But I can’t very well ask them to get a statement from a traitor like that, can I? What would the judge think of me? So I’m keeping quiet about him.
And, Marianne, please write back. I would so love to know how you are getting on in your kibbutz. They say you people play recorders and tambourines out there. Perhaps you haven’t forgotten me yet. I hope you don’t think I abandoned you. At least now you know why you haven’t heard from me. Once I’m free I want to try and save some money (except I don’t know how, as the tobacco shop no longer exists), but if I can lay my hands on some money I’ll come over to you, Arabs or no Arabs.
The new matron, Sister Kruisheer, was a gaunt woman in her fifties with a clearly visible blonde moustache.
She bent over the hospital bed, removed the thermometer from Osewoudt’s mouth, and said: ‘Thirty-eight point nine. Lucky you. Thirty-eight point five and you’d have had to go.’
With her left hand she held a tray with medicine bottles and glasses. She added the thermometer to the others in a tumbler of sublimate solution. Then she took from her tray a tin dish containing a Gillette razor and a dab of shaving cream, and said: ‘Time for a shave.’
‘I don’t need a shave.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘I don’t have a beard. Want to feel?’
She gave him a wide-eyed stare, and slowly removed the tin dish. ‘Lucky you,’ she said, with a mean smile.
Bleak morning light filled the ward, which had walls of pale blue distemper covered in stains and blisters from the damp. There were no windows, but the roof consisted of double-pitched toughened glass. This had originally been the bottle-rinsing room. Taps for hot and cold water abounded, even in the most unexpected places, hence its conversion into a sick bay. Not only were there taps on the walls, there were pipes running down the middle of the space upon which more taps were mounted, some dripping and others constantly emitting puffs of steam.
The patients lay in metal beds. The majority were malingerers. Whenever one addressed Osewoudt, he shouted: ‘Shut your trap, you dirty traitor!’
The uproar that ensued could only be calmed by the guards going down the aisle between the beds, lashing out left and right with rubber truncheons. Osewoudt was not spared, of course, but to him it was worth it.
Thirty-eight point nine, thought Osewoudt, four tenths too many. What could he do to make the fever go down, so that he would be sent back to his own room in the basement?
He felt his damp sheets, sniffed the smell of engine oil that came from the steam, looked up at the dingy glass ceiling and thought: I’ll never get better here. His cheeks bulged suddenly, he threw himself over on his side, writhing with pain, and tried to smother the cough in his pillow, but his lungs felt as if they were bursting, and his chest muscles contracted in rib-cracking convulsions.
‘Hello Henri Osewoudt!’
He turned over on his back and looked up.
An elderly gentleman stood at his bedside. In his pale, liver-spotted hand he held a black trilby. His large head hung forwards at an angle, forced into this position by a sickly red swelling on his throat.
‘I am Dr Lichtenau. You don’t know me any more, but I still know you. A lot has happened since then, but I still recognise you very well.’
Sister Kruisheer came up with a chair and Dr Lichtenau sat down. He laid his hat on his knees.
‘I am the psychiatrist who treated your mother when she was in the institution. I remember you used to come and visit her, with your uncle.’
‘Really?’
‘Indeed I do! I asked you: what do you want to be when you grow up? and you said: a nurse!’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Yes. You were about five years old at the time. You haven’t changed very much, really. Your father was still alive then.’
Dr Lichtenau stared into space and shook his head.
‘Did you treat my mother again later, when she went back to the institution after that business with my father?’
‘At first, yes. The murder of your father did not in fact shed any fresh light on the diagnosis. She herself did not feel responsible for what she did; that was nothing new. There was a voice, a “something”, an “it”, telling her what to do.’
Dr Lichtenau made two small gestures, as though seeking to portray the ‘something’ and the ‘it’ while indicating that he did not believe in their existence. ‘She would sometimes disguise herself, tear a strip off a sheet and tie it over her face like a mask, and say: there it is again, I’ll just chase it away.’
He looked intently at Osewoudt; he had watery blue eyes with sagging lower lids, and seemed to be wondering if his simple résumé had sunk in.
‘She used to do that later on, too,’ said Osewoudt.
‘Indeed. That was her peculiarity — that she did things at the behest of some external agent. She did not like this, it frightened her. So she would try to chase the “something” or the “it” away. Clearly, she did not always succeed.’
‘I suppose you heard about the Krauts finishing her off, Doctor?’
‘Yes, Henri. Yet she was not incurably insane. She was a perfectly normal woman as long as she did not feel threatened by the “it”. But tell me, you must have been very fond of your mother, no?’
‘Need you ask? The only way I could take care of her was by moving into the flat over the tobacco shop and running the business. I was only doing it for her.’
‘Then why did you put her at such risk by getting involved in underground operations?’
‘I wouldn’t … If I’d never met Dorbeck …’
‘This Dorbeck business, do you believe in it yourself?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you really believe that Dorbeck existed, that you met him several times, and that he gave you all sorts of assignments? Look here, Henri, please don’t interrupt! I don’t mean that you’re not well in the mind, not by any means! But the war has been a time of enormous strain for all of us. It could be that in periods of great fatigue you came to believe that Dorbeck existed, that he telephoned you, sent you messages on the back of photographs, and so on and so forth. Come now, Henri, we who both knew your mother so well need have no secrets from each other. What I’m saying is that we all have our moments of weakness. You don’t believe in Dorbeck yourself, if you ask me! There were times when you did believe in him, such as when you were suffering from mental exhaustion, but you don’t believe in him any more. You are only sticking to your story because you are in a tight corner. What do you hope to achieve by that? The judiciary have obliged you in all sorts of ways. Tons of paper have been used up on your case — and that at a time when paper is in such short supply. The files keep piling up. The search for Dorbeck has extended to every country in the world, every person who might have met him at one time or another has been questioned, but he is nowhere to be found. If the authorities had not gone to such lengths to trace him, they would never have called me in. It is only because they have been scrutinising your entire past as well as your family’s that they found me. No, don’t contradict me, Henri, let me finish. The brief for your case is now as good as complete. It won’t be long now before you are brought before the judge. What course will you pursue then? Saying you knew that Dorbeck didn’t exist won’t help, because you will not only be held responsible for everything, but the judges will also be greatly annoyed with you for having misled the police inquiry for months on end. Let me give you some advice: from now on, say as little as possible. Stop contradicting them, just let them get on with it. Remain silent in court. I shall draw up a report for the judges saying it was all a delusion in your mind, a hallucination. I shall say that you yourself were convinced Dorbeck existed. Dorbeck was simply the personification of certain inclinations embedded in your own soul. I shall say that this in fact reveals moral instincts on your part, in that you could not tolerate being responsible for your criminal inclinations, so you stepped outside of yourself, so to speak, by attributing them to Dorbeck.’