The Dinner

by Herman Koch

  Michel played soccer and tennis, and six months ago he had joined a gym. He didn’t smoke, was very moderate with alcohol, and he had on more than one occasion expressed his disdain for drugs, both soft and hard. ‘Those losers’ was what he called the potheads in his class, and we, Claire and I, were all too pleased to hear it. Pleased to have a son who was not a delinquent, who rarely skipped school and always did his homework. He was not an exceptionally good student, he never went out of his way to excel, in fact he barely did more than the bare minimum, but on the other hand there were never any complaints. His marks and exam scores were usually ‘average’, it was only for gym that he ever received an A+.

  ‘Old message,’ the voicemail lady said.

  I realized only then that I was still holding his cell phone to my ear. Michel was already halfway across the bridge. I turned my back to him and began walking towards the restaurant; whatever happened, I had to break the connection as quickly as possible and stuff the phone back into my pocket.

  ‘Tonight’s okay,’ Rick’s voice said. ‘We’ll do it tonight. Call me. Ciao.’

  After that the voicemail lady announced the time and date that the message had been left.

  I heard Michel behind me, his bike tyres crunching on the gravel.

  ‘Old message,’ she said again.

  Michel cycled past me. What did he see? A man rambling through the park all alone? Holding a cell phone to his ear? Or did he see his father? With or without the cell phone?

  ‘Hi, love,’ I heard Claire’s voice say now, at the same moment that my son went by. He cycled onto the lit gravel path and climbed off the bike. He looked around quickly, then walked his bike to the rack to the left of the entrance. ‘I’ll be home in an hour. Your father and I are going to the restaurant at seven, I’ll make sure we stay away till after midnight. So you two have to do it tonight. Your father doesn’t know about any of this, and I want to keep it that way. Bye, love. See you in a bit. Big smooch.’

  Michel had locked his bike and was walking towards the door. The voicemail lady mentioned the date (today) and the time (two in the afternoon) that this last message had been left.

  Your father doesn’t know about any of this.

  ‘Michel!’ I shouted. I slid the cell phone into my pocket. He stopped and looked around. I waved.

  And I want to keep it that way.

  My son came towards me along the gravel. We met precisely at the top of the path. It was awfully well lit. But maybe I was going to need this much light, I thought.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. He was wearing his black knitted cap with the Nike logo, the headphones were slung around his neck, the cable running down the collar of his jacket. A green, quilted Dolce & Gabbana jacket he had bought with his own clothes allowance only recently, after which there was no money left for socks and underpants.

  ‘Hi, guy,’ I said. ‘I figured I’d walk up a bit and meet you.’

  My son looked at me. His honest eyes. Frank, that was how you would have to describe his gaze. Your father doesn’t know about any of this.

  ‘You were talking on the phone,’ he said.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’

  He was trying to sound as casual as possible, but there was an urgent undertone to his voice. It was a tone I had never heard there before, and I could feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck.

  ‘I was trying to call you,’ I said. ‘I was wondering what was taking you so long.’

  21

  This is what happened. These are the facts.

  One night, about two months ago, three boys were on their way home from a party. It was a party in the canteen of the high school two of the three boys attended. Those two were brothers. One of them was adopted.

  The third boy went to a different school. He was their cousin.

  Although the cousin never drank alcohol, that evening he had had a couple of beers. Just like the other two. Both cousins had danced with girls. Not their steady girlfriends, because they didn’t have them at that point – all different girls. The adopted brother did have a steady girlfriend. He spent most of the evening kissing her in a darkened corner.

  The girlfriend had not gone along when the three boys left; they all had to be home by one. The girl was waiting for her father to come and pick her up.

  It was, in fact, already one-thirty, but the boys knew that this fell within the limits their parents allowed. It had been agreed beforehand that the cousin would sleep over at the home of the two brothers – the cousin’s parents were spending a few days in Paris.

