The Dinner

by Herman Koch

  The screen shifted from black to grey. You saw the door of the ATM cubicle again, but this time from the outside. The quality of the images was a lot worse, like the resolution of the camera on a cell phone, I realized right away.

  The white tennis shoe.

  They had come back.

  They had come back to record what they had done.

  ‘Holy shit!’ said a voice off-camera. (Rick)

  ‘Aw, yuck!’ said a second voice. (Michel)

  The camera was now pointed at the foot end of the sleeping bag. The cubicle was filled with a bluish haze. Excruciatingly slowly, the camera panned up along the sleeping bag.

  ‘Let’s go.’ (Rick)

  ‘At least it doesn’t smell as gross here any more.’ (Michel)

  ‘Michel … come on …’

  ‘Come on yourself, go and stand beside it. You have to say Jackass. At least then we’ve got that.’

  ‘I’m goin’ …’

  ‘No, asshole! You’re staying!’

  At the top of the sleeping bag, the camera stopped. The image froze there, then faded to black. In red letters, the following text appeared on screen:

  Men in Black III

  The Sequel

  coming soon

  I waited a few days. Michel went out often, but he always took his cell phone with him, so the chance presented itself only today – only this evening, right before we were to leave for the restaurant. While he was fixing his tyre in the garden, I went to his room.

  I had actually assumed he would have deleted it. I was hoping, praying, that he had deleted it. Somehow I also hoped that, having seen the images on YouTube, I had now seen everything – that they had stopped there.

  But that wasn’t the case.

  It was only a few hours ago that I saw the rest.

  26

  ‘Michel,’ I said to my son, who had already turned to leave, who had said that it didn’t make any difference, ‘Michel, you have to delete those films. You should have done it a long time ago, but now it’s really important.’

  He stopped. Again he scraped his white Nikes through the gravel.

  ‘Aw, Dad,’ he began. It seemed as though he was going to say something, but he only shook his head.

  In both videos I had seen and heard how he pushed his cousin around, and sometimes even snarled at him. That was precisely what Serge had always insinuated, and would doubtless repeat tonight: that Michel was a bad influence on Rick. I had always denied that; I had always thought it an easy way for my brother to duck his own responsibility for his son’s actions.

  But since a few hours ago – in fact, since much longer ago than that, of course – I knew it was true. Michel was the leader of the two: Michel called the shots, Rick was the subservient goon. And, deep in my heart, that division of roles pleased me. Better that than the other way around, I thought. Michel had never been pestered at school; even then he’d gathered around him a whole crew of submissive friends who wanted nothing more than to be around my son. I knew from experience how parents could suffer when their children were bullied. I had never suffered.

  ‘You know what would be even better?’ I said. ‘For you to throw away that whole cell phone. Somewhere where they’ll never find it again.’ I looked around. ‘Here, for example.’ I pointed at the little bridge over which he had just come cycling up. ‘In the water. If you want, we’ll go buy a new one on Monday. How long have you had this one, anyway? We’ll just say it got ripped off and we’ll renew the subscription, and on Monday you’ll have the newest Samsung, or a Nokia, whatever you want …’

  I held out my hand, palm up.

  ‘Do you want me to do it for you?’ I asked.

  He looked at me. I saw the eyes I had been seeing all my life, but also something I would rather not have seen: he looked at me in a way that said I was getting worked up about nothing, that I was just a fussy, worried father, a worried father who wants to know what time his son will be coming home from a party.

  ‘Michel, this isn’t about a party or something,’ I said, faster and louder than I’d meant to. ‘This is about your future—’ Another one of those abstract terms: the future, I thought, and I was sorry right away that I had said it. ‘Why the hell did you two put that footage on the Internet?’

  Don’t swear, I admonished myself. When you start swearing you sound like those second-rate movie hams you hate so much. But I was almost screaming now, anyone at the door of the restaurant, anyone close to the lectern or the cloakroom could have heard me.

  ‘Was that cool, too? Or tough? Didn’t that make any difference either? Men in Black III! For God’s sake, what were you two thinking?’

  He had put his hands in the pockets of his jacket and bowed his head, so that I could just barely see his eyes beneath the edge of the black knitted cap.

  ‘That wasn’t us,’ he said.

  The door of the restaurant swung open, there was laughter and a group of people came outside. Two men and a woman. The men wore tailored suits and had their hands in their pockets, the woman was wearing a silvery, almost backless dress and carried a matching shoulder bag.

  ‘Did you really say that?’ the woman asked, taking a couple of unsteady steps in her high heels, which were silver as well. ‘To Ernst?’

  One of the men pulled a set of car keys from his pocket and tossed them in the air. ‘Why not?’ he said: he had to stretch his arm out to catch the keys again.

  ‘You must be crazy!’ the woman shrilled. Their shoes squeaked on the gravel as they passed.

  ‘Which of us is still in any state to drive?’ said the other man, and all three of them burst out laughing.

