, taking in the healthy shine on her black hair and the shape of her shoulders under her black ribbed sweater. Though I had known it would be her, her appearance was so unlikely, so incongruous, somehow, that it had the quality of a hallucination.

  I walked round the table and sat down opposite her. The policeman who had escorted me into the room stood by the door, his eyes unblinking, his mouth pressed shut, like a child pretending to be invisible.

  “Juliette?” I said.

  She had been staring at her hands. Now she looked up. She seemed tired, dark smears reaching from the corners of her eyes. A greyness lay beneath the surface of her skin instead of the gold that I remembered. I tried to smile.

  “Did you get the part?”

  She looked puzzled.

  “That audition,” I said. “Did you get the part?”

  �
�Oh, that. Yes.” She nodded. “Yes, I did.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  I watched her as she slowly pulled off her gloves. When she looked up at me again, her eyes had filled with tears.

  “What did you do?” she asked in a small, strained voice.

  It wasn’t a question. It was just the closest she could get to an expression of her bewilderment. I wondered how much she’d been told.

  “Juliette?”

  She shook her head and, glancing downwards, touched one of her eyes with the back of her wrist.

  “Juliette, listen. It’s not what it sounds like.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  I stared down at the table. Juliette sniffed twice, then blew her nose. It struck me that this was the first time I had ever seen her cry.

  “It’s not what you think,” I said.

  I had used the same words before, and though they were as true then as they were now, I remembered how unconvincing they had sounded, how inauthentic. How guilty. I also remembered that they hadn’t worked. It was as if my life consisted of a series of desperate and ineffectual repetitions.

  No, it was worse than that. I was like someone with a market stall who brings out the same fruit day after day until, eventually, what he’s selling is rotten to the core, nothing more than putrefaction.

  I looked up at Juliette.

  “Nothing’s changed,” I murmured.

  But I knew I was wrong. The ice had cracked and we had fallen through. There was a distance that could be measured by such things, a distance that could not easily be closed.

  Of course, I could have told her the whole story. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had the opportunity. In our hotel in Paris, at three in the morning, red roses exploding silently behind her—her fingers hesitating on the scar. . . . But she hadn’t asked, and I hadn’t answered, and we had made love with the unspoken hovering between us. . . .

  Juliette was saying that she had brought some letters from my apartment. They had been confiscated at the front desk, but they would be given to me later. As she was talking, the police officer who was standing by the door stepped forwards and informed us that our time was up. I did not ask Juliette to come again. I simply repeated what I had said earlier, that none of this was what it sounded like, and when she looked at me, her eyes reluctant, forlorn, I told her that I loved her, and I saw her nod gravely before she turned away.

  It was only later that I wondered whether the police had asked her to visit me, thinking it might throw some fresh light on my character.

  •

  On Thursday evening, some thirty-eight hours after my arrest, I was summoned to the interrogation room by Snel and Pieters. Snel was smoking, as usual. In a voice that was both soft and urgent, he told me that I was being charged with aggravated assault and attempted rape. They had received a statement from the girl in question. Though still shaken by the experience, she seemed determined to press charges, and there was nothing in my statement to suggest that she might not be fully justified in doing so. In fact, Snel said, inhaling, our statements were remarkably consistent with one another, almost as if we were in collaboration. He looked up at the ceiling, expelled smoke from his nostrils in two flamboyant streams, and then repeated the words “remarkably consistent.” It was clear that my behaviour intrigued him.

  An hour later I received a visit from the lawyer who had been appointed by the state to represent me. He was a short man with a ruddy, good-humoured face, and from the first moment I saw him, I knew I had virtually no chance of winning the case. Alone in my cell with him, I told him I would plead guilty to the assault charge, but not guilty to the charge of attempted rape. I told him there was no evidence to suggest that I had tried to rape the girl. He disagreed.

  “You followed her to the toilets,” he said. “You forced her into an empty cubicle. You tore off all her clothes. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.” He smiled, which, in the circumstances, seemed both inappropriate and condescending.

  “I didn’t touch her,” I said.

  “You were interrupted,” the lawyer said.

  I stared at him. “Whose side are you on?”

  “I am only saying what the prosecution will say.” The lawyer clasped his hands on the table in front of him, as if he was about to say grace. “I am on your side, of course I am, but you must give me some assistance.”

  I could not satisfy him, though, and he left shortly afterwards, looking at the floor and shaking his head. At that point I was tempted to contact Isabel or Paul Bouhtala and ask for their advice, but, in the end, I just didn’t feel as if I could bother either of them. They had done too much for me already.

