The Dinner (29 page)

With great speed, he swung up his head and butted me on the chin, then wrapped his arms around my calves and pulled, causing me to lose my balance and fall over backwards. ‘Fucking shit!’ I yelled.

The principal ran, not to the door, but to the window. He had it open before I could get to my feet. ‘Help!’ he screamed out the window. ‘Help!’

But I was already on him. I grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back, then brought it down hard on the windowsill. ‘We’re not done yet!’ I shouted in his ear.

There were a lot of people in the schoolyard, most of them students, it must have been lunch break. They all looked up – at us.

I picked the boy in the black cap out of the crowd almost immediately; there was something comforting, something reassuring, about seeing a familiar face amid all those other faces. He was standing in a little group, off to one side, close to the steps that led to the front entrance, along with a couple of girls and a boy on a scooter. The boy in the black Nike cap had a pair of headphones slung around his neck.

I waved. I remember that clearly. I waved to Michel, and I tried to smile. The wave and the smile were meant to show that, from out there, it probably looked worse than it was. That I’d had an argument with the principal about his, Michel’s, essay, but that in the meantime everything had come closer to being sorted out.

‘That was the prime minister,’ Serge said returning to the table; he sat down and put his cell phone back in his pocket. ‘He wanted to know what the press conference was going to be about tomorrow.’

Any one of the three of us could have asked at that point: ‘Well? What did you tell him?’ But no one at the table spoke a word. Sometimes people allow silences like that to fall: when they don’t feel like saying the obvious. If Serge had told a joke, a joke that started with a question (Why can’t two Chinamen go to the barber at the same time?), a comparable silence would probably have ensued.

My brother looked at his dame blanche, which, probably out of courtesy, still had not been removed. ‘I told him that I didn’t want to tell him anything about it, not yet, not this evening. He hoped it was nothing serious. Like me withdrawing from the race. Those were his exact words: “It would bitterly disappoint me, on both our behalves, were you to throw in the towel at this point, seven months before the elections.”’ Serge made an attempt to imitate the prime minister’s accent, but so poorly that it seemed more like a crudely drawn version, a political cartoon badly traced, rather than the cartoon itself. ‘I told him the truth, that I’m still talking to my family. That I’m keeping a number of options open.’

When the prime minister was only newly elected, the jokes had never stopped: about his appearance, his wooden way of speaking in public, his numerous – often literal – slip-ups. Since then, however, a process of habituation had taken place. You got used to it, like a stain on the wallpaper. A stain that seemed simply to belong there, and which could surprise you only by one day not being there at all.

‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ Claire said. ‘So you’re keeping your options open. I thought it was all cut and dried for you. For all of us.’

Serge tried to make eye contact with his wife, but she acted as though she were more interested in the cell phone on the table in front of her. ‘Yes, I’m keeping my options open,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I want us to do this together. As … as a family.’

‘The way we’ve always done things,’ I said. I thought about the scorched macaroni alla carbonara, the pan I’d smashed in his face when he tried to take my son away, but apparently Serge’s memory was not as keen as mine, because he actually smiled warmly.

‘Yes,’ he said – he looked at his watch – ‘I have to … we really have to go now. Babette … What’s taking so long with that check?’

Babette got up.

‘Yes, let’s go,’ she said; she turned to Claire. ‘Are the two of you coming?’

Claire held up her half-full glass of grappa. ‘Go ahead, both of you. We’ll be there in a bit.’

Serge held out his hand to his wife. I thought Babette was going to ignore him, but she didn’t. She even offered Serge her arm.

‘We can …’ he said. He was smiling, yes, almost beaming as he took his wife by the elbow. ‘We’ll talk more about this later. We can have another at the café, and then we’ll talk about it some more.’

‘That’s fine, Serge,’ Claire said. ‘Just run along, the two of you. Paul and I will finish our grappa, then we’ll be there.’

‘The check,’ Serge said. He patted his coat pockets, as though searching for a wallet or a credit card.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Claire said. ‘We’ll take care of it.’

And then they actually left. I watched as they walked towards the exit, my brother holding his wife by the arm. Only a few guests looked up or turned their heads as they passed. A process of habituation seemed to be taking place here as well; if you stayed in one place long enough, you became a face like all the rest.

As they passed the open kitchen, the man in the white turtleneck hurried up to them: Tonio – the name in his passport had to be Anton. Serge and Babette stopped. Hands were shaken. Waitresses came rushing over with their coats.

‘Are they gone yet?’ Claire asked.

‘Almost,’ I said.

My wife knocked back the rest of her grappa. She laid her hand on mine.

‘You have to do something,’ she said, applying a little pressure with her fingers.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We have to stop him.’

Claire took my hand now.

‘
You
have to stop him,’ she said.

I looked at her.

‘Me?’ I said, even though I could feel something coming: something to which I might not be able to say no.

‘You have to do something to him,’ Claire said.

I just stared at her.

‘Something that will keep him from holding that press conference tomorrow,’ Claire said.

It was at precisely that moment, from somewhere close by, that a cell phone began to beep. First only a few quiet beeps, which grew louder and merged into a tune.

Claire looked at me questioningly. And I looked back. We both shook our heads at the same time.

Babette’s phone was lying half hidden under her napkin. Automatically, I looked towards the exit first: Serge and Babette were gone. I put out my hand, but Claire was too quick for me.

She slid open the phone’s cover and looked at the screen. Then she slid it closed. The beeping stopped.

‘Beau,’ she said.

‘His mother’s too busy to talk to him right now,’ Claire said, putting the cell phone back where it had been. She even tucked it under the napkin.

