by Herman Koch
The new fascism will, above all, adopt a human face. It will laugh more readily than the old fascism. Look less grim. Above all, it will act as though it understands us, as though it can easily understand our doubts. “Take your time and think about it,” it will say. “Here are a few folders, read them when you get the chance. Many of the problems we’re struggling against are your problems too.”
Fascism with a human countenance creeps beneath the skin of the environmental activist, burrows its snout like a tick into the calves of those fighting for equal animal rights, it nods to us understandingly, pretends to be listening, but meanwhile launches into a monologue about global warming, the melting ice caps, the cruelty of the battery cage. The new fascism puts on its friendliest smile, helps old people across the street and carries their heavy shopping bags up the stairs. It feels at home in minds that are a blank slate, minds like an unfurnished house, without too many thoughts of their own: it provides you with advice about what colors to paint the walls, about the best lighting, it tags along with you to IKEA. “Just hang in there, we’re almost to the cash register,” it says as you load a box containing a chest of drawers onto your cart, a chest of drawers you didn’t want in the first place.
It’s not enough to just pull the tick out of your skin. The head will still be in there. Tomorrow that head will grow a new body, which will once again suck itself full of blood. No, more drastic measures are needed. We have to go deeper than that. A few centimeters of our own flesh will have to be cut away, around the spot where the tick has burrowed in. If it’s not already too late, if it hasn’t already infected us with its fascistic ideas.
“Look what a lovely windmill,” says the tick. “Do you know how many households one windmill can provide with electricity?”
The new fascism comes up with figures. About the pollution caused by coal-fired power plants, about CO2 emissions, about the greenhouse effect. You try to come back with something about the windmill. You wish you could say that you don’t think it’s lovely at all. That it ruins the view. That a windmill on the horizon makes our country even smaller than it already is.
After “wind,” “meatless” comes in a solid second. Do I need to present here a list of all the dictators, psychopaths, and mass murderers who were vegetarians? There are those who take it even further: no fish either, no eggs, no leather shoes. Veganism. Am I the only one who thinks of something very different when he hears the word “vegan”? One look at a vegan’s face and you know enough. It’s not just the absence of color—a bloodless absence, like recycled cardboard—it’s a colorlessness that tolerates no back talk. They refuse to walk in shoes made from animal hide, but feel no shame at displaying their pallid feet, their ghostly white toes, in ecological sandals made from some vague artificial fiber. What do they call those things again? Birkenstocks! Am I, once again, the only one who thinks of something very different when he hears the word “Birkenstock”? Of an obscure spot in the Polish hinterland, its precise location unknown to anyone; of a T-shirt reading i survived birkenstock?
That’s the way it will go. That’s the way it already is. A hidden camera will record how we fail to properly dispose of our waste. How, out of recalcitrance—a final act of resistance—we purposely toss the white bottles in the hole meant for the green ones. Our garbage bags will be cut open—what am I saying, our garbage bags are already being cut open! Amid the rotting apple cores, teabags, and moldy leftovers, the municipal inspectors will have no trouble finding evidence of resistance: a battery that should actually have been brought to the chemical waste car (am I the only one who thinks of something very different when he hears the term “chemical waste car”?), a glass jar that the label says once contained pickles, a plastic bottle with a film of detergent at the bottom. Perhaps the garbage bag has simply been placed beside the tree (or beside the perpetually overflowing container—emptied as it is only twice a week) too early in the evening. Amid all that forbidden garbage the inspectors find something else too: a torn love letter, an envelope bearing an address. There is, in any case, evidence enough to impose a fine. We receive a payment slip in the post. Let that be a lesson to us. From now on we will put the garbage out only after nightfall, or let the bags stink up the house until the containers are finally emptied.
Film clips of the worst offenders will be put online. So that everyone can see how that inconspicuous man from the fourth floor (first name, surname, and house number appear at the bottom of the screen) glances to the left and right, forty-five minutes before sundown, and then drops a bag full of plaster chips and drywall into the paper bin.
