The Darkroom of Damocles (30 page)

‘Yes, I remember.'

‘Didn't you see someone leaving the shop?'

‘It's possible.'

Osewoudt now turned to Selderhorst and said: ‘That was the night Dorbeck brought me the pistol.'

Selderhorst drew a cigarette from his pocket, tapped it on his thumbnail and put it between his lips. He kept his hand over the cigarette to shield it from the rain. The door opened. Selderhorst was the first to enter.

Inside, it was less dark than you would expect for a house with bricked-up windows. The shop had been entirely gutted. There were holes in the floor, the sliding doors were open, and most of the leaded glass had gone. So had the glass in the French windows opening from the back room on to the garden. The walls were stained with soot, there had obviously been a fire, but it could not have lasted long.

The rainwater apparently collected on the flat roof and came straight down through the upper storey and out of a hole in the ceiling of the back room, in a gushing, clattering stream.

Dodging the waterfall, they headed towards the back garden.

The place was overrun with nettles and broom; it was beyond recognition.

‘Well,' said Selderhorst, ‘I think I'll wait inside. Tell them where to dig.'

Osewoudt took two steps into the garden, halted, and pointed to his feet.

‘Here.'

The policeman swiped his spade to clear the nettles, and began to dig. Osewoudt turned up the collar of his jacket against the rain and watched closely. Spuybroek lounged in the doorway with his thumbs in his belt.

The soil was black and lumpy. The spade turned up a large bisected worm. Then a piece of newspaper.

‘There it is!' Osewoudt cried. He bent down; the policeman stopped digging.

Osewoudt squatted down and continued to dig, using his hands. The newspaper disintegrated into slimy shreds at his touch. In the end he managed to pull away a handkerchiefsized piece, which he held out to Selderhorst.

Selderhorst took it and stepped outside. His shoulders darkened instantly in the rain. Both Osewoudt and the policeman were now squatting. The uniform emerged: tunic, breeches and boots. The fabric had gone completely black, and soft as a spider's web, the insignia were rusty, and also the buttons had turned green. When they picked up the boots, the soles stayed behind in the mud.

‘What did I tell you?' said Osewoudt. ‘Here it is: Dorbeck's uniform. See the two pips on the collar? The crossed cannons? It's the uniform of a first lieutenant in the artillery, just as I said. This is the uniform that belonged to Dorbeck. See for yourself. It'll fit me, because Dorbeck and me were the same height.'

He snatched the jacket from the policeman and held it to his chest to show that it was his size. But the fabric was so far gone that the garment fell away in rags, and they had trouble collecting the buttons, which had rolled away.

This cell wasn't really a cell. It was a good-sized space, if not high. It was half buried underground, so the only source of daylight was a double row of glass tiles just below the ceiling. An electric light covered with a griddle remained on all day. It wasn't cold, because there were thick central heating pipes passing through it, but dank due to the absence of a window. An enamel bucket with a wooden lid stood in the corner.

Things could be worse, Osewoudt thought. From time to time cries and groans sounded overhead, where a large number of political prisoners were being held. He was relieved to be on his own.

It would not be long now, he told himself, before everything came out in the open, enough at any rate for them to let him go, regardless of whether Dorbeck ever showed his face again.

He got up and took a newspaper from the small table, on which all his worldly possessions were gathered. The newspaper was much smaller than normal – no bigger than a pre-war weekly. He knew everything in it off by heart. On page three was his own picture, captioned:

A description of the wanted man followed, along with a list of official addresses where such information could be handed in.

A key turned in the lock, and Spuybroek stepped inside.

‘Still reading that newspaper? Well, you'd better come with me. Apparently somebody's come forward at last with some information.'

Osewoudt stood up and coughed.

‘Put a scarf on,' said Spuybroek. ‘The wind's blowing from the potato-meal factory.'

Osewoudt pulled a faded but thick woollen scarf from the table and wound it around his neck.

‘Who is this person who's come forward?'

‘An old man in a wheelchair. Spent a long time in a concentration camp.'

Osewoudt followed Spuybroek out of the cell. They went past the central-heating furnaces, and then through another basement area filled with rusty machinery. The building was an old milk factory that had been shut down in the early days of the German occupation. They went up a flight of crumbling concrete steps and out through a small door.

An expanse of cracked concrete sloped down to a canal. The water was fenced off with barbed wire. Across the water was the potato-meal factory, beside which rose a mountain of pale, rotting foam like beaten egg white, so poisonous that dumping it in the canal was prohibited. Black clouds hung low over the flat, bare countryside. It was raining steadily; the stone terrace was full of puddles.

