The Dinner (9 page)

‘Killing Me Softly with His Song’ … by … goddam it, what was that woman’s name again? Roberta Flack! Bingo! I prayed to God that the man would go and find a toilet of his own, but from the corner of my eye I saw him step up to the peeing wall barely a metre away from me. He made the usual motions, and after only a few seconds I heard the sound of a steady, powerful jet of urine clattering against the water streaming down the wall.

It was the sort of jet that seems particularly pleased with itself, that wants nothing more than to demonstrate its own boundless good health and which probably, once, back in primary school, belonged to the little boy who could pee further than anyone else, all the way across the ditch.

I looked up and saw that the owner of the jet was the man with the beard, the man with the beard who had been sitting with his objectionably young girlfriend at the table next to ours. Just then, the man looked over too. We both nodded vaguely, as is customary when two men stand three feet apart to take a piss. From within the beard, the man’s mouth twisted into a grin. A triumphant grin, I couldn’t help thinking, the typical grin of a man with a powerful jet, a grin that was amused by men who had more trouble peeing than he did.

After all, wasn’t a powerful jet also a sign of manliness? Didn’t it, perhaps, give its owner right of primacy when it came to the available women? And, conversely, wasn’t a cowardly dribble an indication that there were probably other things that didn’t flow right down there? Indeed, that the survival of the species would be endangered were women to shrug indifferently at such dribbling and no longer let themselves be drawn to the healthy sound of a powerful jet?

There were no partitions between us; all I would have had to do was lower my eyes to catch sight of the dick that went along with the bearded man. Judging from the clatter, it had to be a big dick, I thought to myself, a big cock of the shameless variety, with thick blue veins right below the surface of darkish-grey skin that was ruddily healthy yet still rather rough: the sort of dick that might tempt a man to spend his holidays at a nudist camp, or in any event to purchase the smallest model
slip de bain
, of the flimsiest material possible.

The reason why I had excused myself and gone to the men’s room was because it was all becoming too much for me. By way of holiday destinations and the Dordogne, we had ended up at racism. My wife had supported me in my position that muffling away racism and pretending it wasn’t there only made the problem worse. Out of the blue, and without even looking at me, she came to my aid. ‘I think that what Paul means is …’

That was how she started: by putting into words what she thought I was trying to say. Coming from anyone but Claire, it could have sounded denigrating, or patronizing, or condescending, as though I were unable to express my own opinions in words another person could understand. But coming from Claire, ‘I think that what Paul means is …’ meant nothing more and nothing less than that the others were too slow on the uptake, too thick to grasp a point that her husband was holding up before their eyes in an extremely clear and obvious fashion – and that she was starting to lose patience.

After that we went back to films for a little bit. Claire said that
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
was ‘the most racist movie ever’. Everyone knows the story. The daughter of a wealthy white couple (played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) brings her new fiancé home to meet her parents. To their great dismay, the fiancé (played by Sidney Poitier) turns out to be black. During dinner, the truth gradually becomes clear: the black man is a good black man, an intelligent black man in a nice suit, a university professor. In intellectual terms, he is far superior to the white parents of his fiancée, who are mediocre, upper-middle-class types chock-full of prejudices concerning blacks.

‘And that’s precisely where the racist hook comes in, in those prejudices,’ Claire had said. ‘The black people that the parents know about, from TV and the neighbourhoods where they’re afraid to go, are poor and lazy and violent criminals. But their future son-in-law, fortunately, is a well-adapted black man who has put on the white man’s neat, three-piece suit. In order to look as much like the white man as he can.’

Serge gazed at my wife with the look of an interested listener, but his body language betrayed the fact that he found it hard to listen to any woman he couldn’t immediately place in simple categories like ‘tits’, ‘nice ass’ or ‘wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers’.

‘It wasn’t until much later that the first unadapted blacks appeared in movies,’ Claire said. ‘Blacks who wore baseball caps and drove flashy cars: violent blacks from the worst neighbourhoods. But at least they were themselves. They were no longer some watered-down version of a white man.’

At that point my brother coughed and cleared his throat. He sat up straight, then leaned over the table – as though he were searching for the microphone. That’s exactly what it looked like, I thought to myself; in all his movements he was suddenly the national politician again, the shoo-in to be our country’s next leader, and he was about to put in her place a woman in the audience in some provincial union hall.

‘And what’s so bad about adapted black people, Claire?’ he said. ‘I mean, to hear you tell it, you’d rather have them remain themselves, even if that means they go on killing each other in their ghettoes over a few grams of crack. With no prospect of improvement.’

I looked at my wife. In my thoughts I egged her on, to deliver my brother the
coup de grâce
; he had set it up and she could knock it in, as they say. It was just too ghastly, the way he tried to inject his own party platform into a normal discussion about people and the differences between them. Improvement … a word, nothing more: crap dished up for the constituency.

‘I’m not talking about improvement, Serge,’ Claire said. ‘I’m talking about the way we – Dutch people, white people, Europeans – look at other cultures. The things we’re afraid of. If a group of dark-skinned men was coming towards you down the sidewalk, wouldn’t you feel a stronger urge to cross the street if they were wearing baseball caps, rather than neat clothing? Like yours and mine? Or like diplomats? Or office clerks?’

‘I never cross the street. I believe we should approach everyone as equals. You mentioned the things we’re afraid of. I agree with you about that. If we would just stop being afraid, then we could go on to cultivate more understanding for each other.’

‘Serge, I’m not some debating partner you need to wow with hollow terms like improvement and understanding. I’m your sister-in-law, your brother’s wife. It’s just the four of us here now. As friends. As family.’

‘What it’s about is the right to be a prick,’ I said.

