Criminal Conversation (24 page)

Should not the whole world have respected such a man? He himself could never understand that there could exist people who would not respect him.

The conventional and the stupid have defined Himmler as a monstrous criminal. Other, learned gentlemen have said he was nothing of the sort, but that he was a little schoolmaster, dotty in the way many people are dotty who would not harm a fly, but who hold strange theories about the Lost Tribes of Israel.

You know, you, Kersten, the neurologist, that the stomach-ache is caused by forcing the little schoolmaster to do monstrous things. But they are not, to him, monstrous… You see, the exact nature of illness, and of crime, eludes you.

Kersten was a very skilful, very sensitive, wonderfully equipped doctor, to whom I am an ignorant journeyman.

Am I ill? Am I a criminal? I wish you knew. You do not know, because if you knew you would arrest me. This business of evidence is unimportant, really, isn't it?

Has it something to do with God? What God? That lunatic old Stalinist despot? The gentle lamb with the woolly beard and the
bleeding heart in the middle of the spotless white soutane? The God of Islam, of the desert, of the romantic Garden of Allah, with its oil-borings surrounded by jeeps, guarded by paratroops, and with fresh asparagus flown in each week by Air France?

Whose God? Who does God belong to, in Holland? An anecdote… The other day I was accosted by one of these girls in the street with evangelist tracts. It is disgraceful to be rude to someone with the courage to stand in the street and voice unpopular or ridiculous opinions. I did not stop her buttonholing me, but I have no use for tracts.

“It is in aid of one or another sect, isn't it? There are too many, you know.”

She agreed at once, surprising me. A grave girl, quite young, not pretty but with fine eyes. “I'm afraid,” she said, “that is quite true. There are a hundred and eighteen in this country alone.”

Did you know that, van der Valk? Quite likely you do; you are a perfect dustbin of unlikely pieces of knowledge.

I belong to no sects, of course. What infuriated me was that the girl was a great deal less perturbed about it than I would be. Did that elusive God invent crime? I bring no peace, he said; I bring a sword.

I read over what I wrote the other night. About my childhood. No psychiatrist, except a fool, hidebound by ridiculous rules – which all vary according to the school he went to – would pretend to find the sources there of my adult character, my beliefs and decisions, my characteristic behaviour. Even if he knew more, even if I told him about my adult life. There would be too many over-simplifications.

I do not believe any doctor capable of penetrating the human being. Imagine a perfect doctor, possessing the arts of the psychiatrist, the science of the physiologist, the skill of the neurologist, the experience of mankind and his liver that the old-fashioned general practitioner has. Imagine him well read in the knowledge of the Chinese, the Arabs, the Persians. Give him all the latest equipment developed by research teams in Berkeley, California – bless their cotton socks.

Idiotic, is it not?

Very well, create a team of doctors uniting all these branches of knowledge. You would get a fine farce; they would be quarrelling violently inside thirty seconds.

Vanity…

Do you remember that at the beginning of this manuscript I jokingly mentioned Monsieur Simenon? He would do as well as any. We cannot bother him, alas; he is busy walking up and down his garden, five kilometres a day. A peripatetic philosopher. You will
have to do. I would write to him, but I fear he has secretaries, and is pestered by lunatics, beggars, and aspirant authors.

Am I a criminal, Monsieur Simenon?

I am not an interesting person. Neurologically I belong to the common, fairly dull category of the overtense – ‘les grands nerveux'. I need a quiet life, regular hours, plenty of food and sleep. I am at my best in the mornings. My reactions are poor. I have never dared drive a motor regularly. My muscles are weak, my digestion uncertain. Against this I am capable of considerable nervous energy and have a good analytical mind. High intelligence and cramped muscles. I have a need for fresh air and exercise, and plenty of massage. Something like Monsieur Voltaire – or should we say Herr Himmler? I have few mental weaknesses; I am neither lazy, envious nor gluttonous. I have learned patience and detachment. I am resilient, agile and receptive.

