Mr. Miller

by Charles den Tex

  ‘Not so bad,’ she said. ‘His first reaction was good. Very good.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘No buts.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Well, in a couple of months there’ll be other reactions. From his family. From his friends. From other women. And that can be hard going.’ She smiled. Subdued.

  ‘Been there?’ I asked.

  ‘Hm.’ She nodded.

  56 Meaning is history

  ‘Burger?’

  ‘Ew, God.’

  ‘Slice of pizza, then? You were always one for pizza.’

  ‘Come on, it’s ten-thirty in the morning!’

  ‘Good time for pizza, right?’

  ‘Normal people want coffee at about this time.’

  ‘Since when are we normal people? Watch what you say, because they have a Burger King here.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So the King is better than the Mac. Everybody knows that.’

  You could get anything at The Hague Central Station. Sunlight was pouring into the main hall through the tall windows. The rain from a few days back was gone for good, and the beginning of summer had barely enough patience to wait until the weekend. The air was getting warmer by the day, and the closer you got to the coast the clearer it was. You could even see that inside the station hall. Thick beams of light cut through the space like spots on a stage. On one side were the platforms and the trains, all of them standing with their noses facing the station, and on the other side were the doors to the centre of the city. Nowhere do arrivals and departures join together so beautifully as in a main train terminal. The city receives the train as its final destination. This is no intermediate station along the way, no five-minute stop. When you travel by train it isn’t a grazing shot, it’s a direct hit, and I felt that with every move I made. The Hague station may have been a bit chaotic because of the renovation, but it managed to retain that special atmosphere.

  I slipped my hand behind Kirsten’s arm and pulled her along to the Burger King entrance. It was peaceful there, too early for the big onslaught. A girl not more than twenty years old greeted us, her uniform still clean at the start of the working day, cap on her head, smile still fresh.

  ‘Whopper and a coffee,’ I said.

  She repeated the order, put a cup under the coffee machine and pushed the button, and while the coffee was pouring she took a packaged hamburger from the warming rack. Everything was ready in less than a minute and a half.

  ‘Anything else?’

  I shook my head. Kirsten took the coffee, I took the burger. I had the wrapper off before we even got through the door. I held it in two hands and lifted it to my mouth. The smell of grilled meat, onions, tomato and sauce curled up to my nose and brought my feet to a halt. I sighed, waited a second and inhaled the aggressive aroma once more. You can prolong pleasure by postponing it. Then comes the gratification, but that’s always momentary.

  I ate.

  The pulpy, soft substance of the bun and the burger itself slid through my mouth. The fat and the salt clung to my taste buds as if that was their natural home. I wolfed the burger down. Five, six bites, that’s all it took. I remember stuffing a small hamburger into my mouth all at once a while back, jamming the whole thing in. When I tried to chew, streams of sauce and fat squirted from between my lips. Bits of onion and tomato fell out of my mouth. Junk food had nothing to do with eating. It was the gratification of a whim, a way of surrendering instantly to an impulse. Eating was no more than a means to an end.

  Delicious. I had been violently shunted aside recently, and the longer it lasted the hungrier I got. I couldn’t help it. I was drawn to hamburgers and they were drawn to me. I wiped my mouth and tossed the napkin into the trash can.

  ‘Now we can go,’ I said.

  The Zeeheldenkwartier is just outside the downtown area of The Hague. This was where my father originally came from. His parents had lived here, in a house that was long gone. He had grown up in the narrow streets between the Waldeck Pyrmontkade and Anna Paulownastraat. And that’s where he had returned, within biking distance of the insurance company where he had survived three mergers and countless reorganizations with greater ease than the marriage with my mother.

  The tram stopped at Elandstraat, and from there Kirsten and I entered Zoutmanstraat and turned onto Piet Heinstraat, back toward the Royal Stables.

