For a moment Onno was at a loss for words. "So you never forget anything."
"That's why one is a historian."
"I'm here solely as a friend."
"That's enough for me," said the director, and picked up the telephone. "Adriaan? I have Mr. Delius and Mr. Quist with me. What? — yes, that's right. It's about the Wolfgang Delius case. Can you give them a little of your time and help them out? I'm sending them to you."
Max had not mentioned his father's Christian name; it shocked him to hear it coming so naturally from the director's mouth. It was explained to them where they had to go, and as they took their leave, the director said to Onno: "My regards to your father."
When the door closed, Onno said softly. "Now he'll be calling again, and giving instructions."
"What kind of instructions?"
"On what we mustn't see."
"What can be worse than what we already know?"
"Nothing, but of course other reputations are at stake. Not everyone was shot."
From the glances that met them in the corridors, it was clear that the news of their presence had already spread through the building. The official whom the director had called Adriaan was putting the phone down when they came in: a thick-set, slightly stooping man in his fifties, with a round face and a penetrating gaze, who introduced himself as Oud. Without further ceremony he asked them to sit down, and then went to the basement to fetch the documents.
They were sitting next to each other at a long table with well-ordered piles of papers. Onno surveyed the cupboards full of files, with code numbers, which went up to the plastered ceiling, and remarked that some people would be glad to put a match to them; but Max was silent. He realized that he was approaching the end of something. The papers would shortly be put on the table for the last time, but now that he was here, he did not want to know everything at all — precisely how it had happened, how it was reconstructed during the trial, what the witnesses said, and what other crimes his father might have committed; he no longer needed to read the verdict. What had happened had happened. The only thing he wanted to see was something concrete, something direct, which showed that his father had existed — perhaps just a photograph.
Oud came in with six thick files clasped to his chest, followed by a young man with an even higher pile of dusty archive files and boxes under his chin. After it had been laid out in front of them, Oud sat down behind it like a market trader, made a demonstrative gesture, and said: "How can I help you?"
There it was, like dirty scum in an empty bathtub.
Max read on a cover. He would have preferred to get up now and leave; he only stayed in his chair because Onno was there. The latter in turn had decided to outdo everyone and take matters in hand — but the amount of material paralyzed him; he was also a little frightened of the man sitting behind it, with his threatening, St. Christopher-like initials alpha and omega.
When he saw Max hesitating, Oud said: "I know my way around this file. I was involved in the preliminary investigation at the time. Do you want to see the documents where you yourself are mentioned?"
Max shivered. "So you knew him." He wanted to say "my father," but could not bring himself to.
"Knew… I don't think anyone ever knew him. But I met him a few times, yes."
"What did he say about me?"
"Himself? He never said anything — not about you or anything else. He didn't open his mouth during the whole of his detention, or during the hearings. There was no question of interrogating him."
"But then how was he…"
Max did not have to finish his question. Oud nodded, opened a file, undid the clip, and a little while later placed his flat hand on a typed letter: gray lines with narrow spacing, a signature that was half visible under his wrist.
"In this your father asks a certain General von Schumann of the Wehrmacht, who was later killed at Stalingrad, whether he can take steps to rid him once and for all of his young wife. The general was a personal friend of his, because he addresses him as Du. In fact, he expressly calls it a favor to a friend."
Max turned away. He must not even look at that. He hoped Oud would not ask him if he wanted to read the letter, so that he would have to hold it in both hands. Out of the corner of his eye he saw him leafing through.
"Here is the letter from Schumann to Rauter, the Höhere SS-und Polizeiführer in The Hague, also using Du. They were all good pals," said Oud, and went on looking. "He was also a witness at your father's trial— he himself was not executed until three years later. Yes, here we have his instructions for the Sicherheitsdienst in Amsterdam, complete with address and everything, and this is the list of the Amsterdam SD on that day, with a little v in front of your mother's name, indicating that it had been dealt with. With your grandparents, who were not protected by your existence, he took a much more direct route. Shall I look that up as well?"
Max swallowed and shook his head.
"But what's in all those other files?" asked Onno.
"Those concern other people," said Oud impassively, "and, apart from that, mainly robbery and plunder."
There was a silence. Max again saw the piano being taken out of the house, the pile of clothes in his mother's bedroom. In order to help him through the moment, Onno asked whether there was an explanation for Delius's consistent silence.
"Was it from a feeling of guilt? Because he had fatally incriminated himself in that letter? It appears that Ezra Pound has stopped speaking these days for a similar reason."
"According to the public prosecutor," said Oud, "it was only a last resort to escape the burden of proof. But one day something strange was found in his cell." He looked in one of the archive boxes and pulled out a thick yellow official envelope. "This," he said, taking out a cigarette packet and giving it to Max.
It was a Sweet Caporal packet, yellowed and empty. In astonishment Max took it and turned it over. On the back something was written in green ink.
" 'Only I exist,' " he read in German. " 'What does not exist cannot die.' "
"That's the same tune as Wittgenstein," said Onno. "Whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent. Another frustrated Austrian."
Max did not hear. He had never seen his father's handwriting. It was un-Dutch — sharper, more angular. He had held this same packet in his hand, there in his cell in Scheveningen, and he had written this on it, perhaps on his knee, sitting on the edge of his bed.
But it wasn't Wittgenstein, said Oud, it was Delius: he had certainly never heard of Wittgenstein, his contemporary, who was only now becoming fashionable. In a psychiatric report, that note was used as evidence of diminished responsibility: he was under the illusion that only he himself actually existed and that everything else was illusion, projection; from that point of view he could not be guilty of murder, because nobody else was alive, only he himself could die. Even his judges and his interrogators did not exist. Even his executioner, paradoxically, did not exist.
Such a patient should therefore be exempted from prosecution and detained at the government's pleasure. However, the prosecutor argued in turn that it was only the cunning maneuver of an intelligent criminal in order to escape his just punishment. Giltay Veth, on the other hand, the defense counsel Wolfgang had been assigned, who had not been able to get a word out of him, had gone into it further. He argued that Delius's cell contained the infamous book of Max Stirner, a German philosopher from the first half of the previous century, the advocate of an extreme, amoral egoism, whose Ego was a precursor of Nietzsche's Ubermensch. After Hitler's downfall, Delius had obviously gone a step further and arrived at an authentic, metaphysical solipsism. Giltay Veth had subsequently sought the advice of two distinguished foreign philosophers: Russell from Cambridge and Heidegger from Freiburg im Breisgau.