Intimacies(6)

He never looked at her again. However, she found that her voice had shifted, despite herself she had been cowed. The next time she was required to recite a litany of the horrific acts perpetrated by the accused, her voice took on a pleading tone, in response to which the accused gave a thin smile. Somehow, she had become uncomfortable with the idea of confronting the man with his crimes, these heinous accusations that she was not herself making but was simply interpreting on behalf of the Court. Don’t shoot the messenger, she almost added, before remembering that this was precisely the kind of thing the accused did, it might even have been on the list of crimes, actually shooting the messenger. Although she knew there was nothing the man could do to her, she could not deny that she was afraid, he was a man who inspired fear, even while sitting immobile he radiated power.

Still, it was not primarily fear that she felt, but guilt. She felt guilty toward the accused, who not only was a terrible man, but a man for whom she bore no responsibility, apart from adequately interpreting what was said in the courtroom, and doing her part to ensure that he received a fair trial. She bore no responsibility for his happiness, she doubted that the man had been happy since he had been taken into custody by the Court. He was a man entirely without morals, and yet the sentiment she felt toward him was moral in nature. It was illogical, it didn’t make any sense. She concluded that it was the man’s magnetism, which had persuaded thousands of people to commit terrible acts of violence; again there was nothing bureaucratic or banal about him. He was a leader in every sense of the word, she thought as she leaned toward the microphone and continued to interpret, steadily and without pause. He did not turn to look at her, he never did again, after that instance. But it was, she thought in retrospect, her first true encounter with evil.



* * *



—

The day passed uneventfully enough, and soon it was early evening and I was leaving the Court. It was raining, and as I peered up at the sky and unfolded my umbrella, my phone rang. It was Jana again. Almost before I could speak, she told me that she had just arrived at her building. There’s police tape, she said.

The rain was loud on the umbrella, almost deafening, and it was difficult to hear. Someone else was calling. I lowered the phone and saw Adriaan’s name. The rain was falling harder now. I lifted the phone back to my ear as it continued to pulse.

What do you mean?

On the side street, the passageway. Do you know the one? I often take it from the tram. It’s been blocked with police tape. Something must have happened last night.

The phone was still ringing. Jana, I said, I have another call—

There’s no signs or anything. But the passageway is closed off.

In my hand, the phone had stopped vibrating.

Jana—

I’ll call you later.

She hung up, and before I could lower the phone, it buzzed again, a message telling me that I had one missed call followed by a second message, from Adriaan, saying that he would be ten minutes late to meet me, and apologizing in advance.





3.


I met Adriaan at a restaurant in the city center. Despite having warned me that he would be late, he was waiting at the table when I arrived. Before moving to The Hague, I had not associated punctuality with the Dutch character, but Adriaan in particular was incapable of tardiness. He stood when he saw me, I thought again that he was very handsome, and I felt a sense of happy surprise, that this was the man I was meeting for dinner.

Adriaan was the reason why I wanted to stay in The Hague, or at least one of the reasons, though I was embarrassed to admit this even to myself—I did not like to think of myself as a woman who made decisions in this way, for a man. Particularly when things were still so nascent, and the situation so complicated. We had met only four months earlier, but there was already a certain amount of routine to the way we were together. That regularity had many possible meanings and was difficult to interpret, at times I thought it was the expression of an intrinsic ease between us, some deep familiarity superseding our many differences. But at other times it seemed it was a product of habit, and that he knew no other way of being with a woman.

“Habit” because Adriaan was married with children, although the situation was at once less stark and more difficult than it sounded. He had been left by his wife a year earlier. She had left him for another man, with whom she was now comfortably ensconced, not in The Hague or Rotterdam or Amsterdam even, but in Lisbon. She had left the country altogether, removing herself from the bad weather and the marriage and sending for the children one month after she had gone. The children, who had been neither taken nor left by her, the arrangement was not entirely clear, not even now, one year later.

I had learned this not long after we had first met. I had gone with Adriaan to a party. We were at the stage when nothing had been declared between us, and when he introduced me to people at the party there was no purpose behind the introduction, I was not yet his “girlfriend” or “date” or even necessarily someone he was sleeping with. Perhaps because of that apparent neutrality, it did not seem especially awkward or significant when a man—not unattractive, of a similar age and general disposition to Adriaan, not as handsome but entirely presentable, so that I was by no means displeased when I saw him approaching—drew me aside and asked how long I had known Adriaan.

The question did not sound loaded, presumably he had seen us arrive together. Not very long, I replied. He nodded, as if he had expected this answer. I wondered then if Adriaan regularly turned up to parties with different women, none of whom endured for a second outing, I knew relatively little about him at the time. We were standing on a bridge suspended across a large atrium, which was full of stylish and glamorous people, it was the launch of a citywide cultural fund. Below, waiters circulated through the crowd serving canapés executed with outlandish precision. My eyes followed a waiter as he weaved across the atrium carrying a tray of miniature grilled cheese sandwiches, pausing as party guests plucked up the carefully charred triangles. He passed a tall man, I realized after a moment that it was Adriaan.