Mr. Miller

by Charles den Tex

  ‘No. Jeez.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not, why not, yeah, why do you think?’ It was an impossible conversation. Kirsten was pushing me irrevocably to say things I had not yet said. Not out loud. Because I didn’t know how to say it until someone forced the words out of me. And that’s what she was doing.

  ‘What do I think?’ she asked. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you should never do somebody else’s thinking for them because nine out of ten times you’ll be off base, and the one time you get it right it’ll come out wrong. So come on. Why not?’ She was less than ten centimetres away. I could smell her, feel the warmth of her body. And no matter how much I blinked, I couldn’t get her eyes out of mine.

  ‘Because …’

  ‘Because you don’t want me to be … like this. But what that “like this” is, is something you don’t even dare to say!’

  ‘A woman,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. Because I’m not what you think I ought to be, that’s why not.’

  I shook my head. Pain in my back. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No …’

  ‘Oh, no? What is it then?’ She was angry, with an injured viciousness. She had chosen this particular moment, and the moment had chosen me. Here on the tiles in front of the shower. I could barely hold my body together and I had to tell her what it was, here. Every explanation I could think of seemed blunt and crude. Harsh.

  ‘WHAT?’ she screamed.

  ‘Okay, what? You want to know what?’

  ‘YES!’

  ‘Because I’d end up standing here with this massive erection, okay?’

  Her mouth fell open. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Or is that theoretical, too?’

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.

  I leaned against the wall with one hand and dropped onto the edge of the bathtub. ‘Can you picture it?’

  She laughed. ‘At least then I’d know the operation was a success.’

  ‘You don’t know by half,’ I said.

  ‘And there’s me thinking you didn’t love me anymore.’

  I groaned. ‘Give me a break!’

  She cupped my face in her hands. ‘Don’t you worry about that organ of yours. In your condition it’s probably the only body part that can’t get stiff.’ She kissed me, gently and not long enough for it to be anything else but a kiss. In a few rapid movements she ripped the band-aids from my face. I closed my eyes in shock. She grabbed my hands, helped me back up, unbuttoned my pants and pulled everything down. Then she turned me around and pushed me into the shower stall.

  ‘You can find the tap yourself,’ she said, shutting the door behind me. ‘When you’re done, just call me and I’ll come and get you.’

  She was right. The pain in my back made any kind of arousal impossible. I showered with difficulty. Every time I moved or turned in that slippery, confined space I expected to lose my balance. With a towel wrapped around my waist I stumbled into the living room. She had pushed the table a little to the side and had placed a mattress on the floor. It just fit. I laid down on it carefully, on my stomach. It was a good mattress. Not too hard, not too soft and wonderfully flat. As soon as I was down she began rubbing my back with salves and creams I didn’t even know existed. Arnica salve for the scrapes and the bruise, Advil cream for the pain and Tiger Balm to relax my stiff muscles.

  ‘You don’t have any shaving equipment,’ I said.

  ‘No, it took a while, but eventually I didn’t need it anymore. It’s one of those things that …’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ I said. ‘I meant that that’s why I hadn’t shaved yet.’

  ‘You think I didn’t know that?’ she said.

  ‘I’m starting not to know what I’m supposed to think anymore.’

  ‘Common problem,’ she said.

  I told her everything, starting with her arrival at Schiphol and the total chaos I had ended up in. ‘If I hadn’t known who you were, I would have hit on you right then and there,’ I said. ‘Really.’ I said that for several minutes I had thought and felt and realized everything at once, and that when she finally came out through the sliding glass doors I was so caught up in contradictory emotions that there was only one place to go.

  ‘Down,’ said Kirsten.