Osewoudt was racked with coughing again, and stood still. He cast a nervous eye over his surroundings.

On the chimney of the factory the word
COOPERATIVE
was still legible in a column of faint white letters. Beyond the concrete yard there was a second expanse of concrete, divided from the first by a tall screen of barbed wire. A small factory producing flavouring extracts stood there. When the weather was fine there was usually a breeze from that direction, carrying the smell of vanilla.

‘I hope for your sake,' said Spuybroek, ‘that we have a mild winter, otherwise you'll have a hard time of it here in the peat-cutting district.'

‘I'll be out by then, with any luck.'

Osewoudt put away his handkerchief.

‘Where will you go when you're free?'

Osewoudt looked about him and saw the armed guards by the entrance, who had nothing better to do than follow his every move.

‘I wouldn't know,' he replied softly. ‘I've no one left in the world.'

They went into a building which, had it been surrounded by a garden, would have resembled a villa. Formerly home to the factory boss, it now served as the camp offices. Spuybroek handed a note to one of the Sten-wielding guards, and they went inside.

Spuybroek knocked on a door, poked his head in, then beckoned Osewoudt.

Osewoudt stepped inside. In the middle of the room stood a wheelchair, occupied by a man with long snowy hair. His head lolled on his chest; he seemed to be asleep. He wore a heavy black overcoat and had a rug tucked round his apparently lame legs. Beside him stood a woman, resting her hand on the back of the wheelchair. She wore a coat with a fur collar, and a nurse's cap. She had purple, cracked cheeks and hard,
beady eyes, like a hen. She eyed Osewoudt with scornful interest, then gave the old man's shoulder a shake.

‘Mr Nauta, here he is.'

‘Uncle Bart! Is it really you?'

Osewoudt moved up close to the wheelchair.

The old man raised his head, but his chin stayed on his chest. White threads of saliva dripped on his coat, his pale tongue protruded over his bluish lower lip. He had a horrible scar at the left corner of his mouth.

He focussed his eyes on Osewoudt and said something, but he was unintelligible.

‘What did you say?'

‘Mr Nauta says he knows you.'

Inspector Selderhorst now stood up, took his chair and pushed the seat against the back of Osewoudt's knees.

Once seated, Osewoudt was able to put his head close to his uncle's, whose mouth emitted a vile smell, as if his entrails were rotting away.

‘Uncle Bart, I didn't know you were still alive.'

Uncle Bart nodded and again tried to say something, but his lips barely moved. His voice was altered beyond recognition; the sounds he produced were more like grunts than words. Osewoudt had to strain to make out what he was saying.

‘Yes, everyone's dead, but I'm still alive, Henri! I gave those Krauts a piece of my mind, so they tried to cut out my tongue. But I can still talk.'

‘Uncle Bart, do you remember that I came to your house one night with a girl called Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel?'

‘Yes, I remember that.'

‘Do you remember what I told you about her, later on?'

‘Henri, lad, I always knew you'd come to a bad end. I did everything I could for you.'

Selderhorst, too, rested his hand on the back of the wheelchair and bent low towards Uncle Bart's ear.

‘Mr Nauta, nothing has been proved against your nephew as yet. We just have a couple of things we want to put straight.'

‘I never knew what the girl's name was. He came to me with a girl after he left his wife. That's all I remember, what does it matter, anyway?'

‘Why were you arrested by the Germans?'

‘I had a row with a German in the street.'

‘Didn't they ask you about the girl? Didn't they want to know whether she had stayed in your house?'

‘No. Oh, Henri, that it should have come to this! You, in this place! Your poor mother's dead. My poor daughter's dead, too. Murdered – and no one knows who did it! What a terrible world I've been living in. But there's a better world in store. I'm a socialist in every fibre of my being, I will never lose my faith in humanity. My sacrifice has not been in vain. Sacrifices are never in vain. The time will come when there will be no more war. Peace, liberty and prosperity for all men. We now have an excellent government. Before long, everybody will be receiving old-age pensions – an ideal that was regarded as a fantasy when I was young. In the longer term there will be family allowances for everybody, and that, too, is a very fine thing. We ought to pay more attention to the good things in this world. Oh, Henri, you who are still so young – that you should have thrown away your future like this!'

‘Mr Nauta!' shouted Inspector Selderhorst. ‘Was he working for the Germans?'

