Two Stories in English and Dutch (2 page)

      Shortly afterwards, I moved again, this time to Aerdenhout. My practice in junk and old metal circles kept on expanding. I held a key position as secretary in one of their organisations, so I had more financial room. Nor did I have to take on any more cases without payment, so I had myself removed from the list.

      The moving was done by Riks. The same van served as transportation. The brothers were just a little more anxious than the first time about not having a transportation license. The desk was damaged even more. I refused his offer to help with the rebuilding. I had that done by a real contractor.

      When he called again, I had almost forgotten him. He was very secretive. Could I go and see him? I said, come and see me. No, he couldn't, they were looking for him. There I went again, this time to an address on the Albert Cuyp. I went upstairs and rang the bell of the address he had given me. I had to wait awhile before the door was opened. A woman I did not know opened it and let me in. The door was locked carefully, and Riks appeared from the back of the house, which was on a different level from the front. It all looked well maintained and neatly painted. A glass panel separated the rooms. Four children who were playing in the living room, and whom I did not know, were sent outside. The woman was blonde, about 35, plump, short, with a tired face. She kept putting her hand in front of her face, because her false teeth were being repaired, she said. It was clear that she was Riks's present wife, certainly after he had proudly shown me the house, giving me the opportunity to analyze the division of the available sleeping quarters.

      He told a story, very elaborate and not very credible, of which the plausible end was that he was wanted for stealing cameras. He didn't have anything to do with it, but at that time he was working in the shipping department of a camera importer. My question whether the stolen cameras were the same make as those of his importer was answered in the affirmative. He was now living underground and had been hiding for six months.

      It was clear that there was tension at home; how could it be otherwise when your man has been sitting at home the livelong day for six months, only going outside for a moment at night when the weather is bad.

      He had set up a sand transporting business, with three trucks, without any license, and asked if I would arrange for the payment of wages and collect the transportation fees etc., because he could hardly let himself be seen.

      I refused. I scolded him for living like a mole under the ground to avoid being arrested. If he turned himself in he might get six months or a year at most, which is better than first giving yourself six months to a year and then having the court do it again.

      I offered to go with him to the police. The woman took my side and it was clear that he was hesitating. He finally said he would think about it.

      Later he called me up and said he didn't want to. He couldn't deprive himself of his own liberty.

      A year and a half later, I was in the middle of the scrap iron fraud affair. I'll tell a bit more about this, because most people don't remember it. In 1957 a scrap metal dealer from The Hague alleged that fraud had been committed at the expense of the equalization fund for scrap metal imported by the European Coal and Steel Community. Since 1953 that fund had been paying scrap metal dealers the difference between expensive imported scrap metal and cheap Community scrap metal. The fund was fed by money coming from the scrap metal processing industries. The trick was, according to the man from The Hague, to offer community scrap metal as imported scrap metal and be paid the difference—NLG 200,000,000 too much was thought to have been paid. The indirect loss to the Community was estimated at NLG 600,000,000.

      That caused some uproar. Questions to the European Parliament, questions to the Lower House, an investigation by the High Authority, even a Committee on Scrap Metal Fraud, composed of prominent people.

      All that kept me extremely busy. In the middle of all the hustle and bustle, I received a call from the Mosplein police station. During a traffic check they had stopped a car driven by a certain Riks, for whom there was an old warrant out for his arrest. Riks said that I was his lawyer, and asked if I could come by. That afternoon I also had to go to Luxembourg for a briefing the next morning at the European Court of Justice on the question whether the High Authority had decided correctly that improperly obtained premiums had to be paid back.

      Moreover, at that time I hadn't defended a criminal case for so long that I would not have been much help to Riks. That's what I told the detective. I said that I would send one of my assistants. He was not there at the moment, but I would leave him a note so that he could call. Who was I speaking to? Detective Maas.

      Ten minutes later Detective Maas called back on behalf of Riks to say that it was no longer necessary. He would have a public defender appointed in the usual way.

      The scrap metal affair was pretty damned successful. The European Court of Justice overturned the judgment of the High Authority by which it was decided that the premiums had to be paid back.

      In the Lower House, Minister Beerman said that the irregularities alleged to have been committed 'boiled down to a practical application of scrap metal equalization that deviated from the original purpose of the equalization regulation, with the knowledge of all those involved'. I can say indeed that I made a windfall on that case.

I never heard from Riks again.

END OF STORY

May 9, 1974. It's spring in Prague. Party leader Husak has just officially opened the first part of the new subway line.

      Prague is busy, at least in the center, in Wenceslas Square where troops put an end to the spring of 1968. Just like troops had put an end to another spring in 1849 in Budapest.

      I'm sitting here in the cafe of the Jalta Hotel and looking out over the Square, decorated with flags; all traffic has been stopped because of the new subway line.

      At two-thirty I have an appointment with someone; it is now one-thirty.

      As always, while I'm waiting I read. I read everywhere, in the tram, in the train, in waiting rooms, at airports, in court, during lunch and while I shave. I always have a paperback in my pocket, and any time I have to wait I open it to the page marked by the piece of scrap paper I use as a bookmark and read with complete concentration. When I look up from a good passage to savor what I've just read, I don't see what I'm looking at. That concentration, bordering on unconsciousness, was the basis of our game.

      I don't know if it's a good idea to dredge all that up, but when I came to, he was sitting in front of me. I hadn't seen him in 25 years.

      He had put on weight, who hasn't, and here and there his hair was gray. He sat the same way he used to on the terrace of the American or the Lido.

      He would arrive without making a sound. He would sit very still and wait until I looked up from my book and noticed him. He always had a serious look about him. That was his type of inner fun, of which you could not even catch a glimpse in his eyes. He never greeted me, but he would utter a sentence that sounded like the continuation of a conversation, a sentence that could only be an answer or a reaction to something that had already been said.

