With soundless adrenaline-laced steps he takes the stairs up to the landing. The smell of dust and washing. He sets down the bag, fingers the cotton of his judo suit superstitiously, and looks up. The eternal patience of objects. Does he dare? His battle plan is simple: snip open the padlock; if he finds nothing then he’s made a monumental error, in which case he will leave this row house in jubilation and what happened to that padlock will remain a mystery forever; if he does find what he’s afraid of finding, then the padlock doesn’t … then nothing matters anymore.
He wriggles the bolt cutters out of the bag. The jaw is made of glistening, virgin steel. The rubber-sheathed grips are so long that he does not need a chair. His heart pounding, he raises the shears and places the jaw on the shiny U. It takes some effort to squeeze the tool, his upper arms quiver, the bolt cutter is heavy. He gives it one good thrust, and the blades glide through the steel as if through a licorice shoelace. To remove the lock from the rings in the trapdoor and molding he has to get a chair from the study after all, his legs tremble as he climbs onto it. With a dull thud the broken padlock drops into the athletic bag. He takes a deep breath and, the hatch crackling hellishly, he pulls down the folding stairs.
The rectangular hole leading to the attic: a soap film stretches between the wooden edges, a stubborn molecular membrane of last-ditch hope. The fervent hope of paranoia, the hope that things will turn out all right, a softly glistening skin that he puts to the test with every creaking rung—until his eyes scan the attic and the film bursts.
What else did you expect?
He mustn’t fall. As though he’s being crucified, he stretches his arms out over the bloodred carpeting, two nails through his palms. In the ensuing seconds he consists only of head and arms: his legs, his torso, the stairs, the house, Enschede—the whole earth has been swept away underneath him.
What he recognizes from the photos unfolds at lightning speed into three dimensions, what in the pictures was odorless, and essentially innocuous, now has the deadly aroma of unfinished wood, of dust, and of something soft, something feminine, expensive talcum powder. What he experiences is perversely akin to a mathematical proof, to what his beloved Hardy meant by revelation coupled with inevitability; to efficiency, elegance: the dazzling lamp that suddenly becomes illuminated when you hit upon a proof. Now everything blacks out.
He becomes aware of a distant, heavy panting—the rhythm of his own breathing. The attic is more spacious than he had expected, the red wall-to-wall carpeting chafes his arms. Twilight falls softly through a closed Velux roof window. In the middle of the room, a wooden bed in romantic country-cottage style, pillows with lace edging, a white duvet puffed up like fresh snow in a Dickens film. On either side, two tripods with flood lamps. The professionalism of those two scarecrows is devastating—this is no attic, this is a studio. The sloping walls are decorated with posters, carefully chosen posters, he appreciates at once, posters that deliberately have nothing to do with Joni and Aaron: a panorama photo of the Grand Canyon, the picture with the two kittens, Celine Dion in Las Vegas. Against the outside wall, covered in pink-and-white-striped wallpaper, he spots the bookcase filled with the American books, he recognizes it from the photos in Shanghai—a wave of bitterness and revulsion jolts through him: the calculated forethought, the devious perfection of that bookcase.
Off to the right, under the Velux window, he sees a small desk with a PC; lower, at eye level, where the sloping ceiling disappears into a sharp, dark corner, clothes spill out of canvas drawer units on casters: dresses, it appears, lingerie, so there they are, the sales boosters. Across the room, a green dressing table with an oval mirror; on it are various spray cans and roll-on deodorants, in front of it a nostalgic mannequin with, instead of limbs, a four-legged frame on wheels. Atop the faceless wooden head rests the straight black wig of his forebodings. Feeling as if he’s been struck, he realizes that the objects on the dressing table are not deodorants, but plastic penises. His eyes well up with tears. Dildos. He can think the word, that far he can go, but he will never be able to say it out loud.
For a few minutes he stares, panting, at the peak of the roof, poisoned by the scent of talcum. A supporting beam runs across the entire breadth of the attic. Just swing a rope over it. The moment he realizes that his eyes are searching for a chair, he bangs both fists on the carpeting, hard, he almost loses his balance, the ladder underneath him wobbles and creaks.
