Have you ever felt the urge to let your inner hipster come out? I’ve got just the thing for you: a book nobody has ever heard of. And it’s actually good. You can sit at your local non-Starbucks organic overpriced coffee joint, fancy hardback in front of you, and gaze sternly over your thick-rimmed glasses and your cashmere scarf and, your voice full of disdain, inquire of other hipsters: What do you mean, you’ve never read Willem Frederik Hermans? What is wrong with you?
This is assuming most of you don’t live in the Netherlands, where The Darkroom of Damocles is one of the hallmarks of post-World War II literature and Hermans is one of the most famous writers; he’s our Gore Vidal, our Tennessee Willliams, our William Faulkner. Hermans was a member of the so-called “Grote Drie” or Great Three of Dutch postmodern literature, the other two being Harry Mulisch and Gerard Reve. I never ‘got’ enfant terrible Reve, though I admire him for being both openly gay and devoutly Catholic in the seventies, and though I like Mulisch (The Discovery of Heaven is one of my all-time favourites) the quality of his work varies widely. Not everything Hermans has written is pure gold either, but The Darkroom of Damocles, his most famous book, is fantastic.
The book chronicles the life of Henri Osewout. At the start of World War II, Osewout has an unassuming cigar store in an unassuming Dutch town. He’s trapped in a loveless marriage to his cousin, Ria, and together they take care of his mother, who suffers from an unnamed psychiatric condition that led her to murder Henri’s father in the past and makes her wander around the house in hats crafted from scraps of newspaper while moaning about ghosts. Osewout himself is unassuming, unattractive and oddly feminine, with his slim frame and his complete lack of facial hair. On the day that the Dutch government capitulates, a strange man named Dorbeck appears in Osewout’s shop. Dorbeck, strangely, looks exactly like Osewout, though he has a beard and black hair where Osewout is blonde. Dorbeck has shot two German soldiers and needs to get away. Intrigued, Henri helps him. Dorbeck asks him to develop some photographs: one of a snowman wearing a helmet, one of two soldiers in gas masks and pyjamas, and one of a half-naked soldier posting with an anti-aircraft gun. A fourth photo, that of two women standing in front of a house, fails. When Dorbeck re-appears, he has lost all apparent interest in the pictures and insists that Osewout helps him with an assassination. He does so, and though he is nearly recognised by his Nazi-supporting neighbour they succeed. Satisfied, Dorbeck sends him on other, increasingly dangerous, resistance assignments.
One of the accusations often thrown at Dutch literature from this era is that it’s all about sex and war traumas. This is certainly true of The Darkroom of Damocles, but this is the original from which all others derive. It is a work of literature, one that says a lot about human nature and perception, but above all it’s a fantastically gripping thriller that masterfully wanders off towards all sorts of unexpected conclusions. I won’t tell you in which direction the jaw-dropping conclusion takes you, because I knew about it beforehand – the perils of being late to read such a famous book – and I wish I hadn’t.
It also excels at pointing out the peculiar mix of tension and absolute boredom of the war years. The Netherlands saw some fighting during World War II, but as it capitulated rather quickly the occupation was – relatively speaking – unmemorable. Life is threatening in all its boredom, people are tedious and ugly and grotesque. A woman in a girl-scout uniform with a wart at the corner of her mouth and ‘skin like boiled veal’; a drunken Nazi who knows he has lost the war, groping a man in a nurse’s uniform in the backseat of a limousine; a wiry librarian wearing a dress of the same drab material as the tablecloth behind which she sits. You see the world through Osewout’s eyes and you understand the need for heroism and excitement that leads him to follow Dorbeck unquestioningly.
I’m not going to tell you about the ending. I’m not going to tell you about all the works that derive from this one. I’m not going to tell you about the names, the fantastic character descriptions, or the raw desperation that runs through the book like an exposed nerve. I’ll just say this: read this book. Your inner hipster will thank me.