‘Working for the Germans? What does it matter? All I know is that he never had ideals. Always taking the path of least resistance. I offered to send him to university, but all he wanted was to hang around in a tobacco shop doing nothing, when everyone knows that nicotine is a dangerous poison. All my
life I have fought against alcohol, tobacco and the excessive consumption of meat. Total disarmament was my ideal, but as a boy he was too lazy even to address the envelopes for my temperance meetings.'

‘Did you suspect him of anything?'

‘I brought him up as my own son. Why would I harbour suspicions against him? The mere thought of him acting dishonourably was intolerable to me. What I do know, though, is that when his mother was arrested he made no effort whatsoever, none at all, to secure her release. I said to him: why don't you go to the Krauts, why don't you say: here I am, take me instead of my mother? But he wouldn't hear of it.'

Osewoudt got up from his chair, as if he were not close enough to Uncle Bart already. He put his hands on the armrests of the wheelchair and, leaning so far forward he seemed minded to kiss the old man on the forehead, he cried: ‘Uncle Bart, I'm sorry about everything, but I am innocent of the crimes they suspect me of. Do you remember me telling you about Dorbeck?'

Uncle Bart's head fell again, but he made a final effort to lift his eyes to Osewoudt.

‘I am tired. I would rather go now!'

His eyes filled with tears and he began to sob audibly, while his nurse took a folded napkin from her bag, shook it out, and wiped the dribble from his lips and his coat.

‘Uncle Bart, this is extremely important to me. Do you remember the name Dorbeck?'

A kind of whimpering rose from Uncle Bart's throat, as from a dying dog after being hit by a car. He was too choked up to speak any more. His head jolted sideways and reared up again. Then it lolled to the side once more.

Osewoudt stood up straight. He held his hand out to Selderhorst.

‘He's shaking his head no,' he said imploringly. ‘Shaking his head, saying no, he can't remember. But what does that prove? He's an old man. The Germans have maltreated him. He can't help it that his memory's gone. What does this prove against me?'

Each morning the prisoners had to do half an hour of gymnastics in the factory yard. Running, leapfrogs, belly-crawls, rolls, vaults. It was Osewoudt's first time. He ran harder than the others, leaped further, crawled faster, rolled like a marble and vaulted higher. As a punishment the others had to keep it up for an extra quarter of an hour. Osewoudt was allowed to sit and watch.

Spuybroek wandered on to the yard, caught sight of Osewoudt and squatted down beside him.

‘I've got a secret,' he said. ‘Important news! Listen to this! That picture of you we published has been getting some response. Your uncle isn't the only person to have come forward. We've had word from a British army commander in Germany. They've excavated a mass grave somewhere near Oldenburg. It seems they've found a body that fits the description.'

‘Hardly surprising, is it? And I suppose you want me to provide proof that it's Dorbeck? Me furnish proof? I'm the one nobody believes, remember? How can I prove anything about a corpse that's been buried for at least six months?'

‘Shut up for a minute, I haven't finished. Do you remember mentioning the name Jagtman to me? Jagtman … the name passed on to you by Dorbeck, along with an address. You were to send photos there. Legmeerplein in Amsterdam, it was. But when you went to follow it up you found that the building had
been destroyed by a plane crash the night before, and the whole Jagtman family had been killed. Wasn't that what you told me?'

‘Yes, more or less.'

‘Well, then. Do you know who's come forward? The family dentist. He knows exactly what the teeth of the various Jagtmans looked like. Now if the teeth of that body in Oldenburg can be matched with a member of the Jagtman family, we'll be getting somewhere. It would go some way to explaining why no one's heard of Dorbeck. Then it would be reasonable to assume that Dorbeck was an alias and that his real name was Jagtman. Let me tell you something: ever since you actually turned up the remains of that uniform, back in Voorschoten, my opinion of you has changed.'

‘Oh really?' Osewoudt said. ‘So tell me, if that body in Oldenburg is in fact the body of a Jagtman, how am I to explain what it's doing in Germany when the entire Jagtman family was wiped out in Amsterdam by the plane that came down on their house? Every time there's a chance, however slim, of proving that Dorbeck really existed, fresh complications arise. What use to me is a dead Dorbeck in Germany? The living Dorbeck is what I need, to come here and prove my innocence! And I'm certain he's still alive! Colonel Smears, who interrogated me in England, never denied his existence either.'

Spuybroek began to whistle, straightened up, and walked away. Osewoudt stared at the prisoners running round in circles. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing from the flavouring extracts factory, and it smelled of vanilla. If the dentist was able to identify the body in Germany, what would the consequences be?