  Early the next morning, after a surprisingly deep sleep, I was informed that, as a result of a consultation with the Public Prosecutor, I was to be interviewed by an investigating judge. Once again, I was taken to the interrogation room; I knew the route so well by now that I could have walked it with my eyes shut. The judge was a well-built man with a head of creamy white hair, and he swept into the room with the sudden energy of a wave breaking over rocks. He asked me the same questions that Snel and Pieters had asked me, only his manner was both more formal and more distracted, and as I was led back to my cell fifteen minutes later I couldn’t help but feel that the interview had gone badly. Even so, I had no way of predicting what the eventual outcome might be. Events were speeding up in a way that seemed both orchestrated and vertiginous. People appeared and disappeared in front of me with dizzying rapidity, and I was supposed to impress each one of them. I found that I could hardly catch my breath—and this, oddly, despite long periods in my cell, alone. I was being asked to assume full responsibility for my past actions, and yet, at the same time, I seemed to have forfeited all control over the present.

  •

  The post that Juliette had brought from my apartment was delivered to me in the evening. The envelopes had been torn open, as I had expected, but, so far as I could tell, the contents had not been tampered with. Most of the letters were routine, mundane, fit only for the waste-paper basket—a statement from my credit-card company, an offer of a bank loan—but, among them, there was a postcard from Stefan. He had written to me from New York, where he was working on a photographic assignment. His assumption that my life was going on as always—How’s the bar? Hope you haven’t slept with Gusta yet!—made me realise how drastically everything had altered, and it was several minutes before I was able to turn to the last of the envelopes, which was rectangular and white, and which had the address of a firm of lawyers printed in the top left-hand corner. The letter was from a Mr Werkhoven. He wrote that, as executor of Isabel van Zaanen’s will, it was his responsibility to inform me of her wish that I should inherit her apartment in Bloemendaal. For a moment I could make no sense of this. I had to read the sentence again. Even then, its meaning seemed partial, incomplete; it left a smudge in my brain, like a poor-quality Xerox or a piece of rain-blurred ink. I put the letter down and lay back on my bed, and my mind seemed to empty all of a sudden, the space that thoughts usually inhabit taken up by just two words: Isabel’s dead. Just those words repeating silently, endlessly, until they lost their meaning altogether. . . .

  I had last seen Isabel halfway through January. I had taken the train to Bloemendaal with Juliette, and we had spent an hour with Isabel—though I had talked to Paul Bouhtala for most of that time. There had been a certain tension in the air that afternoon, I remembered, which I had put down to the fact that two women who were both close to me were meeting for the first time. I also remembered that, on our way back to Amsterdam, Juliette had turned to me and said, “Isabel must have been beautiful when she was young,” a remark which made me smile. I told Juliette about the photograph Isabel had showed me once when, uncharacteristically, she had drunk two brandies after dinner. In the photograph—taken at the Waldorf Astoria, in 1953—Isabel was wearing a white evening gown, with diamond earrings and a diamond choker. Her skin was flawless,
and her black hair slanted, gleaming, across her forehead, covering her right eyebrow. . . . “She’s still beautiful, of course,” Juliette added quickly, sensing she might have sounded tactless. “I only meant it’s a pity when you meet someone and they’re already old. You realise you’ve missed something, and that can sadden you.”

  I thought back to my own first meeting with Isabel. She was in her late fifties then, and at the height of her fame. I had walked up to her backstage at Sadler’s Wells and told her how much I admired her work. I was studying at the Royal Ballet, I said, but there was a dance company in Amsterdam that I hoped to join. We spoke for less than five minutes, and I remembered nothing about her afterwards except for her perfect English and the seemingly disparaging way in which she had looked me up and down. Towards the end of that year, a scout from the Dutch company visited the Royal Ballet, and I was one of the dancers he chose to audition. You cannot imagine my excitement when he took me to one side afterwards and asked if I would be interested in becoming a member of the company. . . . One afternoon the following autumn, when I had been in Amsterdam for about six months, a message came over the studio PA, saying there was somebody to see me in reception. It was Isabel. I was sweaty and dishevelled, in a ripped T-shirt and Lycra cycling shorts, and she was wearing a Chanel suit and sunglasses. She kissed me three times, and then stood back and looked at me. “So,” she said with just the faintest trace of a smile, “you’re dancing in the Netherlands, just as you planned.” At the time, of course, I had no idea how she had found me, and it had seemed like the most extraordinary coincidence. It was only years later that I discovered that it was Isabel who had sent the scout to audition me, Isabel who had orchestrated the whole thing. . . .