rode omslag

Groene omslag

Milan Kundera offers a compound blurb for The Darkroom of Damocles; "I read it in a single sitting" and "a thriller during which the suspense never flags." While I agree with the first sentiment -- I read the final 270 pages in an evening -- the second claim is more elusive. Detailing the occupation/resistance dynamic in the Netherlands during WW II, W.F. Hermans unleashes a nightmare where his unsettling protagonist Osewoundt (O) takes up arms against the Germans and finds more than traces of evil in his own soul. The thriller aspect is maintained by having the enemy possess a sort of omniscience which leaves the reader puzzling as to the supergrass. How do they know O's activities so closely? There is paranoia at every turn and some sort of sudden sexuality. Ultimately O is a morally questionable figure. Insert symbols for Occupied Europe here. It is easy to be swept along by the novel. Enjoying it is a different task. ( )

“Wat is een held? Iemand die straffeloos onvoorzichtig is geweest.”
― Willem Frederik Hermans, De donkere kamer van Damokles
Can you read the above quote? Most people can't since it is written in Dutch. One big reason William Fredrick Hermans (1921-1925) isn't a well know as other authors of his generation, say, Heinrich Böll, William Trevor or Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Willem Frederik Hermans's novel of intrigue and espionage is told not in first person narrative but has the quality of first person narrative since the story follows one Henri Osewoudt so closely the reader looks over Osewoudt's shoulder throughout the entire novel. Occasionally the narrator conveys Osewoudt's thoughts and feeling, but it's the fast-paced action driving the story told in short unnumbered chapters, short chapters fueling a keen sense of urgency as the story unfolds in twists and turns. Hermans employs simple linear progression with no flash-backs or other time shifts - events happen as Osewoudt experiences them, starting when, after his mad mother murders his father, Osewoudt, a boy of thirteen, is sent to Amsterdam to live with his aunt and uncle and nineteen year old cousin.

About five years pass and Osewoudt marries his cousin, moves back to his father's tobacco shop and is pressed into becoming an active member of the Dutch underground fighting against the Nazis in 1939. Osewouldt is the opposite of a Hollywood-style handsome hero; the author describes him as follows: "A diminutive freak, a toad reared upright. His nose was more of a button than a nose. And his eyes, even when not focusing, seemed forever narrowed, as if he could only leer, not look normally. His mouth recalled the kind of orifice through which the lowest forms of life ingest their food, not a mouth that could laugh or talk." Perhaps the author wants us to experience, reflect, and consider events happening in Nazi occupied Netherlands with a cool objective clarity rather than rooting for an attractive main character.

A man named Dorbeck recruits Osewoudt into the Dutch underground. Dorbeck has a military background and gives orders as the person squarely in charge. Turns out, Dorbeck is the same height and build as Osewoudt, and, other than the black hair and a beard to shave, looks exactly like Osewouldt. Durbeck becomes the center of Osewoudt's life and identify, in a very real sense Dorbeck is Osewoudt's double, his Doppelgänger.

After years in the underground, Osewoudt tells his girlfriend, "But I can only obey Dorbeck, and no one forced me. . . . I had no skills, no ambition. It wasn't until I met Dorbeck that I felt I wanted something, if only to be like Dorbeck, if only to want the same things as he did. And wanting the same thing as someone else is a step up from not wanting anything." As the story progresses we come to see just how tight the grip Dorbeck has on Osewoudt.

Other than Dorbeck, his leader and contact (and also his idol), Osewoudt moves in a spy versus spy world where nothing is certain and there isn't a person alive who can be trusted completely: identities and names continually shift and change, indeed, Osewoudt changes names on more than one occasion and at one point dyes his fair hair black and at another point wears the uniform of a nurse..

One meaning of the book's title, The Darkroom of Damocles, can be taken as the state of an entire country under foreign military occupation: at any moment, the Damoclean sword held by a thread hanging over one's head can drop and one can find oneself interrogated under a spotlight, taken away to prison, or standing in front of a firing squad.

Toward the end of the novel when held prisoner by the Dutch authorities and exasperated in his attempt to prove his innocence, Osewoudt says, "Everything I've ever done is slipping through my fingers! The people I worked with during the war are all either dead or missing, and even the streets I used to know no longer exist. It's beyond belief. I feel I'm in a different world, where no one will believe me. What am I to do? How in God's name can I ever justify myself at this rate." What a quagmire - trying to explain and justify and prove events happening within the world of war retrospectively in a time of peace.

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This is one of the classics in Duch literature. It was written in the fifties and is very much a book worth reading. The main character is a troubled young man who believes he's playing a heroic role in the resistance during the war, but finds out that at the end of the war, people believe he's a traitor of the worst kind. The main character isn't very sympathetic, but you can understand why he does what he does and why he believes he's doing the right things. But what is he doing really? It's all very enigmatic and weird and as a reader who got all the facts, I still was puzzled long after I finished the book. I think it's been translated and I would highly recommend it. ( )