Testimony

by Scott Turow

  The ultimate meeting with the division heads and coordinators took place in Badu’s office. I kept my eye on the old man throughout. Badu chuckled and nodded and groaned in his graceful way, imparting nothing that indicated that he understood in any depth what had been said. I was beginning to realize that Badu’s clueless manner insulated him from everyone outside the Court—and within—seeking to influence him. Near the end of the meeting, Badu said in his beautiful accent, “I have an old chum, Lord Gowen, who is the British ambassador to NATO. I am thinkin to geef him a coal.” My initial reaction was panic, fearing Badu could irretrievably screw things up, but after a second I realized that this might be an adroit move. If the other leading nations in NATO—the Brits, the French, the Germans, who were all also members of the Court—acknowledged the legality of our document request in advance, the Americans would have a much harder time resisting.

  Within a day, Ambassador Gowen had encouraged Badu to proceed. NATO’s supreme commander at the moment was another Brit who, by the standard of other soldiers, was something of a supporter of the Court, and who signaled he would not stand in the way. Badu was careful to get the backing of the full OTP executive committee before I sent the formal document request to NATO. We all knew it was likely to provoke an explosive American response.

  Back from Bosnia, I began to settle into a routine. On the mornings I didn’t call Will or Pete, I would wake an hour later and linger with my coffee over the New York Times online. After that, I often phoned my sister, Marla, for a few minutes of the harmless chatter we’d shared across a lifetime. I was reaching her at about 2 a.m. in Boston, while she sat up in bed, answering e-mails, clipping articles from the day’s newspapers to send to her kids, and reading the latest novel for her book club. The lights were burning while her husband, Jer, an orthopod, slept soundly beside her.

  I got to the office by 8:30, ahead of many people, and was out by 5:30. I ate dinner in one of the cafés near the apartment and continued making my way through the pile of books I’d shipped to The Hague. Currently, I was rereading John Fowles, The Magus.

  The day our document request was finally sent to NATO HQ in Belgium, I left the office a little early. It was the first fair weather I’d seen in The Hague. The solemn winter sky had broken into blue and a southern wind gentled the air. For a week now, the new vitality I’d acquired at the Blue Lamp had stimulated a yearning for exercise, of which I’d had next to none in the last few months. My landlady had offered me an old bicycle of her husband’s, which was part of the herd locked inside the front door, and I contemplated a ride now, but I still didn’t know the city and with my poor sense of direction was afraid of getting lost in some dead zone without cell reception.

  When I came in, Narawanda was home early, too, probably also inspired by the weather. She was stretching in the living room for a run, her heel perched on the back of the sofa. It was the first time I’d seen her in shorts, and given the modesty with which we lived, I felt as if I’d walked in on her at an inappropriate moment.

  I hustled toward the stairs, then regained myself and circled back.

  “How would it be if I followed you for a little while?” I asked. “I’d just like to see your route. I promise I won’t hold you up. But I’d love to get back into running.”

  She pondered that, almost as if I’d proposed cutting my rent in half, but she finally produced a tiny smile and nodded.

  My plan was to run beside her as long as I could, then walk back. Our initial pace was halting as we dodged through the crowded little streets near the flat. But she soon led me on a quicker route, down the leafy esplanade on Lange Voorhout, past the monolithic US Embassy, which looked like a bomb shelter, and then eventually into The Hague’s vast park, Haagse Bos.

  Based on our experience to date, I didn’t expect her to be talkative, but I asked politely about her husband’s visit.

  “Nice,” she answered, which seemed a bit of an understatement given the vigor of the bed-knocking. “Lewis talked all the time about how much he loves New York, how wonderful it has been to be back there.” Her English was accurate, if occasionally somewhat stilted, and spoken with a Dutch accent—the rolled r’s and long o’s and guttural g’s—spiced with a little of the rising pitches of Java.

  “And you?” I asked. “Do you love New York?”

  “To visit? So exciting. To live? So difficult. It is not for me. I am accustomed to The Hague.” It felt like we had quickly reached a conversational impasse, but after a moment, she asked several questions about my trip. Her pace was much faster now, and I found every word an effort, but I answered expansively, in hopes of finally having some genuine interaction with her. I talked about my sons, and then BIH, providing a brief travelogue without going into details of the investigation.

  Bosnia had been my first visit to a majority-Muslim country, and I had been impressed by how easygoing the version of Islam practiced around Tuzla had felt. The call to prayer had keened out from the minarets five times a day, but most of the women eschewed hijab, for example, and there was alcohol on every restaurant menu. Religion was a private matter, it seemed.

  “That is the Islam I grew up with,” Narawanda said. “Modernist. My mother covered her head in the mosque, and went every week, when I was little, but she always reminded me of the verse in the Qur’an that says Allah Himself planned for many faiths.’”