  ‘Carried off in an ambulance,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t even really necessary, but it was fine with me. As long as I was gone. And then I spent days hanging around in a drunken stupor in my apartment. No one knew where I was. I didn’t even pick up the phone, or check my e-mail, or open the door. The only thing I opened were bottles. Vodka, whisky, jenever, cognac, you name it. I had a pretty good supply and in a couple of days most of it was gone.’ I told her everything, from the threatened dismissal to the death of Radekker and to the hunt for me that her death had touched off. I told her about my escape, about making sure I didn’t disappear somewhere without a trace, where no one would ever be able to find me. Up until last night, when I ended up on her doorstep at three-thirty in the morning. I told her about everything, except Jessica. I went out of my way to avoid talking about Jessica. I wasn’t ready to deal with that yet. Not by a long shot.

  ‘So it’s really all my fault,’ said Kirsten.

  ‘Actually it is.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  After that she said lots of other things, but I don’t remember what. I fell asleep in the middle of a sentence. Deeper sleep this time, and more peaceful. For the first time in I don’t know how many days and nights I relaxed. When I woke up at the end of the afternoon I was still far from rested but the pain was less intense.

  ‘It looks worse than it is,’ she said. ‘A couple of more days of salves and creams, I think, and then I’ll be able to help you.’

  I spent the whole weekend with her, on the floor in the dining room, halfway under the table, flat on my stomach. Kirsten massaged my back, gently, with fingers that sometimes barely seemed to touch me but that felt everything. Every bruise, every battered muscle, every pinched nerve.

  ‘Because it’s no more than that,’ she said. ‘As soon as I can see where it is, I’ll be able to rub it out and the pain will go away.’

  ‘That’s what you think.’

  ‘That’s what I know. I had other things to occupy my time in America all those years.’ She was straddling my thighs, leaning forward slightly, rubbing and kneading. Further and further, deeper and deeper into my skin. Under my skin. The pain was killing me, but I said nothing.

  42 Bellilog 06.26.04

  I’ve lost my inner core somewhere along the way, my heart, my soul, whatever. All I have now are cracking joints and aching muscles. I’m physical, nothing more, and even that is in pretty bad shape.

  Mail from: HB2

  Subject: online

  Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock your time. Okay? Till then.

  43 Viruses in a favourable climate

  I was lying flat on my stomach behind my laptop. I surfed to Huib’s secure server, and before I could type a single word his questions started flying off the screen. Where had I been? Why hadn’t he heard from me in such a long time? What was going on? Had I looked on the network? Had I seen how incredibly busy it had been? The data flow that was getting more and more frantic? Had I …

  Patiently I waited until he was finished before typing my first comment. It was the beginning of a sober chat.

  − yesterday second victim, myself almost third

  − by uncle?

  − Yes.

  − SURE?

  − 100%

  − Fuck

  − and I have the computer

  − ............

  − what do you think?

  − I have to discuss this with my father first

  − what?

  − about HB

  − what does your father have to do with it?

  − he’s his brother

  From that moment on there was no talking to Huib. He was stuck in a family situation that was totally beyond me. My own family
was a scattered little group of people. I had just gotten to know my sister, I still had to find my father, my mother had reported me to the police and my brother had plugs in his ears. Huib was talking about his father, his uncles, his brothers, his grandfather and his cousins as if it were an indivisible unit. The entire male division of the Breger family was getting involved.

  The increased data flow probably had to do with the upcoming EU Summit on Security and Integration. Government leaders meeting at the summit were hoping to draw up agreements on taking joint action against extremism and religious fundamentalism. The contrasts were getting fiercer by the day. HC&P was involved in preparations for the summit at a number of levels, and it only seemed logical that they would coordinate their efforts in all the countries they were working in. HB2 disappeared from the network and left me with a lot of open-ended thoughts.

  Kirsten gave me some exercises to do. As I bent and stretched, I clamped my jaws together so hard that my teeth started grating. She felt my back, letting her fingers glide over the injured areas once again.

  ‘It’s still too black-and-blue,’ she said, ‘still too dark. I can’t really see it yet.’

