Mr. Miller

by Charles den Tex

  Wherever I was, they were there, too, each time with greater confidence and an even clearer sense of mission. There was little wrong with this team in organizational terms. The only thing they lacked was success, and I wasn’t about to sit around and wait for that to happen. I crept back to the cart on my hands and knees, hoisted myself onto the chair, set one foot against the pocket knife, and with one kick the little door sprang open.

  The compartment was crammed with folders and papers, far too many to peruse at my leisure. Every second I stayed in this room was too long. The night watchman might not know where I was, but Huib Breger would make a beeline for this floor and this room. If he had stopped at the desk and had seen the images of my entrance, he’d know it was me and he’d also know where I was. I had to get away, and in order to take the documents with me I needed a bag. I looked around, but all I saw were the empty desks and the carts standing in a row beside the door. I tried to visualize the owners of the carts. Which one of them would have a plastic bag. Thomas? No, too fashionable. Not Frans, either. Gijs? Yes, Gijs would. Of course Gijs would have one. He had come to the office more than once with a plastic bag.

  I grabbed his cart and pulled the shelf open. In the back was the key to the lower compartment. I quickly opened the door, and there to the right, in a corner next to the folders, were three plastic bags, all neatly folded up into little squares. One from the Albert Heijn, one from the Edah and one from the Bijenkorf. I hurried back to Jessica’s cart and jammed as many papers into the bags as I could. Then I turned off the desk lamp and stepped into the corridor. The painkillers worked as long as I didn’t make any exaggerated moves, but now I had no choice. I ran, raced—not to the elevators, because any minute now Breger could come walking out of one of them, but back to the stairwell at the corridor’s end. The bags were hanging heavily from my arms. Every step reverberated down my spine. I leaned against the door, pushed it open and slipped out of the corridor, and as the door closed behind me I heard the polite ding-dong sound of the elevator. I had a headstart, but I wouldn’t be able to hold onto it for long. This was the same route Breger had taken with the body of Ina Radekker. He knew exactly how to get in and out of the building, and he wouldn’t need more than five minutes to be on my tail.

  I couldn’t stay in the stairwell. It was too far down and I was too slow. I had to get out before they came in, so they wouldn’t know what floor I was on. The sooner I got out the better, so I went down to the eighth, and back into the corridor. I raced to the central hall, pushed the elevator buttons and waited. As soon as the door opened I leaned forward and pushed the button for the top floor, but I myself stayed out in the hall. When the door closed I ran into the next corridor and down to the far end of the other wing of the building. The handles of the bags were cutting into my hands. Bumping and bouncing, I went down the stairs. More and more urgently, faster and faster—or so I thought. Actually I no longer knew what I thought. I needed all my concentration just to stay upright. Then on the floor below me I saw the door swing open, but it was too late. I was halfway between the fourth and third floors, and suddenly the man from the security service was standing in front of me. In the middle of the stairwell. He looked up, his expression blank and hard.

  ‘I thought so,’ he said, and his right hand slid over to the blunt club on his belt.

  Without even thinking I turned around and began limping up the stairs. It was a no-go. I hadn’t taken three steps before I realized I had made the wrong decision. Going up was a dead-end street, in every respect. I turned around again and looked down. The guard was coming after me, his movements calm and controlled. Here I had no more to lose. Anything was better than Breger, I thought. Anything. And then I thought some more. I thought that when I was in the hotel I should have shaved, for instance, that I should have taken a bath. I thought that, too. Nice, warm, gentle thoughts, while I pressed the bags to my chest, bent my knees slightly and took off. In one smooth curve I dove down, right on top of the man. The bags and papers broke my fall, but my whole body was creaking and tearing. I ended up a couple of steps below him, my feet pointed down. I had let go of the bags. The man above me jumped up with a resilience that I could only remember from a former life. I couldn’t even work in a seated position any more.

  Half hidden under one of the bags beside me was the club. I grabbed it, held it in a concealed position and waited until he came down to the step just above me, the big shoes in front of my nose, the dark grey pants with piping along the side seams. I saw every detail with crystal clarity, and then I struck. With all the strength I had, I hit him on the ankle just above the opening of his shoe. The club landed right on the protruding bone. It cracked. I heard it crack. In the silent stairwell with its bare concrete walls it sounded loud and clear. Shattering bone. For a fraction of a second nothing happened. Deadly silence. Then the man started bellowing as the pain surged through his leg. He grabbed onto the banister. At that moment I completely lost all control. All I could see were the feet of the man above me. My powers of observation were reduced to what I had to break, what I had to smash through in order to get away. My life depended on someone else’s ankles, and I had no problem doing something about it. So I laid into the other ankle like a wild man. Three, four times I bashed the club against the man’s ankle joint. I kept on beating until the man let go of the railing and toppled over. He lay diagonally across the stairs, wailing and shrieking, both feet hanging at an unnatural angle at the far end of his body.

  I quickly grabbed the bags, swept up the papers and stuffed them back in. Then I carefully stepped over the man. I didn’t even recognize him. He didn’t know me, either. It didn’t look as if we were about to become great pals. His walkie-talkie began crackling.