  They had decided to drink one last beer at a café on their way back. But because they didn’t have enough money on them, they needed to stop first at a cash machine. A few streets further down – they were now about halfway between the school and home – they found an ATM. It was one of those with an outer door made of safety glass; the machine itself was inside, in a cubicle.

  One of the two brothers, the biological brother as it were, goes in to withdraw cash. The adopted brother and the cousin wait outside. But then the biological brother comes back outside almost immediately.

  So quick? the other two ask.

  No, man, the brother says, man, I flipped my shit.

  What is it? the others ask.

  Inside there, the brother says. There’s someone lying there. Someone’s lying there asleep, in a sleeping bag. Jesus, man, I almost stepped on his head.

  As to what precisely happened after that, and above all as to who was the first to come up with the disastrous plan, accounts differ. All three of them agreed that it stank inside the ATM cubicle. A horrible stench: a mixture of barf and sweat, and something else that one of the three described as being like the smell of a rotting corpse.

  That stench is significant; a person who stinks cannot count on as much sympathy; a stench can be blinding; no matter how human those odours are, they can actually obscure the perception of the one who stinks as a real person of flesh and blood. That is no excuse for what happened, but it would also not be right simply to omit it.

  Three boys are out to get some cash, not a lot, a few ten-euro notes for a final beer at the café. But there was no way they were going to hang around in that stench, you couldn’t be around it for more than ten seconds without gagging, it was like a torn-open garbage bag was lying there.

  But what is lying there is a person: a person who breathes, yes, who even snores and snorts in his sleep.

  Come on, we’ll find another ATM, the adopted brother says.

  Forget it, say the other two. That’s crazy, if you can’t even get some cash because someone’s lying in front of the machine, stinking and sleeping off his rotgut.

  Come on, the adopted brother says again, let’s go.

  But the other two think that’s spineless, they’re going to withdraw their money here, they’re not going to go off and walk how many blocks to some other machine. Now the cousin goes inside, he starts yanking on the sleeping bag. Hey, hey, wake up! Get up!

  I’m leaving, says the adopted son. I’m not into this.

  Don’t be such a wimp, say the other two, we’ll be done in a minute, and then we’ll grab a beer.

  But the adoptive brother says again that he’s not into it, that he’s tired anyway and doesn’t feel like a beer any more – and then he goes off on his bike.

  The biological brother tries to stop him. Wait a minute, he shouts after him.

  But the adopted brother only waves back, then disappears around the corner.

  Let him go, the cousin says. He’s a bore. He’s squeaky clean. He’s a boring asshole.

  The two of them go back inside. The brother tugs at the sleeping bag. Hey, wake up! Oh, blecch, man, that stinks, he says. The cousin kicks the foot end of the sleeping bag. It’s not really the smell of a corpse, more like garbage bags, that’s right, garbage bags full of leftover food, gnawed-off chicken bones, mouldy coffee filters. Wake up! A kind of stubbornness comes over both of them n
ow, the cousin and the brother, they’re going to withdraw cash here, at this ATM, and nowhere else. Of course they’d had a little to drink at the school party. And it is in fact that same stubbornness, the stubbornness of the tipsy driver who says he’s perfectly capable of taking the wheel himself – and the stubbornness of the guest who hangs around too long at the end of your birthday party, who grabs one last beer (‘one for the road’), then tells you the same story for the seventh time that evening.

  You gotta to get up, mister, this is a cash machine. They remain polite: despite the stench, so horrific it brings tears to their eyes, they still call him mister. The stranger, the invisible man in the sleeping bag, is undoubtedly older than they are. A mister, in other words, probably a tramp, but still a mister.

  Now, for the first time, sounds start to come from inside the sleeping bag. They are the kinds of sounds you’d pretty much expect in the circumstances: moaning, groaning, unintelligible mumbling. It is coming to life. It still sounds like a child who doesn’t want to get up yet, who maybe doesn’t really want to go to school today, but then the sounds are followed by movements: someone or something stretches and seems about to poke a head or some other body part out of the sleeping bag.

