The Darkroom of Damocles (6 page)

‘No, I thought you said I wasn't to spend any money.'

He dragged her through the barrier; the stationmaster blew his whistle as they entered the carriage.

‘Don't you have any paper money at all?'

‘Yes I do, but it's all new. You've got me worried now. The notes could be fakes, maybe poor ones. There's something else, too, which I probably shouldn't tell you because it'll only make you more suspicious, but it wouldn't be fair not to, so I will. Back in England they gave me an ID card, obviously, but the people I stayed with last night said it was no good. I don't know about these things myself, but apparently ID cards have a watermark, a lion I think, and the lion in the thing they gave me is far too small.'

Osewoudt laid his hand on her thigh and squeezed it hard, as if this might encourage her to keep quiet.

‘Let's not talk too much here. People will think: what are those two whispering about?'

She put her arm around him and brushed his chin with the back of her hand.

Osewoudt looked at Elly, and drew her towards him.

‘I can't believe you're over twenty.'

‘I'm eighteen.'

‘You can't stay with me.'

‘Well, perhaps I could do something for you in return, in spite of my money and my ID card being no good. Surely there's something you're short of?'

She turned her hand over and stroked his cheek with the tips of her fingers.

‘Not razor blades though,' she said. ‘No shortage there, obviously.'

‘Razor blades! Who needs razor blades?'

‘I've never met a man with a closer shave.'

Osewoudt let go of her, almost groaning. But he took control of himself and said, with his lips close to her ear: ‘There's no stubble because I don't have a beard. I never shave – don't need to. Feel.'

He pursed his lips and rubbed his chin along her ear.

The train stopped in Leiden.

‘Don't you mind my not having a beard?'

She smiled, dimples appeared in her round, white cheeks, and her wide-eyed look became veiled, as if he had made some strange, sophisticated proposition and she was considering whether it appealed to her.

‘Well in that case,' he went on, ‘tell me, have you ever met someone called Dorbeck?'

‘I told you before, I've met nobody. I just went to the address I'd been given, and when it turned out to be useless I went to my aunt's.'

‘So you didn't meet a man who looked very much like me – same sort of face, same height, but with dark hair?'

‘I do wish you'd stop banging on.'

‘I'm not. The thing is, you could have come across this person under an alias.'

‘You still don't trust me. Is that what you're getting at?'

‘It's not a matter of trust. It's just that I'd like to know if you've been in contact with a man who looks very much like me except that he's dark-haired, the same as me but dark.'

‘Not that I recall.'

‘Strange. You arrived in Holland only yesterday. Not much has happened since, so little that you ought to be able to remember all of it without any trouble.'

The ticket inspector arrived, Osewoudt explained that they had to dash to catch the train, the inspector didn't mind and wrote out two tickets, without adding a fine. Osewoudt paid for them.

When the inspector had left, Elly said: ‘This is the first time in my life I've been on a Dutch train.'

‘You mean you've never been in Holland before?'

‘No, I haven't. Soon I'll be seeing Amsterdam for the first time, too.'

The railway station was dark. So was Prins Hendrikkade, which they crossed, looking out for the occasional car with blacked-out headlamps like glowing rivets.

But the white sign saying
FÜR WEHRMACHTSANGEHÖRIGE VERBOTEN
at the approach to Oudezijds Achterburgwal was as visible as ever.

‘What does it mean?'

‘It means,' said Osewoudt, ‘that this part of town is unsafe for Germans, which makes it all the safer for us.'

Uncle Bart answered the door himself.

‘What, no housemaid these days?' Osewoudt asked.

‘No, there's no one left,' said Uncle Bart. ‘What did you expect? That I'd just carry on, sell all my feathers to the Germans? My feathers on every German whore's hat? I'd rather starve.'

‘So who does the cleaning?'

‘No one. I've shut all the rooms. I've moved my bed into the office. I have everything to hand, stove, table, bed. What more does an old man need? Come on in.'

