The Darkroom of Damocles (8 page)

He thrust Elly's new identity card into her hand.

Zoeterwoudsesingel did not have an even and an uneven side, the houses were numbered consecutively: 70, 71, 72. On the far side of the canal, which followed the zigzag course of the town's old defences, was a stretch of parkland with huge weeping willows.

Number 74 sat exactly in the crook of an angle in the zigzag waterway. The house was quite different from the houses to the left and right, which stood slightly further back. The windows and eaves were decorated with lavish woodcarving. There was no garden at the front, but next to the doorway there were iron railings enclosing a flagged space hardly big enough to park a baby's pram in.

The house next door was full of doctors, all of whom shared the same name. Their nameplates were set one above the other by the entrance.

Labare opened the door in person. He was about forty, and had a dented appearance, with hollow temples, hollow cheeks covered in a thick stubble of a mousy shade, and grey, spiky hair. He wore slippers. He extended an ink-stained hand and said: ‘My name is Labare. Come in.'

‘I'm Joost Melgers,' said Osewoudt, and shook the proffered hand.

He was quickly ushered upstairs. Labare drew him into a small, narrow room.

In it stood a narrow bed with a dingy white counterpane, a
straight-backed chair and a small table with an enamel basin and jug. On the wall: a framed picture of a family of ginger apes partially clothed as humans.

Labare sat down on the bed, and with a weary wave of the hand indicated by turns the chair and the space beside him on the bed. In his other hand he held a flat tin box.

Osewoudt sat down on the bed.

‘Look here, Melgers, it's like this. You can sleep up here as long as nothing's going on, but in emergencies you'll have to stay in the basement. These are all strict orders. We have no time for amateurs, jokers, show-offs or blabbermouths here. There have been enough accidents already. Have you heard about the Dreadnought group? It's the firing squad for them all next week. That lot talked too much, they all knew exactly who the others were. The Germans rounded up every one of them in an afternoon at the same address. So we don't go in for chit-chat here. Like to roll yourself a smoke?'

‘No thanks. Allow me to offer you an English cigarette.'

‘You'd better hang on to those.' Labare opened the tin box and rolled a very thin cigarette with pitch-black, hair-like tobacco.

‘So in an emergency,' he went on, ‘you go straight down to the basement. There are bunks there too. Besides, that's where all the work is done. It would be safest if you stayed down there permanently, but that's a bit hard …' He paused. ‘A bit hard … You might as well come down with me now. Could I see that Leica of yours?'

Osewoudt got out the camera and handed it to Labare. Labare crossed his legs and examined it with head bowed. He kept the roll-up between his lips, the smoke curling around his hollow temples. He was breathing through his mouth and began to cough.

‘Not bad, new model. No close-up lens?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘I've never had one.'

‘Never had one?' Labare looked at him as if he thought Osewoudt had lost it, or even deliberately destroyed it.

‘So what in God's name have you been doing with that Leica? Oh well, it's none of my business.' His voice tailed off. ‘Rank amateur,' Osewoudt heard him mutter. Labare stood up with a sigh, then spoke out loud again: ‘And is that Summar the only extra attachment you've got? No ninety-millimetre lens?'

‘No.'

‘You obviously have a lot to learn. Follow me.'

Halfway down the stairs to the basement Labare stopped abruptly.

‘Take a look behind you, Melgers.'

Osewoudt turned to look.

‘See that rope?'

Osewoudt saw the rope.

‘If you pull that rope a whole contraption of iron bars comes down behind the door, a kind of grating, but much heftier. So anyone wanting to force the door from the outside has a hard time of it. That's what it's for, understand? No, don't pull the rope now, because once the bars are down it takes more than one man to get them up again. More than two, in fact. The windows in the basement are heavily barricaded too. So that could get very nasty.'

Labare went on down the stairs. ‘Very nasty,' he repeated. At the foot of the stairs he stopped again, thereby obliging Osewoudt to remain standing one step up. Labare said: ‘As you can see, it's very cramped here. We have to make the best of what little space we have. So we knocked up all these cubicles from hardboard. What's in those cubicles and what goes on there is none of your business. None. What would be the point
of you knowing, anyway? It never does anyone any good to know about things that are none of their business. No good at all, especially not with the tricky kind of work we do here.'

He began to wriggle his way into one of the narrow passages between the board partitions.