“Amsterdam to Build Two Hundred Wind Turbines,” the headline in Het Parool said, the day after the windmill debate. The debate I had missed because at that very moment I was standing at the foot of my parents’ bed, my mother dead and my father still breathing faintly. Two hundred! I had always thought they meant only a couple of dozen. Out by the Schellingwouder Bridge and the Zeeburger Tunnel, along the Amstel in the direction of Ouderkerk, and the rest spread out around the western harbors. Even a couple of dozen wind turbines would ruin the looks of Amsterdam for good. I had seen the drawings—the misleading drawings, because they were nothing but charts showing only the possible locations. Some of the turbines being announced now were of the very newest kind, the tallest models. Two hundred meters high, if I remembered correctly. From any number of spots downtown you would be able to see the spinning rotors over the rooftops. A crime.
I had missed the debate. The Dutch democratic system stipulates that the mayor has no vote. Don’t ask me why. It’s as big a mystery as how anyone actually gets to be mayor in this country. By election, you would think. In 99 percent of all democracies, a mayor is appointed by means of free and open elections. But not in Holland. In fact, the appointment of a mayor here is as nontransparent as in North Korea, Cuba, or South Ossetia. No, I’m putting that the wrong way; it’s not just as nontransparent, it’s many times less transparent. In North Korea, the only candidate is elected by 99 percent of the vote; that, at least, is a great deal more transparent than the way it goes with us.
So I wasn’t there, and my vote—my non-vote, rather—could never have tipped the scales; but I probably could have steered the debate. Pushed the various parties in the council, by means of a briefly conclusive and businesslike speech, in the direction I wanted. And maybe a speech wouldn’t even have been necessary. I could have made do with body language. Shaking my head in fatigue during the plea held by Alderman Van Hoogstraten, the great advocate of wind turbines. A roar of laughter when the number “two hundred” was mentioned. Two hundred! Did you hear that?! Did you hear what he said?! I would make the council members see the other side of things. The absurd side. Amsterdam is already fairly small, I would say. Our city is renowned throughout the world for its human scale. No overwhelming, intimidating buildings here, not like in London and Paris. In Amsterdam a person can still feel like a person. In most of the world’s metropolitan areas, a person feels like nothing. Puny. And that was precisely what all those kings and emperors were after, too, to make the citizens of those capitals bow their heads in submission. The greater the power, the bigger the buildings and the smaller the people. We need think only of Albert Speer’s plans for Berlin, about Nicolae Ceaus˛escu, Kim Il-Sung. We should be thankful that we have never had such despots here. Not in our country. Not in our city. The merchants and the small businessmen run things here. The more accessible the city, the more hospitable, the more tolerant as far as I’m concerned, the more profit can be made there.
I would not have used the word “rustic.” I would have gone on emphasizing the human scale. A wind turbine in New York (a whole wind park in the Mojave Desert) is not the same as a wind turbine in Amsterdam, I would have said. That scale is exactly right, at this moment. We shouldn’t do anything to ruin it. We have to be careful not to make the city itself puny.
Powerful despots, kings, presidents, dictators,
and mayors have left their own personal marks on their capitals. Working on behalf of Napoleon III, Georges-Eugène Haussmann razed the crowded medieval neighborhoods of Paris and replaced them with long, broad boulevards. The same boulevards we now think of first when we think of Paris. None of that had anything to do with democracy, let alone with popular resistance. It simply happened in the same way that, in our own century, an entire working neighborhood in Beijing could be bulldozed to the ground in a single day and turned into a construction pit dozens of meters deep. Five months later, standing at the same spot, you had twelve residential towers more than sixty stories high. I’ve already mentioned North Korea. Hitler’s plans for Berlin. François Mitterrand took a slightly more modest approach: he had a pyramid of glass built at the main entrance to the Louvre. Whether you like that pyramid or despise it doesn’t really matter: it’s there, that’s the message it is meant to convey; and the Louvre will never be the same again.
