Criminal Conversation

by Nicolas Freeling

  My body gives me little trouble, but I understand it. My internal organs are all present and in good condition. My eyes, ears and teeth are all sound and sharp. I keep in adequate condition with a game of squash and a Finnish sauna each week. I take a winter-sports holiday each year, and a little villa on the coast of Portugal for a month every summer.

  You will be puzzled about my wife. Perhaps you are right and this is the great failure of my life. The catastrophe, possibly, that cracked the criminal open. Beware, my friend, of worldly ambition. You know all this already? How deeply have you observed me?

  A thought strikes me. I give every person that consults me a thorough physical examination. Never would I risk a diagnosis, even of acne (I get several patients with acne), without it. But you have to diagnose without this aid. You must make up the deficiency by observation. I wonder how good you are at this. It is because I am, I know, good at it that I am going to conduct this experiment. It will be salutary for you to read. I am going to see what it is that I know about you – purely from observation.

  That is all talk, nonsense, pretence. The truth is simply that I wish I knew you better.

  I must rely upon memory. But my memory, both visual and aural, is excellent.

  You are not as tall as I am, but I am one eighty-five. You are a lot broader, but you will get tubby, my friend, unless you take a good deal more exercise than I need. You weigh, I should guess, a hundred and eighty. I approve of your hands, which are strong, broad and, I am glad to say, clean. I am more suspicious of your shirts: do you prefer dark plain cotton shirts for themselves or because they show the dirt less? You are not dressy; your suits are cheap, but they look well on you. You do not, I am glad to say, wear sports jackets or blazers. Simple and suitable; it is a good point. Your shoes, though, are expensive; plain soft leather. Second good point.

  Your face is a little too much that of an intelligent ape. It is harsh and bony, which makes it tolerable. Your jaw is too heavy, your teeth too big, your mouth too wide, with enormous furrows alongside it. Your nose is good. Your eyes are too small and too pale. You are good and broad between the ears and your hair is nearly as short as mine – no love-locks. If your forehead were less low and your jaw less prominent, and you had not that comedian’s rubbery mouth, you might be quite tolerable-looking.

  When talking you have a pleasant habit of taking your coat off and rolling up your sleeves; it is unselfconscious, has nothing to do with the warmth, and amuses me. Your wedding ring is narrow, and you are a Jansenist, I notice. You have a Seamaster watch – a present from your wife, no doubt; it is just the kind of watch one gets as a reward for being ten years married.

  You rummage a great deal in your pockets, which are always full of rubbish. I have noticed a workmanlike pocket-knife, your packet of cigarettes that is always squashed (I agree that cigarette cases are detestable things) a kleptomaniac liking for rubber bands, paperclips and pieces of string. You are no truster of ballpoint pens, since you have always at least three, yet go on – trustingly – buying cheap ones. You keep your money in a purse – pleasantly old-fashioned of you. You come, obviously, of a poor family and were trained as a child to be careful and waste nothing.

  You are, I hazard the guess with confidence, largely self-educated. You have been to no superior school, no university. Do you rather resent people with that polytechnic gloss upon them? Yet you have a huge respect for it. If you were French you would take your hat off in the Rue d’Ulm.

  What you do have is considerable intellectual curiosity. You have read smatterings of poetry and philosophy. You know nothing about music but you are fairly well read. You speak French and German, a thing I envy, since I read both but cannot speak them. You have been – but that you told me yourself – in the army in England.

  You are very Dutch. You have a characteristic crudeness, brutality. Your tendency towards lavatory humour is deplorable. You have Dutch virtues: stability, perseverance, obstinacy. You have also too much imagination altogether – less common, here – and you are absurdly individualist. You certainly behave towards me as no policeman under orders would; that, my friend, is your own, your personal idea.

  You have a certain sympathy for me, which you take – good for you – little pains to conceal. You are a bit of a sensualist yourself; you like eating and drinking, don’t you? And girls, and perfume, and southern baroque art, and Mediterranean landscapes. You have a strong vulgar streak, and are not ashamed about it.

