The Ditch

by Herman Koch

  That’s what had always annoyed me most about the alderman: he had left his farming village for the big city, but he brought the countryside along with him. The windmills. The happy free-range pigs, rolling around in the mud. His own barnyard odor.

  last thursday night, after a meeting that ran late, we went with a few aldermen, including Van Hoogstraten, for a nightcap at Café Schiller.

  It’s tiring to be the obvious pivot in almost every group. The motor behind every conversation. I know that sounds arrogant, but it’s just my day-to-day reality. I’ve tested it often enough to know it’s true. In all different kinds of company I have, at some random moment, suddenly stopped talking. At first the other people don’t notice, they go on talking for a while as though nothing was wrong. But the conversation itself starts acting like a plane that suddenly runs out of fuel at high altitude. The engines fall silent, the aircraft begins its nosedive, the crash is inevitable. The people look at each other; occasionally they also steal a look at me. The silences between the sentences grow longer and longer. Then the first of them shrugs, looks at his phone, and announces that it’s about time for him to turn in. Another one glances at his half-empty glass and takes a quick slug. A third one acts as though he’s feeling cold and blows into his hands to warm them. But that’s actually the way it is: they really do feel cold. For a while they have warmed themselves at the fire of my presence, my words; the motor that keeps the conversation running all by itself. It’s as though they’re standing around a campfire that went out without anyone noticing.

  On the rare occasion, I’ve put it to the ultimate test. No more than rarely, because usually I’m relieved when people get tired of my company and go looking for entertainment elsewhere. In the ultimate test, I also take one last sip from my glass. I look around, as though I’m searching for new faces; the others have already started to turn their backs on me, by the count of three they will start to leave. I count to three. One…two…three. And then I suddenly say something. A belated comment that no one saw coming. “A city like Amsterdam shouldn’t even want to have windmills,” I say.

  They’ve all remained standing; the ones who had turned away now make a half-turn back. I have to do my best not to grin, I see it happening before my eyes, how they look at me expectantly. They don’t say anything, all they do is look.

  “Windmills don’t belong in a real city,” I say, half a second before the silence has time to become painful. But even that’s not completely true: no silence is painful in the presence of a strong personality like myself. The strong personality can let the silence go on as long as he wants; there is no one, after all, who dares to break it. Sssh, don’t say anything, he’s probably deep in thought.

  That’s the way it is. I am the prime mover behind the conversation. Every conversation. At Café Schiller I put it to the acid test again. Halfway through the conversation, I suddenly fell silent. From one moment to the next, I stopped talking completely, no more than a “yes” or a “no” when someone asked me something. After only a few minutes, they started shifting uneasily in their chairs. Their person-to-person chatting died out too. Every once in a while, they looked furtively at me. “Everything okay, Robert?” the boldest of them asked. “Are you sick?”

  “No, I feel fine,” I replied. “What could be wrong?”

  No new round was ordered. One by one they got up, went to the bar to pay their part of the tab, then left. “Bye.” “Bye.” “Hey!” “See you on Monday.” “Hope you’re feeling better.” That last farewell came from Alderman Hawinkels, the same alderman who had asked if I was feeling all right. I pictured them unlocking their bikes outside the café. Pictured them clustering together on the sidewalk for a moment. What was with him all of a sudden? Is he sick? Aw, don’t worry about it too much, he’s probably just tired. The end of the week. You’ll see: Monday he’ll be right as rain.

  I thought about Alderman Van Hoogstraten. Would he look more concerned than the others? Would he have ideas of his own about my behavior? Maybe he suspects something, maybe that’s why he’s so quiet… While still biking home he would call my wife, or send her a text message. I need to talk to you as soon as possible. I think he knows. About us. A few moments of inattention would do it. His front tire would end up in the tram rails. The approaching taxi he would see only too late. At the funeral my wife would wear sunglasses, but at last I would know where I stood. You can keep an extramarital affair under wraps for a long time, but sorrow is a lot tougher, it oozes its way out through every pore.