  They don’t have a clear plan, the brother and the cousin, they realize perhaps too late that they really don’t want to know precisely what’s hidden away inside the sleeping bag. So far it has been only an obstacle, something that was in the way, it gave off a monstrous stench, it didn’t belong there, it had to go away, but now they actually have to talk to that something (or someone) who’s been woken up against its will, woken from its dreams; who knows what the stinking homeless dream about, about a roof over their head probably, a warm meal, a wife and children, a house with a driveway, a sweet dog wagging its tail and running towards them across a lawn complete with sprinkler.

  Fuck off!

  It’s not the curse that shocks them so much at first, but the voice. It shatters certain expectations. You would expect to see something unshaven appear from the sleeping bag: sweaty hair glued to the skull, a mouth toothless but for a couple of black stumps. But this sounds almost like a woman …

  But what if it was a – at that same moment, the sleeping bag starts moving even more: a hand, another hand, a whole arm, and then a head. You can’t really tell right away, or yes you can, because of the hair with bald spots: black hair, grey here and there, with the scalp shining through. A man goes bald differently. The face itself is grimy, unshaven, or no, it has facial hair, but clearly not like a man’s. Fuck off! Bastards! The voice is shrill, the woman flails around with one arm, the way you chase away flies. A woman. The brother and the cousin look at each other. It’s time to knock off. Later, they will both recall that exact same moment. The discovery that it is a woman in the sleeping bag changes everything.

  Come on, let’s go, the brother actually says.

  Goddam it! the woman screams. Fuck off! Fuck off!

  Shut your face! the cousin says. I said, shut your face!

  He kicks the sleeping bag hard, but there isn’t much space for kicking, he can barely keep his balance, and he slips, his foot shoots out too far, the tip of his shoe grazes the sleeping bag and hits the woman right under the nose. A hand with greasy, swollen fingers and black nails is raised to the nose. There is blood. Bastards! they hear, the voice is now so loud and shrill that it seems to fill everything. Murderers! Scumbags! The brother pulls the cousin towards the door. Come on, let’s get out of here. Then they are out the door and standing outside. Dirty, rotten bastards, they can still hear from the cash-machine cubicle, a bit quieter now, but probably still loud enough to be heard down at the corner. It’s late though, the street is deserted, there are only three or four windows still lit in the entire area.

  I wasn’t going to … the cousin said. My foot slipped. Jesus Christ, what a filthy bitch!

  Sure, the brother says. Of course you didn’t. Jesus, I wish she’d shut up!

  Noise is still coming from the cubicle, but the door has fallen shut now, it’s already more muffled, a spluttering, a vague, injured spluttering.

  Then suddenly they can’t help laughing; later they’re able to remember precisely the way they looked at each other, their own indignant, flushed faces; that, and the muffled grumbling from behind the glass door, and how they had burst out laughing. In stitches. There’s no stopping it, they have to lean against the wall to keep from falling down, and then they lean on each other. They throw their arms around each other’s necks, their bodies shaking with laughter. Bunch of scumbags! The brother imitates the woman’s shrill voice. Bastards! The cousin squats down, then falls to the ground. Stop it please! Please! You’re killing me!

  Leaning against a tree are a few garbage bags, and a couple of other objects obviously put there for the morning trash collection: an office chair on casters, a cardboard box that once contained a wide-screen TV, a desk lamp and a picture tube. They’re still laughing as they pick up the office chair and carry it over to the cubicle. Dirty, rotten shit-whore! They throw the chair, in as far as that can go into the little cubicle, at the sleeping bag, which the woman has now crawled back into. The cousin holds the door open, the brother goes back for the desk lamp, and two full garbage bags. The woman pokes her head out of the sleeping bag again, her hair really is stuck together in thick, greasy mats, she has a beard, or else it’s just caked-on filth. She tries to push the office chair away with one hand, but doesn’t really succeed. Then the first garbage bag hits her full in the face, her head rocks back, strikes hard against the steel wastepaper container on the wall. Now the cousin throws the desk lamp. It’s an old-fashioned kind with a round shade and a retractable arm. The metal shade hits the woman on the nose. It is perhaps strange that she has stopped screaming, that the brother and the cousin are no longer hearing her shrill voice. She merely sits there, nodding groggily when the second garbage bag hits her in the face. Stupid whore, go pass out somewhere else then! Get a job! That ‘Get a job!’ cracks them up again. Get a job! the brother shouts. Get a job, job, job!