  ‘Rob?’ came a voice that I would gradually learn to recognize anywhere. Breger was looking for his man. ‘Rob, where are you?’

  I grabbed the device, pulled the wires out and tossed it away. Then I went downstairs, stumbling and staggering, past the ground floor and into the parking garage. Using the pass, I opened the gate at the back and went out. No one was there. I walked to the side of the grounds, climbed over the barrier to Strawinskylaan, crossed the road and slid down the slope on the other side, through the wet earth and thick bushes. Then I followed the bike path back to Parnassusweg, opened the door of the taxi and dropped onto the seat.

  ‘I’m back,’ I said.

  The driver looked at me and said nothing. The jacket of my suits was in tatters, the pants were torn from front to back, all the buttons on the shirt were gone, my eyes were so swollen that I could hardly see, I’d lost the cap and the mud from the slope was everywhere.

  He looked at the little clock on his dashboard. It was three-twenty.

  ‘With time to spare,’ he said.

  41 Deeper and deeper under my skin

  If you want family, you’ve got to be family.

  It may not have been the best moment to start, but it was the only moment I had. I didn’t want to go back to the hotel. The thought of a closet of a room with a reproduction of some painting screwed to the wall and a printed card for writing down your complaints and suggestions was more than I could take. The room had no mini-bar and there was no room service. There was no service at all, in fact, and without service in a hotel you’re very, very alone. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be alone, and I was in serious need of care. Lots of care. Ten minutes later the taxi pulled up to Hondecoeterstraat. The driver helped me out and set the backpack and the plastic bags down next to me on the sidewalk.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked.

  We both knew the answer was ‘no’ but I said ‘yes,’ because what are you supposed to do in a situation like that? I had what I wanted and I was where I wanted to be. Even that was a lot. I could have started complaining, of course, and to be honest I really felt like a good gripe, but I just didn’t have the energy. Moaning was all I could manage.

  The taxi slowly drove away trailing snatches of song, a bungee-jump
ing voice sawing away to a steady beat. I looked around. Hondecoeter was one of those streets you could be directed to a hundred times and still not be able to find, a respectable street in a respectable neighbourhood, a street that makes no impression whatsoever. Between Nicolaas Maes and Frans van Mieris. The houses seemed taller because the street was narrower. Optical illusion.

  For the zillionth time I was standing in front of a door. I hadn’t known I had it in me, but calling on other people turned out to be one of my basic skills. I lugged the backpack and the bags up to the door, and in the dimness of the streetlights, which were just a little too far away, I searched for the names next to the doorbells.

  Third floor. Kirsten, it said, without any last name. No one would ever be able to find me here. Because I don’t have a sister.

  I rang the bell and had to wait a long time for a response. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t in a hurry. Hesitantly the door opened a crack.

  ‘Yes?’ I heard. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Me,’ I said. Totally indistinct, but evidently just the sound of my voice was enough because the door slowly began to open. Kirsten looked at me, and what she saw bore no resemblance to what she knew. I was no longer the same man who had come to meet her at the airport. I was no longer the brother she thought I was. She recognized me immediately, but it thinned out after that. I saw it in her eyes, that dizzy about-face that I had felt once myself. One-one, I thought, grabbing onto the door frame.

  That was all I could manage.

  She lugged me inside and dragged me up the stairs. Three floors up was higher than I thought it would be. They built the ceilings higher in the respectable neighbourhoods, so the stairs were steeper. Amsterdam at its narrowest is always a stairwell. It was endless. Up we went, step by step. Every few steps I had to stop, lean against the wall and release the tension from my back. I was living around a core of pain. Colours were dancing before my eyes, colours that weren’t really there, green and yellow, purple. Blue stripes on black. Or was it white? If it turned orange I knew I was done for. I knew it for sure. Orange made me dizzy, always did.

  When we got to the third floor she pushed the door open to the front room, and very carefully, step by step, she led me to a large couch.

  ‘Just sit here,’ she said.

  I sat down in silence, searching for words so I’d have something to say.

  ‘Dad’s gone,’ I said. I don’t know where that came from, but it was the only thing I could think of. Typical.

  ‘About time,’ she said, and with those two words I knew I had come to the right place. The only place. Kurt wasn’t gone. He was still here. He just wasn’t Kurt anymore.

  With her hands on my shoulders she pushed me gently to the side until I was lying on the couch. Then she pulled off my shoes and socks and straightened my legs. Now I began losing touch, and it happened so quickly that I had to struggle just to wrench a few words from my flickering consciousness.

  ‘Backpack,’ I said. ‘Bags.’

  ‘What bags?’ she asked.

  ‘Sidewalk.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll get them. Don’t worry.’

  Don’t worry. That was just what I wanted to hear. Kurt and I understood each other. We always had. Eyes shut, still all those colours flashing wildly through my head. I heard her go out of the room and down the stairs.

