by Herman Koch
‘I’ll get to that later. What matters is how we deal with this. How we bring it all out into the open.’
At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. I looked back at Claire. We’ve got a problem, that’s what she’d said. This is the problem, her eyes were saying now.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said.
‘Paul.’ Serge laid his hand on my forearm. ‘Give me a chance to finish. Then it will be your turn. When I’m done.’
The diners at the neighbouring tables had gone back to their dining, but things were restless around the open kitchen. I saw three waitresses standing around ‘Tonio’ and the manager, they didn’t look once in our direction, but I would have bet my cheese platter that they were talking about us – about me, I corrected myself.
‘Babette and I spoke with Rick this afternoon,’ Serge said. ‘Our impression is that Rick is suffering badly from all this. He thinks it’s terrible, what the two of them did. It keeps him awake at night, quite literally. He looks distraught. It’s affecting his academic achievements.’
I wanted to say something, but restrained myself. It was something in Serge’s tone: as though, even at this early stage, he was trying to compare his son favourably to ours. Rick couldn’t sleep. Rick looked distraught. Rick thought it was terrible. It felt as though Claire and I had to defend Michel – but what were we supposed to say? That Michel thought it was terrible too? That he slept even less than Rick?
It simply wasn’t true, I realized. Michel had other things on his mind besides the incinerated homeless woman in the ATM cubicle. And what was all this moaning about academic achievements? It was too disgusting for words, if you thought about it.
If Claire said something, I would side with her, I decided. If Claire said that it was inappropriate, in view of what had happened, to be talking about academic achievements, I’d chime in and say that we wanted to leave Michel’s schoolwork out of this.
Was Michel’s schoolwork being affected? I asked myself the next instant. I didn’t have that impression. As far as that went, he had his feet more firmly on the ground than his cousin.
‘What’s more, from the very start I have tried to see this separately from my own political future,’ Serge went on. ‘Which is not to say that I’ve never thought about that.’
From the looks of things, Babette had started crying again. Noiselessly. I got the sneaky feeling that I was present at something at which I would rather not be present. It made me think of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Of Oprah Winfrey.
Was that the way it would go? Was this the dress rehearsal for the press conference at which Serge Lohman would announce that the boy on camera in Opsporing Verzocht was his son, but that he hoped nonetheless to retain the trust the voters had showed in him? He couldn’t be that naive, could he?
‘To me, the most important thing is Rick’s future,’ Serge said. ‘Of course, it’s very possible that this whole thing will never be solved. But could you live with that? Can Rick live with that? Can we live with that?’ He looked at Claire first, then at me. ‘Can the two of you live with that?’ he asked. ‘I can’t,’ he added then, without waiting for us to answer. ‘I can just see myself, standing on the palace stairs with the Queen and the cabinet ministers. Knowing that, at any moment, at any old press conference, a journalist might raise his finger and ask: “Mr Lohman, is there any truth to the rumour that your son was involved in the murder of a homeless woman?”’
‘Murder?’ Claire cried out. ‘So it’s murder now, is it? Where did you get that from all of a sudden?’
A brief silence fell; the word ‘murder’ must have been audible four tables away. Serge looked over his shoulder, then back at Claire.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was too loud. But that’s not the point. To call it “murder”, I find that taking things a step too far. What am I saying? Ten steps too far!’
I looked at my wife in admiration. Anger made her prettier, especially her eyes; it was a look that put men to shame. Other men.
‘So what would you call it, Claire?’ Serge had picked up his dessert spoon and was stirring it around in his melted ice cream. It was one of those spoons with a very long handle, but he still managed to get ice and whipped cream on his fingers.
‘An accident,’ Claire said. ‘An unfortunate series of events. No one in his right mind would even begin to claim that they went out that evening to murder a homeless woman.’
‘But that’s what the security camera shows. That’s what all of Holland saw. I mean, so don’t call it murder, call it manslaughter as far as I’m concerned, but that woman never raises a finger against them. That woman gets a lamp and a chair and finally a jerrycan thrown in her face.’
‘What was she doing in that ATM cubicle?’
‘That doesn’t matter, does it? There are homeless people everywhere. Unfortunately. They sleep wherever they can keep a bit warm. It was probably warm and dry in there.’
‘But she was lying in the way, Serge. I mean, she could have gone and slept in the hall at your house. It’s probably warm and dry there, too.’
‘Let’s try to stick to the point,’ Babette said. ‘I really don’t think that—’
‘This is the point, sweetheart.’ Claire had put her hand on Babette’s forearm. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, but when I hear Serge talking like this, it sounds like we’re dealing with some poor little bird here, a fledgling that has fallen out of its nest. What we’re talking about is a full-grown person. A grown-up woman who, in complete possession of her senses, goes to sleep in an ATM cubicle. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m only trying to put myself in someone else’s shoes. Not the homeless woman’s, but Michel and Rick’s. They’re not drunk, they’re not on drugs. They just want to withdraw some money. But someone is lying in the ATM cubicle, stinking to high heaven. So isn’t your first reaction: oh yuck, fuck off, would you?’