  The following night, Sylvia and I had a fight. Not a little fight; we always skipped the gradual mobilization—the threats to neighboring powers, the cancellation of all furloughs, the summoning of reservists. From one moment to the next we face off, armed to the teeth. I can’t remember what it was about. We’d had dinner at the little Chinese restaurant close to our house, the one we go to whenever we don’t want to run into anyone. The place is always half empty. A few lonely diners, the occasional older couple. No lowered voices, no nudging each other when the mayor comes in—no pulling out the cell phone and asking to take a selfie with him.

  As I worked on my wonton soup and Sylvia cut her siu mai into little pieces (a habit that I, according to my mood at the moment, find either annoying or endearing—in any case, a habit that could never cause a fight), everything was still clear skies and smooth sailing. Literally clear skies and smooth sailing, like on the afternoon before Pearl Harbor, the evening before the Six-Day War, the brilliant, cloudless morning of September 11. No one’s being mobilized. No suspicious troop movements have been detected. The element of surprise is the connecting factor here. By the time the marines come barreling out of their barracks, most of them still in their pajamas, some with their razors still in hand, shaving cream still stuck to their faces, the huge flagships of the U.S. fleet are already ablaze or have already sunk. What exactly happened between the time that the waitress cleared the table after the main dish (shrimp with Chinese mushrooms for Sylvia, char siu for me) and the moment that we paid the bill, I have no idea. A teensy mood shift as we walked home. A barely perceptible change in atmospheric pressure, as with an approaching blizzard or thunderstorm. A slight pressure at the back of the eyes: the harbinger of a splitting headache.

  “What exactly did you mean by that?” Sylvia asked cuttingly. Maybe we’d been talking about Diana. Not about her new boyfriend, because Sylvia liked him. More like something about school or the quantity of alcohol Diana consumed during a weekend. My wife and I feel differently about that. On both counts, my opinions are a bit more liberal. So maybe it was about our daughter, but then again maybe not; it didn’t really matter. The fact of the matter was that we made no real effort to keep our voices down as we crossed Rembrandtplein. By that point, we were already walking ten feet apart. Every once in a while my wife tried to walk faster, to cut me off, but then I picked up my own pace and caught up with her again. Then I did the same thing. I took such giant steps that within a few seconds I had left her twenty yards behind me. But when I turned my head as discreetly as possible, to catch a glimpse of her from the corner of my eye, I saw that she was making absolutely no attempt to catch up.

  “Yeah, run away, coward!” she shouted right then. “Go on, run away again! That’s what you always do when it gets too complicated, run away.”

  I stopped. I turned around and stuck my hands deep into the pockets of my raincoat, and I balled my fists. A few passersby had stopped too. A taxi coming from Reguliersdwarsstraat slowed; the driver rolled down his window and said something to my wife. “Keep moving, you!” she yelled. “Mind your own business!” I wondered whether anyone had recognized us yet. It wouldn’t be too hard for someone to pull out his phone and film us. And then sell that film to the tabloids, for good money.

  One evening, years ago, we’d had dinner at Sluizer on Utrechtsestraat. Out of the blue, with no warning, I felt the blood drain out of my face. I told my wife th
at I was going outside, I was afraid I wouldn’t make it to the toilet in time, that I would barf all over our table. I edged my way past the tables. Conversations stopped, heads turned tactfully. I was probably moving too fast, I realized then. And despite the onrush of nausea and the dizzy feeling in my head, I had stood up too quickly. Outside, in the fresh air, I came to my senses quickly enough. I crossed the bridge to the Keizersgracht, unbuttoned my coat, and pressed my stomach against the cold metal of the railing. I took a few deep breaths as I stared down, at a couple of ducks floating there beside a half-sunken sloop. After about ten minutes I went back to the restaurant.