‘Getting around is a bit of a squeeze for me, but it won't be a problem for a small chap like you. I'll take you to where you'll be working, and then I'll show you where the emergency exit is, too.'

Osewoudt walked, or rather sidled, behind Labare. The passage became so narrow that it was impossible to advance by putting one foot in front of the other in the normal manner. Moving sideways, scraping between the partitions, they came to a black curtain no wider than the passage.

‘You will have noticed,' said Labare, ‘that every light bulb has a smaller one beside it that isn't switched on.' He pointed to the ceiling. ‘Emergency lighting, in case the current fails. We've thought of everything. No messing about here.'

He pushed the curtain aside, took a step forwards and then stopped to hold it open for Osewoudt. Osewoudt looked past him.

The cubicle beyond the curtain was painted black all over: ceiling, floor, walls and even shelves, which were stacked with canisters and brown bottles. There was no window, not even a boarded-up window, but there was a small washbasin and a folding bed.

‘In here,' said Labare, ‘is where you'll be doing most of your work. I might as well explain right away. This is the darkroom. Nothing like a darkroom for shedding light, eh? Now don't go thinking that the things that come to light are any business of yours, just concentrate on making it happen. You can do it with your eyes shut, in a manner of speaking.'

He reached for a black ebonite container rather like a jam
jar, but slightly wider and not as tall. He removed the cover and took out a reel.

‘This thing is your developing tank. Unfortunately it's the only one we have, so you can't develop more than one film at a time, and developing plus washing takes a full hour. All those boxes contain films that need developing. There must be about eighty, as there's been nobody to process them for the past fortnight or so and new films come in every day. We have a huge amount of documentation. But even when you've developed a film you're not done yet, because you still have to thin it. You probably don't have a clue about the technical side of photography, like most people who snap merrily away, so I'll tell you how it works.'

He shut the ebonite container and put it back on its shelf, then leaned back with his elbow resting on the same shelf to facilitate his standing delivery.

‘A film, Melgers, consists of two things, mainly: a strip of celluloid which we call the emulsion base, and on top of that a thin layer of gelatine, which we call the emulsion. The emulsion is the photosensitive layer. Now, in thinning, we separate the emulsion from the base. The problem with that is the instability of the emulsion – once the gelatine falls apart the image is lost. So before we start thinning we have to toughen the gelatine layer.'

He took a bottle from the shelf.

‘This is used for washing the film. When that's done we can start prying the emulsion off the base. We make sure the gelatine comes off in one piece, without tearing. That gelatine layer is extremely thin. Once it's properly dry it can be rolled up so tight that it can easily be hidden, inside a propelling pencil for instance. Not that we have any of that romantic stuff going on here. We thin down films mainly to save space. I can't abide romantic notions of any kind in this business.'

To mark his switch from the technicalities of film processing to philosophy, Labare slid the bottles together on the shelf and rolled himself another cigarette.

‘You must think of this as an ordinary job, you don't want to get carried away thinking there's a war on and you're a hero or anything like that. Obviously, we have to make safety precautions and stick to them, but it's the same in peacetime, too. Down mines, in chemical factories. That is how you should see our safety precautions, it's as simple as that. We have no use for heroes. What is a hero? Someone who's careless and gets away with it. We have no use for careless people. I don't need men who keep shtum when they're interrogated by the Germans, but men who'll spill the beans – it's a question of making sure they don't have any beans to spill, that's all. Because if someone does know something, try holding a burning cigar to his balls and nine times out of ten he'll talk, and in the one case where he doesn't, well, he'll be stuck with burned balls for the rest of his life, which would be too bad.'

Osewoudt cackled shrilly, Labare laughed too, but inaudibly, only moving his lips, and he said in a nasal tone: ‘Yes, my boy, that is how you must think of it.'

He shook his head.

‘If anything happens, the first thing you do is pocket the finished films and switch on the light to expose the rest: they'll go black. You do that at the first signal. The second signal means it's time to leg it. I'll show you how it works.'

Labare put out his cigarette under his shoe and walked off. Osewoudt went after him, this time through another passage, one wide enough to walk down normally. It ended at a door.

‘This door opens into the neighbours' house. Got that?'

Labare took Osewoudt back to the small darkroom, and said: ‘You can start now. You know where everything is.'