In a free and open democracy, things go differently. Especially when you involve the local people in your decision-making. If the citizens of nineteenth-century France had been allowed to vote, Paris today would still be a stinking, medieval city. The ugliest building in Amsterdam—and perhaps in the entire country—is, by a long shot, the city hall. The same city hall I go into through the main entrance every day, but that in all types of weather—rain, sun, snow—is a pain to behold. This ugliest building in town (in the whole country!), which shares a roof with the opera house, was created in a democratic fashion. By means of consultation—“opportunities for public comment”—with the locals. Wherever people are given an opportunity for public comment, you get ugliness. Not just ugly buildings, but also ugly, nondescript politicians. The Obamas and Kennedys of this world, those are the exceptions. All you have to do is think back on our own prime ministers during the last seventy years. A rogues’ gallery of the nondescript. The majority always picks the ugliest wallpaper. would you buy a used car from this man? was the caption once on a poster showing the face of presidential candidate Richard Nixon. The poster was meant to show the candidate’s unreliable character, but unreliability is still less stultifying than blandness. with which of these men would you care to drink a beer? should be the caption under the faces of our prime ministers.
No, the truly charismatic leaders rarely come to power by democratic means. From Julius Caesar to Fidel Castro, from Alexander the Great to Mao Tse-tung, from Jesus Christ, Robin Hood, and Che Guevara to Osama Bin Laden: each and every one of them owed their charismatic magic not to free and open elections, nor to opportunities for public comment from the entire neighborhood.
Dutch prime ministers who have stirred the imagination can be counted on the fingers of one hand, or no fingers at all, but mayors are a very different thing. Dutch mayors, who are not elected in democratic fashion, by a majority of the popular vote, but are appointed from on high. The current mayor of Rotterdam possesses more statesmanship than all our prime ministers put together. What’s more, our country is teeming with mayors who have been involved in scandals. Who have sometimes had to resign in the face of said scandals. What prime minister can say the same thing? Behind the empty faces, there is only true emptiness. A face with only the facade still standing, the building behind it has been razed, there isn’t even any rubble left, that too was carted off long ago.
It would be odd, at this point, to say nothing about myself. Hypocritical. Perhaps even vain. He’s not mentioning himself on purpose. We’re supposed to fill it in for ourselves, that he considers himself on a par with his colleague in Rotterdam. But it really is true. There are lists going around that include the two of us when it comes to the most suitable candidates for the prime ministership. On those lists, we are always numbers one and two. Sometimes he’s number one and I am second. Sometimes it’s the other way around.
The original plans for the opera house showed a building made of white concrete. Too big, the neighbors reckoned. Too white. A vote was taken. Everything had to be downsized a bit. Red bricks were substituted for the white concrete. Democracy in a nutshell. Wherever a vote is taken, the people go for something more picayune, made from the same material as our own, cutesy little houses.
Then someone came up with the brilliant idea of combining the two projects. The new city hall and the opera house. That would save money too. The definitive triumph of democracy.
It was, above all, a missed opportunity. Amsterdam may have its canals, but it has no landmark. No Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, or Big Ben. The opera house in Sydney is a landmark. You used to have picture postcards, these days you’ve got selfies. The Amsterdam city hall, the city hall–cum–opera house, is not featured on a single postcard. No self-respecting tourist would take a selfie with the Stopera in the background.
If I were allowed to choose my own landmark, to choose what I as mayor would leave behind for the city, the way Mitterrand did with that glass pyramid in front of the Louvre, I would go for the tearing-down of the Stopera. A new building at the same place. At that lovely spot, one of the loveliest spots on the Amstel, where the river disappears into nothingness. Something that could be put on a postcard without embarrassing the hell out of you.
But a new city hall is, of course, a castle in the air. It’s like abolishing the monarchy. Not open to discussion. Not a single political party is willing to stick its neck out for that. Yet another fund-guzzling project—beside all the other money-guzzling projects that still need completing—is precisely one project too many.