  ‘Okay, wait a minute,’ I said, after the threesome had reached the end of the gravel path and turned left towards the footbridge. ‘The two of you set a homeless person on fire and then you film it. On your cell phone. Just like with that alcoholic at the subway station.’ I noticed that the man who had been smacked around on the platform had now become an alcoholic. In my words. Perhaps an alcoholic really did deserve to be smacked around more than someone who drinks two or three glasses a day. ‘And then suddenly it’s right there on the Internet, because that’s what you guys want, isn’t it? For as many people as possible to see it?’ Had they put the alcoholic on YouTube as well? it occurred to me then. ‘Is that alcoholic on there too?’ I asked right away, for good measure.

  Michel breathed a sigh. ‘Dad! You’re not listening!’

  ‘I am listening. I listen too much. I—’

  Again the door of the restaurant opened, a man in a suit came out and looked around, took a few steps to one side so that he was beside the entrance but out of the light, and lit a cigarette. ‘Goddam it,’ I said.

  Michel turned around and walked to his bike.

  ‘Michel, where are you going? I’m not finished yet.’

  But he kept on walking, he pulled a key out of his pocket and stuck it in the lock, which sprang open with a bang. I looked quickly at the man smoking beside the entrance.

  ‘Michel,’ I said, quietly but urgently, ‘you can’t just walk away from this. What are we going to do about it? Are there more of those films I haven’t seen? Will I have to see them later on, on YouTube first? Or are you going to tell me now whether—’

  ‘Dad!’ Michel spun around and grabbed my forearm; he yanked it hard and said: ‘Now just shut up!’

  Stunned, I looked into my son’s eyes. His honest eyes in which – there was no use denying it – I now saw only hatred. I caught myself glancing to one side as well, at the smoking man.

  I grinned at my son; I couldn’t see it myself, but it must have been a stupid grin. ‘Okay, I’ll shut up,’ I said.

  Michel let go of my arm; he bit his lower lip and shook his head. ‘Christ! When are you going to start acting normal?’

  I felt a cold stabbing in my chest. Any other father would now have said something like,‘Who’s acting normal here? Huh? Who? Who’s acting normal?’ But I wasn’t a father like all
other fathers. I knew what my son was getting at. I wished that I could put my arms around him and press him against me. But he would probably push me away in disgust. I knew for certain that a physical rejection like that would be too much, that I would burst into tears right there and wouldn’t be able to stop.

  ‘Oh, buddy,’ I said.

  I needed to stay calm, I told myself. I had to listen. I remembered now that Michel had said I wasn’t listening.

  ‘Okay, I’m all ears,’ I said.

  He shook his head again. Then he pulled his bike resolutely from the rack.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ I said. I kept a hold of myself, I even stepped to one side, as though I didn’t want to get in his way. But before I knew it I had my hand on his forearm.

  Michel looked at the hand as though some strange insect had landed on his arm, then he looked at me.

  At that point we were very close to something, I realized. Something that couldn’t be undone later on. I took my hand off his arm.

  ‘Michel, there’s something else,’ I said.

  ‘Dad, please.’

  ‘Someone called you.’

  He stared at me; it wouldn’t have surprised me much to have felt his fist in my face a moment later: his knuckles hard against my upper lip, or higher, against my nose, blood would flow, but it would make a number of things clearer. More out in the open.

  But nothing happened. ‘When?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Michel, I hope you’ll forgive me, I shouldn’t have, but … it was because of those films, I wanted to … I was trying to …’

  ‘When?’ My son took his foot off the pedal and planted both feet firmly on the gravel.

  ‘A little while ago, it was a message. I listened to the message.’

  ‘Who was it from?’

  ‘From B— from Faso.’ I shrugged, I grinned. ‘That’s what you guys call him, right? Faso?’

  I saw it plainly, there could be no mistake about it: my son’s expression hardened. There wasn’t enough light here, but I could have sworn that his face also turned a few shades paler.

  ‘What did he want?’

  He sounded calm. Or no, not calm. He was trying to sound casual, bored almost, as though the fact that his adopted cousin had called him tonight was of no significance.

  But he had given himself away. The significance lay in something very different: in the fact that his father had been listening to his messages. That wasn’t normal. Any other father would have thought twice before doing that. In fact, that’s what I had done. I had thought twice. Michel should have been enraged, he should have screamed: what gives you the right to listen to my voicemail? That would have been normal.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘He asked you to call back.’ In that fake, chummy tone of his, I almost added.

  ‘Okay,’ Michel said. He nodded slightly. ‘Okay,’ he said again.

  Suddenly, I remembered something. Just a while ago, when he had called his own phone and got me on the line, he had said he was looking for a number. That he was coming to get his cell phone because he needed a number. I thought I knew now which number that was. But I didn’t ask him. Because there was something else I remembered too.

  ‘You said I wasn’t listening,’ I said. ‘But I did listen. When we were talking about the two of you putting that video up on YouTube.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You said that wasn’t you.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So who was it? Who put it there?’

  Sometimes you answer a question by asking it out loud.

  I looked at my son. And he looked back.