  The couch wasn’t working. The cushions were too soft, and after just a few seconds my back began hurting so much that I knew I couldn’t stay there. I rolled onto my side and gingerly tried to slide myself onto the floor, but the displacement of weight caused the cushions to shift and I landed right on the planks, my chin on the wood and my teeth clenched, and not by choice. I was lying on my stomach. Carefully raising my arms, I pushed my hands under my face. I was lying flat on a hard surface, and although my knees, arms and face were not in full agreement, my back felt blissful. The colours stopped, and finally it began to grow dark. I think I may have heard her coming back upstairs, but it also could have been the beating of my heart. As familiar as climbing stairs.

  I woke up with a thin pillow under my head and a stiff body. Everything was locked. My arms and legs no longer responded to my commands. Even my fingers didn’t seem to understand what they were supposed to do. A thin blanket had been drawn up over me and I couldn’t get it to budge. I was probably groaning, because a little while later Kirsten came and sat beside me on the floor. Daylight all around her.

  ‘Are you still there?’ she asked.

  ‘Barely.’

  ‘Can you stand up?’

  I shook my head, and even that was almost impossible.

  ‘You’re going to have to get up anyway,’ she said.

  ‘Wait. Just a minute,’ I said. ‘Before you start pulling me, my back …’

  ‘Your back? Does your back hurt?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘In the middle. My vertebrae.’

  She disappeared from my field of vision and pulled off the blanket, and soon I felt her fingers sliding across my back, cautiously exploring, feeling, and occasionally pressing down slightly. Every other centimetre she asked me, ‘Here?’ and as soon as I said no she let her fingers slide further.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No.’

  She was barely touching me. Between her fingertips and the spot on my back there was still a shirt and jacket, or what was left of them, but when she touched the spot I screamed.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘So it’s here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine. Don’t move.’ She stood up, went out of the room and came back with a pair of scissors. She cut my jacket and shirt open up to the collar and pulled the two halves back so she could see what was going on. Nothing happened. She didn’t say a word and she didn’t touch me. She just looked.

  ‘And have you had this long?’ she finally asked.

  ‘Since last night.’

  ‘Hm mm,’ she said, and once again she disappeared from sight. Her fingers glided around the centre of the pain. Every now and then she pushed lightly, squeezed a bit. It felt good. The dominance of the pain subsided somewhat. ‘Very active after that?’ she asked.

  ‘Reasonably.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That was more than enough.’

  She stopped and sat down next to me again, where I could see her. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on or what?’

  ‘As if you’ve ever told me anything,’ I said, which was exactly what I knew I shouldn’t have said because it was so stupid. I was taking a swipe at her and she couldn’t answer back. What was she supposed to say? I didn’t want to go into detail either, certainly not now that I could hardly move, being nailed to the floor. The ideal position for saying stupid things. But these moments choose themselves, and you have to trust them up to a certain point.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Kirsten, ‘but there are some things that are best talked about when you can show what you mean, otherwise it’s just a lot of theoretical hot air. And I’m not like that. I’m not theoretical.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Otherwise, you’re right.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Just the kind of right I need to be.’

  Neither of us spoke.

  ‘Pills,’ I said.

  She left the room and came back with two paracetamols.

  ‘More,’ I said, and put the first two in my mouth.

  ‘I do realize that you had nowhere else to go,’ she said after a while, ‘but even so, I’m glad you’re here.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘It may not look like it,’ I said, ‘but I’m gladder than you think.’

  More silence.

  ‘Partly, at least.’

  ‘And the other part?’

  ‘Everything there is wrecked.’

  ‘Here, you mean?’ She pointed to my back.

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘that just hurts.’


  ‘You have to accept who I am,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Otherwise we’re going to have problems.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  Gradually my limbs began moving again. Our hands brushed against each other. ‘I do know who you are,’ I said, ‘but when I look at you, I don’t know who I am anymore, you know what I mean? You haven’t just changed yourself. You’ve changed me, too.’

  ‘And I shouldn’t have done that?’

  ‘No, that’s not it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure, don’t even think about it. You are who you are. But since you’ve stopped being Kurt, I’ve stopped being myself.’

  ‘That’s exactly the kind of theoretical hot air I was talking about,’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’ She squatted down next to me and grabbed my arm. Then very carefully she rolled me on my side. ‘First of all, you have to sit up.’ She folded my legs and pulled me up to a sitting position. Then she stood in front of me, planted her feet on my toes, grabbed my hands and pulled me to my feet. Pain shot through my body. I knew she was right, that I had to do something to counteract the stiffness, but my body just wanted to remain prone. Finally I stood up and my divided shirt and jacket dropped to the floor. I was covered with scratches and black-and-blue spots. I was filthy and I stank. I groaned.

  ‘And now into the shower, please. I can’t do anything with you this way.’

  She supported me, guided me, actually just dragged me down the hall and into the bathroom. In a few minutes we were standing face to face in the small, white-tiled cubicle and she began to loosen my pants.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted, knocking her hands away. The sudden movement made me lose my balance. I grabbed onto the edge of the shower stall.

  ‘Not good?’ she asked.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I’ve seen you so often, so why …’

  ‘Because back then you weren’t … like this.’

  ‘Oh, and now that I’m … like this … I can’t look at you anymore?’