  I had made my observations about Islam in Bosnia without any thought that Narawanda herself was Muslim. She could see I was a little nonplussed, but waved off my apologies.

  “I am more of a lapsed Muslim these days. I have not gone to mosque or done the fasts since Lewis and I married.”

  “Was that what you two agreed?”

  “No, no. Just as it has happened. Actually, at that point, Lewis and I said that if we were ever to have children, we would teach them that tradition.”

  “And that’s changed?” I asked.

  She reflected on my question for several strides.

  “I really don’t know,” she said. “Right now, Lewis and I are not so close to having children. We do not even live in the same place.”

  Given her odd manner, I wasn’t sure if she was miffed or just being matter-of-fact, but I could feel my lungs giving out. I waved her on without me, promising to do better if we ran again another time.

  15.

  Leiden—April 24–26

  I spoke to Esma every night—remarkably explicit conversations in which I nearly gasped at some of the things she said before I slid into lascivious giggles. She was due to head back to New York from London the following week, and we agreed that she’d first detour to Holland to meet me for the weekend. I remained concerned about being seen together. Although Esma had relieved herself of any formal role in the case, as an ardent advocate for the alleged victims, she remained an interested party. Esma thought I was being ridiculous, but we agreed on Leiden, about fifteen minutes from The Hague, and I booked a lovely-looking boutique hotel along one of the canals.

  I arrived there on the Intercity train about 3:30 Friday afternoon, walking along on a fine day and absorbing the charm of Leiden, a bit of Bruges without the gingerbread. Its network of canals and iron bridges was surrounded by the usual centuries-old brick buildings with steep tile roofs. The center of the city was crowded with young people, students at the university who’d already gotten started on the weekend. After another few minutes, I recognized the green striped awning of the hotel, which I’d seen on the Internet.

  At the tiny reception desk, I handed my passport to the bespectacled middle-aged proprietor. He would keep the document for an hour or two, as they routinely do on the Continent in order to fill out forms required by the EU. He had finished work with Esma’s British passport already and handed it to me, with its eccentric images of a crown, lion, and unicorn embossed in gold on its crimson cover. Holding tangible evidence of Esma’s presence, I felt a lurid thrill below my belt.

  In our room, I found her asleep, with the can
vas curtains drawn and her eyes hidden beneath a sleep mask. There was enough light, though, to see her. She had kicked away half the covers, revealing those well-turned legs up to her thigh, the rest of her body draped discreetly, as in an old painting. Her face was at the edge of the bed, while one bare arm hung down. In the grip of a dream, her mouth moved over uncertain words and her body twitched slightly.

  I undressed quietly, then took hold of the duvet and drew it away slowly from her torso, an inch-by-inch striptease of a sort, relishing everything. The sight had a predictable effect on me and I eventually took my hardened dick and nuzzled it against her cheeks and mouth, slowly pushing away the mask. Deep in sleep, she waved her hand vaguely at first and then finally, without ever opening her eyes, took gentle hold of me, guiding me into her mouth.

  I woke Saturday morning, my hand webbed in hers, looking down at that odd collection of rings I’d noticed in Tuzla, which were all on the middle finger of her left hand. I was still staring when she roused herself.

  “Is one of those a wedding ring?” I asked, about a plain gold band.

  “That?” She laughed and sat up. “Don’t worry about that. That is my problem, not yours.”

  “What does that mean, Esma?”

  She tossed around her storm of dark hair and finally went off to the bathroom. When she returned, she said, “Are you concerned you have rivals, Bill?”

  “Every man who sees you, Esma, is my rival.”

  The remark delighted her. She padded to the bed sinuously. Diving down on it, she whispered, “I am with you. Let me show you.”

  Afterward, we sat outside in our robes. Our room was tiny but stuffed with antiques, much to Esma’s liking, with a small terrace outside where the potted plants were already in bloom. I pulled two white iron chairs together and took her hand as we looked out over the rooftops and the adjoining canals. She felt distant for a second.

  “Enjoy this part, Bill. Make it last. Don’t worry about what comes next.”

  “What makes you think I’m worried?”

  She reared back to look at me in mild reproof. I wasn’t sure if I was being scolded for doubting her Gypsy voodoo or just for being dishonest.

  “That is your nature.” She was right about that. “And I am not very good at the next part anyway.”

  “You mean life?”

  “This too is life, and very much the best of it.” She snuck her hand under my robe. “Don’t fall in love with me, Bill.”

  Given my character, which Esma had correctly assayed, I was already reflecting on what I felt. Certainly I was gripped by addictive lust, and great tenderness and gratitude born of its satisfaction. But between us there was a connection, too, I knew that. From our first instants together, I had felt that Esma, with her passionate nature and galloping intellect, fit a yearning space inside me. But love? I wasn’t even sure anymore what I thought about that word. Yet whatever this was, my ardor was more revitalizing than anything I’d felt in decades.