* * *

Osewoudt switched the light off, opened one of the canisters, had no difficulty loading the film on to the reel. He put the reel in the ebonite container, closed the lid, switched the light on again and began the procedure as explained to him.

While the successive baths took effect in the ebonite container, he sat waiting on a low packing case, elbows on knees, head bowed. Now and then he looked at his watch, undid the strap and fastened it again. It was very quiet, no sound from outside penetrated the darkroom, and there didn't seem to be anyone else in the basement besides himself. He reflected on all that had happened in the past week, starting with that phone call from Elly last Monday. He counted the days. It was Friday now! I have to be in Amsterdam tomorrow at five, make that phone call: number 38776!

Dorbeck has made a new man of me, he thought.

Not until half past eight that evening did Labare allow him to leave the house.

‘I ought to keep you indoors all the time, really, as I have a feeling you're a risk outside, but I had one chap staying here who went clean round the twist being stuck inside twenty-four hours a day. And that was a sight more risky for us.'

Osewoudt had developed and thinned ten films, which had taken him ten hours straight. He hadn't even had a proper meal, just a piece of bread from time to time without interrupting his work.

The fresh air had a sweet smell. He couldn't recall the air ever smelling so sweet. He took deep breaths to empty his lungs of the lingering stench of chemicals and cigarette smoke.

Ten minutes later he rang the bell of the narrow hairdresser's shop. The glass in the door was not curtained, so he could see Marianne coming from afar. Rather than a white smock she had on a white blouse with a dark skirt.

He shook hands with her, and hesitated: I'd like to kiss her, he thought, but didn't.

‘Hello Filip.'

She sniffed the air a few times, inaudibly; all he saw was her nostrils flaring.

‘You smell of formaldehyde.'

‘You smell of perfume. I wouldn't know what kind, though, I know nothing about perfume.'

‘Cuir de Russie. Formaldehyde reminds me of the dissecting room.'

‘Then it may not be such a good idea for me to come in,' Osewoudt said as he followed her up the stairs. ‘I don't want you mistaking me for someone else.'

‘Don't worry, you're not
that
pale.'

Then he asked: ‘So how did you get on? Did you go to Amsterdam? Did you pass on that message for me?'

‘Yes, of course.'

They went into a warm room, small but not particularly narrow, more or less square.

‘Who did you speak to? Mr Nauta himself?'

‘Yes, I did. There was nothing the matter.'

‘Nothing the matter, you say? What about the telephone?'

‘Your Mr Nauta said he'd had the phone taken out as he's giving up the business. He doesn't want to sell his feathers to the Germans, he won't have Kraut whores wearing his feathers. Why Filip, you look surprised. I thought he was a nice old gent, digging his heels in like that.'

Marianne laughed, reached out to him and began to unbutton his overcoat.

Osewoudt said: ‘All right, all right.' He undid the last button himself and laid the coat over the back of a chair.

‘How did you introduce yourself?'

‘I said what you told me to say. I said: Henri sends his regards. I've brought an envelope for Elly. Wasn't that what you meant? That was what you told me to say, wasn't it?'

‘Yes, that's fine. And did you get to see Elly?'

‘No, she'd left a few days earlier, Mr Nauta said. He explained what happened. She arrived there on the Monday evening with a nephew of his, and the nephew was married to his daughter! Can you imagine? He said his daughter's much older than the nephew; I had the idea he wasn't very fond of
the daughter, he thought she was mean and could imagine why his nephew would go off with someone else.'

‘What was the nephew called?'

‘He didn't say. What's it to you anyway?'

‘Oh, nothing. Carry on. The nephew brought the girl to his house, then what?'

‘I wish you'd sit down. You're not in a hurry, are you? No one ever comes to visit me here.'

Osewoudt sat down. Marianne dropped on to the divan. She folded her legs beneath her and rested her hand on them. He saw that she was wearing smart stockings; he took another good look at her, thinking she must have dressed up for him. Cautiously, he sniffed her perfume. Cuir de Russie.

‘So Mr Nauta didn't know when Elly would be back, then?'

‘No. It went like this. He said: I'm not prejudiced, I didn't mind putting them up for the night. I wouldn't have known where else to send them anyway. It was already close to eleven when they arrived. But I didn't feel like having them for weeks on end, he said. He said it wouldn't have been fair on his daughter.

