by Herman Koch
‘That’s fine, Serge,’ Claire said. ‘Just run along, the two of you. Paul and I will finish our grappa, then we’ll be there.’
‘The check,’ Serge said. He patted his coat pockets, as though searching for a wallet or a credit card.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Claire said. ‘We’ll take care of it.’
And then they actually left. I watched as they walked towards the exit, my brother holding his wife by the arm. Only a few guests looked up or turned their heads as they passed. A process of habituation seemed to be taking place here as well; if you stayed in one place long enough, you became a face like all the rest.
As they passed the open kitchen, the man in the white turtleneck hurried up to them: Tonio – the name in his passport had to be Anton. Serge and Babette stopped. Hands were shaken. Waitresses came rushing over with their coats.
‘Are they gone yet?’ Claire asked.
‘Almost,’ I said.
My wife knocked back the rest of her grappa. She laid her hand on mine.
‘You have to do something,’ she said, applying a little pressure with her fingers.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We have to stop him.’
Claire took my hand now.
‘You have to stop him,’ she said.
I looked at her.
‘Me?’ I said, even though I could feel something coming: something to which I might not be able to say no.
‘You have to do something to him,’ Claire said.
I just stared at her.
‘Something that will keep him from holding that press conference tomorrow,’ Claire said.
It was at precisely that moment, from somewhere close by, that a cell phone began to beep. First only a few quiet beeps, which grew louder and merged into a tune.
Claire looked at me questioningly. And I looked back. We both shook our heads at the same time.
Babette’s phone was lying half hidden under her napkin. Automatically, I looked towards the exit first: Serge and Babette were gone. I put out my hand, but Claire was too quick for me.
She slid open the phone’s cover and looked at the screen. Then she slid it closed. The beeping stopped.
‘Beau,’ she said.
42
‘His mother’s too busy to talk to him right now,’ Claire said, putting the cell phone back where it had been. She even tucked it under the napkin.
I didn’t reply. I waited. I waited to see what my wife was going to say.
Claire breathed a deep sigh. ‘Do you know that he …’ She didn’t finish her sentence. ‘Oh, Paul,’ she said. ‘Paul …’ She tossed her head and shook back her hair. I saw a wetness in her eyes, something glistening, tears not of sorrow or despair, but of rage.
‘Do you know that he what …?’ I said. Claire knew nothing about the videos, I’d been telling myself all evening. I still hoped I was right.
‘Beau is blackmailing them,’ Claire said.
I felt a cold stab in my chest. I rubbed my hands over my cheeks, so that if I blushed it wouldn’t give me away.
‘Oh yeah?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’
Claire sighed again. She clenched her fists and drummed them on the tabletop.
‘Oh, Paul,’ she said. ‘I wanted so badly to keep you out of this. I didn’t want it to happen … for you to get upset. But now everything has changed. It’s too late anyway.’
‘What do you mean, he’s blackmailing them? Beau? With what?’
From under the napkin came a beep. A single beep this time. A little blue light was now flashing on and off on the side of Babette’s cell phone: it looked as if Beau had left a message.
‘He was there. At least, that’s what he claims. He says he was planning to go home, but then he changed his mind and decided to go back. That’s when he saw them. As they came out of that bank cubicle. He says.’
The coldness in my chest was gone. I felt something new, a feeling almost like happiness: I had to be careful not to start grinning.
‘And now he wants money. Oh, the hypocritical little prick! I always did … You did too, right? You thought he was horrid, you said one time. I remember that clearly.’
‘But does he have proof? Can he prove that he saw them? Can he prove that Michel and Rick threw that jerrycan?’
That last question I asked only to reassure myself once and for all: the final check. Inside my head, a door had opened. A crack. And through that crack, light was shining. Warm light. Behind the door was the room with the happy family.
‘No, he has no proof,’ Claire said. ‘But maybe he doesn’t need it. If Beau were to go to the police and point to Michel and Rick as the culprits … The pictures from that security camera are awfully vague, but if they can compare them to real people … I don’t know.’
Your father doesn’t know about any of this. You two have to do it tonight.
‘Michel wasn’t there, was he?’ I said. ‘When you called him just now. When you kept asking Babette what time it was.’
A smile appeared on Claire’s face. She took my hand again and squeezed it.
‘I called him. You all heard me get him on the line. I talked to him. Babette is the impartial witness who heard me talking to my son at a fixed point in time. They can check my phone’s memory to see that that call was made and how long it lasted. All we have to do is erase the answering machine on the phone at home when we get back.’
I looked at my wife. There must have been admiration in my look. I didn’t even have to fake it. I really did admire her.
‘And now he’s with Beau,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘And with Rick. Not at Beau’s house. They agreed to meet somewhere. Somewhere outside.’
‘And what are they going to talk to Beau about? Are they going to try to change his mind?’
My wife now laid her other hand on mine as well.