He is a man who knows how much effort it takes to achieve something people will be impressed by, often for a disappointingly short time, perhaps because they do not appreciate the immensity of the preparations involved. The first time he detected a trace of that talent in Joni—the ability to work long and hard toward a distant goal—was in Boston. She had to prepare a final project on a subject of her choice, and this eleven-year-old girl produced a twenty-page paper on Dwight D. Eisenhower. While her classmates chose subjects like Afghan hounds or volcanoes or the Boston Red Sox, she gave an in-depth account of West Point, the Normandy invasions, the United Nations, Ike in the White House—knowledge she had collected from various sources in the MIT library, where, using his pass, she spent several afternoons perusing and photocopying illustrations and text. He was touched by Joni’s project, for which she got an A-minus (that “minus” being the discrepancy between her own middling English and the too-perfect English of the excerpts she’d overenthusiastically copied from thick Harvard biographies—she admitted as much). It instilled him with confidence in her future.
The knowledge that she applied that same thoroughness, the same intelligence and tenacity, to concocting this Internet brothel … Is this why he encouraged her schoolwork? Taught her to follow through? To put together a fake bookcase? To play the whore up in some attic?
Behind him he discovers a rack of pumps. He recognizes the shoes, right down to the last pair, the patent leather pumps in every jellybean color, the white ones with the little bows, the Burberrys, the ankle straps, the open toes. Shoes he’s never seen his daughter actually wear. With great effort he reaches for the rack and just manages to flick off a black satin number, lifting it over with his pinkie. The heel is slender and delicate, above the toe there’s a small, soft fabric rosette. “Karen Millen” is printed on the insole. He caresses the heel with his index finger. Then he hurls it across the room, it hits the bookcase with a hollow clack and falls to the floor.
He orders his numbed legs back down the folding stairs. On the landing he thrusts the bolt cutters back into the carryall, he wants to push the ladder back up, but reconsiders. To be alone for longer. No one around. Panic at the idea of having to watch a football match in a full students’ union. Clutching the tennis bag he goes downstairs and walks into the deathly quiet living room. He puts the bag on one of the leather armchairs and sinks onto the purple sofa, gets up again and squats in front of a low oak cupboard with etched-glass doors; glasses on a shelf, bottles of liquor in the wooden belly. He pulls out an open bottle of Jim Beam, fills an old-fashioned tumbler and stretches out on the sofa with the bottle and the glass. He drinks with his eyes closed. And now? Now what? His thoughts, he realizes, have not yet gone beyond this point, all these weeks he has unconsciously firmly planted himself on the axis of the lucky break. That dimension has been pulverized, curled up, retracted: he is a flatlander, his new reality is level and bleak. He can no longer dodge the fact that his daughter and her boyfriend were … he is reluctant, no, he is unable to use the word “porn,” it is too ignominious, the word itself makes him feel too wretched. He wants to tear it apart, letter for letter, burn each letter separately, scatter the ash on five different continents. He refills the tumbler to keep from flinging it through the television screen. Above the TV hangs a large painting, a landscape with thick brush strokes, art on loan. Something has to be broken. Whiskey against canvas, in his mind’s eye he sees the tumbler shatter, the alcohol dissolving the paint. Once, just once, he’d set foot in a sex shop, one of those places with blackened windows, a p
lace that cannot endure daylight. Rent one of those films, Tineke’s suggestion, no, a friend of Tineke’s. You two should try one of those films. “Why do you discuss our sex life?” “What sex life, Siem?” So all right, he goes. But what a sorry sight. Walking into that blacked-out, backstreet joint. Everything in him resists walking into a place with a nude broad painted on the front. But he does it. Once inside, the thought that soon he’s got to go back outside again. The smell of plastic videotapes, man sweat, carpeting. The smell of semen. The louse behind his cum-counter. The displays of tapes, the plastic dicks, the men creeping out of the cabins like cockroaches. The looking, which film, hurry up, decide, for God’s sake. And while he’s standing there, roach among the roaches, awkward, miserable, horny, in comes a guy in a raincoat. Sets a stack of videotapes on the counter; “late,” he mumbles. Out of the corner of his eye he watches the louse retrieve them and stab at a calculator. “That’ll be 1,043 guilders and 30 cents.” Just once he sets foot into this kind of joint and this happens. The raincoat digs around in his pockets, counts out eleven 100-guilder bills and leaves. That is porn, Joni.