  The little street was busy. Nothing but stores on either side. Lots of second-hand shops, a few antique shops, a big office supply store, one hairdresser after another, a greengrocer and a shop for bathroom fixtures, a bike shop, coffee shops, a shoe store and a shop for recycled goods. Lots of Turks and Moroccans at the beginning of the street. Russians further on. Empty businesses and renovations all mixed up together. Fighting dogs and art nouveau. Hash and borscht.

  It felt good to be out with Kirsten. For the first time in weeks I pretended nothing was wrong and no one appeared to be holding me back. The most wanted man in the Netherlands, Eberhuizen had said, and that Saturday morning, there among the shopping crowds, I wasn’t even aware of it. No one was looking for me. Kirsten didn’t ask me any questions about my guilt or innocence. For her the matter was beyond doubt. After her initial anger she had come to accept the rough disruption of her new life on Hondecoeterstraat. For the time being, that is. For her, my back injury had been the decisive reason for coming with me. She was the only one who could help me, and the thought of leaving me in the unskilled hands of an enthusiastic software fanatic simply never occurred to her. No matter how much she liked Vince herself.

  But now that my vertebrae had been realigned, her reasons had also changed. She had found her own way among the people of the commune in Amsterdam North, and much to my surprise she had stopped talking about her apartment or about the desire to go back to it. She observed me and Vince and the others, and more than once I suspected that for her the forced evacuation was a temporary suspension of an approaching solitude. At the same time I wondered why I recognized that solitude so accurately and even so willingly. It was mainly the willingness that turned me back to myself. I understood that now better than ever.

  ‘It was Trompstraat, right?’ I asked.

  ‘Add one, subtract two,’ said Kirsten.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘A language Pete and I made up,’ she said. ‘From when we were kids, if we wanted to agree to meet somewhere without letting anyone else know where it was. One street further, two numbers less.’

  ‘Did you actually do that?’

  ‘Sometimes. It was more for the kick. If I had to pick him up somewhere, for example, and he didn’t want Dad and Mom to know where he had been. Add one, subtract two. Here,’ she said, ‘Barendzstraat.’ She looked on a little scrap of paper. ‘Twenty-one minus two is nineteen.’

  We stopped in front of 19B. Two identical front doors side-by-side. Ground-floor apartment and upstairs apartment. I looked up. It was a large, straight-walled building with tall windows on the first floor. It didn’t look anything like our old house in Dordrecht. The neat suburb, dominated by modern proportions, seemed cramped compared with the spacious dimensions of this city dwelling. The paint was flaking off the window and door frames and the mortar between the bricks was worn and eroded, but poor maintenance had not affected the building’s character.

  Kirsten rang the bell, and in the short time we stood there waiting my world began to loosen from its moorings. As soon as my father opened the door, Dordrecht and everything I had experienced there would be consigned to the past for good. Until that moment, this was no more than an address in a neighbourhood somewhere in The Hague. I knew my father lived in this house, but not until I saw him there, until we stood together in the kitchen or sat at the dining room table, would the old images be replaced by new ones. The difference between knowledge and experience is the role other people play. I heard the footsteps on the stairs, and in a little while the door opened. My father was beaming.

  ‘Kirsten,’ he said. ‘Michael. Jesu
s.’ Tears ran down his cheeks. He wiped them away, trying to keep his face dry.

  Kirsten threw her arms around him and kissed him. Awkwardly he returned her embrace. Dad had never been very physical, and even now, when he probably needed contact more than ever, it still wasn’t easy for him. He could be boisterous and warm-hearted, but touching others was something he did as little as possible. Kirsten let him go, wiped another tear from his cheek and stepped aside. I stuck out my hand.

  ‘Dad,’ I said.

  Upstairs, Peter had just come out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee and four mugs. ‘Hey, sis,’ he said. ‘Yo, Mike.’ He went into the back room and put everything on the table.

  Kirsten stuck her arm under his and leaned against him. ‘Are you making the coffee these days?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t do anything,’ he said, ‘but waiting for him is just as bad as being with the nuns. You don’t get anything there, either.’

  ‘I’m still finding my way,’ said Dad.

  ‘Your way,’ repeated Peter. ‘Your on-switch, you mean.’ He walked out of the room.