A brief silence fell, the proverbial silence in which you could hear a pin drop, had that not been ruled out already by the noise of the busy restaurant. It would be going too far to claim that all heads turned in my direction, the way you read sometimes. But attention was being paid. Babette giggled. ‘Paul …!’ she said.

‘No, but I was suddenly reminded of a TV programme that was on years ago,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember the name of it any more.’

I remembered very well, but had no desire to mention the name of the programme; that would only be a distraction. The name of the programme might prompt my brother to make some sarcastic comment, to try to take the edge off my real message before I even had a chance to deliver it. I didn’t know you watched things like that … That kind of comment.

‘It was about homos. They interviewed an older lady who lived downstairs from two homosexual men, two young men who lived together and took care of her cats sometimes. “Such sweet boys!” the lady said. What she really meant to say was that even though her two neighbours were homosexual, the way they took care of her cats when she was gone showed that they were still people like you and me. That lady sat there beaming smugly, because now everyone could see how tolerant she was. Her upstairs neighbours were sweet boys, even if they did do dirty things to each other. Objectionable things, actually, unhealthy and unnatural. Perversions, in other words, that were nonetheless mitigated by the boys’ selfless care for her cats.’

I paused for a moment. Babette smiled. Serge had raised his eyebrows a couple of times. And Claire, my wife, looked amused – the look she gave me when she knew where things were going from here.

‘In order to understand what this lady was saying about her upstairs neighbours,’ I went on, because no one else was saying anything, ‘you have to turn the situation around. If the two sweet homosexuals hadn’t fed the cats at all, but instead had pelted them with stones or tossed poisoned pork chops down to them from their balcony, then they would have been just plain dirty faggots. I think that’s what Claire meant about
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
: that the friendly Sidney Poitier was a sweet boy too. That the person who made that movie was absolutely no better than the lady in that programme. In fact, Sidney Poitier was supposed to serve as a role model. An example for all those other, nasty Negroes, the uppity Negroes. The dangerous Negroes, the muggers and the rapists and the crack dealers. When you people put on a good-looking suit like Sidney’s and start behaving like the perfect son-in-law, we white folks will be your friends.’

The man with the beard was drying his hands. I pulled up my zipper, as a sign that I was finished peeing, even though it had produced no sound, and made straight for the exit. My hand was already on the stainless-steel door handle when I heard the man with the beard say: ‘Isn’t it difficult for that friend of yours sometimes, going to a restaurant when he has such a familiar face?’

I stopped. Without letting go of the handle, I turned and looked at him. The man with the beard was still drying his hands with a clump of paper towels. Within the abundant growth of his beard, his mouth had once again twisted itself into a grin – but not a triumphant grin this time, more like a cowardly baring of the teeth. I have no bad intentions, the grin was saying.

‘He’s not my friend,’ I said.

The grin vanished. The hands stopped their drying as well. ‘Oh, excuse me,’ he said. ‘I just saw you sitting there. We, my daughter and I, we figured: just keep acting normal, let’s not gawk at him.’

I said nothing. The revelation about the daughter had done me more good that I cared to admit. The beard, despite his unabashed jet, had not succeeded in hooking a woman thirty years his junior. He tossed the wet clump of paper into a stainless-steel trash bin; it was one of those bins with a spring-loaded lid, which made it hard for him to get it all in in one shot.

‘I was wondering,’ he said. ‘I was wondering whether perhaps it was possible, my daughter and I, we both feel that our country is in need of a change. She’s studying political science, I was wondering whether maybe she could have her picture taken with Mr Lohman, later on?’

He had pulled a flat, shiny camera from the pocket of his jacket.

‘It would take only a second,’ he said. ‘I realize that it’s a private dinner for you and everything, and I don’t want to bother him. My daughter … my daughter would never forgive me if she knew I’d even dared to ask this. She was the one who said it wasn’t right to stare at a famous politician in a restaurant. That you should leave him alone, during his few private moments. And that you absolutely shouldn’t try to have your picture taken with him. But on the other hand, I know how wonderful it would be for her. To have her picture taken with Serge Lohman, I mean.’

I looked at him. I wondered what it would be like to have a father whose face you couldn’t see. Whether a day would finally come when, as the daughter of a father like that, you simply lost patience – or whether you got used to it, like a bad carpet.

‘No problem at all,’ I said. ‘Mr Lohman is always pleased to come in contact with his supporters. We’re in the middle of an important discussion right now, but just keep your eye on me. When I give you the sign, that will be the right moment for a photo.

The first thing I noticed when I came back from the men’s room was the silence at our table: the kind of tense silence that tells you right away that you’ve missed something important.

I had come back into the dining room along with the beard; he was in front of me, so I noticed the silence only once I was already close to our table.

Or no, there was something else that I noticed first: my wife’s hand, reaching out diagonally across the tablecloth, holding Babette’s. My brother was staring at his empty plate.

And it was only after I settled down in my chair that I realized Babette was crying. A soundless weeping, a barely perceptible shaking of the shoulders, a tremble in her arm – the arm attached to the hand that Claire was holding.

I sought and made eye contact with my wife. Claire raised her eyebrows and tossed a meaningful glance in the direction of my brother. At that same moment, Serge raised his head, looked at me sheepishly and shrugged. ‘Well, Paul, you’re in luck,’ he said. ‘Maybe you should have stayed in the bathroom a little longer.’

Babette yanked her hand away from Claire’s, seized her napkin from her lap and tossed it on her plate.

‘You are such an unbelievable shithead!’ she said to Serge, sliding back her chair. The next moment she was walking past the other tables, heading for the toilets – or the exit, I thought. But it didn’t seem likely that she would leave us. Her body language, the subdued pace at which she moved past the tables, told me she was hoping one of us would come after her.