My body gives me little trouble, but I understand it. My internal organs are all present and in good condition. My eyes, ears and teeth are all sound and sharp. I keep in adequate condition with a game of squash and a Finnish sauna each week. I take a winter-sports holiday each year, and a little villa on the coast of Portugal for a month every summer.

You will be puzzled about my wife. Perhaps you are right and this is the great failure of my life. The catastrophe, possibly, that cracked the criminal open. Beware, my friend, of worldly ambition. You know all this already? How deeply have you observed me?

A thought strikes me. I give every person that consults me a thorough physical examination. Never would I risk a diagnosis, even of acne (I get several patients with acne), without it. But you have to diagnose without this aid. You must make up the deficiency by observation. I wonder how good you are at this. It is because I am, I know, good at it that I am going to conduct this experiment. It will be salutary for you to read. I am going to see what it is that I know about you – purely from observation.

That is all talk, nonsense, pretence. The truth is simply that I wish I knew you better.

I must rely upon memory. But my memory, both visual and aural, is excellent.

You are not as tall as I am, but I am one eighty-five. You are a lot broader, but you will get tubby, my friend, unless you take a good deal more exercise than I need. You weigh, I should guess, a hundred and eighty. I approve of your hands, which are strong, broad and, I am glad to say, clean. I am more suspicious of your shirts: do you prefer dark plain cotton shirts for themselves or because they show the dirt less? You are not dressy; your suits are cheap, but they look well on you. You do not, I am glad to say, wear sports jackets or blazers. Simple and suitable; it is a good point. Your shoes, though, are expensive; plain soft leather. Second good point.

Your face is a little too much that of an intelligent ape. It is harsh and bony, which makes it tolerable. Your jaw is too heavy, your teeth too big, your mouth too wide, with enormous furrows alongside it. Your nose is good. Your eyes are too small and too pale. You are good and broad between the ears and your hair is nearly as short as mine – no love-locks. If your forehead were less low and your jaw less prominent, and you had not that comedian's rubbery mouth, you might be quite tolerable-looking.

When talking you have a pleasant habit of taking your coat off and rolling up your sleeves; it is unselfconscious, has nothing to do with the warmth, and amuses me. Your wedding ring is narrow, and you are a Jansenist, I notice. You have a Seamaster watch – a present from your wife, no doubt; it is just the kind of watch one gets as a reward for being ten years married.

You rummage a great deal in your pockets, which are always full of rubbish. I have noticed a workmanlike pocket-knife, your packet of cigarettes that is always squashed (I agree that cigarette cases are detestable things) a kleptomaniac liking for rubber bands, paperclips and pieces of string. You are no truster of ballpoint pens, since you have always at least three, yet go on – trustingly – buying cheap ones. You keep your money in a purse – pleasantly old-fashioned of you. You come, obviously, of a poor family and were trained as a child to be careful and waste nothing.

You are, I hazard the guess with confidence, largely self-educated. You have been to no superior school, no university. Do you rather resent people with that polytechnic gloss upon them? Yet you have a huge respect for it. If you were French you would take your hat off in the Rue d'Ulm.

What you do have is considerable intellectual curiosity. You have read smatterings of poetry and philosophy. You know nothing about music but you are fairly well read. You speak French and German, a thing I envy, since I read both but cannot speak them. You have been – but that you told me yourself – in the army in England.

You are very Dutch. You have a characteristic crudeness, brutality. Your tendency towards lavatory humour is deplorable. You have Dutch virtues: stability, perseverance, obstinacy. You have also too much imagination altogether – less common, here – and you are absurdly individualist. You certainly behave towards me as no policeman under orders would; that, my friend, is your own, your personal idea.

You have a certain sympathy for me, which you take – good for you – little pains to conceal. You are a bit of a sensualist yourself; you like eating and drinking, don't you? And girls, and perfume, and southern baroque art, and Mediterranean landscapes. You have a strong vulgar streak, and are not ashamed about it.

Damn you. Anybody else would never have penetrated my fortifications. I could have complained about you; you would not have cared.