  Kirsten laughed and followed him. My father and I looked at each other somewhat sheepishly and moved restlessly around the table. I picked up the coffee pot.

  ‘Shall I?’ I asked.

  ‘Why not.’

  I filled up four mugs, and soon Peter and Kirsten returned, Kirsten with milk, sugar and spoons, Peter with an apple pie, four plates and a knife. While he sliced the pie, we stirred our coffee. Spoons ticked against pottery. My father looked at his children one by one and his happiness seemed to intensify, to sink deeper within him.

  ‘You’re allowed to say something,’ said Peter.

  ‘So are you still with Mom, in Dordrecht?’ I asked.

  ‘Looks that way.’ He placed the slices of pie on the four plates and handed them out. ‘I don’t see you two there.’

  ‘No, but I mean …’

  ‘I don’t care what you mean, Mike. Everybody means something, you know, and meaning is history. It’s old. Last century. Fuck meaning, okay?’ He pointed to the pie. ‘You got enough?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Because Mom is always talking about what she means, too, okay, and she always means well.’ He turned to Dad. ‘True or not, Dad?’

  ‘She means well,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly. But it still sucks! Am I saying that right, Kirsten?’

  ‘What are you asking me for?’

  ‘Because you know where I stand.’

  Kirsten said nothing. She looked at Pete, the younger brother with the big mouth. Screaming and cursing, he had retreated between both Dad and Mom, who had become more and more entrenched in their ideas. Not to hurt them but to protect himself from their megalomaniacal misunderstanding.

  ‘Add one, subtract two,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, there.’

  ‘I think I’d use a different word.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘And how’s it going there then?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a fight,’ said Peter. He took a bite of his pie and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee. ‘No choice, really,’ he said, ‘because there’s nobody left to hide behind, right, Dad?’ He laughed. ‘Say something, Dad?’

  ‘Living with your mother has never been simple.’ He said this without reproach, without putting the blame on anyone. At most he was astonished that he hadn’t made that observation until now.

  For the first time I realized how much our family had changed. All its members and all the relationships had been turned on their heads, all the compromises that had been made over the years, consciously or unconsciously, had been scrapped. No matter how many experiences we shared, it had now become apparent how little we knew about each other, if only because we didn’t know who we were ourselves until now.

  Peter was still himself, but we had changed him. Suddenly he was the constant and no longer the superannuated adolescent who was always against everything. He had been moved from the edge of the family to its very heart. He had a new position, and this gave everything he did and said another shade of meaning. He cursed as much as he used to do, but now we couldn’t get enough of it. I saw my father, Peter, Kirsten and myself. I saw the family that we had never been, that we now could become, and I knew I wanted to be part of it.

  57 Bellilog 06.30.04

  V, this afternoon in the kitchen, head in the fridge, searching for Coke. ‘No more Coke?’ he said. Three bottles right in front of his nose. I pointed and V looked surprised. His surprise was wonderful, artless. Like sunrise in a nature reserve, the first light of day. He put a hand on his forehead and straightened up. ‘Déjà vu,’ he said. I thought he meant the Coke, which I could understand. ‘Okay, reboot,’ he said, and he shut the fridge door, took two, three steps backward and started all over again. Walked up to the fridge, opened the door, looked in. He felt the door. Shut the door again. And opened it. His eyes shut so he could feel every motion, every movement. Shook his head. Looked in the fridge again. Put a hand on one of the Coke bottles. ‘It wasn’t this,’ he said, ‘because I didn’t see this.’ He picked up a chair, put it in front of the fridge and sat down, staring at the cartons of milk, the cheese, the vegetables, the meat and everything else in the fridge. ‘I didn’t see it, and then I did, and I can’t imagine not having seen it.’ He picked up a bottle, took off the cap and put the bottle to his mouth. Drank greedily (computers make you thirsty), quarter of the bottle gone in an instant, screwed the cap back on and put the bottle back in its place. ‘And after that I had a déjà vu,’ he said, ‘that I couldn’t imagine not having seen it.’ He closed the fridge door, turned the chair around and sat down across from me at the kitchen table. ‘So the déjà vu is that I overlook something that’s staring me right in the face. Okay, now I only have to find out what’s staring me in the face.’ And satisfied, he walked out of the kitchen.