No, a new city hall, a city hall that would immediately become the city’s landmark, too, was not on. But in that case, I wanted to leave Amsterdam with something else: a windmill-free horizon.
i was the only speaker at my mother’s funeral. It was what they call a “direct burial.” A plain coffin, Édith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose,” and her favorite flowers: white roses. My father sat in the front, Sylvia and I at either end of the row. Diana was on his right and Bernhard, who had come over from Boston for a couple of days, was beside her. Christine wasn’t there: she was already five months pregnant and didn’t want to fly anymore.
I kept it short. My happy youth. My parents’ love for each other. Our biweekly lunch at Oriental City. We had decided to invite only family and friends. So there would be less explaining to do. About the actual cause of death, for example. For friends and acquaintances, we stuck to “she died in her sleep.” My mother’s two elder sisters had died fifteen and twenty years ago. My father had only one brother, eight years his junior, who lived in Portugal and with whom he hadn’t been on speaking terms since he was forty.
“I don’t get it,” my father told me, almost twenty-four hours after I’d called their family doctor and then the ambulance from the house on Pythagorasstraat. “I gave us both the same dose. No, that’s not true. I gave myself a slightly higher dose, just to be sure.” He looked at me, his eyes still sleepy and his eyelids drooping with fatigue. Every now and again they fell shut, like the eyes of an animal sunning itself in the grass. “To make sure it worked,” he added after a brief silence. “I’m sure I did it right.”
I hadn’t been there when he woke from his stupor about three hours earlier. We had taken turns watching at bedside, Sylvia, Diana, and I. He had a private room on the seventh floor of the Academic Medical Centre. Diana had just taken over from my wife when my father started blinking his eyes for the first time.
“What did he say?” I asked my daughter in the hospital corridor, after hurrying out of another council meeting. “What did he say, exactly?”
“He blinked his eyes,” she said. “He looked around a bit, then he saw me. ‘What a lovely day,’ is what he said. ‘And how are you doing? When do your finals start?’ ”
After three days, he was released from the hospital. We insisted that he stay with us for the first few weeks, but he was having none of it. “I’m tired,” he said. “And I want to go home.”
We di
dn’t ask him the most important question of all, not then, and not after the funeral either. The five of us were standing around my car. Sylvia, Diana, Bernhard, my father, and I. The sun was sparkling on the water of the Amstel, a swan paddled by along the bank, with a ribbon of cygnets trailing behind.
Now what? What are you going to do now?
First we dropped Bernhard at his hotel.
“Lunch tomorrow?” he said; I had climbed out of the car, we hugged, and he patted me on the shoulder. “Dauphine?”
There was no place to park along Pythagorasstraat; I stopped the car in front of the house.
“Are you sure about this?” Sylvia asked my father. “Don’t you want us to come in with you?”
He shook his head. “No, let me go. I have to let this sink in first. I’ll call you tomorrow. Or in a couple of days.”
Now what? What are you going to do now? It wasn’t the kind of question you ask someone every day, not something you could ask by the bye. That’s why we didn’t. Not in the hospital, and not so soon after the funeral either.
“Maybe we should leave it for the time being,” Sylvia said. “Maybe we should just wait and see if he starts talking about it himself.”
And I, as I so often did, agreed with her.
24
“The steak tartare was for…?”
We hadn’t gone for an appetizer; with a smile, the girl placed my order on the table in front of me, then the rib eye with Béarnaise for Bernhard. Dauphine was one of the restaurants in Amsterdam where I felt most comfortable. Not only because of the relatively simple menu, but because of everything: the roominess—a former Renault garage, hence the name—without the frills or humbug, the prompt and always-friendly waiting staff, and the relative anonymity: precisely because there are so many tables, but also because other famous faces tended to come here; the customers at most looked up only briefly when yet another famous face entered, then went back to their meals in feigned boredom.