I didn’t reply. I waited. I waited to see what my wife was going to say.

Claire breathed a deep sigh. ‘Do you know that he …’ She didn’t finish her sentence. ‘Oh, Paul,’ she said. ‘Paul …’ She tossed her head and shook back her hair. I saw a wetness in her eyes, something glistening, tears not of sorrow or despair, but of rage.

‘Do you know that he what …?’ I said. Claire knew nothing about the videos, I’d been telling myself all evening. I still hoped I was right.

‘Beau is blackmailing them,’ Claire said.

I felt a cold stab in my chest. I rubbed my hands over my cheeks, so that if I blushed it wouldn’t give me away.

‘Oh yeah?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’

Claire sighed again. She clenched her fists and drummed them on the tabletop.

‘Oh, Paul,’ she said. ‘I wanted so badly to keep you out of this. I didn’t want it to happen … for you to get upset. But now everything has changed. It’s too late anyway.’

‘What do you mean, he’s blackmailing them? Beau? With what?’

From under the napkin came a beep. A single beep this time. A little blue light was now flashing on and off on the side of Babette’s cell phone: it looked as if Beau had left a message.

‘He was there. At least, that’s what he claims. He says he was planning to go home, but then he changed his mind and decided to go back. That’s when he saw them. As they came out of that bank cubicle. He says.’

The coldness in my chest was gone. I felt something new, a feeling almost like happiness: I had to be careful not to start grinning.

‘And now he wants money. Oh, the hypocritical little prick! I always did … You did too, right? You thought he was horrid, you said one time. I remember that clearly.’

‘But does he have proof? Can he prove that he saw them? Can he prove that Michel and Rick threw that jerrycan?’

That last question I asked only to reassure myself once and for all: the final check. Inside my head, a door had opened. A crack. And through that crack, light was shining. Warm light. Behind the door was the room with the happy family.

‘No, he has no proof,’ Claire said. ‘But maybe he doesn’t need it. If Beau were to go to the police and point to Michel and Rick as the culprits … The pictures from that security camera are awfully vague, but if they can compare them to real people … I don’t know.’

Your father doesn’t know about any of this. You two have to do it tonight.

‘Michel wasn’t there, was he?’ I said. ‘When you called him just now. When you kept asking Babette what time it was.’

A smile appeared on Claire’s face. She took my hand again and squeezed it.

‘I called him. You all heard me get him on the line. I talked to him. Babette is the impartial witness who heard me talking to my son at a fixed point in time. They can check my phone’s memory to see that that call was made and how long it lasted. All we have to do is erase the answering machine on the phone at home when we get back.’

I looked at my wife. There must have been admiration in my look. I didn’t even have to fake it. I really did admire her.

‘And now he’s with Beau,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘And with Rick. Not at Beau’s house. They agreed to meet somewhere. Somewhere outside.’

‘And what are they going to talk to Beau about? Are they going to try to change his mind?’

My wife now laid her other hand on mine as well.

‘Paul,’ she said. ‘I already told you that I wanted to keep you out of this. But we can’t go back now. You and me. It’s about our son’s future. I told Michel that he should try to talk reason to Beau. And that if that didn’t work, he should do whatever seemed best. I told him that I don’t need to know what that is. He’s going to turn sixteen next week. He doesn’t have to wait for his mother to tell him everything. He’s old and wise enough to decide for himself.’

I stared at her. There may still have been admiration in my look, but it was a different type of admiration from a few minutes earlier.

‘Whatever the case, it’s better if you and I can say that Michel was at home all evening,’ Claire said. ‘And if Babette can confirm that.’

I called the manager over.

‘We’re still waiting for the check,’ I said.

‘Mr Lohman took care of it, sir.’

It could have been my imagination, but it seemed as though he relished being able to say that to me. Something about his eyes, as though he were laughing at me only with his eyes.

Claire rummaged through her bag, pulled out her cell phone, looked at it and put it back.

‘It’s too damn much, isn’t it?’ I said when the manager had left. ‘He claims our café. Our son. And now this. And the worst thing about it is, it doesn’t mean anything. That he can pick up a check doesn’t mean a goddam thing.’

Claire took my right hand, then my left.

‘You only have to hurt him,’ she said. ‘He’s not going to hold a press conference with a damaged face. Or a broken arm in a sling. That’s too much to explain, all at the same time. Even for Serge.’

I looked into my wife’s eyes. She had just asked me to break my brother’s arm. Or damage his face. And all that out of love, love for our son. For Michel. I had to think about that mother, years ago in Germany, who had shot and killed her child’s murderer in the courtroom. That’s the kind of mother Claire was.

‘I haven’t taken my medication,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ Claire didn’t seem surprised, she ran one fingertip gently across the back of my hand.

‘I mean, not for a long time. It’s been months.’

It was true: shortly after that episode of
Opsporing Verzocht
, I had stopped. I had the feeling that I would be of less use to my son when my emotions were blunted, day in and day out. My emotions and my reflexes. If I wanted to help Michel to the fullest of my ability, I first had to recover my old self.

‘I know,’ Claire said.

I looked at her.

‘Maybe you think other people don’t notice,’ Claire said. ‘Well, I mean, other people … your own wife. Your own wife notices right away. There were things … that were different. The way you looked at me, the way you smiled at me. And then there was that time when you couldn’t find your passport. Do you remember? When you started kicking your desk drawers? From then on, I began paying attention. You took your medication with you when you went out and threw it away somewhere. Didn’t you? I took your trousers out of the wash one time, the pocket had turned completely blue! Pills you’d forgotten to throw away.’