  ‘Faso?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  27

  In the silence that fell then, the only sounds were those from the park and the street across the water: the brief flap of birds’ wings in the branches, a car accelerating, a church bell striking once – a silence during which my son and I looked at each other.

  I couldn’t be absolutely certain, but I thought I saw a moistness in Michel’s eyes. His look, in any case, left no room for misinterpretation. You finally get it? that look said.

  During the same silence, a cell phone began ringing, in my left pocket. Ringing and buzzing. My hearing seemed to be getting worse lately, so I had chosen Old Phone as my ringtone, an old-fashioned ringing that reminded you of a classic, black Bakelite telephone, and that I could hear no matter what.

  I pulled the phone out of my pocket, intending to dismiss the call, until I saw the name on my screen: Claire.

  ‘Hello?’

  I gestured to Michel not to go, but he had already crossed his arms and leaned them on the handlebars; suddenly he seemed in less of a hurry to get away.

  ‘Where are you?’ my wife asked. Her voice was quiet but insistent, the restaurant noises in the background almost drowned it out. ‘What’s taking you so long?’

  ‘I’m outside.’

  ‘What are you doing out there? We’ve almost finished the main course. I thought you were going to come back right away.’

  ‘I’m out here with Michel.’

  I had actually meant to say ‘with our son’, but I didn’t.

  We were silent for a moment.

  ‘I’m coming,’ Claire said.

  ‘No, wait! He’s got to … Michel was just getting ready to go …’

  But the connection had already been broken.

  Your father doesn’t know about any of this, and I want to keep it that way. I thought about my wife who would be coming out the door of the restaurant any moment, and about the way I would look at her then. Or rather, whether I would be able to look at her in the same way I had a couple of hours ago, in the café for regular people, when she’d asked if I also thought Michel had been acting strange lately.

  I was wondering, in other words, whether we were still a happy family.

  My next thought was about the video of the homeless woman who had been set on fire. And then, most of all, about how it got onto YouTube.

  ‘Is Mama coming?’ Michel asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Maybe I was imagining things, but I thought I heard relief in his voice when he asked whether ‘Mama’ was coming. As though he’d been standing here with his father long enough. His father who couldn’t do anything for him anyway. Is Mama coming? Mama’s coming. I had to be quick. I had to look out for him, in the only department in which I could still look out for him.

  ‘Michel,’ I said, laying my hand on his forearm again. ‘What does Beau … Faso … How did Faso find out about that video? He had already gone home, right? I mean …’

  Michel glanced at the entrance, as though hoping that his mother was already coming out to save him from this painful tête-à-tête with his father. I looked over at the door too. Something had changed, but I didn’t know right away what it was. The smoking man, I realized the next instant. The smoking man was gone.

  ‘Just did,’ Michel said.

  Just did. The same two words he used to say when he had lost his coat, or left his book bag somewhere on a playground and we asked him how he could have done that. Just did … Just forgot. Just left it lying there.

  ‘I mailed those videos to Rick. And then Faso saw them too, he pulled them off of Rick’s computer. He put some of it on YouTube, and now he says he’s going to put the rest on there too if we don’t pay him.’

  There were any number of questions I could have asked then: for a full second I asked myself which one other fathers would have asked.

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘Three thousand.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘He wants to buy a scooter,’ he said.

  28

  ‘Mama.’

  Michel threw his arms around Claire’s neck and buried his face in her hair. ‘Mama,’ he said again.

  Mama had come. I looked at my wife and at my son. I thought about the happy families. About how often I had looked at Michel and his mother – and how I had never tried to come b
etween them; that, too, was a part of the happiness.

  After she had caressed Michel’s back and the back of his head – over the black cap – Claire raised her eyes and looked at me.

  How much do you know? that look asked.

  Everything, I looked back.

  Almost everything, I corrected myself then, thinking about Claire’s voicemail message to her son.

  Claire took him by the shoulders and kissed his forehead.

  ‘What are you doing here, sweetheart?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were meeting someone.’

  Michel’s eyes sought mine; Claire, I knew there and then, knew nothing about the videos. She knew a great deal more than I had thought, but about the videos she knew nothing.

  ‘He came to get some money,’ I said, keeping my eyes on Michel. Claire raised her eyebrows. ‘I borrowed some money from him. I was going to pay him back tonight, before we left for the restaurant, but I forgot.’

  Michel lowered his eyes and scraped his feet on the gravel. My wife stared at me, but said nothing. I felt around in my inside pocket.

  ‘Fifty euros,’ I said; I pulled out the banknote and handed it to Michel.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ he said, stuffing the money in his coat pocket.

  Claire breathed a deep sigh, then took Michel’s hand. ‘Weren’t you going to …’ She looked at me. ‘It would be better if we went back inside. They were wondering what was taking you so long.’

  We hugged our son, Claire kissed him three more times on his cheeks, then we stood and watched as he cycled off along the path to the bridge. Halfway there it looked as though he were going to turn and wave, but he only raised one arm in the air.

  After he had disappeared from view, through the bushes and across the canal, Claire asked: ‘How long have you known?’