They sat down in the narrow little office on the first floor. Uncle Bart had grown a moustache and his breath was so vile you could smell it even when he wasn't speaking, or maybe you smelled it constantly because he didn't keep his mouth shut for more than a second.

‘So you've done a runner with a girlfriend, Henri. Doesn't surprise me in the least. I know exactly what you'll say: that you've had it up to here with Ria, she's so much older than you … Didn't I tell you? I always said you shouldn't get married. Yes indeed, your old uncle here has done a fair bit of reading and studying in his day. Didn't waste his time in the cinema, the way young folk do nowadays. The laws of natural selection can't be broken with impunity! Darwin knew that back then. What am I saying? Schopenhauer! What's the age difference between you and Ria again? Never had proper relations with her, I shouldn't wonder! Don't look at me as if you think your old Uncle Bart's lost his mind! I know full well no other father-in-law would dream of saying such things to his philandering son-in-law! But that's because most people don't use their brains, because they refuse to think about nature! Me – I don't care whether I'm your uncle or your father-in-law, all my life I've tried to observe the world with the unprejudiced eye of the naturalist! That has always been my goal!'

He leaned forward and gave Osewoudt two hard slaps on the knee.

‘She seems a nice enough girl to me,' he went on. ‘Indeed, a nice girl!'

He shifted on his chair to get a better view of Elly.

They climbed the dark spiral staircase.

‘Is he an uncle of yours?'

‘I call him Uncle, don't I?'

‘But is he your wife's father?'

‘That too.'

‘He's very broad-minded. Or is that because of the war? In England they say the war's brought down the moral standards of the Dutch.'

‘He was like that before the war. He's in a world of his own. If he had any idea of what's going on he'd be the strictest moralist of them all. Falling standards has nothing to do with it in his case. In my case, it might.'

He pressed himself to her back and put his arms around her. His hands were on her breasts. She thrust the back of her head against his face. As one, they climbed the last two steps, then stood still for a moment in the dark, by the door to his old bedroom.

‘In my case there does seem to have been a loss of moral standards,' Osewoudt repeated. ‘I would never have gone in for any of this in the old days.'

He felt her nipples harden between the tips of his fingers; he pushed her against the door of his room, which was not properly shut and so swung wide open. They stumbled and fell across the bed, on which lay two flat cardboard boxes that gave way under their weight with soft plopping noises and a smell of mould, dust, and stale herbs.

He pushed up her skirt, she lifted her legs and crossed them over his back. A loose floorboard thudded dully like a diesel engine, great green bicycle wheels rotated in the gloom. The girl's mouth felt so much bigger than it actually was. Oh to
be slurped up by her, followed by the thought: this girl has come all the way from England to get shagged by Resistance heroes.

He got off the bed, stuffing his handkerchief into his trouser pocket.

When he had switched the light on he saw brown cardboard boxes stacked against the wall, Elly on the bed with one hand pulling her skirt down and the other shielding her eyes from the light, and protruding from either side of her the burst cardboard boxes leaking hundreds of small, red birds' feathers. They were still drifting to the floor.

Osewoudt shut the door. Elly lowered her arm, burst out laughing and then sat up. She swung her legs off the bed.

‘The things a girl will do to avoid suspicion!'

‘This war turns everything into a performance,' Osewoudt said. ‘Come on, get up. This place is a mess.'

He pulled her to her feet, took the boxes off the bed, knocked them back into shape and added them to one of the stacks against the wall.

Elly swept up the scattered red feathers with her hands. ‘Is that all you've got to say?'

‘You're crazy, that's what I think you are. Was that what you wanted to hear? Or something else? Forgive me, but I haven't known you long enough to form any other opinion.'

She caught him by his jacket lapels.

‘Never mind. Time passes much faster these days. If you think you don't know me well enough, just ask me questions – anything, the kind of thing you wouldn't normally ask people until you've known them months, or years. What else do you want to know about me?'

‘That aunt you stayed with last night, is she married?'