‘But they could have gone somewhere else for their money, right?’
‘Somewhere else?’ Claire started laughing. ‘Somewhere else? Yes, of course. You can always go out of your way to avoid things. I mean, what would you do, Serge? You open the front door of your house and you have to step over a sleeping vagrant. What would you do? Would you just turn around and go back inside? Or suppose someone was standing there pissing against your door. Would you just close the door? Would you pack up and move to another house?’
‘Claire—’ Babette said.
‘Okay, all right,’ Serge said. ‘I see what you’re getting at. That wasn’t what I was trying to say. Of course we shouldn’t walk away from problems or difficult situations. But you can, you have to, try to find solutions to problems. To …’ – here he hesitated for a moment – ‘… take the life of a homeless person doesn’t bring you any closer to the solution.’
‘Jesus, Serge!’ Claire said. ‘I’m not talking about a solution to the problem of the homeless. I’m talking about one homeless person. And more than that one homeless person, I think we should be talking about Rick and Michel. I’m not going to deny what happened. I’m not trying to say there was nothing wrong with it. But we have to keep it in perspective. It’s an incident. An incident that can have a major impact on our children’s lives, on their future.’
Serge sighed and rested his hands on the table, on either side of his dessert; he was trying to make eye contact with Babette, I saw, but she had her purse in her lap and was looking for something – or pretending to.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘That future. That’s precisely what I wanted to talk about. Don’t get me wrong, Claire, I’m just as concerned about our boys’ futures as you are. The only thing is, I don’t believe they can live with it, with a secret like that. In the long run it’s going to tear them apart. Rick, in any case, is being torn apart already’ – he sighed again – ‘it’s tearing me apart.’
Once again, I had the feeling I was witnessing something that only obliquely had anything to do with reality. At least with our reality, the reality of two couples –
two brothers and their wives – who had gone out to dinner together to talk about their children’s problems.
‘I’ve made up my own mind about my son’s future,’ Serge said. ‘Later, when this is all behind us, I want him to be able to go on with his life. Let me emphasize that I’ve made this decision on my own. My wife … Babette …’ Babette had fished a pack of Marlboro Lights from her purse, an unopened pack, and was now tearing off the cellophane wrapper. ‘Babette doesn’t agree with me. But my mind is made up. She only heard that this afternoon.’
He took a deep breath. Then he looked at us in turn. Only then did I notice the moist glistening in his eyes.
‘In the best interests of my child, and also in the best interests of this country, I’m going to withdraw my candidacy,’ he said.
Babette had put a cigarette between her lips, but now she removed it. She looked at Claire and me.
‘Dear Claire,’ she said. ‘Dear Paul … the two of you have to say something. Please tell him he can’t do this. Tell him he’s out of his mind.’
38
‘You can’t do that,’ Claire said.
‘He can’t, can he?’ Babette said. ‘You see, Serge? What do you think, Paul? Don’t you think it’s a ridiculous idea? There’s no reason to do that, is there?’
To me, personally, it seemed like an excellent idea for my brother to put an end to his political career, right here and now; it would be the best thing for everyone – for all of us, for the country – the country would be spared a four-year Serge Lohman administration: four costly years. I thought about the unthinkable, about things I had mostly been able to suppress: Serge Lohman standing beside the Queen on the steps of the royal palace, posing for the official photo with his newly formed cabinet; with George Bush in an easy chair in front of a fireplace; with Putin on a boat on the Volga … ‘After the conclusion of the European summit, Prime Minister Lohman raised a toast to success with the French president …’
First of all, it was the sense of vicarious embarrassment, the unbearable thought that government leaders all around the world would become acquainted with my brother’s vacuous presence. How, even in the White House and at the Elysée Palace, he would wolf down his tournedos in three bites because he had to eat now. The meaningful looks the government leaders would exchange. ‘He’s from Holland,’ they would say – or perhaps only think to themselves, which was even worse. That sense of vicarious shame was a constant. Our being ashamed of our prime ministers was the only feeling that created a seamless connection between one Dutch administration and the next.
‘Maybe he should take some time to think through it carefully again,’ I said to Babette with a shrug.
The most terrrible image of all was that of Serge sitting at our dinner table at home, somewhere in the – until recently – near future, but a future that was now thankfully fading fast, telling stories about his meetings with the world’s rulers. They would be lame stories, stories brimming over with platitudes. Claire and I would be able to see through them. But Michel? Whether he liked it or not, my son would be fascinated by the anecdotes, the corners of the veil that my brother would lift to his own honour and glory, the behind-the-scenes views of international affairs with which he would justify his presence at our table. ‘What are you griping about, Paul? Your son finds it interesting, you can see that, can’t you?’
My son. Michel. I had thought about a future, without stopping to ask myself if there would be one.
‘Think it through carefully?’ Babette said. ‘That’s exactly it. If only he would stop sometimes and think things through!’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ Claire said. ‘I mean that Serge isn’t free to simply decide this on his own.’
‘I’m his wife!’ Babette said, and she began sobbing again.
‘That’s not what I mean either, Babette,’ Claire said, looking at Serge. ‘I mean that all of us have a stake in this. We’re all in this together. All four of us.’