  “And why do you say that?” I asked. “Because you are unavailable?” I was thinking about the wedding ring.

  “No,” she said. “But I fear I shall disappoint you, Bill.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I always manage to do that in the end.” She was back to being the essential Esma, humorless and intense.

  I tried to joke. “Should I leave now?” I asked.

  As I hoped, the remark leavened her mood. She reverted to her sensual gaze and her thin dominating smile. She loosened the belt on her robe and threw it open as we sat there in the daylight in the view of many rooftops.

  “If you like,” she answered.

  On Saturday night, Esma and I had our first cross moments. Ellen wanted my approval on the plans for the rehearsal dinner before Pete’s wedding, which required three brief conversations between 11 p.m. and midnight. We’d had a call on the same subject the weekend before, while Esma and I were ensconced at the Blue Lamp.

  “This is very strange with your ex-wife. You speak to her more than your children.”

  I explained that Ellen didn’t have time for these projects during the week, when she was working. But Esma’s dark face was closed off by a look of open skepticism, expressed primarily through a fleshy pout. I thought of replaying the remarks she’d made to me yesterday about being jealous, but I already knew Esma would never make her emotions slave to logic or consistency.

  “And you stayed with her when you went back home,” said Esma. “That is strange, too. Is there ex-sex now and then?”

  I laughed out loud. “Esma. You’ve heard these conversations. There is nothing but family business. My ex is no one to worry about.”

  “Some men can never leave their marriages behind. I have known too many.”

  “Well, you’re reacting to what happened with them. Ellen and I are merely planning our son’s wedding, and I consider it a blessing that we can enjoy this together.”

  To subdue her, I suggested that we go out for a drink. A mime was performing under a streetlight a block from the hotel and she lightened our moods.

  On Sunday morning, we both wanted air again and wandered around Hooglandse Kerkgracht, where tony shops lined the narrow brick streets beside a parklike median.

  “Look at that,” Esma said, as we came out of an antique store, where she had looked over several Japanese ivories called netsuke, animal figures that she said she collected. “Your name in lights, Bill.”

  She was pointing one hundred feet up to an elegant-looking jewelry store with an oak facade. TEN BOOM appeared in large gilt letters above the shop window. In the lower right corner, the sign read SINDS 1875.

  The sight turned me to cement.

  “I’ve sometimes thought you made that name up,” said Esma.

  I finally said, “I forgot they were in Leiden.”

  “Who?”

  “My parents. I’m pretty sure my father worked at that store,” I told her. “It was during the Second World War.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was a watchmaker.”

  But that was hardly the most important detail, and as we meandered for the next hour beside the canals, I shared most of the tale with Esma. The actuality of the store, emblazoned with our name, had removed my parents’ story from the shrouded place I ordinarily kept it to quell my discomfort.

  The day I turned forty, my parents asked me to come see them by myself. Like a lot of married people, I rarely visited my mother and father without Ellen or one of the boys as a shock absorber. As a child, I never understood what it was that had infuriated me about my folks, who were in all ways mild and kindly. But getting older, I had recognized that their bond had an intensity that left Marla and me feeling we were forbidden to enter the inner sanctum where they actually lived. As an adult, I preferred not to be alone with them, rather than reexperience that same sense of exclusion.

  But I went by myself on my birthday nonetheless. I was fairly certain that they had a family heirloom to pass on, one of the few things they had carried from Holland, perhaps even a piece of jewelry that would find its way to Ellen. I knew my sister had received a diamond necklace that had been in the family since the 1870s when she turned forty, two years before. And my father had made a gift of one of his watches when I reached twenty-one.

  Overall, I expected forty to be a good birthday for me. I was on the cusp of middle-aged tranquility, the writhings of youth so far behind me that I couldn’t fully recall how it felt. I was the United States Attorney in my hometown, a higher and more esteemed place in the world than I had ever imagined for myself. My two sons were not yet full-throttle teenagers, and I was wise enough to enjoy them while they remained content with their parents. Even my marriage seemed okay. I knew that I bored Ellen in a fundamental way and that she blamed me for it, but she was an interesting, competent woman who shared my passion for our sons, which, at least then, seemed to be enough common ground.

  My parents’ house was a modest Kindle County bungalow that t
hey bought in the 1950s, and which each of them eventually left for good only on the EMT’s rolling stretcher. My mother hugged me at the door to wish me happy birthday, while my father, a master of old-school restraint, shook my hand. Then they led me into the living room from which my sister and I were largely banished growing up. They took places on the flowered sofa, as if they had been preassigned by stage directions. My father’s long pale face was rigidly composed. My mother sat close beside him, her plump hands in her ample lap as she gazed toward him, apparently awaiting a sign to begin. They had already been through this two years before with Marla, as it turned out, but even so, it must have been a nightmare revisited for them, realizing that they were again about to place their relationship with one of their children in jeopardy.