Elly blinked a few times, as if this were a problem she needed a long time to solve, then looked away while soundlessly
moving her lips and crumpling his lapels. Then she gave them a sharp tug.

‘Do you want to know the address?'

‘I just want to know if she's married.'

‘Yes, she's married, but her husband happened to be out of town.'

‘That makes no difference. Your aunt isn't likely to keep it from her husband. Is she in the Salvation Army by any chance?'

‘Salvation Army? Salvation Army? What on earth? In the Salvation Army! Whatever gave you that idea?'

‘Nothing,' Osewoudt said. ‘I'm only asking because of the photo. You know, the one you gave me. I met a Salvation Army woman a while ago, and she had exactly the same one. I can't see why the people in England would give the same picture to every person making contact with me.'

‘Is that true?'

‘Clearly it is. The people who sent you over here are a bunch of incompetents. They give you useless fake identification and a bag full of silver guilders no one would be seen dead with in Holland these days. They didn't even take that funny-looking pencil off you. Go on, open your bag. Show me what else you've got in there!'

She emptied the bag out on the bed. There were nineteen silver guilders, three zinc quarters, two zinc cents, six food coupons, five new hundred-guilder notes and ten new hundred-Reichsmark notes.

‘Where did you get the zinc coins?'

‘They're change from the guilder I paid on the tram to get to the terminal at Voorburg. Otherwise I haven't spent anything. I was at my aunt's house until this afternoon.'

Osewoudt unfolded the identity card and held it up to the light.

‘You're right, it's a rotten fake.'

He folded the card again and pocketed it. He also took the silver guilders. He scrunched up the paper money and put it back in her bag. Then he reached for her coat.

‘You never know! There might be a label of some London shop sewn into it! That would be good. Save the Germans a whole lot of time if they started wondering where you came from.'

He examined the coat closely, the outside, the lining, the inside of the loop at the collar, but there was no label, number or name anywhere.

‘The stitching is different,' he said. ‘It looks peculiar, un-Dutch somehow. Could be the kind of stitching they use for army uniforms.'

He laid the coat down and she let him help her out of her sweater. She took off her skirt and underwear herself. It was pink, sensible underwear, made of coarse material. He inspected all the seams but found nothing suspicious. Still holding her vest, he turned to look at her. She was sitting on the edge of the bed with her arms to her sides in an attitude that might say: I'm cold, or, more likely, perhaps: I know my body's a bit flabby, I bet you're disappointed.

He laid the vest down.

‘Henri! Henri! Listen here!' called a voice from downstairs.

Osewoudt left the room and went down two flights.

Uncle Bart stood in the doorway of his room.

‘Did you take that girl up to your old bedroom? You'd better sleep in Ria's room. There are sheets and blankets in the cabinet. You know I'm not prejudiced, but there are limits. You know what I mean. Not being prejudiced isn't the same as saying anything goes, is it now? If you don't want to stay with Ria that's your business, but not under my roof! Do you get my drift? The world's immoral enough as it is. There's nothing like a war for bringing down morals. What do you take me for? Ria is my daughter, after all! My only daughter!'

‘Of course, Uncle. Good night then.'

Uncle Bart seized Osewoudt's hand and squeezed it firmly. He smiled with relief and said: ‘I've just been listening to a broadcast from London. Things are looking up! The front in Normandy is on the move. In a few months we'll be liberated!'

Osewoudt withdrew his hand and went back upstairs.

The girl had got under the covers. He sat down on the bed and asked: ‘How long are you thinking of staying here?'

‘That depends on you, and on your uncle.'

‘No, it depends on how much work you have to do in Amsterdam.'

‘I don't actually have anything to do in Amsterdam yet, but I may later. There's someone I have to see in Utrecht first, so I think I'll do that tomorrow morning. The person's name is de Vos Clootwijk. He's a railway engineer. I'm supposed to get him to give us information about German troop movements.'

There were still three people ahead of him in the queue when Osewoudt reached into his pocket for the fare. He looked in his wallet, but it was empty. Then he realised he had spent all his money the previous evening on tickets for Elly and himself.