After a shout from the sergeant in charge, one of the prisoners left the group and came to sit beside Osewoudt.

He was young, seventeen at most. He had a high forehead
and the green, shallow-socketed wolf's eyes of the wildest Germanic tribes.

‘You're Osewoudt, aren't you? Interesting to talk to you. Everyone's heard about your case. If you ask me, the hunt for Dorbeck's like walking through quicksand: every step you take you sink deeper. What's your view?'

‘That's none of your business.'

‘If you ask me, Osewoudt, you're a real bastard. I'm not saying that to have a go at you, it's the truth. You know the trouble with most Dutchmen? They never learned to think. Take me. I joined the SS a year ago. I'm a theorist, an amoral theorist. A theorist, because I can't stand the sight of blood, and besides, by the time I joined, Germany was already losing the war and there were SS men running for cover with the Resistance. It wasn't that I believed in the SS, the 1,000 year Reich, or any of the other tripe the papers say every SS man believed in. But what I do believe is that moral values are nothing but a temporary frame of reference, and that once you're dead morality is irrelevant. I don't suppose you've done much reading, have you? I have. I'm an intellectual. Not many of them in the SS, either. A pack of idiots, like everybody else. Some of them thought the world of Himmler! Himmler, I ask you! A sea cow in pince-nez! They thought Hitler was a genius! Hitler! The epileptic schnauzer! They believed in a better future, for God's sake! If it were up to me, I'd have them all put against a wall, now, here, this minute!'

He pointed to the exercising men.

‘See how they run! Ridiculous. You know what it is? You know what it all boils down to? It all boils down to the fact that man is mortal and doesn't want to admit it. But to anyone who accepts the reality of death there is no morality in the absolute sense, to anyone like that goodness and charity are nothing but fear in disguise. Why should I behave morally if
I will get the death sentence in any case? Everyone is sentenced to die in the end, and everyone knows it.

‘The crackpot philosophers who shaped our Western civilisation thought there was a difference between guilt and innocence. But I say: in a world where everyone gets the death sentence there can be no distinction between innocence and guilt. And all that rot about compassion! Of course you've never read a decent book in your life, like all the other imbeciles in this country. But if you get a chance, you should take a look at Shakespeare's
Richard III
! Shakespeare, now there was someone who understood. What happens when Richard's kingdom is on the verge of collapse and he must prepare for the decisive battle?

‘He sleeps, and in his dream appear all the friends and relations he murdered so that he could take the throne. Do you know what they say? Well, what do you think? Do you think they say: Richard, it was awful of you to kill us off, but what's done is done, there's no way we can come back to life, we forgive you for what you did to us and hope that you'll be spared our miserable fate, because even if you are punished for your crimes, it won't do
us
any good … Do you think that's what they say, Osewoudt? No, my friend, that's not what they say.
Despair and die!
is what they say.
Despair and die!
Women, children, old folk.
Despair and die
they all say! Shakespeare knew what he was talking about!

‘Take Dostoevsky. In Dostoevsky you'll find people who are gentle, kind, high-minded, generous, saintly – but they're all insane, every one of them. That's what it boils down to! Man is only good out of calculation, insanity, or cowardice.

‘And this brings me to the point I'm trying to make: this insight is gradually gaining acceptance. The old prophets and philosophers who claimed otherwise are losing ground. The truth can't be kept at bay by autosuggestion. Man will have to
learn to live in a world without liberty, goodness and truth. It'll soon be taught at primary school! This war is just a foretaste of what's in store! The world is getting far too densely populated for there to be room for madmen, do-gooders or saints. Just as we no longer believe in witches, just as sexual taboos are disappearing, so our great-grandchildren will have no qualms about allowing things to happen that would horrify your taxpaying, vote-casting populace of today.

‘The carnage of this war, the millions of defenceless people who have been gassed, beaten to death, starved, doused with burning phosphor from aeroplanes, that's just a start. Our grandchildren won't understand the hue and cry in the papers over such things. The persecution of Jews? You mark my words! In twenty years' time the British, the Americans and the Russians will have the Jews exterminated by the Arabs, if it happens to suit them. May I wish you the very best of luck with your case, Osewoudt?'

The prisoners were marshalled into line. The young SS man jumped up to join them. But after two paces he paused, looked back at Osewoudt and said: ‘Or they'll have the Arabs exterminated by the Jews, if that makes you feel any better!'