‘Paul,’ she said. ‘I already told you that I wanted to keep you out of this. But we can’t go back now. You and me. It’s about our son’s future. I told Michel that he should try to talk reason to Beau. And that if that didn’t work, he should do whatever seemed best. I told him that I don’t need to know what that is. He’s going to turn sixteen next week. He doesn’t have to wait for his mother to tell him everything. He’s old and wise enough to decide for himself.’
I stared at her. There may still have been admiration in my look, but it was a different type of admiration from a few minutes earlier.
‘Whatever the case, it’s better if you and I can say that Michel was at home all evening,’ Claire said. ‘And if Babette can confirm that.’
43
I called the manager over.
‘We’re still waiting for the check,’ I said.
‘Mr Lohman took care of it, sir.’
It could have been my imagination, but it seemed as though he relished being able to say that to me. Something about his eyes, as though he were laughing at me only with his eyes.
Claire rummaged through her bag, pulled out her cell phone, looked at it and put it back.
‘It’s too damn much, isn’t it?’ I said when the manager had left. ‘He claims our café. Our son. And now this. And the worst thing about it is, it doesn’t mean anything. That he can pick up a check doesn’t mean a goddam thing.’
Claire took my right hand, then my left.
‘You only have to hurt him,’ she said. ‘He’s not going to hold a press conference with a damaged face. Or a broken arm in a sling. That’s too much to explain, all at the same time. Even for Serge.’
I looked into my wife’s eyes. She had just asked me to break my brother’s arm. Or damage his face. And all that out of love, love for our son. For Michel. I had to think about that mother, years ago in Germany, who had shot and killed her child’s murderer in the courtroom. That’s the kind of mother Claire was.
‘I haven’t taken my medication,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ Claire didn’t seem surprised, she ran one fingertip gently across the back of my hand.
‘I mean, not for a long time. It’s been months.’
It was true: shortly after that episode of Opsporing Verzocht, I had stopped. I had the feeling that I would be of less use to my son when my emotions were blunted, day in and day out. My emotions and my reflexes. If I wanted to help Michel to the fullest of my ability, I first had to recover my old self.
‘I know,’ Claire said.
I looked at her.
‘Maybe you think other people don’t notice,’ Claire said. ‘Well, I mean, other people … your own wife. Your own wife notices right away. There were things … that were different. The way you looked at me, the way you smiled at me. And then there was that time when you couldn’t find your passport. Do you remember? When you started kicking your desk drawers? From then on, I began paying attention. You took your medication with you when you went out and threw it away somewhere. Didn’t you? I took your trousers out of the wash one time, the pocket had turned completely blue! Pills you’d forgotten to throw away.’
Claire had to laugh – she laughed only briefly, then looked serious again.
‘And you didn’t say anything,’ I said.
‘At first I thought: what’s he up to? But suddenly, I saw my old Paul again. And then I knew: I wanted my old Paul back. Including the Paul who kicks his own desk drawers to bits, and that other time, when that scooter cut you off on the road. When you took off after it …’
And that time you battered Michel’s principal into the hospital, I thought Claire would say then. But she didn’t. She said something else.
‘That was the Paul I loved … that I love. That’s the Paul I love. More than anything or anyone else in the world.’
I saw something glistening in the corners of her eyes, my own eyes were smarting now as well.
‘You, and Michel, of course,’ my wife said. ‘You and Michel, I love you both just as much. Together, you two are what makes me the happiest.’
‘Yeah,’ I said; my voice sounded hoarse, it had a little squeak in it. I cleared my throat.
‘Yeah,’ I said again.
We sat across from each other in silence like that for a while, my wife’s hands still clasping mine.
‘What did you say to Babette?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘In the garden. When the two of you went for a walk. Babette looked so happy when she saw me. “Dear, sweet Paul …” she called me. What did you say to her?’
Claire took a deep breath. ‘I told her you would do something. That you would do something to make sure that press conference didn’t go ahead.’
‘And Babette thought that was okay?’
‘She wants Serge to win the election. But what hurt Babette most was that he only told her about it in the car on the way over here. So that she wouldn’t have enough time to talk him out of his nonsense.’
‘But here at the table, just now, she said—’
‘Babette is smart, Paul. It wouldn’t do for Serge to suspect anything later on. When Babette becomes the First Lady, maybe she’ll hand out soup at a shelter for the homeless. But there is one homeless person about whom she cares as little as you or I do.’
I pulled my hands away. That is to say, I pulled my hands from my wife’s and clasped them in my own.
‘It’s not a good idea,’ I said.
‘Paul—’
‘No, listen. I’m me. I am who I am. I haven’t been taking my pills. Right now, you and I are the only people who know that. But things like that get found out. They’ll dig around and they’ll find out. The school psychologist, my being on non-active, and then that principal at Michel’s school … it would all be out on the table, like an open book. To say nothing of my brother. My brother will be the first to say that something like that, coming from me, doesn’t surprise him at all. Maybe he won’t say it out loud, but his little brother has done things to him before. His little brother who suffers from something he needs medication for. Pills, which he then flushes down the toilet.’
