But how do you know? I asked. They released the name, she said. It was in one article, there wasn’t that much information, but once I had the name, you know the internet, everything is available. He’s a book dealer, a man called Anton de Rijk, he has a business in the Old Town that is very successful. He probably lives in your part of the city, she said to Adriaan. Although the subject matter had suddenly become very serious, her flirtation persisted, taking the form of blunt aggression, it wasn’t exactly friendly to hypothesize that it might just as easily have been Adriaan lying in a hospital bed.
Yes, she continued, he was probably visiting friends, on his way to a dinner party, only he never arrived, how long do you think his friends waited before they sat down to eat? An hour? An hour and a half? She stopped, as if remembering that they had only recently been waiting for me to arrive, that they might sit down to dinner. One day you are living an ordinary life with its ordinary ups and downs, and then that life is ripped apart and you can never feel entirely secure again. You spend your days looking over your shoulder, your understanding of the world is changed, you see it as a brittle place, full of hostility.
She picked up her fork and began eating, she had barely touched her food and was obviously hungry. Adriaan said that this was how violence functioned and why it was so effective at disrupting society, that was why terrorism worked. Jana swallowed, setting down her fork and reaching for her glass of wine. Of course, she said abruptly.
Still, something must have gone wrong, Adriaan said. There’s no reason to beat a man if all you’re after is money, if a man threatens you with violence, if a man asks for your wallet and phone, you give it to him, we all know that.
Yes, but things do go wrong, Jana said. Even the most hardened criminal can panic and go further than he intended, the body is both more resilient and more fragile than one expects, even those who are accustomed to violence can be taken by surprise. Or perhaps the criminal was an amateur, and underestimated his own strength. Or perhaps he acted out of malice, that’s also not impossible, is it? Jana shrugged. In a way the intention doesn’t matter because whether his attacker—or I suppose attackers, there may have been more than one—acted out of malice or out of panic, the result is the same, the poor man is still in the hospital and you know it’s been several days, I can only think that he must have been very badly injured.
Did they catch whoever did it? I asked.
I’m sure they have it under control, she said, they probably already have a suspect, there are CCTV cameras on that block, nothing goes undetected anymore. I always hated the cameras, I thought it was the sign of a surveillance state. But now I find they make me feel a little bit safer, I suppose this is how people become conservative. She sounded a little calmer than before. Being a property owner changes your perception of things whether you like it or not. Even the smallest apartment is enough to do the job, it’s difficult not to be contaminated by it, there’s a difference between living in theory and living in practice.
She spoke as if home ownership had transformed her completely, as if she’d been buried in the battlements of her apartment, her life ossified. But I knew this wasn’t true, that Jana’s own situation remained contingent, the stability around us was simply a matter of appearances. That must have been, I realized, what Adriaan had felt when he had returned home to find an empty apartment. I gazed at him across the table, that must have been what he felt when he gathered the children and sat them down, when he searched for the words to tell them that their mother was gone. Every certainty can give way without notice. No one and nothing was exempt from this rule, not even Adriaan.
7.
For a long time, Jana was quiet. Her face was creased with fatigue and worry and I had a vision of her restless in the night, peering out the window, getting out of bed to check that the door was locked. There was no ghost of coquetry in her manner now, nothing that was in the least bit performed, she seemed to have turned completely inward.
Perhaps a full minute later, she looked up and smiled. What a depressing turn to the conversation, that’s my fault. She reached for the bottle of wine and poured herself another glass, and then filled both my glass and Adriaan’s. I shook my head and said, It’s only natural to worry, or words to that effect, words without any particular meaning. The subject had seemed so innocuous, mere small talk—and yet it had cordoned each of us into a private realm, it was as if we had mutually agreed there was nothing more to be said between us.
Let’s talk about something else, shall we? Jana smiled at Adriaan and me, as if to reassure us that matters were exactly the same as before. Not too long after that, Adriaan looked at his phone and said that we should be going, and that he would order a car. I asked him mechanically if he hadn’t driven, and he shook his head. A little later, his phone pinged. The car had arrived and we stood up. Jana followed us to the door, then reminded us that she had an exhibition opening in several weeks, she hoped we would both come. I nodded and she embraced me quickly before saying she would look forward to seeing us then.