‘The nephew left fairly early the next morning. The girl stayed. She didn't go out all day. By eleven that night the nephew still hadn't come back. The girl then knocked on Nauta's door and asked if his nephew, or rather his son-in-law – I don't know how she referred to him – had said anything in particular. When he'd be back, for instance.

‘At that point Mr Nauta apparently began to lose his temper. He said that he wasn't prejudiced, but that there were limits. The man wasn't prejudiced, he must have told me that a hundred times! Right then, no prejudices, but there were limits! The poor girl took the hint and left the next morning.'

‘He sent her packing without an ID card?'

‘Yes, I think so. She probably hadn't mentioned that she
didn't have one. Whatever. What are you getting worked up about?'

‘Wouldn't you be worked up if you'd gone to a lot of trouble to get a good ID card for someone and they went off without it, just like that?'

‘It's annoying, of course.'

‘What did you do with the ID card? Did you give it to him anyway?'

‘No, I'm not that stupid. Nor did I tell him about the Elly girl not having an ID card. Because people are bad and you don't find out just how bad until you're living under German occupation, like now. Don't you agree, Filip? I thought if I told that man she had no ID he might phone the police! Whether he's prejudiced or not! Or he'll let it slip in conversation with his daughter, and then the daughter …'

Osewoudt drew a deep breath and said: ‘It was very sensible of you not to mention that. Did you pass him the other message, about Ria and her mother-in-law having been arrested, I mean?'

‘No, you said I was only to tell him that if there was something strange going on with his telephone. So there was no need to.'

‘It was more than just a password,' Osewoudt muttered.

‘What did you say?'

‘I didn't say anything.'

‘Oh yes you did. Did I do something wrong? But I'm positive I said exactly what you told me to say! I didn't make any mistakes! I'm very careful about things like that.'

‘Yes.'

‘Don't you believe me?'

‘But of course I believe you.'

‘I say, Filip … did you ever meet this Elly girl, by any chance?'

‘Never set eyes on her. Why do you ask?'

Marianne turned her hand briefly palm upwards, then laid it on her leg again: ‘If you knew her you might be able to track her down. Mightn't you?'

Osewoudt got up from his chair. He looked at the three Japanese cups ranged on a sideboard of brown oak, he looked at the picture on the wall above: Whistler's
Portrait of the Painter's Mother
, complete with a prose poem beneath. Well, well, Uncle Bart, so you threw her out, he thought. So much for not being prejudiced.

‘I say, Filip, do you know what I think?'

He went over to the divan and sat beside her.

‘What do you think?'

‘You're a nice boy, but it's as clear as daylight! She's gone to the nephew, of course, that nephew of Nauta's, the nephew-cum-son-in-law! She must have known where he was!'

Now Osewoudt burst out laughing, thinking: mustn't laugh, mustn't laugh, not now, and he tried to picture Elly standing somewhere with her hands up, surrounded by German policemen. But he couldn't stifle his laughter. Between gasps he managed to say: ‘What if she was stopped on the way without an ID card?'

‘Oh, come on, I'm sure she didn't have far to go. The nephew must have rented a room nearby! Where else could she have gone? Plenty of rooms to let around there anyway. She'll get herself another ID card, I'm sure.'

Marianne fumbled behind her back for her bag and slid it forwards. She took out Elly's identity card. She held it at arm's length, studying the photo.

‘Not very pretty, is she?'

‘No?' Osewoudt wanted to take the card from her, but Marianne clung on to it. ‘I didn't look at her properly,' he said. Marianne's thumb and his thumb in parallel. Elly's portrait in between.

‘She looks rather dim.'

‘Yes, and so puffy.'

‘No sense of humour in those eyes, not a flicker.'

‘Not like yours.'

Marianne raised her eyebrows.

‘You flatter me. I only hope you're right.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘What would I do without a sense of humour? Seriously, Filip, sometimes I'm afraid I'll lose it.'

‘Oh, come on,' he said, his head almost resting on her shoulder. ‘We mustn't lose our sense of humour!'

He let go of Elly's identity card and Marianne placed it on the divan beside her. He kissed her on the temple, nuzzled the hair above her ear. ‘We've got to hang on to our sense of humour,' said Osewoudt. ‘The best way of doing that is: make sure you don't know too much about people.'