  She rubbed on more salve and cream and left me alone. Exhausted by the pain and the endless treatment, I fell back asleep. I didn’t sleep long, a couple of hours, but when I woke up Kirsten was gone. I pulled the telephone towards me and called Vince Batte. Strila’s computer was still in my backpack, and it was about time someone with a bit of know-how had a look at it.

  ‘Bring it over,’ said Batte cheerfully.

  ‘Bad idea,’ I said, and I really had to do my best to convince him that he’d have to give up his Saturday night and come to me instead. The consultant in me was working overtime, and on my stomach at that. I had a cramp in my neck and jaw from talking in that position.

  ‘And one more thing,’ I said. ‘That pass I got from you is probably already invalid. Last night I was detected, and if I’m right about the registration of non-registered people it won’t work anymore.’

  Batte was silent.

  ‘You still there?’ I asked after almost half a minute.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, just hold on.’

  More silence.

  ‘Okay, I can only finish the pass at the office, which means Monday or Tuesday. When do you want me to come?’

  ‘Whenever you want,’ I said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  Kirsten came back with food and shaving gear. She helped me to the bathroom, and with lots of shaving cream and hot water I was able to scrape off my days-old whiskers. It felt good. Being shaved is cleaner than being washed. I looked at my face in the mirror and carefully fingered the scratches and bumps. The wound above my eyebrow was really closed now. Soon the scab would loosen. Kirsten came over and stood next to me, and together we looked at each other in the mirror.

  ‘Hey, Kurt,’ I said.

  She smiled and shook her head. ‘I’ve never been Kurt.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ I said. ‘But I’m starting to understand.’ We continued to stare at our mirror image, neither of us speaking. Just when I opened my mouth and was about to say something, the doorbell rang. Whatever I had wanted to say disappeared. It had something to do with family and with brother and sister, and lots of thoughts that Huib had put into my head. But I didn’t say any of that. What I did say was, ‘Oh, that must be Batte.’

  At first Kirsten was angry that I had given her address to an unknown person. She brought me back to the living room with an injured look on her face. In the hallway she pulled on the cord for the front door and shouted ‘Third floor!’ down the stairwell. By the time she had me back on my stomach on the mattress, Batte’s footsteps could be heard on the top steps. In the hallway.

  ‘Okay, where is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Here,’ Kirsten and I called out in chorus.

  Kirsten turned to the door, and one second later Batte’s fashionable nerd face appeared from around the corner, sunglasses shoved up on top of an almost clean-shaven bald head. No more than a few millimetres were left of the soggy, gel-enhanced spikes. He saw Kirsten and froze in his tracks, his arms extended oddly from the left and right sides of his body.

  ‘WOW!’ he said. ‘Reboot all systems!’ He looked as if he was about to drop to his knees but he straightened himself up, stiffened his arms spastically, turned around in a wooden, wobbly pirouette, slammed the door and grabbed his head.

  Kirsten shot forward to support him. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘This program has encountered fatal beauty,’ said Batte. ‘Don’t let go. Whatever you do, don’t let go.’

  She held on to him and waited. Nothing happened. Batte stopped twitching, and it looked as if he wasn’t going to fall over after all. All he did was stare at her, with a look in his eyes that seemed to soften gradually.

  ‘And now?’ Kirsten asked after about a minute.

  ‘And now it’s time for eternity.’

  ‘Oh, sure, and you’re going to be part of it, right?’ She let him go and gave him a punch on the arm. Batte groaned and winced, but Kirsten didn’t respond.

  ‘Kirsten,’ I said, ‘this is Vince. Vince, when you regain consciousness, my sister.’

  In two more or less normal minutes they shook hands and exchanged the conventional greetings, and Batte managed to find me on my mattress. He cursed.

  ‘What did you do?’ he asked. He pointed to my back and turned to Kirsten. His eyes flashed back and forth a couple of times, but before I could answer he had already forgotten me. ‘Or did you do this?’ he asked Kirsten.

  ‘What do you take me for?’