  Damn you. Anybody else would never have penetrated my fortifications. I could have complained about you; you would not have cared.

  I want you to know that I deliberately did not complain of you, and that I am not afraid of you. I wish to show you that I am in some sense worthy of you, that I do not lack all humour, that when you pin me I shall not resent you. I rather like you, and I rarely like people. Did I say it earlier? – we could under other circumstances have been friends.

  I am wrong. It is just these circumstances that make us friends.

  You have overcome your ingrained Dutch respect for my position. You do not think of me as a doctor. When you lay hands upon me, will it be the doctor or the person? I find it difficult to see you as the policeman, with nothing better to do in life than clapping malefactors into handcuffs.

  I am envious of you. Of your combativeness, of your courage. The unorthodoxy that is your dominant trait interests me the more because of your position and function in our rigid social order. Here, where orthodoxy is expected and exacted, you have outflanked me. That takes courage. You belong to the hierarchy, and any shaky pillar in that hierarchy has small chance of survival. How do you defend the reputation for eccentricity you certainly possess?

  My envy is the keener because I can speak with authority. I belong to the structure I talk of. I am expected to be a pillar of society. It is exacted from me to behave as a doctor is expected to behave: that is an inelegant phrase, which will worry neither of us.

  Of course, if we show combativeness we are not punished, as you are doubtless punished, by a reprimand, the famous and classic Dutch ‘berisping’. We are punished by a barely noticeable coolness. This drop in the temperature is accompanied by a drop in the income, for by a mysterious grapevine the patients are aware of the situation. He may be good at curing your ailments, but he is not quite one of us; you might do better to avoid… Once upon this slippery slope he had better begin to mend his ways, or he will find himself, unless he gets quickly and unobtrusively back into line, in much the same circumstances as a prominent man, let us say, in the state of Georgia, to whom had been attached the little label ‘nigger-lover’.

  I think I know why you survive, why you have an advantage that I have not. I think that you possess not simply combativeness, but talent. Talent, considerable talent, can secure one from persecution. I can think of half a dozen people perhaps, who, possessing this talent, have secured their freedom. Even a minister.

  Have you understood why I have dwelt at length on this subject, why I am so fascinated by this spectacle? Quite right, my friend. It is because I myself fail. I do not belong to your club, the club of those who have talent, who do not care. I do not have enough talent. I am not good enough.

  Naturally, I do not fall into the obvious error of self-pity, nor that of underestimating my capacities. Nor do I wish you to think that I throw all the blame upon my wife. It is true that I have thought that things might have turned out very differently had I married another woman, but that is not Beatrix’s fault. I chose her. I married her deliberately, in cold blood, for the affluence, for the position, for the introduction she could give me into what I thought of as ‘the club’. Le tout-Paris. I had not understood then that there is only one club.

  And I am a good doctor. But I have never broken through the barrier that separates the people with skill from the winner. I am a born second-rater, a born lightweight. Perhaps you have not yet found this out.

  But you will.

  Twenty

 
I am discouraged. You eluded me. I thought that we had reached a point…that we were going to make real contact at last. You delighted me, and then you eluded me.

  I went to the athletic club, but with the feeling that I was making a mistake, that I should be bored, even that I might make a fool of myself. What have I to do with you, after all? You are, at the end of the reckoning, a three-ha’penny policeman that thinks himself clever. You are no cleverer than I am, perhaps less so. You do not penetrate me except in so far as I allow you to, amusedly, to let you see what you miss, how wide you are and remain of the mark. I have tempted you to think yourself more clever than you are. But you are a clown, Inspector Thing, and a clown does not entrap a person like myself. You know that you cannot proceed against me, and you propose, impudently, that I should yield to you…

  It was an odd sensation, arriving in a place you are familiar with, and finding it so unfamiliar. I had not realised that the Thursday clientèle would be so different from that of Tuesday. I suppose there are sporting fanatics that haunt the place, but such are not interesting to me. I felt lost, and wandered about wondering whether you had already arrived. I was recognised by no one but the woman behind the bar who makes coffee, and all she said was, ‘Why, hallo, Doctor, lost your calendar?’, which annoyed me.