He patted his side pockets and felt the silver coins he had taken from her, the old Dutch guilders. Also something flat and stiff: her fake identity card.

He broke into a sweat, glanced over his shoulder; there were at least ten people behind him. The train was leaving in eight minutes. What to do? Risk using the silver guilders? A ticket office clerk would be relatively harmless, being stuck on his chair. But what about the other people waiting by the window? What would they think when they heard the chink of silver, a sound unheard since the war started? What if there were someone from the Gestapo among them?

Osewoudt began to mumble, hardly knowing what he mumbled, and left the queue. He walked out of the station, his head full of vague thoughts … change the silver guilders … find someone on the black market … but how? He didn't know anybody. Ask a random passer-by?

For a quarter of an hour he wandered over Nieuwendijk, but no one accosted him, nowhere did he see anyone resembling a black marketeer. Wait until the afternoon?

Ten minutes later he was back at the station. The train had
left, and there was no one waiting at the window marked
DIRECTION HAARLEM
.

In a low voice, in German, he asked for a one-way ticket to The Hague and quietly laid two silver guilders in the tray. The clerk pulled the tray towards him, deposited the ticket plus the change and put the guilders in his pocket instead of in the till.

As Osewoudt went up the stairs to the platform it occurred to him that someone might be sent to follow him on the train to The Hague. What would be the safest thing to do? He couldn't decide, so he carried on along the platform and took a seat on the train.

Nothing happened. His train arrived at The Hague on schedule at 12.15 and no one took any notice of him when he got off.

He didn't count on Moorlag still being there. What would Moorlag have done? I think what I told him was: if I'm not at the station exit by quarter to twelve, something's wrong.

But Moorlag was still there, keeping a sharp lookout. He had already seen Osewoudt, who responded with a nod. But no sooner had he done so than Moorlag turned and wandered off in the direction of Rijswijkseplein. Once Osewoudt had passed the barrier Moorlag looked over his shoulder, saw him, but kept on walking.

Mustn't run. Why is he acting so strangely? Osewoudt took long strides. It was clear that Moorlag wasn't trying to shake him off; on the contrary, he let Osewoudt catch up, though he didn't stop, even when he must have been able to hear footsteps behind him.

‘Osewoudt! I've been waiting for you for the past half-hour! I'm a nervous wreck. The Germans came at ten this morning. They've taken Ria and your mother away. Bundled your mother and Ria into a car. I had just got up, was still in my pyjamas.
I saw it all from the window. When they were gone I ran down to get your Leica. But while I was upstairs getting dressed they came back. They're waiting for you. I fled over the roof. I went back later to take a look. The whole neighbourhood knows what's going on. Anyone going into the shop gets arrested. It's terrible! I've got nothing but the clothes on my back! They'll take away my books next, and books are so hard to come by these days! We've been shopped by that girl you rang up about.'

‘Calm down,' Osewoudt replied. ‘Even if you go back now they won't arrest you! They let you get away on purpose! Don't you understand? They let you get away on purpose so you'd come running to tell me what happened!'

It was an absurd idea: using Moorlag as a tool in all this wouldn't occur to any German. They had let him get away by mistake. If Moorlag hadn't been at the station what else would I have done but go home to Voorschoten – and get caught?

But Moorlag fell for it.

‘Oh they're a crafty lot! Now I get it! They thought if I told you about your mother being taken away you'd get in touch with them straightaway, of your own accord. They want to catch you by using your mother as bait!'

‘Not by using Ria!' Osewoudt laughed. ‘Have you got that Leica with you?'

Moorlag reached into his pocket and with some difficulty pulled out the camera. A white envelope came with it, which became crushed in the process.

‘What's that letter? For me, is it?'

‘Yes, it was lying on the mat last night.'

Osewoudt put the camera in his pocket, then felt the envelope between his thumb and forefinger. It didn't contain a letter, but something much smaller than a folded sheet of writing paper. He tore the envelope open. Out came a snapshot of six
by nine centimetres. It was of three soldiers in pyjamas, side by side. They wore gas masks over their faces and had their arms around each other's shoulders.