  Then, a little less than a week later, during dinner with a good friend at another restaurant, the whole thing started. The good friend asked whether things were all right with us. With the two of you, he clarified, looking around and lowering his voice. With my wife and me, our relationship. He had heard something, maybe it was all a load of crap, but he thought it was better to check with me first. Two days later, it happened again. A reception at the Hilton. A friend of a friend, no more than a casual acquaintance really. “Everything okay?” the presumptuous acquaintance asked. “With you and the wife? No, it was just that I heard something. Something about a fight in a restaurant.”

  By this time, we were almost back at the house. And we were also walking next to each other again, albeit with five feet between us. In silence. I still had my hands in the pockets of my raincoat; Sylvia, intentionally or no—a soft rain had begun to fall—was holding her open umbrella right above her head, so I couldn’t see her face.

  At the front door we went on grumbling a bit. I stuck the key in the lock. My wife said something about how bullheaded I was, that I could never admit to being wrong, or words to that effect. Then we were standing in the entryway. I turned on the light. Sylvia closed her umbrella. Inside, in the entryway, our fight was suddenly over, like a storm from sea that peters out as it moves inland.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “It’s not true that I never admit it when I’m wrong.”

  “See, there you go again!” my wife said.

  And then we both had to laugh; still with our coats on, we hugged each other, awkwardly at first but then with growing conviction.

  “What in the world was that all about?” Sylvia said; through the cloth of my raincoat I could feel her fingers massaging my back.

  “Don’t ask me,” I said; I tried to do something with my fingers, too, but her coat was too thick, so I pressed her against me even harder.

  It was true: I had absolutely no idea anymore. The cause and course of our bickering were fading fast already, and as I followed her up the stairs, I couldn’t help but smile.

  What, after all, could this fight mean, other than that we still cared about each other? That my wife cared about me, I should say. Only uncaring couples stop fighting completely. At most, they sigh deeply, or roll their eyes meaningfully when the other starts to talk.

  10

  At this point, I should tell you about the Jericho—just so it doesn’t pop up later in the story entirely unannounced. The Jericho is a 9mm pistol of Israeli provenance. There was a period, I hadn’t been mayor for very long at the time, when this city seemed to be going off the deep end. A hit list had been drawn up, they said. If you were on a list like that, you couldn’t be sure you were going to live to see the next day. I remember the emergency briefing with the police chief and the district attorney. A number of national politicians and prominent figures were in trouble. What I remember most clearly about that meeting was the thinly concealed disappointment on the faces of the DA and the police chief when they found out they weren’t on the list. Why him, why not us? That’s what I read in their expressions. So aren’t we important enough? In the weeks that followed I saw that same disappointment on a number of faces, on a number of occasions. We’d had to promise, of course, not to reveal the names on the death list, but someone forgot to tell the press. They hadn’t counted on De Telegraaf. Less than twenty-four hours after the triad met in my office, the whole list was published on their front page. Then I saw even more disappointed faces. The death list formed a clear parting of the waters between those who mattered in this country and those who were apparently so insignificant that they could be left alive. Seeing my own name on the list, I can’t deny, had precisely that effect on me. I matter, I thought to myself. I’ve become a target.

  I was given round-the-clock protection. A police cabin on stilts was erected in front of our house. For the first few months, four bodyguards went with me everywhere. Later that was reduced to two. Whenever I went out to dinner, we had to reserve two tables. Sometimes the hit-listers would run into one another; on the far side of the dining room, a national politician might have reserved two tables as well. We would nod to each other amiably from a distance, but often enough we couldn’t help smiling. We matter, we said to each other with that smile. We belong to the select group of twenty Dutch people who have to reserve two tables at a restaurant.

  And then, suddenly, there was the Jericho. I was given my first target practice at the naval grounds behind the Maritime Museum. “For situations when you have only yourself to rely on,” they told me. “It will probably never happen, but imagine they succeed in neutralizing all four bodyguards, then you can’t be standing there empty-handed.” Without meaning to sound swanky, I had an aptitude for it, for aiming and firing a pistol. “You’re a good shot,” my instructor said after the very first lesson. We practiced on sheets of cardboard with the outline of a person drawn on them with a fat black marker. “We’re not out for Sunday brunch here,” the instructor said. “We don’t aim for the legs, we’re not out to just injure someone. Imagine: There are four attackers. You have six bullets. That means you’re allowed to miss twice. We aim all six shots at the head and at the heart.”