Claire said nothing.
‘He won’t let anything I do change his plans, Claire. It would be the wrong signal.’
I waited a moment, I tried not to blink.
‘It would be the wrong signal if I did it,’ I said.
44
About five minutes after Claire had left, I heard another beep coming from under Babette’s napkin.
We’d both stood up at the same moment. My wife and I. I put my arms around her and held her against me. I buried my face in her hair. Very slowly, without making a sound, I’d breathed in through my nose.
Then I sat down again. I watched my wife go, until she disappeared from sight somewhere around the lectern.
I picked up Babette’s phone, opened the cover and looked at the screen.
‘Two new messages.’ I pressed Display. The first was a text message from Beau. It contained only one word. One word, without a capital and without a full stop: ‘mama’.
I pressed Delete.
The second message said there was a voicemail message in her inbox.
Babette used a different carrier. I didn’t know which number I needed to use for voicemail. On a hunch I looked in Contacts, and under the ‘V’ I found Voicemail. I couldn’t suppress a smile.
After the voicemail lady’s announcement that there was one new message, I heard Beau’s voice.
I listened. As I listened I closed my eyes briefly once, then opened them again. I closed the cover. I didn’t put Babette’s cell phone back on the table, but stuck it in my pocket.
‘Your son doesn’t like restaurants like this?’
I was so startled that I sat bolt upright in my chair.
‘Oh, excuse me,’ the manager said. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. But I saw you talking to your son in the garden. At least, I assume it was your son.’
At first, for a moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. But then, right away, I knew.
The smoking man. The man smoking outside the restaurant. The manager had seen Michel and me this evening, in the garden.
I felt no panic – to be honest, I felt absolutely nothing.
Only then did I see that the manager was holding a saucer, a saucer containing the bill.
‘Mr Lohman forgot to take the check with him,’ he said. ‘So I thought I’d give it to you. Perhaps you’ll see him again before long.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I saw you standing there like that with your son,’ the manager said, ‘there was something in your posture. In both of your postures, I should say, something identical. Something you’d only see in a father and son, I thought.’
I looked down at the saucer, the saucer with the check on it. What was he waiting for? Why didn’t he go away, instead of hanging around here, blathering about people’s postures?
‘Yes,’ I said again; it was not meant as a confirmation of the manager’s assumptions, only as a polite way to fill the silence. I had nothing else to say to him anyway.
‘I have a son too,’ the manager said. ‘He’s only five. But still, sometimes I’m surprised by how much he looks like me. How he does certain things exactly the way I do. Little gestures. I often touch my hair, for example, twist it between my fingers when I’m bored, or worried about something … I … I also have a daughter. She’s three, she’s the spitting image of her mother. In everything.’
I took the check from the saucer and looked at the total. I won’t go into all the things you could do with a sum of money like that, or about how many days a normal person would have to work to earn it – if they weren’t forced by the tortoise in the white turtleneck to spend weeks washing dishes in the open kitchen. And I won’t mention the figure itself, the kind of sum that would make you burst out laughing. Which was precisely what I did.
‘I hope you had an enjoyable evening,’ the manager said – but still he didn’t go away. He brushed the edge of the empty saucer with his fingertips, slid it a few inches across the tablecloth, picked it up
and put it back down.
45
‘Claire?’
For the second time that evening I opened the door of the ladies’ room and called her name. But there was no answer. From somewhere outside I heard the sound of a police siren.
‘Claire?’ I called again. I took a few steps forward, until I was past the vase of white daffodils, and noted that all the cubicles were empty. I heard the second siren as I walked past the cloakroom and the lectern to the exit, and then outside. Through the trees I could now see the flashing lights in front of the regular-people café.
A normal reaction would have been for me to walk faster, to start running – but I didn’t. True, I felt something dark and heavy at the place where my heart should have been, but the heaviness was a calm heaviness. The dark feeling in my chest, too, had everything to do with a sense of inevitability.
My wife, I thought.
Again I felt a powerful urge to start running. To arrive at the café out of breath – where I would almost certainly not be allowed in.
My wife! I’d pant. My wife is in there!
And it was precisely that scene projected on my mind’s eye that made me slow down. I reached the gravel path that led to the bridge. By the time I got there, I was no longer walking slowly in any natural sense, I could tell that by the sound my soles made on the gravel, by the pauses between my steps – I was walking in slow motion.
I put my hand on the balustrade and stopped. The flashing lights were reflected in the dark surface beneath my feet. Through the opening between the trees on the far side I now had a clear view of the café. Pulled up onto the kerb, in front of the outdoor tables, were three police Volkswagens and an ambulance.
One ambulance. Not two.
It was pleasant to feel such calm, to be able to see all these things in this way – almost independently of each other – and to draw my own conclusions. I felt the way I had before at moments of crisis (Claire’s hospitalization; Serge and Babette’s failed attempt to take away my son; the footage from the security camera): I had felt, and I felt again now, that from within my calmness I could take action. Promptly and efficiently.