The whiskey plows furrows in his throat. He has to try to address a number of questions in the right order. How bad is this? Start there. How bad is a daughter who prostitutes herself? He has to assess the damage. How bad is what his daughter is doing? And is it really prostitution? Yes, he thinks it is—and is immediately indignant: she, with her brains, with her opportunities. Your daughter sells close-ups of her genitals on the Internet. It’s a disaster. She is bankrupt. He is bankrupt.
More Jim Beam, the gulp goes down like a dagger, try to calm down. It is a bottle he’d brought back with him from Shanghai—he realizes that he hasn’t for a second thought of Aaron. What’s his part in all this? This is Aaron’s house, it is his attic, his computer, his photography equipment. Coercion? He lunges forward, grabs one of the badminton rackets and smacks the edge of the table. Is he coercing her? No—he knows those two too well to believe that, it’s impossible. Joni can’t be coerced, she is too headstrong, too dominant. The epitome of free will. Aaron is a follower—he thinks this to his own surprise. Only now does he despise himself for his concern. When he still hoped for a happy ending, he was mainly concerned for Joni, he loved his daughter so much that it was her future that mattered most. Was she mentally sound? Was she under pressure? But now: forget it. He is incensed, now that the truth spits in his face he’s livid. What does that little bitch think? How could she be so stupid? So sleazy, so perverse. How could she? Do you realize what you’re doing, Joni? The risks you’re taking? Public risks? What if this gets out? How ostracized do you want to become, Joni Sigerius?
Drink and think. He sags on the stiff sofa like a zombie. For a moment he feels like giving in to the heavy, deep fatigue, but then bolts upright. Blood rushes to his head. What about himself? When this gets out? A Minister of Education with a double watermark on his stationery: murder and prostitution. A son who bashed a man to death and a daughter turning tricks on the Internet. Porn times murder, behold the formula of his life. Oh yes, they’ll drag Wilbert into it for sure, everything will be dredged up. He’ll be drummed out of office, they’ll hound and humiliate him until there’s nothing left of him. What did I do to deserve this? Has my luck run out? The sweat beads on his back, his legs are sticky.
Try to remain analytical. Think in terms of solutions. It is a crisis, not a catastrophe—not yet, at least. He still has almost a week to take measures. He has to come up with a plan of action before they return, a strategy to defuse this crisis that’s not yet a catastrophe. Should he confront them? Take a hard line, give them a piece of his mind, should he unmask them, castigate them? Yes. No. He doesn’t know. Perhaps it’s better to collude with them; an enemy, he thinks, won’t be able to talk sense into them. What they’re doing is legal, they are adults. It isn’t manslaughter, after all. Antagonize them and you’ve lost them. It will only egg them on. You have to confront them and negotiate openly.
Sounds from outside reach him through a rising haze of alcohol; somewhere in a backyard, football fans are gearing up for the impending match. He has got over the initial shock. His anger subsides, the whiskey relaxes him somewhat. His thoughts flow into another channel, again he arrives at his father. Could he be off the mark? Just like his old man was off the mark? Are there, like back then, two realities? Two truths colliding? Is he keeping up with the times? Is that attic room no more than a frivolous youthful indiscretion? Again he grabs the racket and slams a dent into the edge of the table. Don’t be so soft, man! We’re not talking about judo. This is damn well about …
And yet. Something’s gnawing at him, a faint hypocritical nibbling, and the more he drinks, the more difficult it is to ignore. The ironic fact that he … that he happened upon this whole sordid business as a consumer, as one of Joni’s clients, that he wasn’t tipped off by a concerned third party, the fact is he paid, he transferred money to those two for exactly what he’s now so vehemently condemning—the mind-boggling, tangled duplicity starts to dawn on him. The hard white light of his moral indignation strikes a prism and is refracted into a spectrum of nuanced and emotional doom.
The years of Joni’s blossoming womanhood. His absurdly stilted efforts to avoid any semblance of erotic interest. Woody Allen’s relationship with his stepdaughter, he and Tineke watch the evening news, and he furiously switches off the television, can’t stand to hear it. Unbearable. How he prudishly stopped going in the bathroom while Joni showered, put an end to the tickling and roughhousing on the sofa or in the garden—memories he juxtaposes against the outrageous fate now confronting him, the awful awareness that this is the very same girl—woman—he has unwittingly been leering at and lusting after.