On the back a message had been printed in pencil:
PHONE AMSTERDAM
38776
SATURDAY
5
P.M
.
DORBECK
.

He tucked the photo into the breast pocket of his jacket, and as he did so felt the other one, which he'd got from Elly. One more, he thought, and I'll have all three of those damn pictures again, just the one to go: a soldier in pyjama trousers, bare-chested, manning an anti-aircraft gun.

‘Hey,' said Moorlag, catching him by the arm, ‘I'll stick with you of course. I'll do anything to help.'

Osewoudt looked down at himself: there was a bulge on his left side because of the Leica, and, he thought, a bulge on the right too because of the pistol. He fumbled in his breast pocket, took the photos out again and memorised the phone number: 38776. Then he tore them both up into small pieces, crossed the street and dropped the pieces into the water of the Zieken canal.

‘You need a disguise,' said Moorlag. ‘That would be best. Couldn't you grow a moustache?'

‘No. I don't have a moustache.'

‘Oh, sorry. Do you want my glasses?'

‘All right, give me your glasses.'

They huddled in a doorway, looking about them in case anyone was watching. Moorlag took his glasses off. Osewoudt put them on. Straight lines were now curved and misty, the colours of pavements, buildings, roofs and sky running together like splashes of watercolour paint. Every time he moved his head the world became elastic. He could feel his gullet tightening as if he were seasick; with each step he took the ground seemed to fall away.

‘Can you see anything?' Moorlag asked. ‘I'm very short-sighted,
the glasses are pretty strong, minus four, and the right lens is also cylindrical.'

‘I can't see a damn thing.'

‘Nor can I. I'm no good without my glasses.'

‘Let's stop playing around like this. Here, take your glasses back.'

‘No, don't give up. What if some German turns up and recognises you? Come on, better keep moving.'

Osewoudt sensed that Moorlag was pinching his coat sleeve between thumb and forefinger. Swallowing hard to suppress his nausea, he walked on, with Moorlag bumping along beside him.

‘I say,' said Moorlag, ‘the glasses aren't enough, of course. You'll have to get a hat. Makes an enormous difference to a face.'

‘Come off it. You'll be giving me a false beard next. Damn!'

‘You'll have to get glasses of your own. I'm not saying that because I want mine back, you understand, it's just that you should get some with a black frame and plain lenses.'

‘Come off it. What will the optician say?'

‘No, I'll buy them for you, at least I will if you give me the money.'

‘All I have is seventeen real silver guilders.'

‘What?'

‘Real silver guilders! From that girl I had to take to Amsterdam yesterday. She got them in England! To live on as a secret agent! God almighty!'

‘Don't get all worked up for nothing. Give me the guilders, I'll go and change them for you. I'll make a profit, you'll see. I know somebody. The black-market boys are scared their paper money won't be worth a cent after the war. They give three times the value for silver guilders!'

‘Mind they don't call the police,' said Osewoudt. ‘Oh damn
it all. I wonder where they've taken my mother. Given her an injection straightaway, maybe – finished her off. They do that sometimes with cripples or mental cases. Damn and blast.'

‘Stop swearing, Henri. Look, you can wait here while I do the errands.'

They were standing in front of a narrow display window. Osewoudt raised the glasses, blinked a few times and read the sign on the pane:
EAST INDIAN RESTAURANT PEMATANG SIANTAR
.

There was a white card behind the glass in the lower right-hand corner, which said, in Gothic script:
FÜR WEHRMACHTSANGEHÖRIGE VERBOTEN. DER ORTSKOMMANDANT
.

‘Wait for me in there,' said Moorlag. ‘No Germans allowed, and it's still early so it may be empty. No one will see you.'

Osewoudt opened the door.

‘Let me have my glasses back for now,' said Moorlag, ‘I can't do without them.'