  Half an hour later V came back. He sat down next to me. ‘Okay, this is it,’ he said, and he put a list with five points down in front of me. 1. passes, 2. antivirus, 3. k, 4. Brussels, 5. apartment. ‘These five things are staring me in the face. Which of these five am I not seeing?’ And that question filled my heart with terror. The realization that even if you’re able to list them all, there are still things you overlook. Maybe there was something I wasn’t seeing, either. So I asked him. ‘You have no proof,’ he said. I knew that. ‘Yes, but you don’t see it. Look, whatever Mr. B. is or isn’t going to say may be interesting to you, but even if he confesses, all he has to do is hesitate once and everything points back to you. Your name just keeps rolling out of the computer. Not his. So …’ And at that point he suddenly looked at me with a glassy look in his eyes. ‘If you can get at something one way, can you also get at it the other way around?’ he asked.

  By which I simply mean: I don’t know where the virtual world begins and the real world ends. Or has the real world been virtual all along? Are only the wars real? And the disasters?

  Mail from: HB2

  Subject: see more, know more

  okay, second group is gone. i’m with the last group, night flight, in brussels monday morning early. server still clean. link with pattern very nice, wow! thanks, thanks! want to see more, know more. but first uncle.

  Mail to: HB2

  Subject: Re: see more, know more

  men with passes wearing suits and carrying attaché cases.

  look for the camper.

  58 A language I haven’t mastered

  Sunday, middle of the night, the camper was ready to leave. Bernie in the driver’s seat. Me in the passenger’s seat next to him. Kirsten and Vince in the back. All the members of The Pattern standing at the gate. It was a gorgeous night. Under a clear night sky noises sound louder than normal. Bernie had rolled his window down and was still talking to Karl. A few words. Karl gave the body of the camper two rapid smacks with his hand and took a step backward. Bernie shifted, responded to Karl’s signal with two brief honks of the horn and drove away. Th
e big vehicle rolled slowly through the gate. All the way to the corner a few hundred metres further on we kept looking in the mirrors and through the rear window at the people waving behind us. It was the departure from a base camp, a departure in which the return was part of the destination right from the start. As soon as Bernie turned the first corner and the shed disappeared from our sight, silence descended on the camper. It was a charged silence. All four of us were imprisoned in our thoughts. Memories and expectations were woven together. Past and future were linked in the moment of choice. This choice. For the first time since the death of Ina Radekker I was taking the offensive. No more reacting to what others did, but bent on getting what I needed. With your back to the wall, they say, and it’s true, but it’s also nice to have something behind you. The wall also covers your back. If you can no longer trust the people around you, you’re worse off. I had passed that stage. Back to the wall. Fine.

  We crawled through Amsterdam North. All the normal streets were small for the camper, so as long as we were driving through residential areas Bernie kept the speed down to thirty kilometres an hour. He went even slower on the curves. He reached for the dashboard and turned the radio on. The voice of a news presenter sounded calm and trustworthy. Reports of a pile-up on the A12, dissension in the coalition, quarrel between cabinet ministers, a demonstration in Brussels. It took a while before the contents of the report registered with me.

  … the previously banned demonstration was held anyway. Thousands of Belgian, Dutch, French, German and British Muslims took to the streets to protest discrimination and the unequal treatment they say they are experiencing. It was the first time European Muslims held a mass demonstration to make their dissatisfaction known. Images from Brussels today are reminiscent of the emotional marches in the Middle East. The police were present in full force and were able to keep the demonstration from reaching the centre of the city. After a number of brief, sometimes fierce charges, the demonstrators were dispersed. Disturbances continued into the evening but took place far beyond the range of the visiting government leaders. The police arrested nineteen …