Anxiety about the Internet, which he has believed in since day one, which he even, as a scientist and administrator, helped foster, and that now has infiltrated his campus as a bordello. Grim thoughts of Aaron, of the young man who pretends to be his friend, whom he has admitted to his inner circle. Who is this Aaron Bever, actually? He glances around, takes a better look at Aaron’s things, the expensive Luxman amplifier and CD player, the electrostatic speakers, the thousands of books, the furniture he suddenly notices as remarkably exclusive, pricey.
Disquiet about his role as a parent. What did he do wrong? Did he miss the signals? Focus too much on achievement? Did he talk to her enough? In his mind he tries a case of nature versus nurture; proposed settlement: it is nature and nurture. Did not raise his son, did not conceive his daughters—the outcome would make him weep if the alcohol hadn’t tempered his nerves. Brooding over the year he had both of them under his wing, Wilbert and Joni, about his far-reaching suspicions regarding his own son, his concern for Wilbert’s hormonal response to the sudden flowering of his younger stepsister. One question mixes like poison into the stream: what can you expect from a stranger’s genes? Is she really his daughter? Who is Joni?
• • •
Meanwhile the whiskey also … softens him, eliciting a laissez-faire mood that’s entirely unlike him. The corset of his respectability, the straitjacket of his status, the restraints of his … generation? start to slacken. He is relaxed. He loves them, doesn’t he? He loves Joni, with all his heart, he even loves Aaron. Put yourself in their shoes. The seclusion and solitude of Aaron’s house invites him to do just that. The sincere question of why they do it—why do they do it? Does it give them pleasure? The answer is obvious, of course it gives them pleasure. It turns them on. They’re young, rich, reckless. They just do it. They do it out of lust and greed. And him? He likes Jim Beam.
It’s a quarter to eight. He stands up, giddy, totters over to the liquor cabinet, places the whiskey with a crystalline smack against the bottle next to it. He dabs his lips with his sleeve. Another mood has now taken over, a dark mood, a mood that perhaps doesn’t even matter. Shivers run through his body as he leaves the room. The stairs up to the next floor sound hollow. It doesn’t have to take long. His hear
t racing, he closes all the doors on the landing, laundry room, bathroom, study, bedroom. He takes a deep breath, grasps the folding attic stairs, lets go again, wipes his sweaty hands on his trousers. Consumed by vicious self-pity, I deserve this, he begins climbing the squeaking steps. The sweet scent of talcum powder whets his resolve. He is not Woody Allen, he is not the Minister of Education.
The attic is an attic in Kentucky. Holding his breath, he closes the trapdoor and surveys the room. How to go about this? There are so many possibilities. The silence is profound, but he still hears it, a little tune reaches him from the far corner, it’s coming from the shoe rack, the colorful pipe organ of high heels. Maybe the rack waited, let him blow off some steam first. Maybe it’s been beckoning him all along.
He sniffs, undoes his laces, and kicks off his shoes; the carpet presses itself softly and gently into the soles of his feet. He can’t swallow. His trousers and boxers rustle as they fall to his bare ankles; panting, he tugs his shirt over his head. He walks around the bed, gruesomely naked all of a sudden, there is a new nakedness that has concealed itself under his ordinary nakedness, and he picks up the satin pump from the floor. While holding his foreskin between thumb and index finger, as though his phallus were an inflated balloon, he examines the shoe from all angles. He presses the slender heel against his balls, traces a line along the underside of his erection. Something soft, panties, a slip. With the shoe in his hand he goes to the other side of the attic and squats down in front of the canvas drawers, pulling open the middle one: nylons, fishnet stockings, garters, body stockings, tops, skirts, bras, countless panties. He roots around, feels, looks, pulls out a sheer black stocking, thrusts his nose into it: that same dark, exquisite talc smell. Touching the infinitely fine-woven fabric catapults him back to the 1950s, he glides above Delft, descending into his sister’s bedroom, and makes a belly-landing on her twin bed. Home alone, he controlled himself for as long as possible, but eventually reached under the iron box-spring and pulled out the hatbox where she kept her stockings. He examined them, felt them, inhaled the soft, feminine scent, in order to better imagine the feel and smell of the untouchable women’s legs he saw on the street, in the tram, during Miss Rethans’s English lessons. He was ashamed of it, thought he was sick, thought himself a deviant, especially once he found out there was a special word for his peculiar interests, a word he, still after all those years, detests.
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