Osewoudt handed back the glasses, went inside and took a seat roughly in the middle of the empty restaurant.

A smell of fried onion and garlic reached him.

A white-coated Javanese waiter with a batik cloth tied around his head enquired in a whisper whether he wanted his rice on the ration or off. But suppose Moorlag didn't manage to change the guilders?

‘I'll have a glass of soda water,' said Osewoudt, rubbing his eyes with both hands, still unaccustomed to being able to see properly.

A gentleman and a lady came in, sat down and ordered fried rice off the ration. It was half past twelve. Four young men came in, also for fried rice off the ration. More people drifted in. By two o'clock the restaurant was full to bursting, but Moorlag had still not returned and Osewoudt was now sharing his table with three strangers, all having fried rice off the ration while he had nothing but his soda water to sip every ten minutes.
He kept studying the menu, from which he could glean nothing of interest except that a glass of soda water cost twenty-five cents. A relief. He still had three zinc ten-cent coins in his pocket. No need to run off without paying, in so far as running off without paying would be feasible in a crowded restaurant.

He leaped up when he saw Moorlag through the window at last and deposited his three ten-cent pieces next to his glass. Moorlag came in carrying a large paper bag in his left hand. He cast his eyes around the restaurant, barely looked at Osewoudt, shrugged as if to say the place was too crowded for his taste, and walked out again. Osewoudt followed.

‘Did you manage all right?'

‘Of course. I got forty-five guilders for them. I also ordered a pair of glasses with plain lenses, but they won't be ready until this evening. And here's your hat.'

Moorlag opened the paper bag. It contained a green hat of coarse felt.

Osewoudt took the hat from him, Moorlag screwed up the bag and threw it away.

Osewoudt walked along, swinging the hat nonchalantly as if it had always belonged to him and he just happened to be carrying it in his hand. Then he put it on.

‘Moorlag, I know it's awkward for you, but let's stop in this doorway so you can give me your glasses again.'

Moorlag promptly took off his glasses and handed them over.

‘We must get a move on, we're taking the tram to Leiden. I know someone there who's well connected.'

They staggered on, both of them practically blind. Nausea welled up in Osewoudt's gut; the world now consisted of bulging gelatine, his brains seethed under the hat, for he had never worn a hat before and the hooks of the glasses chafed behind his ears.

‘That friend of yours with the connections, any chance he could get me a new ID card?'

‘Of course, that's what I had in mind.'

‘I also need another one for that girl I told you about.'

At Bezuidenhoutseweg they boarded the tram to Leiden.

Osewoudt sat by the window with his hand shielding his eyes to ease the headache, and also to raise the glasses slightly, so that he could look out from underneath.

Squalid, run-down tenements along Schenkweg. Prim, middle class free-standing houses on Laan van Nieuw Oost-Indië. Stretches of sodden grassland. Beyond that the railway track, on which an electric train was racing against the tram. Voorburg. The small white station. Further back, to one side, was where I first saw her, in her white raincoat, a rolled-up newspaper in her hand.

Stop. Conductors get off. New conductors get on. A low whistling sound. Under the floor of the tram an electric pressure pump begins to throb angrily.

The tram gathers speed. Shade: the Leidschendam viaduct. On the horizon three windmills in a row. Shimmering glasshouses.

He felt the sweat beading on his brow; the leather hatband on the inside was beginning to smell.

Voorschoten. The tram slowed down as it rolled into the street where he lived.

He was now covering his face almost entirely with his hand, but his eyes bored holes between his fingers.

EUREKA CIGARS AND CIGARETTES
. He kept his eyes on the shop as they went past. No German car outside, no crowd. Not a soul. The blind over the door had been fully lowered, but the blind over the shop window had caught on one side and hung down lopsidedly like a half-open fan. That's how the blinds hang in houses whose occupants have left in a hurry:
from the street there is nothing much to see. You ask yourself why they didn't at least lower their blinds properly before they went. But the neighbours know that the back of the house has been torched and that only time will tell how long the front will stay up.