  I can’t deny it, I got a kick out of the shooting lessons. The heft of the Jericho in my hand—I had never held a pistol before, and it was a lot heavier than I’d thought. And then the instruction to keep the barrel pointed at the ground once you’d removed the safety. But the best thing of all, really, was the shooting itself. The report. The recoil. Something that’s more powerful than you are. I couldn’t escape the impression that the Jericho had a life of its own, that it was trying to free itself from my grasp every time I fired.

  After a few clips of six bullets each, I asked whether I could take out the earplugs.

  “Why?” the instructor asked with a smile.

  “Because in real life I probably won’t have time to put in earplugs,” I said. “I don’t want it to take me by surprise. I want to know what it sounds like.”

  After that first lesson I lay in bed with my ears ringing, the same way they had rung long ago after a concert at Paradiso or the Milky Way. Afterward, my instructor congratulated me on my request to take out the earplugs. Most people never did that, he said. He showed me the cardboard sheets with the human silhouettes and pointed out the bullet holes. “Not bad for the first time,” he said. “With six bullets, no one would have survived this. In the next couple of weeks, we’re going to perfect that. In the end, each and every shot has to hit the head or the heart.”

  the day after our fight (and two days after the late-night beers with the aldermen at Café Schiller), I was reminded of the Jericho as I took a leisurely bike ride down to the Maritime Museum, where a reception was being held for the French president, François Hollande. It was probably being so close to the naval grounds again that made the pistol cross my mind. Times had changed, the bodyguards were gone. For years, the Jericho had been lying idly in the bottom drawer of my desk. Empty. Every once in a while I opened that drawer and the loose bullets would roll with a hard metallic sound, like ball bearings, across the bottom.

  François Hollande is not a big man. And even with the best will in the world, you couldn’t call him attractive. I am a head taller than him. I felt for him. I have a coup
le of friends who are taller than me. I know how tiring it can be to have to spend a whole conversation looking up at someone. As though you’re admiring frescoes on the ceiling. It doesn’t feel right. The cramp in your neck and the feeling—which can never entirely be dismissed—that you’re somehow less than the person to whom fate granted more height.

  Our prime minister held a short speech. Then there was a stand-up buffet. That is to say: the usual snacks were spread out on a long table. Blocks of cheese, liverwurst—the slices of herring were served with the obligatory toothpicks with a little Dutch flag on them. Young men and women walked around with serving trays. Glasses of orange juice, water, red and white wine, the odd glass of flat beer.

  After the prime minister’s speech, François Hollande looked around. I saw fatigue in his eyes, boredom—he had already spent a whole morning in the company of the prime minister. During that brief, empty moment when no one seemed to be paying him any heed, I walked up to him.

  I looked around to see if there was somewhere we could sit, but all the chairs were taken. And then there was my French. Which is, to put it mildly, no great shakes. English was out of the question. Like most French people, I suspected, François Hollande almost certainly spoke no language but his own.

  I started off with the usual things. Whether he’d had time to see a bit of Amsterdam? Whether he had ever been here before? In Amsterdam? In the Netherlands? They were the questions you might ask any visitor or tourist you came across. Did you find what you were looking for? popped into my mind. “C’est la première fois que vous êtes à Amsterdam?” My French was up to that much, at least, but then François Hollande said something back that I didn’t understand. I decided not to ask what he meant (Quoi? Comment?), not this early in the game, but simply to act as though I’d understood. “Oui, oui, oui,” I said, a bit too readily and a little too quickly. The French president looked at me questioningly for a moment; the wrinkles of a slight frown formed on his forehead. “Ah, oui?” he said then, pointing at the floor with his index finger, at a spot just in front of his shoes. “C’est intéressant! Ici?”