  I found you gossiping with a man I neither know nor wish to know; he looks a clot. You told me he was regarded as a serious contender in the lightweights, or the featherweights, or the clotweights, for a European Judo Championship – as though I cared. You were learning, you said, about judo in case you got the sack from the police and had to take a job as a taxi-driver; this for my benefit. Your clotweight pal, who had the type of very curly close strawy hair that sets my teeth on edge, thought this a good joke and clapped you on the back. If people clap me on the back I simply do not speak to them again, but a policeman, I suppose, cannot afford such gestures. The man looked to me the sort of bank clerk that absconds with funds, but perhaps that is why you cultivate his acquaintance.

  You had to gossip some more with another pal, a fat girl with rat’s-tail hair and a moronic look – some swimmer. After keeping me waiting a good twenty minutes you said ‘Well, let’s go and play squash’, and I was so irritated that it took me several minutes to regain my control.

  I changed; there are only a few clothes-lockers in this place, and I have one, though I take my playing clothes home each time after use. Clothes that have been sweated in, after hanging a day in a closed locker, smell most unpleasant: it is a pity other people do not recognise this fact. The squash court, though the fencers use it as well, is the only place on these premises that does not smell of feet.

  I changed, into cotton trousers and a track-suit top. You sprawled on a bench with your hands in the pockets of denim shorts: you had simply taken off your trousers and dumped them. It irritates me to have someone watch me change, but it was a good exercise in the kind of watchful calm I have to maintain with you.

  I do not wear shorts except when swimming; I have the kind of stringy leg that does not look well in shorts. You, I noticed, had exactly the kind of loose muscular leg, rather too hairy, that does look at its best in precisely the brief shorts you wore. You see that I have acquired a habit – your habit – of observation.

  To make conversation, for a stony silence had fallen and I am not talkative in my underpants in public, I said something trivial. Your white sweater – rather off-white if I may say so, and you might ask your wife to wash it – was ordinary, but I needed something ordinary to restore my even quietness.

  “Nice sweater that.”

  You beamed with your childish enjoyment.

  “Isn’t it? Standard Navy issue to submarine crews; cost me ten bob twenty years ago, in a government surplus store in Gosport.”

  Typical.

  I took my racket out of its press; yours wasn’t in a press.

  “I have any number of balls.”

  “Delighted to hear it; I haven’t any; my children pinch them.”

  We walked on to the court. I am a fair squash player, having a sensitive touch. If I play a ball into an angle I generally get the return angle I want. I stand still as much as I can because I can’t chase balls. I saw that I could beat you straight off on skill alone, but you gave me a harder match than I had thought. Once you took your sweater off – you had an ordinary cotton street shirt on – you started chasing everything. Hitting far too hard at impossible balls, talking, laughing, catcalling, jumping up and down when, as you quite often did, you brought off a good return with a shot that cannoned all over the court and left me flat-footed. You ran like a wild man, crashed into walls, sent half your services out of court, played one or two cunning flick shots I had not thought you capable of, and at least three superb balls that nobody could have returned, even though next time, invariably, you missed the ball altogether and looked accusingly at your racket to see where the hole was. As for my play it was like myself: clever, controlled, occasionally extremely skilful.

  I find myself, probably momentarily, certainly temporarily, a thought depressed. I am tired. I find you like the Old Man of the Sea. I need a break from my routine. I have thought that this would be a mistake in tactics, as it might lead you to imagine that the strain was telling on me, but I do not care what you think. Thinking things will not help you find legal or convincing proof against me.