      A sentence beginning with words like 'But' or 'Anyway'. For instance, once he said: 'On the contrary, Christendom will be annihilated within 50 years.' He said, 'Annihilated', not because it came easily to him, he even had to syncopate his speech rhythm to pronounce the word properly.

      Sometimes I thought he used such words to express a bit of contempt for the English language, as if he wanted to say that there were no useful native English words for what he wanted to say.

      My role in this game was to give an immediate response, which for the unsuspecting listener had to seem like a natural sequel to the foregoing, and without hesitation, without a break, we continued the discussion on the strangest subjects, always profound, often heated.

      At first it was a kind of improvisation. Later, I admit, preparation and planning were involved. I at least made sure that I had four or five answers ready that I could use if he spoke to me, and I'm convinced he also prepared his opening sentences carefully, although we never talked about that. It was easiest for him, since he had the opening sentence. I always had to respond. He could even have four or five usable alternatives on hand for his reply.

      When, after 25 years, on May 9, 1974, I looked up from my book, I found him sitting there, very straight, very still, very serious. He lifted his arm and stuck out his hand. For a moment I was afraid he was going to greet me, but luckily he bent his pinky, his ring finger and middle finger, folded his thumb over the middle finger, so that his pointing finger was aimed at me.

      I have always considered Shyam a symbol of everything that constitutes Arabian dignity. That was not logical in itself, since he had Persian nationality, was born in Pakistan and usually lived in Indonesia. The fact that he was a Moslem probably explains my view.

      I got to know him through a girlfriend during the time he was studying in Amsterdam. He edited, practically all by himself, the journal
Modern Islam,
which he managed in one way or another to spread all over the world. I was then occupied with one of my mistakes and was studying political and social science, called the 'seventh faculty'. He convinced me to revise a paper into an article for
Modern Islam
on Christian European Parties. He spoke Dutch poorly, in fact hardly at all.

      Once he had discovered my pathological concentration, he began our game. I went along with it immediately and now, 25 years later, completely unexpectedly, he was sitting across from me, on a busy spring day in Prague, and he said: 'Elucidate'.

      That seems simple, perhaps it even seems as if he was making it easy for me, but I think his intention was more subtle. He hoped that just one simple word would cause me to fall out of character.

      I must say that it was extraordinarily difficult. Such a moment is a strong emotional experience. If I had given in to that emotion, I would have jumped up for joy, or cried, and shouted that everything was not in vain, that life is worth living, that wars and disasters have not been fought and suffered for nothing.

      So I looked at him calmly and said: ...no, let me tell you something else first.

      It would be dishonest not to do so, as if I had thought of an answer on the spot. I was indeed prepared for his sudden appearance. When he went back to Indonesia in 1950, I prepared myself for the time I would see him again and that's why I had four or five sentences ready. I never considered any of the sentences perfect, so I kept thinking up new ones in the course of the years.

      Until I was in London in 1958.

      At that time I was a trainee solicitor. One day a printer came to see the partner I was working for. His story was as follows: He had been approached by a man from Indonesia who requested him on behalf of Sjafruddin, premier of the rebel government in Padang and (former) governor of the Central Bank of Indonesia, to print banknotes, using their own design, for the rebels who wanted to circulate their own currency in the conquered territories.

      Question: If the rebellion fails, can the Republic of Indonesia hold me liable for the losses to the economy as a result of circulating this money?

      Now it sounds ridiculous, like an operetta. We've completely forgotten that rebellion. It's not even mentioned in the history books any more. Who still knows that Mohammed Hatta, embittered, resigned from the government in December 1956 because he could no longer bear Javanese domination? Who still remembers the name Ventje Sumual, rebel leader on Celebes, who still remembers the rebellion on Sumatra? Who still knows that then, too, in the spring of 1958, troops put an end to an illusion?

      But on February 16, 1958, one day after Sjafruddin had inaugurated the 'Revolutionary Government of Indonesia', the English printer was left with a problem: What could happen to me if I print banknotes for those people?

      We then came up with a judgment of the Court of Chancery in the case
The
Emperor of Austria v Day and Kossuth,
a judgment from the spring of 1861.

      What were the circumstances? Kossuth, the Hungarian rebel leader, driven from his Hungarian spring by Russian troops, was preparing to reconquer his country and depose and expel Franz Joseph, King of Hungary, Emperor of Austria, Hapsburg Monarch.

      Kossuth had been living in London since 1851. He had self-designed banknotes printed by Day & Sons, well-known lithographers, for an amount of 100,000,000 'florins'. Don't ask me what a florin was worth. On the bills it was stated that a florin was three 'zwanzigers'.

      The Emperor of Austria, by profession King of Hungary, demanded that the bills and the plates with which they were made be turned over to him.

      It's interesting to follow the battle, but it ended in defeat for Kossuth.

      I do believe that the Lords' sympathy was with Kossuth. I have not been able to find one good word about the King, but the Lord Chancellor, Lord Campbell, had this to say about Kossuth: 'But Mr. Kossuth, whom I consider as a man of honour as well as a man of extraordinary talents and accomplishments...'

      The printers met a very sad fate, for the Lord Chancellor said to them: 'But they must have been aware that there was some considerable risk in the gigantic speculation in which they embarked; and as they no doubt would have derived much profit as well as fame if Hungary had been revolutionized by their means, they must console themselves with the reflection that they have failed in a great enterprise, and that their fate holds out a lesson to other tradesmen to be contented with the gains and reputation to be earned in the ordinary occupations of their calling, however sober and commonplace these may be.'