"If you please," the commissaris said, "and one for you too."
Their glasses touched and tipped. The jar tipped for the second time, but this time the commissaris merely sipped and Troelstra followed his example. The commissaris liked the cafe; all of its contents dated back many years, to a tangible past. He caressed the stem of his tulip-shaped glass.
"You were polite to me," Troelstra said. "I remember that. A little human decency and understanding, there wasn't much of that around then, but with you it stuck. It kept me going in New Guinea, if I wasn't down. I got pretty ill there."
"Were you sent home ahead of time?"
"Malaria," Troelstra said. "It gets you by spells. We all had it, and when the fever went down we were back at work."
"Bad, was it?"
"Not too bad," Troelstra said. "Have you come to fetch me again? War crimes are never forgiven, but I didn't commit any crimes. I fought the Soviet Bolsheviks. It would be okay now, but in those days it wasn't done yet."
"I came for some information," the commissaris said, "about a Douwe Scherjoen."
"He doesn't come to this bar."
"The name is known to you?"
"I've heard of Scherjoen," Troelstra said. "This place isn't set up for Frisians only, but they all know who I am, and when they come I speak our language, not that I talk a great deal; they prefer me to listen."
"I was born out there, in Joure," the commissaris said.
Troelstra nodded. "You said that last time, so I could trust you some. You told me I should stay alive. Tell me again, why did I have to stay alive?"
'Because there's a point to living."
"You still think so?"
"I was young," the commissaris said. "I put it a little simply. You were young too. I got through to you, didn't I?"
Troelstra's hands pushed his sunken cheeks further inward. His calm eyes stared at the visitor. "This Scherjoen, was he the corpse in the paper this morning?"
"Yes," the commissaris said. "He was shot in this neighborhood and burned afterward, in a dory, or so we think; there wasn't much left of him."
"Sometimes," Troelstra said, "it doesn't pay to try and outthink the others." He grinned. "There are too many of them. What rule did he break?"
"We don't know much yet." The commissaris put his glass down after a carefully measured sip. "We do know that the deceased lived in Dingjum, could spend money, that's about it. What do you know?"
"He sold sheep," Troelstra said, "to Morocco, Turkey, Algeria. Frisian sheep. More than are ever officially counted in all of Friesland. Sheep look a lot alike. There's too much administration these days, but maybe the sheep still slip through."
"But he never came here?"
"Other sheep dealers come here, and they talked about him. The dealers like to visit the Red Quarter. Leeuwarden, our capital, used to have a nice quarter of its own, but now they have to slide down the Great Dike, all the way down to Gomorrah here. Here we can satisfy most any desire."
"In our lower regions?" the commissaris asked. "And what did Douwe's colleagues have to say about him?"
"They didn't like Douwe."
"Jealousy?"
"Of course," Troelstra said. "But maybe more than just jealousy. Douwe wasn't too straight. Broke his agreements, or changed them later on, not quite what Frisians expect of each other."
"Would any of your clients be a shooting man?"
"I am a traitor," Troelstra said, "but I don't really like squealing too much."
"Scherjoen was shot from the rear."
Troelstra lifted the jenever jar. The commissaris nodded. He had lunched lightly and the strong gin made his body tingle. His leg no longer hurt; on the contrary, the usually sensitive nerves seemed to be alive with calm energy. How enjoyable it would be to be just a little drunk forever. Doesn't alcohol addiction exclude all other desires? The thought wasn't new to him. To simplify life's motivation should be an excellent short-term goal. Whoever is interested in alcohol can afford to forget about everything else. Any new day begins with the necessity to drown the hangover, and once that's done time flows on joyfully again. It wouldn't work out in the end, he knew that too, but the idea was still exciting. To realize the wish would be easy enough. He could retire and get up late and go to bed early and be smashed in between. With a bit of discipline, the change shouldn't be hard.
"One more?" Troelstra asked.
"No, thanks."
"Coffee, freshly made?"
"If you please."
Troelstra handled his coffee machine with the slow, exact movements that are the result of long practice.
"How old are you, Troelstra?"
They shared the same age.
"You know," Troelstra said, "I once shot a prisoner in Russia, from the rear. The Russian never knew what happened to him. He was talking to a tree, and the next thing he was out."
"No!" the commissaris said, shaking his head in disbelief.
Troelstra nodded thoughtfully. "He had gone mad. We were out on patrol. I was in charge of the squad. Frisian boys, every one of them. There were hardly any Frisians fighting for the Germans, but the few that went out there were under my command. Good fellows, steady, courageous, supermen, all specially picked for SS training. We were liberating the world. Civilian Russia was the worst place I had ever seen-starving people in hovels, suppressed by a terrible system; we didn't know then that we were making it even worse. Suddenly there was that Russian soldier behind us, with a rifle, hand grenades on his belt; quite a young man still, and he had lost his mind. He was yelling at us and pointing at the clouds. We took his weapons and he never noticed. He was singing by then. We tried to send him off, for a prisoner would slow us down; we were about to attack."
"Yes," the commissaris said.
"I was the sergeant," Troelstra said. "I was supposed to know what to do. My men were looking up to me. The Russian was stamping on the snow, screaming some ditty, frothing at the mouth, eyes popping out of his head. We were close to the enemy, and he was giving our position away."
"Yes," the commissaris said. "I could have some more coffee."
"Java Mocha," Troelstra said. 'Too good a brand for this place but I'm getting too old to make a profit."
"Yes?"
"I took that Russian along," Troelstra said, "with my arm around his shoulders, friendly-like, I was his older brother. He pulled away and ran into the trees; when I found him again, he was talking to an oak."
"You shot him?"
"Yes."
"And that's the way Scherjoen was helped out?"
"I wouldn't know," Troelstra said slowly.
An old man shuffled into the caf6, in a dirty raincoat and frayed trousers. "Jelle, a lemonade today."
Jelle poured soda, holding the gin jar in his left hand. The old man studied first the jar, then his own trembling hands, clutching at the counter. "Yes, go ahead."
The gin joined the lemonade in the tall glass. Jelle lifted the jar but didn't replace it. "Right," the old man said. The jar tinkled again. The man drank. He put the glass down. "Aaah," the man said happily.
"I only meant," Troelstra said to the commissaris, "that things are often not quite what they seem. So I betrayed my country. Maybe I did. Maybe it wasn't meant that way."
"You meant well?"
"Things had to get better, didn't they?" Troelstra asked. "And they got worse. Isn't that the human way? We mean well and we become active and we go down even further."
"In the beginning • • •"
"… there was God." Troelstra scratched his chin. "But where did He go? I sometimes think about that a bit."
The man in the dirty raincoat rattled his glass. "Same again, Jelle." Jelle poured from bottle and jar. The man's toothless smile widened. "Nice day today."
Troelstra and the commissaris said that the old man was right.
"It's all so easy," the old man said, "but I keep forgetting, and it takes a few glasses to remember it again. To keep it easy can be rather tricky."