I want you to know that I deliberately did not complain of you, and that I am not afraid of you. I wish to show you that I am in some sense worthy of you, that I do not lack all humour, that when you pin me I shall not resent you. I rather like you, and I rarely like people. Did I say it earlier? – we could under other circumstances have been friends.

I am wrong. It is just these circumstances that make us friends.

You have overcome your ingrained Dutch respect for my position. You do not think of me as a doctor. When you lay hands upon me, will it be the doctor or the person? I find it difficult to see
you as the policeman, with nothing better to do in life than clapping malefactors into handcuffs.

I am envious of you. Of your combativeness, of your courage. The unorthodoxy that is your dominant trait interests me the more because of your position and function in our rigid social order. Here, where orthodoxy is expected and exacted, you have outflanked me. That takes courage. You belong to the hierarchy, and any shaky pillar in that hierarchy has small chance of survival. How do you defend the reputation for eccentricity you certainly possess?

My envy is the keener because I can speak with authority. I belong to the structure I talk of. I am expected to be a pillar of society. It is exacted from me to behave as a doctor is expected to behave: that is an inelegant phrase, which will worry neither of us.

Of course, if we show combativeness we are not punished, as you are doubtless punished, by a reprimand, the famous and classic Dutch ‘berisping'. We are punished by a barely noticeable coolness. This drop in the temperature is accompanied by a drop in the income, for by a mysterious grapevine the patients are aware of the situation. He may be good at curing your ailments, but he is not quite one of us; you might do better to avoid… Once upon this slippery slope he had better begin to mend his ways, or he will find himself, unless he gets quickly and unobtrusively back into line, in much the same circumstances as a prominent man, let us say, in the state of Georgia, to whom had been attached the little label ‘nigger-lover'.

I think I know why you survive, why you have an advantage that I have not. I think that you possess not simply combativeness, but talent. Talent, considerable talent, can secure one from persecution. I can think of half a dozen people perhaps, who, possessing this talent, have secured their freedom. Even a minister.

Have you understood why I have dwelt at length on this subject, why I am so fascinated by this spectacle? Quite right, my friend. It is because I myself fail. I do not belong to your club, the club of
those who have talent, who do not care. I do not have enough talent. I am not good enough.

Naturally, I do not fall into the obvious error of self-pity, nor that of underestimating my capacities. Nor do I wish you to think that I throw all the blame upon my wife. It is true that I have thought that things might have turned out very differently had I married another woman, but that is not Beatrix's fault. I chose her. I married her deliberately, in cold blood, for the affluence, for the position, for the introduction she could give me into what I thought of as ‘the club'. Le tout-Paris. I had not understood then that there is only one club.

And I am a good doctor. But I have never broken through the barrier that separates the people with skill from the winner. I am a born second-rater, a born lightweight. Perhaps you have not yet found this out.

But you will.

I am discouraged. You eluded me. I thought that we had reached a point…that we were going to make real contact at last. You delighted me, and then you eluded me.

I went to the athletic club, but with the feeling that I was making a mistake, that I should be bored, even that I might make a fool of myself. What have I to do with you, after all? You are, at the end of the reckoning, a three-ha'penny policeman that thinks himself clever. You are no cleverer than I am, perhaps less so. You do not penetrate me except in so far as I allow you to, amusedly, to let you see what you miss, how wide you are and remain of the mark. I have tempted you to think yourself more clever than you are. But you are a clown, Inspector Thing, and a clown does not entrap a person like myself. You know that you cannot proceed against me, and you propose, impudently, that I should yield to you…

It was an odd sensation, arriving in a place you are familiar with, and finding it so unfamiliar. I had not realised that the Thursday clientèle would be so different from that of Tuesday. I suppose there are sporting fanatics that haunt the place, but such are not interesting to me. I felt lost, and wandered about wondering whether you had already arrived. I was recognised by no one but the woman behind the bar who makes coffee, and all she said was, ‘Why, hallo, Doctor, lost your calendar?', which annoyed me.