THE TELEPHONE RANG. “Can I come over?”
Myriam and I have come to an agreement. She distrusts men, and women have always made my life complicated. One evening after pizza, as we were walking down Herenstraat in Voorburg, we turned in the direction of my hotel. We didn’t say much, but we knew we were going to fuck. The only thing in our lives that reassures us is sex. In the elevator, we didn’t kiss. We looked at the ground. Myriam saw the photo of Kabanga. She went through the room, looking for someplace to sit. Finally she chose the armchair in front of my worktable. Myriam came from Somalia, but studied in Kansas, and hasn’t visited her country for ten years. She doesn’t like being Somali. She wants Dutch citizenship and has been taking crash courses in the language. Myriam wants to become someone else. I’m happy being me; I’m familiar with all my ins and outs.
I grasped for a subject of conversation. I wanted to go back to the light-hearted atmosphere we had before. “You can go on the other bed, I feel tired.” I sat down on one of the beds. We had lost all familiarity with the act of love, we searched for each other, and hesitated. We had no skill and sense of ease in this complex exercise, and that made us laugh. Myriam has a pretty smile and I think that’s what excited me, her smile, more than her long graceful body, more than her small breasts. We managed to make love well enough.
The next morning, Myriam left before I awoke. She sent me an e-mail that afternoon. “Let’s make a deal. We’ll see each other when we need sex. No questions, no attachments.”
“Agreed,” I answered.
She returned a few days later. Like the first evening, she looked for somewhere to sit. She chose the foot of my bed. She seemed nervous, anxious, full of troubling thoughts. The last train had passed, it was 2:45 a.m. Sleep, all I could think of was sleep. “Claude, I think I love you.” I don’t want to be loved, and I don’t want to love. I didn’t have the time or the availability. But Myriam had her charms. At first I saw only her timid smile, but now the grace of her body held me, and how wonderfully light she was as she lay upon me. When two people meet, they control nothing but their own defenses. I was circumspect, distant, timid, and humble, and I was able to calm her fear of men. I proved that men could be trustworthy. If I hadn’t been a Court analyst, if I wasn’t tasked with tracking down the planet’s worst criminals, I could have tried passion and loving with abandon, the upsetting of reason that, as soon as it occurs, fills every part of the brain and casts the lover into constant disquiet and uncertainty. Later, maybe I would try to love Myriam, but not now, not three days from the beginning of Kabanga’s trial.
Myriam was part of the team of jurists who wrote up the judges’ decisions. She was a judge’s ghostwriter, in this case the ghost of Judge Fulton, an arrogant, perverse Englishman. We never spoke of Kabanga; professional discretion forbid it. The prosecutor didn’t like Fulton’s concept of the law, full of codicils, commas, and obtuse rules, and the judge had contempt for the prosecutor’s idea of justice that was based as much on law as on equity, but also on the accounts of the victims, the uproar of the planet, and other such factors. We both understood the conflict between these two irreconcilable visions of justice, but we avoided the discussion that could shake, if not completely break, our relationship.
I searched. How could I say yes and no, or no and yes, both at the same time, to this declaration of love that put me ill at ease? I couldn’t do it. I always say either yes or no; ambiguous arrangements are foreign to me, and lies repulsive.
Myriam’s body was a graceful dark serpent on the white sheet. She looked at me with eyes like a vulture. “Claude, Kabanga is going to be freed because of a procedural error. The prosecutor knows. That’s why your mission to Bunia was cancelled. The decision will be announced on Monday and Kabanga will go back to his country if he wants to.”
I asked her to repeat it, but that was only something you say to make sure your heart is still beating and that you’re still breathing. She didn’t repeat it, she only said, “Claude, come to me” with such sweetness and sadness in her voice that I lay down next to her, as close as I could, and let her hold me in her loving arms that seemed like the wings of a bird, protecting me.
Our team had imagined every possible outcome, an exemplary sentence, but also a lighter sentence, and we even considered with a laugh of disbelief that Kabanga might be acquitted, but never freed before trial. One hundred thousand people know in their flesh and through their pain that the man is a criminal. But the judge didn’t give a damn. And what a judge, all gung ho in his own country, an artist of maximum sentences, a grand master of the rule of law. I felt like crying, or screaming, but I was paralysed, wrapped in this loving body like a larva, a parasite, a thing with no consistence. Myriam ran her hands gently through my hair. “Claude, the judge is totally full of himself. I know him. His only thought is for his reputation as a great legal mind.”
Our team knew that, but we never imagined the very high esteem he had for himself would lead him to invoke a procedural error as a way of freeing a criminal. We had confidential documents from the UN and members of local NGOs. These documents were used to build a case against Kabanga. The judge ordered us to share them with the defense. Had we obeyed him, we would have endangered people’s lives. So we sent over only the essential parts. The judge knew that, but didn’t give a damn. For him it was all or nothing. The man wanted to write the history of international law and had no interest in justice.
“You have to sleep, Claude, you need to sleep.” Her voice was as soft as the summer breeze. I was less afraid of her love. I had no romantic feelings towards her, only the sense of comfort she brought me, like a warm bath or a fresh sheet, gentle to the touch. I could get used to her love if she didn’t demand my own.