  The cousin is back outside again, he goes over to the tree where the garbage bags were. He pushes aside the wide-screen box and sees the jerrycan. It’s one of those army jerrycans, a green one like the kind you see on the backs of jeeps. The cousin picks up the jerrycan by the handle. Empty. What else would he have expected, who would put a full jerrycan out with the trash?

  No, no, what do you think we’re gonna do? the brother cries when he sees the cousin coming with the jerrycan.

  Nothing, man, it’s empty, right?

  The woman has come back to her senses a little. You delinquents, you should be ashamed of yourselves, she says in a voice that is suddenly and unexpectedly prim, a voice from the distant past perhaps, before the free fall started.

  It stinks in here, the cousin says, we’re going to smoke it out a little bit. He holds up the jerrycan.

  Cute, she says, but can I go back to sleep now? The blood under her nose has already dried up. The cousin throws the empty jerrycan – perhaps on purpose, who knows – beside her head, at a safe distance, it makes a lot of noise, it’s true, but all things being equal it’s not as bad as the garbage bags and the desk lamp.

  Later – a few weeks later – the footage on Opsporing Verzocht, a Dutch version of the Most Wanted series, clearly showed how both boys, after throwing the jerrycan, go back outside. They remain off-camera for a fairly long time. The images registered by the camera in the cash-machine cubicle never actually show the woman in the sleeping bag. The camera is pointed at the door, at the people who come in for money, you can see those who make a withdrawal, but it’s a fixed camera, the rest of the cubicle is out of sight.

  The evening that Claire and I saw that footage for the first time, Michel was upstairs in his room. We were sitting next to each other on the couch in the living room, with the newspaper and a bottle of red wine left over from dinner. The story had been in all the papers, it was on the evening
news a number of times, but it was the first time the footage itself was broadcast. The images were jerky, out of focus, immediately recognizable as a security camera. Until then, the general reaction had been one of outrage. What was the world coming to? A defenceless woman … young people … stiffer sentences – yes, even the appeal to restore the death penalty had raised its hoary head again.

  That was all before that evening’s broadcast. Until then it had been little more than a news report, a shocking report, true enough, but still – like all news reports – one that was fated to wear thin: with the passing of time the sharp edges would be dulled, until the story finally disappeared altogether, not important enough in any case to be stored in our collective memory.

  But the security-camera footage changed all that. The boys – the offenders – were given a face, albeit a face that was hard to recognize due to the bad quality of the images and the fact that both wore knitted caps pulled down over their eyebrows. What the viewers did recognize, however, was something else: they saw all too clearly that the boys were having a good time, that they almost creased up with laughter as they pelted their helpless – or at least invisible – victim, first with the office chair, then the garbage bags, the desk lamp and finally the empty jerrycan. You saw – jerkily, in black and white – them high-five each other after throwing the garbage bags, how they screamed things, undoubtedly abuse, at the homeless woman off-camera, even though there was no sound.

  Above all, you saw them laughing. That was the moment when the collective memory came into play. It was the key moment: the laughing boys demanded their place in that collective memory. In the top ten of the collective memory they came in at number eight, probably right below the Vietnamese colonel summarily executing a Vietcong soldier with a bullet through the head, but perhaps even above the Chinese man with his carrier bags trying to stop the tanks at Tiananmen Square.