Oh, she said and her voice seemed to calm. We took you to that beach once. The one in Den Haag?
The dunes, I said. On the edge of the city.
Yes, she said. We took you there one weekend, the weather was terrible. Your father didn’t mind though. You ran up and down the dunes with him until you were both worn out and then we ate poffertjes. Do you remember those? Have you been eating them? You loved them when you were little.
I don’t remember coming here as a child.
To Den Haag? I suppose you were very young. We traveled a lot in those days. She didn’t seem to realize that she was saying anything of significance, perhaps to her it was only a small and mundane fact of family history. Still, her voice was warmed through with nostalgia. The wind was pressing the hair into my face again and I pushed it aside and looked around. I tried to see the landscape clearly, I tried to understand the feeling of recognition that now overcame me. My mother had fallen silent, and now she asked if I was really okay. You seem very far away, she said and her voice sounded suddenly wistful.
I’m fine, I said. I’m okay.
We hung up moments later. But I remained on the beach and when I rose to my feet the sun had set long ago, and I had been sitting in darkness for some time.
* * *
—
The case against the former president was formally dismissed two weeks later. We had all known it was possible, the prosecutor’s brief, once submitted, had been less than convincing. There had been weaknesses to the case from the start, problems in proving chain of command. From a moral perspective, the man was guilty; from a legal perspective, the man was likely innocent. That both those things were possible was of course understood. But it was another thing to see the case fail before us, to see the cracks begin to widen one by one. I saw uncertainty spread through the building, blooming like mold.
Even before the case was dismissed, the apportioning of blame had begun. I viewed this activity from a distance, but I knew that within the various departments it was swift and vicious, and I was not the only one to wonder how long the prosecutor would last. For several days, there were a great many journalists at the Court—in the lobby, the corridors, on certain days they virtually occupied the cafeteria, thrusting chairs in place to form groups as they huddled over their coffee, their manner always urgent and professional. We regarded them with both suspicion and awe, they possessed the ability to direct attention to a particular event, person, or place with the press of a button, and they were now using that power to direct the world’s gaze on the Court.
We interpreters were only extras passing behind the central cast and yet we moved with caution, we had the sense of being under observation. We understood that the story of the trial was being written, and also the story of the Court, whose reputation would be deeply affected by the case. The former president had already released a statement denouncing the Court as a tool of Western imperialism and an ineffectual one at that, for obvious reasons he felt vindicated by the collapse of the case against him. Most of the journalists came to the Court only for opening and closing statements. Having been absent for the many months and years of the trial, they had returned to observe the final moments and attendant chaos. They had mere fragments of the narrative, and yet they would assemble those fragments into a story like any other story, a story with the appearance of unity.
One afternoon, I saw that a group of journalists had gathered in a cluster in the lobby. From a distance and over their heads and outstretched devices, I saw Kees, standing at the center. He was gesticulating to the assembled crowd and I saw the conviction with which he relayed his message, everything was calculated, from the way he looked into the camera to the way he made eye contact with the individual journalists, the careful articulation as he brought his thumb and index finger together, then splayed the fingers out in a single sweeping movement of muted, respectful triumph.
He finished his statement and then there was a rush of questions, phones thrust closer to him, journalists calling his name. He leaned forward as he listened to the journalist who had prevailed, and then—as if he had felt my gaze in particular upon him, out of the half a dozen people looking at him, half a dozen or perhaps more—he looked up from the woman who was asking her question, up and across the lobby, to where I stood. The expression on his face was unreadable, but there was no question that he was looking at me. Several journalists turned to see who or what he was looking at. He stared a moment longer and then nodded once—almost certainly in farewell—before lowering his head once more to the journalist.