‘You're absolutely right. There's not that much you can discover about other people anyway.'

She let him hold her hand.

‘Especially at a time like this,' he said. ‘Knowing a lot about someone always backfires. The best thing would be for everyone to change their names.'

‘Oh, Filip, I wouldn't want you to change your name. I think Filip's a nice name. Filip …'

He was now leaning his full weight against her and she was slowly yielding. Then he asked: ‘I hope my name isn't the only thing you like about me.'

She began to laugh, her lips quivering and drawing away from her delicious teeth, and yet there was a touch of disdain in her laughter, as if she wanted to say: how silly to be carrying on like this. Or maybe: men are always after the same thing. With his head he pressed her head into the cushions, his lips on her lips, and his tongue found the warm softness of her
mouth. His hand slid under her blouse and he felt her ribs beneath a thin vest. Averting her face, she said: ‘I suppose I ought to say you're a bit fast, but who knows what tomorrow will bring.'

He slid his hand upwards and cupped her breast.

‘Time runs so fast we have to be fast to keep up,' he said.

He swung his legs off the divan and sat up. He could feel his eyes narrowing, his ears ringing.

‘I want you,' he said, taking her hand and pressing it to his crotch without quite knowing what he was doing.

Marianne was still smiling, but her smile had grown sad. Yet she said: ‘You never know, maybe you can get what you want.'

In his mind's eye he pictured himself as a towering figure, demon and hero, or at least as a fairy-tale prince.

He unbuttoned her blouse and her skirt. She let him take off all her clothes, but he kept his on. He lay on top of her and thought: she is naked but I've still got my armour on. What would I do without my armour? He lifted his head to look at her face. Her eyes were hooded with arousal, but her lips were parted in a smile that now seemed pitying. Not wanting to see this, he smothered her smile with his mouth and thrust his tongue between her teeth. It was as if he held her body taut between two hooks, or between two poles of a battery, and he sent a high voltage current through her frame, making her jerk convulsively and moan as though under torture.

She lay with her back to him. He sat hunched on the divan, adjusting his clothes. Elly's identity card had fallen to the floor. He picked it up and slipped it in his pocket.

Then he leaned over Marianne and planted a kiss on the small of her back.

‘You have the loveliest bottom.'

She rolled over towards him.

‘Do I? Go on, tell me all the other things you like about me.'

He gazed at her from head to toe. Abruptly, his eyes widened and he laughed.

‘Hey! So the colour of your hair isn't natural either! I had no idea you'd bleached it.'

‘No?'

‘Didn't you think black hair suited you?'

He laid one hand on the hair that was still natural. With the other he ran his fingers through the blonde hair on her head.

‘Black hair would look very good on you, too. Very good. Good enough to eat.' He kissed the dark hair, nibbled it and said: ‘I'll graze it all off if you're not careful.'

‘I didn't bleach my hair because I didn't like the colour.'

‘No? Then why?'

‘Do you mean to say you don't know? Don't think you can fool me!'

‘I don't know what you're getting at. And I don't want to know either. I thought we'd agreed that it's best not to know too much about people.'

‘Oh how discreet we are all of a sudden! Go on, take a good look at me, Filip, take a good look and tell me you can't see why I bleached my hair.'

‘I can't look at you for so long in cold blood, it gets me too excited.'

But she pushed his head away, drew herself up and remained sitting upright.

‘Do you really mean there's nothing about me that makes you wonder?'

‘Of course I do! That's no reason to get cross now, is it?'

She began to laugh, looked down at her body and then at him, but although she was still laughing her eyes were so sad that she seemed to have long since died, and she murmured:
‘Can you really not tell that I'm Jewish? Had it not occurred to you?'

Her voice grew louder and very matter-of-fact.

‘My father, my mother and my two brothers were rounded up by the Germans. I was already a lodger here at the time, and now I'm in hiding. Are you telling me you really didn't know? Be honest, didn't you guess ages ago?'

Osewoudt pulled a face.

‘Anyway,' he said, ‘the worst is over.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Any day now the Americans will force a breakthrough in Normandy, and then there'll be no stopping them.'

‘Do you think so? It's already a fortnight since they landed, with all that hoo-hah about the Germans being taken completely by surprise and the Atlantic Wall being a fiction and so on and so forth. And where has that got us?'