  I have been tempted, at times of fatigue, like this, to slash the whole knot apart conclusively. I could always disappear. You have, no doubt, eyes upon me. You could arrange, possibly, to be notified if I made any unusual withdrawals from the bank. No, that, I rather think, is an official act needing official sanction, and I have never believed that you had any official sanction. Yes, it is a temptation to think of the pleasant life I could construct in South America.

  Come come: that sounds too like some deplorable doctor who has made revolting experiments in concentration camps. I must not become childish. I have all the weaknesses of a member of the ‘establishment’ and all the strengths. No police officer will dare institute proceedings against me. You would be bedevilled by a perfect tidal wave of outrage. Wrongful arrest, slander, damage to professional standing, abusive and excessive use of judicial powers. I have only to lift a finger, ring my minister, say that I am being blackmailed by a police officer.

  My position is extremely strong, for as long as I choose to keep it so. I feel better; I always pick up rapidly. I will go off for a week, and you cannot do a damn thing about it. Not the sea, I think; the season is still too summery and there are tourists everywhere. Perhaps the forests. Autumn is getting near and there will soon be mushrooms. I am tempted by the notion of trees, huge numbers of trees, and I could pick a few amanitas for you, as a present.

  That game of squash was typical of Post, thought van der Valk, taking off his shorts and stuffing them in his briefcase, next to the grey cardboard file marked CMP. He beat me, of course, being a practised, clever player. Yet if I took this damn game seriously I could beat him. By chasing everything, pushing him, playing him off balance, pressing in on him – if I practised… Sure, he is a tricky player, but when the ball flies out of his reach he lets it go. He stands aloofly watching it go, with his little smile, and gives his opponent that faint nod of amused congratulation, as though one were a peasant beneath his notice. As though there were something contemptible about running, fighting, competing. There’s no fight in him.

  It was at that moment that he decided to lash out for all he was worth.

  He waited for the doctor in the bar.

  “How about a drink? Not here; too many people. Why not in the Amstel? That’s more your style anyway. Quiet, discreet, elegant, beautiful view over the water at evening. Twilight on the bridge - Whistler nocturne – that’s what we like about the Amstel, that nostalgic feeling. No police riffraff there, either.” The Amstel Hotel, which is the best in Holland, was a couple of hundred metres away, along the Sarphatistraat.

  “Very well,” said Pos
t agreeably. “It might be pleasant. I quite enjoy your company. You make, too, an interesting study – do you know you’re quite a casebook example?”

  Van der Valk beamed at him. “Still waiting for me to get tired, and go home and leave you in peace?”

  “That is your choice. Your time you waste. It is indifferent to me – have I not told you about the man who used to get a recurrent desire to kill me?”

  “Here we are. We might meet Mr Merckel; great stamping-ground this for your patients. Official dinners, with miniature decorations, under the gracious patronage of royalty. Preserving wild life, or some such praiseworthy cause.”

  They sat down by the window that overlooks the terrace and looked out at the Amstel river.

  “I buy the drinks, since I lost the game. Two very good very large cognacs.”

  “Certainly, sir. Any especial brand?”

  “Whatever you please. And two Cuban cigars.”

  “Police hospitality!” said Post. “I’m quite struck. Rather significant, I fear: compensation wishes in you. Why not two beers and a packet of Caballeros?”

  “You’re a very special customer of mine. I like to see them happy, too. Look at him warming the glasses – he gets bored, you know. Like me. I have sympathy for all waiters; I’m sort of a one myself.”

  “Speaking for myself, I’m never bored.”

  “You aren’t? Here’s to you. I got this for you really because you need it.”

  “What, after a game of squash? A glass of squash, more likely.”

  “This is different. Now we’re in a championship match. You want to absorb a lot of courage. You know who wins championship matches? The one who survives setbacks the longest. If that game had been for a championship, I’d have beaten you easily, wouldn’t I? You follow?”