‘That’s why I wanted us to meet,’ Serge said. ‘So we could talk together about how we’re going to do it.’
‘How we’re going to do what?’ Claire said.
‘How we’re going to bring it out into the open. In a way that will give our children a fair chance.’
‘But you’re not giving them a chance, Serge. What you’re planning to bring out into the open is that you’re withdrawing from politics. That you don’t want to be the prime minister any more. Because you can’t live with it, that’s what you said.’
‘Can you live with it?’
‘It’s not about whether I can live with it. It’s about Michel. Michel has to be able to live with it.’
‘And can he?’
‘Serge, don’t be obtuse. You make a decision. With that decision, you also decide your son’s future. That’s up to you. Although I wonder whether you realize what kind of damage you’re going to cause. But your decision will also destroy the future of my son.’
My son. Claire had said my son, she could have glanced over at me then, for support, even if only for a knowing look, then recouped and said our son – but she didn’t; she didn’t even look my way, she kept her eyes fixed on Serge.
‘Oh, come on, Claire,’ my brother said. ‘That future has already been ruined. Whatever happens. That has nothing more to do now with what I decide or don’t decide.’
‘No, Serge. That future will be ruined only if you give in to your urge to play the noble politician. Just because you can’t live with something, you assume that that applies to my son as well. Maybe you’ll be able to make it up to Rick; I hope for your sake that you can explain to your son what you’re about to do to his life, but please leave Michel out of it.’
‘How can I leave Michel out of it, Claire? How am I supposed to do that? Explain that to me first. I mean, they were both there, if I remember correctly. Or are you trying to deny that, too?’ He fell silent for a moment, as though shocked by his own, uncompleted thought. ‘Is that what you’re trying to do?’ he asked.
‘Serge, try to be realistic. There is nothing happening. No one has been arrested. There isn’t even any suspicion. We’re the only ones who know what happened. It’s just not enough to justify sacrificing the future of two fifteen-year-old boys. And I’m not even talking now about your own future. You have to do whatever you think you have to do. But you can’t go dragging other people into it. Especially not your own child. Let alone mine. You present it as an act of pure self-sacrifice: Serge Lohman, the ambitious politician, our next prime minister, gives up his political career because he can’t live with a secret like this. In fact, he doesn’t mean a secret, he means a scandal. It all seems entirely noble, but in fact it’s purely egocentric.’
‘Claire—’ Babette said.
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ Serge said, silencing his wife with a gesture. ‘Let me finish, I’m not done yet.’ He turned to Claire again. ‘Is it egocentric to give your son a fair chance? Is it egocentric of a father to give up his own future for his son’s future? You have to at least explain to me what’s egocentric about that.’
‘And what does a future like that consist of? What is he supposed to do with a future in which his father puts him up on trial? How will his father explain to him that it was this same father’s doing that put him behind bars?’
‘But that’s maybe only for a couple of years. That’s all you get for manslaughter in this country. I’m not denying that it will be hard, but after a couple of years they will have served their sentences and can try to carefully pick up their lives again and move on. I mean, what else do you propose, Claire?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing.’ Serge repeated the word as a neutral conclusion, not a question.
‘Things like this blow over. You can see it happening already. People say it’s a disgrace. But in the end, they want to get on with their own lives. In two or three months, no one will be talking about it any more.’
‘I’m referring to something e
lse, Claire. I … we notice that it’s starting to tear Rick apart. People may forget it, but he won’t.’
‘But we can help them with that, Serge. With that forgetting. I’m only saying that you shouldn’t rush decisions like this. In a few months, maybe even a few weeks, everything may have changed. We can discuss it calmly then. We. The four of us. With Rick. With Michel.’
With Beau, I felt like adding, but held myself back.
‘I’m afraid that’s not on,’ Serge said.
In the silence that followed, the only thing you could hear was Babette’s quiet sobbing.
‘Tomorrow there is going to be a press conference, where I’ll announce that I’m stepping down,’ Serge said. ‘Tomorrow at noon. It’s going to be broadcast live. The twelve o’clock news is going to lead with it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Oh, is it already that late?’ he said, seemingly indifferent to whether this sounded natural or not. ‘I have to … I’ve got another appointment,’ he said. ‘In a little bit. In half an hour.’
‘An appointment?’ Claire said. ‘But we have to – who are you meeting?’
‘The director wants to confirm the location for my press conference, and run through a few things beforehand. It didn’t seem to me like a good idea to do something like this in The Hague, a press conference like this. That’s never really been my kind of thing. So I was thinking of some place less formal …’
‘Where?’ Claire said. ‘Not here, I hope?’
‘No. You know that café that serves meals across the street, where you took us a few months ago? We ate there too. The—’ Here he pretended to be searching for the name of the café; then he named it. ‘When I was trying to think of a suitable place, it suddenly came into my mind. An ordinary café. Ordinary people. I can be myself there, more than in some frigid press centre. I suggested to Paul that we have a beer there tonight before coming here, but he didn’t feel like it.’
39
‘Could I interest you in coffee?’