  ‘Well, now that you mention it, …’

  There was no stopping them. Batte circled around Kirsten and spoke a language that she seemed to understand better than I did. The room was bristling with life, but not where I was. In the same room, but beyond the reach of my mattress, Batte and Kirsten began behaving like a pair of viruses in a favourable climate. It was as if they were duplicating themselves every second. And everything they said was obscurely witty. Kirsten laughed and giggled. Suddenly she threw her head back, her long hair fanning out around her face. She made two or three small gestures with her hands, and then somewhere between those moments (I can’t say exactly when) Kurt disappeared.

  Just like that.

  ‘VINCE!’ I shouted.

  He turned around with a theatrical movement and looked at me. ‘Oui, mon Général?’

  ‘Knock it off.’

  ‘But I’m not doing anything.’

  ‘That’s why.’

  My anger surprised me, but I had ground to cover. The more Kirsten and Batte became interested in each other, the more rushed I felt. That was unfair. What they were doing had nothing to do with me, except for the fact that it was all taking place on my time, which I didn’t have much of. It was a bizarre situation. I couldn’t go anywhere, I was completely dependent on the people who wanted to help me, yet everyone was doing whatever they felt like doing. I pointed to Strila’s laptop.

  ‘Right,’ said Batte. He made an apologetic gesture towards Kirsten and flipped the laptop open. ‘What was the problem again?’

  He started up the computer. I gave him Strila’s password, and soon he was clicking through the files on the hard drive. He ran a couple of system checks and did a system inventory, then he shook his head. ‘Perfectly normal little computer,’ he said. ‘What were you saying about some kind of M-drive?’ He clicked to the MS-DOS prompt and typed M: and a return.

  ‘Station designation invalid,’ it said on the screen.

  ‘This thing doesn’t have an M-drive,’ he said. ‘Here.’ He pointed on the screen to the system properties list, which I couldn’t see. ‘Forty gigabytes partitioned in a C-drive and a D-drive. What are you yakking about? This is a standard Datwell 4120, the most popular laptop in the world. There are millions of them. I have one myself.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At home. It’s at home.’r />
  ‘Connected to the internet?’

  ‘No, it’s off now.’

  ‘But with all the cables attached?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I pulled up my own laptop, clicked onto the internet and, using Huib’s secure server, surfed to the HC&P network.

  ‘You know this?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ Batte was sitting with his back to me.

  ‘This. Here. If you don’t look, you can’t see it.’ He couldn’t take his eyes off Kirsten so I had to drag him away. ‘Here,’ I said.

  Batte sat down on the floor next to me and looked at the screen. In less than two seconds his attention was completely absorbed by the program. He looked at the pulsing image, information moving around in flocks. Huib was right. The network was more active than I had ever seen it before. The greatest activity was between Brussels, Amsterdam and San Francisco.

  ‘Is this a game?’ asked Batte. ‘Because it’s new to me.’

  ‘No, it’s no game,’ I said. ‘Look at this.’

  I clicked through the menus at great speed, as I had seen Huib do, until I found WorldWare in the Netherlands. Since the company was so intimately involved in everything HC&P was doing, I guessed it would be almost fully contained within the network. I clicked to the company’s project list, and soon almost all of WorldWare’s activities were shown on the screen. All Batte could do was whistle.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said quietly.

  I clicked the list away and entered via the departments.

  ‘Where do you work?’ I asked.

  ‘Registration Systems.’

  A list of employee names appeared on the screen, with Batte’s almost at the top. I clicked on his name and in a few seconds a dialog box appeared.

  Host available. Proceed ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

  I clicked on ‘yes’ and the box disappeared. On a dark, empty screen the simple prompt of an MS-DOS environment appeared—M:—followed by a blinking cursor. I typed C: and a return. A new dialog box appeared:

  Host switched off. Proceed ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

  Again I chose ‘yes’ and the spinning hourglass appeared.